56: Lord of the Flies (2026)

[00:00:00] In brightest day, in blackest night No clue in the new HBO series Lanterns shall escape our sight The mysteries, theories, characters and lore, all of that we will explore Join us each week for Casting Light a Lanterns podcast, available wherever you get podcasts Beware our power, Podcastica's might Hello everybody, it's Jason

[00:00:26] Cassie, Cara and I recorded this episode about the Lord of the Flies about a week ago And first we talked about all the Yellowjackets news that had come out since our last podcast And then, during the week, it was announced that Yellowjackets Season 4, the final season Has set a premiere date for November 20th, Friday, November 20th Woo! So we're super excited

[00:00:53] You'll hear in the news us say that we don't know when it's coming out, but it's coming out November 20th And Penny and Daphne and Wendy and I will be back to podcast on it We all can't wait So we'll see you then Buzz, buzz, buzz Hmm? Ah! Hmm? Podcastica

[00:01:13] Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast

[00:01:48] I'm Jason And I'm Cassie And I'm Cara And this is Yellowjackets WTF episode 57 This episode we're covering the recent BBC produced 4 episode Lord of the Flies series available on Netflix in the US Yeah! Excited to be covering this I'm so pumped Because the story has things in common with Yellowjackets Of course, we know Yellowjackets was inspired by it in part I wanted to let you know you just heard two possibly unfamiliar voices because Wendy's

[00:02:17] Been busy with House of the Dragon and like being a nurse and stuff And Daphne's recovering from COVID And Penny said she just wasn't into it But I'm really glad to have Cassie and Cara here with me So welcome to both of you Thanks, Jason I jumped on this one Yeah, yeah I'm so happy And if you listen to our coverage of the Lord of the Flies novel two years ago You heard Cassie along with me and Wendy talking about that

[00:02:45] And Cara, I was surprised to learn it's your first time, right? On this podcast Because you're a big Yellowjackets fan It is! I know I haven't seen it yet Yeah I love it Yeah, so speaking of that Before we get into the Lord of the Flies I'm going to go over some news about Yellowjackets Because we haven't had an episode in a while And there's been a lot of news Production of the fourth and final season Started March of this year And has now wrapped

[00:03:12] And like cast and crew have been posting their farewells and everything It's weird when this happens Because you know that for them it's the end And they're all like Like, oh my god, I can't believe this is over It was such a great experience And we're like, we haven't seen it yet So it's a weird mismatch But I wanted to read what Melanie Linsky posted I think on her Instagram She said Genuinely don't know how I could ever thank our cast and crew enough

[00:03:41] But I threw a little party last weekend To try to express some of my gratitude It came at the end of two incredibly long and tough weeks Including night shoots And honestly, I could not believe how many people showed up My heart I know how tired everyone was So it met the world It was so fun to get to hang out with each other While all the cast is still in town And before the whole thing wraps up We karaoke'd and mini-golfed and drank a lot And ate greasy food Bart started the singing off with There is a light that never goes out

[00:04:09] Jason, who's her husband, Jason Ritter And my daughter did two duets Everyone let loose I do wish I got so many more photos I wish I got photos with literally everyone I wish my hostess anxiety had subsided a bit earlier But I'm happy I got to talk to a lot of friends From past seasons too And to meet a lot of crew who aren't on set So I don't get to see them at work And then to celebrate with them With a team that's with us day in and day out Working so, so hard It was amazing I love everyone so much Thanks for everything

[00:04:38] Nearly at the finish line And Sophie Nolisse I love you the most And I'm happy we got all these pictures We've never met a photo booth We didn't love Aww That just seemed like something Anyone who threw a little party for their friends Could have written But I thought it was kind of fun To hear it Or just, you know That's sweet That's so cute I can't believe it's almost over I know Yeah This is it I don't know if everyone hearing me knows this But they announced season four Is the final season

[00:05:07] And at times they talked about doing five But it's not because it wasn't doing well It was Every season was getting more viewers And the final episode of season three Had like the most views of any episode I think So Or something like that So It's just They I mean I don't know why they're ending it But They knew it was going to end Before they started writing the season So they're really That is good They really got to write to the end Yeah

[00:05:37] So that's really cool I think that's fair I'd rather have four excellent seasons Than Three excellent seasons One good season And then one rushed season Do you know Yeah Looking at you Game of Thrones Oh god Sorry Yeah Absolutely Yeah I mean Hopefully I'm really hopeful I'm I can't wait To see What this last season's going to be Especially given where we ended up Yeah I was going to say After that ending Yeah I have to go back and rewatch

[00:06:07] Like I know what happens I just Yeah I need to go back and rewatch Me too I think Some of us Wendy and Daphne And possibly Penny and I Will do a Catch up episode Before next season starts That would be very helpful There There is talk in the news About the story For season four But I Don't like Reading a lot of Spoilery stuff So If you're curious I would go to Google Look it up I think it sounds awesome What I've read

[00:06:37] Melanie Linsky said The show has been crazy It gets crazier We're all just like Wow Okay Then Also The showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson Signed an overall television deal With Paramount In February So That Means I guess that Paramount's happy with it And how it ended Yeah That's nice That's good That's a good sign Well It could be I was like The Duffer Brothers Had Netflix For a couple of shows

[00:07:07] But then they I think they signed a deal With someone else And that's why Netflix cancelled their That would make me feel better Thing Because it was out of spite I don't know Oh gosh There's some cast news Akilah And Teen Melissa Have been promoted To series regulars For the final season Hilary Swank Is coming back As adult Melissa Which is good Molly Ringwald Is joining Did you guys know that?

[00:07:37] Oh yeah I forgot about that Oh yeah I did know that I just didn't think about it For a while Yeah I love that You know It's that whole Well she's more 80s But She plays a mom I'll just say that Someone's mom Interesting June Squib I don't know who she is But she's gonna be in it And then What else They have not said When it will Premiere But It wrapped Last month Previous seasons Have premiered Two to four months After wrapping

[00:08:07] So that would make it Sometime later this year But it's the final season So who knows They might take more time With it And do it early Next year Pretty soon though Seems like a great Holiday show Good Holiday vibes I think so Yeah Right Gather around Eat another person I feel like This upcoming season Is gonna be really good For television Yep I am Excited Yeah Me too Last thing There's So There was

[00:08:36] Supposedly Some bonus episode That filmed And Jason Ritter Was in it And It never aired And there's still No word On that Oh my gosh I would love to see Jason Ritter I know That's fantastic It was speculation That he played The character We call Cabin Daddy Like this You know Like a flashback Or something Yes Bring it I don't even care If it's edited Just give it to us Yeah Just show it to Even if it's not canon Just show it to us Yeah

[00:09:05] Or he needs to reenact it On his TikTok For everyone On his Instagram Yeah He Melody Yeah His wife can Be Shauna She can direct Too Okay Let's Move into Lord of the Flies Before we Get into The details By the way This is a Netflix series Four episodes It's actually a BBC But it came out On Netflix In the US In May So I would like us To just Give some

[00:09:34] Spoiler free Or spoiler light Impressions of it And whether we would Recommend that people Stop listening And go watch it I mean I My expectations Were pretty high Going into it Because it You know Having a TV Adaptation For the first time It seems like It lends itself So well To that medium As opposed to You know Just another movie And my expectations Were exceeded So Nice I would

[00:10:03] Absolutely Recommend it It's So well And lovingly Made Yes I watched The making Of like The documentary That they had On Netflix That accompanies it And it just Made me fall in love With the project Even more And I'm I was so Impressed I would I couldn't Recommend it Enough Especially Obviously If you like Yellow jackets Once you If you're Into that show Like you can Handle kids The only One thing I wonder

[00:10:33] Is I I think A lot of Yellow jackets Viewers love The girlness Of it all The womanness And this is A bunch of boys Yeah I mean It's a nice Counterpart You have Girlhood In Yellow jackets And you have Boyhood In Lord of the Flies And I think This Rendition Especially Is such a Like Accurate And Beautiful Portrayal Of like Adolescence In general And especially Like the The parts About Being an Adolescent Boy That I

[00:11:03] Don't Think a Lot of People get In modern Media Yeah And for The casting I think They had Like 7000 Kids Come to A casting And They wanted People who Were not Professionals Right Yep And it Feels like A bunch Of real Boys It really Does It does Fucking good I didn't Know there Was Behind the Scenes Until About 20 Minutes Ago So I I can't Wait To watch It Oh yeah It's so Good It's so Good

[00:11:33] I bet I thought I love This so Much My expectations Were Pretty high Too And it Way Exceeded I thought It was Brilliant I thought It was Such a Good Adaptation Of the Story Like one Of the Few Stories I was Forced To read In high School That I Really Loved You know Thank Your English Teacher And the Presentation Was so Artful And it Was also Very Disturbing Not just Because People Are Getting Violent You know If you Know the

[00:12:03] Story Of the Lord Of The Flies But For Me It Felt Like An Echo Of The Real World Where You're Feeling Depressed To see These Corrosive Ego Driven Forces Winning Out And Trampling The Things That We Care About And Like the world's Coming apart At the Seems It captures That Feeling And I was Like I'm Loving This And Also I Feel Like I Thought It Was A

[00:12:33] Masterpiece Though So I Really Recommend Especially For Like You Said Yellow Jackets Fans Yeah It Is TVMA Yeah It's Not For Kids No It Is Not Sorry To All My Fellow Teachers Who Thought Maybe They'd Be Able To Teach It You Could Pull Clips From It For Sure But That's True Yeah It's Really Special It's It's Really Really I The More Impressed I Yeah Absolutely Okay

[00:13:02] So Now From here On out It will Be full Spoilers For the Whole Thing So If You Don't Like Spoilers And You Think You Might Want To See It You Should Stop And Go Watch It And Come Back And Hear What We Have To Say If You Want To We Will Start As Per Tradition With Our Fucked Up On And As Per Tradition Over On The Fall Out Podcast I

[00:13:32] Have Two Honorable Mentions In Mind But I'm Not Going To Say Those Until You Guys Go I Don't Want To Take Anybody's Point But I Had A Really Hard Time Obviously Picking Something That Was Kind of Viscerally Fucked Up As Opposed To Psychologically Fucked Up The More That I But The Pig Hunt And Ambush For Me

[00:14:02] Was Just Ultimately The Most Unsettling Thing Which I Know Is Kind Of A Heavy Thing To Say In A Show Where Children Die But It Was Hard To Watch It Choice They Made To Have The Little Baby

[00:14:32] Pigs Run Away And Kind of Get Away Before The Boys Circled In Was Pretty Horrifying And You Know It's The Perfect Moment To Show Kind Of That Crossover From Civilization And Being Civil Into Barbarism And They Did It Very Well The Sound Design Everything Came Together And Made It Truly Unsettling There's These Forces Of

[00:15:02] Innocence And Vulnerability And Then Bravado And Toughness And And It Was Such A Great Moment Of The Kids Navigating The Transition From One To The Other And All Of Us Too And Because You Could Tell That They Were All Kind Of Horrified By It But Then They Sort Of Decided Collectively Without Talking About It To Be Like Yes We Did What You Need To Do And On Some Level I Was

[00:15:31] Feeling Like That Was Really Hard To Watch And Man I Wish They Were Better At Their Job Because That Thing Suffered More Than It Should Have But Also They Need To Eat So I Was Sort Of Like This Is Exactly That Struggle Of Like Of Course Like Killing A Pig Would Feed So Many Pigs Have It Should Have But The Zoom In They Did This A Few Times In The Series And I'm Sure We'll Talk About It But The

[00:16:01] Zoom In On Their Faces And You See Some Of Juicy It Was So I Guess My I

[00:16:31] Just Think You Gotta You Don't Have To There Are Many Vegetarians Probably Listening That Aren't Going To Agree With What I'm About To Say At All But You Know On Yellowjackets They Killed Deer Right Natalie Went Out To Hunt And In Lost They Killed Boar Right And So Like Each Other Kill Meat And Eat It We Most Of Us Attention To Your Emotional Reaction It Might Be Wow That Was Just

[00:17:00] Totally Wrong I Don't Know I Say It's At Least Debatable Like It's Okay To It Was Both Right I Think They Were

[00:17:30] Wrong For Hunting And Killing And Eating Meat But It Was Definitely Also About That They Wanted To Conquer And Prove Themselves It's Like That Element Peeking Through The Narrative Like Oh This Is Going To Get Interesting What Was Yours Cassie What Was Your Most Fuck The Peak Of Simon's Background

[00:18:00] That We Get And His Parents The Domestic Violence Story Of His I Think He Said His Dad Was Screaming At His Mom And Holding Her And Telling Her Like Who To What Was It It Was So Bad That I Blacked It Out A Little Bit He Was Screaming At Her Mom After Hitting Her And Asking If Simon Agreed And He Was Too Afraid To Say No Or Something Like That Yes And Then He Looked At His Mom And Said Even Your Precious Boy Doesn't Love You

[00:18:30] And That Was Really That Was Rough I Don't Know Why I Could Deal With The Pig A Lot Better Than That I Was Cringing At That Recognize In Jack That Oh His His Father They Had A He Wouldn't Put It This Way But A Kind Of Toxic Relationship I Had Toxic Relationship With My Father

[00:19:00] So I Know That Means That He Feeling Broken Inside And The Way That He's Acting Is To It

[00:19:30] By Thinking He Had To Wear This Mask And Prove Himself All The Time But Jack Also Did Have That Inward Part To Him So That Whole Just Such Great Character Development All Around Those Flashbacks This Actor Who Played Jack I Don't Have His Name In Front Of

[00:20:10] Watch Out Kid That Is True I Kept I I I Fresh Off House Of The Dragon And I Was Like He's Got A Targaryen It It's Not It's Like All Of It His I Was One Of The Adult Chaperones When

[00:20:40] Was It Like Where They Would Engineer Playtime So They Could Film It And Capture Real Moments Kind Of Thing A Few Yeah They Were Really Limited With The Little Ones I Loved How They Called Them On Set They Only Had Three Hours Of Filming Time With Them And You Can Tell That These Kids Are Just Goof Balls They're Trying To Get Them Focused And They Are Focused

[00:21:11] One Of Them They Talked About How They Captured Moments Like Building Sandcastles Or Piling Up Sand Around Your Feet Or The Kids Having The Hermit Crabs Crawling All Over Them The Mud Skipper Adorable It's Like They Were Having Their Own Alternate Version Of The Same Story But A Little Nicer Yeah I Really Like That I Once Had A Student Write An Alternate Ending In From From The Perspective Of A Little One And I Loved It That's A Great Idea That's Really Cool Well

[00:21:41] Mine Was Roger Throwing That Rock At Piggy And Then Saying To Jack That's What You That Was Horrifying And Poor Piggy Like The The The Blood Drip Anyway

[00:22:10] We'll Get To Yeah But I Just Like That Moment Made me Think Okay How Are We Normalizing That Kind Of Brutality Right Modern Day America Because We Favorite Character In The Book To Track And Analyze And I I Really

[00:22:40] Judge The Renditions By How They Develop His Character I Loved Every Single Second That He Was On Screen I Loved The Comparisons Of Him At The Very I Think It Him Murdering Piggy Essentially Murdering Nikki God Bless

[00:23:11] And I Think And I Said This When We Did Lord Of The Flies Two Years Ago But Roger Is The Most Dangerous Character In The Show Because As Soon As He Gets An Opportunity For Violence And Not Just Like Pushing And Shoving Because They All Are Pushing And Shoving And Jabbing At Each Other And Tripping Each Other But The Moment He Gets An Opportunity For Real Violence He Takes It And Then Immediately Looks To Someone For Affirmation So That He Can Because Then If They Say No That's Not What I Meant Then He Can Just Back Away And Be

[00:23:41] Like Well That's Not What You Said Yeah Just So Dangerous I Think His Actor I Can't Remember What His Name Was I Wrote Down Somewhere I'll Have To Look It Up Incredible Incredible Because He Didn't Seem Like A Little Like Villain Like No He Played It Natural And That's Exactly I Feel Like How He Developed And I Got Such Like Patrick Hochstetter Vibes The

[00:24:17] Behind The Scenes Episode Like The Actor He's Not The Kid's Not Like That At All He's So Charming Yeah He's So Like Well Spoken And Thought And Then The Way He Portrays Roger Is Just Like This Kind Of Silent Like Quieter Kid And Then He Emerges And

[00:24:47] Trail Of The Overtake Of Power And The Relationship Between Him And Jack Of Like Well Jack's The Bad One And We Always Think That Jack's The Really Antagonist But Jack I Think Was Had At Some Point You Know Some Opportunity Where He Could Have Salvaged Himself And Roger Just Did Not Have That It's Still In There With Jack Jack I Think Is More About You Know Some Of His In Particular Father Issues Yes And

[00:25:16] Roger It's Almost Like He Was Just Waiting For Something Like This To Acknowledge Something Within Himself Which Makes It So Unsettling I Worry About Him Going Back To Britain And Growing Up And Especially When When We See The Naval Officer I Think Oh And They All Run All The Savages Run Up On To Drop His Spear Because He's Just Following Orders He's Just Going To Do What He's

[00:25:46] Told And Then Within The Confines Of What He's Told He's Going To Be Terrible He'll Adapt Yes Yeah It's He's He waits For His Opportunities And I Probably Will Be Brutality And The Lieutenants Often Are The Worst

[00:26:16] Ones Because They're The Element Of Society That That Is Suddenly Feels Permission To Express Their That Brutality And Then They're Raised Up To Levels Of Leadership And So It Was Yeah Like I'm Resisting Just Like Making One To One Comparisons With Our Own Government But Anyway It's Just Like Yeah He

[00:26:46] He Was Sort Of Helping Like Jack Okay So Jack Is The Kind Of Kid Who Wants To Look Tough But We Saw That He Was Vulnerable He Was Afraid To Climb Up That Hill And He Told Or That Rock

[00:27:39] Is You To Do Yeah Yeah Yeah You You Killed Piggy That Was The Right Thing To Do Even Though There's A Part Of I'm Sure That You Can Tell by the look on his face like oh my god what did you just do so it's like he in in um being this ego-driven leader that's trying to look good he encourages those psychotic elements and they kind

[00:28:09] of feed off of each other and i do want to note it was just a small detail but when um before they hunt and kill simon roger is the one who points him out crawling out of the jungle onto the beach so it's almost it to me it's just like he is just waiting for an opportunity he is just like he wants to push it as far as he can he has the idea to smoke ralph out too yes and the dirt and i i'm

[00:28:36] like i don't want to keep mentioning the dot the like the making of but i think they made a really good point they said you know it's it's like a kind of commentary on how we're losing boys to like hate and especially like echo chambers and stuff like that which is exactly what you were kind of alluding to do you think shauna is more of a jack or a roger

[00:29:00] i feel like she's kind of a combination yeah i want i want to say that she's more like jack i was gonna say roger see i would she gets really vicious in season three like yeah i well i think it depends on which which shauna you're talking about young shauna or grown shauna grown shauna true young shauna i think jack grown shauna i think roger because grown shauna's got a family and

[00:29:27] she's like yeah doing you know yeah shauna when she in season three when she just starts getting all pissed off she's like brutal with people no one's given her the idea to do that she's doing it herself she's postpartum i'm gonna give her wait everyone has their reasons but hitler was a failed artist i mean oh god oh my god okay like if you have a time machine don't go back in time and kill hit hitler like go back in time

[00:29:56] praise his art and make sure he goes to art school oh my god okay sorry sorry anytime i bring up hitler i know people are like well come on okay what else kara gosh so one of and this kind of ties into all the characters in general but this was one of the books that i read additional times voluntarily in high

[00:30:22] school after we were made to read it just because i think it's such a fascinating exercise in exploring the good and bad of humanity but one of the key things like going through the show i could not stop thinking about all of these really interesting decisions they made that were distinct entirely from the book and one of the most important things that they did in this adaptation i think was show us

[00:30:51] flashbacks of the kids and their past um so that's kind of my general point is the flashbacks and how that essentially changes some of the messaging of the film or the tv show compared to the book because in the book you know we don't get a ton of backstory about these little boys it's really focused on

[00:31:14] their behavior and the story on the island and with the flashbacks that we get it it makes the story more poignant and so much more meaningful to me because for instance in the book you don't you know jack and simon don't really have any sort of pre-existing relationship or friendship with each other and in the show through the flashbacks we essentially learned that they both have these

[00:31:43] you know overbearing fathers to different degrees and you've got simon whose father is pretty much directly abusive and jack who kind of deals with more you know psychological abuse and all of these really heavy expectations that his father places on him but that poor kid places so much of that on himself

[00:32:08] and the fact that they bond over that and we have simon's diary giving us insight made it so much more painful to watch the build up to simon's demise and it made it so much more meaningful at least to me to know that this is some you know they they on in another life they could have been brothers

[00:32:37] practically bonding over this struggle and they had the misfortune of crashing on this island and simon unfortunately doesn't make it off but that choice to show their background including poor ralph in the background with his mother and all of the background that we get to see that really fleshes out his struggles before coming on the island it was just a brilliant choice i think by the writers

[00:33:06] and the director to give us you know humanize the boys even more and it's easy when you have these adorable children to see them as the picture of innocence but getting to see what they were each dealing with back home just made it even more impactful watching everything go to shit basically

[00:33:28] and i i if i i could talk about it forever because there are too many points about the flashbacks but that was my main first kind of introductory point is to praise them for making that choice because i think it made all the difference i love too how it showed the stark difference between civil their civilized reality back home and the beautiful scenes of them singing in the choir and just the environments that

[00:33:56] they're in and that's a stark difference and it also very much reminded me of lost with the flashbacks oh yeah i always did you know just to kind of show uh how are you before this and and how did that translate into how you're handling this really hard situation right and it makes it so much easier because one of the whether intentional or not i know it was to a certain degree and very intentional

[00:34:20] with the book um that it's british children that this is happening to that's so much more apparent when you're watching right when you're reading you kind of forget yes like seeing it and hearing these children and watching them in their their uniforms and just being able to see their lives and see that they were just normal kids dealing with you know everyday kid problems and also some pretty

[00:34:48] serious issues that that descent into savagery is so much more stark yeah and jarring and of course with the british there's always this emphasis on being civilized and proper and the notion of self-restraint and it comes through so much better in this medium i was just thinking the flashback in

[00:35:17] chap i think it's like the start of chapter two of them departing on the airplane and all these kids have their families or parents or whatever and jack's alone and you have these flashbacks to them on the plane which i always you know the people yearn for plane crash scenes it's just true of modern media but like you see that juxtaposed with them hunting and you can totally tell the like lack of

[00:35:44] control that jack feels in the moment like beforehand when he sees everyone with their family and then the lack of control when he realizes something's wrong on the plane and stuff starts happening and all the other boys start screaming and then the total control that he feels while hunting oh yeah you were talking about the englishness of it all and and it just made me think about how like i knew that reading the book but i didn't feel it as much and another thing i knew reading the book

[00:36:13] but didn't really quite feel was the dynamics around the conch reading the book for me uh anyway it felt like something that you just sort of uh take at their word okay if they have this shell for some reason then it means that's the person who's talking and you blow out of it or whatever but seeing a bunch of kids uh running around like cats and not listening and then you hear someone blow that and that finally

[00:36:41] gets their attention felt so real and it was like oh yeah that makes so much sense now that i'm actually seeing it i don't think i've ever seen like the other lord of the flies movies i think this is the first time i've ever seen like a live action thing of it yeah so anyway that i i kind of love that it made that part of the story make a lot more sense to me that's kind of cool oh the conch there's so much to be said about the conch also i liked i because you know i always start off with are they

[00:37:09] going to pronounce it conch or conch yeah and i like that they did conch i know conch is correct i get it up but i look i got one spongebob so it's technically conch but the americanized pronunciation is conch and when you start teaching it if you ever say conch your kids will look at you like yeah like what'd you just say and then when i try to explain it they're like but no in spongebob it's the magic conch and i'm like you're right we're gonna call it conch you're right and then i just

[00:37:37] it's just an argument i've lost but that's funny okay i want to talk about the filmmaking and the performances and production and that that kind of stuff nice um it was developed and written by a man named jack thorne who has written a lot he did the harry potter and the cursed child stage play uh the tv show his dark materials from a few years back and more recently he created the show adolescence

[00:38:05] which i hear is really good but i've yet to see incredible amazing so i guess he knows how to write adolescence if you've seen adolescence you can see the same styles in this and adolescence is also only four episodes i gotta watch that yeah it's great i think you would really appreciate that show jason i'd podcast about it cool yeah maybe we could yeah it was amazing uh it was directed by mark

[00:38:30] mundan who did this bb series utopia which was kind of acclaimed but was canceled after two seasons for some reason and national treasure was another one uh the cinematography i thought was just really just really special it was unique it made me feel like i was watching an old 60s movie and i can't

[00:38:56] really figure out exactly why it framed things differently and edited differently than i'm used to and the music felt like from an old movie a lot of the time the color shifting oh yeah and i it would just made me feel like oh this is different this is new and it's beautiful i i just loved it the it's very immersive yeah the color i love how they had um it felt very intentional like you'd see simon in

[00:39:23] this grove of just red leaves yeah and it how sometimes they would have two kids playing and then just cut right to one of the kids floating alone in the water and it was like that was weird but it i love it i don't know why you know or when they did this thing i think they only did it in episode one and episode four where they just kept showing close-ups of all the little kids faces

[00:39:49] and um it it i like i don't even know if i want to try to fully explain what that did or why they were doing it but for me it just gave me a more personal feel of children and there's so much going on in there and there's like potential and innocence and but potential for whatever and then for for barbarianism and then um by the end um they did it again and they were all like smeared with

[00:40:18] pigs blood and pain and everything that was loved that brilliant and i like how it's like because when they're all part of a big group they're just a horde but then you look at each of their faces and they're just scared kids like that's all they are literally forcing you to face what this story is about head on yep and having you know i went back and i watched the first episode again right after

[00:40:47] the ending and having them like you're saying look at the camera just still in their uniforms and pretty like neat and clean and proper by the end they i don't know what direction they gave these kids but it's almost like they're one of the one of the oh gosh i think it was a producer said in the show

[00:41:11] that there are a bunch of thousand yard stairs on that beach yeah and the kids managed to really capture that like it was haunting it was but i don't know if i was supposed to get this but i got that wow these kids have really been changed by this experience but the seed of who they are is still in there that i got that too you know there's still little babies there's one little one in

[00:41:34] particular that made this face i was like you were so cute it hurts to see you like covered in blood they were very cute and natural and i i do think the point one of the points of this story is that we act like we're now civilized but really we're just in a lot of ways playing out the same

[00:41:59] psychological impulses that these kids were and dressing it up as if it's civilized but it's all still there i mean that's the whole point of this soldier coming in at the end and sort of laughing at them for playing games meanwhile he's in the middle of a war that's probably driven just by the same kinds of ego like oh yeah we're gonna bomb these guys so we can look tougher and stuff like that you know well and he says like oh you've been playing war yeah and he's joking oh joking about like well did

[00:42:28] anybody that like anything like that and poor ralph is just like yes too yeah maybe more what i always i hate i hated the guy in the book i hate him in all of the renditions i just like like look at this prick like recent room man yeah poor show poor show you're so british

[00:42:50] like no sense of urgency like and also like i mean i guess this does go partly into the filmmaking like those kids looked thin i know part of it is makeup and like lighting and stuff like that but they looked thin at some parts it's like show an ounce of concern for the children well i think that's just how those kids really were they didn't like go on starvation dyes or something i think you should

[00:43:14] call their mothers i would imagine i would imagine they did a lot of just running around and and tramping through the jungle oh yeah like that too like so much fun so um the the face thing also reminded me of one of my favorite shows orange is the new black which is how they open up each episode showing the prisoner women's faces oh yeah individuals um more filmmaking stuff uh the

[00:43:44] they showed a lot of creepy crawlies which i thought was perfect for a thing about boys like crawdads and whatever crabs and slimy things yeah and the ants surrounding and devouring that caterpillar was what it looked like that was nature yeah yeah and i loved how i don't know if

[00:44:07] this counts as filmmaking but how the their look changed over the course of the movie where they just were so proper and then dirty and then they were sort of making their faces darker to hide themselves from the pigs but then it started to have a little more of a designed look to it like they thought they were warriors but by the end it with the masks and the blood and the texture the almost otherworldly texture and the way they were using i think that woman's clothes in the suitcase

[00:44:37] to look yeah but it looked it looked fucking cool i thought and it looked yes it reminded me of the yellow jackets at the cannibal council you know that's the costuming yes yeah brilliant that that women's clothing is one of my points because i just that was such an because that's not in the book they don't find a suitcase of women's clothing and the the choice for that is brilliant but sticking

[00:45:04] with sound you know film sound if you want to just go into that and then i can take back up with the rest of my stuff here well this i was like there is something that i i think fits with your point um the sound design was almost an entire point of mine because of how striking it was and there were in the episode jack episode number two in particular there were a few moments where

[00:45:32] you could just tell how intentional this show is there's one where he you know we see him and roger flashing back sitting next to each other on the plane and jack in the island is kind of that makes me think of lost but jack i know right i mean think about that and then there was lock and hurley

[00:45:56] but he he starts kind of he's looking around in nature and observing his surroundings and there are all of these noises and there's this moment where they capture maybe it's a seagull some other some type of bird basically diving down from the sky and they pair it with the sounds of the jet engine and the

[00:46:20] plane going down and there's a moment where he looks at ralph and ralph's not ralph roger and his mouth is open in a scream but you hear the plane engine sounds like falling to earth and that was such an unsettling moment that that choice was just so intentional and so well done with this descent

[00:46:45] of the plane and jack kind of descending into his more primal instincts coinciding and the chaos that they captured with the sound design there's later in the episode they're standing around trying to have a meeting and it's this overwhelming kind of cacophony of laughter and shrieks from the little ones and

[00:47:08] they're all like trying to sharpen their spears so they're striking stones together and everyone's talking over each other my anxiety started to go through the roof during that scene and it was so effective to capture kind of you know piggy and ralph losing control they are slowly being taken over

[00:47:32] by you know this other faction and their primal instincts and the way that they capture that with the sound that chaos was perfect especially if you like because in the beginning episodes it's more like the sounds of the island and like you know like the rain and the birds and more relaxing water plunking in the mud and all this and then by the end most of the sounds you hear are from the boys it's like

[00:47:59] the fire crackling yeah we're them like screaming and trying to hunt ralph yep and all of this stuff and you just like the the slow like takeover from the island sounds to the boy sounds it's so unsettling and that i mean the music there were a lot of different kinds of music there was like opera and choir and the score and the main theme is from an opera Benjamin Britten's opera

[00:48:28] hans zimmer wrote additional music but um christobal tapia de vere was the main composer and he famously did the music for white lotus that oh yeah and he uses a lot of vocal stuff in his scores and he he and white lotus showrunner mike white had a falling out they're like the jack and ralph of white lotus maybe and so uh he won't be

[00:48:56] returning to score season four of white lotus which i'm so worried that that's just gonna kill the show like these two fucking guys should realize that sometimes two two people make something greater than the sum of their parts you know but anyway i think this is what he did uh instead of white lotus season four this is the thing oh wow he went on to do next well it's amazing oh he may have been

[00:49:23] sitting by morris and i meant i meant to bring up the boar screaming being synchronized with the boys screaming during the plane crash that is what was really unsettling i want to re-watch it already yeah i've watched it twice um there were some a yellow jacket like music at some points was just vocals uh dissonant vocals it was a couple of times yeah that that happened you it's just like

[00:49:50] screaming or like whooping and it's like kind of yeah yes there was classical music at times um and sometimes the boys singing i just thought that added so much because that was another thing from the book you knew they were jack's kids require but you really got it watching this and i loved how jack would he'd be like you can't hunt and you can't even sing like singing was a big thing

[00:50:13] you know to prove yourself that was cute yeah the the line where he says i should be chief i can sing c sharp it's straight from the book and it's so good and it shows you a whole lot about him they delivered that so perfectly and it's such a good it's like oh yeah these are little boys yeah absolutely um then the actors is the last part about the film make that i want to talk about i thought

[00:50:38] they were so good maybe some of the best absolutely some of the best kid acting i've ever seen um they auditioned how many boys thousand or something thousand yeah and seven thousand total total all the parts and they were uh it was the professional debut of most of them i thought David McKenna as Nicky slash piggy was maybe my favorite and he's not anything this was his first

[00:51:07] role right so good like yeah that is astounding yeah did you hear there is jason there was one part in the making of documentary with the boy that played piggy and he was talking about for the audition you had to say who you would pick like if you were stranded on a desert island and his answer was the cast of les miz from west end and i was just like oh you're going places kid you need to play this part

[00:51:34] theater kid he he um i haven't read the book since we covered it two years ago but i don't remember thinking of piggy as being just so confident but it worked really well because the sense that sometimes the boring sensible people are actually the ones that keep things working he he like he was like

[00:51:57] sort of like roger in some ways he was the one trying to um call ralph to his better nature and roger was the one trying to call jack to his worst nature you know but anyway he was 11 years old during the filming of this yeah i think he added a little bit more complexity and i also because if you read the

[00:52:23] novel there are parts in the novel where piggy does have like smart alec remarks but he doesn't say them in front of most people he's yeah he's saying them to ralph mostly or maybe to simon or the little save people yeah and i think in this series you kind of get the idea that he is picking and choosing which rules still apply he feels a little bit more emboldened to have these smart ass comments because there are no adults around but he's still relying on the structure of society to protect

[00:52:53] him from any real fallout from his little comment as soon as he realizes that's not there anymore then he gets scared and he's like oh sorry yeah and when he and that culminates in jack punching him and then his glass and one of his lenses breaking which is so such an incredible scene good but i think that scene really kind of encompasses like how well he played the character like he knew the line to go to and then immediately he kind of fell back and became like a lot more passive which makes sense because

[00:53:21] he realized he was in real danger at that point and i just keep thinking like i think he represents the the experts in our society like the fauci's and the you know the civil servants and the and the um the deep state basically and um you know the the intelligent like when there's someone like jack who just wants to be dominant and all he cares is about affirmation of his dominance he doesn't even care about reality

[00:53:49] he just like when someone calls him says you know you were scared or whatever he goes say that again he's just like gonna punish the truth with bullying and so with someone like that other people who are actually smart but might say things that either contradict him or challenge his authority that's all that's important to him is his authority so those people get punished and that's what's happening in

[00:54:14] our society right now it is hard not to draw direct parallels when piggy is clearly like science yeah rationalism when the group starts to like break apart and piggy goes to ralph and says he like imagine something like imagine if something happened he'd hurt the next thing and the next thing is me yeah and it was so interesting how like piggy immediately clocked it simon immediately clocked it

[00:54:43] everyone all the major characters kind of knew what was lurking under jack and the only one who didn't really want to see it i guess was ralph yeah yep uh jack i already said i thought he was great he was 12 uh then winston sawyers as ralph was also 12 and my thought on him is they needed a kid with charisma

[00:55:07] to play ralph and they got one yes he was so good definitely and then ike talbot as simon i don't know how old he was but he was he was maybe the best like he was such a sensitive soul great job and i think he has a great career ahead of him i hope you know i want to see more stuff well simon's such a hard character to portray too because a lot of a lot of his character development in the book is

[00:55:31] through like description and his inner thought i did yeah this kid everything read on his face but it was it's almost like i was seeing what i see when i read the book on like just perfectly on screen i was like this is kind of a trippy moment his eyes too are just like he's so expressive and it's so intentional like the the making of listeners like if you have not watched the making

[00:55:58] of and you've watched the series you have to go watch it because it's they they have a ton of interviews with these boys and they're so young but they are so emotionally intelligent already and articulate about their character choices and what their characters are going through identifying their vulnerabilities and i was so impressed by that and it bleeds through in the show it's

[00:56:26] absolutely apparent they were amazing actors and watching the director in particular interact with these boys and pulling stuff out of them the patience that he had and communicating to them you know on their level i it's that's a talent i don't know i couldn't do it i i one of my favorite things too about simon the character is he did seem like he was a little batty you know they kept saying that yeah

[00:56:54] like he was hearing voices and things but also he saw the truth more than any of them he's the one who knew that the beast was just this corpse but he was too mean to say it because the whole crowd had turned against him by that point but it's just really interesting to think of i think there's a lot of characters in literature and probably in real life who seem a little crazy but actually maybe they're seeing the truth more than anyone else at least on some level the cassandras they're you know like

[00:57:20] there are cassandras everywhere and it's it's unfortunate it's so relevant to what's happening right now well i don't know who cassandra is oh like the mythological figure cassandra it basically when i say the cassandras she she predicted like predicted the fall like she knew it was coming and everybody thought acted like she was crazy right exactly and treated her like she was crazy

[00:57:48] and she was simply speaking the truth and then this truth came to fruition yep it's also there's a great taylor swift song called cassandra about mythological cassandra so that's what i was thinking of the entire time you were talking about it also like helena vibes yes knowers

[00:58:09] poor simon poor simon and for the for that poor kid too thinking of him seeing this horrific figure of a dead pilot and that's horrifying enough but realizing that everyone except him thinks that it's some sort of monster and trying to relay that to them it's just heartbreaking and he played he wasn't

[00:58:36] totally sure either he's like maybe it's just maybe you guys are all crazy or maybe i'm crazy i'm not sure in the book the line is maybe it's just us and the fact that he can't finish it and then goes to the lord of the flies and the lord of the flies is like well you didn't tell them right and it's oh yeah so you thought you could kill the beast or something like imagine thinking the beast was something you could kill yeah yeah yeah great well and the the actor who plays simon also plays the

[00:59:06] voice i looked up that credit that was an excellent choice yep but it's completely his own internal struggle and the depiction also of the lord of the flies that boar's head they showed in the making of like pouring maggot juice and like rotten fish on it and putting actual maggots on it so they would

[00:59:30] you know collect real flies and zoom in on it i was like that must have smelled horrible but the dedication to authenticity yeah it it it was very visceral to see that and oh that's not getting out of my head anytime i haven't seen actual maggots i don't think since i was a kid and i never want to again

[00:59:55] no they're not they're not great it's not good when you like pull something off something else and then you get a surprise no yeah there's this whole like it there is maggot therapy which is always right i can't i get it but i can't i feel like i would have a psychological barrier knock me out i don't know about that i don't know all right shall we move on to the next point

[01:00:23] i think it's cassie's turn so in the book we never get piggy's name um he's just called piggy and i yeah yeah we never get piggy's name in the book we never in any of the other movies because there's one from 1963 i believe and then the newer one is i think 1990 um and we never get his name and it was like it's one of my saddest things in the book and like i always you know tell my students pay

[01:00:49] attention because the one of the last lines in the book is like and the fall of the wise true friend named piggy and i'm like imagine yeah mattering so much to someone and they don't even know your real name and so i love that they gave him a name and i love how towards the end ralph is calling him nicky like very consistently and i insist his name is nicky he's nicky yeah and then even even like

[01:01:16] towards the end when he is killed slowly um like they when he tells them that they're or when he tells the savages his name is nicky they start calling him nitpig yeah which like they even start using that as like a little and i just thought that like him getting a little part of his identity back was so i don't know i so so important and that was such a key thing in the show compared to the book and it

[01:01:45] was really nice to see like well he has a name and ralph like is close enough and respects him enough to call him nicky but i feel like that ties in with the choice of you know in the book roger drops this boulder crushers the couch kills piggy instantly like piggy is not up and walking around for a night

[01:02:10] and having you know lovely conversations with ralph in the book it's just done and their choice to have ralph like care for him is so poignant and makes his death so much sadder the fact that we get to see

[01:02:31] him kind of slowly realizing that he's dying and that the vision the way they shot ralph helping him and piggy leaning on him and blood dripping yep down and hitting the ground was i mean ralph lost his mother and yeah he learned that yeah like he wants to be the kind of person to take responsibility and

[01:03:00] care for people i think that's just the kind of kid he is and that's what he's the messages he's learned in life so it was it was a parallel but he lost another friend too and i the the scene of them making this little hut with all of the leaves and them like you know going into this little hut surrounded by the red ferns of hell yeah and then all it does is cut to him digging with the rock

[01:03:24] and also i loved i loved the burial and i guess like we can kind of talk about how it goes into the episode one of like the pilot they find the body of one of the pilots or the the pilot i think yeah um and they say that jack says he doesn't deserve a christian burial because he made a mistake and that's why they're on the island so instead they're like oh well we'll we'll bury him at sea and instead

[01:03:50] they just shove his body very unceremoniously off this clip shout out to the actor who played that pilot too because that was an actual actor an actual person yeah he's dead now he's um committed to the craft one for the team yeah yeah um and then like versus then you they lose the boy with the mulberry birthmark and they presumably don't have anything to bury or do anything with

[01:04:15] because he's burned away and then you have simon who gets washed out to sea very unceremoniously and then so for him to like take time and sit and bury piggy i think was just such a like beautiful nod to like i sobbed yeah i oh yeah i didn't make that connection that he remembered that that was important to nikki so that's why he wanted to bury him it's so sweet that line too that you just

[01:04:43] described cassie jack delivering like he doesn't deserve a christian burial and that was when i was kind of fully pulled in like oh yeah i'm watching lord of the flies yeah this is quick to judge that change because that's not you know in the book they don't see there's no ever i mean they see they have a body that drifts onto the island but they're not really interacting with things that way not up close

[01:05:09] and personal and i so for them to deal with death and also like because i know you know ralph lost his mom and so he's been dealing with death but for him to for a little kid to pull their friend's dead body to go through because burying someone not that i'm talking from experience but burying anything is like is not your body off the freeway in arizona right like but like digging a hole is hard work burying someone is hard work and so for him to have gone through all of that effort while he knows

[01:05:39] that the savages are looking for him was so beautiful to me yeah so sad i'm gonna cry again it's it's and they that that kid the kid that played ralph i think he's winston his facial expressions and his eyes there was something that he pulled off and obviously there's part of me reading into it too

[01:06:02] but it was this perfect way of capturing childhood vulnerability while also looking haggard and worn down by life experience that this child has already had and dealing with his mother and now with piggy and how quickly after that he runs out to find that naval officer and be whisked back into

[01:06:30] civilization it has to make it so much harder to reconcile i feel like if they had been stuck on the island for even another week he may have had a little bit of an easier time when he goes back home and tries to grieve i don't think he would have made it a week no he would have been dead like they would have killed him conversely also think about if the if the navy people had gotten there a day sooner

[01:06:57] yep i'm sure that the casting people were looking for kids that just already had the essence of the characters so they wouldn't have to act it out too much you know because they had so many kids they could find but as far as the nick i mean piggy slash nicky's name i liked that ralph i didn't like like it but i thought it was a good narrative choice that ralph

[01:07:23] tells him the name tells everybody else oh yeah his name is piggy not fatty because even though ralph is the good guy and he has the best qualities he's still a kid he's still a little boy yeah and then i love the scene where um nikki's like you didn't know and ralph said what do you mean oh you didn't know you were gonna like me so much that was so that was cute that was adorable my other um

[01:07:49] thing about all of this is a lesson to be learned if you ever had a nickname that you don't want everyone to call you never tell anyone that's the first thing my ninth graders say why would he tell me that he's supposed to be smart that was like his dumbest mistake yeah the whole thing but i ralph did say like she's like you told him you told the name and ralph's like hey it's better than fatty

[01:08:16] i mean i guess she is kara that's funny um let's see what i want to talk about next one thing this is kind of a shorter point but i wanted to talk about some of the thematic shifts in the tv show compared to

[01:08:38] the book and how it is i think even more relevant to our modern world that way um i couldn't help but think of you know adolescence popped up in my head a lot watching the show especially knowing it was the same creator and you know things that have been in the news about this red pill movement people like

[01:09:04] andrew tate a lot of talk about you know podcast bros and toxic masculinity that has been a topic of conversation for you know years now and it seemed very intentional with the creators of this adaptation to bring more of that you know notion of what is masculinity what are you know these little boys

[01:09:31] dealing with when it comes to the expectations placed on them by society by their parents while they're growing up and the key thing that stood out to me is in the book there is a more basic theme of kind of nature versus nurture almost and this idea of all of us having an inherent beast in us and going

[01:09:56] back to you know uncivilized behavior and more barbaric behavior when the rules and properness of society are stripped away and the book essentially gives the message that's that savagery is inherent just waiting to surface as soon as there's any sort of societal breakdown and we see that you

[01:10:19] you know with the conscience representing quite literally democracy and civilization being destroyed but in the tv show it's almost like there's a cultural corruption aspect to it where it's less about what's inherent and more about you know the pressures faced by the culture these boys are raised in we see jack having

[01:10:49] you know this conversation about you know all the hunting that seeing him hunting with his dad and almost feeling like as he's on the island he needs to step up and be head hunter because that's what his dad was would expect and that tidbit of him throwing in he and his dad's friend kind of hiking across scotland and living off the land and that being such a key moment and shaping his dad's character and his

[01:11:18] you know manhood essentially i feel like they did a lot of you know little drops here and there to distinguish it just enough from the book that it's not just about this inherent you know primitive side or inherent savage it's what kind of psychological expectations are placed on these young boys in

[01:11:42] society that they also have to parse through and it's it's an interesting but subtle difference i think in the book and the tv show and that was one of the key you know thematic differences that stood out to me i just think that civilization developed uh organization laws rules because we all

[01:12:09] i mean there's a lot of reasons but one of the reasons and one of the benefits is that if left to our own devices you know we all have ego to one degree or another um we most of us want to do well by other people but um the rules just help call us to our better nature so it's not that that's if we didn't

[01:12:38] have tendencies towards things that wouldn't be helpful for everyone then we wouldn't have as much need for those rules yeah and so people who think you know what we should get rid of regulations as much as possible i mean you can go too far in either direction but if the people who say oh government's oppressive we should just have uh everyone be free to do what they want then it's anarchy and then you

[01:13:05] are at the mercy of the most skilled who are the most brutal you know what i mean that's but she's terrifying that's what it leads to humanity has spent has spent a really long time trying to figure out exactly how to balance exactly how to balance everyone's needs and i don't think we figured it out yet i think it'll be something that we work on until we as a species go extinct or that's true

[01:13:29] progress we've come a long way though and you know who knows if we've come a long way and then we're about to like go back to the stone age you always have that wonder right but hopefully not well i think one of the things that we talked a little bit about them putting on women's clothes and this and that kind of solidified the the change and the slight shift in messaging to me that the directors were

[01:13:57] going for because you know it's not in the book at all that they find women's clothing and you know usually when you think about depictions of you know either tribes of people that haven't had contact with the outside world or plane crash scenarios where people are kind of descending into quote-unquote

[01:14:22] savagery or barbarism you think of them not wearing you know their uniforms are shed they're not wearing clothes they're shedding clothes as they are you know shedding society almost and in this show the choice to have them dress up in women's clothing is such an interesting subversion because they are all

[01:14:47] adding clothes just of they're like reinventing themselves yeah like it's this and it's the you know it's these clearly they are garments and accessories and clothing for a woman like the what is it the petticoat that one of them puts on one of them is wearing panties as a mask and it's so interesting watching them you know in the book they do take like charcoal and stuff on the island like

[01:15:16] natural substances and smear it on their faces and create these masks and in the show the choice to have them put on women's makeup and smear like the red lipstick on their mouths and the dark blue eye shadow coloring it like their eyes almost like there's a mask over their eyes was such a fantastic way to kind of subvert our expectations from the book and what was really interesting is in

[01:15:46] the making of they talked about how they had like a test shot of that scene and they brought all the boys in and said grab whatever feels right to you put you know do what you would normally do do what you know you're drawn with and most of those choices ended up in the final scene and the fact that they let these boys take you know that

[01:16:10] fascinator hat that red hat that one of them chose and jack choosing that it almost looked like a mink or like that stole or yeah and the petticoat and the red glove that one of them chose it was just such an interesting decision to make that women's clothing and it subtly changes this message they're kind of

[01:16:35] you know free from societal expectations gender norms anything like that same thing anymore kind of no and it's like their battle armor yeah and it's the least masculine clothing choices you could think of the bra that they're playing with like it's just such a brilliant choice of showing them masking their

[01:17:01] identities now with choices that would be stereotypically female that's why i think it was way more intentional than the directors are even letting on to show this this idea of what these what is you know what are these expectations of these little boys like what are we placing on boys today

[01:17:24] and there's a quote that i found really poignant he said we're having a conversation about boys we as a society we're losing a generation of boys and we're losing it because of hate that they are ingesting because it is an answer to their loneliness and their isolation which is similarly you know it's the

[01:17:46] conversation they were wanting to have with the show adolescence and that the finding of the women's clothing it becomes like this transformation for them and i just i i could go on and on about that that decision it didn't like the way you're describing it if you hadn't seen the show you'd think of like

[01:18:13] kids walking around with lipstick and bras but right it doesn't register to me as feminine at all it looked like a whole like uh i don't know some movie about some aliens or something and that's just how it was like their warriors yeah yeah it looked great no it didn't the the way that they used things in different ways like that beaded shawl that jack uses and like everything and i i also think it says

[01:18:42] to me because i was thinking the whole time if one of those boys opened up the suitcase and one of them put some put a skirt on all the other ones would dog pile on yeah that i mean that's just how adolescence work like you know what i mean the fact that they all do it as a group yeah means that it's not dressing in drag or anything like that like it's they're just putting on their war paint and they're putting on their uniform i think they're being goofy at first but then it changes

[01:19:08] over time and i think that's like it's such a kind of show of like what you're what cara was saying of like the or what you were saying too like the idea of like it in the book it's about inherent evil and i don't really think that's what the show is necessarily about as much like and i think it plays more on like you know individual versus group dynamics and the fact like jack when he's with simon

[01:19:33] he's this sensitive tender imaginative creative little boy and then when he's with his friends he's an asshole yeah because that's that's how it works yeah and you know i just i thought the clothing was like such a good indication of that of something being acceptable when you're in a group but if one of them was to do it alone it would be totally different well yeah by the end when roger's

[01:19:57] in control and he's like being totally sadistic and you can tell most of the kids are like how did this happen but they know that if anyone speaks up that the others will jump on him yeah it's such a complex dynamic these poor kids to navigate yeah okay i want to talk about some of the psychology of it starting with leadership style through a freudian lens which i kind of did when we talked about

[01:20:26] um the book before uh but i think this just really captures the themes of the book so well but also yeah changes some of it potentially like not necessarily just about inherent evil but maybe just the way some of our natural instincts could manifest but anyways um i think just like in the book i feel like ralph and jack's dynamic was a bit rick and chain from the walking dead where ralph

[01:20:56] and rick want to keep everyone safe and you know ralph wants to try to get rescued jack and shane are preoccupied with shows of strength and power and ego and i think dale is kind of like a piggy the voice of the moral standards of the old world you know oh but if you think of id and ego and super ego uh

[01:21:18] i think jack is the id ralph is ego piggy super ego so just to remind people freud conceptualized these three parts of our psyche id is our instinctual impulses desires it includes pleasure or fun as jack would say um fear aggression self-preservation um it's very immediate it seeks immediate gratification

[01:21:45] or relief what do i want right now what am i afraid of how do i kill it super ego is the other extreme our internalized ideals values aspirations so it judges our behavior against what we believe is right or what we aspire to become which means sacrificing immediate gratification a lot of times like what should i do ego is the practical mediator between our desires and our ideals and the reality

[01:22:12] that we're actually living in so it weighs competing demands and tries to find a workable course of action like giving everything i want believe and have to deal with what can i actually do and i think none of those is inherently bad we we need id because it's the source of our motivation and desire and instinct and drive and all those things but then the problem is when those impulses become completely

[01:22:39] unchecked by reality or concern for other people um so the challenge of a group of people or a civilization is to get everyone to not live by their id to delay gratification to sometimes do the as jack would say boring or difficult thing now because it serves a larger goal later to build the fucking huts not everyone

[01:23:09] can just go hunt you know and maintain the signal fire you know that's tedious um but it serves signal fires and poor net yeah and and um so you know to be a good leader you have to motivate people to keep doing the hard and boring things and ralph tries to organize everyone you know he tries to get

[01:23:36] everyone to do that stuff build the shelter maintain the fire cooperate but jack sees that it's much easier and power immediately powerful to motivate people by fear and desire like they're afraid of the beast and jack eventually starts exploiting that fear validating amplifying it positions himself as the person who can protect them from it and you know we see that kind of thing in the real world

[01:24:04] find a boogeyman orient everyone against it position yourself as the person who can do something about it uh they're eating the cats and dogs you know so then uh so then but also the powerful thing about this is jack gives everyone a way to change fear their fear because they're shit they're scared as hell of this beast these fucking little kids keep saying i saw something in the woods we did though it's not

[01:24:33] no but i mean it's just like you get frustrated like oh my god you're making you're gonna this is not gonna lead to something good so they're all scared and he gives jack gives them a way to change that fear into a feeling of of power like instead of sitting with the vulnerability of being scared they can become hunters and paint their face and chant and carry spears and kill the thing that they're afraid of and he says who will join my tribe and not be afraid and that's just really appealing

[01:25:00] psychologically to people i don't have to feel scared anymore i have to feel strong but then they get so worked up into a frenzy about this imaginary fear that they kill an innocent kid simon and that's also relevant in society you get people so worked up and then innocent people get shipped off to other countries or you know they suffer you know and and that's uh you don't stop to think and um simon

[01:25:28] sees the truth and and you know piggy's the one who's trying to be like let's deal with what reality but jack's the one who doesn't want to hear about reality he only wants to hear about whatever will make it more powerful oh jack like it's true i mean look at like some of the great leaders jfk ask what your country not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country if you can find

[01:25:55] someone who can motivate people whip them up into a sense of i'm going to help other people that's really special but it's so hard to do you know it's easier to whip up people into let's kill our fears together yeah well because jack that instead of you know piggy and ralph represent order essentially

[01:26:18] and civilization and with jack he instead of seeking order he is seeking dominance and power yeah and all a lot of that i mean it's relevant to i mean any political figure in the same way that that is part of a deep-seated insecurity within absolutely and you know we see that in it's a compensation for

[01:26:44] it yes and we see it with jack and that insecurity when it when it pipes up within him even more that's when he makes some of his worst decisions and impulsive decisions because there's this need to prove almost this drive to prove this test that he's yes imagine his mind yeah for himself and it's just

[01:27:09] it's fascinating to watch how he deals with that versus how ralph and piggy deal with that and in this scenario it's just you know power wins yeah that drive and the thing about this power let me just say the one little last point is um at first it's appealing because everyone is like yeah we don't have

[01:27:36] to listen to people anymore we don't have to be nice we can just be tough and and be strong and powerful and anyone who is against us will just kill them we don't have no one can tell us what to do anymore but then so it's a sense of freedom right we have free to free speech we can do whatever we want but then eventually you realize that you haven't actually become free because you've traded the restraints of

[01:28:02] whatever you thought was against you into submission for submission to the most dominant person in the group and now you have to do whatever he says whether it makes sense or not and so i think about you know fascism that's one of the appeals and fascists of uh traps of fascism the promise is liberation from all these frustrating restraints but then what you end up with is might makes right where the dominant person gets to dictate reality and everyone else has to fall in line like all these

[01:28:31] kids at the end worried about roger and his two-pointed spear and they can't yeah oh yeah i also think like for a lot of them it's like freedom from stuff like freedom from rules and yeah right adults and freedom from expectations and i feel like from jack the the glimpses that we get into his past it's not just like he's free from something it's like he like in the plane when he's sitting next who is he

[01:28:57] sitting next to i think it's morris not roger also that the name thing is yeah anyway because in the book it's maurice and then right well because it's spelled maurice but i said now british pronunciation i was like oh man yeah i could listen to so they're talking him when they first hit turbulence jack is like my father says that turbulence is nothing to fear and then the plane goes down and

[01:29:22] it's like it's like oh dad was wrong it reminds me of this like concept that like to children their first god is their parent like you are their basis for everything and you know you you be a little bit more understanding of this obviously but i was a child once so i know like your your parent when you're that age is the grand authority figure it doesn't matter if you're a christian it doesn't matter if you're this your parent is your authority figure that's what you base all of your stuff on

[01:29:49] so for him to have experienced this and been like well my father says and then his father being wrong it's like his his god has died a little bit yeah his whole world view and it's like it's like oh he was wrong that was wrong so it's not just that i don't have to follow those rules anymore it's that those rules were wrong and they didn't work but he say in the book and in the tv show bollocks to the rules bollocks to the rules bollocks to the rules sucks to the little ones but you end up

[01:30:15] less free you know i mean first off like i said before if anyone who is smart gets um like put down because they challenge the authority of this leader and instead the ones that get rosen up are the ones that are uh willing to be the most brutal in service of him and a lot of times it's so competence is not rewarded you know that was what i'm getting at yeah so then ultimately like piggy says you can just

[01:30:44] hunt until you die like there's a lot of other things that go into a good civilization versus just hunting pigs well and it's also i mean it's so interesting to this finding of the pilot's diary or journal in the show what is that no that was simon not simon's journal i don't know why i said the pilot no no you're good you're good i was like i'm gonna blame the three hours

[01:31:14] but the simon's journal like that added such an interesting you know bit of nuance to it where we see jack like it's still tying him into simon it makes it so much worse watching him make the choices that he does by having access to something that is so inherently vulnerable of simon's it just

[01:31:37] makes it so much more painful to watch his descent and i'm just like oh buddy you like where they're all quiet and jack and simon make eye contact and then jack opens up his diary in front of him and like smirks and like that's such a like power move it's such a vicious example of like being a kid too like that's such a it's the saddest story i've ever read or something like that yes that was

[01:32:04] brutal i was like damn jack like and then he burned it i i didn't catch that until my second watch he yeah it was subtle but yeah so when simon burns his journal originally when he first talked to jack and was like i don't even remember what i wrote in it i think that's true i think he that's a journal that he's been keeping for a long time yeah and i also think like when he burns it it's not just him

[01:32:31] trying to get rid of it i like i think there was some part of simon who knew he was not getting off this island yeah and i don't know exactly and i don't know if that was a conscious thing of like even if we get saved i'm not leaving like i'll i'll be here i'll i'm gonna end it here or something like that because he even said it was the happiest he was the happiest he'd been that was

[01:32:54] fascinating yeah what what are you talking about yeah no and i i think it's i i just think that whole sequence of the diary being read and and revealing all these things and i also know like and i don't want to be controversial or read too much into stuff because i i think there's some speculation about the sexuality of the characters and all of that stuff but i just it i got inklings of it but i just

[01:33:20] thought it was such a real raw view of like adolescent friendships and how fragile they are yeah because there's there's one thing of like you know they were friends jack and simon were friends and then when jack's other friends get back to school they're not really friendly anymore like that's one whole thing but then like jack is so afraid of anyone reading simon's journal because he doesn't want to be associated with simon at all you know and there are parts in simon's journal where he

[01:33:46] describes jack and like his his red hair or his hair in the sunlight and stuff like that yeah yeah he's like a god yeah i was like oh and there are these little scenes too where i think it's such a because i think in in a lot of media not just today's media a lot of media it's like so taboo for boys to be close and comfortable with each other and so you have these really cute scenes of like all the boys

[01:34:11] laying in a tangled heap and they're all cuddling each other yeah and and simon goes to roll over and reach over ralph and then he stops himself and he just like pulls his hand back and like pick and and it's not like the sexuality part of it i'm not saying they're gay for each other but just like the way that they love each other and care for each other i mean the scene that keeps coming to mind is with simon and jack alone and he's yeah putting the makeup on his face

[01:34:38] part of what that was a very tender moment and tenderness doesn't necessarily equate to romantic but they are like they're so young it it i thought they were going in that drive honestly i thought they were going in that direction with them but when you're young like that we we just need to label and categorize and explicate everything and maybe simon doesn't know or maybe it's some

[01:35:08] feeling in between or somewhere near but not quite i mean my guess is he's not like oh my god i love jack it's more just like i'm feeling drawn to do this right now yes you know something like that and in his journal he said there was a point in time where he had visited jack in the hospital i think like jack had a care of him yeah and so i just think it's this i don't know i just think like

[01:35:33] the glimpses that we got into their friendship was so beautiful and i think it just made everything sadder and i think it really did the scene where they're actually where simon is actually dead jack if you notice is the first one to like really see who it is and he dips immediately and i just and that's not from the book we don't see that in the other renditions on a film i just thought it was such a like it was like a final nod to their friendship and then it was over yeah because there was something

[01:36:02] so about their friendship in particular something so innocent yeah but something so heartbreakingly you know grown up at the same time because of what both of them are dealing with with their fathers and their home lives and with some i agree like i think if they were portraying it in that way where there was maybe a spark of interest between the two they're so young and the way that i took it

[01:36:28] is that they they aren't even aware of it yet like simon wouldn't be necessarily aware it's like larval stage or something yeah yeah but at the same time being that young you know they aren't as you know i guess beaten down by societal rules and pressures yet they still there's they've still internalized some already but it's more acceptable for the boys to be kind of tender and sweet with each other the way they look

[01:36:57] at the little ones but only alone like yes like the problem with simon for jack is jack is there's he's struggling not struggling there's a tension between being vulnerable and being tough and when he's around other people he wants to look tough and simon draws out or calls to things that he would consider weak but they're on some level are appealing to him but you can't show any other

[01:37:24] kids that so ultimately the tough side wins out and they kill simon and he doesn't like it but he's just like i gotta let that part of myself that has compassion and empathy and care go because i gotta be a tough leader god that scene i was wondering how they were gonna it was it was i'm not saying it was bad because it was good it was well done but that's that's the tvma rating right there it was i mean

[01:37:49] and i think that's it was great the way it was because it is brutal they brutally killed him yeah and him being like crucified in the water was also such a beautiful which they foreshadowed earlier when he was just floating in the water that was well and they also foreshadow it when the flashback of him in church and he's staring at the giant ornate jesus crucifixion scene right it's just so intense

[01:38:14] and i wonder if you know if i'd be curious if anybody listening if anybody watched this for and didn't know the story of lord of the flies hadn't read the book hadn't seen any of the previous adaptations because the way that they filmed it you know it's set up where it's pretty clear that simon is about to meet them when they're all amped up to kill the beast like you see him going through

[01:38:41] the jungle wanting to tell them what he saw but it was hidden you didn't know it was him until the overhead shot until later which is such an interesting choice that instead of focusing on you know you see them all stabbing and really going after him but the focus is not on his body and what is happening to his body the focus is on each of the little boys that are participating yeah that in

[01:39:07] killing him and the the acting i think his name is it locks the kid that played jack had an interesting name i think it was locks he did it he did it so well that moment of realization where it's like this is not the beast like this is simon and that slow backing away where some of the other kids like little

[01:39:29] freaking i think it was roger just looked like lit up by it it was like it awoke something in him in a terrifying way and it's just the way they shot that was perfect because instead of focusing on the brutal act you still get the brutality of it but the important thing to the story

[01:39:55] is the impact it's now having on each of these boys and it's kind of the point of no return i mean i think it's also a very good way to show how when we get whipped up into a frenzy over some imaginary fear that we can indiscriminately hurt people without really seeing them and if we took the chance especially as a group yeah especially as a group and if we actually took a chance to see them as people

[01:40:21] then we would realize no this isn't right but they don't see simon neither do we until you know then they show them at the end so it really really shows that like oh my god what did we just do but well in the middle of it we didn't even pay attention to what it was we just wanted to destroy our fear yeah i also really liked because because i've watched the i've watched both of the movie versions like several times because i teach it and so the 1963 one is black and white and that's the

[01:40:51] one that's very true to the plot um and i always thought that simon's death in there was a little bit underwhelming it was just kind of like he comes out of the i don't know it's just my opinion in the 1990s one it's a little bit different because it's american kids and in the 1990s film they find some old supplies from the plane i think and one of the supplies is an emergency glow stick so simon's coming out of the jungle with this emergency glow stick that he found and it

[01:41:19] made sense in the 1990s version that there's this glowing thing coming out of the jungle so they're going to attack it yeah and i loved in the series that it was just it was just a thing moving and they were just on it and i just i really liked how and then at the end jack is the one who realizes it he sees simon he dips he runs and the other kids are kind of like they're just jabbing until they're done and then they just kind of like all drift off and then you have this sequence of all of

[01:41:44] them arm and arm dancing on the beach yeah the one keep going on the back right that was so as soon as they saw this kid could do that they're like yeah yeah do that kid yeah oh yeah oh for sure and i just thought that that was such a like i liked that difference between because in the book it's just like they all just like leave yeah and so them dancing away they're still caught up in the yeah the

[01:42:09] frenzy of it yeah i just thought that set such a great like tone that was so chilling yes and it was also like they there's a there's a very brief shot you can see his body on the beach yeah just like dancing around i bet roger knew who it was he's like oh yeah oh i think that's the whole point i think roger's like finally was a kid yeah what else would it be right the beast and like the chant

[01:42:37] going from like you know kind of towards the beginning when they're kill the beast it's more about it's like amping them up to go out and hunt and to a certain extent i can understand all of these children needing to get in the proper mindset to be able to kill an animal you know and yeah because it's scary there's this yeah it's understandable that they would need

[01:43:03] something to kind of motivate them and the whenever i hunt i usually pull a bra down over my head and god smear lipstick all over yeah the bra pulled down was such it reminded me so much of shauna yeah after before she's butchering javi when she just pulls it over her eyes i just that was that clicked for me the notion of you know being wearing a mask not only for them they were trying

[01:43:31] at first to conceal themselves from the pigs and blend in but then the idea of the mask kind of allowing you to separate yourself like the person who does these things from to be anonymous kind of civilize you the anonymity it gives masks interesting masks yep very psychologically freeing

[01:43:55] and we see them all kind of have this break and by the end when the naval officer gets there and you can really see the close-ups of how they're like face paint and the makeup and the women's clothing has evolved they look fucking terrifying like can you imagine that group of children running out to

[01:44:19] you when the when the like the soldier the guy came at the end and the kids all ran out you know i know how it ends but i still couldn't help think oh what if they just kill him right now quite the there was part of me that was like they could do something really interesting that would be a very different ending twist oh my gosh all right whose turn is it

[01:44:46] era is that yeah i think it's you i think yeah oh i do have a fairly small point about that ties into yellow jackets um and i don't know if it's the eyes of this kid that played ralph

[01:45:04] his kind of like big like vulnerable eyes reminded me of both jackie and natalie on yellow jackets to a certain extent and especially natalie the kind of idea of you know yeah i'll be the leader it makes sense but there's a bit of reluctance there and i just i don't know i feel like it would be great if

[01:45:34] someone out there could make a documentary or something that really dives deep into the characters on yellow jackets and their counterparts and natalie was one that kept coming to mind jackie kept coming to mind jackie reminded me a lot of piggy in that there's that tie to remain civilized she's the first

[01:45:59] one that is kind of in denial about rationing food on yellow jackets and while piggy kind of takes the opposite approach is like this is what we need to do i you know this is we've got to have a signal fire they that innocence and that clinging to civilization i feel like really ties those two in and there were a

[01:46:23] couple of other moments in this show that just kind of transported me to scenes in yellow jackets and one of those moments in particular was when piggy's glasses broke to kind of show the breakdown of order and civilization i think of the scene of misty's glasses finally breaking and it kind of signifies

[01:46:49] that same thing where it's like oh we're in trouble now like we are finally devolving into true brutality brutality and savagery and it makes me want to ask the yellow jackets writers if that was at all intentional to mirror you know the breaking of piggy's glasses in the book because piggy's glasses are such a big

[01:47:13] symbol in the book and in the show as well we get you know that carries through but the idea of you know he's pretty much the most intelligent one he's the one that represents rational thinking he represents order and the power of like you were saying jason science and kind of intellect and what one thing i think

[01:47:36] is so interesting about his glasses is the there's the rejection of boring things like figuring things out and stuff and yet they use the benefits of that they steal it from him and use it and that's also reflected in real society too yeah it's it's their lifeline to civilization like the signal fire they're

[01:48:00] literally trying to keep a connection with civilization and be rescued by starting that signal fire i just mean stealing the glasses at all and using it for fire but that like the fact that they recognize the need for it but they aren't really respectful right of it is so i mean it's mirrors a lot of yeah i feel like that's technology and at the time it was yes you know probably a nod to nuclear technology it's

[01:48:28] just and especially with the forest burning down and i really liked also because i feel like in yellow jackets when her glasses break it's also like it's it's a gradual decline in decorum but it's also like she does she's not seeing anything clearly anymore it she's so and i feel like that's not necessarily the same in lord of the flies but also because piggy's still seeing everything clearly but it's like when his glasses break everyone else is forgetting right what's important and the priorities

[01:48:57] and then the first beat or the first night raid when the guys when the savages come in and they steal the torches and then piggy's like oh i thought they were going to go after the conch and then eventually they do steal the glasses and piggy was clutching the conch yep and not his glasses he needs his glasses to see but that's not what he picked up he's like clinging to the notion that they

[01:49:20] can maintain order yeah and civility and him him saying oh i thought they were going to go for the conch they took my glasses was so like poignant like that was such a good like because they're not interested in law and order they're interested in the fire the only way that they're going to get it consistently is to steal it from you and your sight and your vision be damned i'm not just ask for it i think one of the things i remember and i don't know if it was covered on this podcast in like a

[01:49:49] news segment or something but one of the creators of yellow jackets way back when the show first came out talking about how part of the reason that she wanted to do the show and have teenage girls at the center of it was to combat this notion that groups of women or groups of girls would not necessarily or

[01:50:14] couldn't get to the point of brutality as groups of men and young boys like there have been you know i think there's one pretty controversial experience where they put all these like little girls in a house together little boys in a house together and it's talked about very frequently that the girls kind of set up a routine and a schedule and a system of order and the little boys just kind of

[01:50:38] ran rampant and i think that says a lot more about society and gender norms than anything inherent in us and the idea of showing both in lord of the flies and yellow jackets when you strip all of that away there is this you know still inherent primal barbarism that comes out but the gender dynamics that are a part

[01:51:08] of it are still so distinct and interesting because you think about the the female power dynamics and the dynamics of the team on yellow jackets and how that influences their decisions and then here you know they're a lot of the influences that their dads have on them or the organization of choir

[01:51:29] and expectations influences them as well and i thought it was really interesting with you know we have this now this great example of little boys and teenage girls in these situations and they both end up in brutality but it's so different yeah so the showrunners ashley lyle bart nickerson have said lord of the

[01:51:59] flies was a big inspiration for yellow jackets ashley lyle said she saw the 1990 movie when she was young and she it was partly memorable because she had a crush on balthazar getty who played ralph and uh they were also fascinated by that movie alive about the uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the andes oh god and we covered that uh society this is a snow version that they did a couple years ago

[01:52:24] which was really really good i just read the book it's they're doing a documentary on it too um with all the follow-up on all the people but anyways um yeah so you're right they they were inspired because they saw that people that um warner brothers had put out news that they were planning a gender swapped all-girl adaptation of lord of the flies and the online reaction was that wouldn't work girls wouldn't descend into violence like boys would and ashley lyle was like that is wrong or deeply incorrect and

[01:52:53] added fuel to our fire nice has have none of these like you can't critique that if you've ever spent any time with teenage girls i know but it was right it was different and one of the things that i liked is um that in yellow jackets there's a lot of focus on listening listening to the spirits of the

[01:53:20] forest and to your um your intuition and and um you know that's why lottie becomes so big at first because she seems to be more in tune and that's not with the boys there's not anything like that you know yeah but i will i also want to say because we talked about this too i think wendy brought it up when we covered the book the lord of the flies that something like this happened to boys in 1965

[01:53:49] six tongan school boys were stranded on an uninhabited island for 15 months and apparently they organized they divided up work they took care of each other they developed ways to resolve arguments and they kept their signal fire going so it's not just a given that if you stick kids in a situation like this they're going to turn into savages yeah yeah it's just like you never

[01:54:13] know they can yeah they can very well could but not always i think that's also like just a huge nod to group dynamics like oh yeah the like the team in your ugly they were a team yeah and that really kept them together and in you know the school boys they all knew each other and i feel like in lord of the flies you can see that with the choir and then everyone else yeah yeah and if you have a jack

[01:54:39] and a roger that's going to have a big potentially have a big influence and not every group has like like i remember i went to taiwan oh not taiwan thailand with 12 friends uh to two of them got decided to get married there so we spent a couple weeks or something and we you know with 12 people on a vacation together you would think that there would be some friction but it was all easygoing people

[01:55:05] and it was wonderful and we all hung out together and did things and then occasionally we'd go apart but we knew that if this one other friend of ours had come with us it would have been way different because they're always like that's so insistent on things and friction you know so it really depends on who's there yeah that is very true because if you have a little an island full of ralphs and piggies and little ones you're probably gonna be okay i think so like you know they'll build a signal

[01:55:34] fire fire they'll figure out a way to get food and fresh water and you throw in a roger and like you said jack then everything changes and who knows maybe another jack would have emerged but maybe not but i think and one of the things that i think is so interesting about like the jack and roger thing is without if it was just one of them it wouldn't be a problem right right really like that would

[01:55:59] still be a problem and roger would still be an asshole yeah but it's it's the dynamic of them that makes them so dangerous and effective true geez yeah what's his face oh hitler and goebbels yeah exactly mangala yeah fucking mangala the the moment where you know jack is kind of getting lost in you know being amped up by all these other boys like encouraged especially by roger and when

[01:56:27] one you know we talked about how i forgot to mention this talking about the women's clothing but one part of the show that seems like such a perfect perfect moment to distinguish the two factions that have emerged is when jack sees ralph after all the boys come back from dressing up and ralph looks at him and he just goes what are you wearing you know like and that moment

[01:56:55] just shows how divided they've started to become and if ralph had been present i wonder when they were all finding these closing and clothing and had said right off the bat as soon as someone picked it up it's like oh you're picking up a bra or something like that yeah yep if that could have driven everything in a different direction yeah it's like as soon as they threw out the you know the

[01:57:24] expectation that oh these are women's clothing this is for women like we would never go through a woman's like personal things in the real world as soon as that shift happens then they're all just kind of doomed did you think that that was a nod at all to um the uruguyan team i wonder because

[01:57:46] that was that came up a lot yeah in news articles and well and i read so i mean i've read alive i've read society of the snow i've read i think prado wrote a book about it and then i think roberto canessa also wrote a book that i read and there was a whole point where they were wearing all of these crazy things when they were rescued and they were also wearing lipstick as chapstick because and i i remember

[01:58:14] being young and doing that and not understanding at all and then being like oh it's because they had to protect themselves from their son i just i was just thinking of i wonder if that was a little nod it could even be a subconscious thing of the creators yeah of the show i'm sure that they were on some level aware of it especially making this show yeah because in the in the real in the real life you know version um there was never any like question of it was just this is what we need to

[01:58:42] keep ourselves survival yeah that was it yeah but still when you have to start doing something like that i think it could change something in your mind where it's like oh we have to throw away uh things that aren't useful to us anymore but it reminds me of zombie movies like dawn of the dead when they go to the mall and they just try on all the clothes and everything yeah oh yeah is it a zombie movie if you don't go to a mall

[01:59:08] okay my turn yes all right let's see i i want it i had a point about rules and institutions and protecting the weak but i'll just say uh the conch i think is a symbol of everyone in society having a voice and when you don't have rules and regulations to make things fair then the more powerful drown out the less powerful and the conscious destroyed and that maps over onto our own society with our

[01:59:36] disparity of wealth and our citizens united the let's corporation donate as much money as they want and it's just and our treatment of children yeah yeah corporations are people too but i really want to talk about the the beast and the lord of the flies and simon seeing through it all and and um is this beast quote unquote is not real it's just an illusory fear that jack uses to consolidate power

[02:00:05] um and then he and he's the only one who can protect you from it and then there's but it's actually just this pilot's corpse which i thought they did a great job of showing that where it flipped up and the parachute was behind it i was like what the fuck is that that was such a good visual representation of how it's described in the book too right so good i was

[02:00:31] just like oh my nightmares are coming they just did a really good job of making this book come alive and they go back and they're like you had teeth and claws and you're like yeah yeah i love also when they're they come back and the twins have a scratch and one of them one of the boys is like did the beast do that and they're like no this was a bush yeah what are you talking about this one's really good too so then there's the the actual the lord of the flies which is this pig's

[02:01:00] head that jack puts on a stake as an offering to the beast and for people who don't know lord of the flies is an english meaning associated with beals above which is like a devil and and i think so the dead pilot is represents what the boys mistakenly think the beast is but the lord of the flies points to what the beast really is that's something arising from themselves so like you said when the simon

[02:01:28] imagines the pig head saying aren't you afraid of me i'm the beast and simon says no you're just a pig's head on a stick and it says fancy thinking the beast was something that you could hunt and kill and they're just looking for some external thing that's causing their problems that's simple a monster they can identify and destroy but the real danger is their own fear and aggression and insecurity and desire for power and control and um the potential for all that to turn into like murder of innocence

[02:01:58] and destruction and everything and um so then they end up becoming like they projecting their they project their fear onto this imaginary beast and then they use that as a justification to become like the thing that they feared and we see that a lot in society too people who have been victims becoming the victimizers so the way it gets they get more and more savage is because they've developed this habit of

[02:02:28] creating this perceived enemy and then whipping themselves up into a frenzy to kill it so that then they can use that same habit on people like ralph and piggy like now you're the beast we already did kind of cover this a little bit but it's just just like the ritualistic how yeah you can get used to the idea

[02:02:54] of we're powerful and anybody who's not with us is against us and we will destroy them and that all started because they were afraid of some imaginary thing but since that's become a part of their culture then they can turn that on to people like ralph and and piggy yeah that's like they've manifested the beast yeah and it's all the little things leading up to it and it's like and that's one of the things like i think that the the series did really well the other movies do it too but in the

[02:03:23] book it's like all of these little things that you as the reader understand are happening but the boys don't like yeah the little kids saying that some snake thing crawled out of the sea and in the series you see all this debris washing up on the beach and yeah you see like the para glider thing going into the sea so there probably was something that came up on the beach and then like all of these all these rumors and then the kid who originally talked about it dies but there's a yeah the the

[02:03:52] impulse to understand versus the impulse to vilify and destroy yes yes favor the understanding one yeah but in some scenarios like being curious and trying to understand something is not no it's not beneficial it can kill you like there are some scenarios where it's shoot first yeah like yeah that's true if there's somebody trying to kill you you should probably try to kill them when we when

[02:04:18] we covered the book i remember thinking about this idea that like you guys were saying before people are innately savage deep down and it when left without the structure of society that that would come out but i i do like we've sort of been talking about this already but i don't think that's necessarily it because i don't feel savage but i do understand fear and i understand wanting to be safe and i understand

[02:04:47] wanting some control over my situation because feeling powerless is is sucks you know it's it's uncomfortable it's scary i'm wanting to belong to a group even things like wanting to respect i understand that i understand reacting out of ego or insecurity hopefully i'll catch myself sometimes it takes a couple days for me personally but when i think like of this beast quote unquote beast or the

[02:05:15] lord of the flies in those terms it becomes more relatable because you can get this progression you have fear you have desire that leads to desire for safety and control which can lead to wanting to feel part of a group or a tribe who has those same fears and then seeing the outside tribe as the enemy and feeling aggressive towards them and you know uniting around fear you can create a boogeyman to rally against

[02:05:43] and i just think um that you know as much as we like i feel like that right now it to remember not to make the people that i'm frustrated with into simon that i'm stabbing without even looking at you know it's hard yeah to do but that's i think the lesson of this story don't do that don't become so tribal that you're blind to the

[02:06:13] humanity of the people outside your tribe well and i feel like it's a big you kind of sparked something i think it's you know you talk about how kind of fighting your instincts and how you feel with you you don't have like that savagery maybe isn't like close to the surface you don't know what would happen but i think it's almost like if you look at it through the lens of trauma responses

[02:06:42] and how each of these boys has a different trauma response we can't control our trauma responses it's either fight flight freeze or fawn you don't know what you're gonna get and if you look at their experiences as kind of this extended played out trauma response you see jack and roger where fight

[02:07:07] kind of comes out and wanting that need to be able to control things goes into their pirate pot like their dynamics and when i think of flight i kind of think of sam and eric the twins to a certain extent because they almost seem like they just are trying to avoid any sort of conflict possible and stay on

[02:07:32] the fringes like when they end up kind of getting absorbed into jack's faction they're still trying to right and it also kind of goes along with fawn like the idea of people pleasing and doing what you need to just kind of survive and then freeze while usually you think of that as feeling you know completely stuck unable to act i can i kind of think of that with ralph and piggy where they are

[02:07:59] frozen in terms of this is what you're supposed to do we have order we're civilized this is how we're supposed to respond and that is how the naval officer is essentially expecting all of them to respond is you know he says poor show which is the most condescending thing i can fucking imagine she's like all right man but each of them are dealing with it in a different way and we get to see all of those

[02:08:27] different trauma responses conflict with each other and i just it's so interesting thinking about how the dynamics of the island and the outcome could change just by removing one or two of those children and puzzle pieces if you have a bunch of people that are fawning that's not necessarily going to work out either if everyone's trying to not step on toes and or if you have a bunch of people who are fighting

[02:08:52] exactly and i think i mean i feel this way where i can be a different um archetype or just feel like play a different role depending on the group i'm with uh like i can be in the leader role sometimes like i am with podcastica but most of the time i'm not i'm perfectly comfortable being second in command or just being a good member of the group you know so there's people like that that could rise

[02:09:18] to be a jack but would normally not be you truly never know what how you're going to respond to a situation until you're in it you could have insights or expectations but never you never know but i try i like i feel like i learned a long time ago i used to i don't know how personal to get with this but i i'll just say this i realized that when i because i'd feel anxious about something and i'd feel like

[02:09:43] i needed to act on it and i would and a lot of times it wouldn't go well and so one time i decided let me just sit with this anxiety and i sat with it and it hurt and it was i felt so compelled to pick up that phone but i did not do it and then the next day i saw the person that i was anxious about and everything was fine and i the anxiety had passed and i'm like oh that is a lesson sometimes if you don't just act from your emotion you know i'm equating this with going savage maybe that's a

[02:10:12] bit of a stretch but if you just sort of it makes sense yeah don't be so reactive then things can go better yeah it's also like fighting your urge like fighting your instincts because your instinct tells you this is a problem and i need to fix it yes but we are capable of higher thought and critical thinking crawled out of the sea and got them yeah good for us love that for us

[02:10:38] so i i only have notes left do you guys have any more points my last point is about the little ones let's hear it the little ones all the little ones so i increasingly have solidified my decision that you can judge a society accurately based on how it treats its children and if you want to be broader you can say how it treats its vulnerable population especially if we're looking at america

[02:11:05] and we're looking at our disabled population and our minority populations and all that stuff but in my brain maybe this is the teacher part of me it i judge it by how you treat your children yeah and if you look in the real world the the countries that know what they're doing and how to spend their money on education and per student and the way that they invest in their programs is very obvious compared to america where we spend i think more dollar amount per student in our education

[02:11:32] system with not great results yeah and so when they first land on the island or i guess land crash on the island and the first four of them go up the mountain to to look around and scope things out and piggy is the one who says well we the most important thing is the little ones and keeping them safe and jack's like sucks to the little ones and he's like well they don't know they they're not going to be able to help themselves jack says yeah why do you care about them and piggy's like because they

[02:11:57] can't care for themselves yes and so when i think like and i do want to shout out if she ever i'm not going to say her name but if the student who ever wrote that alternate ending ever listens to this it was such a good alternate ending from the perspective of the little ones who have no control over anything they're one one day they're in ralph's camp and they're not doing anything and then the next day they're in jack's camp and everyone's getting beat on and whipped and stuff

[02:12:23] like that and and you look at this the i guess devolution devil i don't know how to say it but like yeah of the number of times that they bring up the little ones in the first couple episodes versus like the last couple episodes when they're there are really no little ones anymore it's just the savages and then ralph's people yeah and i think towards the end when like when they're talking about how the little ones are scared all the time and they're yelling and and they're having bad dreams

[02:12:53] and stuff like that and then towards the end you see all the little ones are painted like savages they all have some even if they don't have a weapon they're all carrying something they've all got something going on yeah and it's like they've been turned into these little child soldiers almost like that's what i thought of like like and i loved their depiction and i loved like the behind the scenes of like watching these little kids be goofballs and then like snap right into the moment and stuff like that and i just thought it was such a like working with little kids i can't imagine how

[02:13:22] hard it is to get them to to act and do what you want them to do and so i think it was such a like it's like a miracle this thing yeah and especially the little kids like they literally refer to them as the little ones when they were shooting they had three hours of shoot time with them i mean it's good i guess if you're filming a story about kids gone savage then it's a little easier because you're just like just be yourselves yeah yeah do what you need to i think they said they were like the little

[02:13:50] ones were maybe like seven to nine yeah i think the oldest one was nine yeah and they i mean as you pan out and look at them in the making of you're just like how do they wrangle all those 35 children kids on the island yeah and so i really liked their depiction and i i really liked all the little shots i think we were talking about earlier of them like you know playing with the mudskippers and and like you know roger throwing pebbles at them and they're freaked out

[02:14:19] and them um like percival and the boy with the birthmark being too scared to talk in the group so they talk through piggy and piggy is so loving and caring towards these little ones yeah and he's telling them stories and he's making up stories about all the boys on the island so that he keeps them invested they make they sit them down for naps you know what i mean yeah and then at the end when you have all these little little kids running out painted like savages and all that stuff and and

[02:14:48] and the naval officers again i i judge you by the way you treat children and i count the big guns as children too when he's talking about what a bad show and and stuff like that but then if you keep listening he talks about okay well we'll get you guys up on the boat and everything and he says we'll take the little ones first and i to me that was such a like we'll take the little ones first because piggy at the start says we need to take care of the little ones and then the officer at the end says we need to take care of the little ones and i think it's such a like encompassing full circle

[02:15:17] yes you would hope so yeah gosh those poor kids one moment well there were two moments with the little ones that really stuck out to me one was poor percival madison when they you know they ask him like okay you gotta state your name like if you're gonna talk and he has all of his like information and his address and his phone number memorized and you know like his parents have

[02:15:48] yeah and he he just he's sniffling and crying and saying that i have never wanted to hug a child on tv so much and then the other kid that is they zoom in on him this little brunette little one and he's talking about you know when they're talking about it coming from the sea and you see his like giant eyes and like this trembling lip they picked the perfect kid

[02:16:16] is that the kid who says it'll come back tonight yes yes yes i was just like this is heart-wrenching to watch and think about these children actually stuck on an island and i realized you know when i was younger i think i was 16 when i saw both of the film adaptations and you know that is still i didn't think

[02:16:38] i was a child then but that's you know you're still a kid you're still young watching it then i was like yeah okay it's kids stuck on an island i've seen hook but now as an adult and having i don't have children of my own but i have a little niece and nephew both under the age of four and imagining like in

[02:17:04] like my little niece being maybe a year or two removed from the age of the little ones being stuck on an island as an adult it hits so much harder watching these vulnerable children and for the little ones it's not any kind of an adventure story it's straight up horror like they crash on this island there are no adults around they they're not big enough or strong enough or and i'm not saying

[02:17:30] they're dumb but they're they're not smart enough yet to understand how to hunt they're eating mangoes in the book i think it talks about how some of the mangoes are like rotten because they're too lazy to climb up so they're eating rotten mangoes which is why they're shitting everywhere right they have all these digestional issues they're like borderline starving that all the older kids are fighting half the island's on fire like it's a horror story for them and then one of their buddies dies and no one says anything like the boy with the birthmark oh yeah that poor kid like and they never say

[02:18:00] anything about it nope it's like uh we lost one you just watching this i never even thought to imagine nico and bodie because i have a nine-year-old and a 15-year-old out there and now i'm about to cry just thinking about i know it's so like i can't imagine it just it bodie would do better no they'd both i think they both i have two nieces i good luck to whoever gets stranded with them i know i was like my little niece would she'd be okay my bodie would be like king of the little ones well he's nine i guess

[02:18:29] he's a little older than that so i also think like when we talk i guess this is tangent kind of related the idea of savagery and like when we think about it as like doing something to another person like being cruel and being and being violent and then but sometimes being savage is like how you save someone and i always think of like rick in the walking dead and him yeah that's an act of

[02:18:57] savagery but it's an act of preservation as well yeah and it's one thing like i i always tell the story i took my nieces somewhere um alone one summer to a park or something and this guy kept coming up and talking to me and i i felt in my bones i was like my guy i will attack you on yeah on park bench like leave my like man it was the most powerful primal instinct and i don't even have kids

[02:19:22] and i'm like like a parent or you know wanting to protect your kid like my niece is the first time i was like oh i would take a bullet for you oh yeah like okay this i get it and thinking of you know that being your own kid and this feeling of almost your your heart being outside of your body i cannot imagine what that could drive some people to do you know we see examples of that all the time

[02:19:51] and watching these kids out there defend entirely for themselves without having that protection that is supposed to be there it's just a brutal brutal watch and it's deeply uncomfortable this reminds me of when nico went to camp in taiwan and he didn't speak taiwanese but we were there on vacation and jenny put him into this camp and it was a week and he he was nervous about it and i was so

[02:20:20] worried about him the whole time right i was just like oh my god i wish i could be there to make sure it's all going okay and then when we picked him up he's like that was the best camp i've ever had it was amazing and i was like oh you can handle yourself i was so happy about that but it didn't go savage or anything as far as i know all right that's good that's a plus let's move into notes i actually don't have any notes what notes do you guys have how did you guys feel about the change in

[02:20:47] piggy's death it was brilliant but i'm mad at them because it made it so much sadder and it was so i mean you kind of already talked about it i just it's the only yeah it was difficult to watch and it was so much worse seeing right like that that rock was huge first of all and watching it

[02:21:14] the way that they showed it and the sound was awful the thunking is yeah that was almost and then hoping he could be okay even though we know the story and then he starts talking about a plan to get off and you're like that doesn't sound like it's gonna happen but could it happen and then it doesn't i i liked it i liked the change i think it made a little bit more sense because even in the

[02:21:41] like in the book it's like this kind of a little bit more sophisticated of like a a big boulder is wedged with a stick and all this stuff like that and so i think like i thought like logically like it makes sense that it's a smaller rock that they could just throw and and i was like oh okay he's dead that makes a little bit more sense and then i was like oh he's not dead and then i was like oh yeah yeah it's like previously injured yeah he's definitely good

[02:22:07] but it's having an aunt may moment so much more direct and violent by having him chunk it right it was a good change it's it was just i wasn't expecting it at all i was just like oh i wonder when they're gonna kill piggy and then when he was still alive i was like oh this is so much but we talked through already the interactions between him and ralph and i think it made for a good well segment yeah having it and that is true like i loved your point cassie about

[02:22:36] the burial and how like there's a lot of labor that goes into that and it's so personal whereas in the book like pages pages dead and his body gets washed out to sea in like a similar way as we saw simon's in the show and in the book he falls also right like on a cliff and he's on the lower part he falls off and that could also be what he like what kills him in this there is no doubt

[02:23:04] whatsoever that it's roger and in the book that it's tragic because it's kind of this it's almost it's just uncaring and unfeeling like there's nothing it's like he dies no we have to keep going yeah like you just have to keep going and the ocean washing them out and this one having to actually watch him go through the process and realization

[02:23:28] that he's getting worse and that moment with ralph just that was a gut punch the only other note that i really had was ouch that hurt after uh well not the rock simon saying you know they're all fantasizing fantasizing about where they'd be if they weren't on the island and he said if he could choose anywhere we talked about that he would choose the island that stuck with me so much watching this show like

[02:23:58] that child must have had a terrible terrible situation at home he didn't seem like he was having a great time on the island yeah it kind of reminded me to a certain extent in a different way misty like yes misty did not want to get off that island because she had finally found like a purpose she felt valued simon sabotaged the plane yeah simon is just like we're gonna crash it

[02:24:25] we're all just gonna go destroy the transcoder or whatever it is totally fine yeah yeah yeah all right we we got a few messages not many uh i didn't give a lot of notice and also we got several messages when i posted about this saying oh yeah i meant to watch that this will give me an excuse to watch it so um i don't know how many of those people had a chance but i hope you did because it was great but

[02:24:52] anyway let's read the fee that we got by the way if you want the whole book is on the internet archive for free there are several different versions of it and the 1990s version of the film in its entirety is available on youtube it just doesn't have closed captions that's that's cool i'll try to remember to put a link to that in the show notes for people yeah yep i want to go back and watch the adaptations the other film ones yeah it's all haven't seen them in forever

[02:25:18] all right sorry listener buzz okay you go first cassie i guess same order uh ian mclaren says i enjoyed it thumbs up emoji yes is it gee or g johnson we need to find that out because that's what everyone let us know every time yeah i know i was like i can see why that comes

[02:25:39] up yeah tomato tomato i tried to watch this with my 14 year old daughter when it first came out but we both lost interest like 20 minutes into it lol i do want to go back and try to watch it though definitely watch it yeah i wonder if he doesn't know the story of the lord of flies and they just didn't realize how crazy it was going to get or something i would be fascinated to hear what people think that

[02:26:08] did not know going in what was gonna happen karen my my longtime co-host karen says i watched this with david we both thought it was excellent but man what a hard watch i actually got so stressed out watching that i had to look away during many of the most intense scenes but again i have to stress that the acting is amazing the production was incredible and beautiful and it felt true to the book

[02:26:30] well said well said for sure uh wendy ann says this is my mother hi mom um it's also our usual co-host of this podcast yeah yes the usual co-host but my mother nurse wendy um left two comments so after watching the first two she said um really loved it the production value was really great the acting from this young cast is just amazing when we podcasted on the book in the older show a year or so ago that

[02:26:57] movie was obviously very dated great for its time but this version just blew me away so well done really brings the book to life i was shocked to see the violence with such a young cast as well and some of the super young kids were just so good with their big expressive eyes i can't wait to finish it can't wait to listen to the podcast so afterwards the next day i watched the second half of the series it really blew me away for any that lost interest after the first episode i recommend trying to push through episode three was wild and intense it's jarring to see such a young cast in this had a 28

[02:27:27] years vibe to it the cinematography was incredible i also watched most of the making of episode the young actors were incredible and i can't imagine how challenging it was to film this in the middle of malaysia now i want to start from the beginning i love how they expanded on the book the death of piggy was far more heart-wrenching than the book i was glued to the screen i think we will be seeing these talented actors and other things in the future for sure oh yeah we forgot to mention it was

[02:27:50] filmed in malaysia just looks so humid and sticky and they lost a lot of time from rain they said about it was like some days there was whole days where they couldn't shoot because of rain and they also said one of the guys who was like one of the experts on set said it was the first time it was the first movie that anyone can find where they directly shot into mangroves and used real mangroves oh yeah i guess because i guess in in other movies and stuff it's really hard to to shoot in

[02:28:20] mangroves because they're really they're ecologically important and protected so they had to get permission to build walkways like a stuff on top of it that was so interesting but yeah another plug for the making of yeah i might watch that right after we finish this recording very cool

[02:28:40] all right that is our show thanks so much for listening everyone great to be back on yellow jackets and in getting ready for this episode and digging up some of the news it got me super

[02:29:05] excited for the final season so uh so yeah i'm glad glad that's coming up like i said before we may do some kind of a yellow jackets catch-up episode next but if not then we'll see you guys for season four episode one if you want to write in or send us a voice message about it you can find all our contact information at podcast to cut.com and while you're there be sure to check out our other shows

[02:29:31] yeah we we didn't mention it yet but the three of us are actually podcast partners uh when we cover fallout which you can find on the wax episodic podcast link in the show notes that is a fucking great show if you're not watching it ella is in that show she's really good in it too she's not playing jackie she's a whole different kind of character very different

[02:29:54] um kara's you're you're are you guys um in production right now on still slaying yes we are i think we're recording tomorrow actually on our next episode we're in season five of buffy and season two of angel right now and kara's co-host on that is of course penny so if you haven't checked that i should try that i have been podcasting on a ton of other cool shows since the last yellow jacks

[02:30:23] episode pluribus severance uh alien earth with kara and randy that was such a great show um they're filming season two right now in london or something welcome to dairy was way better than i thought it was going to be a silo those are all on the wax episodic podcast and um you guys i don't know i don't think this is official yet but i'll mention it anyway you're talking about doing a station 11

[02:30:49] podcast so yeah we're gonna yes i think probably starting around september maybe cool so we'll wrap up before the christmas holidays we're gonna do 11 11 part series on station 11 you can hear cassie and i nerd out about the book and awesome yeah for sure yeah i know a lot of people love that so i'll be looking forward to that all right that is our show thanks for listening buzz buzz buzz buzz

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[02:31:47] where these legendary cases are brought to life i'm brian kenny the chief marketing and communications officer at harvard business school and the host of cold call which explores the real world case studies taught in our classrooms featuring the professors who wrote them and often the executives entrepreneurs and innovators who lived them in each episode we break down the decisions trade-offs and leadership lessons behind some of the most fascinating organizations not to mention we just dropped a new video series examining ai case studies like the atlantic's partnership with open ai

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