Episode 278: Schrödinger's Everything (Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" Pt. 1)

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, just a quick note.

[00:00:01] David and I don't get together too often in person, but we will be doing that very shortly.

[00:00:08] In one of the best places, one of the most fun places for that to happen, New Orleans,

[00:00:12] Louisiana, just a little over a week from right now, a week from when this episode gets

[00:00:17] released.

[00:00:18] We both arrive there on the 20th at night, and then we will be there through the 24th

[00:00:24] of February. you even have registered and you can go in there. Legitimately, we'd love to see you. If not, hit us up if you're in town, if you're in New Orleans at that time. We can't promise anything because we don't know our schedule, but it would definitely be fun to meet up with some of you for a drink or to see some music or whatever. You can email us at the very bad wizards email

[00:01:40] or at our personal emails.

[00:01:42] Yeah, so I hope to see some of you there.

[00:01:43] We're staying somewhere in the Marini.

[00:01:46] February 21st, Wednesday through Saturday. think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. Ain't no attention to that man. Ain't nobody can have a brain. You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.

[00:03:00] Welcome to very bad wizards.

[00:03:02] I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston.

[00:03:05] Dave, today we're going to our episode on sleep though,

[00:04:20] just to kind of remind myself some of the...

[00:04:23] How was it?

[00:04:23] It was really, I thought it was one of our best episodes

[00:04:26] that I've listened to in a while.

[00:04:28] I thought it was really good. lots to talk about. Let's just get through the annoying opening segment. Yes. So we have the annoying opening segment that is about what annoys us. What's the deal segment? Now, we've done a pet peeves opening before, right? I think so. I meant to go back and look at what I said for those. I wouldn't want to repeat myself. Luckily, there's a new tool.

[00:05:42] That would be funny, but it wouldn't surprise me. There's so many things. One thing also,

[00:06:46] that they were the Nuvo Smartest term that you coined, who have started using the phrase updating my priors or some version of that, which is a Bayesian term from Bayes' just,

[00:06:53] to just mean I changed my mind where I got new information, and it sounds a little bit

[00:06:58] about my base line and views on this.

[00:07:01] It's so stupid and douchey, and it just smacks of that sort of like to talk about political issues. And then it just kind of leaks out from there to vox and like mad-aglacious. And then it just spills out onto all the new Vosmart, you know, younger people. That's my... Which is itself, it's such a douchey term to have coined. New Vosmart. So condescending.

[00:08:20] So perfect though.

[00:08:21] It's like one of my great...

[00:08:24] And I'm so mad that I was like in a week moment a few days ago my computer said like my warranty is going

[00:09:44] to expire.

[00:09:45] Do I want to extend a warranty for a year. What kind of mind comes up with that as a thing that they even have the idea of offering? I think we just talked about what kind of mind. Just more data. We have to get more

[00:11:04] data. one to 10 rating of how your patient experience was, they would use that to determine which of the wards or whatever you call, the units in the hospital, which of those people got bonuses by the end of the year. And what sucked is that sometimes it was literally a difference of like 8.98 to like 8.89, you know?

[00:12:21] And they would make these determinations like on the basis of these numbers.

[00:12:23] And it was just a little horrific.

[00:12:24] And not statistically significant,

[00:12:25] in that sense.

[00:12:26] Yeah, exactly, not at all, like so far from. what all of these things are either geared towards or at least just resulting in. The worst is like you mentioned gaming and so that's the part that like you know obviously we've we don't see 100% eye on what should be measured and when but I think we see about this specific part of it like the stuff that can get gamed. I've gotten emails from customer service things like or it's like car dealers or whatever saying please give me a 10 and

[00:13:43] if you can't please let me know why. And sometimes you get the tomato score, but you have to guess the audience score. It was actually pretty fun. It's kind of cool. These things are fun when they are not running things. And when they're not, you don't have an avalanche of ratings just collapsing on you at all times. Ranking things is fun.

[00:15:00] There is something that I think we is because there's nothing wrong with sharing news but the phrase that I hate is new paper alert in all caps explanation equation and it usually has like it's like sandwiched by the police car light emoji yeah and like they're trying to

[00:16:23] trick me into thinking that I have a Twitter one. This isn't my one But my only Twitter one that really just annoys me is the fixed it for you where you take And they do some Photoshop thing where they do that and then they go fixed it for you

[00:17:44] There's something so thing to call it a pet peeve, more like a giant moral disagreement. But yes, dude. I know I agree. This is more coming from the core of ethically who I am. But whoever thought that faculty should spend time and would be good at creating policies and working on bylaws and anything

[00:19:01] that's just not academic, that's not involved somehow

[00:19:05] with helping students and whatever research thing that would be good for the students, also great. And then informal with setting. Yeah. Like, a dean meets with the faculty members, or like, during your faculty meeting, the chair says, hey, what do you guys think about this? I'm going to talk to the dean. It's exactly what you say that in practice, the people who have the most at stake for these policies

[00:20:20] are the ones who usually would never

[00:20:22] volunteer to be on these sorts of committees.

[00:20:24] And so what you're getting is giving a placebo to faculty to give it. So it's not like real things turn on what the faculty senate submits to the, you know. Yeah, which is good. Like I'm glad that they're, but then they like, they shouldn't leave it up

[00:21:40] to us in for real, but then also like they shouldn't do the job and then they get pulled into this stuff and it just takes them away from what they're really good at and what's actually important. Right. It never ends up like Mr. Smith goes to Washington or something. No, we're like the one professor who cares. That's the policy. No, I mean like yeah, maybe I'm sure we'll get some angry emails

[00:23:01] about this and you can tell us the exceptions

[00:23:04] but I do think they will be exceptions that approve the rule. Deafalt sound. It's unbelievable. I feel like you have to turn it on too, because I don't remember turning off. I guess I don't really use Outlook. That one's, I think, I'm pretty sure it's a max sound, but it's default. And if you have alerts on at all, but turn your shit off. Holy shit. It's usually older people. I hate, it drives me crazy when Jen or Eliza

[00:24:22] have their ringers on in the house.

[00:24:24] I've unlock them for their choice of ringtone.

[00:25:42] But I also still ban electronic sort of.

[00:25:45] I do the Laurie Santos thing where you have to have no phones I'm just anything that's like speech related, politics related that's going on in these universities. It's not that these things shouldn't be talked about. It's the proportion of like media space that they occupy in a world where there's actual terrible and important stuff going on.

[00:27:02] When the whole Claudine Gay and the thing was happening, but definitely like Harvard, Yale, Penn, a little bit Cornell. Cornell is kind of off. Or the minor either. Or the minor either. Not the real Ivy. I heard they were thinking of kicking you out of the Ivy section. No, absolutely.

[00:28:20] And I know that the obsession in like that kind of media

[00:28:24] that you consume, Tamara specifically, care about what's going on in higher education, then you should care more about large-state schools than anything, right? Obviously. And the funny thing is, is the stuff they talk about isn't even real at the elite universities where they're realer than they are at the normal state universities where people are just going about their business, taking classes and doing their work.

[00:29:41] It's not even accurate reporting about in the way their kids are being raised, right? Like in a way, like that's the thing that sells books. And you know, all these people send their kids to these universities. And now if you tell them they're actually getting indoctrinated, they're actually getting, you know, poisoned. I think that's probably true.

[00:31:03] Like that's how that's what drives a lot of another adult, another human being, a long relationship, it's going to be challenging, especially if you're like me, if you're always in the right. And so you have to spend all this time and energy explaining that to people. But look, sometimes the best relationships happen in the face of the biggest challenges

[00:32:20] when both people put in the work to make them great and therapy can be a place to work through I'm not gonna see man, kid or you can tweet to us at Tamler or at P's or at Very Bad Wizards. If you want to get into some arguments or have some discussions, you can go to the subreddit, reddit.com slash r slash Very Bad Wizards. You can find us on Instagram and we always appreciate it if you rate us on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. And if you leave a review on Apple Podcasts,

[00:35:00] if you want to support us in more tangible ways, we also very much appreciate that. You can always

[00:36:05] episode topic. You also get access to a few other things, our Brothers Karamazov five part series, couple of lectures from Tamler on Plato's Symposium, some intro cycle lectures from me.

[00:36:10] And at $10 and up, you get access to everything I just said, but you also get to ask us anything

[00:36:18] in our monthly Ask Us Anything segment. And we will release a video of that for you. And at $2

[00:36:23] and up, everybody gets to listen to our answers. thought of burning as like a really interesting example of that, but it is an adaptation of an adaptation. It is a

[00:37:47] an expansion of

[00:38:46] more, maybe had the time to do more was read a bit more about South Korean culture, youth culture, gender dynamics and all that stuff, because I think that there's a lot of that

[00:38:49] in it.

[00:38:50] But it wouldn't be universally, I think, beloved movie if it didn't speak to a lot of the universals

[00:38:55] of the human condition.

[00:38:56] It's funny, a lot of the Park Chan Wook, Bong Joon Ho, these movies about these alienated,

[00:39:03] disaffected, often working class, or if not working class, kind of poor, South Korean and a little bit today. I loved it the first time I saw it. I remember showing it to Eliza. She loved it and I just love it more every time I see it, which is probably now four times something like that. I think you have outstanding, in addition to all the stuff that you said about the filmmaking, outstanding performances from all three leads.

[00:40:20] Like you said, it's beautiful, it's mysterious.

[00:40:22] I think it gets you not just questioning reality

[00:40:25] in the movie, but questioning just reality is what is objective, what is something that we're making judgments about, the protagonist is, and really the answer to those things is we can't know. You know, it's funny that you say that because obviously I think we both have very strong feelings about movies like this and that sort of uselessness of trying to pronounce on the

[00:41:42] objective, an objective account of what happened. level, so we'll want to talk about certain scenes. It's not like we could just do high-level themes and that's it. So the basic plot, and please see this movie if you haven't. All right, so we start our protagonist, his name is Jung Su. He is just, I guess, somebody who delivers stuff from a truck. He's unloading

[00:43:02] stuff from a truck, but he sees somebody who's, I assume that she rigged it because it's a lottery with like those little spinning balls or whatever. They pick a number at random and she picks the number and I was looking at this because I cared because she hands it to the other woman and the woman reads the number. So she had to be kind of sly about this.

[00:44:20] Like she had to do some sleight of hand or something.

[00:44:22] Yeah, exactly.

[00:44:23] Like I'm sure you've focused on that.

[00:44:26] This is not what's going to bog us down at all. years and some food and she is giving, I don't know, her philosophy, her yearnings. She's being very charmingly fun and weird, a little of that manic pixie chick kind of energy that definitely could be annoying but doesn't seem to be here.

[00:45:42] And he certainly doesn't seem to think it into existence. Yeah, and she does it for a while.

[00:47:00] Like she's just talking and pretending to eat, talking pretending to be like she's,

[00:47:03] she's willing this into.

[00:47:05] Yeah, she's willing it into existence. little bit out of his grasp, although not fully as we'll see, but a little bit. And then she talks about how there are these people there that have this distinction between the little hunger, which is just like normal desires, normal just wanting to have food or sex or whatever. And then there's the great hunger, which is they want to understand if there's meaning

[00:48:23] to life, if there's any purpose, what weongsu more often than I've been high meat. And turns out that you want sometimes want free spirits, but you don't want actual free spirits. She also just falls asleep often, and he's paying for the dinner. Happy to do that.

[00:49:41] And then when he comes back, there's just this couple making out, like

[00:49:44] in the table next to them. a sense of like, is it between two streets? Is it I was trying to get a sense of like what was about this building that was giving me a little bit of vertigo? But it's very cool. And it's very like on a high floor. So he has to walk up a lot of steps to a cat? So he's kind of like making fun of the like, and then like, actually one of the slickest things that he says in the whole movie, maybe, like it's kind of funny. It's a callback. It's the peak of his kind of prodding something without being mean about it.

[00:52:23] And she says, like, you think I these condoms. You could just tell that this. But not at this stage, at least. Not at this stage, yeah. He's just happy. So there's an interesting little exchange where when he first gets there, where she says, this room gets no sunlight except at this one time where there's a reflection of the sun off the tower

[00:53:42] and it comes into the room,

[00:53:44] but you have to be kind of in the closet.

[00:55:01] Like it's not like it lights up the room.

[00:55:04] There is no magic moment where, you know,

[00:55:06] in the hands of sunlight. Like the plastic surgery, like the Pantomime. So I think it really does actually work thematically

[00:56:22] with what the movie is trying to tear apart

[00:56:27] and investigate. mesmerizing. I meant to do I didn't have time today but like I'm gonna pill for that sound for your beats. Yeah you should just coming to... Right, some poor cop, I think. Yeah, it's not his fault. It's the fucking, it's faculty governance.

[00:59:02] By the way, we get a little scene of Trump on the TV,

[00:59:05] juxtaposing the South, the North Korean propaganda

[00:59:07] with Trump talking about immigrants, actual trailer on it. It's like an elk amino of trucks. And he doesn't know that it's going to start when he starts it. In sleep, I don't know if you remember this, but the woman, the protagonist has a beat up old Honda Civic, but it's hers and it's like it represents some kind of liberation possibility and that's separate from like her son and her husband.

[01:00:24] This episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought to you by Factor. Factor is a

[01:01:22] much prefer not to do all the cooking. It also has snacks, smoothies more,

[01:01:24] has a bunch of stuff to eat like throughout the day,

[01:01:28] some breakfast food, some midday snacks and more.

[01:01:32] And turns out the factor is actually less expensive

[01:01:35] than getting takeout.

[01:01:37] And every meal has been approved by dietitian

[01:01:40] to be as nutritious as possible and also pretty delicious.

[01:01:44] In fact, I just took right before I started recording this,

[01:01:48] a wellness shot. feed the cat. Now, this cat and whether it exists or not, and what's the deal with the cat, is going to, we're going to go back and forth on like evidence that it's there or not. But right now, the food and water are gone. And so he has to refill the water, refill the food, and also

[01:03:02] scoop out some cat shit. So let's, maybe this is a good time to talk about the cat.

[01:04:07] is not that this isn't a movie with like weird woo vise like it's not like you can tell that this is a movie where you're not firmly grounded. Here's one reason to think that the cat is real if we're to think that it's not real did she just go and.

[01:04:14] Find a litter box and put like actual cat shit before she left on her trip to convince him like that would be off to in her apartment, though, right? This probably is only sexual experience. It's like, it's like every fiber of his being is like, this is where I got laid. I'm a boner. Yeah. I agree, although like I wouldn't look out the window necessarily if I was doing it.

[01:05:42] It cuts to like him with his dad's lawyer.

[01:06:43] neighbors and you know asking them to help out his father. He just looks confused and insecure, but you're right.

[01:06:47] He doesn't seem angry.

[01:06:49] I love the lawyer's reaction when he says he wants to be a writer.

[01:06:53] He's like, well, la de frickin da.

[01:06:56] You got a writer here, folks.

[01:06:59] It's like the Chris Farley thing.

[01:07:03] Now, yo, man, what do deference to authority, I think too. Like no eye contact isn't so weird in a culture where you shouldn't be looking at him. But he always has trouble with that, including and so on. Yeah, always.

[01:08:20] Yeah.

[01:08:20] Yeah, be right.

[01:08:21] So I think there's another scene of him jerking off looking at the tower again.

[01:08:26] Looking at the tower again.

[01:08:27] Yeah.

[01:08:27] Yeah. You'll never guess what I was doing when you called. Yeah, exactly. So there's that element. And again, you start to wonder like, did he imagine that, right? Like it's pretty coincidence.

[01:09:40] There's a lot of coincidences,

[01:09:41] but one of them would be that she would finally get through

[01:09:44] right as he's almost grab it. And this is kind of one of those things.

[01:11:02] Why do you think she asked him to pick her up? not, but he's very good in it. I think he's phenomenal in this. He's kind of perfect. He's perfect. I read an interview with him talking about the process, and he was saying that the director chose him specifically because he thought he would be good because he's American, right? If you've seen him in all this other stuff, creativity. Like she's the writer, really. Like she's picking up on all these details. But then it just turns dark. When she talks about being in this parking lot and the sunset and then she realized that she was at the end of the world and she wanted to vanish. She said, I wish I could disappear as if I never existed.

[01:13:43] Another thing that will come back,

[01:13:45] that's a line that will a shot, and Steven Young's character is just in between them. So he's literally framed in the shot as the thing that's presenting them from having this intimate moment.

[01:15:00] And then he says, one of many psycho lines

[01:15:03] that he's gonna say in this movie,

[01:15:06] he says, it's take you home? Do you want to ride home? And he kind of looks at Jung Su as he's saying that. And Jung Su, he doesn't say anything, right? For a beat. And then he's like, well, like, it's almost like he just gives up. He's like,

[01:16:21] well, I guess I have a long drive anyway. And, he has a lot of sociopathic kind of lines already. But never overtly like cruel or violent or anything like that. But it's almost like what you imagine, like a Silicon Valley, like tech bro billionaire or something like that's who she's going after. Like what does he have? Like a beat up pickup truck? Like a one cow? It's interesting. Like before she went to Africa, she was calling all the shots. She was just like accepting that he was like that. And just like, okay, you called me ugly. What do you think now? Let's have sex. I'll get the condom. I'll invite you out for drinks. Now she it's like she's reached a point where she's about how it's just fun. Like I'll do anything for fun. Everything he says is like psycho shit. Then they go to his house and he's a great cook. He's got a really nice house. You know, like honestly I found myself the character of Ben on the second rewatch, not disliking him that much.

[01:20:21] And I think there's one reading of this movie

[01:20:23] where this guy is like fine.

[01:20:25] Totally, 100%. answer, right? Like he doesn't say what a metaphor is. So, Jung Su says it's a metaphor and he's like, what's a metaphor? And he some truth this way. And sometimes weirdly that bounce light can be more true than the reality. Yeah, yeah. And also, I think, is this question of,

[01:23:00] when you see something in a movie,

[01:23:02] like sometimes the metaphor is intentional

[01:23:06] on the part of their skills. Totally. I have not, I don't even know. I love this movie so much. Like I said, it might be the best, my favorite movie, the 21st century, and I haven't seen zero other of his movies ever. Right. So I gotta do that. I'm surprised I thought for sure. I'd be lecture. You're gonna think less of me for having admitted that. Okay, we get here like another critical scene.

[01:24:22] He goes, John Sue goes to the bathroom

[01:24:25] in Ben's amazing apartment.

[01:24:27] And for the sake of time,

[01:24:28] I'm not talking about how awesome his apartment is. Right, but I've been saying even more it might even be more could just like yeah, like sister and his ex-girlfriend stuff who know yeah, and he's looking for it too like you don't like I like to I got I thought he was looking for Vicodin or something like that but he's already like Trying to find something incriminating about this guy

[01:25:41] one of the things that's interesting in this scene he asks

[01:26:42] like her and this other guy. And the worst part was the friends.

[01:26:44] And now you're just tagging along in something

[01:26:49] that is just not at all for you.

[01:26:52] And again, he's not like,

[01:26:53] Dan is not being a dick about it.

[01:26:55] He's being actually fairly welcoming and introducing him

[01:26:58] and not trying to make fun of him in any way,

[01:27:01] but he feels so out of place in this restaurant.

[01:27:05] And it's a key scene interesting because Gatsby is this mysterious figure that has money that, you know, like, and that money or just the. And it's like, you already know the first time you're watching it. Oh, she might be fucked. Yeah. On the other hand, I watch it. And like, it is such a necker cube of the way that he yawns is so well done at conveying

[01:29:42] what you might genuinely be.

[01:29:44] This guy's had a long day, but he wants to like, and he wants to not show, like show

[01:29:47] that he's tired, but he can't help it. and it's only her feet after a while. And we're gonna get a bit of a call back to her continuing to dance after the music has stopped. Yes, that's right. There's gonna be an echo of that. Yeah, then they go to a club just like blasting house music. He gets the fuck out like I would in that clip.

[01:31:04] Okay, holy shit, it is very late here. We are well over an hour into this discussion

[01:31:06] and we haven't even gotten to what I think