Kaitlyn Blythe is a Melbourne-based disabled queer woman who lives with and writes about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. She is the host of Just A Spoonful and has been published by The Lifted Brow, VICE, Daily Life, Seizure, Junkee and The Sydney Morning Herald.
In this conversation, originally published on In the Arts [under the name Kaitlyn Plyley], Kaitlyn Blythe talks about the value of travel, the damage of positive thinking, the scarcity mindset of the Australian arts scene and liking Taylor Swift.
This podcast transcript has been edited for reading clarity. Listen to the audio podcast of this interview here.
Tahney: Outside of what you do – a bit of literature, some spoken word – what other art forms do you enjoy?
Kaitlyn: I watch a lot of TV on streaming services, and I like watching movies. I saw the new Star Wars the other night. Give me a couple of years then I’ll have figured out what I thought of that movie! At the end of the day, it is a Star Wars movie. But I cried in one scene. I’m an easy crier anyway, but there was a touching scene, and I was crying, and there was a guy in the row behind me laughing his butt off.
Tahney: At you or the film?
Kaitlyn: Oh god, I don’t think it was at me, but he was laughing at the film because it walked the line of cheesy and sometimes it stepped right over that line. He was laughing at how nothing made sense, and they kept trying to deliver these hard-hitting moments. I was crying, and he was laughing. Both were correct responses.
Tahney: It’s a bit tricky with the new ones because when Disney bought them, people were nervous about it becoming cheesy. They need to be careful.
Kaitlyn: The first J.J. Abrams one was good. I liked The Last Jedi by Rian Johnson. Then this one was more Star Wars nostalgia, chopped up and thrown into a sellable film.
Tahney: I am the biggest fan of Star Wars, but also the least fan of Star Wars. I grew up with brothers playing it non-stop. Every day there was a Star Wars movie on. My brothers had a Star Wars club- their friends had to sign contracts to get in, and I sat on furniture or in trees to get saved because I was the useless female princess in distress. I’ve seen these films hundreds of times and I’ve watched the new ones, but I don’t think I could tell you what the narrative of Star Wars is. It’s all disjointed in my mind.
Kaitlyn: I discovered them at twelve and was like, “What are these old movies?” I became obsessed with them immediately after and then the prequels came out when I was in my teens. I saw those at the cinema and was so excited to have new Star Wars films. I bought a Jar Jar Binks doll thinking, “I’m going to keep the tags on; this is going to be an investment.” I was wrong. It wasn’t an investment.
Tahney: As someone who’s consuming rather than making, what does art do for you?
Kaitlyn: It’s my safe place. I spend a lot of time, because I’m chronically ill, feeling shitty. And it helps me distract from pain and discomfort and gives me something to do while I’m lying around all day. Trying to get into reading comics more but it’s expensive. I’ve been reading non-fiction, that’s not much escapism but research for my book, and that’s harder because I’m used to consuming things as an ‘escape.’ Having to learn things and focus on difficult truths… it’s hard to get motivated to do it. I hang art on my walls to make my home feel homier and to connect me to and remind me of what I want for my life. To keep me in a headspace that is – I don’t want to say positive – but hopeful. Hope can be very negative if the things you hope for don’t come true. It can be like attaching yourself to a certain outcome.
Tahney: Do you remember your first connection with literature?
Kaitlyn: I loved reading very early. I could read before I went to school; I was burning through all the My First Farm Animals books. My mum had to churn through the books because I would eat them up and then I would be like, “More! More!” I wrote my first poem when I was five or six. I don’t know where that comes from because my parents are not into poetry… they’re not artists or creative in that sense. I was born in Cairns and we had a lot of artists living in our neighbourhood, maybe I just picked it up from there. It came from somewhere, but I don’t know where.
Tahney: I was young when I started writing poetry, but it is a random thing for a kid to engage with because it is abstract and can be quite moody.
Kaitlyn: How did I even know what poetry was? I remember clearly being like, “I am writing a poem.” It wasn’t like I looked back later and went, “Oh, I didn’t realise but what I was doing was poetry.” I very much knew at the time.
Tahney: Did you go to the libraries- maybe you ran into that section at the library, and you were like, “What is this?” Saying that, how did you get into writing, and how did it impact your life as you grew up?
Kaitlyn: Again, I don’t know where this came from, I was just born a writer, and knew I wanted to be a book author. I started school thinking, “I’m going to be a writer.” It gave me an identity because I was a weird off-beat kid, I didn’t make friends easily because I didn’t feel connected to people. I had another world going on in my head. Writing helped express that. I used to write poems about my dog with declarations of my love for him. Descriptions of his face, of his fur and just how much I loved him. If I had a dog now, I would still be writing — everyone who reads my work would have to put up with it.
Tahney: You are saying writing was always part of your identity, how did it transition to something where you’re like, “Well okay this is something I can do long-term, I can develop this passion into a career”?
Kaitlyn: I was always career-focused. It’s weird, but as six-year-old, I was like, “I’m working on my career.” I don’t come from an artsy family, I don’t know where this comes from, and neither do my parents. They were maths and science people, and they were like, “We don’t know what to do with this kid.” I started trying to get published at an early age. I was focused on being the youngest author ever to be published. When I was 13, a girl got published who was 12, and I was like, “Well, shit! The dream is dead.” I felt like giving up because I had a sense of, “If you’re not the best, then how are you going to get in?”
I got published in The West Australian when I was a kid in Perth. Once I got into high school, I was always working on and trying to figure out how to get published. Even when I was 10, I met authors to question them on how they got their careers started. I was thinking, “I must find out how this happens.” I couldn’t fathom how you go from doing what I was doing to having a book published — I still can’t. When I met authors, they’d be like, “Oh, you want to be a writer?” I’d be like, “Yes. What’s your daily routine? How do you find an editor?” and they were like, “Oh…wow…”
When I was 12, I was winning book publishing competitions. In high school, I was doing as much extra-curricular as possible. I got distracted by trying to be the best student. I went to a private high school where it was very much achievement, achievement, achievement. I got side-tracked and burned out. After high school, I travelled around the world for a year, lived in share houses and worked as a waitress and then went back to Uni and started again.
Tahney: Were you writing when you were travelling?
Kaitlyn: I was journaling like heck. I’ve been into journals since I was 10 when I asked an author, “What should I do?” and he said, “Keep a journal, write everything down.” I love my travel journals. I was filling a questionnaire the other day which asked, “What would you save if the house was on fire?” and I answered, “My journals!” They’re these excellent snapshots of silly 18-year-old me. I’m in awe of how wide-eyed, romantic and open to possibility I was.
Tahney: You’ve lived in Cairns, Perth, Brisbane and then Melbourne. You’ve travelled a lot. How has geographical mobility shaped you?
Kaitlyn: It’s been huge. I haven’t travelled in the last ten years because I’ve been disabled and on a low income. You can travel when disabled but for me, it hasn’t worked out, but before I travelled a lot. My parents are from California, so we’d go back to America a fair bit and visit family. I also did a semester abroad in London.
A lot of realisations about your place in the world you have later in life I had earlier – I’m thinking mainly as a white, white middle-class person. When I was born, my dad worked in Papua New Guinea. We would visit him, and having the experience of being the only white person around wasn’t a thing to me because I was little. It was just what life was. I wasn’t thinking to myself, “I am white, and they are Papuan.” I was like, “You’re my new friends.”
That helped growing up. Cairns is quite multicultural, but Perth is very monocultural. Where I grew up in the northern suburbs, it was mainly populated by white British and South African ex-pats. It helped I had experienced different cultures, and I knew there were other ways of doing things. When people would try to justify their behaviour, I was in my head going, “This is odd behaviour.” If they justified it with, “This is the way things have always been,” my little child brain would know that in another place there’s a whole different way of thinking about things. It helped me question things and stay outside a sheltered white-centric perspective. I knew there were different kinds of houses that people lived in, and there are other routines people have day-by-day — not everybody works 9 to 5 everywhere in the world.
Tahney: It helps you grow up as well. If people reach adulthood and they haven’t had many life experiences, they get shell-shocked when life changes because they’ve been exposed to one life and way of doing things.
Kaitlyn: I have to say life has shell-shocked me anyway. I miss travelling because sometimes I need to get out of Australia to remember other ways of doing things. It can get insular here, especially in the arts industry. I just want to know that there are other places and feel the fresh air.
I’ve lived in a few cities in Australia because I’ve been too sick to go overseas, and I would lose my disability support pension. If I’m too sick and can’t get a job, I could end up bankrupt and stuck there. But I have moved state-to-state as a way of satisfying that need to travel and experience different things.
I don’t think Melbourne is the best city. I love Brisbane although it’s got problems. It’s Queensland, so it’s very racist. But I love Melbourne- I see queer couples holding hands all the time, more trans people than I had ever seen in my life, more people who are not worrying about gender conformities, people mixing it up openly and proudly that I’ve never experienced elsewhere in Australia. But Brisbane is less competitive because there’s more of a community feel in the creative industries. People who come to Melbourne ready to go to make their next level happen. That’s valid and awesome, but Brisbane was a nice incubator for me.
Tahney: You have done poetry, comedy, opinion, essays, fanfiction review, broadcast, theatre. What is the common denominator that defines your style?
Kaitlyn: I get called ‘conversational’, and that’s true. I use different platforms to story-tell and thinking about what people deserve for the past few years has been the main driving inquiry. I did a one-woman show that combined stand-up, storytelling and poetry on rape culture. It was about how I would explain to a cis man who hasn’t experienced this way of moving through the world what it’s like to experience all the little microaggressions. Do women deserve this? Obviously, we don’t. How do I show that?
I’m writing a book now about chronic illness. It’s hard to write, which is why it is taking longer. In terms of things like welfare and structural accessibility in buildings, in homes, in workplaces — what do we deserve? And how different is that to how things are now?
Tahney: You were a national finalist of the Australian Poetry Slam and a host of the podcast Just a Spoonful. What attracts you to spoken word compared to the written word?
Kaitlyn: I got into spoken word because I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid because I loved movies and storytelling. The people I saw doing that were actors, but I realised after years of acting school that I am not good at acting.
I was excited when I discovered spoken word at 20. I had never heard of it before when Allan Boyd put on the first Perth poetry slam. He said later I was the first one to sign-up. I was stoked because it combined my love of performance, but I could be myself, I didn’t have to be acting. I was good at public speaking at school, but I didn’t want to stand up and deliver lectures. Page poetry is awesome, but I didn’t think it was my strength. It was a way to get my poetry out to people using my strengths.
Tahney: Within your storytelling, there’s an emphasis on self-reflection and memoir as you’re often writing about your own experiences. How does writing about personal experience advocate for the disability community? With memoir, some people do it for themselves and others who do it for other people, and then there’s blending the two.
Kaitlyn: I wouldn’t claim my writing memoir is automatically advocating for the disability community. People need to share their experiences. It’s crucial disabled and chronically ill voices are heard, but advocacy must go further. I have helped research and write a guide on reporting on disability for People with Disability Australia. That felt way more like advocacy.
I’ve written two articles for Seizure. One was called How to Talk to Sick People, and a lot of chronically ill and disabled people have connected to it because it’s ridiculous how I’m satirising ableism. The other one about my experience with Centrelink Robo-debt and having a minister called it “merely an inconvenience for us” while people have killed themselves over these debts. The piece reflected the sense of hopelessness that the government’s general attitude fosters in you. Telling my story helped advocate. I wrote it because I was mad at how elected officials make decisions for the community but don’t seem connected to it at all. Disabled people are a good 20% of the population. If you don’t even have the most basic grasp of what it’s like to live as a disabled person, you could end up saying silly things like, “Oh, it’s just an inconvenience.”
I’ve been working on my book for six years now — maybe longer. It started as a memoir because I didn’t have enough knowledge to write anything other than my experience. While writing, I’ve educated myself about disability rights and everything I need to know for this book. As I kept going, I realised that my experience is not that interesting, and I got sick of myself, and it’s turned from memoir into more of non-fiction essays leaning into research. My lived experience lends credibility. Memoir is important, and the more voices you get out there, the better. But I get imposter syndrome and want to make sure I am doing the best I can for the community and not just for myself.
Tahney: I find your writing doesn’t have this positive feel-good, “I’m going to make you feel better about your situation” or do anything for the benefit of non-disabled people. It’s unequivocally looking in the face and being like, “This is what it is.” I’m wondering why you approach writing about disability from a frank position?
Kaitlyn: Very angry — I guess there’s that. There’s been decades of inspiration objectification and positive thinking that centres the non-disabled feelings and experience of, “Here’s how you can feel better when you see a wheelchair person.” We have not seen the strides we need, and awareness is still low. I’m very wary of positive thinking. It’s been very harmful to chronically ill people and people in general. It’s already prevalent. I want to write truthfully.
Tahney: It’s this element of trying to be helpful. With my struggles with chronic fatigue, IBS and mental illness, I don’t want to read people saying, “Drink more water! Have some melatonin!” I don’t want you to help me. I want to read about someone feeling shit. I’ll get that.
Kaitlyn: It puts the non-disabled person in the role of healer and saviour. That’s what I was satirising with How to Talk to Sick People is the idea that once you meet a sick person, you step into the role of healer and now you are the hero by having met them and finding out that they’re chronically ill. People start wanting to give unsolicited advice. I’m very clear with everyone, even my close friends, that I don’t want unsolicited advice. It means you can’t sit with a disabled person’s experience. You feel you must fix them.
Tahney: People are fearful of negative experiences. They want to wipe it away because it makes them uncomfortable even though it might just be part of the other person’s daily life.
Kaitlyn: Some of it isn’t negative- it is neutral. If I have my walking stick or my wheelchair, you see their faces turn into this expression of, “Oh no, life can be bad.” I think, “Sorry, I reminded you of mortality by existing.” That’s where positive thinking has harmed us because it makes people feel like if they accept the different shades of life, then it’s going to attract it towards them. That’s part of why you see disabled people being locked away in institutions and separate to the community because it’s a reminder of uncomfortable truths, but they’re just existing as humans. They’re not reminders, they’re not symbols, I am not your inspiration, I’m not a symbol, I’m not some wake-up call, and I’m not existing to remind you of something. I am existing the same way you are. People need to stop reacting as if we are walking morality tales.
Tahney: Going back to your Seizure piece about the Centrelink debt, I enjoyed this line: The assumption is that youth equals health, but here I am young and chronically ill. It’s easy to feel unwanted as a person with a disability when the government and some media outlets consistently refer to you as ‘bludger’, ‘slacker’ or ‘burden.’ Managing your health alongside creative dreams and career is already a challenge without added financial pressures. How has pervasive financial and housing instability affected your creative career?
Kaitlyn: Coming to the end of another year, I’ve been reflecting on how I grapple with resentment and anger. It’s mainly directed at my disease, but it’s not about my disease. There is such a lack of accessibility in the arts, such as the lack of part-time jobs that are actually part-time. They’ll say 0.8 FTE but if you can’t do five days, four days are still hard. Our current expectations for people under capitalism are ridiculous. 40-hour, 50-hour workweeks are stupid and, in the arts, it’s how it is. Even just for your job, you’re expected to go to the events, after-work drinks, the opening and the launch to MC, take photos etc. There’s always extra stuff. Take it all home with you, read documents in your bed.
We’re all struggling, but I’m locked out even more than an able-bodied person might be because I can’t do as many hours. And when it comes to the arts, money is tight, and they’re going to find spaces wherever they can, and those spaces are upstairs or inaccessible in other ways.
There’s a sense of victimisation in the creative industries. Artists feel like victims, and there’s not a real sense of, “Well, I’m going to stretch out and include chronically ill and disabled people as well.” Or even, “Well I’m not going to go out of my way to program people of colour and find and mentor them. I’m not going to find and mentor women when I’m already doing it tough. I’m already struggling. Why should I have to struggle more?”
Tahney: The people doing fine shouldn’t be self-victimising, but they should be pushing back. It infuriates me seeing people working beyond their contracted hours. At 5 o’clock, I’m done. I’m going home, that’s my right. With chronic fatigue, I need my boundaries respected. When I see arts workers be okay with putting in too much time – effectively breaking their contracted hours to look like a passionate employee – they are lifting themselves while pushing others down.
Kaitlyn: If you’re not going home at 5, you’re setting a precedent for everyone else. That’s how I feel about people talking about hustle. There’s an idealisation of always working, always having five projects on the go. I know it’s hard to get ahead and there’s a reason we’re all working hard, but then they’re not prioritising community, and they’re not making time for friendships. They’re just hanging out with whoever is nearby in their project. I’ve been left behind because of people working, working, working. Now a lot of us are getting into our thirties, and I see them not slowing down. Well, when are we going to slow down? Are we going to be in our forties, fifties and sixties and not caring for each because we’re just grinding?
Tahney: People in the arts are going to burn themselves out and not realise until it’s too late. I know my limits and love leisure time- give me a lot of time laying on lawns and gardens drinking wine.
Kaitlyn: And enjoying and savouring leisure is a luxury. It shouldn’t be, but we’re led to believe it is living under capitalism. What are we working for? The arts industry is so individualistic it can be easy to be like, “Another opportunity, yes! This will be good for me. Yes! Yes!” It’s been radical for me to stop, and becoming disabled has radicalised me quicker. I ask myself, “Is my voice necessary here? Could I push someone else’s forward for this job or this gig?” This holds me back from writing because I don’t want to be another middle-class white woman taking up space. Even though I’m on a low income now, I grew up middle-class, and that gave me social capital and education benefits before I became disabled. There’s a privilege with growing up middle class. I never want to lose sight of that by focusing on the fact that I’m on a low income now. There’s always someone worse off who might have a better story to tell. That can be paralysing, but I end up journaling, which is still writing. If I feel it’s important, I’ll push it out into the public sphere.
Tahney: Do you think community building is one of the solutions to making the arts more accessible for people with a disability?
Kaitlyn: In general, we need more community building. We have wealthy elite leaders who treat leading a country like their birthright. They can do what they want. It’s not this burden of responsibility to care for millions of people. I would be terrified to be a leader of our country because the responsibility is enormous. They are people willing to step up and do that job properly, but some of these men (and women) see it as a nice feather in their cap.
The rich keep getting richer, the poor keep getting poorer. Newstart hasn’t been raised in 25 years. There’s a vast structural thing we’re all trying to survive within, and the arts keeps getting pummelled or left behind. That’s already hard, but we should have more a community-mindset towards the work we’re doing. I found that in Perth because artists are isolated from the rest of Australia. There isn’t a huge amount of funding, but there are pioneering spirits of, “If this thing doesn’t exist, then I’m going to make it exist.” That’s awesome. But I wish it wasn’t necessary. I wish it were a little bit more comfortable to create art, that you didn’t have to always feel like you were at the coal-face of struggle.
Tahney: So much art is made in a place of desperation rather than comfort. How does that change what’s produced?
Kaitlyn: If I didn’t have to think about if my voice is a priority right now, what would I be creating? If I didn’t have to think about paying my medical bills, what would I be creating? I think about the people we’re missing out on because of the guy who grew up in Melbourne to rich parents, always knew which internships to apply for, always knew the right school to go to and had time on weekends to work on his craft because he didn’t have to have a third job. That guy’s voice is getting heard. We hear about his trip to Japan again. Oh, you had a break-up in Japan? We all did. We’re missing out on Indigenous, trans, refugee and immigrant voices because the status quo keeps happening.
The community does not prioritise them because they’re busy, they’re tired but also once they go up for things there’s a sense of, “Well, we’re already struggling in the arts, we’re going to play it safe. I’m going to go with the guy who looks like all the other guys I’ve recognised as successful.” It doesn’t come from a good place, but it’s not people trying to be evil. But because there’s a constant scarcity mindset, it just leads to more and more mediocre art.
Tahney: I recently read an article about how actors of colour have moved to America because Hollywood is moving toward diverse casting and Australia’s not there yet. It’s really sad people have to change their entire world to pursue their craft. It makes sense to make art from where you’re from because you’re reflecting on your experiences and feeding those back to your community who will get it. Because these people need to leave, we only see a small portion of experiences.
Kaitlyn: Our talent pool is shrinking because people are going overseas. We’re not just losing talent, we’re losing knowledge. I’m thinking of women of colour that have gone to LA because they can’t find opportunities for the level that they’re at. There’s nowhere left to go in Australia. They’re not around to mentor upcoming Australian artists. We’re losing voices.
A lot of chronically ill people, especially with my disease, die very young. I don’t have long left. I need to create, and I’m dying faster because of poverty and inaccessibility. I can’t get a day job. It’s hard to make it happen here. I don’t like being angry as it’s not comfortable. I’m stuck here because of my illness, I can’t just be like “Oh, I want to go to Berlin.” But I also love Australia, and I want to keep reflecting on place through my work.
Tahney: You also write about pop-culture. I read your Junkee piece 10 Years On, How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love Taylor Swift’s ‘Fearless’ and I liked how you spoke on stopping the urge to squash feminine taste. I was in Year 9 when Fearless came out, and it was the first time I thought about romance. When I listen to it now, it reminds me of that innocent feminine internal place that’s lost now.
Kaitlyn: I came to Fearless much later in my 20s, and it was when I needed that reminder of how open I was to romance. Romance with a big ‘R’. I was always thinking about the moon, gardens, flowers. The world is exciting, and I want to adventure across it, and maybe there’ll be a handsome person—this sense of possibility and wonder.
You can hear cynicism coming in Taylor’s work in Fearless because she’s had her heart broken (and maybe that’s just what country writers do). Fifteen is a great song with pathos in it because it’s hard to be that age having your first heartbreak. Listening to that album makes me want to nurture that kid inside me. I was anti-Taylor Swift when she first came out because I was one of those girls being like, “I’m a cool girl. I listen to Interpol and Muse. I’m into four-piece men bands. That are very masc. That makes them cool, they all wear black t-shirts.” That’s cool too, but I’m a fully rounded person, and I need to reflect that in my taste.
Tahney: That can also come back to the arts industry, and how everything is meant to be highbrow, and you’ve got to write about serious, intellectual things and blah blah blah. What do you think is the importance of analysing pop culture and famous artists like Taylor Swift?
Kaitlyn: I enjoy reading heartfelt dives into pop-culture, especially pieces by Maria Louise and Brodie Lancaster. Usually, once it means something to a lot to people, it’s not worth exploring because it is seen as fluffy. Taylor Swift’s work has meant so much to me and has become one of my big safe spaces. I do love her music critically although people think if girls and women like someone, we wilfully ignore their flaws and love them uncritically.
It deepens my experience to know that Taylor Swift is problematic and has flaws, but also to see her strengths because, just like anyone, she’s complex. The fandom is articulate and expressive, and every time she releases something, there’s a million takes on Tumblr, and I love it. Recently, I was moaning at the fandom to calm down about them thinking she was going to release a Christmas song. Then, she released a Christmas song. I should never doubt them. They’re all in school and do nothing except study Taylor Swift. They’re almost psychic. It’s creepy.
Tahney: How does gender come into writing with pop culture?
Kaitlyn: I think about stuff that’s been written about gatekeepers of what’s credible in the music industry. Publications like Rolling Stone are doing better now, but they were traditionally associated with male rock bands.
I see tweets from men who are like, “Oh, Harry Styles is talented.” Women and girls have said that for a decade! It’s not a surprise! He’s on his second solo album! It’s on you if you’re surprised that he can sing and is a great performer.
I had a partner when 1989 came out. I was obsessed with Out of The Woods and put it in his ear. He was like, “Oh, Taylor Swift is actually good.” I was like, “Did you think I just liked a shit thing?” It felt insulting.
Tahney: It’s crazy how feminine aspects of pop culture can be successful but snubbed at the same time. I saw the preview for Little Women this week, and although it was all pre-bought tickets the line wrapped around the hallway of the entire cinema. The movie was beautiful, but it was mostly women in attendance. It’s had all this critical snubbing because it’s a huge women audience and male critics aren’t thinking about it. But then Greta Gerwig’s partner Noah Baumbach released Marriage Story. It’s just a Netflix film. I was like, “That was a smart movie, but it’s not like a blockbuster thing like Little Women” but then people are talking about nominating it. It’s crazy this couple both made a film, and one is much better, and the other one’s just a good film. It all comes down to gender.
Kaitlyn: I was shocked to find out they were married, but they make the same films, so that makes sense. He gets spoken with this hushed sacred tone. He is probably doing fantastic stuff, but it is interesting how a young woman coming-of-age film by Greta like Lady Bird, it’s not going to get as much attention as his films. But every story about men is about coming-of-age! In the last five years, we’ve had all these movies about men coming-of-age at like 55.
It’s not about wanting stories to exist less; we just need more balance. There needs to be more representation because there are stories not being told. Gender’s a massive thing for the way I consume things. I’ve done personal experiments where I try and go a year without reading any romance novels or see how that affects my attitude toward relationships and love. I did a blog series called The Other Movies where I only went and reviewed new releases that were not about a white man. It was interesting to find out that you’d have a hundred sessions for a couple of movies about white men and then you’d have to find that one six-thirty showing at an indie cinema on a Wednesday for a Korean film.
It was hard because of my financial and access abilities to see these films. I ended up not being able to review a lot of them because they hardly had any showings, and there isn’t space for them in the cinemas. They’re not getting seen, and they’re not going to become someone’s favourite movie, and that person’s not going to buy the DVD and watch it over and over. But that made me seek out stuff that’s not readily available. I was like, “Oh, wow, it’s amazing to watch movies I relate to on a different level.” I say that because I can always relate to a white man because we’re taught to connect to their emotions.
Tahney: This probably sounds a bit snarky about Timothee Chalamet. At first, everyone was like, “Yeah, Timothee!” and I was like, “Yeah, amazing baby boy!” Now, every time I watch a film with him in it, which feels like every second film, I feel like he is always the cookie-cutter broody young skinny white dude. He’s not saying or doing anything interesting, he’s just there brooding, and we’re all losing our minds. This just like Leonardo DiCaprio all over again.
Kaitlyn: And Leo is a good actor, but also, he was allowed to have a career that lasted long enough to explore other avenues and to get better at his art. Whereas, women are one and done.
Tahney: Have you watched Fleabag?
Kaitlyn: People talked about it like it was ground-breaking. It was really good but very similar to the sitcom Miranda but gritty with swearing and sex. Just another posh lady talking to the camera. I would like to see more of that, but I would like to see it not about a posh lady. Chewing Gum is about this African-British character living in a council housing in London. It’s the same story about a person who’s trying to struggle through their life, and quirky things happen, and they try to find love. And it’s complicated except that she has an African mother who is deeply evangelical and trying to get her a flyer for her illegal church that she runs out of a community hall. The universal story is the same, but the details are different, and the way that things unfold are different. That means that you get to discover different facets of life. I’m not saying anything ground-breaking, but I feel that we keep getting the same stories and I would like to see more variety because the world is super fascinating.