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Episode 79 [PATREON EXCLUSIVE] -- Backlash Cinema: Fatal Attraction (Patreon)

Published:
2025-05-30 08:43:06
Imported:
2026-09

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Content

For this episode, Moira and Adrian talk their way through the 1987 Michael Douglas/Glenn Close starrer Fatal Attraction, and the role narrative cinema plays in staging and stoking backlash. The episode is also a roundabout way to do a (first) episode about Susan Faludi's brilliant 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.

We forgot to mention it at the top of the episode, but obviously a pretty big trigger warning for ... just about all the things: self-harm, sexual violence, domestic violence, etc.

Comments

A Felt

Great episode! I just finished reading Backlash so the timing is perfect. One of the things that struck me most about Faludi’s account of 80s media and pop culture portrayals of lonely single women (like this movie) is that it’s almost a gender inverse of the current “male loneliness epidemic”. Except that single men are treated with empathy and as victims of systemic failure while single women were disparaged as immature and unstable, responsible for their own misfortunes.

Karen Cox

i really enjoyed this episode. I actually refused to see 'Fatal Attraction' when it came out because I thought it was horrible back then, and nothing I've learned since then has made me re-examine that decision. I should note that this movie accurately portrayed the 80's view of career women.

Karen Cox

As you note, this movie was part of a panic that women were suffering permanent loneliness, which the world made women's problem then. Now that men are lonely it's still women's problem.

Katie

Listening to this from the bath 😂

WGM

I am morbidly curious about the remake

Alice Kron

As someone who's seen Tár an unhealthy amount of times, please do Tár

Lorissa

I’m having In Bed With the Right withdrawal. New episode coming when??

In Bed With the Right

Yes, we have to do this! We literally have been talking about this and our Schlafly episode for over a year at this point!

Brian

It’s been a while since I listened to the episode and I’ve forgotten, did y’all reference Jessa Crispin’s book on how Michael Douglas films are the perfect cypher for understanding American masculinity through time? Gonna drop an interview she did with WNYC’s OTM if anyone is interested

Nathan

Just listening to this now, and as an Old who was in college in the early 90s, I definitely dissected this movie from a feminist POV even back then. I watched it on VHS for class and was appalled. Michael Douglas was in so much back then and I fucking hated every single one of his horrible, popular movies. That guy gives me the creeps.

Bradley Laas

You’re totally right about everything. But also. This is one of three movies Glenn deserved her Oscar for.

Bradley Laas

Also my genuine take on Glenn closes character is she’s the bad guy. But also. Good for her?! Michael Douglas knocked you up and he wants you to leave him alone?! Literally insane. She was nuts bc she was forced to he nuts.

Isaac Erbele (edited)

Comment edits

2026-10-06 17:00 The story about men yelling misogynistic crap to the screen reminded me of how people responded to Birth of a Nation. According to Kellie Carter Jackson (on the excellent This Guy Sucked podcast), a white man left a screening and murdered an anonymous black man on the street. In both cases, it seems the political harm was the intent.
2026-10-04 22:43 The story about men yelling misogynistic crap to the screen reminded me of how people responded to Birth of a Nation. According to Kellie Carter Jackson (on the excellent This Guy Sucked podcast), a white man left a screening and murdered an anonymous black man on the street. In both cases, it seems the political harm was the intent. These films probably shouldn't even exist.

The story about men yelling misogynistic crap to the screen reminded me of how people responded to Birth of a Nation. According to Kellie Carter Jackson (on the excellent This Guy Sucked podcast), a white man left a screening and murdered an anonymous black man on the street. In both cases, it seems the political harm was the intent. These films probably shouldn't even exist.