Welcome back Trashmaniacs! In the wake of our deadCENTER coverage, we return to give you a scathing look at 2006’s crime thriller Running Scared, starring the man, Paul Walker. It’s a fun episode as everyone rips apart Dalton’s host pick. This could also be an early frontrunner for The Hebrew Hammer at our annual awards show.
We round up the usual suspects this week to pick Running Scared apart on the analysis table. But before we do that, we play our game. This week we discuss movies that we only finished watching because we were recording a podcast over them. There are a lot of callbacks to early episodes, as well as some of our more recent offerings. After we have a few laughs here, we finally get down to business. Dalton gets things going by discussing the film’s look at redemptive violence and toxic masculinity. He debates the film’s stance on violence and what, if anything, it’s trying to say. The show then grows very somber as Alexandra presents a very personal and emotional reading of the film’s commentary on gun control – it is considerably more powerful in light of the events in Orlando which happened on the morning of this record. Dustin brings the discussion home by bringing up the works of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in relation to mass culture. He presents their work in light of commercial cinema and how it reinforces societal ideology.
Running Scared Timestamps
Arthur is a creator of content, lover of movies, and father of dogs. If you want to keep the conversation going, then click here to follow Arthur on Twitter. If you would like to keep up with what Arthur is watching, then head over to Letterboxd and give him a follow!
