Feminist Frequency Radio

A.C. and Kat experienced Andrew Ahn's remake of The Wedding Banquet across somewhat of a generational divide. He finds it relies on a millennial aesthetic portrayal of queer identity, with inauthentic politics. She (who watched it with Gen X family members) thought it was sweeter and more satisfying than he did. But, having also seen Ang Lee's 1993 original, Kat thinks the movies might be trying t...

It was an absolute joy to spend time in the world of Spike Lee's 1994 bildungsroman Crooklyn . Co-written by Lee and his siblings Joie and Cinqué, the film follows nine-year-old Troy navigating herself, her neighborhood, and her extended family in 1973. We're refreshed to see Lee's rich visual language as the backdrop for a young girl as the hero of the story of growing up. Especially when so many...

Kat and A.C. go through the films that will be fêted at this Sunday's Academy Awards. We feel a big shift in our relationship to Oscar movies, and aren't sure how much of that is the disintegration of the entertainment industry, and how much is just growing up. Plus, we play a new game all about The Relentless Diane Warren's 17 Oscar-Nominated Songs. (Don't laugh: her career trajectory has been a...

Our "Focus on the Family" season is back after an unexpected hiatus! [Once again: sorry for the interruption; a member of our team had an ongoing family medical situation, but we're happy to be with you again.] It was a big nostalgia kick for Kat to revisit Patricia Cardoso's 2002 Sundance darling Real Women Have Curves , but this was a first-time watch for A.C. We talk about how America Ferrera's...

For the first episode of our "Focus on the Family" season, we're taking it back to 2010—a time before Prop 8 when a Sundance movie could really make a big impact on the widespread film landscape. Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right is a great example of a specific early 21st-century portrayal of queer families with a "coastal elite" filter, and how it straddled the line between caricature and...

FFR is going to be back soon with a new season focusing on the family ... just in time for the holidays! Listen to our mini preview ep where we'll explain the theme in more detail, and give a little teaser of the special bonus segment each episode will include. From festival favorites to reality TV, we're looking ahead to discussing onscreen portrayals of all different kinds of families, and what...

"Bingo." As the epic conclusion to our season of Musical Mayhem, we watched Jacques Audiard's 2024 extravaganza Emilia Pérez . Did we hate it? Kinda! Did we love it? Kinda! We also have a teaser of next season on Feminist Frequency Radio, coming soon. This full episode is a special bonus for upper-level Patreon supporters, but also available as a one-off purchase for non-subscribers. >> Listen to...

It's Andrew Lloyd Webber week in our Musical Mayhem season, and to turn the volume all the way up, we've selected Joel Schumacher's most renowned superhero flick, The Phantom of the Opera . And for those of you who couldn't care less about musicals, but have been along for the ride with us on this journey... this episode concludes the season! Next week we're bringing a special bonus episode for Pa...

Watching the 1968 film adaptation of the Broadway musical The Wiz , we can't help but feel that director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Joel Schumacher deeply underserved their stars, craftspeople, and source material. It's impossible not to be captivated by the performances, especially as the movie is such a memorable intersection of the careers of Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, but the staging a...

We couldn't do a whole season about movie musicals without watching a Barbra vehicle. There are so many elements of 1968's Funny Girl that elevate the form, from William Wyler's direction taking a stage show to the screen, and Streisand's performance as her character Fanny Brice evolves from fame-hungry teenager to worldly star and wife. We found a lot of nuance in the film's exploration of labor...

Halfway through our season of Musical Mayhem, we decided to dive deep into the shallow waters of 2021's Dear Evan Hansen . After covering Glee last week, we felt like we had no other choice. This full-length episode is a special bonus for Patreon supporters at the "Fearless Feminist" level and above, but it's also available as a one-time purchase for non-subscribers. >> Listen to the full episode...

Never has the micro-generational divide between Kat and A.C. been sharper than in their relationships to Glee , arguably the most influential musical series ever on television. It's hard not to get glib in our discussion of the "issues" the show attempted to tackle over the course of its six seasons. Especially when the show's tone varied from mean-spirited to earnest representation politics throu...

Is this the first "perfect" movie we've covered on this podcast? This was Kat's first time watching Bob Fosse's 1979 self-referential musical drama All That Jazz , one of A.C.'s absolute favorites. There's something compelling about the way Joe Gideon, Fosse's stand-in for himself, is far from being the hero in his own larger-than-life story of addiction, perfectionism, and womanizing. And though...

For the first full episode of our new "Musical Mayhem" season, we watched the 1955 film Guys and Dolls . The gender expectations and relationship dynamics between the central two couples in this movie feel like they'd be right at home in today's modern "trad wife" resurgence as certain segments of society seek to backslide into authoritarianism. Even the series finale of the Sex and the City follo...

Kat and A.C. are back from an extended hiatus in the Heavyside Layer to bring you an all-new season of Feminist Frequency Radio! This time, we're being critical about the media we love while tapping our toes: the screen musical. Join us for a preview episode where we discuss the season ahead and what you can expect from our movie and TV selections, new Letterboxd lists themed to each episode, and...

A.C. and Kat are joined by director Sav Rodgers to discuss his documentary feature debut, Chasing Chasing Amy , and the complicated legacy of its subject matter, Kevin Smith's 1997 film Chasing Amy . Sav shares about the arduous process of becoming the central story in his own doc, and examining his relationship to the movie that saved his life as a young queer person. We explore how we take our v...

A.C. and Kat are back from their first semester at Shiz University for winter break, and we just had to talk about Jon M. Chu's blockbuster Broadway adaptation of Wicked: Part One . Starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in the story before the story we all know from The Wizard of Oz , this is a tale that was originally published as a novel by Gregory Maguire in 1995. On its face it's a movie ab...

Kat's fighting a vicious cold, and only had enough raspy voice left to record a bonus mini episode with AC this week. We caught up on all of the random movies and TV Kat watched while traveling or coughing on the couch, from Hit Man  and Trap  to Love Again  and Hot Frosty . AC shared what movies he rewatches annually on Thanksgiving, and yes— The Silence of the Lambs  is first on his list. Plus,...

Luke Perry biographer Margaret Wappler joined us for a conversation about her hybrid memoir profiling the '90s heartthrob, and the impact Perry had on viewers from 90210  to Riverdale . We dug into Fran Rubel Kuzui's 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer , starring Perry alongside Kristy Swanson and Donald Sutherland. We particularly loved the comedic swings of supporting cast members Paul Reubens an...

Writer and musician Tara Giancaspro joins Kat and A.C. for a rootin' tootin' rip-roarin' review of Colin Higgins' 1982 movie musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas . We get lost in the fun and charm of the music, dancing, and wigs! We delight in the beauty of Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds! And we get caught up in a discussion of whether a movie like this could be made today, with its light-h...

Anita Sarkeesian returns to the podcast this week to discuss Coralie Fargeat's buzzy body horror film The Substance , starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Anita gives the movie 5 out of 5 stars, but she, Kat, and A.C. all find something uniquely different to love about it. After an electrifying in-theater experience, we couldn't stop thinking about its storytelling on the panopticon of the pa...

Film critic and podcast host Alonso Duralde previously joined us for a discussion about 1950s Hollywood , and it was such a treat to have him return to the show. He recently published the film history compendium Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film , so what better film for us to watch together than William Wyler's 1961 opus of lesbian shame, The Childre...

We were so excited to welcome author and journalist Emma Specter to the show, that we asked them if we could talk about their favorite movie. Join us as we traverse journalism onscreen in James L. Brooks' 1987 film Broadcast News , starring Holly Hunter, William Hurt, and Albert Brooks. We also ask Emma about the process of writing her reported memoir, More, Please , and what she might say about e...

Kat and A.C. are starving for a blockbuster to make them feel something, as if the movies are actually, finally back. So, they saw Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters , and unfortunately—they’re still hungry. Listen in as they hypothesize about what Glenn Powell’s character was doing in the years before the events of this film took place (while Anthony Ramos’ was “working for the military” and Daisy Edgar-...

Kat and A.C. ~*witnessed*~ the fifth installment in George Miller’s apocalypse epic, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and… we found it completely unnecessary. We know that movies about women are not by default inherently feminist (Anita tweeted about this specifically related to Fury Road back in 2015), but it’s always a bummer when we’re more invested in the male characters in a movie centered around a fe...