Celebrity Traitors - The Culture War Stupidity

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2:13valentino feminine perfume donna born in roma features juicy black currant central jasmine soft cashmere and warm vanilla masculine leaning but unisex Womo has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver and mineral salt. Shop holiday gifts at macys.com. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest of Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osman. Hi everybody. Hi Marina. How are you Richard? Very well. Just recovered from your wonderful Halloween party. Thank you for your hospitality. It was a lot. It was a lot. Yeah, listen, very few people hire an entire graveyard and and two types of fog machine well you're you're welcome it did it was pretty good in the end and uh yeah i i and i've had amazing makeup and you came as man city

3:14don't say that i'll get in trouble with man city fans yeah yeah well we will maybe maybe talking about fandoms today i think okay well that's good thank you so much. Thank you for my link there. We will be talking about some fandom today. We're going to talk today about, I don't want to say traitors, culture wars, but we're going to have to deal with the fallout from this show because it continues to rumble. The patheticness of. The patheticness of, yeah. I don't want to say anything about patheticness here, but we are also going to be talking about the growing phenomenon of Disney adults, a subculture that not only won't die but continues to thrive and expand. Yeah, and we're also talking about a report saying that a majority of younger people

3:56watch all of their television, all of their content with subtitles on. And what an interesting phenomenon that is, where it comes from. How it's changed TV. How it's changed TV. How it's changed TV. Yeah. Right. Go on. Let's do it. Traitors Culture Wars. Yeah. So obviously I missed your final wonderful traitors reaction that you did with Tim Hinks because I was doing the Luke Littler show. By the way, hello Manchester. We had such fun. It was brilliant. But your reaction thing was brilliant. So I've got a few things that I wasn't able to say then. But let's talk about the kind of this just absurd aftermath. As soon as anything is big or important, everyone wants to chime in. Can I just begin with a happy story?

4:38No, it's not even a happy story. It's a happy rumor, isn't it? I have to say that the report that Kenny was seeing leaving Maya's flat I just wanted to say I would be 100% here for it I couldn't be more here for it so that's that's a potentially nice story but then of course they had the uncloaked episode and there were some no-shows to that Michael Sheen did a sort of dial-in he was unable to be there for work I think Maya Jarman wasn't there for work. Yeah. James Acaster wasn't there. And because of everything that happened, people, there's been a huge amount of focus on that. Do you want to get into it? Yeah, come on. What do you want? Okay, so we know, spoiler alert, the show was won by Romesh and Bash,

5:25and both of them, by chance, because there were many other charities available, chose refugee charities to split the £83,000 between. And sections of the media, the broadcast media and, you know, even a couple of Tory MPs, hi, have got really angry about this and think it's a stitch up some form of BBC bias it shouldn't be coming from the license fee I you know we will be talking about all of those things yeah yeah turns out a lot of those people are idiots or it's possible they're very clever and they have an agenda it's one it's definitely one or the other because they ain't right it's a huge sort of like you know try and make make a rave about BBC bias. Other people are sort of thrilled.

6:07But how can it also, to accuse the BBC of bias in this in some way, shows firstly a fundamental misunderstanding of how you make a television programme. I mean, a fundamental misunderstanding of that, which I presume they know, perhaps they don't. Oh, I don't think they even know. Yeah, but, you know, your point of everyone chose a different charity. I mean, what you're actually saying is if someone goes on a BBC show they even know. Yeah, but your point of everyone chose a different charity. I mean, what you're actually saying is if someone goes on a BBC show and wants to give their prize money to a refugee charity, the BBC should say no. Yeah. That is absolutely bad. If you do want that, that's absolutely fine,

6:38but just explain the form of words you would need. Then you're voting for bias. Yes, because you're choosing for the BBC to be biased. But if you've got a line for them to say to anyone who wants to be on a TV show, you cannot give money to refugees. Here are a series of things. You mustn't give it to the lifeboats. If you have a line that's useful and legal, then great. Let's absolutely have it. If you think it increases plurality of thought in this country, then fantastic. But do please be aware that what you are requesting is that the BBC is formally biased. Rather than saying two out of 21 people are not allowed to have as their chosen charity a refugee thing, which upsets you. But listen, for lots and lots of reasons to do,

7:18maybe with your upbringing, could be all sorts of things. It's called freedom. Look it up. If I can diffuse it for one second. It is a game where you don't know who will win. And quite obviously, other people had other charities. And they published all of them, right? Yeah, yeah. So there's Great Ormond Street, Tamworth Cancer Support, Joe Lysett, presumably these would have all been acceptable. Red Cross, Alzheimer's, UNICEF, hospices. Blue Marines for James Blunt. Haemophilia. Those people didn't win, but they could have. I know, but yeah, other than the fact that the BBC fixed it so the two refugee lovers could get £41,500 each. I have to say, this is, even in a conspiracist culture, this is one too funny.

8:01You know what? I'm done with it. It's genuinely so pathetic. 15 million people watch that. Let's say 1,000 people are being twats about it. Yeah, I agree. That's like being in a championship football game. 15,000 people watching, 14,999 cheering, and just one idiot who's not happy. Unfortunately, a lot of those idiots work for EGGB News or whatever it is. I mean, I feel like surely, you know, you can give money in a capitalist world to whoever you wish. And I found it hilarious. So GB News is more annoyed about this than they were about that Thai-based crypto billionaire who gave the £5 million gift, it's still under investigation, to Nigel Farage and then later gave £37 million to his party.

8:45You give money to whoever you want to give. And I tell you what, be incredibly popular and successful and then go on a hugely successful game show and then be the smartest player on that entire show and show empathy and show gameplay and show intelligence. Then you can give money to whoever it is that you want to. And you don't have to be telling other people who they give money to. You don't know who Romesh and Bash give money to all the year round. Yes. You know, look at the benefits Romesh has done all year this year. Look at the different people he does benefits for. He wants to give money to the Refugee Council. That's what he does. What have you done? I would say to the people. What have you done? Exactly. Don't jump on the back of a show that's made by incredibly

9:21talented people. That has been a hit, which is not something you've been able to do in your lifetime and the second you do you will find that things change for you and you will find that you can then demand things and you can find that you can change culture in the way you want to do it until that moment you know what just let other more talented people do the thing that they want to do let people be free let people think freely because that's what you're supposed to think about and I'm really sorry that two people who wanted to give money to refugees won this show. But that's the world that you are living in. Different people think different things to you. It's OK. Stop wetting your pants. Stop wetting your pants

9:59about everything. Stop saying, well, it all comes out of licence fee money. You cannot be that stupid. You cannot be that stupid to not know that Traitors makes a fortune for the BBC. This is giving huge amounts of money back to the BBC, this show. This is not something that's a drain on licence fee payers. You know that. You're not an idiot. You work in the media. You might work at the Daily Mail. But you know that. You understand that. It's's 15 million this is the thing i'm tired of 15 million people and because of the absurdity of our culture now and social media we have to listen to these people it becomes a story because four people say it there are 14,999,999 people who watch that show go go, that was fun.

10:47That was entertaining. Oh, that's nice that they gave their money to that. What should we watch next? That's what Traitors is. It isn't anything else. And the fact that you have to get column inches and clickbait out of just co-opting this thing. Stop co-opting other people's work. Stop co-opting the fact that other people have done extraordinary things and made something and made a series of correct decisions about what people want and have done it brilliantly. And suddenly it's a hit. And all you can do is go, eh, baby, eh, baby, baby. I mean, fuck off, you know? But really, fuck off. Wow. I am so pleased to find you off your fence this Monday morning it is I love it here yeah it's ridiculous

11:30but you see actually it's a function of two things one thing much more that journalism is on its arse if this is the actually only way you don't go out you don't try and find stories you can find anybody saying anything on social media as we know yeah and something's a lot darker that never becomes stories um and to choose that and to make that the sort of headline is pathetic yeah someone's had a hit and millions of people in britain joined together and enjoyed it okay that's not a big enough story for you though so let's turn it somehow into someone hating somebody else. I am going to put a slight. My slight caveat is that it is partly a function of how they reacted to how this show played out.

12:25Because without any, you know, and let's get we get to things like James Acaster not being on an encloaked after the final and not being really mentioned on it. There is fallout, clearly, and there are, you know, lots of behind-the-scenes things that certain people are not happy with, Jujo Lambert, and there's kind of behind-the-scenes dispute. And we'll see how that plays out because I think it will continue to rumble. But equally, when I'm thinking about James Acaster, you know, his girlfriend and his parents have been doorstepped. You obviously have had some sort of crisis on it. And having to talk about it, do you have to? I don't know. When I was watching this, I have to say that I did think, and thinking about the reaction and how it's been playing out,

13:02I see what's happened here. In incredibly short order, this show has become a classic modern fandom. And that means there are minority, but so vocal, aggressive elements. They're obsessive. They attempt to manipulate the thing that they're a fan of. We see this in all fandom, all kind of the kind of very definitive modern fandoms. They want to possess it. They want to control it. They defend it. They might defend it, but they derive some kind of identity from it. And you see it with Marvel. You see it with K-pop bands. And I'm just thinking, oh, my God, Traitor's Stands are becoming the worst. OK, it's a fucking game show. It's a game show. Right. And but tell me how this is different to Star Wars where

13:45people went nuts about The Last Jedi and were like I don't like the casting I don't like how the story played out their behavior was nuts it was absolutely nuts and what Star Wars did was they bowed down to it and they pandered to it and the next film The Rise of Skywalker an unbelievably bad film was effectively made by a committee they got rid film the rise of skywalker an unbelievably bad film was effectively made by a committee they got rid of the type of interesting you know they got rid of like i mean there were people who had real kind of loathing from the extreme star wars stands and so kelly marie tran she didn't return for this it was so awful they just pandered to it completely again and we're pandering to the one loud person in that stadium of 15 000 people all of the time i totally agree and what happens in these very very hyper evolved modern

14:29fandoms is that the fans feel like oh my emotional investment means i get to make decisions i own it not the creators you know there's a whole and it's betrayal narratives which oh my god another one of the worst elements of modern life. They have destroyed the thing we love. Don't be so pathetic, okay? Also, by the way, they made it. They made the thing that you love. But it doesn't matter. They think they own this beautiful game. And so the other thing that's part of all these kind of fandoms and indeed modern life is conspiracy thinking and the idea that there have been cover-ups and there is a little bit of it as I was saying on Friday when I was talking to Tim about this there is a thing with any kind of reality show when people become literate about

15:15the format and therefore instead of not being able to see the cuts and the joins and things they can see a little bit more than they did. And so they see the hidden hand and they become suspicious of it. But for me, the endless sort of grievance of it, it is a game show. I mean, it's so preposterous. It's a game show. But also, as so often in life, spend a day watching how that show is made. And it's not a group of evil people saying, how do we manipulate this? It's like, oh, my God, how do we make this as entertaining as possible for everybody this thing has happened how do we tweak it so that the next thing you know I mean it's how do we make that story clear yeah it's a lot it's a live and ongoing organic

15:53incredible creative process that resulted in without any question the biggest tv show of the year so and I again another part of those kind of fandoms is factionalism, because it goes without saying that most people loved it. And I just think it's interesting that this show is so successful and such a phenomenon that it has happened in very, very short order. Because this is only, as we know, the second edition, you know, 13 months ago. We'd never seen any of it. and it's amazing how quickly that has evolved and how it has become something that's so emblematic of the age in which we now live and so emblematic of types of fandom and tiny subsections of fandoms who are basically pretty monstrous.

16:36I've said time and again on our reaction episodes that James Acaster is my favourite comic and he is and he's one of my favourite people as well. He's just a glorious human being and this is not the environment, just lots of favourite people as well. He's just a glorious human being. And this is not the environment. Just lots of things happen where you think, oh, that's a bit uncomfortable. But do you know what? It's OK. Can't people be interested in it? Everything's OK. It is an experiment, right? Yeah, and he's brilliant. Can't you treat life with interest and say, gosh, how interesting? You know, I do actually remember talking to Kate Phillips, who runs BBC's programming, before this show.

17:06You know, obviously she would never give you even the hint of a spoiler. It was months before and she'd watched the series and she said, it's so interesting how this one plays out. It's so different. Don't you want things to be interesting and surprising and to reflect things about our world? And, you know, to reflect that some people can't actually handle the game and that different that the celebrities are different people are wired differently and the human beings are different to each other and it just teaches i always otherwise it's just it's a knockout i remember with big brother people always go oh they're all awful you go if you're watching these 16 people you think they're all awful there's only one awful person here and it's you

17:40because there's there's stuff there if you're an empath or if you're a human being who likes other human beings you can find a bit of fellow feeling yeah listen and it's it's ridiculous even talking about it because every single person listening to this agrees we all know that we all know and yet we have to listen a lot of people are on our borderline now because because you get whipped up by it into this thing like i think lots of people listen to this to be like no no they have, no, they have broken the game. No, but... Honestly, but I'm just saying to those people, I get why you're saying that, I really do. But think about, you know, just from a different perspective, which is something extraordinary happened.

18:18The thing that we want to happen, which is that everyone is talking about a game where people pretend to murder people in a really camp Scottish castle. I mean, please, this is, it's sort of amazing. This is no stakes. Don't worry about it. Nothing is, nothing bad. I mean, what it is, is sport. Yes. That's all it is. And any sports fan knows this. You just have opinions all day long and none of them matter. And then you go to Morrisons. Yeah. But you know what I mean? You move on with your day. But if you're in it, so if you are James or someone who's in it yeah I imagine at the moment you do think oh do you know I wish I hadn't done that because now so because everyone can have one opinion about this today

18:53James then has to listen to 56 million opinions you know and like nobody needs that and thing with him he's so brilliant and so talented that whatever he does next will you know supersede this in a heartbeat. But, you know, just annoying to have to spend a couple of weeks sort of in a position where you feel slightly destabilized. But if anyone who, if James, if you're listening or people who know and love James, we love you. And I'm very excited for what he does next. But it was, listen, it was a weird series because it started with the energy that the previous series ended with, which was incredibly heightened. Everyone went into that, I think, slightly with their energy was vibrating slightly too much.

19:33Well, you think you're standing on the threshold of becoming a national treasure. Yes. And because of Alan Carr's unbelievable temperament, I can gallop through this being not only the best entertainment booking on this show, but I'm also going to win it. I mean, you have to respect the work. And I think that he made it look easy and funny. And it's clearly very psychologically, you know, for certain people, pressurizing. And definitely it's psychologically pressurising what's happened afterwards because when anything is the biggest TV show, even though you can protect it as much within the confines of your edit of the format and all of those sorts of things, you can't stop people going and knocking on

20:15the parents' doors and coming for testings. You can't stop all of these things happening. No, we can't stop it. I tell you, you could stop that happening. Yes. The people doing it. Yeah. You don't have to go and knock on people's doors. No, I think that there's... I know you do have to if someone's paying you. Well, there's certain things in which it's very, very important. Half of journalism comes from people just trying things like that. And I have to say on something like this, it's like, okay, this is really, maybe your time could be better spent. But that's up to them. But people now know that, and the people that sign up next year will have seen two different versions of this play out i think the next year

20:50is going to be an absolute solid down the line gameplay version of this show yeah i think it's going to be do you know what let's this is not a big lifestyle show that that is like it's just let's play the game yeah and you know certainly when you talk to people about who they're looking for and looking at it's like no let's let's just get back to basics and have just an amazing game of the traitors yes but we also we have the civilian version coming in january that's great which we will all love and i'm told that it's great fun and it's it's yeah and it quite can't yeah my my reading of it is from both sides, from the people who go on and the people who made it, that this is a no-fault situation.

21:31I just think that a series of things happens where this becomes quite a difficult show for people in certain ways and the way you have to make it, but the way you want to be on it. It's one of those things where you go, I've seen it a million times on a million shows and it passes by and a few weeks afterwards. You talk to my owners on Traders, they always say the aftercare is amazing. But, you know, you talk about it for a bit, the WhatsApp group goes on for a bit, and then it ends, and you're all moving on to something else. It's just this is so big that it feels incredibly intense at the moment, but it won't be. But my big message is, oh, my God, what are 15 million people in the same country watching the same thing, talking about it?

22:07How beautiful. What a beautiful thing. That's everything that entertainment is supposed to be. And I wouldn't want that message lost in the absurdity of people trying to make money out of this thing that they could never have created. Yes. There is a slightly parasitic element to that, just like living off the back of the host hit. Yeah, instead of just saying, oh God, I wish I was that talented, which I hope is what we've said a number of times about that show. Well, with that off our chest, shall we have a little break and then talk about Disney for adults, which is fascinating, I would say. See you in a sec. the best for you, Mr. Shaq. Hey, have you always been so big, tall, and handsome? Not always. I was

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23:55Then I tried LinkedIn Hiring Pro. It's like the hiring partner I always wished I had. It reviews every applicant and surfaces the strongest fit candidates for my role, so I know who to talk to first. You know, 60% of hirers found a candidate to interview in the first week using LinkedIn Hiring Pro. So hire right the first time. Post your job for free on LinkedIn today at linkedin.com slash quality. Welcome back, everybody. Now, just before we get into Disney adults, on Thursday, we have my interview with Sylvester Stallone. I cannot wait. Oh, my God. There's some really joyous... But there's a drive-by on Steven Seagal in it. I literally felt I was getting Stendhal syndrome when you're overwhelmed by the beauty of something.

24:44Was it a drive-by from him or you? No, the drive-by was from him. But, you know, I obviously was able to add to it, provoked by a particular question. He's already dead. Yeah. Yeah. He's fighting in chairs now. So that's Thursday or Tuesday for our members. But listen, Disney for Adults, Marina, tell us all, what is a Disney adult, please? A Disney adult is a sort of, again, it's a sort of subculture. It's somebody who spends money on Disney experiences and merchandise and holidays and fandom in general, independent of having children. It's not families. It involves visits to the parks, going on the cruises, fashion, cosplay. I'm right in saying that 37% of people who go to the Disney parks go without children.

25:27Yes, it's enormous. I'll give you a little positive history of it. In the 80s and 90s, adult nostalgia began to be sort of commercialised a bit by Disney. But in the 2010s, it sort of becomes an identity, like lots of things. And consequently, like lots of things, it is loathed by sections of the internet and there are more and more of these Disney adults and there have been whole books written about this. Disney love them because they are worth billions a year to Disney. Now Disney experiences, remember parks and cruises or Disney experiences as that they call it as a commercial division makes more than twice as much as Disney's entertainment division every year. It is absolutely massive. And you need the entertainment in order for there to be things that people come to the parks.

26:13So they're sort of symbiotically related. But it's so much a bigger part of their business. Disney Experiences makes 36 billion revenue a year. And 10 billion of that is profit. And Disney Adults are worth a lot more to the business. What sort of things would that be in terms of experiences? Like it's holiday homes, it is cruise ships. Parks and cruises. It's going to the parks. You're staying in the hotels and the parks and they stay in the fancy ones because they want to, you know. And there's lots of very, very, very premium services. There are special experiences, you know, bolt on things where you have a private meet and greet with one of the characters. You're going to get the premium

26:48cocktails, the smart restaurants you're going to, the more expensive ones, rather than like, let's just get the burger on Main Street with the kids. On all the Disney cruise ships, there is one suite that's built into the funnel, which is the most expensive suite, and that can cost you tens of thousands. Yeah, and you're not taking your kids in that, forget it. Yeah, you're not taking your kids in that forget it yeah you're not taking your kids in a funnel and they the great thing about disney adults is that they visit several times a year it's not the whole sort of oh do you remember the time you went to disneyland holiday that you might do with your children they buy a lot of merchandise not just on christmas and birthdays and you know this term that you hear a lot in business or

27:26particularly in things where you need people to keep coming back lifetime customer value they stay customers for potentially a very long time and there's a lot of talk now that they're becoming more valuable to Disney than families with children which is sort of incredible to give you sort of a flavor I'm just going to give you like one person who I think was quite interesting. The New Yorker had an article that I read a few months ago, and it was about this woman. She went to college and she had, you know, much more freedom and she had $15,000 in her bank account. I think there's something more psychological going. I'm going to get to the psychological elements of this later. And we both are i know because it's you've got to think what underpins this she enjoyed the freedom of college did she okay but

28:08she started she started taking solo trips to disneyland she went six times in two years she is now deep in debt but she just keeps getting more into debt because she's she wants to go back to the parks in terms of who they are, they are well-educated. They tend to skew left. They are heavily in the 25 to 44 bracket. And they tend to be women, but there are lots of men who do this as well. So shall we unpack? I mean, what do you think is sort of behind it? It's fascinating. I mean, my kind of route into this was they've come up with their first story living by Disney Resort. So they've had little communities before. Yeah, Celebration. There's another one, the C1. I can't remember what it's called.

28:54And funnily enough, I visited it last year. And it's called Cortino near Palm Springs. And it's right up in the hills of Rancho Mirage. I will say this, if you're interested in buying there, it's very, very windy. I will just say that. And everyone who lives there knows that that plot of land is very windy. But it's homes which are from one and a half million to three and a half million and more, in fact. It has like a country club at the heart of it, which a lot of those communities there have. But the country club is a voluntary country club, which means that you don't have to join it, but it's got like an enormous lake and water sports and all the restaurants right at the heart of the community and after you've bought your three and a half million pound house you then

29:33have to pay twenty thousand dollars to join this club and then if you want the whole family to join you have to pay another twenty thousand dollars every year to be in it so people are very very happy to take all of their life income and put it into a community like that. How did you do this on that trip and not discuss it with me? Well, because when I went to see it, it hadn't really been built. So all I was really seeing was construction fences. You know, I would have talked to you about that for a long time. Well, have a look at it online because the map of the resort itself is amazing because it's sort of, it's got all of these rows like called brilliance drive and stuff like this and then it's got the incredible lake and then in

30:08between you've got this kind of what look like green areas and i'm like oh that's interesting is that sort of lagoon and then you look and it says future condominiums are you like oh okay so yeah exactly um so where does it come from i mean for me the idea that you could live in these things it come it comes i always think lots of our culture is explained by the fact that we whenever we don't feel safe we revert back to the last place we felt safe and i think for a lot of people that is disney for some people you see on facebook all the time with pictures of britain in the 1950s and 1960s and for a lot of people their childhood is the last time they felt safe or you know when they're when they're in a family and so we revert to type all the time every time we're

30:49frightened by anything at all and Disney it feels to me that that's that written a very very large scale which you know we remember sitting and watching old VHS's of Disney films and you know we were with our mum and perhaps she's not around anymore and you know we didn't have any bills to pay because we were eight years old and so I think it's it's it's a very very deep seated need to go back into the cocoon yeah to escape and regress and it's really interesting I've said this before but it's relevant again here cosplay started um in Japan in the immediate wake of the 1990 financial crisis when people felt this massive institutional failure and they retreated into a world of childlike simplicity.

31:33And this kind of adult cosplay grew directly and explicitly out of that. When people say, oh, we live in an infantilized age, I wonder why. You know, why? Why do we? Why do people want to go back to sort of childlike forms of safety all the time? It's obviously because they feel that there is some form of community there. The things that are missing, that there's some kind of clarity and simplicity there that they need. I think one of the very interesting things about this is that people who've looked into it conclude, not all people, but are like, oh, no, no, Disney invented Disney adults. And then they said it as a label. And I don't believe they literally invented it. I think it started organically.

32:17But the second they saw it happening, oh, I'm going to turn this business away. You know, they've cultivated it. And once something becomes an identifiable thing and think something that people can identify into to say, oh, that's me, that's who I am, you know, why lose the customers after childhood? It was obviously always assumed that you lost customers in the Disney business from the age of about, I don't want to say like 10 because obviously there are other entertainment products that you're selling them during that. But you sort of, the stuff that the parks are built, although they've built more of the teenage stuff into the parks now, but you kind of lose them after childhood and then they come back to make memories with their own families.

32:57And that's the cycle. A whole generational sort of cohort later. Why? They don't want to do that. But it's growing and they love it disney and they are now the the big question is at what point do they you know become more valuable to um the parks and the cruises and everything than families in a way it was always there i was reading about this there was a 1954 article about the anaheim Park, which is the first park, Disneyland. And that article, ahead of its opening, said, oh, we expect four adult visitors for every child. Now, if you do the family maths, that means that they always envisaged adults. And in a way, theme parks and all kinds of fairgrounds and things are a form of escape. And it's like, or even going right back to these things like,

33:46I don't know, frost fairs or whatever people used to have like hundreds of years ago. There's a sort of moment of leaving things. People say this about festivals. You walk through the gate and then suddenly the normal world doesn't count anymore. And you're in a kind of mad fantasy land for a little bit. And you get to forget your cares and all of those sorts of things. And theme parks have always encouraged that. They want to build, you know, they call them Imagineers at Disney World. They want to build these kind of alternative realities where things are simple and... Well, that's this whole Coutinho, this resort. It's been made by the Disney Imagineers. And if you want to buy a house, by the way,

34:23you'll get a call from a member of the Disney sales cast. And you're like, okay. Amazing. Yeah, okay, okay. Let's do that. And, you know, the technology in the water to turn it blue is some sort of, you know, registered trademark technology. And it's a fantasy land. And my personal view is, why not? And my personal view is, what a mental world. I don't offer financial advice, as you know. I would advise not getting deeply into debt to do it. Yes, definitely do that. Sorry, definitely don't do that. I don't know. I would advise not getting deeply into debt. And my feeling about that girl who went to college was that actually she was finding elements of her new freedom difficult. And therefore, this was a place to retreat to, rather than that this was finding elements of her new freedom difficult and therefore this was a place to retreat to rather than that this was emblematic of her new freedom.

35:09She went back to her old friends. Yeah. Mickey. Yeah. Donald. Yeah. It's Donald Disney, isn't he? Yes. Donald is very much Disney. By the way, can we just stop for literally one second as a sidebar to say this makes billions and billions this this company, Disney, this whole empire, built on the single worst piece of IP in the history of IP, which is Mickey Mouse. You absolutely hate Mickey Mouse, don't you? I mean, but what's to not hate? I'm not throwing shade on him, but he isn't anything. Yeah. What's his character? Yeah. Who is he? What's his character? Yeah. What are his character? Yeah. Who is he? What's his character? Yeah. What's his? I can't give you three. Even in some TV shows where you're like,

35:50okay, there's certain shows that it doesn't matter what's the character. Like, you know, I love Line of Duty, but please tell me what their characters are like. You know, she's tough, no nonsense, gets the job done. Right? That's it. Okay? He's trying to hide the Scottish accent. Yeah, and he once had a neurofen addiction, right? And he wears waistcoats. The end. Okay? But it doesn't matter because the show is completely competitive. He has a character, Hastings. Sorry, I don't know why we're talking about Line of Duty and Mickey Mouse. I don't know how this happened. But yeah, I couldn't tell you one characteristic that Mickey has. I don't know, I want to say cheeky but he's not particularly.

36:25Yeah, he's got a high voice. Yeah. He's no Huey, Dewey and Louie, Donald's nephews, who you know are cheeky. Oh, they moved on to some great stuff. Oh, yeah. I mean, they really did. They very quickly moved on to some brilliant characters. But Mickey... I cannot tell you his character. But by the way, I love Disney. I'm a big, big fan of it. I'm so looking forward to going to the parks with my children. But if someone brought that into you tomorrow, if you're in any kind of company that makes IP, and someone says, yeah, I think I've got something you're rather going to like. He's a mouse. He's got big ears. He's got a really squeaky voice. What else? This is how when he fell out of copyright,

37:02no one wanted to do anything with him. Everyone's like, oh my God, you know, Steamboat Willie, the first thing of Mickey Mouse, that first kind of black and white sketch, it was a shaky animation, you've probably seen it. When that came out of copyright, everyone's like, anyone can now exploit him. And everyone's like, no, you're all right. He's no good. Like do what? Like nothing. What's he going to do? But it's amazing to build something off the back of that. I mean, to build one of the most amazing companies in the world without any question that I am endlessly, endlessly fascinated by. And suddenly you're buying a $4.5 million house because of Mickey. Because of something that grew out of that.

37:35Okay. I think that wraps us up on Disney adults, Richard. Yeah, other than to say you can buy a crystal castle for $250,000 if you want to. How big is it? Oh, it's a model. It's not an actual castle. I can't actually live in Elsa's Frozen Castle for $250,000. Not in Elsa's Frozen Castle. In Coutinho, the club room is the house from The Incredibles 2, if that's helpful. Wow. Oh, can I say, by the way, this is my final thing on disney uh at the um the artisan club which is the club at the heart of catena the disney resort there are a series of classes you can do uh you can do the you can do moana breath work that's the thing these are all adults doing this uh you can do the encanto lat Dance Cardio. Okay. The Incredible Super Circuit.

38:27You can do a Villain Era Power Sculpt Maleficent Edition. And you can do Stitch and Splash. So all the castes are even Disney themed. The more I talk about it, the more I quite like the idea of it. You know, I don't mind it. When you go you go quite you go almost annually there i think you need to go and see how it's taking shape i'm going to next next year i'm gonna wear um mickey mouse oh just sit around do nothing that's the class it's interesting that yeah they're not going big on mickey yeah and there's a reason now the last thing we want to talk about is very interesting um statistics came out of yougov last week about subtitles yes um there was a very interesting statistics came out of YouGov last week about subtitles.

39:05Yes. Yeah, so it's over half now in the U.S. Well, in 18 to 24-year-olds, 53% watch it. This is YouGov, yeah. This is YouGov. And then it goes 25 to 34-year-olds, 46%. Then 35 to 44-year-olds, 35%. 45 to 54-year-olds, 24%. You can see which way this is going, and you can see which way it's going to end up. 55 to 64-year-olds, 20%. 65 to 74-year-olds, 22%. Oh, it's creeping back up. And 75-year-olds plus 31%, because by then it just got on here. Yeah, it's fascinating. It is something finally bringing together young people and old people, their love of having subtitles on the TV. But it's fascinating because when I was young, subtitles were two things. They were an accessibility feature or they were pretentious

40:00because it meant you were watching some kind of Czech animation about this or that or you were like some, you czech animation about this or that or you were like some you know cineast yeah or whatever and now and lots of people listen to this will know we all know that younger people watch everything with subtitles yes and so the question is how did that come about what does it mean for how we make content as well i think as far as i can really tell there's all sorts of theories that say oh it's because kids are watching loads of anime which is not quite right actually because more people watch anime dubbed than they do subtitled. I think the real place that it started was when Facebook started turning off sound on

40:34its videos as its kind of default. So its default was then to play videos silently because kids are watching on screens and kids are watching in public and what have you. And that seems to have been when all content creators, short form content creators, started using subtitles just automatically, automatically generated. And so a generation of kids just were used to watching that content in that way. And then we multiply that by certain things that have happened in the film and television industry in terms of how sound now works and we find ourselves in this position now where all young people watch with subtitles yeah it's really it's definitely i'm trying to think of my memories of i remember

41:15the first time i heard of people watching subtitles and they were watching it because they were watching dvds and that's a big part of this story too which we'll get to but they people were watching i remember someone telling me they watched The Wire with subtitles because I couldn't understand I remember feeling that was politically dicey in some weird way the reason I did that was was because the thing with The Wire is the dialogue is unbelievably brilliant and it's quite dense and it's quite important that you follow it and And for someone with a very strong Baltimore accent, you're missing bits that you know are important. So actually, I immediately go, you know, I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything here.

41:51Yeah, I agree. And actually, that's a huge part of why people say they do it, especially young people, is that they think it improves their concentration because it focuses them on that screen. Almost certainly there's another screen in their hand at the same time. And it helps them better understand the plot. I definitely think it's partly a function of acting style, which has unbelievably changed. If you watch certain brilliant dramas from the 90s, you're dealing with a lot of actors who are projecting much more. Sound recordists will now say, oh, actors don't project anymore. Because they don't need to. Yeah, and it's naturalistic. They call it mumblecore, don't they? And if you look at something like Christopher Nolan's films if you look at

42:28Tenet they it's sort of deliberate and you're not supposed to be able to hear some of it sound recording in the old days you know it started you couldn't even if one thing was happening another thing couldn't happen so if there was gunfire you couldn't have anyone saying anything there were some shots and then some people said something and um definitely don't blame the sound mixers for things like this because they are most actors on productions now use clip mics and called lavalier lav mics and um they record much more bass um there are in any scene there are thousands of audio tracks or audio elements and there are different formats for cinema for streaming for broadcast and obviously our tvs and our laptops and certainly our phones are not as

43:12good as the technology that's happened in television and film is incredible the technology in our televisions has actually sort of got worse you know it's people who watch tv without sound bars or anything and so everything is on the same channel and that is not how it was filmed and so people who say i'm sure people mumble a lot more i'm sure i can't really hear the sound the good i have good news for you you are absolutely right you can't it's interesting yeah a big and but another big part of this first of all the subtitling started in cinema and gradually national public service broadcasters followed and everyone had their own national standards. And then when DVDs became just the phenomenon that they did and you could have the DVD,

43:52you could put the subtitles on, that became very big. And then the streamers started doing it. And I think you can't really talk about this story unless you talk about Netflix. And a big reason that it became the kind of world's TV channel is because they they put they had all this foreign stuff and people who were early believers at Netflix were like what you're going to put foreign language things on and think people will watch it well they will now and I it's really interesting I remember by the time it got to Squid Game which by the way is one of the big Trojan horses of this where people like it's a very simple story to understand it's I mean the themes are very basic of Squid Game. It's not subtle.

44:28It's got those childlike colours. It's incredibly visual. And my children didn't want to watch the dubbed version. They wanted to watch the subtitles. And I remember thinking, which I shouldn't have obviously let them watch the show. I get it. I understand. But Netflix obviously really wanted it because then you can distribute foreign language TV across all the territories. Some of the things I'm really interested in is like the international style guides of it all and how they, sorry, this is so niche, but I love it. You have to decide when you're subtitling how much text can appear, how conversations can be condensed. Because it's a bit like being, you know, it is like being a translator. There's huge amounts of kind of ethical

45:06and artistic decisions that really brilliant translators take when they're doing books, which we've talked about those before. And so it was standardised at first by Netflix and they were like, you can have 42 characters per line and you can have a reading speed of 17 characters per second for adults and 13 for children. And then all the local countries ended up pushing back and they said well we don't actually do it this way um and we do it and it's we've you've ended up in a situation where individuals can slightly choose but individuals rather than countries now choose and you can choose subtitles or dubbed people have become much quicker at reading them because they're so used to it. It's weird, there's a thing where your brain prioritises visual

45:49over audio always, and there's something about how the human brain is hardwired that if there's something happening, you will focus on the visual rather than the audio. Comedy is always the hard bit because so much of jokes is the timing and you've just read the punchline. Because I'm visually impaired also for me it's like yeah jesus this is you know but they've got so much bigger over the years as well which for me is amazing you know subtitles in the old day i could never have gone to see in a foreign film because you go to the cinema and be tiny little text me like white over someone wearing a white dress like they literally didn't give a toss about people that actually made it to see it whereas now i don't think it would have been like your street either

46:24yeah it sort of wants i don't know yeah i don't think it would have been like your street either. I don't know. Some of them are like, okay. I could grow. But I think it's one of those things that it feels to me like a net positive. Oh, for sure. It's amazing that people have discovered these cultural shows, these huge stories from other countries. And the early believers, people at Netflix, actually I was talking to a woman who was one of them because she'd grown who's brilliant she had grown up in a dual language household her father's German and she was like no no I think people could get into this and people were thinking right you're moving into foreign language telly because it was like

46:56sort of like going off to be put out to pasture and she was like no no I think this will be really big and she ended up running that for Netflix and it was obviously it became a huge huge deal yeah but yeah nothing puts us it was obviously it became a huge huge deal yeah but yeah nothing puts us it doesn't matter where a show comes from now because completely and all of these things I mean this is why people the ability for young people to watch K-dramas anything like that they simply do not care where anything comes from the idea that you would have watched you would have had to be so pretentious when we were growing up to watch a Korean drama I can't even imagine who you would have watched you would have had to be so pretentious when we were growing up to watch a

47:25Korean drama I can't even imagine who you would have been I was watching Frasier the other day and they were doing a joke about you know that Frasier wanted to see something because it had subtitles and that was seen so absurd such a character note yeah so if you've noticed it happening it's not going to stop happening and I think it's probably broadly an okay thing. I think it's fantastic. But I do think the fascinating thing is that the film and TV industry, in terms of sound, is recording things in such a technical way. And now we've all got these incredibly thin televisions where the sound is just not very good. Or phones, Richard. Let's be honest. Yeah, it's just your phone is not as good.

48:02Don't blame the sound mixers ever. Exactly. But if you are watching your TV and thinking, it feels like I can't hear this very well and people mumble a lot these days, don't worry, you're not getting old. That just happens to be the case. Those are your television speakers. Any recommendations this week, Marina? I have. It is a documentary called SCTV, The Greatest Show You've Never Heard Of. I don't love the title because I have heard of it. It's on Netflix. It's about Second City, which is the… Oh, so SCTV. SCTV, the greatest show you've never heard of. I don't love the title because I have heard of it. It's on Netflix. It's about Second City, which is the... Oh, so SCTV. Yeah, SCTV, the Canadian sketch show.

48:32Second City is the sort of improv troupe that has various outposts. Everyone's come from it. But this is basically the story of what... I want to say the Canadian SNL, but it's much darker and weirder and it's in the 70s and 80s. It was made incredibly cheaply. I will, by the way, it's not perfect. I would have wanted to hear more from the writers. But this launched the careers of incredible people. Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Martin Shaw, Andrea Martin. It's not bad going, is it? It just incredibly, and it's so fascinating. I love these stories of these comedy shows that develop in a very, very specific, I mean, as I say, I'm not a fan of SNL, and yet I will read every word in every oral history about it

49:19because I find it so fascinating how they put these things together. And so I would recommend that. SCTV. Would you like to know a Martin Short fact? Yes, please. You know, Claire Short, the Labour minister. Yes. Claire Short and Martin Short are first cousins. Their dads are brothers. Claire Short and Martin Short are literal cousins. I can't. What? Yeah. Why don't I know this? I don't know. Ingrid found it out. And ever since, I've said, do you know that Claire Short and Martin Short are first cousins? And nobody knew. They've met up a number of times. They go out for dinner. Oh, okay. I need much. I will read a full oral history of that. Okay. Well, listen, we've got your Stallone interview on Thursday,

50:02a little bit early if you're a member. By the way, if you want to become a member, you get ad-free listening, all of that stuff. It is therestersentertainment.com. We'd be very happy to have you, but as always, you do not need to. And also, just a shout-out to everyone on YouTube who is watching us with subtitles. By the way, though, four members. Our bonus episode this week is part of the Bond series, and it's just the story of George Lazenby. It's quite a story. See you soon. Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

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