As a music theory nerd, violinist, and pianist that composes music, I had to stop and literally conduct to find that downbeat 😂 fucking fun song to conduct though lol I also love the rock opera, but I think alot of it has to do with nostalgia as a close friend of mine loved it (and Dr. Horrible's sing along blog, another one I love) and introduced it to me years ago. However, I can definitely see the obvious flaws in the opera/musical movie. Kind of like I love Sweeney Todd, despite the very clear strange choices made and not so smooth lyrics. Love the vid ❤
Amber is the face of the Zydrate recovery charity. She is supposed be 'recovered' from her Zydrate addiction and so she has to get her fix from non-public channels.
@@Waywardpaladin It's all kind of Thermian I guess. I understand the internal logic but I also have to admit that it only exists to justify the dry humping
@@Waywardpaladin or her access to money hinges on her father. I doubt the kids can spend freely on whatever they want whenever they want. And if amber is hiding her habit from her father then the grave robber guy is never getting paid.
It's interesting to hear her parse that line, I also read, "It's my job to steal and rob graves," as two related, but separate, jobs he does. That is, he "steals" and he "robs graves." It never occurred to me to read it as he "steals graves" and he "robs graves." Interesting. She obviously had the same thoughts, it's just really neat that I simply never considered the alternative.
Zydrate comes in a little glass vial, because its synthetic, its made in factory and probably is based on lead or mercury as well, because once its in the body it doesn't leave. Grabberobber isn't harvesting new Zydrate, he's taking the one that was already inside of those bodies.
@@jeniferjoseph9200 Its explained in the movie. Geneco makes it internally and has a monopoly on it, and (presumably through lobbying and paying off the voters) made it illegal for anyone else to sell it, which is kinda also the reason why it is ungodly expensive. And thats why he has to harvest it from corpses to sell it for way cheaper, its good business.
There is something off about screenwriters who add questionable things into their script, then cast themselves in the scene to experience those questionable things.
I always just figured Amber liked romping with criminals because, as a spoiled rich girl, she craves seedy situations that are the opposite of her 'day job' so to speak. She clearly craves attention, and showing up in the streets dressed like a dom is just another angle with which to get it.
As I came into knowing about this really late, I thought it was literally just writing Paris Hilton's own late childhood and young adulthood as a character
her character kind of is a dom, in a way. or at least a bratty bottom. her costumes (aka paris' real clothing) reflect that mindset. like you said, she likes/craves attention and most rich girls who are neglected by their family act out in promiscuous ways. everything about amber's character makes sense to me in logic of the film and irl logic.
This video being the same runtime as Repo is actually a bit genius. I also appreciated the ending segment. As a person who’s been in fandom circles for a long time, I’m starting to come to terms myself with Art and Shitty Artists, and making decisions to continue supporting them while they still have influence. And I love how eventually you just kept cutting off Graverobber going “GRAAAAAAAAA-“
I was the sign-painter/ designer for "Devil's Carnival" and I got some feelers seeing some of my old work on screen again (the Devil and his Due, etc). I remember hearing about an actress getting hurt but didn't know who it was. I also played what you can see for a hot second is a chimp like character wearing a fez in the background. Hours and hours of waiting with Moody for just a second of screen time. Was not aware of the stuff mentioned at the end. I didn't even know they made the sequel til now.
I watched repo probably way too young at 13 and it informed my tastes for the rest of my life. I dove headfirst into all of Zdunich’s other content, namely TDC, and I even wrote and directed the most embarrassing musical ever for my high school one act festival based around three AMS songs at 16. I was an edgy queer kid and a teenage girl with a bad relationship with my womanhood who felt very drawn to the excess and indulgence of repo, while not feeling alienated by it like I did with a lot of other work like it. I’m in my 20s now, and I just recently decided that I am unable to pursue classical music as a career like I wanted to ever since I was young. I found this video at a very low point, after having worked with a very exploitative and shitty director who’s treatment of me heavy contributed to me becoming disabled. To have at once lost my comfort artist (and first celebrity crush lol, I had bad taste) to the news of him being a shitty creep and just like all those people I worked with that wronged me broke my heart. All this drama and oversharing to say, I’m very thankful I found this video and had that cry. I always knew his work wasn’t perfect, but I did idolize him. Part of my idolization of Zdunich lead me to allow people I deemed as ‘creative geniuses’ to exploit me. 6 months of this video being on my mind has helped me with my relationship to music, media, and self advocacy. The fact that you analyzed the shittier parts of Zdunich and his work with such impressive articulation and humor opened the door for me to actually listen to your points about it and mature in real time. TLDR: Thank you for making this video, you were so funny in it that I am better at standing up for myself now.
I remember watching this at 4 since my great grandparents owned a theater and they were watching me at the time so I ended watching the whole thing and it ended up being my favorite movie
I have been DIGGING this video until you made the comment about the pause, and what you expect him to say, VERSUS what he ACTUALLY says (about his therapist) and it made me insta-sibscribe!!!!😂❤
One: this video is very powerful. I've been uncomfortable with discussing anything about Zdunich for a LONG while, among others mentioned. It's a relief to see such feelings expressed and this is another great video in your repertoire. On a lighter note, love the alter ego and hope you have fun with it. :)
19:52 - the reason Nathan focuses on losing his wife instead of poisoning his daughter as the "wrongdoing" is because he genuinly believes he is a good father who protects his daughter from harm by doing what hes doing, he doesnt see his wrongdoing as wrongdoing - on the other hand he very much believes he directly caused the death of his wife. Also i think the song is more showing of how Nathans trauma developed a borderline psychosis or bipolar disorder, in which he sees himself as both the scary Repo man and the loving father, not realizing the two cant coexist - which is why the song goes from soft parts "Dear Marni i am so sorry can you forgive me for this" (Nathan) to "Cause the claims medic needs no anesthetic!" (Repo man) - The Largo family created the Repo man from Nathan by using his guilt and grief, and they are doing the exact same during this song - they are using his trauma "Remember who you are, remember what you did to Marni" to make him go from Nathan to Repo. This evolves in the song "Let the monster rise" with the difference being that during that song, hes not being influenced by the Rotti family, but himself - he realizes what he did to Shylo was wrong and so he gives up on being Nathan the father, and instead gives in to being the Repo - "Let the father die and let the monster rise" Or at least thats how i saw it :)
His first song, Legal Assassin, implies that it's not the objective circumstances of Shilo's illness that require her to always stay inside, but rather Nathan's fear of losing her. So, he is conscious about his actions being egoistic (though at this point we don't have the context to understand why). Night Surgeon doesn't mention him poisoning Shilo because, well, it's not what the scene is about. And it's not the time to reveal that Rotti knows about it too, Nathan isn't supposed to know that he knows.
One of my favorite songs in Repo was “Infected”, it showcased what a chronic illness does to a person’s mental health and how they value themselves. But I get your point
As an autistic girl whos teen years were made hellish solely due to Autism Problems, Infected is and was also my favorite because I finally felt Understood. (I know The Community says we would never want a cure but I'm still self-loathing enough to take a Normal brain pill if it means I can have enough mental energy to talk to people AND take a shower in the same day)
I feel the same way about that song. It does do an excellent job of describing what it’s like to watch life go by from the confines of a room or bed that you can’t get out of. I had cancer in 2001 when I was 30. The combination of that plus chemo really screwed up my body, causing disabling chronic nerve pain a few years later. I stumbled across a clip from the movie on UA-cam years ago and was drawn in by Shiloh’s story.
I just watched the movie for the first time, and when Graverobber screamed “GRAVES” I thought it made complete sense. Law enforcement was closing in, he saw Shilo and suddenly has a perfect scapegoat. Screaming “GRAVES” 1) gets the attention of law enforcement to start his scapegoat exit, 2) kinda acts as an “F you” to the police who have been after him, and 3) completely throws Shilo off guard, making it easier for the police to catch her instead of him. Maybe it’s just me, but it seemed like a pretty clear “sacrifice the girl and run” move
"it's like you fed an AI the complete works of andrew lloyd webber, stephen soundheim, rob zombie, steven king, tim burton, my chemical romance and nine inch nails" well thank you for summarizing my entire personality into a single line
See, I like Rent for two reasons, and I'm saying this as a bi individual who's completely over the whole "bi people are all kinda slutty" trope that Maureen personifies: 1. The songs are pretty fun. I still know all the words to "La Vie Boheme" because it's a certified bop. 2. The show presents a pretty diverse cast, and all of them are petty, self-absorbed, and kinds ridiculous. Which (and we can't ask Larson about this) *might* be the point. Every character in Rent has their own silly personal struggles and things they need to get over, but you know, EVERYONE has those. During the peak of the AIDS crisis it was easy either to categorize gay people as deserving of their fates or as pure martyrs for a cause. But Larson doesn't do either, even though one of the characters is literally named Angel. They're colorful and flawed and all of them PEOPLE, and the tragedy of AIDS is that we lost real people. Also, I'll say that Maureen's characterization falls under the umbrella of the "THEATER people are kinda slutty" trope, and I'm a bit more comfortable with that interpretation.
The difference is here there are some legitimate criticisms and Ellis was just being mean-spirited (not saying there aren’t legitimate criticisms of Rent but Ellis didn’t touch them) Also, Zdunich is a monster. There’s no evidence Larson was
@@evanlinden4410 I don't think it was all that mean-spirited, but there WAS a shade of respectability politics in her analysis. Yes, the stereotypes are there but I think she missed a bit about "fuck respectability, even if we fit your stereotypes we're still here and we're gonna fuck your shit up" Still wish they respected the restaurant.
I noticed a detail in the clip where Zdunich makes the “joke” about the white van. Bill Moseley looks deeply uncomfortable, and I don’t blame him at all. He’s one of my favorite actors and I’m so glad he doesn’t seem to be a creep like Zdunich.
@@mountainharpie i wasn’t aware that Bill was also in on the joke. i’m hoping he’s learned that this isn’t the kind of thing to be joking about. I haven’t really seen anything else about Moseley, so i’m hoping it was just a shitty joke he regretted making
@@xxbimmyxxI can actually confirm that he isn’t like this anymore. Bill Moseley is in another movie series I like and in the second film (The Devil’s Rejects) his character partakes in a VERY brutal SA scene that is hard to watch. There’s interviews where he’s talked about this scene where he says that he told the director a lot about how he really didn’t feel comfortable doing it but for the sake of the movie he did it anyways. This can show quite a bit that his mind changed a lot and he’s a better person now
Thing with repo is you can’t look at it like a normal horror movie. This was even admitted by the director that this is more a dark comedy. It’s a rock opera about organ repossessions. And in true opera fashion, it’s overdramatized where everything is connected, and everything is super important. And I feel that’s why repo works.
Thanks for this! I'm a big fan of Repo! and The Devil's Carnival films, and I appreciate the eye-opener of exactly how problematic my local favs are. I like that you also address that we don't have to abandon everything we like when the creators turn out to be the worst. I can talk for days about why I enjoy these movies, so it's even more frustrating that Zdunich and Bousman are creepy for real and not just for the horror spectacle.
being good at being famous takes practice. especially if you weren't popular in school. and then there are those people who just aren't well equipped emotionally to have power over others, and will never be able to manage it responsibly.
@@roachmorphine8018 The occasional rape joke is mildly problematic (being as gracious as possible in a patriarchal society)... but the amount of such jokes this guy is doing is basically self-reporting. Take that in conjunction with the later accusations and this is starting to look really bad.
As somebody who was always friends with the goth/emo kids who were suuuuper into Repo but never got into it myself, I appreciate the deep dive on it. I think it's really important to be able to acknowledge that "shitty/manipulative behavior" and "creates very inspiring/influential content" are usually not mutually exclusive qualities; In fact, the latter is what often enables the former to even happen in the first place. These things really aren't black and white and it does us a major disservice to paint them as such. When we do that it's so much easier for somebody (particularly someone in a vulnerable position) to idolize someone to the point they won't bother second guessing an iffy situation. "When you're wearing rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags", so to speak
I always thought that Geneco made and administered Zydrate legally to their patients as part of legal surgeries... and Grave Robber "recycled" it by getting it second hand from the corpses of prior addicts to be used by living addicts... who were also often addicted to less than legal back alley surgery. Thats always begged the question .. why didnt Amber get it from sombody in daddys corporation rather than grave robber? Perhaps Rotti might have had at least an ounce of protective parental instincts after all.
because the street zydrate was actually very addictive unlike the company zydrate i’m sure edit: also i didn’t know zydrate was recycled from the corpses, i just assumed the dead bodies naturally produced zydrate themselves 🤷🏽♀️
@@saintsweetsubs Yep. The street version is heavily addictive, and the official version is only addictive in that it makes surgical addiction much easier to get.
While I don’t think it was properly explained I think the idea with Amber getting sketchy street drugs and constant surgery is part of her being an addict and her father not being happy with her choices. While Rotti was in charge at least he still had the final say and was trying to get her to stop. So with him telling her no she turned to more illicit means of getting what she wanted
Agreed, I'm a little surprised by some of these "BUT WHY IS THIS HAPPENING" complaints. It's pretty obvious to me what Amber is doing. Even the layered evil of Nathan - yes, tricked into become one (OF MANY) Repo Man, he seemed to suffer a mental break. There are real life cases of people doing what he did who were otherwise seemingly normal well adjusted people.
I think part of the not-explained is that unless you go in through TV Tropes or ask someone who was in the fandom toward the start, you will NEVER know that there were mostly-official social media journals/blogs meant to be written in-character, a bit like Watson's blog from BBC's Sherlock was actually officially part of the narrative. A lot of the extra details come from that and shout outs to whoever compiled the tropes from these in-universe posts and from what only happened at the musicals and not the film, and put them on the TV Tropes page.
@@jeishiikanzaki I suppose we could draw comparison between Nathan and Walter White in terms of this ‘acquired psychopathy’. I’m not sure how it would be classified, since it’s not diagnostically psychopathy - which is genetic nor sociopathy that will acquired comes from early life rather than later on experiences. But how people spiral into losing their moral compass later on in life through traumatic and shitty experiences.Whether it be soldiers or people from crime or war torn places, even just on the bistander perspective, it’s the idea that if you cried over every person you saw die, you’d drown in your own tears. Now being stuck in a situation where you yourself have to take life, being detached or twisting it into some sort of joy is fucked up, but the only way to cope without going completely insane.
@@neoqwerty Its strange though, within the movie itself it explains that Amber runs a charity for those recovering from addiction - Making it obvious that she's gotta get her fix through illicit means to keep her "public" persona clean. On top of that posters, background / news announcements, and so on in the movie explain away a lot of these "... BUT WHY IS THIS HAPPENING..." rants. I assume its an act for more comedic effect?
@@sakulaeyr9819 I mean, she still has the money and influence that she doesn't need to manipulate Graverobber in that way, and it'd be far easier for her to pay hush money to a doctor/pharmacist than trade with a street drug dealer.
I mean, by the way he handles his female characters, I am not surprised to hear such allegations. It is easier to separate the art from the artist when the art doesn't overtly feature the artist's problems, but Terrance is pretty transparent in his movies.
Fied Da Signifier had an unscripted video a couple months back where he basically said "R Kelly's lyrics were not subtle" and it's like... yeah. Maybe assuming a character should come AFTER listening to the message I wouldn't assume Scissor Sisters are serial killers but that's because I Can't Decide is its own thing
1:25:35 this has been how I’ve desperately been trying to find the words to explain the exhaustion that is felt consuming some of my favourite pieces of art years after discovery, knowing that most of those artists have been exposed as being seedy… you NAILED it. It’s such a hard battle with remaining ethical in consumption of entertainment and wrestling with nostalgia and/or love for a quality (or at least connecting) piece of work. Amazing video!
Sometimes it's nice to experience older stuff, because while you know the people behind it are probably (or possibly even known to be) terrible, they're dead and you're not contributing monetarily to them... I may be getting cynical in my old age.
Ethics, & morals are just constructs of society meant to keep the individual enslaved, & exploited by the very society who claims to be liberating, & in the pursuit of equality. You may as well pursue vanity upon the wind.
If I remember correctly, there is "brand name" Zydrate that DOES come in a little glass vial (not shown in the movie), the whole corpse-harvesting is because dead zydrate addicts still have some of it in them (?). I mean, that's what I thought was going on, I might be mistaken 'cause Repo has a very messy plot, like, it puts great premises in a cringy messy way, like a teenager trying to write a "dark" story but failing to narrate it in a compelling way.
Yeah, zydrate was Developed by gene-co, that's set up in the comic opening. So we can only assume that the stuff he takes from the corpse is either a different stuff similar to zydrate and just called by the same name, or it's the left over stuff in the corpses, thus why amber gets the street stuff rather than the original formula, as it's different and probably more addictive as well as the danger in all of it. If Zdunich didn't brag about making out with Paris Hilton so much, I would assume that addiction of danger was the reason behind her paying with sex. On the topic of plot points I feel she misunderstood, I don't think Shy's medication is supposed to be actually poison, I think that was Rotti purposefully oversimplifying or just plain lying. Marni took nondescript medicine implied that she took it all her life, so either she actually did have blood condition or everyone just takes vitamins daily. Either way, it would be logical for Nathan to assume that Shy would have said blood condition and thus probably takes a modified version of the same medication Marni took(which Nathan wouldn't be surprised at it being called poison). So Shy either was suffering from withdrawal or simply a placebo of thinking she was supposed to be in pain due to the timed beeper, which would make the most sense as she gets over it in like 3 minutes with pure force of will.
in the opera scene where Nathan is on his knees and c9nfessing he actually saya "i poisoned you. im worse than Rotti I imprisoned you, Oh god what have i done to you..." He definitely has some blame, I think that he was definitely trying to keep shiloh more dependant on him so he wouldnt lose her. but since the lot is so messy, yeah. its hard to tell.
I remember the Scorpion and the Frog thing in Devil’s Carnival always bothered me because I felt she didn’t do anything wrong and that her sin was making the same mistake. But whenever I brought it up to friends it got brushed off with “well her sin could be ignorance, etc.” and it just never sat right with me. But seeing this essay coupled with the way he talks about the “perpetual victim” finally tells me what I saw was a red flag and not just bad writing. I was so lukewarm on Devil’s Carnival that I stopped following the rest of his work and I’m kind of glad I ultimately did.
If being stupid af is a thing, I guess 99 % of mankind goes to hell. But then ever read the bible? I wouldn't be suprised if gullable people enabling their own end will end in h*ll.
The biggest issue for me watching Devil's Carnival was the Scorpion and the Frog storyline. It had a strong victim blaming mindset to it, and no justification of her possible sin (I was told it was lust overpowering sense or some BS) made it feel any better. Add to it the creepy end credits where Zdunich's devil character has that skin crawling song with the girl's character...
@@CutThroatCat it's more like don't let obvious bad things happen to you. The problem with abusive relationships is they are kelpies. They make you climb on their backs and then drown you.
Given the whole mentality of the Devil in the movie is throwing a middle finger and arguing that these people are NOT deserving of damnation, I disagree. The rules that different sects of Christianity apply that condemn you to hell are often incredibly arbitrary and one small mistake can result in damnation. That was how I took it. Alleluja the devils carnival expanded on that by showing how Heaven literally abuses the souls that go there and dumps them into Hell if they cross any arbitrary lines God chooses to set up.
At the beginning I'm like, hey some of that stuff sounds kind of misogynistic. Maybe we shouldn't hurry past it too quickly? At the end I'm like ... Oh.
I've never seen this movie or heard much of anything about it, but I knew where this video was going to end up in just the first few minutes. I guess being a survivor and having known too many men similar to this has sadly taught me that where there's smoke, there's almost always fire. I hope any and all of his (alleged) victims are safe and healing.
When those clips of the con panels showed I knew there was going to be "things" about this person that come up. Even looking at it in the lens of pre-2010 "edgey" comments it was still off putting.
I got the vibe normal people just got prescribed the drug but wealthy people are hooked and need more then the normal prescribed to get the surgery due to tolerance. Also try my new parts is a freakin awesome song and awesome scene. It actually made me highly emotional and as an ex junkie I LOVED it!!should be mandatory viewing for female junkies!
1.) I recently discovered your channel and I really like your work! 2.) So I was heavily involved in Repo! fandom back in the day. Like I was on the street team, I went to the Roadshow, I was in a Shadowcast that hosted Terrance and Darren Smith at one of our showings, I was in a loose online RP community inspired by it… and I left it behind bitterly because my cast was a bunch of drama filled 20-somethings that kept trying to drag me into their muck years later. Like I know so many stupid things about this film (like I heard the Barry Bostwick thing straight from Darren Smith and that there was allegedly a longer cut at some point that made some plot details more clear), I have met the 3 creative heads on the film along with the voice of Dead Marnie and one of the production designers, and I have literally touched the leather on the Repo Man’s coat. All this to say the last part just made me exhale very long and slow and mutter “Yeah, that tracks.” under my breath.
I am way too late to this comment, but here I am. I was also involved in the fandom, though not for as long as I wanted. I was part of the Los Angeles shadow cast "Addicted to the Knife" (ATTK) as a GENtern and Scalpel Slut. I was only in it for a few months, but I remember Anthony Stewart Head, Bill Moseley, Paul Sorvino, and Alexa Vega being at our first few performances, as well as Darren Lynn Bousman, Darren Smith, and Terrance Zdunich. Not all at the same time, mind you. I really miss those days of shadow cast rehearsals, performances, and the after-performance meal at whatever 24 hour diner we picked.
The scream getting Graverobber caught by law enforcement is to draw attention away from Shilo because she would be presumed to be a graverobber and killed while he already knows how to escape them, though they don’t explain why he cares at this phase
Repo! is genuinely one of my favorite movies. It's messy and unnecessarily complicated, but I adore it. And yeah, Graverobber was my favorite character. So one day I decided to make a lil fanart of him, but I wasn't sure about his eye color. So I did the obvious and went to some fan wiki page to check this. And there, while reading the rest of his page out of curiosity, I found out that originally Graverobber was supposed to be into Shilo. There's a removed song by those two where it kinda sounds a lil suggestive. And as I read further, turns out Zdunich himself is kinda a Graverobber x Shilo shipper. Which is kinda ironic, seeing how many fan blogs have Grilo shippers in their dni list, as he's like almost 30 and Shilo literally has an entire song about being 17. And I was devastated. Like, had an actual breakdown, just because it turned out my favorite character from this movie I love is a creep, and all that while in the middle of making art of him. And I'm still very conflicted about all this, especially now after watching this essay. I still love the movie. And I still enjoy his character, since his "relationship" with Shilo isn't canon. But it feels so wrong to like the character when the actor is so bad. And I feel so bad for the people he allegedly hurt. I don't know. This separating art from the artist is complicated and weird and I don't know how we're supposed to act. By the way, his eyes were dark blue
I haven't watched the whole video yet, so he may in fact be a creep, which will break my heart, but in general just bc someone, even if that someone is the character's actor or creator, ships such a large age gap, or any other kind of dynamic.. that doesn't necessarily mean they support that kind of thing in real life. It's just shipping fictional characters for personal enjoyment, not moral activism. And Graverobber is no angel even in canon. He's.. a graverobber. Who takes money and sexual favors from desperate junkies in exchange for a dangerous and addicting drug. It's entirely in his character to flirt with Shilo despite her youth and clear inexperience. And there's nothing wrong with finding the dynamic between this suave bastard and a sheltered girl sneaking out of her cage to experience the dark and dangerous world for the first time aesthetically pleasing as a taboo romance. Shipping that sort of thing is only problematic when the person shipping it /doesn't know/ that it's taboo. But it being taboo is half the appeal. All I'm saying is, judging a person by their ships is not a healthy way to view fandom, and fiction in general. Perfectly normal, decent people can and do enjoy all sorts of not-real things without compromising their personal morals at all, because that's what fiction is for. Like, just because Graverobber was your favorite character (mine too) doesn't mean you think drug-dealing and graverobbing is fine and good, right? Of course not.
@@elleofmusic the thing is, afaik he was writing this movie. He could've written shilo as older, but he didn't. And i know Graverobber isn't a good person, obviously, it still is creepy but if it was just some random character that wouldn't bother me that much, he does some creepy illegal shit anyway. It makes me uncomfortable because Zdunich made Shilo a minor, and then made himself a character that's way older and attracted to her. And by being a shipper, he implies that they're actually in a relationship. Like, i get it, Graverobber is evil and it could be in character for him to be flirty with younger girls, but if he actually ships them he implies they are both in a relationship, and that's just creepy, especially that he literally plays the character. And its extra uncomfortable knowing all the other shit mentioned in the video
@@beefromashroom yeah but it being a taboo relationship is what makes it attractive. That's what's great about fiction, you can explore and enjoy the things you'd never feel comfortable with irl. Her being so young is an important aspect to her character, with the contrast of the natural rebelliousness and naivety of adolescence being a driving force for the whole plot. And Graverobber being an experienced older man, already jaded and dirty, the ship has an aesthetic appeal. The danger and toxicity of it is what makes shipping it so much fun. You can indulge in vicariously through fiction. It's why classics like Romeo and Juliette, a fatal romance between a 17 y/o and a 13 y/o have never been cancelled, and why there's so many Phantom/Christine shippers. Of course, there's equally nothing wrong with not finding the ship hot, or finding it uncomfortable even. That's totally fine and valid. But it's not a red flag. If Zdunich wanted it bc he has a thing for teenage girls irl, then yeah that's gross and bad of him, but only bc he likes it /irl./
@@elleofmusic I get where you're coming from so please don't take this as any kind of attack, but I feel like your POVs might be a little janked. It being a taboo relationship can make it attractive from the outside, or in-universe from Shilo's perspective, but that it's coming from the in-his-thirties (at the time) writer and also actor is not . . . great. Paired with his pretty horrific track record of comments and *alleged* behavior, it really does seem like an early red flag. (also I wanna run in some of your internet circles, I've seen so much cancellation of Romeo and Juliette lol fandom be *wild*)
I definitely think we shouldn’t judge people based on ships like that other person says- but like- when the dude is a confirmed creep it reaallllly casts a new light on their creations. Kind of like how there were so many feet jokes in nick shows- knowing Dan Schneider is a total creep really makes you uneasy. I understand feeling confused, as Idk how I’m supposed to act either in these situations.
Watching this UA-cam video has been like a fever dream. I remembered a movie about repo men who harvest organs when the recipients of those organs defaulted on their payments, but had no recollection of it being a musical. I spent a good 40 minutes doubting my own memory before googling it and realizing that there was an entirely different movie about repo men harvesting organs from people who defaulted on their payments.
I remember seeing the previews for that, having seen this one several times, and being like…. wait someone is making a straight-faced drama version of Repo?! I hoped it was probably better than that, but never saw it
Seeing this show up in my subscriptions...I almost didn't watch it. I'm glad I did, but... I was one of two people who were on the street team for Repo! when it came through Denver (during the initial road tours, round tour 3 I think). I worked maybe harder than anything I have ever worked at promoting that film, for free (I paid for all the flyers I made with only the promise of a t-shirt at the end). I built a goddamn repo man costume. When the day came I met Bousmann, Zdunich and Mosley, and I immediately clocked Bousmann as a creep. And there was this little look during the signing after the screening Zdunich and Bousmann shared as all the female fans moved down the line, some getting boobs signed and my little egg brain couldn't understand why it stuck with me so. I left Repo! And to a lesser extent Devil's Carnival behind as a painful reminder of an old self so when I saw this show up it all came flooding back and from those opening clips my brain finally ticked over. "Ah, so that's what it was." Regardless, thanks for making this titanic piece, can't have been easy for multiple reasons. The mix is not just you, btw, the initial release of Repo! had a notoriously bad mix, both on DVD and blu ray. It also had some really funny subtitles ("you've turned this house into a zoo!"). And also goddamnit every time I see that subscriber count I get pissed off, you deserve so many more!
@@thefollowingisatest4579 Fair enough. Thankfully that's only one time that's ever happened with me. Sadly, it was in the case of Bruce Campbell, which sucked cause I love the Evil Dead movies. Meanwhile, I recently met the Michael Myers actors from H20, and the new trilogy, and they were very engaging.
I still don't know how they got that wrong She's dead, the movie features graves and death everywhere, "tomb" is right in people's minds. I would've suspected Zdunich, but my radar isn't tuned finely enough for Bousmann, maybe because I haven't seen him in person
I never realised the lyric was "it's my job to steal and rob graves"... I always thought he yelled "GRAVES!" out of nowhere. Thank you for explaining the plot. I have watched it twice and I still had no idea what it's about (beside The Aesthetic).
I just have to add, as a native german speaker, the random german lines are completely unintelligible to me. So even if you speak German you would not be able to understand it.
The ending where you just cap it all off by sardonically singing Zydrate over "Living Dead Girl" and it hits beat-for-beat just... just an excellent bow to tie over all of this. This was a lot to process but was super worth it, thanks Laura 💜
So my suggestion to people who don't want to support the predatory nature of Terrance Zdunich but want some awesome dark opera/musicals to fill the void left behind look into the works of Paul Shapera and his New Albion series. It follows a city called New Albion from the Steampunk Era all the way onwards through Biopunk and Post Humanism, stopping along the way for entries into lesser celebrated fandom like Weird West and Fairypunk. And yes, we even get a psudo-purgatory Carnival album! His work is intricate and fills any former theaterkid with thrills of imagining staging it. Shapera is also an Ally and includes many LGBT+ and BIPOC in his works, even going so far as writing a personalized song for a fan after they came out and were rejected by their family to help cheer them up and encourage them to be themselves. So put down that Zydrate and come dance in the crossroads with the Voodoopunks!
Seconded! It’s amazing how much he did with like, 3 singers in the first musical and seeing how much more he does when he gets a larger cast. He’s more active with the fandom from what I’ve seen and it’s a much different vibe from Zdunich ofc.
Thank you for this I am a couple days in and have made it to the faepunk series and I am humming "Annabel McAlister is raising up the dead" and sobbing with Han Mi and I can't stop thinking about the two girls and their very smart rat. I have fallen in love with that world which is so well thought out and woven together.
It's very melancholy to remember, but there was a time years ago, after I'd heard all of New Albion (and the second was album new and the third wasn't out yet) when I used to fantasize about what a New Albion movie done by Zdunich would look like. I got into both within a few years of each other tops, so it seemed like the obvious choice if it ever came to be.
God. Your personal story about the director from your small town hit. Hard. The “oh I’m sure I’m overreacting” response is one that I have frequently had. And it’s gotten me in some bad situations. Including one that is so similar to your experience with the creepy director that it felt genuinely chilling. But thank you, for somehow putting a voice to many of my own thoughts and frustrations about the aftermath of that situation that I’ve had trouble deciphering.
As someone that JUST discovered Zydrate Anatomy but has had a few American Murder Song songs on my playlists for a little over a year now. I wish I could say it was a fun surprise when I heard in this video that this Terrance Zdunich guy helped make both of these things I liked and I found them in backwards order, oh jolly good fun. Unfortunately I could already see the way the winds were blowing this video and all I could think was "No! Not that too!? Why, I don't even go here!?" Anyway thanks for making this great video a couple years ago to protect future people like me from supporting a creep, I do actually appreciate it.
I can actually answer why Shiloh passes out even though her medicine is poison Withdrawal, or some fictional parallel of it. Like, alcohol is a poison, and 3 days straight of that can make it so that you pass out if you go without it for 12 hours.
I'm german btw and the grammar in hoof and leap is ridiculously screwed up. I couldn't even understand what she was saying in the clip so I had to look up the lyrics. "Mein Liebe, Mein welpe" - my love, my puppy In german, love Is feminine so it needs to be "/meine/ Liebe" forgetting the e is like nails on chalkboard to my ears "Spielt den wildpferden" Is TRYING to mean "The wildhorses play" Spoiler, it doesn't. To get anywhere near that meaning you'd need to make it "Die Wildpferde spielen" Wildpferden makes no sense to be used here. "Mit unseren Röcken Hochgezogen " Actually works, good job "Und im Grätschsitz und Reitgerte" Technically works but the double Und sounds awful. You could get rid of the first Und, it'd still work , and sound less like something my grammar teacher would throw her keyes at me for saying.
The imagery from Another Brick In The Wall is fitting here. I feel like I've spent my entire life watching young girls be prepped and lined up for slaughter by terrible men. There's another comment here about Zdunich and Bousmann sharing a look while young female fans lined up and it breaks my heart.
@@clementinedanger That's pretty fucked up. Boys and men can be abused, too. I know because I was psychologically abused by one woman, and sexually abused by another. This was when I still identified as male but still-they were abusive towards me, and a big part of it was because they looked down on me because they thought of me as male and considered me a toy.
I really wanted to give _Devil's Carnival_ a break when I first saw it, because the music really hit my raw nerves somehow. I saw the misogyny in Tamara's storyline, but I really wanted it to be a condemnation of Heaven's victim-blaming rules that got her damned, and not a victim-blaming narrative in and of itself. I guess that interview killed that interpretation. Maybe someday I'll go back to the soundtrack and see if I can summon my old POV again, but most likely not for a while.
when i first listened to repo, i was struck by the realisation that it fit into the same cultural niche as johnny the homicidal maniac, or at least, it has some of the same vibes. i might just have synesthesia but they both feel like this odd shade of brown, like dried blood mixed with rust. i mean that in a good way, by the way. i absolutely love both jthm and r!tgo. this is just a thought i had, so if it makes no sense it's because i have a bit of a cold.
I've watched this several times now. I'm really happy to have my high school love for Emilie Autumn validated and very sad that my recent discovery American Murder Song is...Problematic
Same here... I really liked repo and was excited to discover American Murder Song this year. Only to find out (AFTER buying tickets for their recent concert) that Terrance was a misogynistic fan-hating prick. And I can't exactly pretend that the AMS songs themselves don't have some pretty outright racist lines. Like on one hand, I understand that it's historically accurate. On the other hand, should it really be included so casually in media from today? Cause it's never really condemned as a bad thing... Which makes me uncomfortable.
@cyotee doge Sounds like someone forgot that English is a living language that evolves and develops new words and terms as time passes. Perhaps someone having trouble keeping up?
@@agodelianshock9422 Not being a creep isn’t “an impossible standard.” Quit making excuses for bad behavior. If someone doesn’t want to support someone they find problematic, they don’t have to do so.
I hadn't seen "The Tutor" till this. It puts a whole new light on it knowing that he graduated from the same awful art school I went to. I don't think a good school would've helped his character flaws at all, but the attitude of some of the older male teachers.... it really does all make sense. Simultaneous enabling of the worst behavior while tearing down others for artistic imperfections. I can only imagine how much exponentially worse it was when he went (googled and he graduated in 98). The school genuinely made me want to kms in a way I hadn't felt so deeply seriously since the depths of teenage depression. So the unsettling tone of the videos is honestly REALLY horrifyingly accurate to my emotional experience of the school he went to.
I never see your conclusions coming until they slam into the video and you deliver them with such raw power. It pulls all the strings together into a tightly woven thesis that's so powerful.
With no context beyond: "my friends and I watched this movie in college when it came out and I love it." I made my fiancee watch it. At the end he just sat in silence for a moment, and said "huh...well....it was a movie." I asked him if he liked it and he said he didn't know. He also didn't know if he disliked it.
Yeah in all honesty she kinda deserved a roasting as well... Not as much as Zdunich but like, what she's doing is actively hurting people too. And others have pointed out that her actions are wrong and she just refuses to accept that or any accountability 🤷🏻♀️
@@jor4114 Nope it doesnt in this context. It means multi-level marketing. Basically pyramid schemes where people recruit downlines to spend money to make that person rich. Like Monat or Herbalife. Mary Kay. Those kinds of predatory companies. Sorry for not giving enough context. :-)
I don't have the mental capacity or energy to appreciate this video at the moment but I love to see this weird musical being talked about since I honestly thought it was a fever dream and here is a comment for the algorithm gods. Keep up the fantastic work! Edit: oh no I read the title properly just now and I am afraid.
So I finally bit the bullet and decided to watch this video. I've been avoiding thinking about the awful nature in which repo was created for a long time now, as It's my favourite piece of media. Repo was an incredibly influential piece of media for me as an edgy, queer preteen, and the world drew me in. Repo is set in a world where you can build yourself however you want, and I yearned for that. A big part of enjoying repo was the fan media, the building of the story around all of those loose keystones and I lost myself in it. For me the movie feels like a peek into a climax in the lives of these characters, like it's practically made to be built upon . Now, as an adult, I can't quite let go of that part of me, but I can avoid interacting with anything outside of the movie that I already own. I can live that world without having to give money to the creator, I won't feel bad about it anymore. Thank you for this video, and thank you for explaining why I always get confused when "Living Dead Girl" plays.
I discovered Repo from the various industrial rock musicians who worked on the soundtrack and knowing Ogre from Skinny Puppy was playing Pavi. It took years for it to finally come out and I bought the soundtrack months before I saw the movie, listening to it at work almost daily. I love the movie but find Terrance's contributions to be the weakest. Zydrate Anatomy is a master class of his co-composer Darren Smith worked on playing almost every instrument. And that graves scream always bugged me and took me out of what was a good song until then in my opinion. I knew from friends that Terrance was a creep and problematic. I actually found Devil's Carnival and it's sequel to be kind of lackluster so whatever paradoxical relationship I might have formed was lessened by diminishing returns to me. I feel horrible for Fables and I feel horrible for those people who can't separate the art from the artist (made worse with Jimmy Urine's recent allegations, too) and have pieces of art that spoke to them taken away. Your message is wise no matter how niche the social circle. Industrial rock has found a way to have Jimmy Urine, Eisel Dope, and Sin Quirn outted as alleged creeps and quite a few people outted as Nazis or racists. We try to police our own but ignoring red flags just because you like an artist is dangerous.
You know, I was today years old when I learned Grave Robber was shouting "GRAAAAVES" this whole time, and not just repeating the word "Rooooooooob" .... lmao God damn I'm deaf.
As a fan of both your channel and of American Murder Song and the various other works, I appreciate all your time and information on this. Gonna have to think about how willing I am to separate the art from the artist now. You are fantastic. I really appreciate you doing the hard work of digging through all this.
I always saw the Grief story as being about him being unable to accept his part in how his child died, as well as being unable to move on from his grief. Being able to let go. The director did admit that Tamara's storyline was fumbled. It was supposed to be that she ignored all the red flags. She sees the Scorpion kiss someone else and she chooses to ignore that. To keep giving the people who hurt her chance after chance, ignoring her heart crying out that things aren''t okay. In all her dreams she drowns, but she stays on a ship that's sailing upon the sea. It's still not great, but... yeah, this dude's works are highly flawed but I still love them. They're sexy and gothic.
Oh I'm SO glad we get to talk about all of Terrance Zdunich's work. Much like you I fell down a weeklong rabbit hole of his stuff, found him oddly bewitching but technically lacking when it came to crafting music/narratives (and sometimes downright disrespectful). Learning that he's also a total fucking creep was the missing puzzle piece I needed to make sense of who he is as a person. Finally all the odd vibes I was getting fall into place. Great video, very thorough, very enlightening.
I do want to push back on your criticism of “Chase the Morning” just a bit. I think Mag’s whole situation is a pretty classic deal with the devil. She does benefit from having the eyes and she also has a career through GeneCo, but every benefit she has comes from a corporation that not only keeps her from being free, but keeps *everyone* from being free. Choosing to give up everything she gains from GeneCo, including her neat cyber eyes (and I guess her life lmao???), would be a meaningful arc in the hands of better writers. But forgive me for nitpicking your nitpick, lol. As someone who watched this movie when I was an edgy teen and who feels a lot of nostalgia for it, I think your criticisms here are overall really strong. One of my favorite videos to rewatch while I’m cleaning my house.
Two things that bug me about this movie (other than Terrance's general creepiness): 1. Shiloh's character beyond her wanted to go outside is incredibly thinly sketched out, leaving the story without a real reason to be invested in her 2. They treat Graverobber like he's important in the scenes he's in but that then he does absolutely nothing to contribute to the plot
I'm about halfway through and the 'we have dialogue back' comment made me realise that every time I've been to the opera, I've been given some kind of physical synopsis or libretto to help me follow along. I don't know if that's normal for all opera or if it's just a thing my local opera house does, but if it is normal, it's a reason worth mentioning for why opera works worse as a film than as a stage performance.
As a opera singer, I have never been in a show that didn't include a breakdown synopsis. However, many operas are not in English and, even if the show has live translations, those are largely included to help audience members follow along. It's a common practice since some people have trouble following the chaos that is opera :)
@@TheeMusicalARM to be fair, most operas are a lot less complicated than this movie. Like Tosca. Cop tricks girl into incriminating her boyfriend. Cop offers to let boyfriend go if she sleeps with him. Girl stabs cop instead. Cop kills boyfriend. Girl kills herself. End show. You don't need all this context about the world and everything cause the story is simple.
Maybe I'm giving The Devils Carnival too much credit, but I think the guy who was being punished for "being too sad" was actually representing the oft-forgotten 8th deadly sin, Despair. In the end of his story he isn't let go because he's "suppressing his emotions", but because he overcame Despair and embodied the 8th Heavenly Virtue, Hope.
Autumn has also had some issues... and also has been working on one project for ages, aka her asylum series. That said, I hope that one day she finds the original stems for opheliac and releases an instrumental album, because dang can she sling a bowstring. Also everyone go give Clipping some love, if the first two albums are too harsh and you don't want their recent dip into horrorcore, Splendor and Misery is a tasty little afrofuturist concept album. On The Creepster though... Yeah part of what i got from the devil's carnival was that it was god's fault for making "broken" (thanks dude, thanks) beings and then cursing them for his own failings, and that most of the sinners really just had to work through their personal baggage. However THAT all falls apart when you have a mixture of "sins" on display in the first film. If all three of the faults had been something like "you shouldn't stay mired in grief, but realize that you need to reach out for help", "the scars of abuse are long-lasting and it's hard to resist falling back into those well-worn wagon trails (while also factoring in that yanno, *sometimes you can't escape an abusive situation right now*)", and "looking fantastic/wanting goods isn't inherently evil, but when it becomes the focus you gotta wonder what issue it's trying to cover up in your life", that would be more of a situation where it's a little more clear that the Hell is a personal one that each character needs to grapple with. But nope, Merrywood is just a Problematic Vain and Greedy. Have you thought about not doing a Greed? the film asks. So okay, then is there anything not sketchy about Tamara's "crime"? ...I mean, no, but also long answer no. Like if the idea is "when someone terrible says they're terrible, believe them" That doesn't even work in the fable. In the fable the scorpion/serpent is like "hey no, i won't do this bad thing" and then the other being says "yeah that tracks, why would you?" and then the scorpion/serpent does it anyway and everyone suffers. It's. not a great fable in the first place (if anything, the only remotely salvageable moral is "people who make self-destructive choices sometimes need help so they don't make destructive choices") and also at no point is the dangerbeast like "hey i will TOTALLY wreck our chances" and the other party goes "oh he's just saying that!" THAT would be a decent fable and one that's worryingly appropriate to politics of the last five years or so. If that was that fable then... well Tamara's plot would still be really questionable and victim-blaming, but at least I could see what he was getting at. This is just clunky, and even more clunky when you take into the fact that *she died trying to get away from him*. Like she was trying to break free from her ex's abuse, even in the terrible logic of the film she was trying to "make better choices". Anyway, shocker but. Iirc, this part of the film got some backlash, and the creep tried to frame her sin as "stop trusting untrustworthy people!" which really does make sense in a lot of ways. Like let's be real here, he's the scorpion in this tale, but instead of reflection on patterns of abuse, he'd rather pass the blame onto the people he's hurt.
Yea the framing of everyones sins are very???? Like "but god is the villain" doesnt translate or get addressed in the first one. So you're just lost as to What the points were supposed to be? The depressed dad - felt almost Jacobs Ladder- cut you away to free you. But then you get Tamara and its baffling. Without the actual showing of God as the reason for this and being the villain - the audience has no idea where the compass is supposed to be pointing. But yea the "it's her fault for being with a jackass" does feel very in the nose for the actual creators sins.
ok this is delving deep deep into my high school emo days but I'm pretty sure she did have an instrumental album, as well as one of spoken word poetry? I feel like I remember listening to that lol
@@gjungart She had an instrumental double album called Laced/Unlaced, Laced being a rerelease of her debut classical violin album and Unlaced being more Opheliac-style electric violin. The poetry album is called Your Sugar Sits Untouched and I haven’t heard a single word of it so I have no idea whether it’s any good but it does exist
…Emilie….oh no…oh no no no…oh honey there’s a lot on Emilie Autumn. You’re totally right about spiralling with parasocial relationships, but going from him to her is like choosing which cheek to get slapped. You can only turn twice
Also my sister grew up with this movie, it inspired her whole look for all of high school and after that too, still wears gothy dresses and big hats and white foundation every day of her life. And a lot of my grungy punk style has elements of goth/scene in it due to her. So it just sucks to know he's involved with something that was crucial for a lot of kids who found their way into subcultures as teens.
Terrence might ✨ allegedly ✨ be a POS,. It the film has Anthony Head and Bill Mosley both extremely wholesome and really kind to their fans. So if you still want to watch and or enjoy Repo do it for them and the rest of the stunningly amazing cast. No none of these films or projects are actually good but they're fun, they're entertaining, and to a lot of people (myself included) they are nostalgic. It's okay to to still enjoy something but also not like or want to support someone who's a creep. I am not going to defend anyone. He is a creep and that doesn't have to ruin the experience but it also 100% is a valid reason to not want to support him or anything he's in. It's going to be a very long time before I can watch him in anything without feeling gross. But if a song from Repo! Comes on my playlist I'm not going to skip it unless it doesn't pass the current vibe check.
Middle of the video. i just have to say that i would love to see your alter ego conduct more thrash metal songs. Would watch an entire secondary channel just of that
I'm thinking about how when things go from "some rumors" to "confirmed big fucking creep" it actually makes it easier to recommend that person's art? Because you can be upfront about stuff. Does that make sense? I'm not sure it makes sense.
Nah I can see that. Never done it with a creator. But I have worked in a social circle where I'd feel I should warn people about some creeps and have no facts. It gets very awkward to be like "look out for [dude] cause he's...not good?"
Welcome to the 90s Black metal scene. Murderers, homophobes, racists, church burners, and all sorts of other issues within the culture (let's not forget the list of evil). Yet, the music itself is iconic for those who listen to it and it still holds up today.
So in the beginning when she says that Repo! is six movies haphazardly jumbled into one, one of these movies is the 2010 movie Repo Men, where a corporation sells artificial organs on credit and repossesses them when the client can't pay. It's been a while since i've watched it i don't know if it's good
I came here because I love Repo and wanted to hear more people's thoughts. And then I learned lots of upsetting things. Thank you for posting this. While living in blissful ignorance of Zdunich as a person was fun, it's more important to know shit about the creators you support.
1:30, I've gotten to THAT part and just... Oh. That's the saddest thing about today (and yesterday but our parents won't admit it) is that we have managed to gaslight themselves into deciding that the problem is with us for not accepting the normal baseline of creepiness. I couldn't begin to get into what I used to deal with because "I mean sure he threatened you and sure this other guy touched me, but the rest of the time they're so sweet and gentlemanly" Which is why I have such strong feelings about Tamara's story. When I first saw it I was at the time boucing from a relationship with a S abuser to an emotional abuser (who incidentally thought he was Lucifer), and that movie was what finally woke me up to the fact that this is just going to keep happening over and over if I let little things slide instead of fitting them together to see the big things coming, and that MeToo is just the culmination of generations of being told to do exactly that
My biggest issue with Repo: The Genetic Opera is that it does the bare minimum to incorporate opera into its storu and music. Like the shell of recitative and aria forms in the music, but the substance is completely missing. It falls way more into the style of like les mis, which on its own isnt a bad thing. But man, the music just completely fails to be narratively or emotionally engaging and feels more like a gimmick to get the movie funded and marketed.
I had never heard of Repo! when this popped up in my recommendations and something compelled me to click on it. It's kinda odd, because based on what I've seen throughout this video, Repo! is *exactly* the type of thing that I probably would have been into in 2008 - dark, offbeat, cult-y media with absurd alternative aesthetics, that fairly revels in its own weirdness. Watching clips of the film (and the other works that followed), and the interviews and moments with fans, gave me a creeping feeling of déjà vu, because, hoo boy... the casual and pervasive misogyny/objectification/leering (which was somehow generally excused, laughed off, or otherwise accepted?) was *so familiar,* even though I've never been in this fandom. Not just because misogyny was and is pervasive, but something about gross comments and behavior in this specific subcultural context brought about a real reckoning with my memories of alienated young adulthood. Like, this sort of stuff barely even *registered* to me at that time, as a young woman with a very feeble grasp on any concept of self-worth, y'know? It's just wild to look back on the media of that time period or even more recent stuff and see just how much ickiness is normalized to the point of numbness - even, and sometimes *especially* within subcultures that pride themselves on being havens for outsiders and outcasts. To that point, I think the clip where Terrance says "girls . . . didn't pay attention to me in when I was school, now like my art, like my music" is *really* telling. It's pretty transparent how a seed of deep insecurity, germinating out of a history of rejection, can grow into flower of, well, not exactly evil - but like, toxic self-aggrandizement and sexual aggression. Particularly given the rich soil of artistic success liberally fertilized with the stinking bs of sexism and masculine entitlement. Anyway, wanting to enjoy weirdo art "without getting smacked in the face with your own self-loathing" is really apt. Loved the video - still thinking about it days later. Subscribed and already watched several other videos. Good stuff.
This was powerful. REPO! Was very important to me. I and my group of friends had been following it for awhile before it came out on dvd. We had the soundtrack, we organized a watch party for when it released. This is my Salinger. It breaks my heart to let go.
Thank you for making this! Your framing in the video of the build up of your path with Zdunich allowed thread together your actual journey very well. It brought some much needed light to passive fans of an old movie, that would have continued to walk through life having no idea. It was an excellent watch
Thank you for this. Its taken me 10 years to get through my fixation over him, i wish so much that i knew What parasocial relationships were as a teen, and the telltale signs of abusing power dynamics. Trying to rediscover my relationship his work, if i can have one, disentangled from his presence. Its really gross how much I've overlooked for so long, but i know im not alone and hearing an outside, balanced perspective helps cement a lot of things ive been trying to work through on my own
This comment is for the algorithm, which recommended this video to me. I'm saddened, but not at all surprised. I have too much to say and think about on this topic. Maybe dark / emo stuff attracts a certain type of people? Maybe it sets a structure we fit ourselves into - implies we don't respect ourselves and thus don't "deserve" respect. Or maybe that's making excuses for gross men behaving grossly, and women (or femme coded people, or anyone really) getting treated like objects in order to earn affection. Don't poison yourselves. Don't waste time on toxic people or situations that make you feel ill and weak. You are strong and beautiful, and worthy of love and respect, from yourself most of all. Thank you for making this video. I hate to hear it, but it's so important to call it out.
My first and only exposure to this show (before this vid) was my sister showing me clips on youtube and explaining the plot, probably at the height of its popularity. The only thing I retained is "Addicted to the knife?" "Addicted to the knife." And I hate her for it.
15:49 according to the movie, Lotti at one point cut Amber off as far as funding/appointment making goes for Zydrate and surgery cuz she was going too far to the point where if she got another surgery it wouldn’t heal right and would be unnatural unintentionally. That’s why her face fell off on stage.
I still think that Nathan being truly, madly, convinced that Shiloh needs the medicine when she in fact doesn't, and the meds being dangerous to her healthy body is a better way to include that plot point, should that be non negotiable
I remember during my own classical music training someone said how operas had inherently weird plots full of holes that didn't hold up to literally scrutiny, and that during that classical period of opera people didn't attend because they wanted a complex wholesome story (that's what plays were for) but rather they attended for the spectacle and the magic of the theater So within this context to say Repo! has an incoherent plot may not be the best criticism... Now with that said asking if the spectacle and music holds up is perhaps a better question (Ironically this seems to be the problem ppl mention about the Cats movie, the original stage musical was supposed to be a magical spectacle that gets lost in a cgi movie lol) ❤❤❤
I agree with this 100%. Repo isn't something you're supposed to watch and care about plot holes or meaning inconsistencies because that's not the point of it. It'd be like asking why are there aliens in rocky horror picture show or deconstructing your perceived political meaning assigned to Rocky building a beautiful man monster
I don’t agree. If Repo wanted to have the reputation of spectacle over story, it would be story light in the same way Cats is. It isn’t. It’s extremely story heavy and if you can’t follow the film that’s not the fault of the viewer.
@@jeniferjoseph9200 But it is ALWAYS the fault of the creators (director, writer, producers, etc) when a member of the audience doesn't understand or can't follow a film? REPO! is an extremely simple story to follow - its character are charicatures, sure, but their motivations and roles are easy to comprehend. I've watched countless films or theatrical plays/musicals/operas where a majority of the audience understands what's going one but a minor few will not - despite the simplicity of complexity of the story being told.
@@jeniferjoseph9200 I was a kid when I first saw Repo and I followed the story just fine. There are holes and the characters are not exactly complex. But the world created was far more interesting to me. And it did largely remind me of shows like Buffy and yes even Rock Horror. The story is secondary. I like it fine but I was more interested in the performances and music. Also Sarah Brightman was just incredible. Woman must age backwards lol
Oh noooo I'm so sad! I've loved Repo! since high school (it got me right in the middle of my Hot Topic phase.) I rewatched it recently and had so much fun. It's always such a bummer to learn that someone involved in art you enjoy isn't a good person. My policy of presuming all male celebrities to be shitty till proven otherwise seems to continue to hold up.
One of the reason I don’t care about the lives of most celebrities of various levels. If they turn out to be a shitty person you can’t be shattered by the truth.
Remember you can separate the art from the douchebag artist. Most everything we like has someone behind it we don't agree with. If you let it ruin everything, you'll have no life.
@@prouddegenerates9056 depends on the Artist. Artist is a bit creepy or has some politics i dont Like... I dont Care, i can still enjoy the movie If you have someone Like Polanski, who is still paraded around in my home country because "uwu His movies are nice" (and by that i mean Walking free and getting Awards and Holding speeches) when He really should be in jail in the US.... Slightly different ball game.
There's now a director's commentary for this video available to supporters on my Patreon! www.patreon.com/lauracrone
As a music theory nerd, violinist, and pianist that composes music, I had to stop and literally conduct to find that downbeat 😂 fucking fun song to conduct though lol I also love the rock opera, but I think alot of it has to do with nostalgia as a close friend of mine loved it (and Dr. Horrible's sing along blog, another one I love) and introduced it to me years ago. However, I can definitely see the obvious flaws in the opera/musical movie. Kind of like I love Sweeney Todd, despite the very clear strange choices made and not so smooth lyrics. Love the vid ❤
Amber is the face of the Zydrate recovery charity. She is supposed be 'recovered' from her Zydrate addiction and so she has to get her fix from non-public channels.
But that still doesn’t explain why she can’t pay off the grave dude
@@jeniferjoseph9200 Doesn't leave a paper trail but ultimately I feel it is because she knows she can manipulate him and doesn't need to pay.
@@Waywardpaladin It's all kind of Thermian I guess. I understand the internal logic but I also have to admit that it only exists to justify the dry humping
@@QuikVidGuy Fair enough, rock opera mostly exists for dry humping, drugs, and maybe some nihilism?
@@Waywardpaladin or her access to money hinges on her father. I doubt the kids can spend freely on whatever they want whenever they want. And if amber is hiding her habit from her father then the grave robber guy is never getting paid.
At work today someone told me they were going to sweep and mop. And my brain just went "and it's my job, to sweep and mop, FLOOOOOORSSSSS"
I was at minute 29:00 when I read your comment
Uncanny
@@main4325same thing here. Weird…
I worked with a cook who used flip and stir instead of rip and tear lmao, they’d FLIP AND STIR TIL IT’S DONE
"How would you even steal a grave?" Lol, ask most museums
It's interesting to hear her parse that line, I also read, "It's my job to steal and rob graves," as two related, but separate, jobs he does. That is, he "steals" and he "robs graves." It never occurred to me to read it as he "steals graves" and he "robs graves." Interesting.
She obviously had the same thoughts, it's just really neat that I simply never considered the alternative.
ask the british.
especially those british museums, lol
“it is my job to steal, and rob graves”
@@DR34ML3SSINCWhy are the Pyramids in Egypt? Because it couldn’t fit in the British Museum
Zydrate comes in a little glass vial, because its synthetic, its made in factory and probably is based on lead or mercury as well, because once its in the body it doesn't leave. Grabberobber isn't harvesting new Zydrate, he's taking the one that was already inside of those bodies.
Well if it’s synthetic why steal from corpses at all?
@@jeniferjoseph9200 to resell it
It's theoretically plausible, if it was worth enough.... ua-cam.com/video/VcMIeyjggbM/v-deo.html
@@jeniferjoseph9200 Its explained in the movie. Geneco makes it internally and has a monopoly on it, and (presumably through lobbying and paying off the voters) made it illegal for anyone else to sell it, which is kinda also the reason why it is ungodly expensive. And thats why he has to harvest it from corpses to sell it for way cheaper, its good business.
The harvesting of Zydrate from corpses reminds me of the harvesting of ADAM from corpses in BioShock honestly
"Haha yay a silly video about this silly movie."
[literally the first minute]
OH.
so much me
Oh snap, one of my fav creators, in another's comment section. It's like validation
Same
Same
@@Sporkmo RIGHT?
There is something off about screenwriters who add questionable things into their script, then cast themselves in the scene to experience those questionable things.
any male artist that self inserts like this raises instant red flags for me
Tarantino... 😂
Lin Manuel Miranda
I always just figured Amber liked romping with criminals because, as a spoiled rich girl, she craves seedy situations that are the opposite of her 'day job' so to speak. She clearly craves attention, and showing up in the streets dressed like a dom is just another angle with which to get it.
As I came into knowing about this really late, I thought it was literally just writing Paris Hilton's own late childhood and young adulthood as a character
her character kind of is a dom, in a way. or at least a bratty bottom. her costumes (aka paris' real clothing) reflect that mindset. like you said, she likes/craves attention and most rich girls who are neglected by their family act out in promiscuous ways. everything about amber's character makes sense to me in logic of the film and irl logic.
This video being the same runtime as Repo is actually a bit genius. I also appreciated the ending segment. As a person who’s been in fandom circles for a long time, I’m starting to come to terms myself with Art and Shitty Artists, and making decisions to continue supporting them while they still have influence.
And I love how eventually you just kept cutting off Graverobber going “GRAAAAAAAAA-“
I was the sign-painter/ designer for "Devil's Carnival" and I got some feelers seeing some of my old work on screen again (the Devil and his Due, etc). I remember hearing about an actress getting hurt but didn't know who it was. I also played what you can see for a hot second is a chimp like character wearing a fez in the background. Hours and hours of waiting with Moody for just a second of screen time. Was not aware of the stuff mentioned at the end. I didn't even know they made the sequel til now.
I watched repo probably way too young at 13 and it informed my tastes for the rest of my life. I dove headfirst into all of Zdunich’s other content, namely TDC, and I even wrote and directed the most embarrassing musical ever for my high school one act festival based around three AMS songs at 16. I was an edgy queer kid and a teenage girl with a bad relationship with my womanhood who felt very drawn to the excess and indulgence of repo, while not feeling alienated by it like I did with a lot of other work like it.
I’m in my 20s now, and I just recently decided that I am unable to pursue classical music as a career like I wanted to ever since I was young. I found this video at a very low point, after having worked with a very exploitative and shitty director who’s treatment of me heavy contributed to me becoming disabled. To have at once lost my comfort artist (and first celebrity crush lol, I had bad taste) to the news of him being a shitty creep and just like all those people I worked with that wronged me broke my heart.
All this drama and oversharing to say, I’m very thankful I found this video and had that cry. I always knew his work wasn’t perfect, but I did idolize him. Part of my idolization of Zdunich lead me to allow people I deemed as ‘creative geniuses’ to exploit me. 6 months of this video being on my mind has helped me with my relationship to music, media, and self advocacy. The fact that you analyzed the shittier parts of Zdunich and his work with such impressive articulation and humor opened the door for me to actually listen to your points about it and mature in real time.
TLDR: Thank you for making this video, you were so funny in it that I am better at standing up for myself now.
I remember watching this at 4 since my great grandparents owned a theater and they were watching me at the time so I ended watching the whole thing and it ended up being my favorite movie
I have been DIGGING this video until you made the comment about the pause, and what you expect him to say, VERSUS what he ACTUALLY says (about his therapist) and it made me insta-sibscribe!!!!😂❤
Geeze get a therapist
One: this video is very powerful. I've been uncomfortable with discussing anything about Zdunich for a LONG while, among others mentioned. It's a relief to see such feelings expressed and this is another great video in your repertoire.
On a lighter note, love the alter ego and hope you have fun with it. :)
@Caitlyn Carvalho well, Vega is white Hispanic, and the actor used as the face of Marni does look a lot like her
19:52 - the reason Nathan focuses on losing his wife instead of poisoning his daughter as the "wrongdoing" is because he genuinly believes he is a good father who protects his daughter from harm by doing what hes doing, he doesnt see his wrongdoing as wrongdoing - on the other hand he very much believes he directly caused the death of his wife.
Also i think the song is more showing of how Nathans trauma developed a borderline psychosis or bipolar disorder, in which he sees himself as both the scary Repo man and the loving father, not realizing the two cant coexist - which is why the song goes from soft parts "Dear Marni i am so sorry can you forgive me for this" (Nathan) to "Cause the claims medic needs no anesthetic!" (Repo man) - The Largo family created the Repo man from Nathan by using his guilt and grief, and they are doing the exact same during this song - they are using his trauma "Remember who you are, remember what you did to Marni" to make him go from Nathan to Repo.
This evolves in the song "Let the monster rise" with the difference being that during that song, hes not being influenced by the Rotti family, but himself - he realizes what he did to Shylo was wrong and so he gives up on being Nathan the father, and instead gives in to being the Repo - "Let the father die and let the monster rise"
Or at least thats how i saw it :)
His first song, Legal Assassin, implies that it's not the objective circumstances of Shilo's illness that require her to always stay inside, but rather Nathan's fear of losing her. So, he is conscious about his actions being egoistic (though at this point we don't have the context to understand why).
Night Surgeon doesn't mention him poisoning Shilo because, well, it's not what the scene is about. And it's not the time to reveal that Rotti knows about it too, Nathan isn't supposed to know that he knows.
One of my favorite songs in Repo was “Infected”, it showcased what a chronic illness does to a person’s mental health and how they value themselves.
But I get your point
I’m infected..
I’m infected!
by your genetics
As an autistic girl whos teen years were made hellish solely due to Autism Problems, Infected is and was also my favorite because I finally felt Understood.
(I know The Community says we would never want a cure but I'm still self-loathing enough to take a Normal brain pill if it means I can have enough mental energy to talk to people AND take a shower in the same day)
I feel the same way about that song. It does do an excellent job of describing what it’s like to watch life go by from the confines of a room or bed that you can’t get out of. I had cancer in 2001 when I was 30. The combination of that plus chemo really screwed up my body, causing disabling chronic nerve pain a few years later. I stumbled across a clip from the movie on UA-cam years ago and was drawn in by Shiloh’s story.
I just watched the movie for the first time, and when Graverobber screamed “GRAVES” I thought it made complete sense. Law enforcement was closing in, he saw Shilo and suddenly has a perfect scapegoat. Screaming “GRAVES” 1) gets the attention of law enforcement to start his scapegoat exit, 2) kinda acts as an “F you” to the police who have been after him, and 3) completely throws Shilo off guard, making it easier for the police to catch her instead of him. Maybe it’s just me, but it seemed like a pretty clear “sacrifice the girl and run” move
He knew she was innocent so it's better they find her than him red handed
Oh god damn singing the lyrics to Zydrate Anatomy over Living Dead Girl is *effective*.
"it's like you fed an AI the complete works of andrew lloyd webber, stephen soundheim, rob zombie, steven king, tim burton, my chemical romance and nine inch nails"
well thank you for summarizing my entire personality into a single line
Lmao I love this
before I make this joke, I want to preface, I am autustic
And I call this aesthetic "Autism Suburbia"
@@QuikVidGuy gothic autism
Feeling as validated by this as I felt by Lindsay Ellis's video about Rent, ngl.
There’s a similar flavor
See, I like Rent for two reasons, and I'm saying this as a bi individual who's completely over the whole "bi people are all kinda slutty" trope that Maureen personifies:
1. The songs are pretty fun. I still know all the words to "La Vie Boheme" because it's a certified bop.
2. The show presents a pretty diverse cast, and all of them are petty, self-absorbed, and kinds ridiculous. Which (and we can't ask Larson about this) *might* be the point. Every character in Rent has their own silly personal struggles and things they need to get over, but you know, EVERYONE has those. During the peak of the AIDS crisis it was easy either to categorize gay people as deserving of their fates or as pure martyrs for a cause. But Larson doesn't do either, even though one of the characters is literally named Angel. They're colorful and flawed and all of them PEOPLE, and the tragedy of AIDS is that we lost real people.
Also, I'll say that Maureen's characterization falls under the umbrella of the "THEATER people are kinda slutty" trope, and I'm a bit more comfortable with that interpretation.
The difference is here there are some legitimate criticisms and Ellis was just being mean-spirited (not saying there aren’t legitimate criticisms of Rent but Ellis didn’t touch them)
Also, Zdunich is a monster. There’s no evidence Larson was
The funny thing is I LOVE both that video and this one, and they are both absolutely correct...but I also still very much enjoy Rent and Repo 😂
@@evanlinden4410 I don't think it was all that mean-spirited, but there WAS a shade of respectability politics in her analysis. Yes, the stereotypes are there but I think she missed a bit about "fuck respectability, even if we fit your stereotypes we're still here and we're gonna fuck your shit up"
Still wish they respected the restaurant.
I noticed a detail in the clip where Zdunich makes the “joke” about the white van. Bill Moseley looks deeply uncomfortable, and I don’t blame him at all. He’s one of my favorite actors and I’m so glad he doesn’t seem to be a creep like Zdunich.
They openly called their tour vehicle the "rape van" 😳
Bill Moseley is an absolute legend I'd be devastated to find out he was a creep like Zdunich
@@mountainharpie i wasn’t aware that Bill was also in on the joke. i’m hoping he’s learned that this isn’t the kind of thing to be joking about. I haven’t really seen anything else about Moseley, so i’m hoping it was just a shitty joke he regretted making
@@mountainharpie where did they say that?
@@xxbimmyxxI can actually confirm that he isn’t like this anymore. Bill Moseley is in another movie series I like and in the second film (The Devil’s Rejects) his character partakes in a VERY brutal SA scene that is hard to watch. There’s interviews where he’s talked about this scene where he says that he told the director a lot about how he really didn’t feel comfortable doing it but for the sake of the movie he did it anyways. This can show quite a bit that his mind changed a lot and he’s a better person now
Thing with repo is you can’t look at it like a normal horror movie. This was even admitted by the director that this is more a dark comedy. It’s a rock opera about organ repossessions. And in true opera fashion, it’s overdramatized where everything is connected, and everything is super important. And I feel that’s why repo works.
Thanks for this! I'm a big fan of Repo! and The Devil's Carnival films, and I appreciate the eye-opener of exactly how problematic my local favs are. I like that you also address that we don't have to abandon everything we like when the creators turn out to be the worst. I can talk for days about why I enjoy these movies, so it's even more frustrating that Zdunich and Bousman are creepy for real and not just for the horror spectacle.
Sucks big time :(
They're not problematic. They're great people, but nowadays everyone expects everyone else to be perfect. Cry about it.
@@roachmorphine8018well I’m certainly grateful my moral standards aren’t nearly as low as yours hahaha
being good at being famous takes practice. especially if you weren't popular in school. and then there are those people who just aren't well equipped emotionally to have power over others, and will never be able to manage it responsibly.
@@roachmorphine8018 The occasional rape joke is mildly problematic (being as gracious as possible in a patriarchal society)... but the amount of such jokes this guy is doing is basically self-reporting. Take that in conjunction with the later accusations and this is starting to look really bad.
As somebody who was always friends with the goth/emo kids who were suuuuper into Repo but never got into it myself, I appreciate the deep dive on it. I think it's really important to be able to acknowledge that "shitty/manipulative behavior" and "creates very inspiring/influential content" are usually not mutually exclusive qualities; In fact, the latter is what often enables the former to even happen in the first place. These things really aren't black and white and it does us a major disservice to paint them as such. When we do that it's so much easier for somebody (particularly someone in a vulnerable position) to idolize someone to the point they won't bother second guessing an iffy situation. "When you're wearing rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags", so to speak
I always thought that Geneco made and administered Zydrate legally to their patients as part of legal surgeries... and Grave Robber "recycled" it by getting it second hand from the corpses of prior addicts to be used by living addicts... who were also often addicted to less than legal back alley surgery. Thats always begged the question .. why didnt Amber get it from sombody in daddys corporation rather than grave robber? Perhaps Rotti might have had at least an ounce of protective parental instincts after all.
because the street zydrate was actually very addictive unlike the company zydrate i’m sure
edit: also i didn’t know zydrate was recycled from the corpses, i just assumed the dead bodies naturally produced zydrate themselves 🤷🏽♀️
@@saintsweetsubs Yep. The street version is heavily addictive, and the official version is only addictive in that it makes surgical addiction much easier to get.
Ngl Repo! has an energy of third playthrough of game when you just try what wierd shit that game makes you do.
While I don’t think it was properly explained I think the idea with Amber getting sketchy street drugs and constant surgery is part of her being an addict and her father not being happy with her choices. While Rotti was in charge at least he still had the final say and was trying to get her to stop. So with him telling her no she turned to more illicit means of getting what she wanted
Agreed, I'm a little surprised by some of these "BUT WHY IS THIS HAPPENING" complaints. It's pretty obvious to me what Amber is doing.
Even the layered evil of Nathan - yes, tricked into become one (OF MANY) Repo Man, he seemed to suffer a mental break. There are real life cases of people doing what he did who were otherwise seemingly normal well adjusted people.
I think part of the not-explained is that unless you go in through TV Tropes or ask someone who was in the fandom toward the start, you will NEVER know that there were mostly-official social media journals/blogs meant to be written in-character, a bit like Watson's blog from BBC's Sherlock was actually officially part of the narrative.
A lot of the extra details come from that and shout outs to whoever compiled the tropes from these in-universe posts and from what only happened at the musicals and not the film, and put them on the TV Tropes page.
@@jeishiikanzaki I suppose we could draw comparison between Nathan and Walter White in terms of this ‘acquired psychopathy’. I’m not
sure how it would be classified, since it’s not diagnostically psychopathy - which is genetic nor sociopathy that will acquired comes from early life rather than later on experiences. But how people spiral into losing their moral compass later on in life through traumatic and shitty experiences.Whether it be soldiers or people from crime or war torn places, even just on the bistander perspective, it’s the idea that if you cried over every person you saw die, you’d drown in your own tears. Now being stuck in a situation where you yourself have to take life, being detached or twisting it into some sort of joy is fucked up, but the only way to cope without going completely insane.
@@neoqwerty Its strange though, within the movie itself it explains that Amber runs a charity for those recovering from addiction - Making it obvious that she's gotta get her fix through illicit means to keep her "public" persona clean. On top of that posters, background / news announcements, and so on in the movie explain away a lot of these "... BUT WHY IS THIS HAPPENING..." rants.
I assume its an act for more comedic effect?
@@sakulaeyr9819 I mean, she still has the money and influence that she doesn't need to manipulate Graverobber in that way, and it'd be far easier for her to pay hush money to a doctor/pharmacist than trade with a street drug dealer.
I mean, by the way he handles his female characters, I am not surprised to hear such allegations. It is easier to separate the art from the artist when the art doesn't overtly feature the artist's problems, but Terrance is pretty transparent in his movies.
Fied Da Signifier had an unscripted video a couple months back where he basically said "R Kelly's lyrics were not subtle" and it's like... yeah. Maybe assuming a character should come AFTER listening to the message
I wouldn't assume Scissor Sisters are serial killers but that's because I Can't Decide is its own thing
1:25:35 this has been how I’ve desperately been trying to find the words to explain the exhaustion that is felt consuming some of my favourite pieces of art years after discovery, knowing that most of those artists have been exposed as being seedy… you NAILED it. It’s such a hard battle with remaining ethical in consumption of entertainment and wrestling with nostalgia and/or love for a quality (or at least connecting) piece of work.
Amazing video!
Sometimes it's nice to experience older stuff, because while you know the people behind it are probably (or possibly even known to be) terrible, they're dead and you're not contributing monetarily to them... I may be getting cynical in my old age.
Your fresh take on this is not only refreshing, but also validating. And yes, individuals aren't the problem...
Ethics, & morals are just constructs of society meant to keep the individual enslaved, & exploited by the very society who claims to be liberating, & in the pursuit of equality. You may as well pursue vanity upon the wind.
If I remember correctly, there is "brand name" Zydrate that DOES come in a little glass vial (not shown in the movie), the whole corpse-harvesting is because dead zydrate addicts still have some of it in them (?). I mean, that's what I thought was going on, I might be mistaken 'cause Repo has a very messy plot, like, it puts great premises in a cringy messy way, like a teenager trying to write a "dark" story but failing to narrate it in a compelling way.
Yeah, zydrate was Developed by gene-co, that's set up in the comic opening. So we can only assume that the stuff he takes from the corpse is either a different stuff similar to zydrate and just called by the same name, or it's the left over stuff in the corpses, thus why amber gets the street stuff rather than the original formula, as it's different and probably more addictive as well as the danger in all of it. If Zdunich didn't brag about making out with Paris Hilton so much, I would assume that addiction of danger was the reason behind her paying with sex. On the topic of plot points I feel she misunderstood, I don't think Shy's medication is supposed to be actually poison, I think that was Rotti purposefully oversimplifying or just plain lying. Marni took nondescript medicine implied that she took it all her life, so either she actually did have blood condition or everyone just takes vitamins daily. Either way, it would be logical for Nathan to assume that Shy would have said blood condition and thus probably takes a modified version of the same medication Marni took(which Nathan wouldn't be surprised at it being called poison). So Shy either was suffering from withdrawal or simply a placebo of thinking she was supposed to be in pain due to the timed beeper, which would make the most sense as she gets over it in like 3 minutes with pure force of will.
in the opera scene where Nathan is on his knees and c9nfessing he actually saya "i poisoned you. im worse than Rotti I imprisoned you, Oh god what have i done to you..." He definitely has some blame, I think that he was definitely trying to keep shiloh more dependant on him so he wouldnt lose her. but since the lot is so messy, yeah. its hard to tell.
@@lucehleblanc This brings to mind something my Doctor friend says quite often. "the difference between medicine and poison is dosage"
Same.
Yes, I was under the impression that it is so “fake” that the body doesn’t really break it down and it doesn’t go away, like a plastic-liquid.
I remember the Scorpion and the Frog thing in Devil’s Carnival always bothered me because I felt she didn’t do anything wrong and that her sin was making the same mistake. But whenever I brought it up to friends it got brushed off with “well her sin could be ignorance, etc.” and it just never sat right with me. But seeing this essay coupled with the way he talks about the “perpetual victim” finally tells me what I saw was a red flag and not just bad writing. I was so lukewarm on Devil’s Carnival that I stopped following the rest of his work and I’m kind of glad I ultimately did.
If being stupid af is a thing, I guess 99 % of mankind goes to hell. But then ever read the bible? I wouldn't be suprised if gullable people enabling their own end will end in h*ll.
The biggest issue for me watching Devil's Carnival was the Scorpion and the Frog storyline. It had a strong victim blaming mindset to it, and no justification of her possible sin (I was told it was lust overpowering sense or some BS) made it feel any better. Add to it the creepy end credits where Zdunich's devil character has that skin crawling song with the girl's character...
Blame that one on Aesop.
@@CutThroatCat it's more like don't let obvious bad things happen to you. The problem with abusive relationships is they are kelpies. They make you climb on their backs and then drown you.
Given the whole mentality of the Devil in the movie is throwing a middle finger and arguing that these people are NOT deserving of damnation, I disagree. The rules that different sects of Christianity apply that condemn you to hell are often incredibly arbitrary and one small mistake can result in damnation. That was how I took it.
Alleluja the devils carnival expanded on that by showing how Heaven literally abuses the souls that go there and dumps them into Hell if they cross any arbitrary lines God chooses to set up.
At the beginning I'm like, hey some of that stuff sounds kind of misogynistic. Maybe we shouldn't hurry past it too quickly?
At the end I'm like ... Oh.
I'm still not over the "sin" of being a victim. 🤢 The "sin" of grieving is also pretty appalling (also, hope his ear regenerates in heaven...).
I've never seen this movie or heard much of anything about it, but I knew where this video was going to end up in just the first few minutes.
I guess being a survivor and having known too many men similar to this has sadly taught me that where there's smoke, there's almost always fire. I hope any and all of his (alleged) victims are safe and healing.
When those clips of the con panels showed I knew there was going to be "things" about this person that come up. Even looking at it in the lens of pre-2010 "edgey" comments it was still off putting.
Yeah, he is on screen and just, waving red flags
I got the vibe normal people just got prescribed the drug but wealthy people are hooked and need more then the normal prescribed to get the surgery due to tolerance.
Also try my new parts is a freakin awesome song and awesome scene. It actually made me highly emotional and as an ex junkie I LOVED it!!should be mandatory viewing for female junkies!
girl i am dying at the segment of you conducting in the drop on bodies because that is absolutely me
1.) I recently discovered your channel and I really like your work!
2.) So I was heavily involved in Repo! fandom back in the day. Like I was on the street team, I went to the Roadshow, I was in a Shadowcast that hosted Terrance and Darren Smith at one of our showings, I was in a loose online RP community inspired by it… and I left it behind bitterly because my cast was a bunch of drama filled 20-somethings that kept trying to drag me into their muck years later. Like I know so many stupid things about this film (like I heard the Barry Bostwick thing straight from Darren Smith and that there was allegedly a longer cut at some point that made some plot details more clear), I have met the 3 creative heads on the film along with the voice of Dead Marnie and one of the production designers, and I have literally touched the leather on the Repo Man’s coat.
All this to say the last part just made me exhale very long and slow and mutter “Yeah, that tracks.” under my breath.
Was it the Amber's Sweets cast by any chance. Your experience sounds familiar. If so, hi! If not, "ah, you too?"
@@MysteryCorgi_VN 21st Century’s Cure, actually. Sounds like a common experience! 😂
I am way too late to this comment, but here I am. I was also involved in the fandom, though not for as long as I wanted. I was part of the Los Angeles shadow cast "Addicted to the Knife" (ATTK) as a GENtern and Scalpel Slut. I was only in it for a few months, but I remember Anthony Stewart Head, Bill Moseley, Paul Sorvino, and Alexa Vega being at our first few performances, as well as Darren Lynn Bousman, Darren Smith, and Terrance Zdunich. Not all at the same time, mind you.
I really miss those days of shadow cast rehearsals, performances, and the after-performance meal at whatever 24 hour diner we picked.
Damn, sounds like every shadow cast experience was the same!
(An ex Toronto Shadow Cat.)
The scream getting Graverobber caught by law enforcement is to draw attention away from Shilo because she would be presumed to be a graverobber and killed while he already knows how to escape them, though they don’t explain why he cares at this phase
Repo! is genuinely one of my favorite movies. It's messy and unnecessarily complicated, but I adore it. And yeah, Graverobber was my favorite character. So one day I decided to make a lil fanart of him, but I wasn't sure about his eye color. So I did the obvious and went to some fan wiki page to check this. And there, while reading the rest of his page out of curiosity, I found out that originally Graverobber was supposed to be into Shilo. There's a removed song by those two where it kinda sounds a lil suggestive. And as I read further, turns out Zdunich himself is kinda a Graverobber x Shilo shipper. Which is kinda ironic, seeing how many fan blogs have Grilo shippers in their dni list, as he's like almost 30 and Shilo literally has an entire song about being 17. And I was devastated. Like, had an actual breakdown, just because it turned out my favorite character from this movie I love is a creep, and all that while in the middle of making art of him. And I'm still very conflicted about all this, especially now after watching this essay. I still love the movie. And I still enjoy his character, since his "relationship" with Shilo isn't canon. But it feels so wrong to like the character when the actor is so bad. And I feel so bad for the people he allegedly hurt. I don't know. This separating art from the artist is complicated and weird and I don't know how we're supposed to act.
By the way, his eyes were dark blue
I haven't watched the whole video yet, so he may in fact be a creep, which will break my heart, but in general just bc someone, even if that someone is the character's actor or creator, ships such a large age gap, or any other kind of dynamic.. that doesn't necessarily mean they support that kind of thing in real life. It's just shipping fictional characters for personal enjoyment, not moral activism. And Graverobber is no angel even in canon. He's.. a graverobber. Who takes money and sexual favors from desperate junkies in exchange for a dangerous and addicting drug. It's entirely in his character to flirt with Shilo despite her youth and clear inexperience. And there's nothing wrong with finding the dynamic between this suave bastard and a sheltered girl sneaking out of her cage to experience the dark and dangerous world for the first time aesthetically pleasing as a taboo romance. Shipping that sort of thing is only problematic when the person shipping it /doesn't know/ that it's taboo. But it being taboo is half the appeal. All I'm saying is, judging a person by their ships is not a healthy way to view fandom, and fiction in general. Perfectly normal, decent people can and do enjoy all sorts of not-real things without compromising their personal morals at all, because that's what fiction is for. Like, just because Graverobber was your favorite character (mine too) doesn't mean you think drug-dealing and graverobbing is fine and good, right? Of course not.
@@elleofmusic the thing is, afaik he was writing this movie. He could've written shilo as older, but he didn't. And i know Graverobber isn't a good person, obviously, it still is creepy but if it was just some random character that wouldn't bother me that much, he does some creepy illegal shit anyway. It makes me uncomfortable because Zdunich made Shilo a minor, and then made himself a character that's way older and attracted to her. And by being a shipper, he implies that they're actually in a relationship. Like, i get it, Graverobber is evil and it could be in character for him to be flirty with younger girls, but if he actually ships them he implies they are both in a relationship, and that's just creepy, especially that he literally plays the character. And its extra uncomfortable knowing all the other shit mentioned in the video
@@beefromashroom yeah but it being a taboo relationship is what makes it attractive. That's what's great about fiction, you can explore and enjoy the things you'd never feel comfortable with irl. Her being so young is an important aspect to her character, with the contrast of the natural rebelliousness and naivety of adolescence being a driving force for the whole plot. And Graverobber being an experienced older man, already jaded and dirty, the ship has an aesthetic appeal. The danger and toxicity of it is what makes shipping it so much fun. You can indulge in vicariously through fiction. It's why classics like Romeo and Juliette, a fatal romance between a 17 y/o and a 13 y/o have never been cancelled, and why there's so many Phantom/Christine shippers.
Of course, there's equally nothing wrong with not finding the ship hot, or finding it uncomfortable even. That's totally fine and valid. But it's not a red flag. If Zdunich wanted it bc he has a thing for teenage girls irl, then yeah that's gross and bad of him, but only bc he likes it /irl./
@@elleofmusic I get where you're coming from so please don't take this as any kind of attack, but I feel like your POVs might be a little janked.
It being a taboo relationship can make it attractive from the outside, or in-universe from Shilo's perspective, but that it's coming from the in-his-thirties (at the time) writer and also actor is not . . . great. Paired with his pretty horrific track record of comments and *alleged* behavior, it really does seem like an early red flag.
(also I wanna run in some of your internet circles, I've seen so much cancellation of Romeo and Juliette lol fandom be *wild*)
I definitely think we shouldn’t judge people based on ships like that other person says- but like- when the dude is a confirmed creep it reaallllly casts a new light on their creations. Kind of like how there were so many feet jokes in nick shows- knowing Dan Schneider is a total creep really makes you uneasy.
I understand feeling confused, as Idk how I’m supposed to act either in these situations.
Watching this UA-cam video has been like a fever dream. I remembered a movie about repo men who harvest organs when the recipients of those organs defaulted on their payments, but had no recollection of it being a musical. I spent a good 40 minutes doubting my own memory before googling it and realizing that there was an entirely different movie about repo men harvesting organs from people who defaulted on their payments.
I remember seeing the previews for that, having seen this one several times, and being like…. wait someone is making a straight-faced drama version of Repo?! I hoped it was probably better than that, but never saw it
I saw that too, it was deffinitelly real. It's called Repo Men
Seeing this show up in my subscriptions...I almost didn't watch it. I'm glad I did, but...
I was one of two people who were on the street team for Repo! when it came through Denver (during the initial road tours, round tour 3 I think). I worked maybe harder than anything I have ever worked at promoting that film, for free (I paid for all the flyers I made with only the promise of a t-shirt at the end). I built a goddamn repo man costume.
When the day came I met Bousmann, Zdunich and Mosley, and I immediately clocked Bousmann as a creep. And there was this little look during the signing after the screening Zdunich and Bousmann shared as all the female fans moved down the line, some getting boobs signed and my little egg brain couldn't understand why it stuck with me so.
I left Repo! And to a lesser extent Devil's Carnival behind as a painful reminder of an old self so when I saw this show up it all came flooding back and from those opening clips my brain finally ticked over. "Ah, so that's what it was."
Regardless, thanks for making this titanic piece, can't have been easy for multiple reasons. The mix is not just you, btw, the initial release of Repo! had a notoriously bad mix, both on DVD and blu ray. It also had some really funny subtitles ("you've turned this house into a zoo!"). And also goddamnit every time I see that subscriber count I get pissed off, you deserve so many more!
Was Bill Mosely a nice guy I hope?
@@JnEricsonx he seemed alright, a little bothered to be there, standard actor obligated to appear there.
@@thefollowingisatest4579 Fair enough. Thankfully that's only one time that's ever happened with me. Sadly, it was in the case of Bruce Campbell, which sucked cause I love the Evil Dead movies. Meanwhile, I recently met the Michael Myers actors from H20, and the new trilogy, and they were very engaging.
@Mojo TheRising Everybody has a bad day.
I still don't know how they got that wrong
She's dead, the movie features graves and death everywhere, "tomb" is right in people's minds.
I would've suspected Zdunich, but my radar isn't tuned finely enough for Bousmann, maybe because I haven't seen him in person
I never realised the lyric was "it's my job to steal and rob graves"... I always thought he yelled "GRAVES!" out of nowhere. Thank you for explaining the plot. I have watched it twice and I still had no idea what it's about (beside The Aesthetic).
I just have to add, as a native german speaker, the random german lines are completely unintelligible to me. So even if you speak German you would not be able to understand it.
Sad
The ending where you just cap it all off by sardonically singing Zydrate over "Living Dead Girl" and it hits beat-for-beat just... just an excellent bow to tie over all of this. This was a lot to process but was super worth it, thanks Laura 💜
So my suggestion to people who don't want to support the predatory nature of Terrance Zdunich but want some awesome dark opera/musicals to fill the void left behind look into the works of Paul Shapera and his New Albion series. It follows a city called New Albion from the Steampunk Era all the way onwards through Biopunk and Post Humanism, stopping along the way for entries into lesser celebrated fandom like Weird West and Fairypunk. And yes, we even get a psudo-purgatory Carnival album! His work is intricate and fills any former theaterkid with thrills of imagining staging it. Shapera is also an Ally and includes many LGBT+ and BIPOC in his works, even going so far as writing a personalized song for a fan after they came out and were rejected by their family to help cheer them up and encourage them to be themselves. So put down that Zydrate and come dance in the crossroads with the Voodoopunks!
Seconded! It’s amazing how much he did with like, 3 singers in the first musical and seeing how much more he does when he gets a larger cast. He’s more active with the fandom from what I’ve seen and it’s a much different vibe from Zdunich ofc.
Thank you for this I am a couple days in and have made it to the faepunk series and I am humming "Annabel McAlister is raising up the dead" and sobbing with Han Mi and I can't stop thinking about the two girls and their very smart rat. I have fallen in love with that world which is so well thought out and woven together.
It's very melancholy to remember, but there was a time years ago, after I'd heard all of New Albion (and the second was album new and the third wasn't out yet) when I used to fantasize about what a New Albion movie done by Zdunich would look like. I got into both within a few years of each other tops, so it seemed like the obvious choice if it ever came to be.
Yes. I am so glad someone recommended this!
I'm going to look into this, thanks for the recommendation.
Referring to oneself as a "big, wood, cask of amontillado," is the confidence I am walking into 2022 with.
This guy's cellar wall:
🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱 🤡"Help!"
God. Your personal story about the director from your small town hit. Hard. The “oh I’m sure I’m overreacting” response is one that I have frequently had. And it’s gotten me in some bad situations.
Including one that is so similar to your experience with the creepy director that it felt genuinely chilling.
But thank you, for somehow putting a voice to many of my own thoughts and frustrations about the aftermath of that situation that I’ve had trouble deciphering.
As someone that JUST discovered Zydrate Anatomy but has had a few American Murder Song songs on my playlists for a little over a year now. I wish I could say it was a fun surprise when I heard in this video that this Terrance Zdunich guy helped make both of these things I liked and I found them in backwards order, oh jolly good fun. Unfortunately I could already see the way the winds were blowing this video and all I could think was "No! Not that too!? Why, I don't even go here!?"
Anyway thanks for making this great video a couple years ago to protect future people like me from supporting a creep, I do actually appreciate it.
I can actually answer why Shiloh passes out even though her medicine is poison
Withdrawal, or some fictional parallel of it. Like, alcohol is a poison, and 3 days straight of that can make it so that you pass out if you go without it for 12 hours.
I'm german btw and the grammar in hoof and leap is ridiculously screwed up. I couldn't even understand what she was saying in the clip so I had to look up the lyrics.
"Mein Liebe, Mein welpe"
- my love, my puppy
In german, love Is feminine so it needs to be
"/meine/ Liebe" forgetting the e is like nails on chalkboard to my ears
"Spielt den wildpferden"
Is TRYING to mean
"The wildhorses play"
Spoiler, it doesn't.
To get anywhere near that meaning you'd need to make it
"Die Wildpferde spielen"
Wildpferden makes no sense to be used here.
"Mit unseren Röcken Hochgezogen "
Actually works, good job
"Und im Grätschsitz und Reitgerte"
Technically works but the double Und sounds awful. You could get rid of the first Und, it'd still work , and sound less like something my grammar teacher would throw her keyes at me for saying.
The imagery from Another Brick In The Wall is fitting here. I feel like I've spent my entire life watching young girls be prepped and lined up for slaughter by terrible men. There's another comment here about Zdunich and Bousmann sharing a look while young female fans lined up and it breaks my heart.
yeah its a shame that men and women can be like that
@@strawberrylotlizard Yeah I see what you did there and no, absolutely not, I meant what I said
@@clementinedanger then you're excusing all the women who have done the same thing?
@@strawberrylotlizard Yes
@@clementinedanger That's pretty fucked up. Boys and men can be abused, too. I know because I was psychologically abused by one woman, and sexually abused by another. This was when I still identified as male but still-they were abusive towards me, and a big part of it was because they looked down on me because they thought of me as male and considered me a toy.
Gravedigger here! Since a grave is just a plot of land, you could effectively "steal" a grave by removing the body and replacing it with another :)
I really wanted to give _Devil's Carnival_ a break when I first saw it, because the music really hit my raw nerves somehow. I saw the misogyny in Tamara's storyline, but I really wanted it to be a condemnation of Heaven's victim-blaming rules that got her damned, and not a victim-blaming narrative in and of itself. I guess that interview killed that interpretation. Maybe someday I'll go back to the soundtrack and see if I can summon my old POV again, but most likely not for a while.
I guess I wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with that storyline in the movie.
when i first listened to repo, i was struck by the realisation that it fit into the same cultural niche as johnny the homicidal maniac, or at least, it has some of the same vibes. i might just have synesthesia but they both feel like this odd shade of brown, like dried blood mixed with rust. i mean that in a good way, by the way. i absolutely love both jthm and r!tgo. this is just a thought i had, so if it makes no sense it's because i have a bit of a cold.
I've watched this several times now. I'm really happy to have my high school love for Emilie Autumn validated and very sad that my recent discovery American Murder Song is...Problematic
Same here... I really liked repo and was excited to discover American Murder Song this year. Only to find out (AFTER buying tickets for their recent concert) that Terrance was a misogynistic fan-hating prick. And I can't exactly pretend that the AMS songs themselves don't have some pretty outright racist lines. Like on one hand, I understand that it's historically accurate. On the other hand, should it really be included so casually in media from today? Cause it's never really condemned as a bad thing... Which makes me uncomfortable.
@@jasonmydreams18 He's hella pretentious, too.
@cyotee doge interesting. Attempting to discredit someone's well thought out argument with a simplistic insult is quite... Childish.
@cyotee doge Sounds like someone forgot that English is a living language that evolves and develops new words and terms as time passes. Perhaps someone having trouble keeping up?
@@agodelianshock9422 Not being a creep isn’t “an impossible standard.” Quit making excuses for bad behavior. If someone doesn’t want to support someone they find problematic, they don’t have to do so.
I hadn't seen "The Tutor" till this. It puts a whole new light on it knowing that he graduated from the same awful art school I went to. I don't think a good school would've helped his character flaws at all, but the attitude of some of the older male teachers.... it really does all make sense. Simultaneous enabling of the worst behavior while tearing down others for artistic imperfections. I can only imagine how much exponentially worse it was when he went (googled and he graduated in 98). The school genuinely made me want to kms in a way I hadn't felt so deeply seriously since the depths of teenage depression. So the unsettling tone of the videos is honestly REALLY horrifyingly accurate to my emotional experience of the school he went to.
I never see your conclusions coming until they slam into the video and you deliver them with such raw power. It pulls all the strings together into a tightly woven thesis that's so powerful.
With no context beyond: "my friends and I watched this movie in college when it came out and I love it." I made my fiancee watch it. At the end he just sat in silence for a moment, and said "huh...well....it was a movie." I asked him if he liked it and he said he didn't know. He also didn't know if he disliked it.
I couldn't tell if I liked it or not after the first viewing. Then, down the rabbithole!!
I hope that you both thought about it more deeply and upon further reflection decided that you dislike it.
@@orinanime Nope. Tied to too many good times with friends to not like it.
@@SayaCeline fair enough
Watched this over on Nebula, throwing in a sacrifice to the algorithm.
Excellent vid!
Kinda interesting how Alex Vega has now become an MLM promoting super Christian instagram influencer. I wonder if its from trauma from the industry.
Interesting. And sad.
Omg I went to her Instagram and I'm honestly kind of shocked 😲
Yeah in all honesty she kinda deserved a roasting as well... Not as much as Zdunich but like, what she's doing is actively hurting people too. And others have pointed out that her actions are wrong and she just refuses to accept that or any accountability 🤷🏻♀️
Okay, so... MLM in this context doesn't mean "men loving men", right? Because that's what I know this abbreviation as and I don't think that tracks.
@@jor4114 Nope it doesnt in this context. It means multi-level marketing. Basically pyramid schemes where people recruit downlines to spend money to make that person rich. Like Monat or Herbalife. Mary Kay. Those kinds of predatory companies. Sorry for not giving enough context. :-)
I don't have the mental capacity or energy to appreciate this video at the moment but I love to see this weird musical being talked about since I honestly thought it was a fever dream and here is a comment for the algorithm gods. Keep up the fantastic work!
Edit: oh no I read the title properly just now and I am afraid.
So I finally bit the bullet and decided to watch this video. I've been avoiding thinking about the awful nature in which repo was created for a long time now, as It's my favourite piece of media. Repo was an incredibly influential piece of media for me as an edgy, queer preteen, and the world drew me in. Repo is set in a world where you can build yourself however you want, and I yearned for that. A big part of enjoying repo was the fan media, the building of the story around all of those loose keystones and I lost myself in it. For me the movie feels like a peek into a climax in the lives of these characters, like it's practically made to be built upon . Now, as an adult, I can't quite let go of that part of me, but I can avoid interacting with anything outside of the movie that I already own. I can live that world without having to give money to the creator, I won't feel bad about it anymore. Thank you for this video, and thank you for explaining why I always get confused when "Living Dead Girl" plays.
I discovered Repo from the various industrial rock musicians who worked on the soundtrack and knowing Ogre from Skinny Puppy was playing Pavi. It took years for it to finally come out and I bought the soundtrack months before I saw the movie, listening to it at work almost daily.
I love the movie but find Terrance's contributions to be the weakest. Zydrate Anatomy is a master class of his co-composer Darren Smith worked on playing almost every instrument. And that graves scream always bugged me and took me out of what was a good song until then in my opinion.
I knew from friends that Terrance was a creep and problematic. I actually found Devil's Carnival and it's sequel to be kind of lackluster so whatever paradoxical relationship I might have formed was lessened by diminishing returns to me.
I feel horrible for Fables and I feel horrible for those people who can't separate the art from the artist (made worse with Jimmy Urine's recent allegations, too) and have pieces of art that spoke to them taken away.
Your message is wise no matter how niche the social circle. Industrial rock has found a way to have Jimmy Urine, Eisel Dope, and Sin Quirn outted as alleged creeps and quite a few people outted as Nazis or racists. We try to police our own but ignoring red flags just because you like an artist is dangerous.
Wait what did Jimmy Urine do?
@@tonkababic9826 rolling stone did an article on it. He was/is being sued for SAing a minor when she was 15-17 and procuring cp from her
Honestly hearing about Jimmy Urine isn't a shock, like you can't really go on vibes but he gave me weird vibes
You know, I was today years old when I learned Grave Robber was shouting "GRAAAAVES" this whole time, and not just repeating the word "Rooooooooob" .... lmao
God damn I'm deaf.
I love how Grave Robber is constantly throwing Shiloh under the bus in this movie.
I mean... I still like Repo and I'm never gonna stop liking it but this is definitely important to acknowledge
As a fan of both your channel and of American Murder Song and the various other works, I appreciate all your time and information on this. Gonna have to think about how willing I am to separate the art from the artist now. You are fantastic. I really appreciate you doing the hard work of digging through all this.
Comment for algorithm
I always saw the Grief story as being about him being unable to accept his part in how his child died, as well as being unable to move on from his grief. Being able to let go.
The director did admit that Tamara's storyline was fumbled. It was supposed to be that she ignored all the red flags. She sees the Scorpion kiss someone else and she chooses to ignore that. To keep giving the people who hurt her chance after chance, ignoring her heart crying out that things aren''t okay. In all her dreams she drowns, but she stays on a ship that's sailing upon the sea.
It's still not great, but... yeah, this dude's works are highly flawed but I still love them. They're sexy and gothic.
Oh I'm SO glad we get to talk about all of Terrance Zdunich's work. Much like you I fell down a weeklong rabbit hole of his stuff, found him oddly bewitching but technically lacking when it came to crafting music/narratives (and sometimes downright disrespectful). Learning that he's also a total fucking creep was the missing puzzle piece I needed to make sense of who he is as a person. Finally all the odd vibes I was getting fall into place.
Great video, very thorough, very enlightening.
I do want to push back on your criticism of “Chase the Morning” just a bit. I think Mag’s whole situation is a pretty classic deal with the devil. She does benefit from having the eyes and she also has a career through GeneCo, but every benefit she has comes from a corporation that not only keeps her from being free, but keeps *everyone* from being free. Choosing to give up everything she gains from GeneCo, including her neat cyber eyes (and I guess her life lmao???), would be a meaningful arc in the hands of better writers. But forgive me for nitpicking your nitpick, lol.
As someone who watched this movie when I was an edgy teen and who feels a lot of nostalgia for it, I think your criticisms here are overall really strong. One of my favorite videos to rewatch while I’m cleaning my house.
That "I'll be WHERE hanging from WHAT?" bit was a wonderful bit of acting.
Two things that bug me about this movie (other than Terrance's general creepiness):
1. Shiloh's character beyond her wanted to go outside is incredibly thinly sketched out, leaving the story without a real reason to be invested in her
2. They treat Graverobber like he's important in the scenes he's in but that then he does absolutely nothing to contribute to the plot
I'm about halfway through and the 'we have dialogue back' comment made me realise that every time I've been to the opera, I've been given some kind of physical synopsis or libretto to help me follow along. I don't know if that's normal for all opera or if it's just a thing my local opera house does, but if it is normal, it's a reason worth mentioning for why opera works worse as a film than as a stage performance.
I'm pretty sure that's what the comic book intermissions are for.
As a opera singer, I have never been in a show that didn't include a breakdown synopsis. However, many operas are not in English and, even if the show has live translations, those are largely included to help audience members follow along. It's a common practice since some people have trouble following the chaos that is opera :)
@@TheeMusicalARM to be fair, most operas are a lot less complicated than this movie. Like Tosca. Cop tricks girl into incriminating her boyfriend. Cop offers to let boyfriend go if she sleeps with him. Girl stabs cop instead. Cop kills boyfriend. Girl kills herself. End show.
You don't need all this context about the world and everything cause the story is simple.
Maybe I'm giving The Devils Carnival too much credit, but I think the guy who was being punished for "being too sad" was actually representing the oft-forgotten 8th deadly sin, Despair. In the end of his story he isn't let go because he's "suppressing his emotions", but because he overcame Despair and embodied the 8th Heavenly Virtue, Hope.
Autumn has also had some issues... and also has been working on one project for ages, aka her asylum series. That said, I hope that one day she finds the original stems for opheliac and releases an instrumental album, because dang can she sling a bowstring. Also everyone go give Clipping some love, if the first two albums are too harsh and you don't want their recent dip into horrorcore, Splendor and Misery is a tasty little afrofuturist concept album.
On The Creepster though... Yeah part of what i got from the devil's carnival was that it was god's fault for making "broken" (thanks dude, thanks) beings and then cursing them for his own failings, and that most of the sinners really just had to work through their personal baggage. However THAT all falls apart when you have a mixture of "sins" on display in the first film. If all three of the faults had been something like "you shouldn't stay mired in grief, but realize that you need to reach out for help", "the scars of abuse are long-lasting and it's hard to resist falling back into those well-worn wagon trails (while also factoring in that yanno, *sometimes you can't escape an abusive situation right now*)", and "looking fantastic/wanting goods isn't inherently evil, but when it becomes the focus you gotta wonder what issue it's trying to cover up in your life", that would be more of a situation where it's a little more clear that the Hell is a personal one that each character needs to grapple with. But nope, Merrywood is just a Problematic Vain and Greedy. Have you thought about not doing a Greed? the film asks. So okay, then is there anything not sketchy about Tamara's "crime"?
...I mean, no, but also long answer no.
Like if the idea is "when someone terrible says they're terrible, believe them" That doesn't even work in the fable. In the fable the scorpion/serpent is like "hey no, i won't do this bad thing" and then the other being says "yeah that tracks, why would you?" and then the scorpion/serpent does it anyway and everyone suffers. It's. not a great fable in the first place (if anything, the only remotely salvageable moral is "people who make self-destructive choices sometimes need help so they don't make destructive choices") and also at no point is the dangerbeast like "hey i will TOTALLY wreck our chances" and the other party goes "oh he's just saying that!" THAT would be a decent fable and one that's worryingly appropriate to politics of the last five years or so. If that was that fable then... well Tamara's plot would still be really questionable and victim-blaming, but at least I could see what he was getting at. This is just clunky, and even more clunky when you take into the fact that *she died trying to get away from him*. Like she was trying to break free from her ex's abuse, even in the terrible logic of the film she was trying to "make better choices".
Anyway, shocker but. Iirc, this part of the film got some backlash, and the creep tried to frame her sin as "stop trusting untrustworthy people!" which really does make sense in a lot of ways. Like let's be real here, he's the scorpion in this tale, but instead of reflection on patterns of abuse, he'd rather pass the blame onto the people he's hurt.
Yea the framing of everyones sins are very???? Like "but god is the villain" doesnt translate or get addressed in the first one. So you're just lost as to What the points were supposed to be?
The depressed dad - felt almost Jacobs Ladder- cut you away to free you. But then you get Tamara and its baffling. Without the actual showing of God as the reason for this and being the villain - the audience has no idea where the compass is supposed to be pointing.
But yea the "it's her fault for being with a jackass" does feel very in the nose for the actual creators sins.
Splendor and Misery brings me endless joy
ok this is delving deep deep into my high school emo days but I'm pretty sure she did have an instrumental album, as well as one of spoken word poetry? I feel like I remember listening to that lol
Some people can't be trusted
@@gjungart She had an instrumental double album called Laced/Unlaced, Laced being a rerelease of her debut classical violin album and Unlaced being more Opheliac-style electric violin. The poetry album is called Your Sugar Sits Untouched and I haven’t heard a single word of it so I have no idea whether it’s any good but it does exist
…Emilie….oh no…oh no no no…oh honey there’s a lot on Emilie Autumn. You’re totally right about spiralling with parasocial relationships, but going from him to her is like choosing which cheek to get slapped. You can only turn twice
Also my sister grew up with this movie, it inspired her whole look for all of high school and after that too, still wears gothy dresses and big hats and white foundation every day of her life. And a lot of my grungy punk style has elements of goth/scene in it due to her. So it just sucks to know he's involved with something that was crucial for a lot of kids who found their way into subcultures as teens.
Terrence might ✨ allegedly ✨ be a POS,. It the film has Anthony Head and Bill Mosley both extremely wholesome and really kind to their fans. So if you still want to watch and or enjoy Repo do it for them and the rest of the stunningly amazing cast. No none of these films or projects are actually good but they're fun, they're entertaining, and to a lot of people (myself included) they are nostalgic. It's okay to to still enjoy something but also not like or want to support someone who's a creep.
I am not going to defend anyone. He is a creep and that doesn't have to ruin the experience but it also 100% is a valid reason to not want to support him or anything he's in.
It's going to be a very long time before I can watch him in anything without feeling gross. But if a song from Repo! Comes on my playlist I'm not going to skip it unless it doesn't pass the current vibe check.
Ah yes, the "Watch Star Trek for George Takei and not William Shatner" method
@Kay Dwessie if it helps William Shatner just kind of keeps getting worse like a banana. So... he used to be less rotten
Middle of the video. i just have to say that i would love to see your alter ego conduct more thrash metal songs. Would watch an entire secondary channel just of that
Rewatched. This is just such a uniquely good video. Thanks again for it.
I'm thinking about how when things go from "some rumors" to "confirmed big fucking creep" it actually makes it easier to recommend that person's art? Because you can be upfront about stuff. Does that make sense? I'm not sure it makes sense.
Nah I can see that. Never done it with a creator. But I have worked in a social circle where I'd feel I should warn people about some creeps and have no facts. It gets very awkward to be like "look out for [dude] cause he's...not good?"
I’m an og Marilyn Manson stan but… big Marilyn Manson energy after all of the stuff has come out from Evan.
Welcome to the 90s Black metal scene. Murderers, homophobes, racists, church burners, and all sorts of other issues within the culture (let's not forget the list of evil). Yet, the music itself is iconic for those who listen to it and it still holds up today.
Especially if you have met the person, and have your own observations....
@@htcheeto420 Omg I love Marilyn Manson but yeah. After that revelation I was like, yeah never meet your heroes. Ouch!
So in the beginning when she says that Repo! is six movies haphazardly jumbled into one, one of these movies is the 2010 movie Repo Men, where a corporation sells artificial organs on credit and repossesses them when the client can't pay. It's been a while since i've watched it i don't know if it's good
I legit found this movie looking for that one, one hell of a rabbit hole
Its also a pretty good movie, tho not exactly the next "1984"
Funny thing about scorpions is that they can hold their breath for up to six days. A scorpion wouldn't drown.
me watching the first part like: "whomever wrote these lyrics is pretty clearly a neckbeard in the bad way"
the second part:
I came here because I love Repo and wanted to hear more people's thoughts.
And then I learned lots of upsetting things. Thank you for posting this. While living in blissful ignorance of Zdunich as a person was fun, it's more important to know shit about the creators you support.
1:30, I've gotten to THAT part and just... Oh. That's the saddest thing about today (and yesterday but our parents won't admit it) is that we have managed to gaslight themselves into deciding that the problem is with us for not accepting the normal baseline of creepiness. I couldn't begin to get into what I used to deal with because "I mean sure he threatened you and sure this other guy touched me, but the rest of the time they're so sweet and gentlemanly"
Which is why I have such strong feelings about Tamara's story. When I first saw it I was at the time boucing from a relationship with a S abuser to an emotional abuser (who incidentally thought he was Lucifer), and that movie was what finally woke me up to the fact that this is just going to keep happening over and over if I let little things slide instead of fitting them together to see the big things coming, and that MeToo is just the culmination of generations of being told to do exactly that
"Amber's face falls off. It's very embarrassing..." 💀
I lovehate this film and this beautifully articulated why, thank you so much
My biggest issue with Repo: The Genetic Opera is that it does the bare minimum to incorporate opera into its storu and music. Like the shell of recitative and aria forms in the music, but the substance is completely missing. It falls way more into the style of like les mis, which on its own isnt a bad thing. But man, the music just completely fails to be narratively or emotionally engaging and feels more like a gimmick to get the movie funded and marketed.
I had never heard of Repo! when this popped up in my recommendations and something compelled me to click on it. It's kinda odd, because based on what I've seen throughout this video, Repo! is *exactly* the type of thing that I probably would have been into in 2008 - dark, offbeat, cult-y media with absurd alternative aesthetics, that fairly revels in its own weirdness. Watching clips of the film (and the other works that followed), and the interviews and moments with fans, gave me a creeping feeling of déjà vu, because, hoo boy... the casual and pervasive misogyny/objectification/leering (which was somehow generally excused, laughed off, or otherwise accepted?) was *so familiar,* even though I've never been in this fandom. Not just because misogyny was and is pervasive, but something about gross comments and behavior in this specific subcultural context brought about a real reckoning with my memories of alienated young adulthood. Like, this sort of stuff barely even *registered* to me at that time, as a young woman with a very feeble grasp on any concept of self-worth, y'know? It's just wild to look back on the media of that time period or even more recent stuff and see just how much ickiness is normalized to the point of numbness - even, and sometimes *especially* within subcultures that pride themselves on being havens for outsiders and outcasts. To that point, I think the clip where Terrance says "girls . . . didn't pay attention to me in when I was school, now like my art, like my music" is *really* telling. It's pretty transparent how a seed of deep insecurity, germinating out of a history of rejection, can grow into flower of, well, not exactly evil - but like, toxic self-aggrandizement and sexual aggression. Particularly given the rich soil of artistic success liberally fertilized with the stinking bs of sexism and masculine entitlement.
Anyway, wanting to enjoy weirdo art "without getting smacked in the face with your own self-loathing" is really apt. Loved the video - still thinking about it days later. Subscribed and already watched several other videos. Good stuff.
This was powerful. REPO! Was very important to me. I and my group of friends had been following it for awhile before it came out on dvd. We had the soundtrack, we organized a watch party for when it released. This is my Salinger. It breaks my heart to let go.
Thank you for making this! Your framing in the video of the build up of your path with Zdunich allowed thread together your actual journey very well. It brought some much needed light to passive fans of an old movie, that would have continued to walk through life having no idea. It was an excellent watch
Thank you for this. Its taken me 10 years to get through my fixation over him, i wish so much that i knew What parasocial relationships were as a teen, and the telltale signs of abusing power dynamics. Trying to rediscover my relationship his work, if i can have one, disentangled from his presence. Its really gross how much I've overlooked for so long, but i know im not alone and hearing an outside, balanced perspective helps cement a lot of things ive been trying to work through on my own
This comment is for the algorithm, which recommended this video to me.
I'm saddened, but not at all surprised. I have too much to say and think about on this topic.
Maybe dark / emo stuff attracts a certain type of people? Maybe it sets a structure we fit ourselves into - implies we don't respect ourselves and thus don't "deserve" respect. Or maybe that's making excuses for gross men behaving grossly, and women (or femme coded people, or anyone really) getting treated like objects in order to earn affection.
Don't poison yourselves. Don't waste time on toxic people or situations that make you feel ill and weak. You are strong and beautiful, and worthy of love and respect, from yourself most of all.
Thank you for making this video. I hate to hear it, but it's so important to call it out.
I'm grateful my perspective is different than it was before I left the active fandom!
Hardcore Conductor Laura Crone may be my favorite thing I've seen recently. The rest of this video is hauntingly excellent. Thanks Laura.
I once met Bill Mosely he seemed really excited to discuss this movie.
My first and only exposure to this show (before this vid) was my sister showing me clips on youtube and explaining the plot, probably at the height of its popularity. The only thing I retained is "Addicted to the knife?" "Addicted to the knife." And I hate her for it.
15:49 according to the movie, Lotti at one point cut Amber off as far as funding/appointment making goes for Zydrate and surgery cuz she was going too far to the point where if she got another surgery it wouldn’t heal right and would be unnatural unintentionally. That’s why her face fell off on stage.
As odd the story and pacing is, I still love every bit of the musical and its gothic aesthetic tale.
I still think that Nathan being truly, madly, convinced that Shiloh needs the medicine when she in fact doesn't, and the meds being dangerous to her healthy body is a better way to include that plot point, should that be non negotiable
Had to comment after the sweet Santa Ana Winds clip. Good work!!
I remember during my own classical music training someone said how operas had inherently weird plots full of holes that didn't hold up to literally scrutiny, and that during that classical period of opera people didn't attend because they wanted a complex wholesome story (that's what plays were for) but rather they attended for the spectacle and the magic of the theater
So within this context to say Repo! has an incoherent plot may not be the best criticism...
Now with that said asking if the spectacle and music holds up is perhaps a better question
(Ironically this seems to be the problem ppl mention about the Cats movie, the original stage musical was supposed to be a magical spectacle that gets lost in a cgi movie lol)
❤❤❤
I agree with this 100%. Repo isn't something you're supposed to watch and care about plot holes or meaning inconsistencies because that's not the point of it. It'd be like asking why are there aliens in rocky horror picture show or deconstructing your perceived political meaning assigned to Rocky building a beautiful man monster
@@Alishmcmalissh YES! THANK you!
I don’t agree. If Repo wanted to have the reputation of spectacle over story, it would be story light in the same way Cats is. It isn’t. It’s extremely story heavy and if you can’t follow the film that’s not the fault of the viewer.
@@jeniferjoseph9200 But it is ALWAYS the fault of the creators (director, writer, producers, etc) when a member of the audience doesn't understand or can't follow a film? REPO! is an extremely simple story to follow - its character are charicatures, sure, but their motivations and roles are easy to comprehend.
I've watched countless films or theatrical plays/musicals/operas where a majority of the audience understands what's going one but a minor few will not - despite the simplicity of complexity of the story being told.
@@jeniferjoseph9200 I was a kid when I first saw Repo and I followed the story just fine. There are holes and the characters are not exactly complex.
But the world created was far more interesting to me. And it did largely remind me of shows like Buffy and yes even Rock Horror. The story is secondary. I like it fine but I was more interested in the performances and music.
Also Sarah Brightman was just incredible. Woman must age backwards lol
Oh noooo I'm so sad! I've loved Repo! since high school (it got me right in the middle of my Hot Topic phase.) I rewatched it recently and had so much fun. It's always such a bummer to learn that someone involved in art you enjoy isn't a good person. My policy of presuming all male celebrities to be shitty till proven otherwise seems to continue to hold up.
One of the reason I don’t care about the lives of most celebrities of various levels.
If they turn out to be a shitty person you can’t be shattered by the truth.
Remember you can separate the art from the douchebag artist. Most everything we like has someone behind it we don't agree with. If you let it ruin everything, you'll have no life.
Separate the art form the artist.
@@prouddegenerates9056 That's the perk of being a fully conscious adult, sadly a lot nowadays find that nigh impossible.
@@prouddegenerates9056 depends on the Artist. Artist is a bit creepy or has some politics i dont Like... I dont Care, i can still enjoy the movie
If you have someone Like Polanski, who is still paraded around in my home country because "uwu His movies are nice" (and by that i mean Walking free and getting Awards and Holding speeches) when He really should be in jail in the US.... Slightly different ball game.
16:10 I don't think pavi does actual transplants. Amber goes through the surgery, pavi just nails it to his face. The rest of the points stand tho
Yeah, I'm pretty sure he just wears the faces like masks
Ergo Proxy: The Live Action Musical