Persuasion 164 | Behind the Silver Screen, with Alissa Wilkinson

Stories are powerful vehicles for sharing values, emotions, information, and history. Everyone loves a good story! We thrive on stories great and small, from the mundane to the epic. Many of our cultural stories are passed along via the silver screen, where storytelling meets the art of presenting characters and sights and sounds in ways that affect us at our core. A good movie is a shared narrative that beckons us to partake of it together, to learn and experience something as a collective. The silver screen is both a mirror and a compass, showing us who we are and who we could be in this world that is shaped by our shared experiences. But what happens when there are some stories you do not take in with the rest of society? What happens when you are the only one who hasn’t seen the movie everyone is raving about?

In this episode of Persuasion, Erin Straza and Hannah Anderson kick off a new series titled Never Seen, exploring a collection of key movies that you might be surprised to learn have never been seen by your Persuasion hosts. To help with the series launch, Vox.com movie critic Alissa Wilkinson joins the conversation to help frame up the role movies play in our lives and the power these silver screen stories can have upon us individually and collectively. Conversation touches on the shame that comes when you’ve missed a key film, to the way our movie choices are shaped by those with power in the industry, to the way older films can make us cringe based on today’s standards for equality and tolerance. Is it possible to catch up if you’ve missed an entire era of stories? Is the life of a film critic as glamorous as it seems? Should we shame people who don’t watch the same movies we do? Listen in for dialogue on issues like these, and continue the conversation on Twitter @PersuasionCAPC or in the CAPC members-only community on Facebook.

HOSTS

Erin Straza: Web / Twitter
Hannah Anderson: Web / Twitter

PERSUASION PODCAST

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Twitter: @PersuasionCAPC
Instagram: @PersuasionCAPC
Facebook: /Persuasioncapc

Persuasion 164 Resources & Links

Alissa Wilkinson
Web: alissawilkinson.com
Twitter: @alissamarie

How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, and Politics at the End of the World, co-written with Robert Joustra

“Titanic is turning 20, but I just saw it for the first time. It blew my mind.” Vox

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Theme music by Maiden Name.