In the last days of Twitter, one thing is constant: there's barely a week that goes by before someone stirs the sex scenes in movies discourse pot. It is a confusing time, augmented by both the normalization and proliferation of internet pornography, meaningful progress on conversations about sex, gender, identity and power, and a Hollywood film industry that has seemingly eliminated sexuality from a cinematic ecosystem that primarily courts comic book fans and children. Perhaps to understand the present we have to summon the past. And there's no better person to do that than Karina Longworth. But, the "You Must Remember This" host, who has guided listeners through Hollywood's first century for over eight years, is more than just a soothsayer of cinema's history.
Most articles about Longworth and her podcast start with something ethereal. They ruminate on the film historian's uncanny ability to access Hollywood's past, its specters, the things that haunt the industry, leaving orb like traces on our current entertainment landscape. Longworth has come to be known for her cinematic clairvoyance, or at least her ability to channel this on the podcast, her voice often described as dreamy. For almost a decade, she has excavated the stories of the film industry's first century, from the Manson murders to Joan Crawford, and deconstructed, demystified and reflected on the sociocultural contexts of both their time and ours. And her season on "Song of the South" examined how a film as racist as it is has stayed, even subconsciously, within the American pop cultural lexicon through re-releases and theme park rides.
