The Waves: Why Are We Obsessed With Queens?
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Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2022
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Rebecca Onion is joined by Slate contributing writer Imogen West-Knights to talk all about queens. From the daily news to Sunday nights on HBO, queens are everywhere right now. Rebecca and Imogen talk about the enduring appeal of shows like The Crown, House of the Dragon, Victoria, and more and what these representations are lacking.
In Slate Plus, is the modern iteration of Hillary Clinton still feminist?
Recommendations:
Rebecca: Dirty Dancing abortion fundraisers, like this one.
Imogen: Netflix’s Dahmer (in order to grapple with its lack of sensitivity)
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario, and Alicia Montgomery.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Waves, Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and all the queens. |
| 0:20.1 | Every episode you get a new pair of women to talk about the thing we can't get off our |
| 0:23.4 | minds. |
| 0:24.4 | Today you've got me, Rebecca Aignand, a senior editor at Slate. |
| 0:29.0 | Today, inspired by their recent death of Queen Elizabeth in Imogen's England and the |
| 0:37.2 | ongoing mess that is the queen's base show House of the Dragon, which you may or may not |
| 0:42.2 | believe is a mess, but I believe is. |
| 0:44.4 | We are talking about queens and popular culture, why we love reading and watching stories |
| 0:49.0 | about them, why those stories are so surprisingly durable, and why in the world Americans in |
| 0:55.2 | particular who created a country at one point that did not have queens in it would like |
| 1:00.3 | consuming them so much. |
| 1:02.8 | So as a reader and watcher of historical fiction and historical romance, I cannot get away |
| 1:08.6 | from queens. |
| 1:09.6 | They plagued me, I wish I could, I wish there were more stories about women who did |
| 1:14.8 | other stuff besides be born into or marry into royalty and aristocracy, but for some reasons |
| 1:22.2 | I'll hopefully pick through with Imogen on this show. |
| 1:24.8 | I find it very easy to buy into a queen show or a queen book or a queen movie thinking |
| 1:30.7 | of shows like Victoria or the tutors or rain, which is like so cheesy or the serpent queen |
| 1:36.9 | which I just started watching. |
| 1:38.4 | I love them, Imogen, why do you want to talk about this? |
| 1:42.6 | Well, I feel like I want to talk about it because to be honest living in England recently |
| 1:47.4 | it's been impossible not to think about queens because I mean, I'm laughing, RIP, given |
... |
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