Tis the Hallmark Season
The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 903 Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, host of Slate’s ICYMI podcast Rachelle Hampton is joined by Vulture’s Rebecca Alter to talk all about those cheesy holiday movies we can’t escape this time of year. They dig into what makes a Hallmark Holiday Movie™ (inns and men who have probably been to therapy are a must), how the movies have evolved over the years and whether their attempts at diversity are just forcing other cultures to conform to their model. Plus, all the holiday vibes.
In Slate Plus: Rebecca talks about her time on a Hallmark movie set, which she wrote about for Vulture.
Recommendations:
Rachelle: The Holiday Calendar on Netflix and Lifetime’s The Spirit of Christmas.
Rebecca: Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square on Netflix and Showtime’s Matt Rogers: Have You Heard of Christmas.
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by 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. Welcome to the Wave Slate's Podcasts about Gender, Feminism and the economics of running a business |
| 0:20.4 | in a small picturesque town. |
| 0:23.1 | Every episode you get a new pair of women |
| 0:25.2 | to talk about the things we can't get off our minds. |
| 0:27.6 | And today, you've got me, Rachel Hampton, |
| 0:30.3 | the host of Slate's Internet Culture Podcast in case you missed it. |
| 0:33.6 | And me Rebecca Alter, a writer about all things pop culture at vulture.com. |
| 0:39.7 | As you might have been able to tell from the intro. Today we are talking about the |
| 0:44.2 | Hallmark Holiday Movie Industrial Complex. Y'all know the movies I'm talking about |
| 0:49.5 | where an overworked and under-sexed career woman has to go to a small town for the |
| 0:55.5 | holidays where she meets the owner of some local business and discovers a true |
| 0:59.7 | meaning of Christmas. Two souls will have to work together to discover the spirit of the season. |
| 1:06.0 | Merry Christmas. |
| 1:07.0 | A Hallmark Channel Original Movie, The Christmas Spirit, and all new premiere. Sunday, December 1st. The last time I was on the ways I was talking about romance novels so it's kind of easy to imagine why I love these movies. |
| 1:21.0 | There's just something so satisfying |
| 1:23.6 | and also funny about the way these movies are all the same |
| 1:27.1 | but with different kind of window dressings. |
| 1:29.6 | But Rebecca, why did you want to talk about this? |
| 1:31.8 | I want to talk about this because I just got cable for the first time since I moved |
| 1:36.9 | into my own apartment in my adult life and between Thanksgiving and Christmas we are in the corridor where these movies are inescapable. |
| 1:47.0 | And what I find so fascinating about them, I've been watching them and enjoying them for a while, is that all these small towns that you mentioned that they take place in, those small towns exist in the uncanny valley. |
| 2:02.5 | There is something so, I guess, |
... |
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