Episode recorded: November 1st, 2025 (11/01/2025)

This episode is dedicated to Scout’s grandmother Susann Tafoya (1937-2025). May she rest in peace. 

We have finally reached the season finale, so Jay and Meredith will be talking about another Lars von Trier movie to bookend the very first episode. Jay brought his former mentor at the City College of New York, Emmett Goodman, along with the past guest Scout Tafoya, who was also a cast member in Jay’s previous work The Tragic End of Rodney & Madlyn U., which also starred Meredith, as last-minute minute guests. (However, Scout was only available temporarily due to a different commitment and left in the middle of the recording).

Check out Emmett Goodman’s works: https://www.emmettgoodman.com/

Check out Scout Tafoya’s The Unloved videos on RogerEbert.com: https://www.rogerebert.com/features/the-history-of-the-unloved

And Scout’s Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/honorszombie

Together, we discussed Lars von Trier’s Dogville, a 3-hours long idiosyncratic retelling of Bertolt Brecht’s song Pirate Jenny set in an isolated American town with a very few props. We talked about the use of sexual violence as a narrative crutch, timelessness of American suburban facade , the surprisingly relevant politics regarding how the US today treats migrants and refugees, how von Trier applied Brecht’s distancing effect, how to bring it into a medium of animation through mixed-media, and Lotte Reiniger’s body of works. Jay wants an answer to the question that nobody has asked before: why there are only few animated works with a Brechtian distancing effect (Verfremdungseffekt)?

The original guest for this episode, Devon Manney, whose recent animated short The Wings was partially inspired from works of Bertolt Brecht, has backed out a day before the recording due to an emergency. That being said, Devon Manney agreed to answer some questions that Jay wanted to ask him on the show. Jay read Devon’s responses during the podcast in regards to the possibility of using Brecht’s distancing effect in animation (and why animation filmmakers don’t use it often as live-action filmmakers). 

Please check out Devon’s short The Wings: https://vimeo.com/1053227103?fl=pl&fe=sh

Movies, shorts, and tv shows we have mostly discussed during the episode (spoilers ahead):

• Dogville (2003), directed by Lars von Trier
• Irréversible (2002), directed by Gaspar Noé
• The Wings (2025), directed by Devon Manney
• My Love Affair with Marriage (2022), directed by Signe Baumane
• The Girl Without Hands (La Jeune Fille sans mains) (2016), directed by Sébastien Laudenbach
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) (1916), directed by Lotte Reiniger
• Die Nibelungen (1924), directed by Fritz Lang
• Rooty Toot Toot (1951), directed by John Hubley
• BoJack Horseman, created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
• Neon Genesis Evangelion, created by Hideaki Anno
• The works of Stan Brakhage
• The works of Robert Breer
• The works of Greg & Myles McLeod
• The works of David O’Reilly

Most of sources that I have cited:

• Khoshniat, Ahmad. “Bertolt Brecht’s Soul in the Body of Experimental Animation: Common Audiovisual Strategies between Epic Theatre and Robert Breer’s Short Animations.” AVANCA | CINEMA, no. 13 (October 30, 2022). https://doi.org/10.37390/avancacinema.2022.a369.

• Willett, J. (Ed.). (1977). Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic (13th ed.). HILL and WANG.
• Fusini, Letizia. “Cross-Cultural Encounters in World Theatre: Bertolt Brecht, the ‘Alienation’ Effect and Chinese Drama.” The Theatre Times, May 20, 2018. https://thetheatretimes.com/cross-cultural-encounters-world-theatre-bertolt-brecht-alienation-effect-chinese-drama/.

• Fox, Jesse David. “BoJack Horseman’s Raphael Bob-Waksberg on Why Puns Are like ‘math, Sex, and Comedy’ All in One.” Vulture, July 26, 2016. https://www.vulture.com/2016/07/bojack-horseman-has-so-many-puns.html.

• Rosenfield, Esther. “‘the End of Evangelion’ and Stan Brakhage.” Medium, April 4, 2019. https://medium.com/@EstherRosenfield/the-end-of-evangelion-and-stan-brakhage-e57fb668181f.
• Sergeant, Alexander. “Before Walt Disney, There Was Lotte Reiniger – the Story of the World’s First Animated Feature.” The Conversation, October 3, 2025. https://theconversation.com/before-walt-disney-there-was-lotte-reiniger-the-story-of-the-worlds-first-animated-feature-125091.
• Benjamin, W. “The Author as Producer,” (27 April 1934) collected in Understanding Brecht. Verso: 1998. pp. 85-103

Information segments narration: Dom Valentini
Audio Editor: Jay Whang