Hey Nat.

Natalie
Hey Bec.

I’m excited about today.

Rebecca
Why did we have that weird pause?

Natalie
I don’t know. Are we going to edit that out, or are we going to embrace the pause? Wasn’t that something that we were going to work on, embracing silence in our podcasts?

Rebecca
Look, I’m doing it right now. I thought you were going to embracing the moment of pause in one’s life.

Natalie
Oh, I wasn’t going that big. I’m not there yet, and actually, today is all about a little bit of smallness — like a little bit of littleness. The littleness that is… reframing the Hallmark movie experience.

Rebecca
Yes, which we think is very fun. We feel very fun right now.

Natalie
Yeah, it feels whimsical. I need a little whimsy.

Rebecca
We both spent the time to watch the Hallmark movie over the weekend — we watched The Beach House.

Natalie
Yeah. With Andie MacBowell — MacBowell, oh gosh! Andie MacDowell, who I really love, and Minka Kelly. Ok, well anyways, the whole idea behind reframing The Beach House, reframing Hallmark movies, for me, came from a desire to reframe notions of high / low art. I think that that is important to me right now for some reason, because I’ve had a bunch of students coming into the library. Our friend Tamara is the librarian. I watch her engage with the students about the different books that they want to read, and because she’s a librarian and dedicated to their literacy levels, she will buy them whatever they want. She makes it happen. A number of them have some very specific authors that they keep adamantly asking for, and a number of these writers are writing YA books that are really… I would say that somebody when I was a teenager would have said, “You can’t read that smut!” So they’re not necessarily considered quote unquote ‘highbrow’ work, and yet the kids are reading and that’s such a big win. But that’s got me thinking about…

Rebecca
Like V.C. Andrews?

Natalie
Yeah, like imagine when you used to read V.C. Andrews’s stuff, exactly.

Rebecca
Which I loved.

Natalie
Yeah, you loved it. I never got into it.

Rebecca
But I would be so embarrassed if mom…

Natalie
Had found you reading it?

Rebecca
Or she picked one up now, she’d be horrified maybe.

Natalie
Oh, isn’t that interesting? But yet you also loved reading Little House on the Prairie stuff — you were really into those Christian pioneer novels. And now we problematize some of those for lots of reasons, but there’s just something so interestingly in opposition. Neither of those novel sets would have been considered quote unquote ‘highbrow’ literature, right? I think that I just am wanting to…

Rebecca
Like Dostoevsky, that would be an example. You would call that…?

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
Anything by Dostoevsky…

Natalie
Gets to be elevated to highbrow literature. Even just the use of high and low creates not just a binary between the one and the others, this or that. It’s about hierarchies. I feel like I am at a place in my adult years where I would like to get rid of that, because I think that whether it’s reading, or writing, or the art that we see in galleries, or just in the world (like on our walks daily in the neighbourhood), I feel like there’s something about getting rid of those hierarchies and meeting the art where the art meets us. That’s something I think I’d like to consider, so I want to consider that with a Hallmark movie.

Rebecca
Ok, so we watched The Beach House, because you suggested it and I said sure. The plot is: “Caretta Rutledge, a woman who's tried to move beyond a difficult past but is forced to grapple with history head-on when she returns to fix the family beach house. During one devastating storm, Cara and her mother save hundreds of sea turtles from certain death and learn some of life’s real truths in the process.”

Natalie
Now, you got that summary from somewhere.

Rebecca
From Wikipedia.

Natalie
But what’s so interesting is that that summary doesn’t actually read to me as what I took from this watching experience.

Rebecca
Yeah, she doesn’t come home to save the house, does she?

Natalie
She talks a lot about how the house is looking a little worn down, but I think the only thing she saves is, like, one pergola. In fact, it might have just been the swing on the pergola.

Rebecca
Well, I guess that’s where they got it from.

Natalie
Mm-hmm, and I don’t remember her saving any sea turtles. Her mom did, but she didn’t.

Rebecca
She did. Remember when they joined hands, and encouraged them back towards the water?

Natalie
Right, ok, so there was some of that there.

Rebecca
Yes, I remember that important moment.

Natalie
Ok, so you would like to get rid of the binary of high and lowbrow.

Rebecca
Yeah, and even just the language itself.

Natalie
I really just think that the value-laden language is… I don’t know that that’s helping me.

Rebecca
One time you were feeling sensitive because — remember, we got into this little argument in LA because you thought I was saying something derogatory about video games?

Natalie
Yes. Right, I did.

Rebecca
We seemed to be having a highbrow / lowbrow conversation.

Natalie
Inadvertently, yeah.

Rebecca
We were being very not direct. But I did like the beach house. You kind of liked it, right?

Natalie
Yeah, I ended up kind of liking it. I did, by the way, my rebounders for the whole film — so I bounced for 7000 bounces through that hour and 30 minutes of Hallmark movery, and it was great.

Rebecca
Nice. I actually really liked that it was only an hour and a half. It was nice and tight. I appreciated the simplicity of the journey. I knew I wasn’t going to be watching any hard parts.

Natalie
Totally.

Rebecca
Like when Andie MacBowell, when she dies…

Natalie
It was like the way I want to die.

Rebecca
She just passes into a warm light.

Natalie
Hug — literally, she passes into the hug of the man on the beach that she wants to be with, and the picture of him drops from her hand. I want to go that way.

Rebecca
That was just the most gentlest of deaths.

Natalie
It was such a gentle exit.

Rebecca
Ok, so what I would find interesting about watching more of these movies is just to see how writers work within the structure, and the tropes that they’re supposed to use.

Natalie
Yeah, because it’s definitely a structure. I mean, you and I, in preparation for the Hallmark film that we’re writing — spoiler (I’m going to just keep saying that, because now it is that).

Rebecca
We have a duty now, Nat, to finish it and to share it with our audience.

Natalie
But I had this teacher in grade 11, who I had a super-intellectual crush on, and I’ve talked about him, I swear, on one of our other episodes. Mr. Eckland was his name. It was an anth-psych-soc class, and I remember him describing the formulaic nature of Harlequin romance novels. I am sort of equating Harlequin romance novels and Hallmark films because both of them have very formulaic structures to them. When he was talking about this with the group, he was talking about sociological patterns and tendencies in people, and that we are developed to, as human beings, we appreciate systems and structures. Fans of Harlequin novels will get really upset if somebody tries to present a Harlequin novel that goes a different route. It’s like there’s a structure to it, and if you don’t go with that structure, that book’s not going to work. It’s not going to sell, because the fans can see through it so quickly.

I think the same with the Hallmark structure — and we looked it up, right? I think we found a Reddit thread to guide us in terms of our own working of this Hallmark writing experience of our own. This film, The Beach House, really fit it, didn’t it? Like there’s the opening problem for the character, but the problem’s not so serious that things can’t still be pretty on the screen — because beauty is very much a part of this, like a very specific type of beauty, but it’s definitely supposed to be soft, light and pretty. Then there’s an initial introduction to whoever is going to be the love interest — who we know as soon as we meet this person, that person is going to be who they land with at the end. There’s such a pleasant, immediate introduction to this person, because you can say to yourself (or myself as I’m bouncing on the rebounder), “Ok, there’s the dude that she’s going to end up with. That’s the guy from One Tree Hill.” So then I said that to myself, and then I didn’t really have to worry about who was going to be some other love interest. It was going to be very linear. This was who she was going to land with. Done.

Rebecca
It’s interesting there is no conflict about who she will end up with. There is not another love interest that comes into the scene. It’s just sorting out the necessary steps with the one love interest that’s present, so there’s no competition.

Natalie
No, it was really low-stakes. It’s like a really low-stakes drama, and for me this past Saturday when I watched it in the face of my own big life changes in my own fatigue level and whatever I’m navigating right now, I did not actually want to watch anything that had any major dramatic tension. So I appreciated the seriously low stakes of what was being presented to me within the first ten minutes of this story.

Rebecca
And maybe as we get older and life gets…

Natalie
More complex?

Rebecca
I think it does. I was just talking to a friend earlier whose kids are older, and we were both navigating how you must speak about sex, kids, teens, teenagers having sex, and find your position, help your children navigate it. I was like, “Oh, that’s coming for me. That feels complicated.” That’s coming for me faster than you.

Natalie
I mean, Frankie these days, he and Clifford are playing this video game that they play together, and if some of the dinosaurs that are a part of their game want to have a baby, they have to mate. So these days, he’s been talking about mating, and then he looked at us the other day with one eyebrow cocked and went, “Or sex,” and we both went “What…?” So it meant he had heard the word somewhere more explicitly explained. So it doesn’t feel like it’s that far off, and he’s only turning eight. But yeah, you’re way more in the zone of having to have the discussions.

Rebecca
So the point being that life gets complicated. Previously, I hadn’t really considered the pure escapism and entertainment value that one can get through a Hallmark movie, or, you know, I have a really good friend who loves The Bachelor. She specifically loves the mechanics of it all.

Natalie
Because it’s so formulaic.

Rebecca
She knows the lives of the characters, or the people outside, and fitting all the pieces together. It’s not what I would normally gravitate towards — I normally gravitate towards complexity and opaque emotion. But this is another option.

Natalie
Though it is interesting, now that you bring up The Bachelor. In Bachelor nation, there has been much struggle and turmoil over the really, really apparent lack of diversity in who has been cast as leads and the stories that have played out on screen for so long. I think they might be in his season 25 or something ridiculous, and I remember watching some of those earlier seasons, like way back with… I think her name was Trisha. I have gone down that hole of looking to see if she’s still married to the firefighter, and they are, and they’ve got kids, and all the things. But I mean, I think they’ve had max two (if not three) seasons where the lead hasn’t been white. And right here in our Hallmark movie, only the best friend was a character who happened to be — and I say, “Happened to be” in quotation marks, like really heavy air quotes, because we know that this character who was black when everybody else was white set in this southern town that this was supposed to be the Hallmark film playing with their own sense of ‘diversity,’ quote unquote. Like, now they could say they’ve ticked that box. It was definitely box-ticking. So there’s beauty in the formula, I guess, but there’s also real dangers in these very specific tropes being taken up.

Isn’t there that new Amanda Parris series, isn’t it called Revenge of the Black Best Friend? She’s totally hammering in on that idea as something that’s worth being unpacked in narrative television, which is very interesting. I love it.

Rebecca
Yeah, that was weird to see that played out so starkly.

Natalie
Yeah, very much so. I don’t want us to present something like the Hallmark film or even The Bachelor — but I actually don’t watch it anymore, because I found the lack of… you know what, it wasn’t linear. Even though I understand why somebody might appreciate the puzzle-piecing of it all, because there is such a specific set of conflicts that are going to happen, and then at the end, you’ll get the bringing them together. But the reality of it being supposedly a version of ‘reality TV’ (again, heavy air quotes, because it’s very scripted), but the end result is that definitely not all the couples have stayed together. Right? When the show ends, they have After the Rose, all those kinds of episodes, and then you’re supposed to now watch these people’s lives play out on social media, and often they break up. But the beauty of the Hallmark movie is that when the story ends, I can say to myself (on my last little bounce on my rebounder), “Nope,” — what was her name? Cara?

Rebecca
Cara.

Natalie
“Cara and One Tree Hill dude are going to be together forever with the turtles, and Andie MacBowell has moved on into her heavenly stay with the man she loved, and everybody’s ok.” That is the linear storyline I think I was looking for here.

Rebecca
For everyone just to be ok.

Natalie
Yeah — and remember, we talked about transitions? There were some really big transitions that happened in this film. Like the brother, he’s a total jerk to the mom, which is supposed to be calling up images of a negative dad who now is long dead (so we don’t actually have to see the dad being bad, but we hear about it). And then all of a sudden the son shows up and hugs the mom and says, “I’m sorry,” and then everything was ok. So it went from being on the verge of abusive to… ok.

Rebecca
It’s just these straightforward emotional moments that you don’t sit in. Actually I was thinking, “Oh, if life were like that!” So you’re really seeing this ideal of everyone being able to process their emotions really efficiently.

Natalie
Or at all — I mean, some people can never get over family hurts and traumas, and maybe shouldn’t. I don’t know, I don’t know how that all works.

Rebecca
These people got over them in conversations.

Natalie
Yeah, and not even a real conversation, right? Like, that moment was a hug. They got over it with a hug. I think in my momentary watching of this little story, I kind of was ok with it, because I was like, “I don’t need to know all your episodes where you spent time with your counsellor in your therapist’s office.”

Rebecca
Well, it just seems like nobody needs therapy in this movie. Nobody is stuck enough…

Natalie
To need therapy.

Rebecca
Or you think they secretly have done it already?

Natalie
I guess that’s how I was interpreting this — the nitty gritty of having to get through those hurts in the therapist’s office, instead of making the show about the therapy office, it was just about their return to each other.

Rebecca
It’s so funny, I had this moment yesterday where I went to say hi to Violet’s teacher. She’s a woman that I know from a past life, and she’s great, and she was asking me what I do. She’s like, “You’re a writer, right? I think Violet has said.” And I just gave the weirdest answer. It just got really weird. I said, “Oh, I’ve been through a breakup and I’m working on a novel.” I think that’s what I said, and I even said to her, “I don’t think I’m selling my life,” and she’s like, “Oohh…”

Natalie
That’s great.

Rebecca
It was so weird.

Natalie
Oh, Bec.

Rebecca
So do you feel humiliated for me?

Natalie
No.

Rebecca
But I just felt like — oh, my gosh, humans, we are so weird. Why couldn’t I just speak clearly to this woman? But instead I gave the weirdest answer.

Natalie
Well, if it makes you feel better, I had a job interview yesterday, and in the midst of my job interview with a lot of people on a screen, I somehow managed to tell them that I had been taken to court. When they were asking me about my ability to budget large budgets, I was like, “I have done it very well, and it still is complicated when other people get in your way…” and then I fully overshared about having had that principal take me to court all those years ago. Even though in my head, the thing I was sharing…

Rebecca
Made a lot of sense?

Natalie
The face you just gave me was not helpful. You just looked at me agog, and that’s exactly how I felt in my own person. “You shared that?!” “Yes. I. Did.” So that highlights how complicated we all are, and you’re not alone.

Rebecca
I’m not sure what it all means. I was just responding.

Natalie
I’m teasing. It was bad — it was a bad moment for me.

Rebecca
Or not!

Natalie
It might have been fine on their end, but for me it felt gross because it felt like it was a big overshare — albeit an accurate one.

Rebecca
We need to save the overshares for here.

Natalie
I know, it’s true. Bunch them up, and then save them in a little bag in our pockets, and then pull them out when we’re on here. I think that the beauty of this show, of The Beach House, was that none of that happened.

Rebecca
No one’s putting feet in mouths.

Natalie
No, none of it.

Rebecca
It was just so clean. So clean to watch that, as opposed to dirty messy humanity. One time I watched for ten minutes the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial.

Natalie
Oh, did you?

Rebecca
Yeah, because you can watch it live.

Natalie
Yeah, it’s horrible.

Rebecca
So I spent ten minutes watching, because I don’t know who to feel bad for. I don’t really know anything particularly, but it does feel like the woman was going to get thrown under the bus here.

Natalie
I don’t think I fully care to speak, only because I know that the two of them are pretty gross in their responses to each other. But I never feel good for women in positions of relational power dynamics.

Rebecca
It seems like there’s some mental illness perhaps happening on her part, and it seems like he’s using that — the point being, it just reminded me of wow, you can have all that money, and have everything in the world, and you’re still saying these weird things. And I’m sorry that happened in your interview, Nat.

Natalie
Yeah, I’m sorry that happened with your conversation with your teacher.

Rebecca
Thank you. It was so strange. I felt like, “Wow, these many years later, and you still can’t just say clearly what you do as an artist.”

Natalie
Well, and I think that that’s because you so quickly dismissed your abilities, even though you’re like this super-accomplished artist and human and creator.

Rebecca
But that alone felt weird, because I just had to have a therapy session last week where we almost felt like we didn’t know what to talk about because we were doing so well.

Natalie
Oh, that’s wonderful. But maybe that just means…

Rebecca
That there’s something new to talk about.

Natalie
Or there’s just, you know, money to keep sharing around all the professions — like the therapists and whatever.

Rebecca
Ok, one thing is Elsie was listening to this movie with me on the bed, and she said, “Wow, that sounds like a horrible movie.”

Natalie
Ok, nice.

Rebecca
So I just wanted to say that the kids are not necessarily wanting to watch this. Is it just our age?

Natalie
Oh, I don’t know. There’s a whole Hallmark Channel. I do think that the Hallmark Channel is definitely not made for Elsie.

Rebecca
They say the appeal is actually pretty broad, that’s what they say. 18 to 49.

Natalie
I don’t blame her for thinking that it’s not great. We started the beginning of the conversation with me saying I wanted to get rid of a hierarchy in terms of highbrow / lowbrow art. The interesting thing is, Elsie, as the TikTok generation, what she likes on TikTok, I don’t actually find myself attracted to — and I think that that’s good. I don’t think that necessarily does she want me to like what she likes, because by the time I like what she likes, she’s going to have moved on to something else that she likes. But there’s something about a bit of a mainstay simple love story that this seems to fill a hole in what was my weekend, when I knew I had this interview coming up.

Rebecca
Filled a hole in your weekend, I like that.

Natalie
Yeah, maybe right?

Rebecca
It satisfied this gaping hole you knew you were going to create with the interview.

Natalie
I don’t think it was a gaping hole — just a crack. But you know what, I do think that there was something about the high / lowness of it that I wanted to end on for myself. I really think that it was pretty. There was enough aesthetic beauty, whether it was some of the scenes, whether it was just the characters themselves — like the actors playing these. I mean, I love that Andie MacDowell is in this, and just getting to continue to play this role of somebody beautiful and in love, even though her love interest is dead, because that’s what they do to older people, is they have to kill us off.

Rebecca
We’re not quite there yet, Nat.

Natalie
Getting there.

Rebecca
We get to live a little longer.

Natalie
Ok, we get more love stories. But I just think that there’s something in recognizing that we all have a need for certain kinds of art at certain times. And that, I think, is a better way of looking at it for myself than simply saying ‘high’ or ‘low.’ Certain art fill certain holes at different times.

Rebecca
And that’s ok.

Natalie
In fact, healthy, maybe. Right? If I only ever wanted to watch super sad complicated therapy stories, that might also say something about what’s going on in my head, and so maybe it’s good to shake it up a bit.

Rebecca
Yeah. I like the idea of the structure and the boundaries created by that movie (just going back to the structure for a second), and how that makes so much sense to you. Because even when I said, “Do you want to write a Hallmark movie?” that was a pretty easy sell with you.

Natalie
Right, because it was the formula.

Rebecca
You’re like, “Structure? I love structure.”

Natalie
It’s true. That’s why I love essays, right? I can fill in the structures.

Rebecca
And it just reminded me about this workshop I took with the Toronto author Kyo Maclear. Her way into writing children’s books is to create a boundary. So she creates a different boundary for each book. One book might be, “I’m just going to write it in dialogue,” or, “My characters are only going to be animals.” I just find that interesting.

Natalie
That’s fascinating.

Rebecca
Yeah. She uses the idea of boundary.

Natalie
She and I spent time together in a course together, and I remember listening to her speak and being like, “I just want to keep listening to her voice.”

Rebecca
She does have a beautiful voice.

Natalie
She has a lovely speaking voice. But something that I thought was interesting the first time you shared this, that now it’s prompted me to say again, is that I wonder how she got to creating that boundary in the first place. That for this book, this is the boundary I’m going to choose. Does she have a list of boundaries?

Rebecca
She did have a list.

Natalie
So that’s interesting, right? How do you decide, “This is the one that I’m going to attach to this writing of this story?”

Rebecca
Well, that’s probably her excellent artistry.

Natalie
Probably, and so I think that there must be something differently artistic in the craft of the formulaic plotline. How do you find artistry in something that has already been crafted?

Rebecca
You don’t get to pick the boundary.

Natalie
You don’t get to pick the boundary, so now you have to somehow work within that boundary that’s already been set by someone else for you.

Rebecca
We get to try.

Natalie
We’re holding hands, people. We are trying. I like it.

Rebecca
Ok, I would like to tell you a couple lines. Just receive them. So this is a line from the movie, ok?

Natalie
Ok.

Rebecca
“This isn’t my home, just a place I spent a few summers.” That was a devastating line in the film.

Natalie
Yeah, that was fully the moment of real complication between the two lovers.

Rebecca
He took it real hard.

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
Did you find he took it surprisingly hard? Were you like, “Is that the worst you got?”

Natalie
Well, I felt like this is the low point, which means it’s only up from here. That’s what I knew. According to the formula, I was like, “Ok, we’re done with the low.” So I was ok with it.

Rebecca
Ok, and then this one: “All those years I was running toward, I think I was running away.”

Natalie
I like running metaphors. That’s good.

Rebecca
Ok, and the last one is: “I’ve made a million mistakes.”

Natalie
Relatable. Hashtag relatable.

Rebecca
Ok, lastly, the one scene that did bother me — I’m surprised you haven’t brought it up, Nat, but I will have to now — is the storm scene with the pregnant girl freaking out, and then when she shows up after the storm back at Andie MacDowell and Caretta’s (I like how one of them has a character name and one of them has the actor’s name), she shows up with her baby and they just go, “Cool.”

Natalie
You know, I was fully feeling that. I was like, “Oh my gosh, are we going to belabour the labour?” Like, is this going to be a whole thing?

Rebecca
So once again, you were like, “We just skipped a thousand steps, and I like that.”

Natalie
Yeah, and dude from One Tree Hill rescued her in the rain and I was so relieved because I was like, “How is she going to get home? Oh, good. Done.”

Rebecca
She went through labour. It happened the day before. She’s standing there like a dean at the park.

Natalie
And he’s demonstrated his ability to be a stick-to-it man — you know, caring for a woman who he’s not even in a relationship with her. I think it bodes well for Caretta and the turtles.

Rebecca
When she’s knocked up, it’s all going to be ok.

Natalie
Sets the scene, in my mind, for what’s to come — because it’s going to be a happily-ever-after ending. It’s not going to be The Bachelor potential breakup.

Rebecca
No, there’s no breakup on Coretta’s horizon.

Natalie
No, they’re in.

Rebecca
All right. Well, will you summarize for everyone what you just got from this?

Natalie
I think that for me, I have appreciated getting to talk with you about a movie that in my olden days, I would not have called a ‘film.’ I would have called this a ‘flick,’ and then I would have said other films that might be labeled highbrow. I think I can now say I can get rid of those terms as value-laden terms and land on the beauty of accepting different forms and iterations of art at different times to fill different holes in my heart. And I think that is really useful and good. I still think it’s ok to problematize aspects of these formulaic pieces, because I don’t think that it’s about just accepting that really simplistic beauty, as if it’s the only one. I think that there’s a time and a place.

Rebecca
And this doesn’t mean that you won’t watch more complex films with me at some point.

Natalie
No, gosh no.

Rebecca
At the farm, when people are upstairs watching a movie like that one with Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo.

Natalie
Oh, that one wasn’t great.

Rebecca
That was a terrible movie.

Natalie
But that was not a Hallmark movie.

Rebecca
There was no formula. That was just bad. One time when I grab your hand and I’m like, “You have to come sit on this bed with me, and we’re watching something slow and sad,” you will do that?

Natalie
Depending on what I’ve had to eat or drink or snack on that evening, I might say, “Yes. Take me to the sad film. I can handle it today.”

Rebecca
“Take me to the sad film.” Ok, good to know that you’ll be there for me.

Natalie
I love you, Becca. I will always be there for you. No matter how many times we have awkward conversations with others, we can always come back to ourselves. To each other here, to the Sister On! community.

Rebecca
We’re going to press pause, and then we’re going to have a big ol’ hug.

Natalie
I love you.

Rebecca
Love you. Bye.

Natalie
Bye.

Rebecca
Oh yes, some house business. Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is actually really important. Consider a donation on Patreon if these reframing conversations have supported you or someone you know. And please sign up for our Sister On! newsletter which we send out every Friday. It comes with an original recipe from Nat which, I tell you, her recipes are really good. All the links are in our show notes. Love, Sister On!