Transcript - BSFC #32: Kristy and the Secret of Susan

[00:00:00] Brooke: Welcome to the Baby-sitters Fight Club, where the first rule is, you don't talk about Fight Club. Instead, you talk about the battle spot and the lessons learned in the Baby-sitters Club series of books by Ann M. Martin. I'm Brooke Suchomel, an editor who's revisiting these books after 30 years.

[00:00:24] Kaykay: And I'm Kaykay Brady. I'm a therapist and I'm new to the books.

[00:00:28] Brooke: And this week we are taking you back to March 1990, where Janet Jackson took over with "Escapade," the second of four number ones from Rhythm Nation 1814, the album. I was putting the playlist for this episode together and I just went on a kick. I'm like, I'm just going to listen to this whole album just because it's been, you know, it's been a while since I sat down and actually listened to the album in full, and God damn it, that album rips.

The album fucking rips, dude. It's so good. I think it's like the only album that has number one songs in three different years. So she had "Miss You Much" in 1989. That was the first single from it. And then she had "Escapade" and "Black Cat," which is also a severely underrated song. That song is so good.

[00:01:18] Kaykay: "Black cat, nah tha shah dah lah," did I get that right?

[00:01:23] Brooke: Yes, you did. And she wrote that. It's like the only song on her album that she wrote the whole thing herself. And it's so good.

[00:01:31] Kaykay: I guess I didn't realize all those songs were from the same album.

[00:01:35] Brooke: Yeah. And then she had a number one with "Love Will Never Do Without You." Remember, that was the like black and white video on the beach where she's dancing.

[00:01:42] Kaykay: Oh, "Cause love will never do without you."

[00:01:45] Brooke: Yes. That was also Rhythm Nation. She had eight singles from that album. It's so fucking good. And one thing that I discovered when I was, when I was looking into it, because I, you know, went down a Rhythm Nation wormhole. So the album is called Rhythm Nation, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814. I've always been kind of like, I wonder where that came from, but never looked into it.

Do you know where that comes from? Why 1814?

[00:02:10] Kaykay: Nope.

[00:02:11] Brooke: Okay. This is the best fucking story. So when she was writing Rhythm Nation, she was like, this song should be the National Anthem for the 1990s. The record company wanted it to be a concept album called Scandal. They wanted it to be like, just talk about your family, capitalizing on like all of the drama with the Jackson family.

And she flipped the fucking script. And she was like, no, I'm actually going to make a really political album about like what she sees going on in the world. So she's like, okay, well, Rhythm Nation. This is like the National Anthem for the nineties. When was the "Star Spangled Banner" written? It was written in 1814. 1814 comes from, it's a hint at like the "Star Spangled Banner."

And it's all coded because her record company was like, don't say it's political. And you can't listen to the album and miss the political. It's very much in your face.

[00:03:09] Kaykay: But they were doing the best they could to keep it in the box.

[00:03:12] Brooke: Yeah. I love that she basically put like a code in the title. I was looking at tabloids and stuff from that time.

And all of these journalists were asking her, "What does 1814 mean?" And so she would say, "Oh, this is what it means, but my record company doesn't want me to talk about that." So fucking brilliant. Goddamn, Janet Jackson rules.

[00:03:33] Kaykay: Janet Jackson does rule. Did you see that new documentary?

[00:03:37] Brooke: I haven't seen it yet. I know I need to. Have you?

[00:03:39] Kaykay: Yeah. A friend of mine was saying, you know, you never hear Janet Jackson speak. And so getting a whole documentary of Janet Jackson's words, her voice, her perspectives is infinitely interesting, because you really don't hear Janet speak all that much. She really kind of speaks through her music.

[00:03:55] Brooke: She totally does. And I think that, you know, she gets held up, I think in a way of like, she's such a good dancer. I don't know if she really gets her flowers as a songwriter because she's really fucking good.

[00:04:06] Kaykay: Yeah, I agree with that.

[00:04:07] Brooke: She's really excellent. So obviously "Escapade" is going to be on the playlist for this month, but I would encourage you to go back and listen to Rhythm Nation again in full, because...

[00:04:18] Kaykay: It slaps.

[00:04:19] Brooke: It slaps so hard. Another song that slaps hard that was the other number one from March 1990 was "Black Velvet" by Alannah Myles.

[00:04:28] Kaykay: Oh, of course. "Black velvet and that little boy smile." I remember the bass line. "Bum, bum bum, bum bum..."

[00:04:36] Brooke: It can be the best and also the worst karaoke song. You know what I mean? You gotta get "Black Velvet" in the right hands, or in the exact wrong hands.

[00:04:45] Kaykay: In the worst hands.

[00:04:46] Brooke: Right. You don't want mediocre "Black Velvet."

[00:04:48] Kaykay: There's no middle ground in "Black Velvet." You either have to be the worst singer in the history of the world or, you know, Patsy Cline basically.

[00:04:55] Brooke: Yeah. You got to give it your all either way. Yeah, you just got to lean into "Black Velvet." So that will also be on the playlist for this month, as well as a song that didn't hit number one, but did make the top 10. A song I loved so much, Biz Markie's "Just a Friend."

[00:05:11] Kaykay: Yeah!

[00:05:12] Brooke: That hit the top 10 in March 1990.

[00:05:15] Kaykay: That song slaps.

[00:05:17] Brooke: Oh, that song slaps so hard. Yeah, there were a lot of songs that slapped. March 1990, it was a month of slaps.

[00:05:23] Kaykay: It was a slappy time. It was a slappy time.

[00:05:28] Brooke: A song that doesn't slap by any stretch of the imagination, but has a video that slaps, in like, going the opposite direction of good for "Black Velvet." For like, just lean into terrible. I'm going to share this video with you, Kaykay.

[00:05:43] Kaykay: Oh shit. Yes.

[00:05:44] Brooke: It's a video that's going to be on our video playlist, and the song will be on the playlist. Apologies for putting the song on there, but like, y'all have to see this, because it's a song called "Hide and Seek," by a band named Pajama Party. And the video came out in 1989, but it hit its peak on the charts.

[00:06:05] Kaykay: I'm so frightened about what I'm about to see. There's just so many creepy places this could go.

[00:06:13] Brooke: There's also so many awesome places this could go.

[00:06:16] Kaykay: Oh, great.

[00:06:18] Brooke: I'm going to share this with you, Kaykay. If this is making it to the final cut of the episode, this is where I will do a little transition directing all of you to check out the video in the show notes. You can pause if you need to, then come back and get Kaykay's reaction, because holy shit, this is fucking delightful.

It's the most 1989 ass video I've ever seen in my life. It's a time capsule of 1989, and I'm gonna share it with you.

[00:06:48] Kaykay: Is this Pee-wee's Playhouse? This looks like Pee-wee's Playhouse. There's the biggest hair bow I've ever seen in my life.

[00:06:57] Brooke: Oh, just you wait on the hair front. This video was filmed in a Glamour Shots.

[00:07:02] Kaykay: Wow!

[00:07:04] Brooke: How'd you feel about that Kaykay? What was that experience like for you?

[00:07:09] Kaykay: It was like I snorted a Pixy Stick, and then it was like, I was like tripping. It was like what you see and experience right before you fall into a sobbing ball and crash. Wow! Well, it also seemed like somebody just graduated from film school and was just like so excited to try every video trope that's ever been created and like jam it into two minutes.

[00:07:44] Brooke: Yeah. So what did they have in their like, inspiration reel? They had Pee-wee's Playhouse, obviously.

[00:07:50] Kaykay: "Sledgehammer."

[00:07:51] Brooke: They had "Sledgehammer" from Peter Gabriel.

[00:07:53] Kaykay: All the Taylor Dayne.

[00:07:55] Brooke: Taylor Dayne, the concert scene from Teen Witch. They had your mom's Glamour Shots book. Like, their mom got Glamour Shots, and they just had that as their inspiration. It's a fucking delight is what I'm saying.

[00:08:11] Kaykay: It definitely has a Teen Witch flavor. I mean the hair, the outfits, ah. The woman with the black hair, how she has sorta like a bang swoop.

[00:08:21] Brooke: Oh yeah.

[00:08:22] Kaykay: A long bang swoop. I remember how difficult it was to get that bang swoop.

[00:08:26] Brooke: Did you have a bang swoop?

[00:08:27] Kaykay: At least for me. I tried, this was right before I went to private school where you couldn't do things like that.

[00:08:32] Brooke: Oh my God. I can imagine you strolling in, girl from the Bronx with your bang swoop at the private school.

[00:08:38] Kaykay: Oh shit, I had a bang swoop and a jean skirt on. People were talking about my jean skirt for like years.

[00:08:44] Brooke: Yes!

[00:08:44] Kaykay: "Oh, the girl from public school in the jean skirt?"

[00:08:47] Brooke: Was the jean skirt like a scandal?

[00:08:49] Kaykay: Yes. I mean, first of all, you weren't allowed to wear any denim whatsoever. There was a uniform. But you know, number one, I probably didn't have the uniform yet. And my mom didn't realize that. Cause she was like a trashy lady from the Bronx, she didn't realize I couldn't wear jeans. So it was a scandal.

[00:09:04] Brooke: So you stroll in to preppy school looking like one of the members of the Pajama Party. God damn, that makes me happy.

[00:09:13] Kaykay: And like threatening people with physical violence if they tried to pick on me. They did not know what was rolling in.

[00:09:18] Brooke: That's how you make friends at private school.

[00:09:21] Kaykay: That's how you become a legend. I don't know about friends.

[00:09:25] Brooke: Well, it's basically, I mean, not to, not to spoil the book talk, but you know, it is kind of how one of the Hobarts makes friends, so...

[00:09:33] Kaykay: Yeah.

[00:09:33] Brooke: You know, taking a page from your book.

[00:09:34] Kaykay: Ugh, this book!

[00:09:37] Brooke: Yeah. Uh, we'll get into that real quick. Um, so before we do, movies!

[00:09:46] Kaykay: Are we going to do the whole podcast on Pajama Party, because the book's too hard to do? That's what I'd prefer.

[00:09:55] Brooke: Well, before we do that, we have to talk about the number ones. So we've got some shit to unpack with number one movies as well. So, number ones at the box office in March of 1990, Hunt for Red October, dude military stuff, whatever.

[00:10:10] Kaykay: Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin.

[00:10:13] Brooke: Pretty Woman also came out, was number one. What are your thoughts, when you think of Pretty Woman, what's your gut reaction? Do you have one?

[00:10:22] Kaykay: Eh, straight people movie.

[00:10:24] Brooke: You're like, not for me.

[00:10:25] Kaykay: Yeah, that's exactly right. Not for me, that's what I feel like.

[00:10:28] Brooke: In my head, what might've been for you was the original script.

[00:10:32] Kaykay: Ooh.

[00:10:34] Brooke: Because it was originally a gritty drama about prostitution in Los Angeles.

[00:10:40] Kaykay: Would've been way better.

[00:10:42] Brooke: Julia's character had a coke addiction and was eventually kicked out of Richard Gere's car. Like, he kicked her out of his vehicle. And then she takes the money that she got from him for that week and takes her roommate on a bus trip to Disneyland at the end. And just stares ahead with a dead expression. And that's how the movie ends.

[00:11:02] Kaykay: Wow.

[00:11:03] Brooke: Kind of like The Graduate ending, you know? Where you're like, oh fuck.

[00:11:07] Kaykay: That sounds amazing.

[00:11:09] Brooke: See, that is a movie that I would be like into. Like, okay, let's, let's take a real look at this shit. Not what happens when Disney buys your script.

[00:11:22] Kaykay: Is that what happened?

[00:11:23] Brooke: Yeah. Yeah, so Disney ended up buying it because they had had such success with Beaches. And so they were like, oh, with Beaches, we need to have another drama. And so they bought this screenplay that's like a dark gritty tale that ends with like a whole thing about like the myth of Disneyland, right? And instead they're like, we're going to turn this-

[00:11:49] Kaykay: The heartless eye of capitalism.

[00:11:51] Brooke: Yeah. Instead they turn it into a fairy tale. Like literally, that's what they wanted it to turn into, was a fairy tale. Which you kind of get at the end. And I'm sorry, there's nothing fairytale about Pretty Woman. There's nothing romantic about this.

There's a reason there isn't a Pretty Woman 2. And that's because Pretty Woman 2 would eventually be an episode of Dateline. I don't know which one of them survived, which one is dead, but one of them survived and one of them is dead.

[00:12:23] Kaykay: Oh I think you know.

[00:12:24] Brooke: I don't know, it could go either way. So that's how Pretty Woman would really play out in reality.

[00:12:31] Kaykay: That is so interesting.

[00:12:33] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:12:34] Kaykay: Somebody revive this, please. Netflix?

[00:12:37] Brooke: Everything's getting rebooted, right? So like, let's get that dark gritty reboot for Pretty Woman, and it's just the original screenplay. I'm into that.

[00:12:46] Kaykay: I'm into it.

[00:12:47] Brooke: But then we wouldn't get "It Must Have Been Love."

[00:12:50] Kaykay: I did have that soundtrack. "Wild women do, and they don't regret it."

[00:12:56] Brooke: I don't know if you saw my eyes light up, but that's on the playlist this month. That's on this month's playlist, yep. That song is one of the redeeming qualities of Pretty Woman. And then on TV, we had a bunch of series that ended in March 1990, including The Bradys. Started, uh, in February of 1990, ended in March 1990. For some reason, a gritty reboot of The Brady Bunch with a laugh track didn't really take off. Who knew?

[00:13:25] Kaykay: Go figure.

[00:13:26] Brooke: Yeah. So even though it was marketed hard, I watched an episode of Sally Jessy Raphael that you can find on YouTube, where she is live from Fort Lauderdale, and everyone cheers for Fort Lauderdale. And then she brings on the cast of The Bradys and, uh, it's very 1990. So shortly after that episode of Sally Jessy Raphael aired, it was taken off of TV.

[00:13:51] Kaykay: That was the final nail in the coffin.

[00:13:52] Brooke: It was the nail in the coffin of The Bradys.

[00:13:54] Kaykay: America could not, you know, they could not handle that.

[00:13:56] Brooke: No, no, but fortunately we have the, uh, the theme song that lives on.

[00:14:00] Kaykay: "That's how the Brady bunch became the Bradys."

[00:14:05] Brooke: It's so good.

[00:14:06] Kaykay: This episode is pretty much half me singing. I hope, uh, I hope everybody's down for this adventure.

[00:14:12] Brooke: We need to have another soundtrack and it's just you singing.

[00:14:15] Kaykay: There's an amazing album called Downloading the Repertoire. And it's just this like 70 year old guy singing every song that he knows. And it's just, it just doesn't stop. It goes for like two hours, like, "Camptown ladies sing this song, do dah, do dah. Camptown rah dah see dah sah. Way down upon the Swanee River!" So it's going to be like that, but just me.

[00:14:37] Brooke: For two hours. Just riffing.

[00:14:40] Kaykay: Yeah. This is extra special podcast content. Bonus content.

[00:14:44] Brooke: Like, we make sure that you're wearing an adult diaper. Somebody brings you beverages like, we gotta keep this going. You're hungry, you got a hand signal, somebody goes and gets it for you. Cause you can't stop. It's like a dance marathon.

[00:14:58] Kaykay: Genius.

[00:14:59] Brooke: I'm excited for that. Maybe you can work in, along with The Bradys, you could work in the original theme for the Baby-sitters Club show on HBO as well, which was a delight. "Say hello to your friends," because-

[00:15:12] Kaykay: Oh, you know it. I could fit that in there.

[00:15:14] Brooke: It's really good. But the HBO show ended in March 1990. And on that note, we were so sad to find out that the Baby-sitters Club Netflix show did not get renewed.

[00:15:27] Kaykay: Boo!

[00:15:27] Brooke: A hearty "what the fuck" to Netflix, because how are you going to cancel a show that's a hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes? Both seasons. I.P. gold mine. And there's no way that that show is nearly as expensive to film as a lot of other stuff that they're making. So we would just like to send our ire to Netflix.

[00:15:48] Kaykay: They're doing everything in Canada.

[00:15:50] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:15:50] Kaykay: Come on, how much can that cost?

[00:15:52] Brooke: Justice for the Baby-sitters Club, is what we're saying.

[00:15:55] Kaykay: I am very disappointed at that. So we really have to live it up this summer when we do our summer vacation.

[00:16:02] Brooke: Yes. And cross our fingers that some other enterprising streaming service will pick up.

[00:16:08] Kaykay: Picks it up.

[00:16:09] Brooke: Give us a third season, because dammit, I think that we deserve it.

[00:16:14] Kaykay: We should petition WOW! Do you think WOW! would pick it up?.

[00:16:18] Brooke: Yeah, and then they can actually like go really hard on Kristy's queer, and that's cool! Come on!

[00:16:25] Kaykay: You can just go so far in any direction that they want.

[00:16:28] Brooke: Yeah. Oh, that would be delightful.

[00:16:29] Kaykay: We could get the Baby-sitters Club we all need and deserve.

[00:16:32] Brooke: You know, if we do get that third season, hopefully there will be a revisiting, you know, just as they've kind of refreshed the way that they approached topics in the modern version.

Hopefully this book that we're about to discuss will be another one that is given a second look and modernized and refreshed and updated to take away some of the problematic shit. Because the 32nd Baby-sitters Club book, Kristy and the Secret of Susan-

[00:16:59] Kaykay: You have the saddest- your face. It's like a very pained and sad smile Brooke is bringing to the table, which is exactly how I felt reading the entire time.

[00:17:12] Brooke: This is a very March 1990 book. This is a book that is very much of its time, in good and bad ways. So it's time for some back cover copy. And I quote, "Kristy's newest babysitting charge is Susan Felder, who goes away to a special school. Susan isn't like most kids. While she can play the piano and sing beautifully, she can't talk to anyone.

Susan is autistic. She lives locked inside her own secret world. Kristy thinks it's unfair that Susan has to be sent off to school and is treated differently from everyone else. But Kristy's going to try to change that by showing everyone that Susan's a regular kid too. And then maybe Kristy's new friend can stay in Stoneybrook for good." End quote.

So Kaykay, we both have pained looks on our faces right now. The back cover copy seems to, you know, the fact that- we said in our last episode, the fact that like, Ann M. even uses the word autistic...

[00:18:13] Kaykay: Is pretty groundbreaking.

[00:18:14] Brooke: Was pretty- yeah. Yeah, I mean, this was not a word that you heard super often in this time, but I think it's important to note that this is March 1990. The biggest movie from a box office standpoint, and also from like an Oscar standpoint, in 1989 was Rain Man. So Rain Man was the movie with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman where Dustin Hoffman plays an autistic, you know, savant, um, who displays a lot of the similar qualities that we see Susan display in this.

Just like Dustin Hoffman's character is very fixated on dates can like rattle off any day of the week. Like give him a date and he could tell you what day of the week it was. You see that exact thing with Susan. And then he's very big on numbers, Susan's very like adept at playing piano by ear and memorizing music, et cetera. Ann M. is picking up on a thread that was in pop culture at the time, but it was new, right? Like, people didn't really know know much about it.

[00:19:17] Kaykay: Yeah, thanks for that context. I didn't even put that together. I guess I thought Rain Man was a couple of years later, but it's really helpful to know that it was the year before this book came out.

[00:19:26] Brooke: Yeah. So it came out in December of 1988, and then it was the biggest grossing movie of 1989. Biggest movie at the box office.

So this was something that was being discussed. But like, more in the context of like, okay, what are, what are we learning about this movie? And again, it was like this thing of autistic people have like special gifts, you know?

[00:19:46] Kaykay: Right. Kind of like the magical disabled person trope.

[00:19:50] Brooke: Yeah. Extremely othered. Kind of like a topic of fascination of there, which is what you see in this, too. Susan is a topic of fascination, but not from a like, "Oh, this is so cool." But like, "This is so weird." Like, it's fascinating, but also disturbing in a way to the kids.

[00:20:11] Kaykay: Yeah, and also, this was a book where she felt very othered, even from the narrator.

[00:20:18] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:20:19] Kaykay: Which, usually I feel like the narrator is actually very good with sort of attuning with whoever's being othered and understanding who's ever being othered. And being very sort of like gentle with whoever's being othered. And then the rest of the world is kind of othering them in this book. It felt like the narrator too, who is Kristy, is very much othering. And it, it made for a really uncomfortable read.

[00:20:47] Brooke: Yeah, because as you see in the back cover copy, it's focused on, you know, Kristy thinks it's unfair. Kristy basically wants to assimilate Susan.

[00:20:56] Kaykay: Yeah, she kind of want to makes her as normal as possible or get her into a normal life.

[00:21:01] Brooke: Right. And saying, you know, by showing that she's a regular kid too. Like there's a specific, very specific definition of regular in the town of Stoneybrook. And I think it's queer coded as well. Like, Kristy knows deep down what it's like to be othered and to have to try to be integrated into Stoneybrook, and she wants to help Susan do the same. But what did you see her do that made you feel like, "Ooh, not so great"?

[00:21:27] Kaykay: So here's the first, uh, "Since Susan was sort of small for her age, I just moved behind her, picked her up, and carried her into the kitchen. She struggled a little, but not much. 'Okay, Susan. Time for a snack.'" That was the first one. "You know, even I have to admit that Susan is one of the most handicapped kids I've ever seen. She wouldn't let me touch her tonight. I couldn't get her pajamas on, and she kept screaming." Something about the physically overpowering Susan, I was so profoundly creeped.

[00:21:56] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:21:56] Kaykay: The complete lack of bodily autonomy that Susan was allowed felt very like frightening too. And then also the way that they talk about Susan constantly, right in front of her, and say, just really kind of like, I wouldn't say cruel exactly, but just really thoughtless and othering, that also made me very uncomfortable.

And then it's like the whole arc of the book is sort of like Kristy believing that she could make Susan normal. And then when she sort of discovers, or thinks that she has figured out Susan's mind, which is just like, "Oh, Susan is like completely checked out from us in the world." It's kind of like Susan gets dropped and abandoned.

Like, "She's a lost cause. Shrug." You know, like I kinda just got that lost cause feeling that almost felt like, you know, the limitations of Ann M's understanding of autism at that time.

[00:22:53] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:22:54] Kaykay: Anyway, so those are some things that made me uncomfortable, but just in general through the book, I felt no one was really caring for Susan. Susan felt very vulnerable to me, and I was like very afraid for her.

[00:23:07] Brooke: Yeah, the sort of physical dominance really disturbed me as well, especially when, Susan plays the piano a lot. That's where she opens up. That's sort of her form of communication. They say that like, she doesn't really speak, but she can sing, she loves to play the piano.

It's like playing the piano and singing, that's where she's expressing herself. And she'll just do that all day long. And instead of being like, it's great that she has this outlet, let's encourage this, which theoretically they do. And the reason why she is in Stoneybrook is she has been sent away to a residential school for treatment and care.

And they decide to transfer her to a school that is very musically focused. And that's good, right? Looking at something that she likes and finding a good place for her. And she is back for a month. Well, she's in between schools basically. And so Kristy goes over to her house three times a week to give Susan's mom a break for like two hours a day that she can just like, leave the house, you know, have some space.

And so this is when Kristy is like, "I'm going to change her," right? "I'm going to make Susan's parents see the error of their ways." Like, she can stay here. She's like, Matt Braddock is deaf and he goes to a special school, but he's still integrated.

[00:24:29] Kaykay: Yeah, "He can function."

[00:24:30] Brooke: He's still integrated into the community, and so why can't the same thing happen for Susan? That's like her mission. She takes it upon herself as her mission without any consent of anyone else, but that's another story.

[00:24:42] Kaykay: "Consent" is a good word. Not a lot of consent.

[00:24:46] Brooke: You know, and speaking of with no consent, there's a moment where Susan's mom is leaving. She says to Kristy, "Try to pry her away from the piano if you can. I'd like her to get some fresh air." Then Kristy takes it upon herself to literally go over to Susan and like, grab her hands while she's playing the piano. And she talks about how she tightens her grip on her hands until she stops playing.

And this becomes like a technique of Kristy to like, try to like break a spell that she thinks she's under or something. Like, no, don't do that. Just don't do that. I mean, it's just...ooh, as a piano player, just the thought of somebody standing behind me and grabbing my hands as I'm trying to play, and tightening their hands, like taking away something that you love. Saying like, "I'm going to physically lock you down from like your one method of communication and expression."

It was really disturbing. And I don't know, I mean, in like the Stacey books and, you know, when she talks about stuff in her books about diabetes, et cetera, in the front, it'll say like a credit to a doctor that advised on things. Like you will often see in, in the front of the book acknowledgement of who was consulted to make sure that the portrayal was accurate, I don't see that in this book. I see that it's "for David Holmes." I don't know who David Holmes is. I'm assuming that that might be somebody who is autistic.

[00:26:10] Kaykay: Did you read the letter at the end?

[00:26:13] Brooke: Well, see, I have the original, so I don't have a letter at the end. The letter at the end only comes around in the 1990s reprints. So what does the letter at the end say? Does it explain?

[00:26:22] Kaykay: Yes. It says that this is based on Ann M's time as like a teacher at a camp for kids on the spectrum in the summers.

[00:26:31] Brooke: Oh no, so that means...

[00:26:32] Kaykay: She did this in the summers.

[00:26:34] Brooke: So this was the sort of practice that was...

[00:26:37] Kaykay: I'm sure.

[00:26:38] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:26:39] Kaykay: And that was sort of like, what I was picking up was like, it's so hard to explain what I'm picking up, but something along the lines of, Ann M thinks she knows way more than she knows. It checks perfectly with the idea that like she was at some camp that had, you know, what we'd probably consider now very regressive and harmful practices towards folks on the spectrum. And, you know, she was probably taught why that made a lot of sense.

And then you kind of get it in this story and it really, the rigidity of that comes across. There's very little exploration of, you know, is this the right way to be interacting with Susan? Are there things we don't know about Susan? Are there limitations to what we understand about people with autism? All of that is kind of missing. This book is very, like, non exploratory, unlike most of her books. Does that make sense?

[00:27:32] Brooke: Totally. Yeah. And as you're saying that I'm like thinking about how Kristy doesn't get any sort of training on how to work with Susan. It's basically just like, "here you go."

[00:27:42] Kaykay: "Do whatever you gotta do." It's nuts!

[00:27:44] Brooke: Right, and how would she know?

[00:27:46] Kaykay: Of course!

[00:27:47] Brooke: To be clear, like, I don't think either of us are blaming Kristy, because Kristy is not being set up for success in any way with Susan to help her. But as you're saying that Ann M. had experience as a counselor working with kids on the spectrum, which, you know, wouldn't have even been referred to as "on the spectrum" at that time. You know, who knows what sort of terminology was used? Speaking of terminology, there's dated language, to say the least, that is used in this book.

[00:28:16] Kaykay: Throughout, yeah.

[00:28:18] Brooke: We didn't know much. People just didn't know much about autism or any conditions on the spectrum then, because it just wasn't something that was getting a lot of research and focus, because live in a very society that's all about assimilation. Right? And it's like, if there are people that can't be assimilated as is into society, you shun them. Like, that's just what you do in America.

[00:28:44] Kaykay: Yeah, you kind of throw them away.

[00:28:45] Brooke: Yeah. Yep. So as we were talking about how Rain Man, I suspect, is probably the reason why this book, the topic of this book came up when it did. Actually I found, uh, when I was doing some research that Rain Man and the attention that it brought to autism brought open the flood gates of funding for research.

So you hear about people being like, "Why are your autism rates going up? Oh, it must have something to do with vaccines, blah, blah, blah, blah." No, it's because all of this research in like 1989, 1990, started to just flow. Like, money into research started to flow because there was attention brought to this condition that wasn't being paid attention to before, because these people were not integrated into society, really.

It was something that was like unseen and unspoken of. And so because it was something that was seen and spoken of, people were curious. And so people were able to get grants for funding and research to learn more and to investigate more in treatments and in diagnosis and all of that.

So it's not that autism rates have skyrocketed. It's that now that we know more, you can identify it. It's not a matter of rates as much as it is a matter of awareness. And that's something that I think a lot of people have a, not a lot of people- well, yeah, a lot of people. A lot of people have a hard time understanding that there are much more obvious explanations out there. Occam's razor, y'all.

So that focus on assimilation, I think we see throughout. For what they were fighting- cause I think it's going to be hard to, you know, discuss the other plots that we see in this book without showing how the needle is thread. I had as what they were fighting was ostracism. Kristy talks about how both Susan and the Hobarts, the family that moves into Mary Anne's old house, they're from Australia, and they have four boys...

[00:30:46] Kaykay: Ugh, can we talk for a minute about how painful Ann M's trying to just trot out the Australian slang. I mean, it was like she was tying herself in knots trying to get everything-

[00:30:59] Brooke: Weetabix and Vegemite for brekkie. Like that's what she, it's so stereotyped. Crocodile Dundee comes up over and over and over and over and over again.

[00:31:09] Kaykay: Oh right, they were calling them crocs.

[00:31:11] Brooke: Right. I think she needed an Australian consultant as well as an autism consultant, because they're both treated pretty ham-fistedly. So she talks about how both the Australians and this autistic child are outcasts in Stoneybrook because Stoneybrook fucking sucks, dude. Stoneybrook sucks. Get the fuck out of Stoneybrook. It's awful.

[00:31:35] Kaykay: Time to leave. Move to the Lower West Side, c'mon.

[00:31:38] Brooke: Yeah. I mean, not that there's too many places in the U.S. that wouldn't fit Stoneybrook's classification then, and frankly now, but holy shit, that place is suffocating.

[00:31:49] Kaykay: Yeah, this book, it's uh, the community's very painful.

[00:31:52] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:31:53] Kaykay: I mean, just engaging with Stoneybrook at all in this book is very painful, yeah. And I also had, um, that they were fighting ignorance and cruelty. And that's both the ignorance and cruelty of the kids who are outwardly ignorant and cruel, and also, you know, the ignorance and cruelty that's the more like microaggressions baked into like Kristy in this book, how the author is treating it, which made for like a really painful read.

Like I felt very protective of Susan. I felt that she was vulnerable the whole time. The idea that like a kid like Kristy would be put into this situation. I mean, we've talked about this and we laugh about this all the time about, oh, now they're crisis counselors, you know, it's just total madness and interesting that Ann M, who actually, you know, had worked with autistic kids would be like, sure, let's have Kristy take care of this kid. It just felt, you know, it's sort of an old trope in these books where the kids get put in way over their head, but it was hard to read in this context.

[00:32:55] Brooke: Yeah. And I don't know how to feel about the way that Kristy is in over her head in this, because the book doesn't shy away from the fact that she's in over her head. Like her goals are, she's basically cast herself in the role of a hero.

[00:33:12] Kaykay: Savior complex, 100%.

[00:33:13] Brooke: Yes. With zero skills or knowledge to do that. Just like, "I want this to be the end result, and I'm not going to do any research to figure out what I should do. I'm not gonna- like, I'm just going to go full steam ahead and I'm going to fix this," right? And I think the book is pretty transparent in the fact that like, Kristy has set herself up for failure.

[00:33:36] Kaykay: Yeah, I mean the whole arc of the book is to expose that as folly.

[00:33:42] Brooke: Right. But there isn't much reflection on, is this an attribute that Kristy needs to work on? It's more of like a, well, this is just too tough of a job, even for Kristy.

[00:33:56] Kaykay: Yeah. Like, oh, it didn't work this time.

[00:33:58] Brooke: Right. But keep trying, next time it'll work.

[00:34:01] Kaykay: I totally agree. As a therapist, I'm extremely sensitive to savior complex narratives because that's something you have to be very careful of as a therapist. Especially if you're working with any communities that don't share your identity, are in targeted or marginalized identities, it's so easy to slip into savior complex, especially handling circumstances and situations that are really challenging and hard.

Yeah. I have to say, I noticed the savior complex right away and also noticed that it doesn't get addressed at all. There's no reflection about it. And in fact, you know, you'll see the savior complex in other books too, and it almost never gets addressed. And I imagine, I'm not a teacher, but I imagine too, like if you're a teacher, you might also, like a therapist, struggle with savior complexes.

[00:34:53] Brooke: Yeah. So we see, we see the arc for Kristy, but yeah, I don't know that we see that Kristy feels like she's going to approach the world differently. I don't know that we see what Kristy has learned, other than, this one time it didn't work.

[00:35:10] Kaykay: This is a lost cause.

[00:35:11] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:35:11] Kaykay: Yeah, that's how I read it, where it was more like, this is a lost cause. Shrug.

[00:35:15] Brooke: And they try to make you feel better about it at the end, in the way that Kristy goes over there as they're packing for Susan to go to her new residential school that's like an hour away, where she'll learn music. And she's helping Susan's dad pack things up. Again, it's not enough for you to, you know, care for this child. You also should come over and assist the parents in like every stretch of caring for this child.

Susan's dad says to Kristy, "Just imagine, like maybe someday she'll be a concert pianist, like known throughout the world." And so it's just giving you that, but it's going to be okay, you know? It's kind of that like fantastic delusion. You know, maybe she will, that's fine. But it's like a nice pat ending to make you feel better about the fact that Kristy didn't achieve her goal.

And frankly, Stoneybrook didn't come around to Susan either with the exception of one of the Hobart kids who was basically like, okay, the two of us are like the same age and we're both ostracized and we're living close to each other. Like, can we hang on to that? So it's like, she makes one friend, but it seems like the friendship is sort of one sided and then she just leaves. But we're supposed to be like, okay, maybe one day she'll be exceptional on a grand stage.

[00:36:36] Kaykay: To me, that really highlights the ableism of the culture at that time, and the ableism in our culture today. And ableism is something that is like woven into the fabric of capitalism, right? Like you have to be normal, you have to fit in. And if you're different in any way, you can't just be sort of seen, held, understood, and celebrated for like who you are, what you are, your dignity.

The dignity that you deserve just as a human being. You have to be special, right? And our culture is rife with this. It's like the messaging we receive constantly of like, get it, get it, go, you gotta be special. Everyone has to be special. You know, so for me, it just really held a mirror up to how deeply ableism is baked into American culture.

[00:37:29] Brooke: Yeah, that's such a good point. Because it's like, if you aren't special, if you don't have like exceptional ability, then you have to fit the mold. Then there's a mold that you have to fit. And if you can fit that mold and you're not special, okay. That's tolerated, because you'll still produce and you'll still like follow the rules and directives that we have established for members of our society.

So if you can do that, if you can look the way we want you to look, act the way we want you to act, do all of that, then it's okay if you're not special. But if you don't fit that mold, and if you aren't a concert pianist, or in the case of one of the Hobarts, like a frickin boxer or some shit, you know, somebody who can physically intimidate anybody who threatens them, then you got to go. Like, you're cast out.

[00:38:24] Kaykay: Yeah. You don't really have a place.

[00:38:25] Brooke: No, you're resented. Like, you're seen as a drain on society as opposed to, Hey, maybe there is no one mold for people to be. Maybe everybody has a different way that they can contribute, and just, if it doesn't fit into your current conception of the way that people can contribute to society, it doesn't mean they can't contribute.

It means like, you're limiting what contributions to society is, if you expect everyone to fit a mold. You'll never grow as a society. That's what you see with Stoneybrook. Who would feel welcome in Stoneybrook? How would Stoneybrook ever change and evolve for the better when, if you're different in any way, you are harassed. They even use the word "tormented." Like, these kids are tormented. The Hobarts are tormented simply for using, you know, "brekkie" instead of breakfast.

[00:39:19] Kaykay: You freaks!

[00:39:21] Brooke: So yeah, the thing that was hard for me is, so it's like, okay, so they're fighting ostracization in this book, but the methods that they're using to fight it were not great.

[00:39:34] Kaykay: Yeah.

[00:39:34] Brooke: It's assimilation, so Ben Hobart is accepted at school when like Mallory shows interest in him. So it's like, oh, an American girl thinks you're cute. Okay, well, you know, we'll let that slide. James Hobart, basically when he's challenged by his bully that torments him, he like demonstrates tremendous capacity for violence and then says to his tormentor, "Oh, and I can teach you how to do that," and then they're buds!

[00:40:01] Kaykay: It's pretty fucked up.

[00:40:02] Brooke: And that's like a good thing. And then it even says in the book, it's like, "This is exactly the friend that James needed." No, it's not! It's very much not. Definitely not. That's the wrong message.

So it's like, if you can't assimilate, then you have to be like physically removed. You have to be isolated, removed, and fucking replaced. I mean, the fact that at the end, as Susan's leaving, as they're taking Susan away, they're like, "Oh, and we're so excited! Mrs. Felder is pregnant with another daughter who we are going to name Hope!" Holy fucking shit, dudes! Like, that's dark.

[00:40:41] Kaykay: Yeah, and then, "We did all these genetic tests so that we can make sure she comes out normal." It's dark, dude. It's dark.

[00:40:50] Brooke: Dark, dark, dark.

[00:40:53] Kaykay: Yeah.

[00:40:54] Brooke: Yeah, so did you notice when Kristy congratulates Susan's mom on the pregnancy, what's the first thing that Susan's mom said?

[00:41:04] Kaykay: I don't remember.

[00:41:05] Brooke: "Thank you. Do I look fatter to you?"

[00:41:08] Kaykay: Oh, right. But then it's supposed to be that Kristy's like, "I knew she wanted to look fatter, so I said yes."

[00:41:13] Brooke: But did you also notice Kristy was like, "I never really noticed weight, you know, weight gain or loss, unless it's like a hundred pounds or so." So I'm like, okay, there's queer coding throughout. Like Kristy is like, "I don't fucking care about people's weight."

[00:41:25] Kaykay: Yes! I love it. It's so queer coded.

[00:41:26] Brooke: Every other character in this book is so fixated on weight. Kristy's like, "I don't give a shit about weight, but all right."

[00:41:34] Kaykay: Great little thing to clock. I love that.

[00:41:37] Brooke: Yeah. And the same thing where you see-

[00:41:39] Kaykay: Well that's because, it's like what Katya says, my favorite drag queen, she's like, "I just want to be a lesbian doing interesting things."

[00:41:45] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:41:45] Kaykay: You know, we're too busy doing interesting things to care about people's appearance and weight.

[00:41:50] Brooke: Yeah. Although Kristy does, I noticed in this one, she really is describing her friends, you know, her friends are always described, everyone's always described in terms of appearance, but Kristy goes in on appearance. Kristy describes Dawn as quote, "drop dead gorgeous."

[00:42:06] Kaykay: Ooh!

[00:42:07] Brooke: Claudia is "beautiful." Even Mary Anne. Like, she thinks that she's not as pretty as Mary Anne, Kristy does. And I think, I think Kristy's crushing on Dawn in this book.

[00:42:16] Kaykay: I have, uh, a confession to make, which is I skip the exposition at this point. I can't do it anymore. I've done 32 books. How many roles they have, what are the jobs, what do they look like, who's pretty, who's ugly- I can't do it anymore. I just let myself off the hook.

[00:42:35] Brooke: So normally everything is repeated. You don't generally learn anything new. So that's what I will generally do, like a scan, but stuff that is new jumps out at me big time, because I'm like, we have seen this so many times. And so now all of a sudden, Kristy thinks Dawn's drop dead gorgeous.

[00:42:52] Kaykay: We have something developing here!

[00:42:54] Brooke: I know!

[00:42:55] Kaykay: Okay, I'm so glad that you are a better Baby-sitters reader than me to clock that. Thank you.

[00:43:01] Brooke: You're welcome. Um, yeah, and that's why I think that it's interesting that we see that Kristy is the one who is trying to help Susan assimilate, and is so focused on helping Susan appear normal and fit in, because I think it's something that Kristy has experienced every day of her life and just can't really discuss it openly.

It seems like it would make sense that it would be Kristy, who is constantly trying to pass and assimilate, who would be trying to help someone else pass. And, you know, the thing that made me really, really sad at the end, you know, in terms of that goal, on page 140, when they're at the Baby-sitters Club, you know, you generally end with like exposition about what happened and how other members of the Baby-sitters Club feel about what happened in the book, et cetera.

And they talked about how she says the Hobarts ended up fitting in. Susan didn't. Talks about how, you know, at first they were all outcasts. Like Jessi said, "The kids around here didn't accept any of them because they were different. But it turned out that the Hobarts weren't so different after all, they stood up for themselves and fit in. But Susan was too different. Unless she changes a lot, she'll never fit in here with regular kids. You were the one who pointed that out to me," to Claudia.

So they have all, at the age of 13, internalized, there is a bar that you have to meet in order to be accepted in Stoneybrook. And the Hobarts were able to meet that bar because, let's be honest, they're white boys. Totally neuro-typical. They just have an accent and use different slang. And so once they were able to get an American girl and demonstrate their ability to physically dominate their opponents, that was the bar that they needed to pass, and then they were accepted in Stoneybrook.

But Susan isn't going to physically dominate anyone, and she's not going to be looked at as like an attractive romantic partner, which is basically like the role that girls are supposed to play. So she has to be sent away and a new daughter has to emerge in her place, you know?

[00:45:22] Kaykay: Named Hope.

[00:45:23] Brooke: Named Hope. This one was pretty bleak.

[00:45:28] Kaykay: Yeah. I found it to be pretty bleak too. And I, I also, it felt like hastily pulled together. You know what I mean? It just felt like maybe this was kind of slapped together on a topic that Ann M. had more than passing familiarity with, but far from an expert and was like, all right, this one will be a lay up. And it was like, far from a layup.

[00:45:51] Brooke: I could see this coming out in a marketing meeting. I could see this coming out in like a brainstorming meeting about, okay, what should another topic be? Looking at how popular Rain Man was, knowing that-

[00:46:01] Kaykay: Yeah, they're like, "Great! Fast track it!"

[00:46:03] Brooke: Knowing that, yeah, that Ann M. had experience working with children with neurodiversity, would be what we would call it now.

[00:46:11] Kaykay: Sure.

[00:46:11] Brooke: Thinking like, "Okay, cool. This is exactly what will sell." Not perhaps being so aware of, maybe we need to stop and get a little bit more help on this, although who knows how much help there would have even been at the time. It's 1990, people didn't know shit.

[00:46:27] Kaykay: It's true. I mean, and we talk a lot about how Ann M. does really represent the vanguard at the culture of that time. And that's probably true here, too.

[00:46:36] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:46:36] Kaykay: It's just hitting us in a very sort of sad and heavy way given where the culture was back then.

[00:46:43] Brooke: Yeah, and given what we know about how this all would unfold over the next 30 years, how people would be treated. You see the mom, the mom is always exhausted and it's like presented as, having an autistic child in the household is absolutely miserable. And then you see how people start to like cast, like, "Oh, having an autistic child is the worst thing that could happen. That's why we have to stop giving kids vaccines." Like, it gets so fucking bleak from here.

[00:47:10] Kaykay: Yeah, it gets dark, for sure.

[00:47:12] Brooke: As opposed to seeing how everyone has abilities and traits and things to offer, and P.S., none of this has anything to do with vaccines? It just has to do with awareness. The way that awareness can not always be purely positive, it can end up being harmful if the awareness is just awareness, if it's not understanding. And I think today, a lot of people don't understand.

[00:47:36] Kaykay: I keep having a phrase pop up in my head, which is like, I feel that Ann M. in this book knows just enough to get herself in trouble.

[00:47:45] Brooke: Yeah.

[00:47:46] Kaykay: You know, there's a point at which like, you know, enough to feel that you're confident about a topic. And so you're actually doing worse than if you truly came with like that beginner's mind and that like open spirit. And like, let me consult lots of different experts. You know, there is that space where you know just enough to get yourself in trouble.

[00:48:06] Brooke: That's such a good point.

[00:48:07] Kaykay: It feels like that's where Ann M. is in this one.

[00:48:09] Brooke: Yeah, agreed. Well, I think we've identified a lot of problematic nineties moments. What did you have for most nineties moments?

[00:48:18] Kaykay: I had just one this time, which was looking things up in the dictionary. I think we had, maybe we've had some version of this before, but yeah, she looks up autism in the dictionary because Kristy, she doesn't even know what the word means. So she goes to the dictionary to look it up.

And I was like, oh, I remember those days when you didn't have a phone to turn to. And yeah, it was either a world book or a dictionary, or like maybe go to the library and look it up. That would be your next level of research if you couldn't find it in the dictionary.

[00:48:49] Brooke: And the dictionary is not the. Which is rough, knowing that the DSM at the time would've been trash.

[00:48:56] Kaykay: Oh my God. Older DSMs are like ouch, painful.

[00:49:00] Brooke: Right. I had Mentos. There's a whole separate thing at the end about Mentos.

[00:49:05] Kaykay: The freshmaker.

[00:49:06] Brooke: Ah, Mentos and the Mentos commercials, which would come around later in the nineties, were a highlight of the nineties for me. So I was very excited about Mentos.

[00:49:15] Kaykay: How did you feel about actually eating Mentos?

[00:49:17] Brooke: I love Mentos. I still love Mentos to this day. Mentos are dope.

[00:49:22] Kaykay: Are they minty?

[00:49:23] Brooke: They can be minty. They can be fruity. They even have like chocolate Mentos, which I don't recommend. I'm a bit of a Mentos connoisseur.

[00:49:30] Kaykay: Okay, great! I'm so glad that I asked.

[00:49:32] Brooke: I'm ride or die for Mentos, for real. I was before the commercials. The commercials made me a permanent customer of Mentos.

[00:49:40] Kaykay: So the commercials, what, they were sassy? Funny?

[00:49:44] Brooke: "Do do do doo do doo, do wah! It doesn't matter what comes, fresh goes better in life, with Mentos fresh and full of life! Nothing gets to you, staying fresh, staying cool, with Mentos fresh and full of life! Fresh goes better, Mentos freshness! Fresh goes better with Mentos fresh and full of life! Mentos, the fresh maker." That was the commercial. I remember it a little bit.

[00:50:11] Kaykay: Clearly I remember it a little bit too. You know, it's fun when we get to come out with these 80s things, these 90s things, but then I'm also like, don't we need that space in our brain for other things?

[00:50:21] Brooke: Maybe, but I, I'm not losing it. Like if you gave me dibs, you're like, you could lose the Mentos commercial and gain like 10 IQ points." I'd be like, "Fuck your extra IQ points. I'm not giving up the Mentos commercials, no. No deal. Walk away, walk away."

[00:50:36] Kaykay: Mentos commercial or one secret of the universe? Mentos commercial.

[00:50:40] Brooke: The Mentos commercial is a secret of the universe, okay? The joy that I got? Oh man. So in this book, there is a lot of focus on not fitting in and that's going to continue in the next book, which is Claudia and the Great Search. Because Claudia feels very disconnected with her family, and so starts to suspect she might be adopted and looks into that. So we get another like afterschool special Baby-sitters Club in the next episode.

[00:51:12] Kaykay: I'm looking forward to that.

[00:51:13] Brooke: I'm very excited. Hopefully it will be a bit of a Mentos, a bit of a freshmasker, after this book.

[00:51:19] Kaykay: We need a fucking freshmaker. I feel like this book has definitely given me cat shit mouth. I need a mint.

[00:51:26] Brooke: Right.

[00:51:26] Kaykay: This book is cat shit mouth in book form.

[00:51:29] Brooke: Hopefully Claudia- Claudia has Mentos hidden all over her bedroom, so hopefully she will bring that Mentos energy with her to the next book. And I am looking forward to talking with you about it then.

[00:51:42] Kaykay: Me too, my friend.

[00:51:44] Brooke: But until then...

[00:51:47] Kaykay: Just keep sittin'! [theme song] Camptown rah dah sah dah sah.