Why Everyone's Obsessed with Wicker (And What It Says About Us)

Becky and Taina are back from their summer Everything Is Political series with their regular weekly episode, kicking things off with the internet-breaking trailer for Wicker — the upcoming movie starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, and Peter Dinklage about a woman who marries a man made of wicker. What starts as trailer reactions turns into a wider conversation about the booming romance and "smutty romance" book industry, the trad wife movement's contradictions, media literacy, and who gets conditioned to be curious versus who doesn't.

What we discussed:
00:00 – Welcome back after the summer Everything Is Political series
00:28 – Introducing today's topic: the Wicker trailer
01:33 – First reactions to the trailer and the Bookstagram/BookTok buzz
04:11 – Breaking down the premise (and the jokes about it)
09:52 – "It's all men until it's not all men" — men continuing to fall short
10:08 – The wicker husband, village jealousy, and the metal-collar marriage symbolism
12:17 – Why this topic: free publicity and the bigger conversation about romance/smut
15:39 – Trad wife influencers, rising conservatism, and the contradiction underneath it (Nara Smith)
16:54 – Aside on the novel Yesteryear
20:16 – Romance publishing stats: 52% revenue growth, $1.44B a year
22:59 – Wicker as a modern fairy tale / parallels to Beauty and the Beast
24:26 – Entertainment as propaganda: military movies and Hollywood contracts
26:14 – Media literacy: why it matters for everything we consume, not just news
31:21 – Privilege, curiosity, and who gets conditioned not to question things
34:07 – Curiosity as joy; how liberal arts education changed things for Becky
36:22 – The power of "why" and "what if" as questions
43:00 – Wrap-up and plans to revisit after they've both seen the movie in October

Resources mentioned:
• Wicker trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP0BWBWn14I
• "The Wicker Husband" short story: https://www.scribd.com/document/163478512/The-Wicker-Husban1
• "Yesteryear" by Caro Claire Burke: https://amzn.to/3TEeLNs

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