Explore every episode of the podcast Marxists at the Movies

🎧 Support the show:
💸 Patreon: patreon.com/marxistsatthemovies
🌐 Website: cinemarchmedia.com

The valley girls have entered the apocalypse—and late-stage capitalism better watch its back. 🧟‍♀️🛍️

In this episode of Marxists at the Movies, we take a radioactive deep dive into 1984’s Night of the Comet, a cult classic where mall culture meets mass extinction. What happens when consumerism collapses and teenage girls inherit the Earth? We explore themes of feminine resilience, Cold War paranoia, government bio-violence, and the eerie freedom that emerges after societal implosion.

Also: should Reggie and Sam unionize?

🎙️ New episodes every other Wednesday
📲 Now streaming everywhere!
#MarxistsAtTheMovies #NightOfTheComet #80sMovies #CultClassics #ApocalypseCinema #FeministFilm #MarxistAnalysis #CineMarchMedia #CommunistCinemaClub #PatreonCreators #PodcastCommunity #QueerCinema #AntiCapitalistMedia #LeftistTok #MovieTok #SciFiCinema #ColdWarCulture #ZombiesAndShopping #TeenRebellion

Find us at:

🎧 cinemarchmedia.com
💸 patreon.com/cinemarchmedia

For our final Pride Month 2025 installment, Marxists at the Movies heads to Buffalo—by way of Broadway—with a deep dive into Stepping Out (1991). Liza Minnelli leads a stacked cast of queer-coded legends in this criminally overlooked tap-dancing gem. From its quietly radical ensemble energy to its New Wave rejection of glamor in favor of community, this film isn’t just feel-good—it’s anti-capitalist at its core.

They were never supposed to be stars. But they showed up anyway.

#MarxistsAtTheMovies #SteppingOut #LizaMinnelli #PrideMonth #QueerCinema #CampClassic #MusicalTheatre #AntiCapitalistMedia #CineMarchMedia #LeftistFilmCriticism #QueerJoy #TapShoesAndRevolution #LGBTQIAPlus #1991 #nostalgia

🌐 www.cinemarchmedia.com
🎁 patreon.com/cinemarchmedia

🌈 BONUS PRIDE EPISODE:
Top 11 Disney Films That Slay the Rainbow
From queer-coded chaos to chosen family feels, these Disney classics hit harder than they had any right to. We’re talking magic, drama, sparkle, and subtext so loud it’s practically screaming.

This episode is free for everyone—but patrons heard it first.

Happy Pride, comrades. 🏳️‍🌈

✨ Want early access, bonus episodes, and behind-the-scenes chaos?Join us on Patreon: patreon.com/cinemarchmedia🌐 Visit our official website: cinemarchmedia.com🎤 We’re back — and this time, it’s live.

This Pride Month, we’re going full rhinestone revolution. In this episode, we put To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in conversation—two iconic '90s films that brought drag to the big screen, but did it in radically different ways. We unpack American sentimentality vs. Aussie surrealism, camp vs. critique, and the politics of queer visibility in a pre-RuPaul’s Drag Race world. What do these films still teach us? And what got lost in translation on the road from Priscilla’s desert to Wong Foo’s heartland?

#PrideMonth #DragCinema #ToWongFoo #PriscillaQueenOfTheDesert #QueerFilm #CampClassic #LGBTQIA #RadicalMedia #CineMarchMedia #MutualAidMedia #CineCulture #FilmPodcast #PodcastRevolution #MarxistsattheMovies

🎶 Marxists at the Music: Kat and the Hurricane’s Got It Out

🌐 Visit us at cinemarchmedia.com for more revolutionary media!
🎧 Support bonus content like this at patreon.com/cinemarchmedia — where your dollars help dismantle the algorithm, one mic drop at a time.

🎤✨ This month on Marxists at the Music, we’re tuning in to the storm. Kat and the Hurricane’s 2024 album Got It Out isn’t just a record — it’s a battle cry, a breakdown, and a breakthrough. Genre-fluid, emotionally exposed, and bursting with resistance, this album smashes through labels and dares you to feel everything.

We explore the record’s themes of survival, queer embodiment, burnout, trauma, capitalism, community, and that sacred act of getting it out before it eats you alive. From shimmering synths to guttural screams, from punk spirit to pop catharsis — this is music as rebellion.

💥 You don’t need a record deal to spark a revolution. You just need a voice, a beat, and a refusal to be quiet.

🩷🎶 Kat and the Hurricane made a healing machine disguised as an album — and we’re here to open it up, track by track.

Hashtags:
#KatAndTheHurricane #GotItOut #MarxistsAtTheMovies #MarxistsAtTheMusic #QueerMusic #IndiePop #AltPop #QueerPunk #EmotionalLabor #AntiCapitalistPop #MarxistPodcast #SpotifyPodcast #RevolutionThroughArt #MusicWithMeaning #MonthlyBonus #CineMarchMedia #QueerArtists #LeftistPodcast #MusicReview #socialism #NewMusic2024 #SupportIndieMusic #PatreonPowered #communism

Visibility, Backlash, and the Cost of Being First
A Marxists at the Movies TV Spotlight SpecialSupport our work and get early access to full articles and audio at ⁠patreon.com/cinemarchmedia⁠.

In 1997, Ellen DeGeneres came out—and television would never be the same.

This special episode explores the sitcom Ellen as a cultural turning point. From its subversive structure to the historic “Puppy Episode,” we trace how the show challenged network norms, made queer identity visible, and paid the price for it. We’ll also examine the long shadow of backlash, Ellen’s rise and fall, and how capitalism devours authenticity—even as it pretends to celebrate it.

Spoiler warning: we’re going deep.
And yes, Myron is mentioned.

Follow us for more unintentional communist masterpieces, cultural deep-dives, and unapologetically leftist media critique. New episodes drop every Wednesday!

🎬 Marxists at the Movies – June Pride Month Premiere 🌈
This week, we're stepping into the ruins of glamour and class illusion with Grey Gardens. Host Edward Michael Francis (they/them) reads their featured article “House of Contradictions”, unpacking how this cult documentary reveals the tragic, theatrical collapse of bourgeois performance — and why it holds such a powerful place in queer canon.

We explore the Beales not as eccentrics, but as two women clawing their way out of a class cult, one delusion at a time. Come for the tattered flag dancing, stay for the collapse of ideology.

🎧 New episodes drop every Wednesday with bonus episodes every 4th Friday!.
✨ Support us on Patreon and get early access + bonus episodes:
patreon.com/cinemarchmedia
🌐 All links here:
linktr.ee/cinemarchmedia

This is Marxists at the Movies.

🎭 The Birdcage (1996) | Marxists at the Movies

To close out International Workers' Month, we're going full feather boa with a Marxist lens on Mike Nichols' The Birdcage. What happens when queerness is sanitized for respectability? What does it mean when the working class in drag is asked to behave for the sake of the ruling class? And how does this compare to the original La Cage aux Folles, which was far more unapologetic in its mess and politics?

We’re talking performance, patriarchy, and pink-washed politics—because drag may be art, but it's also labor. Join us for a sharp, funny, and unflinching dive into the contradictions of gay visibility under capitalism.

📢 If you're loving what you're hearing, help us keep this going. Support the show on Patreon and get exclusive content, bonus episodes, and our eternal gratitude:
👉 patreon.com/cinemarchmedia

🎬 Marxists at the Movies drops every Wednesday—plus bonus episodes every fourth Friday.

For International Workers Month, we travel to the rugged coast of Maine to uncover the revolutionary fury buried in Dolores Claiborne (1995). In this Marxist analysis of Taylor Hackford’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel, we examine class struggle, domestic labor, and generational trauma through the eyes of one of cinema’s most complex working-class heroines.

Kathy Bates gives a towering performance as Dolores—a housekeeper accused of murder, a mother with secrets, and a woman who has had enough. We explore the film’s blistering indictment of patriarchal violence, the invisible weight of unpaid labor, and how capitalism isolates and silences the women it depends on most.

This is not a horror story. It’s a labor story. And sometimes, being a “bitch on wheels” is the only way to survive.

New episodes of Marxists at the Movies drop every other Wednesday at 10 a.m. MST / 12 p.m. EST. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your radical cinema.

In this bonus episode of Marxists at the Music, we dive deep into TLC’s groundbreaking album CrazySexyCool — not just the hits, but the history. We unpack the group’s fight for fair pay, their infamous bankruptcy filing, and how they challenged the exploitative machine of the 1990s music industry while selling millions. This isn't just a story about pop icons — it's a story about labor, image, and resistance.

🎤 Marxists at the Music drops every fourth Friday — only on Marxists at the Movies.
#MarxistsAtTheMovies #MarxistsAtTheMusic #TLC #CrazySexyCool #LisaLeftEyeLopes #FairPay #MusicIndustryExploitation #PopMusicJustice #CommunistCritique #BlackGirlMagic #LaborRights #90sMusic #MusicHistory #GirlGroups #CapitalismIsTheScrub

This week’s TV Spotlight turns the lens on the fiery, foul-mouthed proletarian queen of Hollywood herself—Kathy Griffin.

In My Life on the D-List, Griffin doesn’t just pull back the curtain on fame—she shreds it, sets it on fire, and sells the ashes for charity. What looks like a reality comedy show is, on closer inspection, a pointed critique of class, labor, and gender within the fame economy. It’s performance art disguised as Bravo trash. And it’s exactly the kind of working-class revolt we celebrate during International Workers Month.

We dive into her struggle for respect, the emotional cost of self-branding, and how she weaponized irrelevance to build a career on her own terms—outside the A-List, but never beneath it.

🗓 New episodes drop every Wednesday at 10am MST / 12pm EST.
🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and right here on Patreon.
💥 Get early access, bonus content, and support the revolution at any tier.

Join us. Laugh loud. Talk back. Stay D-Listed.

#MarxistsAtTheMovies #InternationalWorkersMonth #TVSpotlight #KathyGriffin #MyLifeOnTheDList #DListRevolution #CelebrityLabor #FameIsWork #CineMarchMedia #SupportIndependentMedia #HammerAndSickleRatings

International Workers' Day (Part 2)
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. Yes, even this.

In our second International Workers’ Day special, we dive headfirst into the accidental communist masterpiece that is Baby’s Day Out — a slapstick odyssey where the baby is the revolutionary vanguard, the kidnappers are the capitalist class, and every pratfall is a blow against the bourgeoisie.

We explore how this 1994 Patrick Read Johnson family comedy inadvertently critiques wealth, policing, and media spectacle, and why the baby’s journey through the urban jungle feels like a Marxist allegory for class consciousness crawling its way toward liberation — in footie pajamas.

This is not a joke. This is the revolution in a diaper.

#MarxistsAtTheMovies #BabysDayOut #InternationalWorkersDay #CommunistCinema
#ProletariatPower #UnintentionalCommunistMasterpiece #CineMarchMedia #MarxistFilmCriticism #WorkersUnite #LeftistPodcast #communism #socialism #patrickreadjohnson #laraflynnboyle

This week on Marxists at the Movies, we kick off International Workers Month with a working-class hero who shouted union and shook the system. Sally Field’s Oscar-winning turn as Norma Rae is more than a performance—it’s a rallying cry. We unpack the film’s roots in labor history, its radical legacy, and the way it still resonates with anyone who’s ever dared to stand up and fight back. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t just a movie. It was a movement.

Mae West didn’t come to play nice—she came to play boss. In this episode of Marxists at the Movies, we dive into her 1933 pre-Code classic I’m No Angel, a film that smuggled radical gender politics, class defiance, and unapologetic sexuality past the censors. We explore how Mae West’s screen persona wasn’t just bold—it was revolutionary. From her real-life arrests to her cinematic takedown of patriarchal norms, Mae carved out a space for working-class women to own their power and their pleasure. This isn’t just a film critique—it’s a love letter to a trailblazer who told the boys to step aside, and made sure they listened.New episodes every other Wednesday at 10am MST. Listen on Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok—wherever you get your resistance.#MarxistsAtTheMovies #MaeWest #ImNoAngel #PreCodeHollywood #ClassStruggleCinema #FeministFilm #CommunistCritique #CineMarchMedia #QueerCinemaHistory #MaeWestWasRight #WorkersOnScreen #HollywoodHegemony #RevolutionThroughFilm

In the first-ever bonus episode of Marxists at the Movies’ monthly spinoff Marxists at the Music, we dive headfirst into Jolin Tsai’s bold, bizarre, and subversively pop 2018 album Ugly Beauty. What does it mean to call something “ugly” in a beauty-obsessed system? How do we decode glamor when the spectacle is the prison?

From the ironic bubblegum of “Hubby” to the gothic rage of “Lady in Red,” this album isn’t just a collection of bangers—it’s a fragmented manifesto from a pop star confronting the monster the industry made her become.

We break down the album track by track, exposing the commodification of the female body, the alienation of fame, and the terrifying freedom in rejecting perfection. Jolin doesn’t just make pop music—she weaponizes it.

This is Mandarin-language cyberpunk cabaret for the post-human capitalist nightmare—and it slaps.

#JolinTsai #UglyBeauty #MarxistsAtTheMusic #MarxistsAtTheMovies #PopMusicCritique #CommunistMusicReview #AsianPop #Mandopop #FeministPop #AntiCapitalistArt #LeftistPodcast #MusicAnalysis #TaiwanesePop #CyberFemme #RevolutionThroughRhythm #CulturalCritique #PopCultureMarxism #MarxistCritique #SpotifyPodcasts #CommunismIsCuteToo

What happens when you mix every celebrity who wandered within five feet of a camera in 1990, throw them into a sitcom house with a talking planet, Muppets, cartoon cameos, and a whole lot of forced environmental guilt? You get The Earth Day Special—a chaotic, star-studded fever dream brought to you by the same media conglomerate that probably printed the scripts on rainforest pulp: Time Warner.In this first official TV Spotlight episode of Marxists at the Movies, we dig into the absurd contradictions of a corporate-backed Earth Day PSA that tells you to recycle... while marketing everything but systemic change. We talk trash—literally and politically—about capitalist greenwashing, celebrity activism, and what this bizarre cultural artifact says about America's relationship with the planet, the press, and performative progressivism.#MarxistsAtTheMovies #TVSpotlight #EarthDaySpecial #1990sNostalgia #Environmentalism #Greenwashing #CelebrityCulture #Muppets #CartoonCameos #SitcomSurrealism #CapitalismSucks #LeftistMediaCritique #QueerMarxistCinema #AntiCapitalistContent #MediaCritique #ThrowbackChaos

The machines are rising—but not in the way you think. In this episode of Marxists at the Movies, we dive into the first three Terminator films, exposing how they reflect Cold War paranoia, capitalist fear of automation, and the contradictions of labor in a techno-dystopia. We unpack Skynet as a metaphor for the military-industrial complex, Sarah Connor’s evolution as revolutionary labor, and the hidden class war in James Cameron’s future nightmare. From factory floors to doomsday bunkers, this is science fiction soaked in class struggle.Follow us into the past to understand the future—and why the system is always trying to erase resistance before it’s born.#MarxistsAtTheMovies #Terminator #SciFiAnalysis #MarxistPodcast #ClassStruggle #Automation #LaborTheory #Skynet #CapitalismKills #FeministFilm #ArnoldSchwarzenegger #FilmCriticism #CommunistCinema

It’s not just Jets vs. Sharks—it’s poor vs. poorer in a rigged capitalist system. West Side Story sells us a love story but buries a brutal tale of racism, poverty, and displacement. Let’s break down the class struggle and colonial undertones in both versions. This is Marxists at the Movies.#MarxistsAtTheMovies #WestSideStory #Spielberg #Bernstein #Sondheim #LeftistTikTok #MovieAnalysis #ClassStruggle #AntiCapitalism #SocialistTikTok #CommunistCinema #FilmTok #MarxistCritique #CinemaFromBelow

Is the Wizarding World just whimsical fascism in disguise? In this episode, we dig into the Harry Potter film franchise and uncover the unsettling eugenicist and hierarchical themes baked right into the magic. From blood purity to authoritarian institutions, we explore how the films reinforce systems of power, inheritance, and exclusion—and why even the “good guys” uphold the status quo. It's not just a story about wizards—it's a blueprint for a deeply stratified society where your birth determines your worth. Magic isn’t neutral, kids.#HarryPotter #EugenicsIsMagic #MarxistsAtTheMovies #JKRowling #FilmAnalysis #WizardingWorld #QueerCinema #MagicalHierarchy #DumbledoresComplicit #AntiFascistFilmCriticism #CinematicResistance

Is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial actually a trans allegory hiding in plain sight? In this episode, we explore Spielberg’s 1982 classic through a queer, autistic, and Marxist lens—unpacking themes of found family, visibility, and the alienation of childhood. We connect E.T.’s glowing finger to moments of trans joy, analyze the government's role as an oppressive surveillance state, and even bring in Michael Jackson’s hauntingly beautiful song “Someone in the Dark” for deeper context. You’ll never watch that flying bike the same way again.#ET #TransAllegory #QueerCinema #Spielberg #FoundFamily #MarxistsAtTheMovies #FilmAnalysis #80sMovies #AutisticJoy #QueerFilm #MichaelJackson #SciFiRevolution #CinematicResistance

In this episode of Marxists at the Movies, we examine Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt through a Marxist-feminist lens. What looks like a murder mystery is really a story about perception, alienation, and a young woman waking up to the darkness around her.We focus on Charlie Newton’s transformation, explore the symbolic use of shadows, trains, and telegrams, and look closely at the roles of the women in her life—each navigating truth and denial in their own way.Spoiler alert: This episode discusses the full plot.#MarxistsAtTheMovies #ShadowOfADoubt #Hitchcock #FeministFilm #FilmAnalysis #WomenInFilm #ClassicFilm #PodcastEpisode

From Cold War propaganda to Reagan-era action heroes, Hollywood has long been a battleground for political ideology. In this episode, we explore the history of conservatism in film—how movies have shaped, reinforced, and challenged right-wing narratives. What other movies can you think of that reinforce thread ideologies? Comment below and don't forget to like and subscribe!

Join us Comrades on this very special deep dive outlining the history of Indigenous portrayals in film. Using historical sources we will examine films that portray Indigenous people's in both positive and negative ways, and how those portrayals reflect their true stories. A truly enlightening discussion! Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe!

Join us as we enter the tragically violent and desperate world of Menace II Society (1993) starring Tyrin Turner Caine, Larenz Tate, and Jada Pinkett-Smith. Bringing together sources on police violence, gang activity, and racial discrimination we will attempt to show how much of this fictional movie is based in reality and why it changed movies forever.

On this edition of Marxists at the Movies Podcast, we drive off into the sunset with our first road picture. 1995's Boys on the Side starring Whoopi Goldberg, Mary Louise Parker, and Drew Berrymore. Join us on a cross country journey as the film explores many feminist themes and the power of chosen family. Please don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe!

In our inaugural episode we tackle the AIDS crisis through the lens of the Dallas Buyers Club [2013) starring Matthew McConaughey. Join us as we discuss how the film depicts the early AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. Does it align with its lofty ideals? That's what we are here to find out on the Marxists at the Movies Podcast. Please don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe