Ned Wuascht

• Masks, Gender, and Genre: Inside Billy Wilder’s Cinema

  #5 Masks, Gender, and Genre: Inside Billy Wilder’s Cinema in Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, and One, Two, Three This episode takes us from the shadows of Sunset Boulevard to the political turmoils of Cold War Berlin—through the sharp, satirical, and entertaining world of Billy Wilder. Born in Austria-Hungary and later forced into exile by the Nazi regime, Wilder rose to become one of the most iconic writer-directors of Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age. But beneath the wit and glamour of his films lie biting critiques of power, gender, and performance—on and off screen. We explore three of Wilder’s most famous works: the noir comedy of Sunset Boulevard (1950), the screwball cross-dressing comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), and the hyperactive capitalist satire One, Two, Three (1961). Wilder’s characters are often caught between self-invention and social expectation—whether it's two musicians hiding in plain sight in women's clothing, a fading diva clinging to a forgotten image, or a Coca-Cola executive trying to control everything (and everyone) around him. His films perform genre, but they also perform ideology: letting us laugh, wince, and sometimes mourn at the ways gender, class, and desire are negotiated in mid-century cinema. Through a diverse-feminist lens, we ask: How does Wilder use performance and disguise—especially in Some Like It Hot—to explore the instability of gender roles and social norms? What do Norma Desmond’s haunting monologues in Sunset Boulevard tell us about ageism, stardom, and the gendered decay of Hollywood dreams? And how does One, Two, Three deploy rapid-fire dialogue and farce to reveal the absurdities of postwar capitalism and patriarchal order? Key questions in this episode include: How does disguise (voluntary or not) expose deeper truths about identity and social gender performance? What does Wilder’s comedy make visible about power and exclusion? And how do these films speak to the immigrant experience of navigating and reshaping dominant narratives?

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• Teen Angst and Quiet Violence? Youth, Gender, and Control

  #4 Teen Angst and Quiet Violence? Youth, Gender, and Control in Adolescence, Benny’s Video, and Lovely Rita This time, we dive into the alienated, disoriented, and at times violent worlds of three teenage protagonists—and ask what their silence, rage, and rebellion reveal about the societies around them. From the one-take intensity of Adolescence (UK 2025, creators Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne), to the disturbing sceneries of Benny’s Video (Michael Haneke, AT 1992), to the suburban revolt-escapisms of Lovely Rita (Jessica Hausner, AT 2001), we trace the intersections of gender, class, and power in cinematic portrayals of adolescent violence. As always, we take a diverse-feminist lens to look at these stories: How do teenage boys and girls experience control differently? Who is allowed to act out—and who is pathologized when they do? And what role do media, technology, and social isolation play in shaping these young lives? Each work not only depicts youth violence but also reflects on how violence itself is mediated and consumed—most strikingly in Haneke’s Benny’s Video, which directly implicates the viewer and destabilizes our position as passive observers. These are not just stories about violence; they are stories about how we watch violence. What also connects these narratives is the striking absence of honest parental affection, love, and emotional connection—an absence that becomes all the more devastating for young people growing up in a highly individualized world saturated with media images of violence, yet lacking spaces of care and genuine belonging. Key questions in this episode include: What kinds of violence are visible, and which are suppressed? How are masculinity and femininity narrated through acts of rebellion? And how do class and parental authority shape the way teenagers are seen—and punished?

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  1:15:22

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• Exoticism and Escapism! Class, Coloniality and Gendered Tourism

  This time it's all about westerner's all-inclusive getaways—and the ideological baggage the characters as well as the viewers bring with them. But does anybody care about the places they visit and the workers? In our third English podcast episode, we travel to The White Lotus Season 3 (US 2025) and revisit the early-2000s Austrian cult comedy Poppitz (AT 2002), each set in a more or less luxury holiday resort, each revealing just as much about its vacationers as it does about the place and the viewer it/him/her/*self. But what exactly lies beneath the beach towels and palm trees? With a focus on gender, whiteness, and class, we unpack the fantasies, projections, and power imbalances embedded in these two very different, yet surprisingly resonant, resort narratives. Our analysis builds on diverse-feminist film readings and digs into how The White Lotus and Poppitz render masculinity in crisis, exoticize their local contexts, and reproduce—or subtly question—privileged perspectives. Key questions in this episode include: What does it mean when white, Western characters escape to the Global South—or to a fictional place similar to Tunisia, in the Austrian imagination? What labor remains invisible in these glossy resorts, and who is allowed to desire, to complain, to act out? *** We are sorry for the bad sound quality of Bianca's track!

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  1:04:25

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• Sexy or sexist? Feminism, postfeminism and antifeminism

  The topic of this episode is postfeminism, or rather the changes in feminist waves and their entanglement with capitalist, neoliberal structures. Texts by Angela McRobbie and Rosalind Gill form the starting point for our examination of pop culture and pop culture and arthouse in this context. A look at Barbara Albert's Nordrand, Sabine Derflinger's "Anna Fucking Molnar" (AT 2017) and the series "Emily in Paris" (US since 2020) apply the approaches to film practice and analysis.

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• Intro NED WUASCHT goes English

  NED WUASCHT – WIR GEH’N FISCH’N is a critically divers-feminist film podcast by Vienna-based film scholars Bianca Jasmina Rauch and Barbara Wolfram, who are also active in the film industry, film journalism, and artistic research. Every few weeks, we introduce and apply tools for critical film reading and analysis with a intersectional feminist perspective in a conversational format. Since our research at the Film Academy in Vienna primarily focuses on Austrian cinema, we always discuss one Austrian film alongside a more "mainstream" international film or series. Finally, we present evidence-based suggestions for greater gender equality, inclusion, and diversity both on- and off-screen. In Season 4 of Ned Wuascht – wir geh’n fisch’n, we dive deep into new film releases and diverse feminist perspectives. Together, we bridge theory and practice, examining Austrian and international cinema through a diverse feminist lens. This season will be our first fully in English! nedwuascht.com/

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