Party Girl with Liz Gotauco

00:00:00
Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zephynvest start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

00:00:16
Speaker 2: Jamie, you can't be a librarian. Your mother was a woman with no common sense.

00:00:22
Speaker 3: What what is the Dewey decimal system?

00:00:29
Speaker 1: No?

00:00:29
Speaker 3: I think the response of the titular party girl should just be like, shut up, I'm wearing the greatest outfit ever worn by a human person. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. Party Girls. My name is Jamie Loftus.

00:00:42
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Derante. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. But what pray tell is.

00:00:55
Speaker 3: That, well, I'll tell you. The Bechdel test is a media metric created Queer Cortinez, Alice and Bechdel friend of the cast. Our best friend, our BFF. We have talked to her twice and she didn't yell so best friends. So she Originally this was a one off joke in her Wonderful Comics collection dice to watch out for has since been adapted to a more mainstream, widely applicable media metric. The version we use of the Bechdel test requires that two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of meaningful dialogue. If you want movies that pass the Bechdel test, congratulations, you've come to the right movie. Because we're talking about Party Girl today.

00:01:44
Speaker 4: This is so true.

00:01:45
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they're talking about libraries, they're talking about books. They're talking about the Dewey decimal system, which is named after a man. But the system is self a bad man too.

00:01:55
Speaker 5: An incredibly terrible man.

00:01:56
Speaker 3: Like really kind of like an all timer, shockingly bad man. I was on the Behind the Bastards episode about, oh about Dewey, like he's that bad, He's that bad.

00:02:07
Speaker 2: I had no idea. I didn't know research about mister Dewey.

00:02:10
Speaker 3: I think that that would be kind of overreach for Party Girl. But but you can go to the Behind the Bastard's episode because it is quite shocking. Oh, but I think I think, let's say the Dewey decibel system is a genderless entity. I agree, Anyways, it passes the Bechtel test. End of episode.

00:02:28
Speaker 2: Bye, yeah, No, we have a wonderful episode ahead of us with a wonderful guest.

00:02:34
Speaker 3: She is a.

00:02:35
Speaker 2: Librarian, storyteller, and debut author of the book Fucked Up fairy Tales, Sinful Cinderellas, Prince Alarmings, and other timeless classics. It's Liz Gotaco.

00:02:47
Speaker 5: Hello, everyone, so grill to be here.

00:02:49
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for joining us. But before we get into party girl, I want to hear more about your book let the listeners know.

00:02:56
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, thank you so much. It is a collection of fairy tale for an adult audience, all retellings. So they are fairy tales that have existed in folklore, and essentially I'm just kind of reclaiming fairy tales and like the lessons we can get from them and the kind of bibliotherapy we can use for adults, because for a long time, at some point people were like, fairy tales are for kids, and we're gonna teach kids how to be pious little babies with them, when actually there's a lot of weird stuff happening in them. There's stuff about our bodies, there's stuff about love, and sex and family baggage that I like to bring into my retellings.

00:03:31
Speaker 3: Awesome, that's so cool. Do you have a this is maybe a boring question for you, but interesting to me. Do you have a favorite fairy tale that you enjoyed reworking.

00:03:41
Speaker 5: Yes, I didn't do it exactly for the book, but my favorite fairy tale is the Brother's Grim There from one called aler Laira, And it's got an extremely fucked up premise in that princess's father falls in love with her and wants to marry her, and she rescues herself from that situation with like three magical ball gowns that she stuffed in a walnut shell on. She sure has this big, like weird kitchen wench disguise, and she goes to another kingdom and hides out until she can meet someone who isn't her dad. Ah, And that's my favorite fairy tale for some reason.

00:04:12
Speaker 3: Wow, that there is in all the twists You're like, that is ultimately somehow a relatable story for many just hanging out waiting to meet a man that's not your dad, Like, been there, been there, doing something weird while waiting to meet a man who's not my dad. That was eighteen years of my life. Well, I'm very excited to dig into the book and very excited to have a real life librarian on the Zoom call to talk about Party Girls.

00:04:43
Speaker 5: So we are flesh and blood.

00:04:44
Speaker 3: It's true, it's free and truly. Our bravest soldiers are librarians, especially now, which I would also love to talk about, but definitely. But first, what is your relationship with the movie Party Girl.

00:04:59
Speaker 5: I I first saw it, I think right around when I got my graduate degree, because I don't know, sort of like write a passageway. You're a librarian now, and you want to like see all the different versions of yourself in like library media.

00:05:12
Speaker 3: Is this Is this like librarian, cinema cannon?

00:05:16
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, for sure, Okay, okay, awesome, and we can we'll talk about it. But I actually think it's a really it's probably one of the better like representations of like an authentic library in movies. I didn't like totally click with this one at the time. I think I was a little bit of a judy when I was young, believe or not. Now I've gotten older and I'm appreciating more of my merry side of myself now.

00:05:35
Speaker 4: You're a party girl exactly.

00:05:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, because like we're seeing it again now in like my forties with more like life experience. Uh, I just like love it so much, so it's been really excited to remiss it now with like fifteen years of librarian ship under my belt and much better taste.

00:05:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie?

00:05:57
Speaker 3: I only saw it for the first time earlier this year, and like, I watched it on a whim as a person trying to make my own indie feature. You're like, okay, Like, what are what is the like s tier movie made for twelve dollars? That's amazing, and this definitely falls into that category. It came out in nineteen ninety five, for it was made for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which is absurd even in nineteen ninety five money. I love that it was written and directed by a woman. I know there's a male co writer, but I'm gonna iconically not include him, and so I was just really excited to check it out, and it fucking rocks. It's so much fun. I feel like this is one of the many characters Mary that has healed my relationship with the bimbo stereotype. I think about bimbo stereotypes a lot, and have in the last decade, mainly because of the work of Sarah Marshall, a bimbo's champion, and not just in terms of like reclaiming the term, but women who are like sexually open are framed, are framed and demonized so horrifically. This is something we know and made to seem like not smart and not able to adapt and change. Bah. And so I think if I saw this movie ten years ago, I would have really chafed with Mary, similar to you, Liz. Yeah, But seeing it now, it's like I see the vision. And also because she's played by Parker Posey, Parker Posey like gets it. I feel like she just gets Mary to her bones and like shapes her into this really beautiful character. I don't know, there's so much And I love Mustapha, I love their I love their weird, little horny twenty something romance. Like I just yeah, there's, uh, there's lots to love about this movie. Also that the directors know if it was her direct followup, I don't know if I'm gonna get the name right. Daisy von Schurler Mayer Daisy von Schurler Mayer, which is a mouthful, and I celebrate that she later directed the live action Madeline movie that I remember vividly.

00:08:15
Speaker 4: Oh, I don't remember that at all. I haven't seen that one.

00:08:18
Speaker 3: It was I don't think very successful. I just know my cousin had it on VHS.

00:08:23
Speaker 4: Wow.

00:08:24
Speaker 3: But yeah, it stars Francis mcdormant as the nun from Madeline. She is the I don't know if it's good. I do know that it wasn't successful, and I also know that I've seen it a lot of times and that she is, like she's still very much working. She's almost sixty. She's been mostly working in TV, but she like also did recent episodes of like Yellowjackets. Like, she's very much working, and I just think her career is really interesting. And this movie rocks long way of saying, I like this movie and I've seen it twice. Nice Caitlin, what about you.

00:09:02
Speaker 2: I had never seen this movie before prepping for this episode. I remember you talking about it, Jamie earlier this year, when you had seen it for the first time and really enjoying it. I will say that I did not connect with this movie quite as much nor the character Mary. I love Parker Posey so much, but I don't know something about some of her behavior. Just I was not the biggest fan. I think there are things to like about this movie, but for me, like I don't know, some of its parts just didn't. It didn't all come together for me. But uh, there's lots to talk about. I'm very excited to discuss.

00:09:43
Speaker 4: Should we take.

00:09:44
Speaker 2: A quick break and then come back for the recap.

00:09:47
Speaker 4: Let's do it, Okay, I'll play.

00:10:00
Speaker 2: It's a quick content warning here at the top for attempted sexual assault that happens toward the end of the movie. But we open on a party that's being thrown by the party girl herself, Mary, played by Parker Posey. We briefly meet some friends of hers also at the party, including a DJ who Mary seems to owe money to. We meet Mary's boyfriend, Nigel played by Leave Schreiber, but soon after this the cops show up and Mary is arrested and thrown in jail with charges like selling alcohol without a license and possession of controlled substances. So Mary uses her one phone call to call her godmother Judy, who apparently bails her out. Because we cut to Mary out of jail, ordering full of Full with hot sauce, a side of bob aganoosh, and a seltzer from a street vendor named Mustafa played by Omar Townsend, who is cute, and they flirt a little bit. Then Mary goes to the library where Judy works, so we meet Judy on screen for the first time, and she is played by Sasha von Schuler, who is director Daisy von Schuler, Mayer's mother.

00:11:29
Speaker 1: Oh.

00:11:31
Speaker 2: Mary asks Judy for a loan and or a job at the library, and Judy is reluctant to give Mary a job, saying that she's just like her mother and her mother had no common sense. But the library has experienced budget cuts and Judy realizes she can hire Mary as a clerk and not pay her very much. So Judy gives Mary this job. That's how I got a job at the Comptroller's Office of Massachusetts for these summers.

00:12:04
Speaker 5: That's hilarious. Word.

00:12:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the only nepotism I've ever been the beneficiary of the nepotism alive.

00:12:12
Speaker 5: And well in the public government system for sure. Yeah that small, small, small public government.

00:12:17
Speaker 2: Right. So now Mary has this job, but oh no, she has to learn the Dewey decimal system.

00:12:25
Speaker 3: I just think this is such a fun hill to scale for her because it is, well, Liz, it's confusing, right, it is is it is.

00:12:34
Speaker 5: And for some reason, like the employees of this library seem to know it down to like the twentieth decimal decimal as well, which I have to say I do. That's not the kind of library and I am there, but it's it's one of those things where you get like the broad strokes of it before you have to get the nitty gritty, and they're kind of throwing Mary into the deep end I think.

00:12:56
Speaker 6: A little bit.

00:12:58
Speaker 5: It takes a lot of a lot of training to just be like a library page or a library clerk who does the shelving.

00:13:04
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah.

00:13:05
Speaker 2: Well, when I was in school, I think both like elementary and high school, we would have like one class a week where we had like library library, right, and because I think like most children would not really go to the library otherwise unless they were forced to buy a class, So we would all go to the library and we would learn the Dewey decimal system, which to this day I still don't understand. I found it very complicated, but we would have like tests on it and stuff that's hard for.

00:13:35
Speaker 3: I feel like that's rare, yeah, because when we went to library class, they were just like, please read a book. Any book. That was sort of library class.

00:13:44
Speaker 5: Ours combined with like tech to a little bit like with early like internet technology.

00:13:49
Speaker 6: Right, hmm.

00:13:50
Speaker 3: There should be I thought about this before. If you're like this, it's so like niche, but there should be just a bunch of interviews about what specific computer classes were like a particular times, because early computer classes were so fucking unhinged and bizarre like there. I feel like I've definitely talked about this on the show before because I think about it constantly. But we had like in middle school, we had computer class and it would be like you play a math game, you play a reading game, and then you play a weird third game that was about internet safety, and you're playing a detective and you're trying to save a kid who talked to someone in a chat room and is now being held hostage in California. Like it was terrifying. It was just like meant to scare you into never using a computer again, even though you were at computer class. It was so weird.

00:14:41
Speaker 5: I don't even remember that type of stuff. I just remember like bs and clang, Oregon Trail and like sending notes, but with a computer until high school when I had to take it and it was so I was so fucking bored. I was like, well, I'm just gonna become the best typiest in the world, and I am nice.

00:14:58
Speaker 2: Well, part of my computer class was like a typing class, and they were like, if you don't learn how to type ninety words a minute, you're gonna fail miserably in the rest of your life. And so I was like, oh my god, I have to learn.

00:15:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, my dad was really I never. I still type like boink blank blink, but like ASDF, JKL semi, like that sort of that style of typing, like I won't I never. It's I don't know, like I think it's like people with typewriters, or maybe it was a reporter thing. I honestly don't know. But you keep your fingers if you're writing, you keep your fingers on ASDF on your last, JKL, semi on the other and then yes, you know, yeah, but that's just I don't think that there's a single person under fifty that does that. Now, probably not I do you do you ASDF?

00:15:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my default ASDF.

00:15:49
Speaker 3: Wow, you were like raised write or something like, I don't even that's not true there, you were raised differently, Yes, anyways, Yeah, there's to the library. Yeah.

00:16:01
Speaker 5: I do think like the goal of like the school library and these classes is so that like people like Mary or whatever, you can become like a self sufficient person in like locating information, not just like for school but in general and life. And but it's just like never works out that way.

00:16:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Mary is kind of she's in over her head with this library clerk job that she has just gotten.

00:16:26
Speaker 3: She's Parker poseying out about the Dewey decimal system.

00:16:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:16:30
Speaker 5: Again, all of those like shots of Melville Dewey's poster there, especially like knowing what a dirtbag he was, especially like haunting.

00:16:38
Speaker 3: I know, I'm like, did day, I feel like Daisy, we weren't. We weren't as a culture talking about the crimes of Melville Dewey in nineteen ninety five. She didn't know, No, she talked.

00:16:47
Speaker 5: I mean they do like briefly mention his sexism at the end of the movie about true but not crimes.

00:16:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, the crimes the racism of the anti sebotism, like it's just every every way you could be a bad person. He gave it a shot.

00:17:02
Speaker 6: We hate that, yep.

00:17:03
Speaker 2: So then we see Mary back at her apartment loft. She lives in this huge Manhattan question Mark or whatever somewhere in New York City loft, and she's hanging out with her friend Derek, who is always talking about this guy named Carl who he hooked up with but Carl didn't ever call him back. She's also hanging out with her friend Leo, the DJ we met earlier, who has kind of moved in because he needs a place to stay for a while. And she takes Leo to this place called Renees, the hottest nightclub in town, because Leo wants to spin at this club. So she's going to introduce Leo to Renee, who we meet on screen.

00:17:50
Speaker 3: I'm so curious if there's any first of all, any DJ is listed to our show, sccond of all, is this an accurate portrayal of DJ. It's like, I, I mean, Leo seems very committed to his crap, but I was just like, I don't know, DJ is such a nebulous, fascinating job. To me because you're like, what are you guys?

00:18:14
Speaker 6: What are you doing? Are you? Yeah?

00:18:16
Speaker 3: But it sounds and I feel mean saying that, but like I've been to so many weddings and I'm just like, it is you. You are curating the vibe.

00:18:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, but like.

00:18:26
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:18:26
Speaker 2: I also think that like nineties DJ, where you're like literally standing records, very different. There's a joke about this and pop Star Never Stops Stopping where I got a.

00:18:37
Speaker 3: Cut for it.

00:18:38
Speaker 2: So good feminist canon. But so it's dormant Decom's character. He plays Andy Samberg's characters DJ, and there's a joke where he's like, yeah, like back in the day, I used to actually like spin and do stuff as a DJ, And uh now I just hit play on an iPod.

00:19:00
Speaker 3: Leo is Leo is working?

00:19:02
Speaker 2: He is spinning?

00:19:04
Speaker 5: Yes, Yeah, he's creating a collage, a collage of vibes.

00:19:08
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:19:08
Speaker 3: Is it my personal vibe? Not really, but I celebrate it. Yeah, and everyone around.

00:19:13
Speaker 5: Him seems to be enjoying it something.

00:19:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, you're like, Okay, I guess I must have been a nineteen ninety five thing. People liked this shit.

00:19:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, around this time, Mary breaks up with her leaf shreber boyfriend Nigel, saying that he lowers her worth because it seems like he drinks quite a lot and he like maybe like pisses in public or something, and she's like, you're a dirt bag. I'm breaking up with you.

00:19:39
Speaker 3: Love that right, yeah goode.

00:19:42
Speaker 2: Then at work at the library, Mary tries to get the hang of things, but that damn Dewey decimal system is really she's really struggling with it. Then she goes to order more falafel from Mustafa and she tries to chat with him in Arabic because because she has been learning a few phrases specifically to be able to talk to him, and he tells her that he used to be a teacher back in Lebanon, but he's reluctant to teach in the US because he feels his English isn't good enough. Then he asks her on a date Friday night, which she seems excited about, and we see her at home doing a very offensive dance and singing thing. She's being very culturally insensitive and that's how she's displaying her excitement.

00:20:38
Speaker 3: Question mark.

00:20:39
Speaker 2: But when it comes time for the date with Mustapha on Friday night, she blows it off in favor of sneaking into the library and trying to figure out the filing system, especially because we just saw Judy be raiding her and again saying her mother has no common sense, neither to you, and your life is frivolous. And so Mary has been feeling especially inadequate and aimless, and so she's trying to like improve at her library clerk job and take pride in her work. But then we cut to Mustafa, who is being stood up and he's really bummed about it. Leo, meanwhile, has followed up with Renee, the nightclub owner, and she has given him an audition spot Friday night to spin, and he's really nervous, especially after he sees a beautiful dancer named Venus, and he messes up a little bit, but he recovers and he does a pretty decent job the rest of the night. The next day, Mary comes upon Judy as she's having a hot flash, and we're like, okay, menopause representation in media beautiful. Then Mary goes to Mustafa's food cart again, but he's still her that she bailed on their date. Neither of them directly addressed this but he makes a remark about how she was dismissive of him, and she's just like shrug, give me my falafel and baba ganush and Seltzer please, and you're just like.

00:22:19
Speaker 3: Mary, Mary.

00:22:20
Speaker 4: I mean I do.

00:22:22
Speaker 3: It is interesting rewatching this movie because I feel like in there's issues issues with it that we'll talk about, but there is like the low budget feel of like the plot is kind of all over the place. I feel like there's certain sequences where you're like, she's just kind of twisting in the wind. I don't understand her behavior. And luckily I really like Parker Posey.

00:22:45
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean she's like so in the moment too, I think, yeah, it was very like of her, not even acknowledging that she blow him off, and she's like very impulsive and it seems to be stuck where she is.

00:22:58
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's like, you know, we see her learn from that over the course of the movie, but especially at that moment. I mean, that's that's a tough one because you're like, Mustafa just like shared something very personal with you, He like really opened up to you, and your response is to do a weird racist stands at your house. And then blow them off.

00:23:15
Speaker 6: What do you mean?

00:23:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, what do you mean?

00:23:17
Speaker 2: Really?

00:23:18
Speaker 4: Any setting.

00:23:20
Speaker 2: Then, at work, Mary is much better at her job these days, but Judy still undermines her and compares her to her common senseless mother, which of course frustrates Mary. Then she bumps into Renee at the library, who thinks that Mary is there for an AA meeting, which is what Renee is there for. So she confides in Mary. And then there's this weird joke. We'll talk all about how Renee's alcoholism is represented in the like comic relief that the movie's trying to do with it, but that's there. Then there's a montage of Mary ordering falaffel from Mustapha again, but he's not thrilled about her always coming around. He has previously told her like, leave me alone, but she keeps coming back. He tries to send her to the gentrification falaffel kart across the street, and so we'll talk about that as well, but she's like, no, I want your falafel. Then Mary puts her library filing skills to practice and organizes Leo's like over one thousand records by a filing system akin to the Dewey decimal system, which infuriates Leo because he already had a system and she fucked it up. But she's like, no, no, no, my system is better.

00:24:49
Speaker 3: Here.

00:24:50
Speaker 2: I'll teach you how to use it. And then it seems like he kind of comes around on it, and so it was good actually that she interfered with his life. And there's what I found to be a very bizarre scene where Leo takes a shower and she's like, no, it's my turn to take a shower. So she gets in the shower with him without his permission, and they're naked and then she kisses him. The consent here is murky at best, just off the rails.

00:25:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it really goes nowhere yeah yeah, and then goes nowhere. Yeah. I wrote that I was just like, question Mark didn't love it, Like it's so like because it's really unclear what the movie thinks is happening, yeah, and what the characters thinker is happening. So I'm like, or if there's any precedent for this having happened in this roommate relationship before, like, just nothing but questions. I stand with what I said, which is question Mark didn't love it.

00:25:52
Speaker 6: A fair assessment.

00:25:53
Speaker 5: Yes.

00:25:53
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:25:54
Speaker 2: Then we cut to Mary back at the library. Mustapha comes in looking for information on becoming a teacher in the US, not realizing that Mary works there, and she helps him, and then they have sex in the library. It's after hours at this point, so like they're alone, it's not like they're doing it in front of other people. But she forgets to close the windows and it's pouring rain outside, and the rain splashes in and it ruins several books, which enrages Judy. The next day, Judy also sees like a used condom in the trash, so she knows that Mary had sex in the library, and this is when she goes.

00:26:35
Speaker 3: But she had a good reason, like I'm very pro Mary having sex in the library. I actually have to.

00:26:42
Speaker 5: Say, as like a public librarian, I don't think I would just automatically assume it was my coworker that had sex in the library. Either in a public building, it could be anyone's condom.

00:26:50
Speaker 3: That's true. Famously, anyone can go so it's very easy to be like, it wasn't me, It wasn't It could have been anyone in the city.

00:26:59
Speaker 2: So true, so true. I mean I guess to Mary's credit. She cops to it immediately, She's like, yeah, I fucked.

00:27:06
Speaker 3: Oh n it. So it's like, also, it is cool that she fucked in the library, so why had it right? It's like, you're jealous. I hear you, and I hear that you're jealous.

00:27:15
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah yeah.

00:27:16
Speaker 2: And then this is when Judy has a monologue about gender roles and women being underappreciated in the work they do in libraries. Again, we can talk more about this later, but the bottom line is Judy is furious and she fires Mary from the library, and then when it rains, it pours because Mary also gets an eviction notice, so she's really having the low point of the movie. She sells a bunch of her designer clothes to a thrift store so she can make rent, and she's once again feeling very lost and aimless. She doesn't know what to do with her life. Mustapha consoles her and like as he's embracing her, she looks around and she's like, hmm, this would be a great place for a party. Cut to she's throwing another party, one that is once again very culturally insensitive and appropriative, and it's also her birthday party because it's her birthday, but she's very stressed out about like the logistics of throwing the party, and she's lashing out. So Mustapha confronts her for being shitty to the people who are helping her, and she doesn't like being confronted. So to cope with everything that's going on, she takes some drugs and they make her like go off the deep end. She's like falling all over the place. She says the f slur to her friend Derek a bunch of times.

00:28:50
Speaker 3: She shared us Yeah.

00:28:51
Speaker 2: Then her ex boyfriend Nigel pulls her aside and attempts to assault her several times, but she's able to get way and she goes into her building and passes out on the stairs. She wakes up the next morning and goes to the library to be like, hey, Judy, I need to talk to you. Come over to my place tonight at eight o'clock. Then Mary enlists the help of a few of her former library colleagues and starts researching places for Mary to go to grad school and study library science so that she can become a librarian.

00:29:26
Speaker 3: I was like this, now the movie's becoming Kaitlin Cannon, because higher education is becoming integral to the plot.

00:29:32
Speaker 2: She's trying to get a master's degree, but once she gets it, she will never mention it.

00:29:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I feel like Mary would be bringing it up.

00:29:42
Speaker 5: Yeah, honestly, that gets very librarian to bring up your master's degree. So the difference between film world and library world, I think in terms of graduate studies.

00:29:51
Speaker 2: As someone with again a master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University, I would never mention my master's degree.

00:29:59
Speaker 5: So master's de grace from the University of her An Island and I'm load, I'm proud about.

00:30:02
Speaker 3: It, and I uh am not in debt smart, very smart.

00:30:11
Speaker 4: Okay.

00:30:11
Speaker 2: So meanwhile, Derek and Leo are at Mary's place setting up a second birthday party for her. This one's a surprise party, and she comes home and they're like surprise, But she is not as much of a party girl anymore. She is now more of a library girl. So she tries to break up the party before Judy arrives. But Judy shows up and she's like, I knew it, You're a frivolous party girl. There's a male stripper who's dancing all over Mary while she's begging Judy for her library job back.

00:30:49
Speaker 3: It's a very chaotic and just movie like they're it felt like they were like, oh my god, we all they have one day left to shoot. I guess we're just gonna have to do everything that's left in the movie. Everything just kind of happens. It feels very rushed. Yeah, I kind of love it, like it's just yeah, very frenetic.

00:31:06
Speaker 6: Yes. Yes.

00:31:07
Speaker 2: And then Mary's friends come to her defense and they're like, she helped organize my records, she helped me research how to become a teacher. And Judy is like, damn, okay, maybe you are a library girl. And she gives Mary her job back, and everyone celebrates and dances and parties because.

00:31:27
Speaker 6: You can do both. You can.

00:31:30
Speaker 3: You can the end, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and throw a party in the library.

00:31:38
Speaker 6: Who and we're back.

00:31:50
Speaker 3: What feels right? I mean, I sort of want to start with what doesn't work about this movie, so we can talk more about libraries and bimbos and stuff that does. I think that, like, okay, so obviously there's a lot of racial insensitivity in this movie that comes from our protagonists who were supposed to love. Yeah, I think, like, so this is a two white writers. There is this co writer, Harry Burkmeyer, Daisy von Schirler Mayer is both the writer and the director. So this is coming from a white perspective. And I would be curious if she spoke with anyone of a Lebanese background or just a non white background at all when building out this story, because I think that the character of Mustapha is thoughtful. Asterisk for nineteen ninety five, right, which was mentioned when this movie first came out, And there's a quote from Daisy von Schurlermeyer. I'm just gonna say Dave Meyer because that's what she uses now, but that people were complimenting her her on like oh, you're your movie is so diverse, and she says, no, that's the world. You don't represent the world in your stuff. Why is your world so segregated? I think the world is messed up and party Girl is normal. So she's coming from like this comes from an attempt to show New York as it is or as it was when this movie is made, which I think is like a very valiant and cool thing to do. But because our protagonist is aggressively white, you could say, I feel like when she was doing these all this culturally insensitive stuff, she doesn't learn from it and it's played for laughs, and so it just sucks like it just yeah, there's.

00:33:49
Speaker 5: Just no if she had to reckon with that at some point in the movie, it would be very different. Because I know, I'm like an extremely white presenting woman, but my father is Filipino, and so I think there it's a pretty realistic actually to like feel like you're honoring someone close to you their culture and to do it in a completely misguided way. But obviously if you present that and then never like reckon with it, then all the wrong lessons are being learned.

00:34:15
Speaker 3: It's interest because I feel like the potential, Like I don't know like a lot of things, and I know that this was like a movie very much made like Run and Gun style, but like it felt like there was a lot left on the table with Mustapha's character in general, because I really liked the like the story we get with him. You know so much more about him than you know about most people of color in movies in nineteen ninety five, which is depressing, but like you know, he is like a very sweet person, like he wants to be a teacher. He has this ambition that exists outside of our protagonist, which again rare, but like, because Mary does not learn anything about her own cultural insensitivity, it's like hard to her root for that relationship for Mustafa because you're like, that sucks for him.

00:35:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because so much of what she is doing is that white people sing of wearing other people's cultures as a costume. Because we see again that scene where she has like developed a crush on Mustafa and she goes home and does that like bizarro like feels like maybe she's mimicking belly dancing or more likely mimicking other caricatures of Arabs that she has a copy of a copy of a comedy, Yeah, precisely. And then there's the part where she and Mustafa are supposed to go on a date. She completely blows him off. She shows up at his falafel cart as if nothing has happened. He's rightfully upset and says something like, you seem to misunderstand what's going on here, and it feels like you've you know, you met a vendor who speaks funny English, and for you, it's a holiday travel without buying a plane ticket, but I can't agree with this, like can you go? And she completely shrugs this off. She does not apologize, she does not acknowledge her shitty, white privileged behavior. There's that part where he tells her that he was a teacher back in Lebanon but that he has like struggled to become a teacher here, and she's super dismissive about it. She's just like, well, why don't you just become a teacher in America? Like what are you doing with a falafful cart. She's also like pretty classist in the way that she talks about doing any kind of like service jobs. She's like, I am not a waitress. I will never be a waitress.

00:36:38
Speaker 3: Which I also feel like that I interpreted that as like her coping, like because she is. I don't know, there is like this Hollygo lightly quality to her where she wants. She like has no money herself, but she wants to appear wealthy, and so I feel like it's like she I don't know, maybe I'm giving the character too much credit, but it's not like she's above any working class job, like she she needs work. It's like she can't admit that to herself. Yes, for sure. So I felt like a lot of her classes stuff felt coping coded to me. I guess yeah. But the way that she treats Mustava, I just I get it. Like her character is supposed to be like careless and lost, and like then she learns the Dewey decimal system and that somehow solves everything whatever. But like I was repeatedly bumped by, like you said, Caitlin, like that speech that Mustapha brings, like he's very clear about like why he is not okay with how she's treating him. He has a detailed backstory, like it isn't as if the writers are not thinking about him. They've like built a very sympathetic, cool, unique character, So why is he treated so badly? Like it's not played for laughs that he's treated badly. It kind of just like happens. And there isn't like quite the resolution or movement on Mary's part.

00:38:03
Speaker 5: So it's yeah, yeah, and I can't even tell how we're how they're kind of hoping we're gonna feel about it either, because right, I mean I certainly know, like when she has her like Arabian Night's birthday party or whatever, and she's like tokenies her boyfriend in his uniform and is saying, it's funny, it'll be funny if you, you know, build your full offel. Yeah, it just comes across as so wild and I'm guessing maybe it's just supposed to represent her kind of bottoming out, but it's feel terrible for Mufasa that it never comes around later on.

00:38:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've just you're just like and then he like sticks up for her towards the end, because that's what needs to happen at the end of the movie. I don't know, I just I've I've it felt like there should have been a victory for Mustafa in the context of this relationship where we see him stand up for himself. It just kind of seems like everything that resolves seems to happen in a way that we don't see or is it kind of like YadA YadA, when I think it's like very within the you know, ability of this movie to like have those conversations with these characters, like this movie can have uncomfortable conversations, and I just felt like Mustapha kind of got left by the way side. Yeah, in this in this way that feels like really gross because we know this character, we love this character, but like you're saying, Liz, like I am so unclear on because white cultural insensitivity is so prevalent then and now that it's like this is I feel like that kind of insensitivity. This is like the tip of the iceberg in the nineties. So it's like hard to watch in twenty twenty five and really like understand what we're supposed to be, Like, are we supposed to be offended and embarrassed and upset with her in nineteen ninety five? I genuinely don't know.

00:39:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, the big problem here, as we've said, is that things were resolve narratively, but we don't see any effort on the part of the white character to unlearn her racism or to hold herself accountable for it and acknowledge it and apologize for it. Like, we see none of that. It's just that they've made up. They've kissed and made up, and it's nice. A very similar thing happens with what appears to be commentary on cultural appropriation with the white full Awful vendors who have a food cart across the street from Mustaphas, and you can imagine that like their food is not very good or authentic, but the white people in the neighborhood are lining up for the white people full afful that they put toothpicks in and stuff like that, And I feel like Mary always going to Mustafa's cart and not the like gentrification falafful cart is supposed to be shorthand for Mary's cool and she can hang and that's why it's quote unquote okay for her to then turn around and throw like cultural appropriation the party at the end of the movie. But anyway, so throughout the entire movie, it's Mustafa resenting that these white food vendors are making his culture's food and doing it wrong and it's way more popular, like their business is way more successful than his.

00:41:28
Speaker 3: Which is like good commentary. So it's exactly yeah again, so you're like this movie is able to engage with these issues. But then there's like a clear point with Mary's character where they just stop for sure.

00:41:40
Speaker 2: And then at the end of the movie this magically resolves itself where suddenly no one's going to the white people full awful cart and it's no longer popular and everyone is instead lining up at Mustafa's food cart. But we don't know what changed or why it's just this sort of magical resolution that happens without again anyone learning anything or.

00:42:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does feel like sort of like oh no, the movie has to end, like.

00:42:07
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's like a short movie. It feels like there's like a cutting room floor full of scenes that maybe want to filled some of this in.

00:42:15
Speaker 3: I mean also just like one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They may have just been like we can afford to shoot for ten days, and whatever we get on those ten days ends up beating the movie. But like I yeah, I again, it's like I'm glad that that wasn't dropped, but like you're saying, Caitlin, it was very just like happy ending in a way that like doesn't engage with the clear commentary that that conflict was introduced with. So it's like yet another thing that it's like it's set up in a way that you're like, oh, this could be really interesting, but then it's either like dropped, forgotten about, or just like tied up in a very weird neat bow and just like yeah, going back to the relationship with Mary Mustafa, because it seems like whatever these conversations, well whatever the resolution with their relationship happens mostly off screen. You do sort of like leave with the impression that and I think that this is like again, another common thing that this movie should be commenting on instead of just doing, is like she doesn't make any movement on her cultural insensitivity or covert racism or overt racism. So if at the end, if Mustapha is choosing to be with her, like, what choice do we have but to think like, okay, so he's just compartmentalized that and said I accept her like I will not demand more of my partner, which is like a very like he deserves better, he deserves yea better.

00:43:56
Speaker 2: I also want to talk about the black characters in the movie, who are very much either secondary or tertiary characters whose interior lives we know nothing about. The few who we learn by name, Each one has some thing that is not handled well. Starting with Wanda. She is the library clerk who Mary works with, and we see her now and then we don't really get much of a sense of her and Mary's working relationship. Then there's a scene toward the end where Mary grabs Wanda by the scruff of her neck and like slams her into a bookcase and says something like, you're gonna help me, bitch. Cut to Mary is making Wanda and some of her other colleagues like research grad school for her, So it's just like we know nothing about this character. And then we see like Mary being violent and aggressive towards her, so that's not great we have. This feels like another example of Mary temporarily adopting a culture that she doesn't belong to to seem like trendy or whatever. But we meet this character when Mary goes to Renee's nightclub. Natasha is black and queer, and Mary gets up and sort of like dances with or next to Natasha, but it's mostly just Mary's standing there as Natasha is voguing, and once again it's just like Mary, like ballroom culture is not yours, Like what this is not for you?

00:45:38
Speaker 6: What are we doing here?

00:45:40
Speaker 2: But that's also just like a thirty second scene, and then we never see Natasha again. Then there's Howard, who is a librarian who we also don't see much of until the scene at the end when Mary is trying to figure out how to go to grad school. We learn a little bit about how Howard feels regarding like libraries and academia and stuff like that, but it's a very quick scene. We don't get much else from Howard. And then there's Venus, the dancer at Rene's club who vibes with Leo. Again, we don't learn much about her, but there is this random beef between her and Mary at the party scene toward the end, where Venus says to Mary like, could you move your cigarette is bothering me? And Mary replies very antagonistically, like get a last name and then we'll talk. And it's just like, what is this random? Like do you even know each other? Like why are you being so antagonistic toward that?

00:46:46
Speaker 3: I was like, this feels deleted, scene coded or just straight up like bad. Improbably it was weird, weird, weird. Yeah, I think that like that is like a consistent thing throughout this movie where they're trying to capture this very diverse party scene that existed at the time in the locations where that was happening, but they are not giving focus to the characters that make those parties what they were. So it's like it feels like you get a very surface look at New York queer culture, at ballroom culture at all, of these scenes that existed at the time, but you really just see them in a brief flash in a way that makes Mary seem out of place, and the characters, particularly the black characters, seem very like there and gone. And again it's like, even with the way that they had to make this, like why not have a full character. If you want to have like show this party scene, if you want to have ballroom within the movie, then give us a character, give us two characters, even although you know two is usually too much, too much to us. Yes, but yeah, I think particularly with black characters, it started to feel like it was a repeating thing. And again, this movie was like praise for its diversity at the time, and unfortunately probably it did look more diverse than most movies at the time.

00:48:19
Speaker 5: Well it structured funny too, because like similar to m stuff, I think like the first impressions you get at these characters, it's exciting, like you see black, queer people. Right from the beginning of the movie. You see two black librarians and a career that's very very white, and so I'm inclined to say, yay, I'm excited to dig into this more. And then nothing happens with them, yeah, or poor things happen with them.

00:48:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's the facade of diversity because you see black characters, you see queer characters, you see immigrant characters, you see a Latine character. With Leo, who is played by Ghirmo Diaz.

00:48:55
Speaker 3: He's been on every TV show on the face of the planet. His IMDBA is Wild.

00:49:01
Speaker 2: Weeds, Girls, Law and Order, Scandal.

00:49:05
Speaker 3: Like, etc. Every TV show that's all of them.

00:49:08
Speaker 5: That's the best kind of career I think, to have just to be everywhere.

00:49:12
Speaker 3: It is pretty cool.

00:49:13
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's what appears to be a diverse cast, but the inclusion and characterization of many of those characters isn't particularly meaningful or thoughtful.

00:49:24
Speaker 3: The cultural insensitivity towards Mustafa is the most egregious because it seems like their heart is maybe not in the right place. With how Mary's characterized, it does feel like, you know, in terms of like, I don't know, there are moments where it's like this movie's biting off more than it can chew. If straight white woman has to be at the center of it, I want to say, it does seem like the director's heart is in the right place. She wants to show a wide swath of New York culture, but like she kind of can't with the story she's created. It's a bummer. And and also like you see so with with with other characters, you're like, oh, this would this is this is a whole other movie. You know, like there are certain stops at certain clubs where you're like, let's stay I wish we could stay here, could we get you know?

00:50:17
Speaker 5: Yeah, she knows so many interesting people. Yeah, but they're kind of just there to make her interesting and you know, let's be bad.

00:50:23
Speaker 2: Yeah right, Yeah, they're there to service her character more than be characters themselves.

00:50:29
Speaker 3: In terms of stuff I like about the movie, I do like, Okay, so we have a messy, unlikable New York girl protagonist. I'm a sucker for that. I like that. I mean, she's, amongst other things, very twenty three years old. She doesn't know what she wants to do. She's in denial and defensive about just about everything. She has anxiety about being around older women, which is a very interesting dynamic that I don't think that I like understood about myself when I was in my early twenties, where like a lot of older women to her are cautionary tales rather than people to talk to, and so I just like part of what I think her dynamic with Judy is very interesting that I think is like a strength of the movie where they just do not get each other. They're projecting like nobody's business at each other, and I don't know, I think it's like a cool even though both of these characters are pretty broad in the way that they are painted, like everyone in this movie is very broad, but there was more nuance in their relationship than I was expecting, honestly, and I appreciated it.

00:51:51
Speaker 2: This is not really a criticism, but I was just curious about how Judy is Mary's godmother because Judy and Mary's mother were friends once upon a time. We also learned that Mary's mother passed away.

00:52:05
Speaker 3: Right, which is like an element of Mary's character that you goes kind of under explored, but you're like, oh, she also like lost a parent very very young, and like Matt, can have no other family that can lead to party girl tendencies and like looking for community outside of family in YadA YadA.

00:52:21
Speaker 2: But the thing I was curious about is like Judy does not seem to respect Mary's mother at all, so like, why were they friends? And why did she agree to be Mary's godmother?

00:52:31
Speaker 3: I was so curious if that was a seed that was cut or something, because I do again, it's like that's a weirdly specific detail that like completely informs how she treats like she's she's like getting out all of her anger at this woman who is no longer alive by tormenting her daughter while also feeling responsible for her. And like that's a really complicated dynamic.

00:52:58
Speaker 5: Yeah, there seems to be something heavy maybe that happened there. I mean that we know that like this one died in a dui. Yeah, so maybe there's there is some kind of grief that she's trying to process and and that's the reason why she's sticking around with Mary book. But again we're we're we're Philly and Blanks.

00:53:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's and it's like a very complicated specific dynamic to be Philly Good Blanks for as an audience, because it did. I think, like similar to Mustafa, we get way more detailed than I would have expected for Mary's mother, where you know, most movies you sort of get like Disney Prince, like you know, they're like she died when she was young, and that's why she's weird. Now, Like that's the story of so many young women in media, but this is, like, we know, it's a very specific, tragic circumstance, and Judy is taking it out. I mean, I don't know, poor Jewe. I feel for Judy and also can be so judgmental and cruel and like she's really she's.

00:54:04
Speaker 5: Like painted her picture of Mary and it's it's hard to see her getting out out of it.

00:54:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's and you know, that provides for a nice arc at the end where Judy kind of finally loosens up and she's like, yeah.

00:54:19
Speaker 3: My god, daughter.

00:54:20
Speaker 2: She's a party girl, but she's also a library girl, and the two things can be true at once, and so here's your job back.

00:54:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, And we do get like an element of Judy seeming like she like regrets some kind of loss of her youth or whatever in that scene where they meet up on the bench and she's having the hot flash, because she does kind of imagine like, oh, I know what your night was like so care free and sow this and so that, And I do wonder if there's like a longing there in addition to her sort of dismissal of that lifestyle, but.

00:54:49
Speaker 2: She also says something like, you know, I know you have so many friends, because at one point Judy like extends an olive branch and says like, would you like to have dinner with me? And I forget who else, maybe it was like the librarians and clerics and stuff. But Mary's just like, no, I'm going out, and Judy's like, oh where, and She's like, I don't know yet. I just know that I'm not going to dinner with you. And so they're both dismissing each other and it you know, there could be a generational component to it.

00:55:17
Speaker 3: There could be just tell also very like they have a very mother daughtery kind of antagonism about them too, like yeah, I I'm glad you brought up the du I think because it also ties in this movie. Another thing that this movie like tackles with specificity but also dismissal at the same time, which is like addiction and alcoholism, where if I'm putting myself in Judy's head, I understand, I mean, it doesn't justify the cruelty and the judgment which also does just objectively does not help. But like her anxiety at seeing her friend's daughter who died in a dui, you know, going out to parties all the time. I understand that, like core, Like, it's not this is not a character who's written in love, Like she's just jealous and she hates young women without context and blah blah blah. It's like we know the reasons and she is like not able to quite see it or acknowledge it or I don't know. It's like this combination of things. And then you have the is it Renee Renee at the club owner? Yeah, And and the way her story is treated sort of undercuts that.

00:56:28
Speaker 5: It's just I don't know, Yeah, it almost seems like they were setting up these like two maternal figures in a way, and one of them is sort of on the path that her mom was and the other one isn't. But then again, we don't really get to know her name other than small bites, right, So it's.

00:56:45
Speaker 3: Just another question mark don't love it moment.

00:56:48
Speaker 2: And again, just to briefly go through those beats with Renee and just reiterate that she's someone who is dealing with an alcohol addiction, and that is played as a comedic beat almost every time. It's brought up where there's like the whole misunderstanding in the library and Renee thinks that Mary is there for an AA meeting, and so she walks into the meeting with Renee and everyone there is smoking cigarettes, and so Mary's coughing, even though we also see her smoking cigarettes, so it seems like she's a smoker, So like, why are you coughing?

00:57:24
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's whatever it but and it's like it's so like it's like pick a Lane is like are you playing for laughs or not? I mean not that I'm like just play it for laughs obviously, Like that is an insensitive like that's whatever. Why so much comedy age is poorly But it's so weird that it happens that there is like one track in which there is like an unusual amount of nuance and another track where it's just the total opposite.

00:57:51
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Because the way that scene culminates is everyone's smoking a cigarette. It's causing Mary to cough a lot, and then she says, I need a drink and then she like runs out, and it's probably that what she probably means is she needs a drink of water because she's coughing. But the joke is, oh no, this room full of people who were there for an AA meeting thinks she's about to fall off the wagon and go get a drink of alcohol for sure, for sure, Haha, isn't that funny? And then later on at the Mary's birthday party, like the surprise party, Renee is there and she thinks that Mary's on drugs and she keeps being like, oh no, what are you on? Oh no, you're hitting rock bottom. Oh my god, and her concern for Mary is once again played as a joke, because the whole thing is like she's misunderstanding what's going on, and isn't that funny. She's really overreacting. So the way all that was handled was like really bizarre to me.

00:58:48
Speaker 3: It is weird. I wanted to I don't know, like the amount of So this is Daisy Byer's or Dais Mayer's first movie. She directed it when she was twenty eight, I think, which is offensive to me, but I did want to say she I Once I learned more about her background, I was like, oh this is I mean, first of all, she was whatever, like yes, but like a very particular kind of nepo baby that I think helps you understand why she chose this story. So first of all, she is like, you know, not not like she is Mary, but like sounds like she probably has experiences similar to Mary, where she is like had financial worries but not really because her family was fine, did run in these crowds, which is why she was able to get access to so many iconic spaces for her movies because she was calling in favors. But also that she is in fact the daughter of kind of an iconic party girl. She is the daughter of an actress and comedian Sasha von Schuler who plays Judy, who plays Yes. So it's like there is like a party girl legacy.

01:00:03
Speaker 5: Oh Judy was the party girl. Yeah, I mean in real life.

01:00:06
Speaker 3: It's kind of cool where it's like Sascha von Schuler was like a big time flapper and like art girl, and I just I thought that was cool. It's like that they're the first of all that they like collaborated. You're like, I don't know, it's so rare to find a Neppo baby story where you're like, you know what, I'm okay with this. It's it's like when I see Margaret Qualley, I'm just like, you know what, fine, I like it. I like it. I like that sort of generational thing. Other random stuff about this movie that make it very nineteen ninety five. This is the first movie that premiered on the internet, question mark yes, what Yes? And that like who knows how much electricity it took for that to happen.

01:00:54
Speaker 2: They could only the transmission was limited to black and white, so it wasn't even in color. Yeah, I read this to I'm pulling from, of course, scholarly Journal Wikipedia.

01:01:03
Speaker 6: Yeah.

01:01:03
Speaker 4: The movie did.

01:01:04
Speaker 2: Have a theatrical release, I believe, But yeah, it did.

01:01:08
Speaker 3: Well well or made its money back, premiered at Sundance, made its money back.

01:01:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, it had an Internet premiere and was the first movie.

01:01:21
Speaker 3: To do so, which is kind of cool. I don't know, just everything about it is so nineties. Its strengths are very nineties. It's weaknesses or very nineties. Its message while enduring. I think it's very nineties because it's kind of like girl powery feminism of like you can go to a party and read a book, which is a lesson I like, but very much a lesson of its.

01:01:46
Speaker 2: Time, you know, and to get into the library of it all. And Liz let's go to the library.

01:01:52
Speaker 3: In foremost, Yeah, let's get into library and representation. There is that like Judy's feminist monologue about well, she starts out by berating and more or less slutshaming Mary. Judy's like, don't fuck in my library. Quit behitting so stupidly in you know, like diminishing your potential, and blah blah blah.

01:02:16
Speaker 2: Then she says Melville Dewey hired women his librarianes because he believed the job didn't require any intelligence. It was a woman's job, quote unquote. That means it's underpaid and undervalued. And then she goes on a rant about like literacy rates and people watching movies instead of reading books and how that's disgussting.

01:02:37
Speaker 3: Which is a very generational vibes. Yea, but I liked it.

01:02:43
Speaker 2: I liked it was fun monologue.

01:02:45
Speaker 3: The last thing I wanted to say about Sasha von Schuler is she was, you know, kind of objectified pretty heavily in her early life, in her party girl days. But in the eighties she got her masters in social work and then worked for over ten years at an AIDS treatment center in Greenwich Village. So we have just like I don't know. I'm I'm I'm chalking it up as good NEPO, good NEPO mother daughter collab.

01:03:17
Speaker 2: But but Liz, tell us, what tell us your thoughts on the representation of library librarians. Yeah, et cetera.

01:03:25
Speaker 5: I think Judy toes the line of like stereotypical librarian a little bit are like old school librarian, but not totally. She never shushes anyone, which is revolutionary for that.

01:03:34
Speaker 2: I was shocked because Mary storms in all the time, screaming and no one ever says.

01:03:42
Speaker 5: And you know, her ideas about TV and stuff. Everything she says about Dewey and his added toward towards woman is true and has like larger implications with like women in librarianship. Even though it's like a female heavy field. You know, there is a big pay gap between men in the field and women in the field. I when I think of Dewey and what he thought of women in the library, I think of him as as unfortunately starting the sexy librarian trope in a way because he wanted to hire women, because he wants to look at beautiful women while he worked. But libraries are really definitely one of those feminized job that in that it's a service job, in that it's a provider job. Everything Judy feels about it is right. There's a level that we want to like uplift the job past that, but also I don't know, it's like wrapped up in its legacy a little bit. Yeah, but you think she's a good I think she's a pretty good character. That to me, what I see when I when I was watching Party Girl, with the librarian ship of it all, is something that kind of minicked my path was that, like when you become a librarian, it becomes like your entire thing, Like I'm a librarian now, and it like infiltrates your life. It's and it's hard to like separate being a librarian from yourself from yourself. And I do think Judy is stuck there a little bit. And I do wonder if the sequel to Party Girl is Library Girl, when like she's trying to reclaim some of that of her old self that Mary's lost because she goes full librarian by the end of the movie. She's like, no fun tights, put the hair up, put the glasses.

01:05:13
Speaker 2: On hair and a type on glasses.

01:05:15
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm a new person now. Yeah, And that feels true true to the career as well.

01:05:23
Speaker 3: Interesting, Yeah, I want I want more librarian movies and like, are there okay, here's another not to put you on the spot, but are there other movies that, like to this degree, are in librarian cinematic canon? Like, are there others that people are like, Oh, if you're a librarian, you have seen this movie, whether you like it or not.

01:05:44
Speaker 5: There's not a huge amount of librarian representation, and I think that I think in some ways every library in the librarian and media is like you love them and you hate them because they're either like super kind of a superhero.

01:05:59
Speaker 6: You know.

01:06:00
Speaker 5: I think of like Buffy or like Rachel Weissen The Mummy, where we kind of hold them up here. But there's a very different part of being a librarian, which I do think they kind of do in Party Girl, where it's it's not a it's just an everyday job. I mean, like, it's a public building, You're going to clean up shit. At some point, it's you, people scream at you. And which is the face that you don't see in in the movies as much so to me, I like part of her for that reason. There's also a great Australian show called The Library or Librarians. I think that, like the very first scene of it is the library director scraping like shit out of the drop box, and I was like, wow, this is but you know, we also love our little superhero librarians because well who doesn't lie. I feel like their job is a little is a little bit of a superhero job heroic.

01:06:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:06:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially, I mean I want to see I don't know, because there is a world and this is like where I'm this isn't a criticism, this is just like wow, there are so many different ways this that this story could have gone, or like other fun library based stories where I feel like this movie now would be like basically just fighting against a library's closure by a fascist government.

01:07:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to like put on a big benefit show to save the library.

01:07:22
Speaker 5: She has to throw a party.

01:07:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to throw the like library rave or whatever to save the library. But I was, I just think it's funny. I mean, it's like I get I'm sure that it like helps keep things like appropriately low stakes in a way that it's like okay, we could shoot that. But her main struggle as a library and being learning the Dewey decimal system was very funny to me of just like how both high and low stakes it is at the same time.

01:07:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, I do think that there's something too like her learning this like organizational system is like how she's going to put her a life in order, because I do find sometimes that when outside life is like chafing me, if I go to the nonfiction section and reorganize it, I'm like, well, at least I can fix something. Yeah, And so you know, librarian is maybe the perfect job for Mary in this journey in that regard, and you see little glimpses of it in her after her outside life too, with like her like fashion organization and.

01:08:21
Speaker 2: Her gen onto that right. I missed that the first time I watched the movie, but on my second watch, she gets frustrated with her friend Derek, who's like messing up the order of her genes that she had very meticulously. She's like, they're in order and he's like they're just jeans and she's like, yeah, they're jeans and they're in order. So she already like they planted that organizational skill in her early on, and it was fun Parker Posey, So this movie, you know, made less than a million dollars at the box office when it came out.

01:08:54
Speaker 4: But it sounds like.

01:08:55
Speaker 3: Parker Posey's I like, this is like when is her. I'm trying to figure out was this before? Was this like firmly in the middle of her like art house girl era, or was it like one of her because she she'd already been dazed and confused? Okay, post dazed and confused, Parker Posy got it.

01:09:17
Speaker 2: Was this maybe one of her first like starring roles because she has a baseball part in that movie.

01:09:20
Speaker 6: Yeah?

01:09:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, Anyway, it's become a cult classic. The point is many people now are familiar with this movie and love it, and people will approach her. Librarians will approach her who are fans of this movie, and they tell her that Party Girl made them want to be a librarian.

01:09:37
Speaker 5: That's very cute.

01:09:38
Speaker 3: That's so sweet. Definitely, that's really sweet. Yeah, And then I mean, I feel like we don't even really need to say this. Parker Posy iconic.

01:09:50
Speaker 2: I'm wearing my Josie and the Pussycats shirt right now.

01:09:54
Speaker 3: One of the movie ever, one of her best, along with like any Christopher guest movie She's in net for sure, like she's just so good. I don't really love the White Lotus, but fun performance. Anyways, I always forget she's in that she well she's just in one season.

01:10:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the New War season.

01:10:14
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know. Did anyone else have other stuff to touch on for Party Girl?

01:10:19
Speaker 2: My last thing is really quick. There's a part where Judy and Wanda are training Mary on the Dewey decimal system and they're shaming Mary for being dyslexic and being like, you're so bad at learning this system. You have dyslex together, like being really awful about.

01:10:37
Speaker 3: It, which does feel also very nineties for sure, Like I was like, casual ableism for learning disabilities feels very nineties for.

01:10:47
Speaker 2: Sure, very reflective of real life at the time, and also still today. It's something that maybe someone could have challenged.

01:10:57
Speaker 3: No one does.

01:10:58
Speaker 2: It just goes unchallenged. And again that's also you know, like things going unchallenged is also representative of real life. But when it's a movie and you can like decide to include something or not include something, you could just have what a Howard walk by and be like, hey, don't say that.

01:11:18
Speaker 5: Yeah, Howard seems pretty cool, right, you know.

01:11:21
Speaker 2: But he's also is he I forget what his whole deal is. He either hates or likes public libraries.

01:11:29
Speaker 5: He's My impression is that Howard is a public librarian. He's the one who says to Mary that, like, it doesn't matter where you go to school, like, just try to save money and get done as quick as you can. Right, So to him, I think he's he's definitely more of the people's librarian, whereas like the collegiate librarian there, who's like, well, first of all, you went to Columbia, right, you know, she's representing the more elitist librarian for sure.

01:11:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, And she's like, I hate living in a city. It's yucky. I want to live in a small town western Massachusetts or something.

01:12:01
Speaker 3: And you're just like, well you should. It's much cheaper. Like anytime someone's like I'm trapped and it's really I'm like, get the fuck out, like you, there's no, it's really expensive to live here.

01:12:13
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, but that's all I had. Yeah, anyone else?

01:12:17
Speaker 5: Oh I don't think I have the Nathan else.

01:12:19
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, yeah, that's all I got. This movie does pass the Bechdel's hoast. We said that in the opening of the episode. But but how does it fare on the one true metric, the Bechdel Cast nipple scale.

01:12:34
Speaker 2: Yes, where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on how it fares examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I think maybe like a three something like that. It has some some very nineties elements to it, as far as the white protagonists over racism, which.

01:13:02
Speaker 3: Mostly played her laughs.

01:13:05
Speaker 2: She does not make any movement on precisely other things of that nature as we've talked about. But I do appreciate that you do have like mediocre woman visibility, or like woman who's figuring shit out visibility, and like not.

01:13:22
Speaker 3: Entirely likable visibility.

01:13:25
Speaker 2: Right, Like, she's kind of a fuck up in some regards, and that is relatable. So you know, she we see her getting into trouble, we see her being aimless, we see her being eventually good at her job, but being really bad at it at the jump, so you know, again, just sort of like relatable life things.

01:13:45
Speaker 4: So I appreciate that.

01:13:46
Speaker 2: I'll give it three nipples, and I'm gonna give I mean, Parker Posy, she simply must get one, but I'm gonna give my other two nipples to the I kept calling them the upa lumpa guys. Two guys who were wearing the green wigs or they have like long dyed green hair, and I feel like they were wearing orange. I'm not sure if they were, but I was just like color scheme going on.

01:14:10
Speaker 5: They were like Thing one and Thing two vibes for.

01:14:13
Speaker 3: Me, okay, okay, yes, yes, yeah.

01:14:16
Speaker 2: So I was just like, who are these people? They show up in random scenes, we know nothing about them, but I was like, those are my oomple lump of friends, So they get two of my nipples.

01:14:26
Speaker 3: Uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna meet you at three. That feels That feels right?

01:14:30
Speaker 6: Uh.

01:14:30
Speaker 3: For this movie, I really enjoyed this movie. I feel like it is like such a cool I don't know, I just I'm really into watching first Features right now. This is a really cool one. I love the mother daughter collab. I like, I think that that's really fun. But the the the shortcomings of this movie, especially as time goes on, are quite glaring, particularly with I'm just like justice for Mustapha. I really hope that he truly just sort of soft ghosts her after this and moves on with his life. Gets his teaching degree. Maybe they reconnect as friends down the line. Who knows. I just want better for him, but I also want the best for Mary. I hope she continues on her journey. Like it's hard not to have a soft spot for this character because she is such a fuck up in a way that like it's hard not to root for. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I'm gonna go three nipples for all the reasons we've discussed. You gotta give one to Parker Posey, I'm gonna give one to Daisy Mayor, and I'm gonna give one too Gear Modiaz as Leo because he was really hauling boxes of records everywhere he went, and it just seems like that job used to be much harder. So shout out to that characters. Yeah, what about you, Liz.

01:15:50
Speaker 5: Okay, Okay, I think I'll join you in the three nipple ranking. I agree with yeah, everything you said. I actually think the sort of be flawed woman is across the board. Every Field character has her ups and downs, which I do love that, and I do think the library representation is great. I'm going to give a nipple to Mary, I'm going to give them to Judy. I'm going to give one to Renee, who I really hope had a better day than any datest movie. I just try to live her live, run the hottest club in New York. But I would like to take a step further, if you will allow it, and I'd like to take Melville Dewey's nipples away from him. And I'd like to give one to Wanda and one to Howard.

01:16:34
Speaker 3: That's great love that, Oh, yes, and yes, I would like to give honor all of my nipples honorarily to the Bastards. Episodes about Melville Dewey, if you've got the stomach for it, pretty pretty brutal stuff.

01:16:47
Speaker 5: It's tough to listen to, but it's a good episode.

01:16:48
Speaker 3: It's a good couple of episodes. Judy didn't cover the half of it, all right. So that is Party Girl nineteen ninety five. Happy birthday to Party Girl, Liz. Thank you so much for joining us, Thank you for having me. This was the light bol absolutely. Where can we find your work? Where can we get your book? Tell us everything?

01:17:10
Speaker 5: You can find me online anywhere you're online at Cosbrarian co O S B R A R I A N and you can get my book Fucked Up fairy tales wherever you most like to buy books. Hopefully you're local Indie, certainly you can request your librarian to stock it in their library or wherever the hell you want to buy a book.

01:17:31
Speaker 3: Please get mine, Helly, Please, congratulations on your book.

01:17:35
Speaker 5: Thank you.

01:17:36
Speaker 3: And you can find us in all the regular places, mostly Instagram at Bechdelcast, and of course you can follow our Patreon aka Matreon. Five dollars a month gets you two bonus episodes every single month, as well as a backlog that goes back over two hundred episodes at this point. If you're running out of main feed stuff where you want to just hear us kind of goof it off even more than we do on the main feed, head over there and check out the Matreon great community of friends. And when you come to our live shows, you get a free button unless we run out, and then we give you a normal button something else. Yeah, just a little peek behind the curtains.

01:18:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, and with that, should we order some falafel with hot sauce, a side of babaganooshe and a seltzer.

01:18:27
Speaker 3: That actually sounds really good right now?

01:18:29
Speaker 2: Yeah? All right, let's go.

01:18:31
Speaker 3: Bye the Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced by Me, Jamie Loftus.

01:18:41
Speaker 2: And Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann.

01:18:45
Speaker 3: And edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever Heard of Them? That's Me and our logo and merch and all of our artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus, Ever Heard of Her? Oh My God? And our theme song by the Way, composed by Mike Kaplan.

01:19:01
Speaker 2: With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.

01:19:04
Speaker 3: Iconic and especial thanks to the one and only Aristotle Ascevedo.

01:19:09
Speaker 2: For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash Spectelcast