Taken

00:00:01
Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and vest start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

00:00:16
Speaker 2: Hey, Jamie, what, Caitlin.

00:00:18
Speaker 3: I have a very particular set of podcasting skills, well, skills I have acquired over a very long career in podcasting, skills that make me a blessing for people like you, my co host of the past.

00:00:36
Speaker 2: Yeah wow.

00:00:37
Speaker 1: I mean, if charisma were a defense mechanism, maybe we'd stand a chance. But unfortunately, in the world of Taken, we're fucking cooked. What are his skills exactly? Not that sorry, finding people and killing people? Really, I guess that's what he promised. I guess in that way he does deliver. It is frustrating that even when you're like this movie is a force of evil face, or at least a force of like foolishness, the monologue still hits, you know, like you're just like, what is with that? Why is it such a good monologue? Like even in the middle of your like oh hate it, no, stop, no, no, And then the monologue stars and You're like, all right, let's hear him out. Let's hear him out.

00:01:32
Speaker 3: You're like, Okay, this guy's kind of a thing or two to say, and I'm listening.

00:01:36
Speaker 1: He has a particular set of what you know, like, let's let's hear him out. It's too bad anyway.

00:01:43
Speaker 3: It's the taken episode of the Bechdel Cast. Hello, my name is Caitlin Durante.

00:01:50
Speaker 1: My name is Jamie Loftus. And yeah, we have a very particular set of skills that would not get us out of any emergency situation, because this is the podcast where we take your favorite movies and look at them using an intersectional feminist lens. And we have chosen a movie that I feel is both on an easy and high difficulty level, depending on the way you look at it.

00:02:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, but we're gonna use our particular set of skills to really analyze the shit out of this movie.

00:02:19
Speaker 1: It's true. We are talking about the two thousand and eight thriller Action Ba Bah taken Yes this week, But first, Kaitlyn, could you let me know what the hell the Bechdel test is? And by the bechel test, I mean, of course, spoiler alert. A media metric this movie has no interest in none whatsoever.

00:02:41
Speaker 2: Uh. Yes.

00:02:42
Speaker 3: The Bechdel Test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel disappearing in her comic dex to Watch Out for It was a test that appears to kind of examine how women don't really talk to each other and a lot of media or often there's just not two of them. There just aren't two women. And if there are two women, they're talking about men usually, So that's the test. There are many versions of it. The one that we use is do two characters of a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other? And is there conversation about something other than a man? And yeah, this movie even if it like passes on a technicality which I honestly was not even paying attention to, because it doesn't, okay.

00:03:30
Speaker 1: I absolutely was keeping track. Was like, wouldn't it be funny if this movie somehow passed? No. I think that there is one arguable past At the end, when Kim is untaken and she's back from the airport, parentheses not reported to the authorities, and she says mom, and then her mom says Kim and you're like, You're like, I guess that. I mean that is important because that means she got home. But we can't. We can't know on vibes alone. This movie completely and utterly fails.

00:04:06
Speaker 2: So very true.

00:04:07
Speaker 1: Well that's the episode, bye, Yes, we were talking about Taken this week. I did not realize who some of the primary players in this movie are, which I feel like is revealing as to perhaps why it is the way it is the first. Caitlin, what is your history with the movie Taken?

00:04:30
Speaker 2: Well?

00:04:30
Speaker 3: Take Can is a movie I have seen before once, though not when it came out. I slept on it for a long time because as much as I do like action movies, this is a subgenre of action that I don't give a shit about at all.

00:04:47
Speaker 1: How would you qualify this sub action.

00:04:50
Speaker 3: Well, I guess just like toxic dudes saving a woman question mark, I don't know why.

00:05:00
Speaker 1: Is sort of like I guess you could put it under a revenge movie.

00:05:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, like kind of thing, and I'm fine with some revenge stories. I don't like inherently dismiss all of those. The action movies I do like are ones that are like action adventure or I love like a kind of espionage, you know, Mission Impossible, James Bond kind of thing generally, and ones that have some degree of like comic relief or fun or rompiness to them. This movie is not a romp because it's just it's not light at all. It's not fun.

00:05:38
Speaker 2: It's too dark.

00:05:39
Speaker 1: Now, the parts of this movie that are funny are completely by accident. Yes, my biggest laugh of this because I will talk about my history with it in a second, but like, I just hadn't seen this movie in a long time, and I forgot the inciting act is that a seventeen year old girl in two thousand and eight is going to follow you too around Europe. I was like, these fucking like also Luke Beason screenplay and we'll get to him. I mean, but like a known sex criminal co wrote this. Yes, but the fact that they couldn't even bother to look up act more women are tempested in like they're like, who would have who would I have followed around twenty years ago?

00:06:21
Speaker 2: Oh? You too?

00:06:22
Speaker 1: I guess I just can't imagine a world where and now there's like one millennial YOUTWO fan shaking their fists. But I'm just like, statistically unlikely, right, especially because we're introduced with like, she's a huge fan of this pop singer, but she's willing to put her life on the line to see you too.

00:06:41
Speaker 3: In multiple cities, following you two around Europe.

00:06:45
Speaker 1: Crip, young women these days see you two strictly by accident, Like it's just so, that's the funny part of the bit. But no, Yeah, this movie takes itself very seriously. That's a non starter. With a lot of action movies for me, I don't like but it's just one guy. I prefer a group. I prefer a little bit of levity adventure. Yeah, this is not an adventure. This is very punishing, for sure.

00:07:11
Speaker 3: So I didn't see it for many years, but I kept seeing the meme the I have a particular shutter skull as blah blah blah, and I was like, should I see this movie? I guess, And then I watched it and I was like, well, that was fucking racist and shitty and sexist and all the horrible things. So I didn't ever revisit it. What is your relationship with the movie, Jamie.

00:07:37
Speaker 1: Shockingly, I saw this movie in theaters when it came out because I was in I mean, primarily because I was in high school when this movie came out, sure, and it was Friday. I think that that's the extent of it. I remember going to see this movie with my friend Kim, which was a source of fun because the girl who's taken his name is Kim. Yeah, and so for you know, weeks, months years after, you'd be like, where are you? So that's my primary association with this movie is just like sort of a pleasant night out with friends. But having lived it, I can say this movie I didn't remember because I'd only seen it once, because even in eight I was like, this is not my kind of movie. I just like, am I'm here for the ride? Whatever? Yeah, But I do vive more so than any detail in the movie. Besides the monologue, I remember like people were the theater was absolutely packed. This movie was wildly successful in spite of what it is, which is like, also, I feel like it is interesting to revisit movies from like this specific set of years right now because we're heading into I think a similar era in movies where it's just like recession era movies and movies that have Bizarrely, I think we're like disproportionately right wing y themes are becoming, you know, like critically and commercially successful in a way that they might not be outside of my recession. Anyway, I saw this movie during the recession, and yeah, the crowd was freaking loving it. I just remember like every line, like every monology Lineleamnising gave the crowd was like like it was just it was a very the vibe was electric the movie, I thought then and more so now. At the time, I was just like, ugh, this is boring, depressing, and I don't like it. And now as an adult feminist, just like, this movie is boring, depressing and also racist and pro military and hates women. So yeah, I didn't like it then, but I do vividly remember seeing it. And I don't mean this as a positive, this is a neutral statement, but I understand why this movie was successful when it was successful, and because we're going into another era of procession era movies, I think it's interesting to revisit. I also knew I was aware of the sequels. I can't say I ever took interest, but I was like, I wonder if they first of all get rid of Lucas on at any time they did not or like what happened.

00:10:17
Speaker 3: I was also curious. I was like, does the daughter just keep does she get taken? I can tell you, please indulge me.

00:10:23
Speaker 1: Taken to Leonor is taken, Yes, and then it seems that Kim sort of helps during the second act, but then she's removed from the help by the end of the movie. So I feel like Taken two might be the closest to women being involved in the plot just off of Wikipedia. Kim is helpful at some points, yes, but it seems like mainly through executing what her dad tells her, but she does do things. Taken three is a return to form, but even worse because Leonor is murdered. Yeah, Brian aka Liam Neesai, I'm not gonna call how this character Brian liam Neeson is accused of her murder. Now Kim is pregnant, she's heavy with Greg.

00:11:08
Speaker 2: Pregnant.

00:11:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's pregnant and Taken three and then she's taken again. So Taking three feels just like, what can we do to these women? We can get them pregnant and we can kill them. And I do feel like that is ultimately the politics of this world is what are women good for? Sex and property? Because that's the thing. Like, when it comes down to it, I don't know this movie. It reminds me of a lot of a lot, a lot a lot of movies, and some of them are better than others. But it's just like I kept hearing the like Sean pen read of it from Mystic River where he's like my daughter, Like, it's like, that's all this movie is is. It's like taking all of the tropes around, specifically the relationship of fathers being possessive and overprotective of their daughters, and creating a world in which this is the most rational behavior that could possibly be.

00:12:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:12:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's like a pretty like four DHS vile kind of movie. But it was, I mean, yeah, I didn't really remember much about it, so I was coming in pretty fresh.

00:12:16
Speaker 2: Here.

00:12:19
Speaker 3: Well, let's take a quick break and then come back for the recap. Let's take in.

00:12:25
Speaker 1: Let's take it.

00:12:26
Speaker 4: No cale, Yeah, don't get taken during the BAK going to take you to an ad break. Describe the products and services well, quite frankly, we don't know what's about to play, but say it as loud as you can on the phone.

00:12:43
Speaker 2: Okay, BRB, and we're okay.

00:12:55
Speaker 1: We're back.

00:12:56
Speaker 2: We're back.

00:12:57
Speaker 1: Don't you think it's funny that? I mean, I understand the I guess, I sort of. I don't understand. I don't even if the writers understand. But when Kim is taken and then Leam Neeson goes to France that he gets under the same bed and is like my daughters under this bed, it's.

00:13:17
Speaker 2: A little goofy.

00:13:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an extremely goofy movie. This horrible movie. But anyway, sorry, welcome back. Let's find out what happens and taken. Let's rip the band aid off.

00:13:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, first all place of content Warning four things like coercion, abduction, sex, trafficking, things of that nature.

00:13:39
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:13:40
Speaker 3: Liam Neeson is a guy named Brian Mills, and he has a seventeen year old his daughter named Kim played by Maggie Grace, who I recognized from Lost I believe. Oh yeah, I didn't watch she's in Lost. Anyway, Brian doesn't see his daughter Kim that often because he was a bit of an absentee father. He had this very demanding job for a long time. And now he and his wife or his ex wife, Lenore played by Famka Jansen, are divorced and Kim lives with Lenore and her new husband, this uber rich guy named Stuart, not to be confused with Stuart the.

00:14:29
Speaker 1: Minion, Although you know, we can't rule out that that is who he's inspired by.

00:14:38
Speaker 2: We cannot roll it out at all.

00:14:40
Speaker 1: Unlikely but not impossible. Hm.

00:14:44
Speaker 3: So, Brian is now retired and trying to reconnect with Kim, but he's not making much progress. Like he tries to go to her birthday party and give her a karaoke machine because she's always wanted to be a singer. But she's like, that's cool, But what about this horse that my stepdad Stewart just gave me.

00:15:04
Speaker 1: I was like, was she younger in the original draft of this right? The way she acts and I know she's given I'm like, it's giving thirteen, like it's not being seventeen at all.

00:15:16
Speaker 2: Ten Like, yeah, it's right.

00:15:19
Speaker 3: I think these men who made this movie just don't know what seventeen year old girls are. Like.

00:15:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I was like, if I met this girl, I'd be like, sure, Kim, Like I wouldn't be like she's so cool, She's so.

00:15:35
Speaker 2: Like, she's weird.

00:15:36
Speaker 1: She's weird.

00:15:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, why is she acting like a ten year old. Yeah, so the point is Brian is trying to kind of reconnect with his daughter.

00:15:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:15:45
Speaker 3: Then Brian has a boys night with three of his his little buddies, who are all former CIA operatives or something.

00:15:57
Speaker 1: I have no idea, like, I just listeners are gonna have to under I don't understand who they're working for. I know it's the government and it's bad and they think it's good. And that's as far as I was willing to reflect.

00:16:08
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, And he agrees to do a job with his buddies. I love calling adult men and their friends' buddies.

00:16:17
Speaker 1: Well, that's what the minions do. That is that's why you love it, buddies, they say, buddies. The whole minion you gave me. I keep it on my desk.

00:16:28
Speaker 2: Ah, it's really cute.

00:16:30
Speaker 1: It's my security minion.

00:16:32
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of security.

00:16:34
Speaker 1: He is a security minion.

00:16:37
Speaker 3: Brian agrees to do a job with his buddies being security escorts for this pop star at a concert, and we're like, wait a minute, lady Raven wrap Alard.

00:16:50
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, how cool would it be like in the world where this followed the rules of trap, like Bono would end up untaking Liam Neeson's daughter like he would be on FaceTime, being like, girls, you've got to get me out of this bathroom. Everyone go see Trap, whether you like it or not, I just want to. I'll give m Night Shimalan money forever. I know he doesn't need it, but I'll keep giving it to him.

00:17:19
Speaker 3: Well, that's your prerogative. So in this movie, it's not Lady Raven, it's a pop star named Shira.

00:17:28
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:17:29
Speaker 3: And after the concert, a man tries to attack Shira with a knife and Brian steps in and saves her. He fights the attacker off in a highly trained combat kind of way, and we're like, hmm.

00:17:42
Speaker 1: Very particular set of skills.

00:17:43
Speaker 3: Vibes exactly, And Shira is very grateful to Brian for saving her life and she wants to help his daughter, Kim, become a singer. The following day, Brian, his daughter, Kim, and Lenore have where Kim reveals that she's going to Paris with her friend Amanda and Amanda's cousins and she needs Brian's written permission, but he isn't comfortable letting her go because it's just going to be a bunch of you know, teens and young women traveling around Europe on their own. But he does give permission eventually on the condition that Kim let him know where she is and who she's with at all times.

00:18:31
Speaker 1: It's very much implied that he is pressured into doing this.

00:18:36
Speaker 2: By Lenore, his ex wife.

00:18:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yeah, because Lenor is framed as being.

00:18:44
Speaker 1: She's made out to be like and this is his bitch ex wife, yes, which we'll talk about, which is absurd if you go through what we know about Leonore in no way, Like I feel like the way that she's written is to seem overly severe. But there is a read of this movie multiples almost every scene where the two parents are talking, like if this was a movie that was marketed towards women, she would be the hero of the story and Liam Neeson would be the deadbeat, dead antagonist basically right, Like, she's not doing anything overtly unreasonable.

00:19:20
Speaker 3: Not at all. Yeah, it's him who's unreliable, unstable, scary, and she seems to be doing a pretty good job.

00:19:30
Speaker 1: And regardless, it's not like she is, Like I feel like the movie treats it like she's forbidding him from being close with his daughter, where it's like she's not. She's clearly not thrilled to be spending all this time with him, but it's not like she's preventing him from being around her. She's just trying to enforce healthy boundaries, understandably because he was so negligent towards her and Kim by both of their accounts, She's like not thrilled, but she's like, Okay, well, if Kim wants it, it's fine. But especially that one line where it's like you're talking about at the cafe where she says something like she's going to you know, like you have to let her grow up or she's going to push you away like that is a line in an independent coming of age movie of a teenage girl where the mother is completely correct, Like it's just so weird that it's presented like, ugh, how could she? But it's because we know she's going to be taken. And then Liam Neeson cannot be wrong in the world of this movie. He's never wrong, right, Yeah, it's.

00:20:32
Speaker 3: Very frustrating to watch. So Kim and her friend Amanda head to Paris, and when they arrive, this man named Peter asks them if they want to share a cab ride with him. From the airport. They get to the flat where they'll be staying and this guy, Peter is like, wow, nice place, and Amanda is like, yeah, TIHI, we're staying here all by ourselves.

00:21:04
Speaker 2: And he's like.

00:21:04
Speaker 3: Cool, want to come to a party tonight and Kim is like, we don't know this guy, but Amanda is like.

00:21:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's party.

00:21:14
Speaker 3: And then as Peter is walking away, he makes a very suspicious phone call giving someone the address of this flat and he says like two girls around eighteen years old, and we're like, oh no, what's happening now. Shortly thereafter, some men come into the flat and abduct Amanda nar which Kim sees from a different room while she's on the phone with Brian, and he's like, Okay, they're going to take you, but I need you to shout out any details that you notice about them because he's going to use those details to track them down and find them and kill them. So the men grab Kim and she yells out like six foot beard tattoo on hand of Moon and Star, and then one of the abductors picks up the cell phone and this is when Liam Neeson delivers the line, I have a very particular set of skills and d D.

00:22:17
Speaker 1: I'm making the fart noise. But also maybe this is like, unfortunately like a millennial sleep or cell where I hear the speech and I was like, I did, like really lock in because there are certain sequences of this movie where it's just hard to pay attention. Sure, but yeah, this speech I was there. I mean, to this day, I feel like it is a cultural osmosis moment at this point where you can quote sections of this speech and not even fully know what you're quoting or the context you're quoting it in. It is for sure, for better or worrese iconic.

00:22:51
Speaker 3: A similar speech for me is the Bill Pullman president speech in Independence Day, Like I have the same visceral reaction when I hear any segment of that.

00:23:05
Speaker 1: See, Okay, so it is maybe it is like a microgeneration because I think I couldn't tell you what that speech says, but if you gave me a line from it, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I know.

00:23:12
Speaker 3: That right anyway, So you know, Brian delivers this whole monologue and the man on the other end says good luck, and then the line disconnects. Thus starts Brian's search to find his daughter, and based on the dialect of Albanian that the kidnappers were speaking and the hand tattoo that Kim had noticed, Brian learns that this is a group of organized criminals who abduct and sex traffic women. And based on the data, Brian learns that he has about a ninety six hour window from the time they were abducted to a point where they'll never be found. So Brian arrives in Paris and he breaks into the flat where Kim and Amanda were going to be staying. He finds the SD card or whatever from the smashed phone of Kim's.

00:24:14
Speaker 1: Good two thousand and eight detail yeah.

00:24:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, And he looks through the photos that were on the phone and finds a picture that Peter took of Kim and Amanda at the airport, which shows a reflection of Peter and the whole action movie thing of enhance, you know, zooming into a very pixelated photo that suddenly magically becomes very crystal clear, a.

00:24:38
Speaker 1: Lot of like, yeah, hacker, who coudes YadA YadA. Yeah, it's kind of fun.

00:24:43
Speaker 3: M hm. And so now Brian knows what Peter looks like, and he finds Peter at the airport, trying the same taxi sharing trick on another woman. Brian attacks him and chases Peter, who gets hit by a truck and killed. So then Brian links up with a friend slash colleague slash French cop named Sean Claude who tells him about a specific area, Porte de Clichi, Frenchy, where these traffickers are known to hang out. So Brian goes to this area and talks to a woman who has been sex trafficked and asks her a bunch of questions. Basically, he's stalling knowing that a trafficker will come up and hassle him, which is what he wanted so that he can plant a microphone on freight sky.

00:25:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:25:46
Speaker 3: And so then Brian has a translator interpret the conversation that these traffickers are having in Albanian, which is about a construction site and a problem with the quote unquote new merchandise cut to this construction site. We don't know how Brian figured out where it was or anything like that, but he conveniently and magically find.

00:26:11
Speaker 1: A very particular set of skills, which is his particular set of skills is that he actually has a copy of the script.

00:26:18
Speaker 3: Takes yeah, and he knew exactly what location to go to yeh. So he goes there and this construction site turns out to be a derelict brothel and he's looking around and he finds the jacket Kim was wearing when she flew to Paris. But the woman in this like enclosure is not his daughter. He takes this woman with him.

00:26:43
Speaker 1: He takens her.

00:26:44
Speaker 3: He takens yes, but not in a bad way. He takens her in a good way.

00:26:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, question for good.

00:26:54
Speaker 3: After he fights off several of the traffickers and he gets to a hotel room and provides medical care to the woman. She seems heavily drugged, and she eventually comes to and tells Brian that Kim gave her the jacket while they were in the house with the red door, and she remembers what STREETA was on. So Brian goes to the house with the red door, pretending to be a cop who is there under the guise of negotiating an extortion deal. Basically, the traffickers will pay law enforcement to keep quiet about the illegal things they're doing, but what Brian is actually there to do is to find which guy he spoke to on the phone who told him good luck. It's this boss named Marcos.

00:27:44
Speaker 1: They play the voice and I was like, it honestly doesn't sound doesn't sound the same, it's similar. I was like, what, uh huh. I guess yeah, if you say so, But I was like, that could have been most guys.

00:28:00
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.

00:28:02
Speaker 3: But somehow he identifies Marcos and he kills the dozen or so other men in the house. He finds a bunch of trafficked women there, one of whom is Kim's friend Amanda, who is dead from an apparent drug overdose, but he does not find Kim, so Brian tortures Marcos, who reveals that they don't keep women who are virgins. Instead, they traffic them further to different traffickers, this particular boss named Patrise Saint Clair, but Marcos doesn't know where to find this guy. Then there's a scene where Brian goes back to his cop friend Jean Claude to his house, suspecting that he might be involved in actual, you know, extortion and collusion that the French police are doing with the traffickers, and Brian is correct in this assumption, so he shoots Jean Claude's wife in the arm to show him that he means business, and then he has Jean Claude look up Patrise Saint Clair in the police database and get an address for him. So Brian goes to this address. It's a mansion. There's some kind of party happening, and there's also an auction happening where this Patrise guy is auctioning off these trafficked women for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Brian goes into this private room of one of the buyers and forces him to buy Kim, and he thinks this is going to be how he rescues Kim, but then Brian is knocked out by one of Patrese's minions. Brian wakes up, he fights back. He finds out where they're taking Kim. She's being loaded onto a yacht, so he kills Patrise and then goes after this that belongs to a sheikh who had bought Kim. Brian jumps on board, kills everyone, and saves his daughter, and then the movie ends with Kim safe at home with her family and Brian surprises her by taking her to the home of Shira, the pop star from earlier. So that she can help Kim with her music career.

00:30:28
Speaker 1: The oh my god, it's stressful.

00:30:33
Speaker 3: Let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss. And we're back from having taken a break.

00:30:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're back at lax after narrowly escaping our doom where she begins. I mean, I want to say, like, I just want to lead with the fact that I felt like there was no amount of research that I could have done that was going to be a propriate for this episode. This is a deceptively complicated movie to talk about, yes, because of all of the various heavy themes that it is attempting to address. Not a heavy lift to say that maybe it's not sufficient, you know, I feel like this movie suffers from a lot of the tropes were used to seeing in action thrillers. That being a really you know, pro military, pro masculine, sidelining women characters, marginalizing any non white character. This is all part and parcel to action thrillers, and this movie is not pushing back on any of those very common problems. But on top of that, it's adding the deeply complicated issue of sex traffic. Yes, in a way that I honestly I mean, it's an issue that I am under educated on and is particularly for a group of writers that include a known sex criminal.

00:32:15
Speaker 3: Known sex criminal Luke Basson, Yeah.

00:32:18
Speaker 1: Using sex trafficking in what appears to be a very callous plot driven way, like just add sort of an extra layer to this movie where you know, I feel like at this point, you know, you can talk about the tropes that surround action thrillers, and we have on this show quite a bit, and we will again today, but like, and I guess I would be curious of what I was struggling to find. I don't know if you found anything to this effect, and I'd be curious if listeners have thoughts on this is like, is there a reason that that layer is being added in this particular moment, you know where It's like there's plenty of action thrillers that have come out before and since that do not include this element. Is this a unclear why this is the moment where sex trafficking is being introduced into the action thriller space or is there a particular reason why the late two thousands, like there was a I mean, obviously not interest, but like a market for this particular theme. I really like I mean, if I had had several days to get ready, I would maybe understand better. But yeah, that layer added to again just all of the things that we are used to pushing back on in this genre was very jarring.

00:33:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:33:38
Speaker 3: I didn't find anything about possible like cultural context that might have informed why that layer was added. It could just be well, we haven't seen many movies yet where this is the thing, so let's try it. I have no idea. What I do know is that they horribly misred present what sex trafficking is. Yes, I found something from the Polaris Project, which is a nonprofit organization that is leading a survivor centered and justice and equity driven movement to end human trafficking.

00:34:20
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:34:21
Speaker 3: Everyone, it's Caitlin from the future. Wanted to jump in right here and say that. After we released this episode, a few listeners pointed out that the Polaris Project has a history of problematic behavior, such as they have been known to spread misinformation, Their hotline doesn't respond to tips related to people doing consensual sex work. They've lobbied for policies that harm sex workers, things of that nature. We did not realize that at the time. We absolutely should have investigated this organization more closely to say there's no merit to the work they do, but it is not the best resource we could have consulted, considering Jamie's and my stance on being pro consensual sex work is legitimate work, pro workers' rights of sex workers. So, as you're about to hear, we quote from the Polaris Project a few times, mostly in relation to what they say about this specific movie. But we just wanted to acknowledge that we now know more about this organization and we apologize for not researching them more carefully before recording this episode. Thank you so much to those listeners who provided more information to us. We always appreciate listeners doing that. We're always wanting to learn and grow, so thank you again. So again, just wanted to pop in here and provide that additional context acknowledge some of the shortcomings of this organization. And we're about to cut back into the original episode now talking about something that this organization published on their website regarding the movie. So here we go back to the original episode, and they put out a like an online guide entitled telling the Real Story of Human Trafficking, and it basically gives a bunch of information about what human trafficking actually.

00:36:32
Speaker 1: Is, like, right, because this movie is so frequently conflates sex trafficking with sex work, which is like one of the more dangerous things that it does.

00:36:41
Speaker 3: Right, And this guide offers guidance imagine that, oh, on how to make content and tell stories about human trafficking if that's something you're interested in doing in an accurate and responsible way. Saying that quote in the anti human trafficking world, Taken has become a shorthand for how not to make content about human trafficking.

00:37:08
Speaker 1: Yes, I saw this piece as well.

00:37:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this guide starts by saying about the film Taken quote. Unfortunately, it has the unintended effect of completely miseducating the public about what human trafficking is, how it happens, and who it happens too. Nearly fifteen years later, those of us who work in the anti trafficking field are still managing the consequences. Indeed, we often start out saying things like, you know that movie Taken, Well, that's not really how trafficking happens unquote.

00:37:41
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, and I remember that being a conversation at the time the movie came out. I don't know as we're talking about it, because I'm also seeing that there was. It's interesting because I feel like this is sort of side to take in. But I guess just in terms of the issue of sex trafficking and miseducation around sex trafficking being prevalent in American culture at this time, there were congressional laws passed around this time, but it had to do more with cyber sex trafficking, which is really not what Taken is talking about it all, which I think is interesting, like it is off of a real world encounter. Just I don't know. This is like bring I wonder if I've ever brought it up on this show. I know I've talked about it previously, but like I remember as a kid having cyber sex trafficking cautionary tales told to me a lot at school, Like there was a computer game in like computer class. I feel so old, but like this is I'm wondering if there's like any other young millennials listening that, Like we had computer class and we would play three games in the course of class. It would be like a math game, a literacy game, and then an anti cyber sex trafficking game and the game was called Oh Gosh, I believe it was called Stolen. This was before and came out. But you are playing as the father of, or like an investigator working with the father of a child who has been abducted and is being cyber sex trafficked, and it is your mission, as a twelve year old computer game player to save this child and learn about what was at least purported to be the common showings of cyber sex trafficking at that time. So, for example, the character met a man who lied about his identity on a message board and then was flown out to Also, California is a big thing with the game, where they're like California, the world whatever. It was not a good education, but I do remember like this being something that was like pushed to me at a public school, of like a fear of technology, which makes more Again, you know, Americans are just miseducated on this subject wholesale. I'm not saying that I'm so glad I played this computer game and it kept me safe. It was I remember being quite afraid of it, but sowing a fear of technology at least that holds a little like more consistently than I don't know again, taking it just seems so random and based in just like the various prejudices and interests of the writers. It's not even like like there's a million horror movies about AI right now, because that is the technological development that people are afraid of, and at the time it would have just been the internet conceptually would be like what you would say is going to kill you or sex traffic you, or do the worst thing you can think of. Right, I don't understand why this movie was so popular, right.

00:40:44
Speaker 3: I wonder if because the movie Hostile came out a few years earlier, and that was the movie about If I'm remembering correctly, it's a movie about American tourists going to Europe. And I also don't remember exactly where they go, but it's a place in Europe that the movie is like, actually, this area is really unsafe and if you stay in a hostel you'll be murdered. So I wonder if Taikan was almost kind of using that playbook of like beware of travel to Euroine, beware of Eastern Europeans because they're so scary.

00:41:25
Speaker 1: Which in some ways is like hearkening back to the Red Scare, which has also never really left us, and like, I don't know, I would be curious if Alicitor has a clear concise reason why the two thousands were littered with this particular kind of story. I mean, and I also think we were you know, came up in the age of like the Elizabeth Smart abduction. And another thing that I think this movie is very guilty of and doesn't examine at all is missing white girls syndrome and how you know, to expand a little bit on our discussion of how sex trafficking and human trafficking in general is used as a plot point in this movie, and again we are not experts, but that how this movie intentionally centers a privileged young American sis white girl, not yeah, she's still a child in this story, when it is statistically far more likely for young people and particularly young women in films of color and indigenous people to fall victim to this specific type of crime. But I like, as is very often in media, both fictional media like this and just who receives attention from local and national media when they are taken missing whatever. It is far more statistically likely since the beginning of mass media for white women to receive priority in terms of who gets the attention for during after, And I mean there is infinite media to this extent. We've talked about it on the show of how many Indigenous women regularly go missing or are killed and it never, it rarely, if ever, breaks into mass media, whereas if a white woman experiences the same horrific event, it is far more likely to be discussed. Again, it is horrible when this happens to anybody, Yes, but in terms of yeah, where priority is given, in terms of even acknowledgment, if not resources to be assisted and rescued and preventive measures. I mean, the human trafficking world is no exception to that, to the point where I mean again not to say that well, I guess I can't say that taken would not happen, But it's just I don't know. It's like a wealthy white young tour like, it's of course someone's going to come looking. She's like a millionaire's a billionaire's stepdaughter.

00:44:04
Speaker 3: And yeah, while it's not impossible that a wealthy white girl would be targeted for trafficking, it's far more likely that a person more marginalized than someone like Kim would be targeted.

00:44:19
Speaker 1: Right, And it's not to say that we have no empathy for this character. Of course we do, but it is Yeah, I mean, given the fact that again this is a Lupusson co write, even outside of his personal crimes, go back and listen to our lean on the professional episode, you know, someone with a notoriously bad track record on women and also on the issue of sex work and sex trafficking. It's just really hard to take this story at face value because it's bringing in a very serious issue, completely misunderstanding it and not really acknowledging at all how the people who do suffer this are disproportionately marginalized, and that is not an interest, Like this story has nothing to say about human trafficking, certainly not. Furthermore, the protagonist doesn't really care about the issue outside of how it affects his daughter.

00:45:14
Speaker 3: Okay, so that was one of my big things.

00:45:17
Speaker 1: He literally says repeatedly, I don't care, I will not report you, just give me my daughter back.

00:45:23
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:45:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's confounding. I kept having this question, like, by the end of the movie, does he make any effort to save all of the women who have been trafficked or.

00:45:36
Speaker 2: Just his daughter?

00:45:37
Speaker 3: And the answer is his daughter plus that one other woman who he only saves in order to get information about his daughter.

00:45:46
Speaker 1: But I think that we're supposed to Yeah, we'll get into Liam Neeson in a second. The other thing I wanted to say, as it pertains to human trafficking again, I feel icky. I hope that we're not completely missing the mark here, but the fact that they're is an emphasis put on Kim's virginity in terms of what makes her valuable that is based in some truth. I did some background research we can link to it that of course it is. This is all immoral and very fucked up, but virginity is brought up as a plus in this very twisted world. So it's like it's reflecting something what bothers me besides everything in the movie. But it's like, I feel like the writing rises to agree with the sex traffickers in this where there is a morality attached to virginity and a slut shaming between the characters, specifically of Kim and Amanda, the two friends that go to Europe together. Amanda is presented as hornier basically where for sure, yeah she's more rebellious. She says like, oh should I hook up with this guy and Kim when they first arrive, it's like, but you don't even know him, Oh my gosh, blah blah blah, which is like whatever teenage girls, you can feel whatever way you want, but there is by the writers a moral application because Amanda we are sort of indicated she she is not a virgin, and so she dies and Liam Neeson does he call her parent? Like what happens? Does anyone get in touch with this girl's family?

00:47:29
Speaker 2: We don't know.

00:47:31
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it's referenced and taken to, but like there is almost say like it is again like her death is a plot thing where Liam Neeson's like, Okay, Kim was here, but now she's not because here's Amanda and she's dead, and Amanda seems like she died because she was not a virgin. Essentially, like that I think is the internal plot logic, and that it's the morality that is attached to Kim's virginity that keeps her alive long enough to be resky. It's just so fucking dark. So even though it's like, even if that is based in a reference point that does take place in the real world, it's written to I think like reinforce, it in this weird way where it's like horror movie logic of like a girl who has sex is going to die and deserves it.

00:48:24
Speaker 3: There are other implications that we'll get into, because this is a whole separate conversation about the racism and xenophobia in this movie. Yeah, the implications revolving around a very reductive view of Islam, but we'll get to that in a second. The other thing I wanted to say about this movie misrepresenting sex trafficking is that, and again this is according to that piece from the Polarist Project saying, quote, people in sex trafficking situations almost always know and to even trust or love their traffickers. Traffickers target vulnerable people who have needs that the traffickers can fill. Sometimes they offer material support, a place to live, clothing, a chance to get rich quick. Other times they offer love, emotional support, or a sense of belonging. Kidnapping victims and forcing them into the sex trade through violence is rare, unquote. So this movie presents it is like, Oh, these scary boogeymen from Albania who just target people kind of at random. That's who sex traffickers are. So this is just another way in which this movie doesn't really understand sex trafficking. And as you already alluded to, it's media like this that conflates sex trafficking with like consensual sex work, and it's movies like this it position sex work as something that people are doing against their will and it only happens because they have been trafficked, and things like that and just the things that contribute to the stigma and negative perception of sex work. And of course there's a huge difference between people who are coerced and sex trafficked and adults who are doing the legitimate work that is sex work, and they're doing so consensually, by their own accord and on their own terms. All this to say, the movie kind of it doesn't directly conflate these two things necessarily, but it does, I think, contribute to this larger stigma of a just kind of misunderstanding of sex work being separate from being the victim or the survivor of sex trafficking.

00:50:49
Speaker 1: Just having seen this movie when I was a teenager, I would say it does directly conflate the two because I can tell you seeing this movie as a like fifteen year olds, I did not understand the difference. As a naive kid that did not understand what human trafficking nor sex work really was outside of the scope of movies, I think that this movie actually kind of does dangerously conflate the two because even in the scene where Liam Neeson is approaching who I thought was a sex worker, she is reacting with the same amount of fear and coercion as we see people we know to be human trafficking victims are.

00:51:36
Speaker 2: And so I can.

00:51:38
Speaker 1: Say for sure, like if you're cause I mean, this is I mean, I wouldn't even say that majority teenagers are going to see movies like this, but this is a genre that does touch from teenagers to old heads. And I can say for sure that like when I first saw this movie, I did not understand the difference, and the movie did nothing. Not that it is the job of any movie to like educate you on the nuances, but it is the job of the movie to be clear. And I just don't think that this movie really was at all because otherwise, like this movie takes place in a vacuum where sex work does not exist, you know, I think it is like tacitly saying that all sex work is human trafficking, which is like a very dangerous and wrong thing to imply.

00:52:28
Speaker 3: I feel like I had a similar perception of it for at least some amount of time in my youth.

00:52:34
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm talking about when I was a kid. Like I was, I had no fucking clue about right.

00:52:38
Speaker 3: And it's because of media depictions like this that don't understand the distinction absolutely and just again contribute to this horrible stigma and assume that people who engage in sex work consensually are not actually doing so consentially, they are being forced and coerced into it. And that also comes with a lot of like victim blaming and shaming of people struggling with addiction issues, and you know, a whole slew of things. But yeah, this this movie is very guilty of just painting things in a very broad way and ignoring all of the nuance when it comes to this topic.

00:53:27
Speaker 1: And again, it's not a shocker from a co writer who's an accused sex just absolutely horrific woman although he was not formally.

00:53:38
Speaker 3: Convicted, that doesn't mean shit.

00:53:40
Speaker 1: That's something that we can take up with France.

00:53:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, France is also fucking harboring Roman plan Ski and shit like that.

00:53:48
Speaker 1: So that's what I mean. Yeah, France is famously bad of this issue, not that America is any better anyways, right, Yeah, So, I mean I think that that was all I had to say on the sex trafficking versus sex where conflation front.

00:54:02
Speaker 3: The one last thing I have is just to go full circle on the does Liam Neeson attempt to save any of the other people who have been targeted for sex trafficking? And the answers pretty much know no, which is a version of that patriarchal value when a man says I love and respect women, but that only extends to the man's wife, his wife, or his daughter or maybe his mother. Basically only women that they know personally, and usually women that they feel some type of ownership over. Absolutely, because men like this like never care about women's issues. They never care about like the devastating effects of rape culture or anything like that. They just care about women who they feel belong to them. And this movie is very much giving those nasty vibes.

00:55:01
Speaker 1: So and it seems like the entire franchise does, because yeah, I think it wouldn't have improved the movie meaningfully, But like even a cliffhanger if you're trying to make this into a franchise of like, Okay, I have liberated my daughter, and now I'm gonna go back and liberate the rest of the victims of this human trafficking ring. Something some indication that he has an interest in anyone who is not married or blood related to him, but there isn't and it doesn't seem like that ever really changes.

00:55:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:55:37
Speaker 1: From there, should we get into the racism and xenophobia of this movie, because this was something that while I did not have the education to understand the completely incorrect messaging around human trafficking and sex work that this movie provides, I was able at fifteen to understand that this movie is extremely racist.

00:55:59
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, All the good guys are white Americans and all the bad guys are non American and or not white.

00:56:10
Speaker 1: Which is wild because this is like a half French movie, and even the French guys are generally bad people. The white French guys.

00:56:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's an exception, which is Patrise Saint Clair, who is a white American man, or at least he speaks English with an American accent. We don't know his nationality necessarily.

00:56:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, the guy, it's like it's just business. And then yeah, you're like all right, but.

00:56:35
Speaker 3: By and large we have a group of Albanian characters, and then later on in the movie there are Arab characters, and both of them, in some overlapping in some different ways, are portrayed in just awful ways where they're criminals, they're the human traffickers, they're violent, they're barbaric. There's a whole town in Albania that is characterized as being a breeding ground for like the scum of the earth that would become human traffickers, that kind of thing.

00:57:09
Speaker 1: It is just like a like comical lack of nuance to anything anything at all. Yeah, it is like deeply xenophobic, where the second they meet someone who is an American, within moments of arriving, they haven't even walked in the door and they're already being targeted by Like it's just it's absurd. Even the first interaction in this movie as Leam Neeson like interacting with a I don't know what his nationality is, but it's like a very stereotyped character who's working at the karaoke machine business.

00:57:47
Speaker 3: The electronics store.

00:57:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, where where at very least there are a few lines in this movie that it doesn't make it worth the journey, but it is fun to hear Liam Neeson say the line, who is Beyonce just kidding? Just kidding because you're like two thousand.

00:58:02
Speaker 2: And eight, I don't know.

00:58:04
Speaker 1: No, she's been really famous since the nineties, so yeah, he's like, JK JK, really why put that in there? There are there are a few lines, I mean, and then at the point where it's like they're following you two around the country, the script has already given up on interacting with youth culture in any way, shape or form, because a seventeen year old girls acting ten years old and man, yet she also wants to follow you too, like nonsense. I feel like Beyonce was added by a punch up writer. I don't think that either credited writer would have known to include Beyonce as a then actually successful artist among young women.

00:58:41
Speaker 3: Well, also, whoever wrote that line of dialogue because they're talking about a karaoke machine and the electronic salesman is like, yeah, this is the karaoke machine that all the professionals use, examples Beyonce, and then he.

00:58:56
Speaker 1: Listens like to you others karaoke machine yep.

00:59:00
Speaker 3: Pop stars aren't using karaoke, like they just don't understand what pop music is. And I have a whole shpiel, which I'll say for later, just about the way the buddies talk about the pop star who's not Lady Raven though she should be. But anyway, Yeah, the way non white and non American characters in general are portrayed in this movie is heinous, to the point where in twenty nineteen, the Albanian Tourism Board produced an advertisement in order to kind of counter the negative perception of Albanians that this movie like directly caused.

00:59:42
Speaker 2: So they created this.

00:59:43
Speaker 3: Kind of movement. You can sign a petition. It's called be Taken by Albania where they are challenging.

00:59:51
Speaker 1: I would maybe change the name, but sure, I get I get that, I appreciate the message, but I.

00:59:57
Speaker 3: Guess they were like it's a pun. But anyway they're asking. They're inviting Liam Neeson to visit Albania and explore the beauty and the culture and the food and the tourist hotspots. There's a video that I watched that the actor who plays Marcos is in briefly at the end, Oh wow, But it's mostly like people in Albania being like, see, we're a really nice country and we have all these beautiful things and we're really nice people.

01:00:26
Speaker 1: Which is like absurd that they even have to do that. It reminds me of our conversation around Kazakhstun's reception of Borat, where it was like, wow, it did not irreparable, but significant harm to the global perception of the country because of this like dullbass movie that was successful, Like it's yeah, anyone who's like it's just a movie, You're like.

01:00:50
Speaker 3: Well, wow, why do we have so many examples of movies influencing perceptions of things on a global scale. Then if it's quote unquote just a movie.

01:01:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:01:03
Speaker 3: And then again, the way the Arab characters are portrayed in this movie is the way they often are in Western media, which is being violent and hostile and corrupt and uber wealthy. They covet women who are virgins, which again is just a very incredibly reductive portrayal of Muslim characters and Arab characters, and again has real world consequences and contributes to like anti immigration rhetoric and policy that is still affecting so many countries around the world.

01:01:41
Speaker 1: The line I wanted to draw attention to to sort of illustrate what the internal politics of this movie appear to be. It's said by leam Nisid and the scene where he's like, oh, you're the guy from the phone, and you're like, first of all, you don't recognize a guy's like at International I'll call on a razor phone in two thousand and eight, be serious, But he is lecturing the group of Albanian men in a country where he does not live, but says, you come to this country and think because we are tolerant, we are weak and helpless. Your arrogance offends me, which just implies all of these really ugly narratives around immigration in general, where I think the word tolerated is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, where it's like you are being permitted to live here so long as you do A, B and C to basically, I mean, it just feels like assimbilation tactics. It feels like anyone who immigrates to a country does not actually have a right to live there. It's conditional and just I mean all of these really, I mean, this movie is a conservative movie, and that line, like in particular, which is weird because I think if we saw a comparably conservative movie today, that language would probably be much harsher. But even so, it's like you can read between the lines where it's like, this movie is clearly anti immigration and it is clearly deeply xenophobic, which, not for nothing is wild because Liam Neeson is from Northern Ireland, so but he's whatever. I mean, the same thing happens with Bondo a lot. I've been working on a story for sixteenth Minute about the super Bowl and how like you two was the super Bowl act after nine to eleven and they were wearing American flag jackets and You're like, they're Irish? What anyways? Very weird And Liam Neeson, I know we've I think we talked about this in our episode on Widows also has had his share of controversies around talking about race. So unfortunately, it is not shocking to me that he ends up in this very conservative action thriller written by sex criminal.

01:03:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:03:54
Speaker 3: Also, Liam Neeson's saying that line about you know, we tolerate you being here, da da da, that's in response to the Albanian characters saying, oh, you think that just because we're immigrants, you can exploit us and take advantage of us and all this stuff, which fair point that does often happen to immigrants, but it's undermined by the fact that what they're doing is illegal trafficking. It's like, well, point, not well taken because of what. But it's of course like these filmmakers writing these Eastern European characters in this way, and it's just such a mind fuck.

01:04:38
Speaker 1: It's hard to talk about this movie because there are so many major consequential issues being conflated with each other that it just feels like an intentional way of like, well, the only immigrant characters in this movie are going to see are going to be engaged in the most horrific crime you can think of, So how can you have a common versation around immigration when that is the puzzle box that a sex criminal has put in front of you? And you're like, well, I guess I don't know. I guess I don't know the answer to that question, and I resent being asked. Right, Yeah, it's all horseshit, LIKEE is horseshit is. The other co writer of this movie co wrote movies in the Karate Kid franchise and The Fifth Element, and now owns a vineyard in Sonoma, and that is all I know about him. His name is Robert Mark came in. Anyways, both men who wrote this movie were pushing fifty, if not over fifty when writing this movie about teenage girls. Which is why they're following you two around Western Europe.

01:05:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is why she squeals when she's given a horse, and she loves milkshakes with extra cherries. Not to say that seventeen year olds can't love horses and can't love milkshakes, but the way she's framed in this movie feels like writers just like infantalizing this girl slash, having no idea how a seventeen year old girl actually behaves.

01:06:09
Speaker 1: Well's skin just talking about Kim and Lenore, because it's like, yeah, the way that Kim has introduced clearly she's very wealthy. We have Nisson's character is not as wealthy. He lives in an apartment. We don't really know what his financial status is. But she, you know, Leonore has remarried a very very rich man and Kim lives with them. But it's made a point to make Lenore look rude, to say, like, why did you get her a karaoke machine? She was really into that when she was twelve, as if to say, you don't know your daughter very well because you were not around for all of her formative years, which becomes clearer as the movie goes on, not that it really goes anywhere, but it has made clearer that, like Kim agrees with this, Kim felt very estrange from her father while growing up. But then to say for leonor to say that and then have her be like what she really wants is a pony, You're like, well, is she an.

01:07:05
Speaker 2: Adult or not?

01:07:07
Speaker 3: Like especially because the movie opens with like video camera footage of Kim's like fifth birthday where she's given a toy horse and she's like, tie, he look at my.

01:07:18
Speaker 1: Little horse, Like okay, so you're all infantilizing her and she's she appears to love it, like poor Kim like that or I mean the actor that plays Kim, because it's just like so divorced from an existing like she's very much like a daddy's girl character. I have, yeah, some just some notes again in the like conflating things and airtight logic that this movie has a vested interest in creating. Is Yeah, the relationship between fathers and das and like the like overprotective father trope, which we see in movies constantly. Depending on who the movie is centering, it can be framed as like a force of oppression, and then in other movies it's made to seem very reasonable. This movie, it is made to seem almost as reasonable as I've ever seen it, to the point of absurdity of like and connects to like if you want to go back hundreds of years, connects to you know, how fathers are trained to see their daughters as their property and as a bartering tool. And you know, I don't think that they're thinking that hard about it. But there is a clear reason why this trope exists. It is rooted in something real. But this movie just doesn't want to talk about anything. But yeah, it's like he you know, she is his property. It's tricky because in some ways it's like, Okay, he wants to right some wrongs. He's retired, he wants to have some sort of connection with his daughter. He's relocated to do it. I don't even object to that as long as Kim feels okay about it, which she appears to, and that they're trying to make it work. But like again, it's just his overprotectiveness, which is made to seem so wildly correct, and like the idea, like any of Lenore's boundaries are made to seem cruel or ridiculous as it folds out. Well, the first time we meet Lenora, she's setting a boundary with him, saying like, hey, this is we agreed that this was going to be the way this was gonna go. And he's like, oh, well, I don't care. And then Kim shows up and she's like, oh, I don't care either, and then Lenor looks mean for having set the boundary. And then the next time we see her, she is encouraging Liam Neeson to let Kim go on this trip to Paris and like, give her a little bit of freedom. She's you know, she's a teenager. She's going to push you away if she feels hyper surveilled by you, and he says okay. And the one time he gives in to something she recommends, she who it appears, has in entirely raised her daughter, she is dead wrong and is not able to participate in the movie. Further, she doesn't I don't.

01:10:08
Speaker 3: Think she she doesn't have a particular set of skills Jamie has she to do.

01:10:14
Speaker 1: Her skills are wife, but we also don't know that did she ever have a career, We don't know. I mean, I guess the most I can say for that is that at least they bothered to explain why the marriage fell apart and why his relationship to them is so tenuous. But even so, it is just made to seem like there's no point where leam Neisum is not correct, and that the world revolves around his feelings about people and boundaries and relationships to be correct, like the world will shift on its access to meet his logic, and that's at the expense of the two women.

01:10:54
Speaker 2: In the story.

01:10:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this reminds me of a trope that we talk about from time to time, where in any story where there's a woman who ends up as a damsel in distress and the man protagonist saves her, by the movie's logic, that entitles him to that woman because he's saved her, this is the prize he gets in return for saving her, and she's obligated to be with him and to kiss him because he saved her. I feel like a similar logic applies here, where because he's saved.

01:11:32
Speaker 2: His daughter, his daughter.

01:11:34
Speaker 3: He has redeemed himself as a father, and now he's gonna be allowed to be an active participant in her life and he's entitled to her time and all that kind of stuff. And that is not necessarily true. Just because a person does one good thing does not redeem them for a lifetime of wickedness. And yes, that is a quote from the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

01:12:01
Speaker 1: But I wow, I'm problematic king. Yeah, no, it's true. And it again, it's like the way that these issues and dynamics are proposed makes it hard to talk about in an analytical way because you know, like if I'm putting myself in a parent character's head, like both of the parents to me are acting weird, where it's like Lenore has no concerns about this whatsoever. That also feels weird. Like I of course, like if my kid was like I want to go to Europe alone with people you basically don't know, I would I would be worried. I don't think it's unreasonable to express concern and express like, Okay, here is where you know, like, here is how we're going to approach safety. Here's how we're going to approach communication and blah blah blah, like in a way that feels pretty healthy, but like neither of them are proposing that.

01:12:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're both on opposite ends of the spectrum, like, well, she's too aloof and he's too overprotective.

01:13:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. So if that's the case, whose logic does the story favor and it's leam Neeson, it makes Leonora look negligent and foolish for feeling any other way. This is why I find action movies like kind of eye rolly in general, where it's just like it's just creating, you know, a structure in which one guy is the coolest guy on the planet, and so of course it's not gonna make any sense. It sounds like the stepdad is at least you know, I don't know what he's like as a father, but he's certainly you know, he's like an oil he deals with shell. I was like, I here's something where in my brain wasn't working where leam Neeson was talking so fast, like, well, you have a bunch of deals with shell corporations, as like shell corporations or the shell corporation.

01:13:54
Speaker 2: Good question, what is his job?

01:13:56
Speaker 1: What is he doing? It doesn't sound good. It definitely does sound good. You don't get a house like that doing good things generally, but like certainly not. But it feels like that character is there and behaving like that, just again in service of making leam Neeson the cooler of like this, like you know, suit fucking sucks and like he doesn't know what he's talking about, and she should have stayed with me. I'm awesome even though I was negligent and a horrible husband and a horrible father, which actually is at least acknowledged by the story. And then we have how Jean Claude's what his wife is treated, which is goodness, so absurd.

01:14:40
Speaker 3: Leem Neeson shoots her for no reason other than to send the message.

01:14:46
Speaker 1: Also, her job is dinner. Yes, her job is dinner. She lets a strange like you would think someone who is his wife of someone this high profile would know maybe to not let a random stranger into the house, but that is like literally not the case.

01:15:04
Speaker 3: Here knows him because they go way back, so that I can kind of buy it like that he's a family friend. It seems like they already know each other, but that doesn't excuse any of the other ways she's portrayed, which is like, yeah, she's like here, have dinner, and then again he shoots her. She is not involved at all in this situation, but he needs to send a message to his new enemy, Jean Claude, and he does that by shooting her in the arm, threatening to shoot her in the ess wounds.

01:15:40
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, oh shot her king.

01:15:45
Speaker 3: Then after he gets what he wants from Jean Claude, which is like the information on that Patrice guy. The scene ends with Brian saying, please.

01:15:54
Speaker 2: Apologize to your wife for me.

01:15:56
Speaker 3: Then the exits and then we never know what happened beens to the wife Isabelle.

01:16:02
Speaker 1: And also Jean Claude treats his wife like garbage, you know, like and Jean Claude also a bad guy. It's not like, you know, there's he's being presented as like the peak of morality. That's leam Neeson. And he shoots her, but like you know, he tells, you know, his wife, he tells her to shut up. He's like, you know, he's being very rude to her when she understandably has no fucking clue what they're talking about, and he's like shut off. And then she shot and you're like, Wow, I don't know what I expected from a Luke Basard screenplay, but here I am watching it. It's just like it's like comical, it's ridiculous. And also, yeah, this movie was produced by Luke Basson. The director Pierre Morrell was Bison's go to cinematographer. So this is very much the predatory racist boys Club movie. And it made a quarter of a billion dollars. It made almost it made its budget back almost times. It was wildly successful. Again, had these two shitty sequels, and I guess also a TV show.

01:17:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, which I missed. It's a not Liam Neeson. It's the same character but played by a different actor. It's kind of like a re envisioning.

01:17:16
Speaker 1: Guy named Clive stand In. Wow, what a wild last name for an actor. Stand In sort of feels like a death sentence. Anyways, Yeah, this movie has I mean and speaking to like the campaign run in Albania to reverse the misinformation of this movie. I feel like, I mean, it's weird because I feel like a lot of times on this show we cover like, well, it's unclear what if any net harm resulted from this. It's rare to talk about a movie where there is demonstrable net harm done by the movie's success, but this is one of those movies. Absolutely no question in my mind, this movie did bad things for people's understanding of extremely important issues, for sure, and written by again like truly the last person you want weighing in on issues around human trafficking, the last person you want, who's creative work you want to see? Really period, end of sentence. And granted, at this time, this you know, in two thousand and eight, this conversation around Luke Pasan was not happening yet. That wouldn't happen for almost ten years afterwards. But looking back on it now, but.

01:18:27
Speaker 3: All you had to do was watch Leon the Professional and.

01:18:31
Speaker 1: Feeling I mean what, but a lot of people like it took a long time for the conversation around that movie to come all the way around. It took a really really long time. I mean not that not to discount anyone who was having the conversation when it started, but just in the like majority public sense, that was a beloved movie when it came out. Is I just yeah, lukeas On, I really wish him the worst.

01:18:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, the same, may he rot in hell?

01:18:58
Speaker 1: Yeah?

01:19:00
Speaker 2: The last thing I have.

01:19:01
Speaker 3: Is the way the buddies talk about the pop star Shira, where the guy his name is Sam I think, calls her a pop diva and then he's like, I don't know if you'd call her a singer, more like a cash cow. And it's just like demonstrating the way that men often are disparaging about performers or media that is targeted toward women because they.

01:19:29
Speaker 1: Was pulled from personal conversations that the people who make this movie have probably right exactly.

01:19:36
Speaker 3: So it's just like, oh, these men hate art buy and for women because they think, oh, if it's not for me, then it must be bad.

01:19:45
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also in that scene the one other I forgot to say this earlier, but the way that his friends it's just something that we talk about on the show all the time. But how the fact that Liam Neeson has taken it upon himself to be an actor presence in his daughter's life on her seventeenth birthday is presented as like this heroic feat and just how low the bar is for father participation in a child's life. And they're like they literally like has she thanked you? You're like like it really seems like he sees her one day a year, like why would she think him? But also the way she's written, she might, you know, like she's like daddy, Yeah, because she's.

01:20:28
Speaker 3: My milkshake and my horses.

01:20:31
Speaker 1: Where's my milk? And my horsey? Classic seventeen year old behavior, Like this movie can it can go? It can go? Like I again, love the movies you love, but this movie I feel like is best enjoyed ironically, and it did.

01:20:49
Speaker 2: It did.

01:20:50
Speaker 1: Just I will not be revisiting it after this. I just I don't know rare that my fifteen year old self was right, but she was. She was really cooking on and having no further interest in this movie, franchise, genre, etc.

01:21:05
Speaker 2: I love that for young Jamie.

01:21:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't pass the Bechel desk. I don't care if it does. It doesn't.

01:21:10
Speaker 2: It doesn't.

01:21:11
Speaker 3: It spiritually doesn't. And this movie on our nipple scale, where we rate zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I give it zero nipples.

01:21:23
Speaker 1: I give it zero. I have nothing to give.

01:21:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, we haven't talked about the concept of fridging in a while, or at least not defining it by that. But like I just also want to point out, like this is fridging the movie for any listeners who are not familiar, we're talking about a common trope in the action genre, but it also you can see it in any genre. But it was a term coined by comic writer Gail Simone in nineteen ninety nine. It describes a trend in storytelling where characters who are women will face disproportionate harm. They'll be killed, maime, dessaulted, abducted, anything like that, in order to serve as plot devices to motivate the men in the story. Usually it's a smaller plot point of a larger story, but like in the Taken movies, it's the whole story fridging the movie, the whole plot hinges on.

01:22:25
Speaker 1: There's no movie if it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, there's no active person in this movie besides sex traffickers and Liam Neeson. Outside of that, there's not even a you know, I think what is more common now in sexist movies where it's like the women will maybe kick once or twice. No, we're not even rising to that. There is nothing. It's just shaking, sobbing, crying, and all the information that's been conveyed is not thought about. I mean, this movie is just like saying it's it's weird. This movie isn't saying nothing. It is just saying a lot of wrong things in a way that sticks with you harder than you might expect, because there are so few movies, especially like widely released movies, that address issues like this, and so the ones that do, if they get it wrong, that makes a big difference exactly, And the legacy of this movie says that. So, yeah, zero nipples, it sucks. You know the monologue, sure, sure, sure, but watch it on YouTube and fuck the rest.

01:23:33
Speaker 3: And it's a monologue that could be said by many characters in many different movies, so it's not even though it's specific to him.

01:23:42
Speaker 1: I think that the nice thing is most people who know that monologue forget the plot of Taken, and that is the best case scenario there. So with that, we're back at lax. I guess we don't care that our friend died and let's just go home.

01:24:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I'm ready for my singing lessons.

01:24:02
Speaker 1: By this diva, Kim is also implied to be trauma free. The second shot, You're just like, okay, anyways, we can't we can't talk about this movie a second longer. Thank you for listening to our back to School episode which was taken wow. Thank you again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you can follow us online follow us or mainly on Instagram at Bechdelcast. We're still on Twitter occasionally, and if you want more hashtag content with just Caitlin and myself, you can go to our Patreon aka Matreon, where for five dollars a month we cover two bonus episodes. You also get access to our over one hundred and fifty episodes of back catalog. We've been doing the Matreon forever and every month we choose a special silly theme and cover some of your popular requests. This month it is John Hughes Bumber, and we're covering John Hughes movies that we get a lot of requests for that we haven't covered yet, so head on over there. It's a great way to support.

01:25:08
Speaker 3: The show, indeed, and you can grab our merch at teapublic dot com slash the Bechdel Cast. You can, Hey, why not rate and review us? Give us five nipples on whatever podcast platform.

01:25:23
Speaker 2: You use, and uh with.

01:25:27
Speaker 3: That, Jamie, let's use our particular set of skills as Friends, uh huh and go hang Out.

01:25:36
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, Bye bye.

01:25:42
Speaker 3: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Vosskrosenski. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftis into special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash Bechtelcast