Suspiria (2018) with Alissa Nutting and Alyson Levy

00:00:01
Speaker 1: On the Bechde 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, zeph and Beast start changing it with.

00:00:14
Speaker 2: The Bechdel cast. Hey, Jamie, Heyklin.

00:00:18
Speaker 3: Sorry, that's mother Caitlin to you.

00:00:21
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, I'm sorry, I'm I'm definitely not a mother.

00:00:24
Speaker 3: Also, no, no, yeah, it's it's in a way. We're all mothers and we're all here at this dance academy and.

00:00:35
Speaker 2: Something something World War two, it's something something Cold War, and it's all feeling kind of profound, isn't it.

00:00:44
Speaker 3: And we're witches. Surprise.

00:00:48
Speaker 2: I mean that's not really a surprise. You figured that out pretty early.

00:00:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.

00:00:53
Speaker 2: The real question is why does Tilda Swinton look like the six Flags guy when she's playing the I could I could not. I guess I went into the movie knowing that she plays the psychologist, which great, But why does she look like the six Flags guy?

00:01:15
Speaker 4: Oh?

00:01:15
Speaker 3: She does as the psychologist? Or yes, yeah, I think she looks more like the Six Flags guy for that character who doesn't speak and stebs herself in the neck.

00:01:27
Speaker 2: Oh that's true because that has the glasses element. Yeah, she's so versatile. That is Till the Swinton in that role too, right, Yes, that one I think is more obviously Till the Swinton. That would be an interesting piece of clickbait to read is Till the Swinton characters ranked by how much they look like the Six Flags guy. Sure, sure, she should play the Six Flags guy in a biopic.

00:01:52
Speaker 3: Oh I'm not mad about it. Okay, hello, and welcome to the Bechdel Cast.

00:02:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, that didn't pass.

00:02:02
Speaker 3: It well, yeah, six Flags, But I think if if you're talking about the Six Flags Guy as played by Till.

00:02:11
Speaker 2: The Swinton, I think it does. But she's playing a male character. I don't know. Six Flags Guy, tricky. Let's get semantic right at the beginning of the show. I think that's that would really hook in listeners. It's just like Dakota Johnson hooks her vagina question mark. We'll get into that later.

00:02:29
Speaker 3: Oh my god, the hooks. Yeah. Anyway, this is the Bechdel Cast. My name is Caitlyn Derante, my.

00:02:35
Speaker 2: Name is Jamie Loftus, and this is our podcast where we look at your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel Test as a jumping off point for discussion. But Kitlin, what is that?

00:02:46
Speaker 3: Well, it's just a media metric created by queer cartoonist Allison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test, originally appearing in Alison Bechdel's comic Dikes to Watch out For in the eighties as a bit as a goof. It's since been used as a popular media metric by people such as us. But again, we only use it as a jumping off point. Our version of the test is that two people of a marginalized gender must speak to each other about something other than a man, specifically the Six Flags guy, for two lines of dialogue or more preferably, some narratively substantial conversation.

00:03:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of movies don't pass. This one does, and so you know, you can just sort of wash your hands of wondering. Passes very early and consistently, and no one talks about the Six Flags guy. And that's actually one of my bigger criticisms of the film. Yeah, but historically they couldn't. I think he wasn't, you know, a popular figure till the nineties. Let's get our guests in here talk about two guests who love to expect foor grotesque motherhood in a very different way.

00:04:05
Speaker 3: Indeed, yes, they are the creators of Teenage Euthanasia, which is currently available to stream. It's Alison Levy and Alyssa Nutting. Hello, welcome, thank you.

00:04:17
Speaker 2: Yes.

00:04:18
Speaker 4: I don't think they talked about any man in this movie at any point alone for two lines in a row.

00:04:25
Speaker 5: I am wondering if the six Flags guy is its own marginalized gender perhow.

00:04:34
Speaker 4: And then what if Tilda Swinton actually is the six Flags guy? That was my like, do we know that she's not?

00:04:41
Speaker 3: We don't know that she's not.

00:04:43
Speaker 2: That would be a really good long con. It's like when you learn that JK. Simmons is the Yellow Eminem and you're like, what it all comes to? Oh, Kitlyn, I love that. I got to tell you that he's been the Yellow Eminem for like at least ten years, probably longer. I yes, I know.

00:05:02
Speaker 3: It's also like when that one stormtrooper in The Force awakens who has like two lines of dialogue and is getting like force mind controlled by ray as she's like discovering her powers. Is Daniel Craig what but you never know because he's in a stormtrooper costume.

00:05:20
Speaker 2: Good good for him.

00:05:23
Speaker 3: I find that fascinating personally.

00:05:25
Speaker 2: Anyway, it's it's no yellow eminem for me, but I'm happy for him. Yeah, that's a fun. Okay, Okay, we're talking about Suspiria, the twenty eighteen adaptation by Oh God, Italian name I am not, I'm gonna fuck it up. Luca Guagnino, Y Guadanino, Ewen McGregor. Ye, just list of names I've never said correctly, Luca Guadnino, most famous. It's his first movie. I didn't realize this was his first movie after Call Me by Your Name. It's kind of a wild follow up, but obviously not the first adaptation of this movie that was in nineteen seventy seven by Dario Argento. And will sort of talk about the like changes made to the twenty eighteen movie, because it's a lot, it's about an hour's worth of their stuff.

00:06:17
Speaker 3: They're very different movies. Yeah, and I imagine we will just cover the nineteen seventy seven Suspiria in a different episode at some point.

00:06:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's very it's very very different. Yeah, but first I guess with I would expand this to either Suspiria Alyssa. Let's start with you. What's your history with the Suspiria expanded universe.

00:06:41
Speaker 5: Okay, I do want to Like, I read that Tilda wore a prosthetic penis when she played the German Psychoana. Yeah, and that that kind of eclipses a lot of sort of like what I I don't know thoughts I had about the film. And there's a great gift of her from this movie eating Wings. That's also just like a gift. Yeah, I want to put out there if people haven't seen that gift, like, you can send it. You can send it for almost anything. It's kind of one of those universal it's like, oh blood, you know what I mean, Like any any situation can use Tilda eating Wings.

00:07:25
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean I loved.

00:07:26
Speaker 5: I loved the original and was really excited for the new one. I didn't I didn't expect it to be as different.

00:07:35
Speaker 4: I guess I'll begin there.

00:07:38
Speaker 5: But you know, I like being aroused and frightened at the same time, So I'm a I'm a big fan of both.

00:07:46
Speaker 3: Sure, it's a horny movie and it's a scary movie. It's accomplishing a lot of emotions.

00:07:54
Speaker 2: Check check Alison, what about you? Either Suspiria both very uns well.

00:08:01
Speaker 4: I see like two horror movies a decade. I'm like, I don't like the feeling of being afraid. I don't like the manipulated feeling of fear. But for some reason, I did see this movie when it came out in the theater, which again highly you know, not regular for me to do, and I liked it a lot, which also at the time seemed, you know, people just decided they hated it or something, but I don't know, but I liked it. And I watched it this morning at kind of yap speed to Prayer for Today, and I liked it at yap speed too. It's I don't know, it's really beautiful. And I also think I didn't realize how much mother stuff was in there actually, And now that's probably why I liked it too, because that is one of my more favorite topics.

00:08:56
Speaker 3: Jamie, how about you.

00:08:58
Speaker 2: I had seen both suspir before, but not for a while, and I know that when I saw the Luca Guadnino one, I was like, probably not fully paying attention because it's streaming on Amazon Prime, which means if a movie's long and it's streaming, I'm gonna be in and out of the room. I'm gonna be peeing and not pausing. I'm gonna be missing some things and not really worrying about it. So it felt like a fresh look at it. I'd seen the ar gentle One I don't know when, but I remember, like, I don't know, like it's not really doing much in the way of like subverting slasher tropes as as much, but it's beautiful and the score rips, and I just remember liking, like, even though it wasn't, like whatever, doing much in the way of subverting any sort of witchy tropes or whatever, because we've been talking about so many witch movies recently that I feel like on Witch Patrol, where I'm like, nothing really new there, but it just like the way it's stylized is pretty incredible and really memorable, and so I liked it. I rewatched it before watching the New Suspiria just to get a full idea of like how complicated the new narrative is in comparison, and I don't know, I feel like I'm I I was not expecting to be like mech on this new one, and I am open to being swayed. I didn't really like it very much. I thought it was like doing it's so weird because it's like art whatever this show was airing when this movie came out. It's only five years old, but it already feels like kind of funky to me, of like a male o tour trying to craft a reaction to the me Too movement. I think if I watched it in twenty eighteen, I would have liked it more than I liked it now. But now it just felt like, oh yeah, that was like the series, like the you know, stretch of a couple of years where all of our male o tours were like, don't worry you, guys, I get it and like it. I don't know, like parts of this movie were from certain angles. I really liked this movie. I liked what it tried to add with like historical context and like giving you more than just sort of your standard slasher characters. But then there were other parts that I was like, what is he on about? What? What's all this?

00:11:22
Speaker 5: Then?

00:11:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like not loving this movie the way I was expecting to. Anyways, Caitlin, what's your history with Suspirias.

00:11:31
Speaker 3: I saw the first Suspiria in the early two thousands, and I've seen it a few times since, and I generally like it, although I find the story just sort of like what is this about?

00:11:46
Speaker 2: Again? But which is there?

00:11:47
Speaker 5: Mean?

00:11:48
Speaker 2: And they need new ones right right?

00:11:52
Speaker 3: It's a tone poem, I would say, between like the color scheme, the lighting, the score. You know, it's like it's just sort of something you put on and kind of like vibe to in a horror way, you know. And I appreciate that. The new one I find more narratively compelling, because I feel like it tries to have more of a plot. But I have similar gripes as you, Jamie, as far as I mean, we'll get into it. But I did see it in theaters. I was one of, like, I don't know eleven people who saw it because this movie tanks.

00:12:29
Speaker 4: Yeah. I also saw the theater the same show.

00:12:32
Speaker 3: It was just us.

00:12:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I would have liked it better if I had seen it in the theater the first time, too, because it's like, it seems like it's the sort of movie where it's like, if you're like in it, it probably hits harder.

00:12:46
Speaker 4: That dancing too is really cool.

00:12:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I don't know the dancing.

00:12:50
Speaker 4: And again, as much as I dislike horror, I also dislike dancing, and so it like sort of doublely seemed problematic for me. But no, I maybe like they cancel each other out. But I liked all the dancing on the big screen because the sound is really cool too that you probably don't hear if you're like wandering around your apartment watch it. The sound is pretty cool.

00:13:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:13:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's cool stuff. I mean, there's there's things to like, certainly, and.

00:13:20
Speaker 2: The dancing's amazing. The costumes are incredible. It made me realize that there's apparently a whole like subgenre of horror that's like ballet or dance horror. Yeah.

00:13:32
Speaker 4: Center parts, a lot of center parts.

00:13:35
Speaker 3: Yes, middle parts. Yeah. So I'm excited to get into it. I feel even though I watched the movie twice and did a bunch of reading, I still feel underprepared because there's just there's so much. There's a lot of lore that was established by Dario Argento and Daria Nickelode who coote the first Suspiria movie.

00:14:01
Speaker 2: Is that correct?

00:14:04
Speaker 3: Yes, So there's all this lore and then this Suspiria movie from twenty eighteen, being set in Cold War mostly West Berlin, and a bunch of stuff that I still don't understand. Every time I try to learn about the Cold War, I read so much and I still do not really quite understand it.

00:14:28
Speaker 4: Let me paint the picture for you. I'm just kidding you.

00:14:32
Speaker 2: That's fortunately the three of us are Cold War. Said, I know, it's like we mutually figured. I don't know as because I was texting you while I was watching the movie as well. I'm like, I just it's just not coming in. It's not coming in.

00:14:47
Speaker 4: I mean, I actually can paint the picture a tiny bit of the Berlin part, if this is If this helps at all, I've been to Berlin a lot of times and I had friends there, so I think why it's set there and why it was interesting to me, and the whole bider monhaff stuff. It's like, you know, the seventies in Germany, they're like the people who were born after the war are like confronting. They're disgusting parents who were Nazis, right, so they're all like coming of age and realizing they have to confront this. Like not in some theoretical construct but with their actual families and so that it's like there it's like a whole seventies like apocalyptic you know, political thing or everything's like busting apart, and there's like actual terrorists that are you know, creating havoc. And then the whole East and West is this like crazy schism, right you guys know, like you couldn't go from one to the other. It's like families are divided again. Yeah, and then the whole the whole East part, like when he goes there. The other thing I thought was kind of cool is because it's famous for like the Stazi, which was like Google before Google, like irl Google, where there's like people keeping track of every single thing you're doing, what you're saying, You're being recorded all the time, but there's like actual humans writing this down, where did she go, who she's meeting with, and everyone's telling on each other. So it's like this absolute state of paranoia, which I think is what the therapist thing is about, but it's real. It's like how this is real. There really are riches, and there really is this entire state of paranoia that they're all living in. But that's you know, that was why I thought it was set in the Germany this time.

00:16:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that's that's super and I think that like it it. I thought it was a cool concept for them to set the twenty eighteen movie in Germany at the time that the original came out, with like the benefit of knowing what happens and like how to Yeah, Like there's so much talk about generational trauma through like World War two specifically, and also just how generational trauma exists between mothers and daughters, and I like all of that. But why don't I like this movie?

00:17:14
Speaker 4: Let's explore I wouldn't even convince you that you should. You know, I don't know.

00:17:18
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I doesn't like And maybe it was just too long, but I don't It's very long.

00:17:24
Speaker 3: And not very quickly paced.

00:17:26
Speaker 2: There was a post credit sequence, yeah, which I don't understand. It's doctor strange ass approach.

00:17:32
Speaker 5: To the message.

00:17:34
Speaker 3: Well, let's take a quick break and then come back for the recap. Here is the story, which is set in mostly West Berlin in nineteen seventy seven, and we meet a young woman named Patricia played by Chloe Grace Moretz, who pays a visit to her psychologist doctor Klemper, who is an old man, although it's Tilda Swinton in makeup, one of the many characters the Six Flags guy, some would say, one of the many characters that Tillda Swinton plays in the movie. And Patricia tells him their witches, although we don't know who or what she's referring to yet.

00:18:29
Speaker 2: We also hear Chloe Grace Moretz say the iconic line, They're going to eat my cont on.

00:18:36
Speaker 3: A plate, my hollowed out kunt on a plate.

00:18:39
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:18:39
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a fun crossed it, you know, as like that's the fun that maybe is the first time that sentence was written down, and I like that.

00:18:48
Speaker 4: I'm like, I'm in it. Now.

00:18:51
Speaker 2: Did you get points for that?

00:18:52
Speaker 5: Right? I will. I'll be as a defense attorney, right, Like, I mean, come on, like, how many points for that?

00:18:58
Speaker 4: Right?

00:18:58
Speaker 1: I mean?

00:18:58
Speaker 5: Even if it's even if it's do anything else?

00:19:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, on a plate?

00:19:03
Speaker 4: You know.

00:19:05
Speaker 2: The steaks are high.

00:19:09
Speaker 3: Okay. So then we cut to a Mennonite family in rural Ohio. We meet a young woman named Susie Banyon played by Dakota Johnson as she sits by the bedside of her very ill mother. Then we cut to Susie in Berlin. She arrives at the Marcos Dance Company for an audition, and even though she has no formal dance training, she gives an audition that impresses the people in charge, one of them being Madame Blanc also Tilda Swinton, and Susie is accepted into the company in a building where like the dancers also live, so like the performances are there, the dormitories where the dancers stay are there. It seems like all of the matrons who are like faculty and staff of this place, everyone lives there.

00:20:03
Speaker 2: Right, and there's when she gets in, there's sort of this like definitely does not appear in the Argenta version, but it's like taken. They take a moment to emphasize that all of your needs are taken care of, and that a woman's financial independence is not lost on them and is very important to them, and that is originally what makes I mean Susie almost bursts into tears upon hearing that, because it seems like she grew up with not very much. Yeah.

00:20:29
Speaker 3: Then Susie meets a few of the staff. There are instructors, administrators, a house mother. Again, the matrons not to be confused with the matrons of our Matreon.

00:20:43
Speaker 2: Yes, Patreon has a patriarchal plan that we don't like. Yeah, I would say that about maybe one third of the women who run this school are till the Swinton, yes.

00:21:01
Speaker 4: But well and the rest the rest are more conventional hacks, which is again I'm pretty into that. I'm really into hagc.

00:21:09
Speaker 2: Or in general.

00:21:10
Speaker 4: It's a wonderful and diverse body type of hack.

00:21:14
Speaker 2: I do like, yeah, like all of the like older women in this I mean I it reaches a point sometimes where it's like, I don't know, but as far as the administration goes, I'm like, oh, yeah, women that are like look their own age and are not constantly bilittled for it.

00:21:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeeha. Imagine all are welcome at the dance company.

00:21:36
Speaker 4: You assume they're all ex dancers. So they seem they seem pretty lithe is that the right word. They're pretty they seem like they can move pretty good. It's been kind of jealous of that.

00:21:46
Speaker 5: But anyway, there's the witchcraft too that probably.

00:21:50
Speaker 3: That's probably helping that keeps you limber.

00:21:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:21:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, if I could, I would cast spells on myself so as to not wake up in pain every morning. Anyway, So Susie meets the Matrons. She also meets another dancer named Sarah played by Mia Goth, and they become friendly.

00:22:11
Speaker 2: I like Mia Goths so much. I forgot she was in this movie.

00:22:15
Speaker 3: She's great.

00:22:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's an incredible like horror actor, specifically, like, I'm excitedly like.

00:22:21
Speaker 5: One of the best.

00:22:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I just saw Infinity Pool.

00:22:25
Speaker 5: Oh, she's a standout, beyond beyond standout.

00:22:30
Speaker 3: And I know that people really like ex and Pearl, neither of which I've seen yet.

00:22:35
Speaker 2: But afraid to afraid, I really liked of the two. I loved Pearl. I thought Pearl was awesome. We should cover Pearl at some point. And she was great in Emma. Anyways, I hope she's well.

00:22:48
Speaker 3: I hope she's well.

00:22:50
Speaker 5: She's well, I hope she's well.

00:22:52
Speaker 3: Also worth noting that everyone at the dance company, the dancers, the matrons, et cetera. Everyone is a almost as if it's a.

00:23:01
Speaker 2: Coven, of which is yeah, there wouldn't. Surely there wouldn't just be a group of women.

00:23:07
Speaker 3: Never a group of women equals a coven.

00:23:11
Speaker 2: Not in the seventies. Something's afoot.

00:23:15
Speaker 3: Okay. Then there's a scene where the matrons are casting votes for either Marcos or Blanc, and it's voted that Mother Marcos will remain in charge. Then there's a conversation about how they have to choose the right girl to perform some ritual because Patricia aka Chloe Grace Moretz didn't work out and now Patricia seems to be missing. The other dancers, particularly Sarah, is worried about her and they don't know where.

00:23:45
Speaker 2: She is, which is interesting because in the in the original version, that is Susie. I mean, there's like Susie's whole narrative in this movie is unique to this movie. But originally it's like the American girl shows up and finds out something's afoot and immediately starts investigating it and doesn't. I don't know, it's just like the character is totally different. But that's more Mia goths vibe in this movie.

00:24:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're wondering if Mia Goth's character Sarah might be the right choice for this ritual that they will be performing. Sarah then helps Susie get settled into her dormitory, and then the dancers start rehearsing for an upcoming performance of a dance called Vulk, which and they're doing like contemporary dance slash German expression. There's some modern dance. I don't know exactly what genre this is, but it's not ballet like it is in the first Suspiria movie.

00:24:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're pulling from like this specific German choreographer named Mary Wigman, and I guess that that is like who Dakota Johnson studied. She's a modern dancer during the time. But the reason she is not explicitly credited or referenced within the movie is because I think a lot of what you were like referring to of like the kind of one of the narrative complications of this movie Alison, where she was likely connected to Nazism in some way. So she had a lot of influence in German dance but is not really discussed today, although I think it's her work that's being pulled from for this choreography.

00:25:31
Speaker 3: Interesting. So they're doing they're prepping for this performance for this dance called Volk. The one dancer, Olga, is upset that Patricia is gone and she calls Madame Blanc a liar and a witch, and she runs out intending to quit the company, so now they don't have a protagonist because Olga was supposed to dance that part, but Susie volunteers, even though she's brand new and people are skeptical of her skill level. He's like, I can do it, and she starts dancing.

00:26:02
Speaker 2: She's so Christine die in Phantom of the Opera, where she's like me, I guess I could, and then she fucking kills it.

00:26:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's dancing, and as she's dancing, we see Olga trying to leave, but she gets trapped in a room and it's as if Susie's dance movements are puppeting Olga's body and so it's contorting her in this really gruesome, violent way. It's breaking her bones and twisting her all around.

00:26:34
Speaker 2: I know this movie came out afterwards, but it reminded me very much of a similar dance scene in US. Oh yeah, that's right, that came out the year after this, So I think it's a coincidence, but wild that this setup was on people's minds. Right.

00:26:52
Speaker 3: We are also occasionally following doctor Klemper around he visits I think it's his old house in East Berlin where he used to live.

00:27:02
Speaker 2: With his wife.

00:27:04
Speaker 3: Who went missing many years ago. We also see him looking through Patricia's journal and he sees some peculiar stuff about this dance company and he calls the police and reports Patricia missing. Now back at the company, some of the matrons find Olga's grotesquely contorted body. They barely react. They stick some large hooks in her and drag her away. So it seems like this is just par for the course at the old Marcos Dance Company.

00:27:38
Speaker 2: A lot of hook imagery in this.

00:27:40
Speaker 3: Movie, yeah, truly. Then we hear a conversation, which so some of the conversations in this movie seem to be happening telepathically, where the matron slash witches are communicating with their minds.

00:27:56
Speaker 2: You didn't like that part, Jamie, Oh no, I did like that part.

00:27:59
Speaker 4: That was a good part. I thought that was really good, Like when they're just dinner but then they're so fang is happening. I kind of love that.

00:28:07
Speaker 2: I thought that was great. Yeah, No, that like there, I didn't hate this movie, let me be, I just feel like, I don't know, I'm excited to talk about it later in the episode where I felt like there were so many elements of this movie that I liked and I didn't really I don't know, like I just where it landed. I found confused. I was like not happy with the way that it.

00:28:26
Speaker 3: Ended, I guess anyway, So we hear this conversation where they are rethinking their choice of Sarah and instead maybe they should try the new girl, Susie for the ritual they're planning.

00:28:41
Speaker 5: Uh.

00:28:41
Speaker 3: Then two cops show up to the dance company trying to find Patricia, but some of the matrons seemingly put them in a hypnotic trance. They're taunting them, they're taking their pants off and like touching.

00:28:58
Speaker 4: That was my other favorite part.

00:29:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're and they're touching them with the hooks like they're like kind of prodding the one guy's penis with one of the hooks, and it's release something. The dancers continue to rehearse with Madame Blanc instructing them. She's working closely with Susie, training her up. She's like jump higher. Then we see this hand, this like close up on a hand with these like long growth fingernails, and apparently it's mother Marcos from like the depths of this building wanting to feel Susie's energy. Then doctor Klemper approaches Sarah about Patricia and her belief that a coven of witches is running this dance company, and he's like, Sarah, maybe you should check this out, and she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I see no evidence of this. Leave me alone. But Sarah starts to get little suspicious, and she does start investigating the building and finds a room with some weird stuff, including those large hooks, and she also hears some screaming coming from another room. And that screaming, I think is that other Tilda Swinton character with the big plastic framed Six Flags guy glasses who we had seen picking up a knife and stabbing herself in the neck for reasons Yes that we definitely understands.

00:30:35
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think that she and the psychiatry should have hung out because they had a similar till this wint and six Flags guy aesthetic, Like they would have made sense together as friends, even you know exactly.

00:30:52
Speaker 3: Okay, So Sarah is, you know, hearing and seeing this freaky stuff. So she runs out and she goes to see doctor Clemper again, who tells Sarah about what Patricia had written in her diary about the three mothers, and I'm going to try to pronounce their names. It's mother Tennenbroum, the Royal tenen Broughms. It's mothers.

00:31:20
Speaker 2: Like being at a party and trying to remember the name of a movie.

00:31:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, mother, Oh god, I don't let letch not lockreamham Marum, I don't know. And then mother suspiriorum or something. I don't know if I said that one right. Anyway, Mother Marco's claims to be one of the three, but there is descent among the group of matrons, hence that vote we saw earlier as to who should be in charge, and it seems like modern Blanc is also insisting that she's one of the mothers.

00:31:51
Speaker 4: This is kind of the bitchiest part of the Movie's kind of like in cat fighting between them. Which old witch in charge?

00:32:01
Speaker 3: Which witch yep. Then Sarah confronts Susie, accusing her of making some kind of deal with the witches, and Susie's like, no, nothing is wrong, everything is normal te he and we're like, wow, gaslighting much. Then it's the night of the show that the company is putting on, and as the dancers are getting ready, Sarah snoops around the building again, and she finds Patricia and some of the other dancers. I think Olga maybe the one who had been like badly contorted. They are alive, but their bodies are badly injured and they're like decaying. They're kind of being kept in storage. It looks like, yeah, they're like being held against their will.

00:32:52
Speaker 4: Kind of catacombs underneath.

00:32:54
Speaker 2: The dance school.

00:32:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really scary. And Sarah is freaked out and she's trying to escape, but she falls and breaks her leg because like the witches are preventing her from escaping, and then some of the matrons find her and put her into a trance and heal her leg. Meanwhile, the performance is going on upstairs with Susie dancing the lead and Sarah, in her trance joins in, but she falls and cries out in pain, and doctor Klemper, who is there to watch, is like, Wow, something weird is definitely going on. I was right.

00:33:35
Speaker 4: They changed eye color too, Yeah, girl, yes, which is very weird. You don't realize what is happening, and then yeah, you sort of realize it.

00:33:44
Speaker 3: Yeah right, I know, Like toward the end of the movie, I was like wait, was Dakota Fanning's eyes were they always brown?

00:33:51
Speaker 2: Dakota? Who?

00:33:52
Speaker 3: What did I say, Dakota? Did I say, Dakota Fanning? I knew I was going to do.

00:33:56
Speaker 2: That, Dakota straight.

00:33:57
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I'm so sorry, buddy.

00:34:00
Speaker 2: Back inside of everyone, there are two Dakota's.

00:34:07
Speaker 3: North inside or east and west like the Berlin anyway. Okay, So then there's another day of rehearsals, and Madame Blanc is like, okay, it has to happen tonight, this ritual with Susie, where Susie will be some sort of vessel for Mother Marcos, and Susie seems to be in on it. She is a willing and knowing participant. Meanwhile, doctor Klemperer's his wife, who again went missing decades earlier, suddenly reappears and she's played by Jessica Harper, who played Susie Banyon in the original Suspiria from nineteen seventy seven.

00:34:45
Speaker 2: Who has been on this chef friend of the cast.

00:34:48
Speaker 3: On the Rosemary's Baby episode. Ye anyway, so uh, doctor Klemperer and his wife Anka have a tearful reunion and they're walking through this city at night, and then She brings him to the dance company and then immediately disappears because it was a trick. The witches tricked him into going there because they're going to use him as the witness for the ritual. The ritual starts. We're in this big underground room. The dancers are naked. They're dancing and writhing around. Sarah is getting disemboweled. Mother Marcos is there. We finally see her in the flesh. She is also played by Tilda Swinton, and she is a sight to see, a vision of a vision, a legend. You know, we'll talk about that character more, but basically she's made to look very.

00:35:47
Speaker 2: Many times we talk about that happening. Yeah, seriously reminds me of I feel like that goes back to not like cinematically, just like times we've talked about it. I feel like the shining maybe.

00:35:58
Speaker 3: Shining, we talked about it and the Vivich We've got countless times. This conversation is always coming up midsommar. Yeah. Oh, and then Susie is like I'm ready, and we think she's going to be sacrificed, and then Madame Blanc is like, something doesn't feel right. We have to stop this, but before she can, Mother Marcos kind of like half decapitates Madame Blanc and then Marcos is like, okay, Susie, let's keep going. And by the way, you have to kill your mother back in Ohio because I'm the only mother you need. But then another super witch I don't really know who this is supposed to be, but a very scary being shows up, and Susie's like, hey, Mother Marcos, for which mother were you anointed again? And she's like Mother's Suspiriorum and Susie's like, well, that's interesting because I am Mother's Suspiriorum. And then the super witch kills Mother Marcos and anyone who had voted for Marcos by exploding their heads into a burst of blood. Then Susie goes to Patricia, Olga and Sarah and they all ask to die. They're you know, in pain and they've been you know, brutally tortured and stuff. So Susie slash the new Mother Suspiriorum releases them from their mortal coils, and the other dancers are still dancing, and Susie's like, yes, keep dancing. She also rips open her own chest at some point for reasons.

00:37:46
Speaker 2: It's because she's got like a heart of darkness. Yes, mother suspiriorum vibes truly.

00:37:55
Speaker 4: I think she's like, she's not a person, So you're just like, it's whatever, where this is?

00:38:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, the spirit, this magic, it does sort of look like a hollowed out kunt hit in her chest. Sorry, I'm just quoting the movie anyway.

00:38:13
Speaker 4: Oh I'm open to it.

00:38:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, thank you so much.

00:38:17
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:38:18
Speaker 3: Then we see the aftermath of all of this, where one of the matrons escorts doctor Klemper out of the building. We see the remaining matrons whose heads didn't get exploded. They're cleaning up the bloody mess from the night before. Madame Blanc is still sort of alive, but who knows. Then Susie pays a visit to doctor Klemper at home, and she's like, you deserve to know the truth about what happened with your wife, and she tells him that she was killed in a Nazi death camp in nineteen forty three and that she was thinking of him when she died. And then Susie erases his memory of his wife, Anka, of Patricia and Sarah, and Susie herself basically all of the women that were his undoing. And then the movie ends with an image of the house he lived in with Anka, and this like engraved like their initials engraved with like a heart drawn around it, which he will never remember because the witches don't want him to remember.

00:39:32
Speaker 2: The end.

00:39:34
Speaker 3: So that's the movie. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss, and we are back, all right, Where should we start?

00:39:52
Speaker 2: Where did we start with this movie? I mean, I guess just to for people listening who have not seen either movie or have a only seen the twenty eighteen movie, the differences between the two suspirias are pretty significant. I would say that there's obviously a lot of love and care put into the twenty eighteen version to pay homage to the original. The protagonist's name is the same. Susie comes from America to a dancing organization in Berlin in both times. The dance company is full of witches both times, but the Argenta version is plot wise pretty cut and dry as far as which stories go. I think that what makes it different is, you know, unlike most slasher films of this era and still to some extent now, depending on what you're watching, it's not men butchering women, it's women butchering women. Although it's shot very similarly and it's sort of a straightforward an innocent young woman comes to Berlin and finds witches and she survives till the end and is sort of this pure figure throughout. This one is obviously very different, but for those who haven't seen the Argento that's basically what it is, and it has all these separate issues that the twenty eighteen movie does not share with it, So we'll save that for another episode.

00:41:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, I also want to share some of the lore of the Three Mothers, which I didn't realize until I started researching for this episode, but it's I wasn't sure if like the Three Mothers were based in some sort of myth thought like existing mythology, and it was inspired by existing mythology. But basically Dario Argento conceived of this trio of mothers and made a trilogy about the Three mothers. So Suspiria from seventy seven is one of the movies of this trilogy that focuses on, you know, mother Suspiriorum. He also made a movie called Inferno and another movie called Mother of Tears, which each of those movies focuses on the other two of the three mothers, and throughout the course of this trilogy you learn that it's these like, you know, ancient witches who I think invented It was like three sisters who invented witchcraft and then started just like going around Europe amassing wealth throughout the centuries, amassing power, leaving death in their wake wherever they went. They were able to manipulate world events on like a global scale, you know, killing anyone who got in their way or discovered who they actually were, and they were determined to rule the world. Now the witch is wanting more world domination doesn't come across super clearly in this movie, which is actually one of my criticisms about it because I kept being like, oh, okay, what is their motivation? Like why are they doing what they're doing? I wish there was I don't know, I guess, and we'll talk about this the way, like these witches are feminists, which obviously I mean further discussion, but like I was like, are these witches like trying to smash the patriarchy quote unquote or like what are they doing exactly?

00:43:33
Speaker 2: It's it.

00:43:33
Speaker 3: It never becomes quite clear, and so I was left wanting, I guess, more of a reason or an explanation of like why they're doing what they're doing. But we can get further into that.

00:43:47
Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, does anyone have like I mean, I sat like, I think the way that I think about this movie changes depending on like which perspective I'm looking at it from where.

00:43:58
Speaker 3: Which perspective.

00:44:01
Speaker 2: Witch, But there's I think that there's a lot of like generational stuff going on in this movie, and that it see or I sort of took away that like this coven was just trying to sustain by any means necessary, which you could say of like basically any societal setup, but this one is hyper feminine and also supernatural. But it just seemed like for me, like I don't know, I was not I'm surprised I did not know that about the Argento expanded like lore because it Yeah, I think I just read especially because of like the historical context that they were However, like however they had to survive as even like an idea or a structure that they were not above brutalizing or getting rid of anyone who didn't sort of fall into line with what they needed, which is like, you know, a patriarchal structure, even though this one is dominated by women. But anyone who falls out of line in this world, and I think this is true of the Argenta movie too, but like anyone who falls out of line with the big leaders is not just eliminated, but like tortured and humiliated and then eliminated and like discredited. And that felt clear to me. I just like I don't know, I guess I'm less sure of like what the goal was of showing this happening in a strictly like matriarchal world.

00:45:42
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, to me, what I thought it was a back which was very interesting to me was like female creativity because to me, like it really they were a dance studio. They weren't just like a schoolhouse or something. And I think that's their thing. They're fucking amazing at dancing. And that's a super interesting tension of like their creativity and the woman who's kind of in charge is the kind of creative, the most creative one, but they're all kind of buying for like who's you know, can kind of get into it the best or the best dancer. And I thought like that was their point, but maybe that's just you know, what interests me is female creativity, and there's very few movies about female creativity, and so I like that a lot. And then again, so I have teenage daughters and I'm an elder hag, and so the tension between the hags and the young women is real. I just a personal story. I had just spent two days at my fourteen year old daughter's overnight camp where all the mothers come. It's called Mother's Weekend, and it was mothers with their daughters for two nights at an overnight camp. And you see these like daughters and then you see them walking with the mothers and they kind of look alike, but there's kind of some I don't know, like they're all like the mothers are kind of like swollen and sweaty and like you know, wearing shorts that don't fit them, and the daughters are all just sort of like these like glorious like young, full of life, you know things, And it's like real to me. When I just watched it again, it was super like that tension of like older women younger women. The kind of physicality of it, I don't know, I mean, does it all like is there like a straight line that you can call, you know. But it made me think about all that stuff and that's all interesting to me.

00:47:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's like one of the things. So like Mother Marcos and when we finally get her reveal on screen, and there's been kind of there's been hints about like what this ritual is gonna be fool or like why it's happening, and you eventually realize that she's basically looking for a new body to inhabit because the body that she currently has is and this is what we were alluding to as far as like the discussions we've had about this trope. But it's like a woman who is not young or thin is therefore disgusting. And the way that like this character is designed where she's got like extra appendages growing out of her it seems like there's like a baby head like kind of drooping from her belly.

00:48:36
Speaker 2: Oh, I was thinking about the baby hand on her arms. Oh, there's a lot of extraneous Yeah.

00:48:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's like it's it almost seems like she's like externally pregnant is the best way I could describe it. Either way, Like she's she's just characterized as being this grotesque hag and her goal here the reason this ritual is happening, I don't know, Like it's so that she can inhabit this new, thin, young body. Is it for vanity reasons? Is it for just that she needs a body that will like last longer so that she can keep ruling as like mother suspiriorum.

00:49:17
Speaker 2: That's sort of what I interpreted that as was like that she is trying I guess that that was going with like how I was viewing the movie by like how do I sustain We're weirdly we were talking abou. I don't know why we were talking about the Star Wars rebooths, but it's on like a similar thing with like Emperor Palpatine is like you need to go on and like you know, he's kind of similarly characterizes very very grotesque, although not in the same way he's wearing a robe, but like is trying to maintain this immense power that he has that not most people see or recognize by enlisting younger bodies. But then there's like I think that, yeah, like the fact that this older body is a woman's body that complicates things because there's like the way that like any older woman's body has been shown specifically, and horror tends to be really pointed, and like, aren't older women's bodies horrific and therefore evil? Which is like what we talked about in you know, when Jack Nicholson sees an old lady's but in the Shining he can't handle it. It's it's too evil stuff like that. I don't know, like it's tricky, I I And then with like younger women's bodies, I mean, I think that the younger women in this movie don't have a lot of power and like they h and it feels like this, I don't know how like effectively it's done, But I guess I don't know, like how the older women in charge have the actual power, but they need to execute it through the bodies of these younger women, which theoretically, on a long enough timeline, these younger women will do two other younger women and it's like this, you know, whole churning cycle of power and manipulation. Yeah, so that or maybe that's mommy, I don't know, I'm not bad.

00:51:20
Speaker 4: Well, there's mothers. There has to be daughters, I guess, right.

00:51:24
Speaker 2: Or children?

00:51:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, yeah, of any gender but yeah, in this case of this movie, it's like, yeah, the mother quote unquote the mother generation and then like the daughter generation and like the tension they'rein, which I do want to talk about further. But so the thing with me for this movie is that throughout the story there's this idea of this dance company is a matriarchy. It's women looking out for each other. It's like, you know, the mother is nurturing this younger generation, and these witch are feminist icons where you get like lines of like when one of the matrons is explaining to Susie that you know, like you mentioned this already, Jamie, like at this company, we understand the importance of a woman's financial autonomy. There's a scene where Susie and Sarah are talking about Madame Blanc and how she's awesome, and Sarah says, like, when the Third Reich wanted to shut off women's minds and keep their uteruses open, Madame Blanc was there to like provide a safe space for women to have like freedom and bodily on autonomy. The matrons b rate doctor Klamperer, saying like you had years to get your wife out of Berlin before she disappeared, like it's your fault that your wife is dead. And then they also b rate him for not believing women when they come to him about like their concerns, and he instead, you know, says they are delusional. So it sort of presents this idea of like, wow, look at this matriarchy who's all about women's autonomy and you know, believing women and women looking out for each other. But then like any woman who doesn't want to be a part of the witch stuff is imprisoned and tortured, and there's like this one true leader and if you don't pledge your undying loyalty to her, she'll explode your head off. So there's like this power structure. To me, it's like like even that scene where they're hypnotizing and taunting the cops, who are the only other two male characters besides doctor Klemper who have any kind of like narrative significance, And it seems like on the surface that could be some kind of like feminist win, but I don't know, Like me, they're.

00:53:54
Speaker 4: Just having fun, Like I really good and it's kind of nice to see what take some laugh. That was like they had like the best time ever but I don't know if it was that.

00:54:07
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't know, Like women abusing men the way that men have abused women is not feminism, as much as I like to goof around and joke that it is. It's not. Like matriarchy is not just gender swapped patriarchy. Like smashing the patriarchy doesn't mean we're going to like replace it with an equally toxic and violent power structure, and like a power structure where some women have way more power than other women that they violently wield over the women who have less power. Like, that's not feminism, that's not matriarchy. So I don't know exactly what the movie's trying to say. And I feel like the director thought he was making a feminist movie, but I just I feel like the takeaway from this movie is everything you've heard about a group of women and actually being a coven of witches, well that's true. And a group of women, especially one who is like not dependent on men in any way, that's something to be feared because those women are evil and their power hungry. They want power over the world, over men, and over each other because women be petty, And that is my takeaway. I am willing to entertain other reads of this movie, because I do think you could look at this movie and read it as a feminist text. But to me, it's just like there are too many tropes of women as evil witches present that I don't know what the movie is doing to exactly challenge that that I come down on the side of, Like, so, what's the point, Like, what's the takeaway again?

00:55:50
Speaker 4: I mean maybe I'm just I don't think it is a feminist movie.

00:55:54
Speaker 5: I wouldn't really bad. Yeah they're bad women and it's a bad matriarchy. Yeah they're.

00:56:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not a feminist movie. I just still it tracks for me all like a million levels, like actually because my dearest.

00:56:15
Speaker 5: Level, you know, And that's like kind of what I see this movie, you know, like in a lot of ways, you know, don't know.

00:56:22
Speaker 4: I was just saying. When I came up, I was a visual artist, and I was in New York and worked for a lot of really amazing middle aged female artists who were hella me. I mean, the meanness I could ever be would like be like one tenth of how mean they were, but they what they had to get through to be even in the position they were I was just like in awe of them and like whatever they you know, I really could identify with the young dancer to the old woman thing. And you know, I don't think the movie's feminist, but it's a it's a it's an it's an experience. But like, I don't think it has a point like you're saying, I don't think we should be like, oh, this is really insightful about some you know, changing the face of feminist thought. But it does sort of track with the timeframe of what it's about women creativity, women artists that is potentially, you know, at least I feel like it wasn't like science fiction, so no, I mean.

00:57:26
Speaker 3: Familiar. I guess I'm just like annoyed. This movie that was written by a man and directed by a different man has women valuing things like women's financial unbodily autonomy, or at least saying that they value that on the surface, and then like saying that people should believe women, and then they turn around and they're like just kidding, which also does happen where like people have a very like public facing feminist persona, but then they turn around and are like evil sexist capitalists and stuff. Like that, So I don't know.

00:58:04
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm just like, yeah, I guess I'm sort of coming down somewhere in the middle here because I also think that this, Yeah, I agree with you, Caitlin that like the most evil characters in the movie saying the most progressive things definitely does not bode well. I don't think, and I would have I think appreciated. I think it would have maybe made I don't know. First of all, I cannot really tell what the intended effect was for the writer and the director. I truly could not figure out what they wanted me to take away from it, which is fine, but I just couldn't tell. But yeah, some of the most technically progressive statements in this movie are made by who end up being the most evil characters, and that is I guess it would have been. I don't know, like I would have appreciated more of some sort of diversity of opinion among the older women and if there was someone who had sort of like dissented to the general like, because I think that existed in a younger cast, where the younger women tend to feel a variety of ways about a thing, the older woman tend to sort of fall in line with the same thing, and that sort of muddled the takeaway for me. The thing that like really genuinely bothered me about the way this movie ends. And maybe and I think that there is some like worldly truth to this, but because the end of the movie was so jumbled for me, I just didn't like it was that, you know, at the end, in a way that is like knowingly self serving, Susie goes to the six Flags guy and presents him absolution and men in Black Memories apps him from the horrific things that he has seen, and he, you know, receives this sort of full arc of he learns this horrible thing that has happened to his wife that he he's clearly carrying a lot of guilt about. That seems to be implied why he is attempting to help women, even though he is applying rationality to an irrational world. All this shit, right, But the fact that, yeah, that he's the only character in the movie that gets that grace and that absolution just in general bugged me. Maybe that was the point though, maybe that's like, you know, men are extended a level of grace and absolution that women are not. I don't know, really and maybe Susie was just acting, you know, in the best interests to sustain the coven and for someone on the outside to know anything about the inside is bad for business, and so we're not going to do it. But that was the thing that like, I don't know, going out, especially because there's so many like characters inside of the dance studio that I feel like did not get a satisfactory arc to like go out of the way to give that to the literally the one male character in the movie and give him kind of like a happy Smiley ending. I just like that. That was the thing that really bugged me about the ending, Like do you.

01:01:12
Speaker 5: Think it's happy Smiley though if like he has no memory now of like his wife and like the love they shared, that's true, you know, I mean I don't know, Like to me, it's like the ending is prioritizing like the history you know, in the atmosphere, over the dance, you know, like over the witches, you know, like even essentially right, it's like reaching out like just you know, to me and my interpretation to like this like larger metaphorical you know space that sort of like engages like the you know, the whole like context and setting and the Holocaust and you know, all of it, you know, and so I mean, yeah, I think like that's kind of and and like I mean this in a caring way, because I appreciate, you know, sort of all of the larger historical contexts that come into the film, but I think that there is like this like essential like both wayseness that it's trying to have, you know, like like being sort of you know, like taking the story of like this coven and you know, this dance troup and these women that you know, like ultimately it has to leave them to serve that you know, kind of like level I guess of like thematics.

01:02:29
Speaker 4: I don't know.

01:02:30
Speaker 5: So so that that was kind of like my yeah, my thing with the ending, it's like I understand, but it also did feel like a historically male narrative choice, you know, to leave the female characters behind, you know, like in favor of capital h you know, history and you know, yeah, just kind of like saying what we'll say about war.

01:02:54
Speaker 4: I don't know. Yeah, I thought it was also maybe I was reading too much into it, but I thought it was like some kind of like collective psyche that that guy like embodied of like being because he doesn't really feel like a person. No one does in the movie. But you know, it's not like it's a realistic portrayal. It's so like stylized and heightened. But he, to me was like you know whatever. And Freud and I talk about Lacan like they're like deep into like European intellectual you know, theory within the film and they're letting you know that. But I think, like that's what I thought. It was some sort of like she's now maybe the whatever her reign as you know, if you have to have the witches, she's gonna sort of coming in now it's her thing. And it's like she seemed more benevolent because the other woman was clearly batshit, the one that she got rid of, like she maybe was the one causing so much chaos and we don't choose a fraud, Yeah, right, that lady's the fraud. So when Dakota not Fan Johnson like put to you know, and clearly her mother was so fucking mean, which we didn't talk about at all, like whatever, that was that to you know for Alyssa, and I think that lady tracks the most from our world. The actual mother who's like cursing her one curses her daughter. It's on her death.

01:04:18
Speaker 5: That was a real bummer. That was a real bummer for me.

01:04:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a bummer. And so I just felt like, Okay, this girl is like gonna maybe bring upon this like more benevolent thing because she gets rid of all the people who voted the other girl. Oh, keeps her people on and a bunch of those tags. Yeah, they seem like maybe the hags that were always kind of like you, they would always cut away to them like, oh no, what's she doing now? You know, the ones that lived through to the end, they seemed a little more suspicious of the original witch hag.

01:04:53
Speaker 5: Oh no, definitely, So maybe she's a better Yeah, Oh I think she is. I mean I do think that it's like about, you know, a sort of like come up and right to those in power who abused their power. Right, But I'm also just kind of wondering like what it says about, you know, like like secrecy is such a thing you know, sort of like within even like the building, you know, and like the mirrors and like reflections and like who people literally are and lineage you know, with like the mother you know, and just sort of like, yeah, where we came from being like so hidden, and.

01:05:32
Speaker 4: That's the whole lacon thing, right, It's like you see your mother, you see yourself, and as it was saying on the camp where you see the mothers and daughters together, and it's this weird funhouse mirror between the two. I mean, the movie's not a feminist movie, but it's it's like they went for it in this movie, and I personally I like people who really go for it.

01:05:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, it did not hold back.

01:05:55
Speaker 4: And they they did not take the easy road here, No, they did not.

01:05:58
Speaker 5: They did not.

01:05:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's like, I don't know, it's so weird because it's like the stance, like he comes in at an eleven this entire movie. But I'm still that's something. But there are still whole sequences where I'm like not sure what he's trying to say. I like that, Like with this psychiatrist, I don't know, Like I liked a lot of what was going on with him until the very end. The ending I just found frustrating. But towards the beginning it's clear that he's like trying to like apply this very like I guess new Ish European psychological standard to his patients that is not working because Patricia is telling the truth and he's like, well, you just have issues with your mom, and so like let's work this out, which I think is like an issue I have with my therapist as recently as tomorrow. Sometimes I'm like, I hear you, but it can't just be that, like we cannot just keep going back to my mind, you know. I think he's like applying a lot of theory to patients who are kind of just telling him what is happening to them. And I thought that that worked, and I like that he's sort of like his come up and being forced to witness the reality of what Patricia was telling him in the first scene of the movie felt appropriate and like, you know.

01:07:26
Speaker 5: Almost feels feminist, right Like like at that moment, I'm like, okay, you know, like I think it does, you know, approach it in moments I.

01:07:35
Speaker 2: Think part of my.

01:07:37
Speaker 5: Like I don't want to say, you know, like I want to appreciate it on its own terms, right, you know, like not everything is you know, like a vehicle for feminist theory. But I think what's so frustrating to me about the movie is like it's so easily could have been right, Like there are so many you know kind of like moments and windows and avenues that you know, like do get it right or you know, do point out. I mean it's also like a really fun takeaway, you know that like in you know, nineteen seventy seven, like Berlin like to be as evil as a patriarchy, like to get enough power where you can like express that power and be that evil, like you literally have to be supernatural witches. Like it's the only way you know that like women can like amass that much power, you know, and that much like independence and you know, financial freedom and et cetera, et cetera. You know, I think like there are a lot of like feminist vectors right in the movie. So I mean I think like maybe like that was kind of one of my peeves, I guess, you know, at certain points where I thought it was like gonna you know, like realize this.

01:08:44
Speaker 2: And then it doesn't.

01:08:46
Speaker 5: But I do feel like it's also kind of like saying you know, something interesting about history and atonement, you know, or even just kind of like validation of kind of yeah witness and hollowed out counts, you know, like I mean, it's bringing good stuff to the table in other ways.

01:09:10
Speaker 2: In other ways it felt like, I guess at the end, I felt like the what this movie seemed like it was trying to say about history and what this movie was trying to say at different points about women felt like it got kind of muddled and jumbled, which I guess is true of the world. But it is a movie, and so I was just sort of like, it felt like, you know, there was it was like the culmination of this psychiatrist's view of his women patients that comes true when he's forced to witness it, but the way that his arc resolves is more related to history and less related to the other stuff. And it just felt like I just was frustrated by it. But I get that, you know, like everyone will feel yeah.

01:09:57
Speaker 4: Well, I mean the other thing is I mean I was reading little bit about them. How the second one came to pass and it took It was in development for a very long time. First of all, this is not like a slam dunk movie to make. It was, you know, and it made no money, so clearly they were you know, had some problems. But it was originally David Gordon Green was going to direct this, which is like mind numbingly confusing to me. Even though I really love David Gordon Green, I just don't. I don't somehow get it. And that would have been fascinating to see. But I mean, the people who did make this movie, like, did choose to make an entirely female cast of this movie. That's whatever you want to say about the context of what it is. That's a choice, that's an unusual choice. And then again, I'm going to harken back to the whole concept of like female creativity. I think, like there's you know, and my one of my daughters is an athlete. There's so few movies about female creativity and female athletes. I'm considering how many movies are about male creativity. It's like it's mind blowing to me and would have been interesting if a woman made this movie. I'm sure it would have been. But I think it's still an odd choice for anyone to want to make a movie about this much about you know, with this whole women cast. You know, it is like whether or not it's a feminist movie. There certainly tried to make something. They tried to do something. They took some big swings here, and I don't think it was. I think I don't know. I think that's interesting, like if they had that, these were the people that got the script, which this guy like got Argento to give them the rights to the movie to make it, you know, I don't, I don't know. I mean, Dario Argento is way problematic. We haven't gotten into it, but in terms of his own personal behavior, which I is, you know, slightly more upsetting than the film, I guess, but yeah, anyway, Yeah, well.

01:11:52
Speaker 5: I mean another reason I had, you know, like another soft spot I guess, you know that I have for the movie. That's you know, kind of like one of my own like problematic trials.

01:12:04
Speaker 4: I guess.

01:12:04
Speaker 5: I guess a creative is like how you represent you know, female like evil and female violence without you know, falling into like stereotype and trope, you know, and things that like reinforce messages that are out there you know that are are already very harmful and you know, have historically been very harmful.

01:12:23
Speaker 2: You know like that.

01:12:25
Speaker 5: Yeah, that that's just something like I'm really interested in and that I struggle with a lot. So I mean, I guess like I also appreciate both sides of that struggle.

01:12:35
Speaker 2: M right. It makes me I want to go back to something I think, Alison, you were talking about it earlier about sort of the complicated and generally bummer with you alyssa message around or just around Susie's specifically arc with mothers and motherhood that goes back to me for another I guess, like chafing, I was having with how this movie portrays witches because I feel like there's a few different examples in arcs in this movie where we're seeing this horrible thing happened between Susie's mother and Susie, where Susie's mother is saying that her youngest daughter is this agent of Satan, that she is her sin, that this is the worst thing that's ever happened to her, which is essentially like it. You're led to believe Susie's been at least emotionally abused, and it's also implied physically abused for most of her childhood, which makes total sense. You want to get the fuck out of the country if that were the case. But then at the end, Cuzie's mother is kind of like quote unquote proven right, because actually Susie has been an agent of Satan. This whole time she is evil and she is horrible, and so you're like, well, what is that trying to say? If we're shown this horrific parent child dynamic and then at the end the abusive parent is correct, Like, it's just bizarre to me. I like couldn't get my head around it.

01:14:09
Speaker 4: Okay, I thought it. And again I'm just my own like dark sided soul in my own experience. But I read it as Susie is an artist, right, Susie's dancer, Susie's this artist person growing up in like some kind of I don't know what that was, honest, Menon, menonit right, mennonit thing. And you know, I had parents who were like, you want to be a what you know, you're going to be an artist? Like, you know, just this real like negative super And again I don't know how how bad she is a bee the you know, we could agree to disagree on that one. But to me, I don't know, Maybe you know, they just couldn't handle her levels of like ambition and creativity back there in Ohio, you know, but maybe I'm just you know, that's just the way my brain goes on it.

01:14:57
Speaker 3: Alternatively, is it the abuse that Susie endured from her mother that led her to become the witch she now is, Like, did she start out as like a well, because I do want to examine Susie and her arc more closely, because like we meet her, we see her. I don't know if she's like tending to her sick mother, but she's like sitting by her bedside, and I feel like the movie maybe I'm just sort of like reading into this, but I feel like it's implied that the reason her mother is ill is because Susie has been making her ill with her like witchcraft this whole time. That's not clearly stated one way or the other. But anyway we meet Susie, she is set up to be this, you know, innocent. She's pretty shy, quiet, she's kind of awkward. She comes from this Mennonite family, the implication being that she has lived a pretty sheltered and modist life. But then she comes to Berlin. She's like at the dance school for a day and she's like, hang on a minute, I can dance the lead in this thing. Because I saw a documentary about it. I went to the library and watched it one hundred times.

01:16:18
Speaker 2: Was like me when I was starting stand up there, so be careful.

01:16:22
Speaker 3: I'm not judging her.

01:16:23
Speaker 2: I just think I can do this because I watched it on TV. I thinks a lot of the I mean, I think that that is like a lot of young artists where it's like, especially if you are Susie and you grow up with very little access to art like souls, do you learn you want to be an artist other than watching it and whatever's available?

01:16:42
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, I'm not passing anywhere or help you.

01:16:46
Speaker 2: Chats to you about it at night.

01:16:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, Alyssa. Alyssa grew up in a very religious household that as an artist. Yes, so that you know, did you how did you feel for Susie escaping?

01:16:59
Speaker 2: Like?

01:16:59
Speaker 4: You know?

01:17:00
Speaker 5: So I think that there can be a Okay, I don't know that this is like the right opinion to have.

01:17:09
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna lay it out there.

01:17:11
Speaker 2: Let's go on the assumption that it is.

01:17:13
Speaker 4: Well, it isn't.

01:17:16
Speaker 5: Like there was something kind of refreshing about seeing like the that you know twist and that reversal leaned into like in a way that like exists completely outside of like religious propaganda, you know what I mean, Like just like to to be like yeah, you know that this was actually like true, and you know, like maybe all of those assumptions right that we have about you know, like our like willingness to kind of like see this you know, young woman as a victim, YadA YadA, you know how in your face like I know that that's that's kind of like an overdone and and like dirty trick. But I don't know, I mean there's just something about like going for it at eleven, like you say that, I don't know what kind of interested me. And I liked thinking back then on the movie, you know and being like okay, well was I seeing you know, like how was I seeing this? And like how would I see it if actually like she was a vehicle for seeing this full time, you know, or like actually like she was tuning into this or you know, like her mom did see you know this this in her or this was her life, or you know she wanted to be here for like all of these different reasons, or she was lying to her friend when we thought that she was you know, being like completely honest and vulnerable, like I don't know, you know, it was just kind of a fun little like rewind and I don't know that that I don't know that that you know, even like led to like a good read of the movie.

01:18:55
Speaker 2: I don't know, I mean I do. I mean I think that like something like a huge difference between The Argentle One and this one that I liked was that like in the Argentle One, Susie is like the like American girl next door character. You you are sort of like led to believe she's inherently trustworthy because she is like young and pretty and white and from America, and so you're like, well, yeah, sure, this is a little sweety pie. I trust her, And I like that the that the twenty eighteen one is like, yeah, I did sort of assume that of the Dakota Johnson character when I was like, oh, she's just a little girl from Ohio, like she's out of her element, and and to like give her more intention and more power than I had, like it challenged whatever my assumption of that character. And that was cool because it's like, you know, not every and and like this movie, I'm all over the place about it. But this movie does clearly have an interest in the idea of like what purity is and what it means, because it's something that comes up over and over and over. And one of the things that like was I think like easiest to get rid of from the seventies one is like there's sort of a vague implication of like a love interest for Susy from a male dancer because it's an all genders dance studio in the first one, and they get rid of that really quickly. But I don't know, just like the idea that like being involved in this coven in a meaningful way also has to do with some sort of purity, and that's kept pretty vague. You don't know like what you need to be pure of or about. But it felt like the twenty eighteen one had some interest in the idea of purity. I'm not really sure where it fell, but I thought it was interesting that it brought that idea up, because that was something that in the first one I felt was like assumed and very much like played on your assumptions about who you're looking at. Where esca Harper character you're like, oh, yeah, sure, I trust.

01:21:03
Speaker 4: Her, And this one too, there was no like exploitation. I didn't feel of their sexuality at all, like male gaze women sexuality, like whatever was going on with them sexually which was something quite vague, was also something very internal, which I can you know, I'm there for that, you know, like it had nothing to do with almost other the sexuality, and this film is very self generated and not that much, which is really rare when that many beautiful women like naked in a film. I can't really think of another that didn't even broach that barely. I don't know.

01:21:47
Speaker 2: I like that a lot.

01:21:48
Speaker 4: And whatever. We didn't talk at all about the dreams that she's having, which I thought were really cool visually, whatever that is in this light and whatever, the like indoctrination thing that there's spell they're putting on her. I don't know. I really enjoyed that. And that again was whatever this like auto sexuality that's happening. I don't know. I thought that was very unique to this film.

01:22:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, because so well, I brought up the like her she's like I can do it, because I watched a documentary just to demonstrate that. She's very confident and she's like, so for her to be like, yeah, I can dance the lead and it turns out she's right. I mean, she ends up being the best dancer it's implied at the company, and which just feels, I guess, like kind of foreshadowing of what's to come. As far as like twist, I'm mother suspiriorum and I have been all along, but I just, like you were saying, Jamie, like playing to people's expectations of like a you know, a soft spoken, quiet woman being trustworthy and just apparently nice and the person we're going to root for. I feel like was set up to better serve the twist that she's actually the meanest witch of them all. But is she the meanest because she does like show compassion to you know, Sarah and Patricia and Olga who are like begging for death and she's like, yeah, babe, got you, no problem.

01:23:28
Speaker 2: May we all have a friend so merciful to provide the sweet release of death?

01:23:34
Speaker 5: Right?

01:23:35
Speaker 3: So I don't even know if I have any kind of like conclusive thoughts on this, as far as like the way Susie is portrayed and her arc and the way she's initially characterized versus like her coming into her own power, and like you were talking about Alison, like her sexuality in a way that is completely separate from men, and it's just like her kind of having sex with the ground sometimes like kind of writhing around and just sort of fucking the ground here and there. And then there's that scene where I mean we've all done.

01:24:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean if you get too close to a dryer and it's in heat, a dryer in.

01:24:20
Speaker 3: Heat, Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then there's like that scene that conversation between Madame Blanc and Susie where where Madame Blanc is like, how did it feel to dance? And She's like it felt like what I imagine it feels like to fuck? And she's like, oh, like to fuck a man And Susie's like, no, I was thinking of an animal, which I don't quite know how to inter.

01:24:51
Speaker 4: That's that's my language. I was like in it with that, like I was way more interested than if it was about fucking a man, Like.

01:25:00
Speaker 5: Thank god, yeah, like that's a redemption.

01:25:03
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, we.

01:25:05
Speaker 4: All know that.

01:25:05
Speaker 5: I feel like, yeah, I don't know, and I mean, like, let me just say something else awful, Like they're like, there's so I just as a viewer, you know, now, it's like I see so many things that you know, in a good way, you know, are are trying not to equate female sexuality with you know, being like out of control or you know, morally wrong that like sometimes it's just maybe especially like in like if you can't do it in Horror. I don't know, Like in Horror, I think sometimes it's just fun that like you're really horny because of the devil. I was raised Catholic, Like I don't know, but like for me, that was just kind of like yeah, you know, like you you leave the farm, you know, like you get the devil and like then like you know, you are like an erotic fucking dancer, you know, and I mean like they they are dancing like so fucking erotically. Yeah, yeah, like maybe because of Satan and I just enjoyed that.

01:26:12
Speaker 3: Sorry so sorry, no, no, I'm just processed it.

01:26:17
Speaker 4: We're pretty dark sided. So like you know, you just you should have known who you were discussing this movie. We should have done truth beverly because it would have been a much better take.

01:26:29
Speaker 2: We would have had a had it little do.

01:26:30
Speaker 3: You know that? I am mothers.

01:26:33
Speaker 5: Spira, You are the hollowest comfortable.

01:26:41
Speaker 3: Thank you finally somewhere welcome. I admitted it.

01:26:45
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think that's like, especially with scenes about sex and purity, there's like a bajillion ways to look at it, some of which I think are really horny and cool, and then it's like others are not, and and that's part of why it's a movie and you can see it however you want.

01:27:01
Speaker 5: But it's on the costumes help, Like I I mean, I think they're like show Girls level, you know what I mean, Like I feel like too, if you're like sexy and like an interesting enough costume.

01:27:13
Speaker 3: This is just me.

01:27:14
Speaker 5: I just feel like you like transcend gate like somehow you just like you go outside of like the like normal realm of just kind of like sex objectness.

01:27:24
Speaker 4: And even the middle aged woman as a middle aged women were really sexy too in this movie, in a completely unusual take on you know, no plastic surgery, no like I'm trying to look young but I'm actually sixty years old. Like they were all kind of sexy and this really fun different I don't know European people get to do that or something way that I was personally very impressed by and got some maybe style tips like again for the age, super cool and you know, I don't know, I thought they were.

01:27:59
Speaker 2: It's all about the middle part, baby middle part, Yeah, I mean it's because I read I tried to read a fair like swath of criticism and praise of this movie, and I read some writers who came down firmly that the way that Susie's sexual awakening is framed kind of plays into tropes of how women's sexuality is seen as dangerous and devious, and how like women's confidence is seen as like inherently bad. If you view the ending as Susie being inherently bad, but you can also see it in a way that's like really fucking cool, and a way that the fact that, like the way that sex is or even just like horniness in general in this movie is shown is very like individual, like no one is hooking up at all, like the way that people view sex like they're fucking themselves and they're fucking the ground. It's like women figuring out sex in a very individual way, which you don't really see a lot, and like I kind of I don't know, it's kind of fun to see a gorgeous woman fuck the ground. I liked that part, but then I read criticism of it, and I was like, was I wrong for liking the part where Dakota Johnson fucked the ground and I was like, no, I'm not No, two things can be true.

01:29:25
Speaker 4: We're all I didn't read any criticism of the movie, but I will say no.

01:29:29
Speaker 2: I will say no. I have a quote here. I wanted to share it because I was looking for sort of like if there was any sort of thesis statement that Luca Guagnino had made about this movie, about what we were talking about specifically, And there was an interview he did when the movie around, when the movie came out on movie that sort of addresses this, and it also addresses his hyspiia in relation to Argento's suspiria. So this for the room. He says this in twenty eighteen quote. The focus of Dario's movie was the idea of older women recruiting younger women. The relationship between the girls and the matrons of My Dance Academy is quite different, as they are terrible mothers aside from casting their magic spells ideal in the concept of the uncompromising force of motherhood, a mother is supposed to be caring, nurturing, unbiased, and devoted. But what if that is all our own prejudgment? Even if you are the most radical person you think of motherhood adhering to accepted norms, but real danger lies in that presumption, as motherhood comes from deep conflict, the banality of postpartum depression, the refusal to bond with the child, and the complexity of the relationship between mother and daughter that can often turn into a competition. If you make a movie about witches, basically a group of women bound to a pact of solidarity and sorority with power within themselves, you have to be open to the possibility that they aren't just simple evil care characters. They are very complex ones and it's not all about nature and nurture unquote. So that's what I've got with Luca and the girlies.

01:31:12
Speaker 5: I wish I hadn't heard that.

01:31:15
Speaker 4: Also, Yeah, that's I really usually read absolutely nothing about movies, and I don't like to read what people say about it. But yeah, no, that's not less interesting than my thoughts on it, just you know, because I don't think at least I was an understanding like that any kind of like mothers have to be one way or another, Like there's a lot of ways to be a mother, and I don't you know, So I don't know.

01:31:40
Speaker 2: I apologize for sharing that quote, but I did it on purpose, because I just feel like I don't know, Like I'm not trying to imply that it is impossible for a man to make a feminist movie. We have found on this show that that is absolutely not true. However, it is statistically unlikely, and sometimes if they do it, it is sometimes by accident, or maybe it is like the way that the movie is received in the general sense, or received by women and feminists is not necessarily the way, Like it's sort of a mistake and you kind of stumbled into this, which is like still net good for the world if there is a feminist movie out there, even if you didn't mean to. But I just do I think that I'm trying to think of I know that there's at least one other example of a movie we've covered on the show that it's like a movie about women that is two times over been adapted by only men, and I feel like that more often than not results in kind of what we've been bumping up against this whole episode, like for better or worse, like a lot of dissonance and like not a lot of clarity, which can be fun because it means it's sort of like a fun house whatever it's Olga's death Room. It's a fucking fun house mirror full of ways to view what you think is being told based on who you are and how you feel about it. But it just feels like I don't know this movie for all the parts that I liked and all the parts I did, and it just felt a little ultimately kind of muddled and unclear. And I cannot definitively say it's because it's a story, like it's a story about a coven of women that is only that has been told conceived of, and I did even deeper research all of the texts that are cited as being influential on like psychology also men. It's just like in the way that we I think, oh, I'm thinking about Carrie, about how Carrie's written by Stephen King and adapted by Di Palma and other men, where there's a lot to love about that movie, and there's a lot that we loved about that movie, but there's a lot of dissonance because it's sort of men guessing around women's experiences in a way that when it hits, it's great, and when it doesn't, it's completely baffling because you're like, what are they trying to say. And that's I think kind of ultimately where I come down in this movie. Yeah, there's like it really is.

01:34:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, this isn't like the super insightful movie about mothers or women. I would definitely not, like, you know, for me, that maybe be like terms of endearment James Brooks, Like, you know, that's like a great Mother Daughter by a Man movie.

01:34:24
Speaker 2: Okay, I haven't seen that movie in forever.

01:34:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a really it's one of my favorite movies. I also watch a lot of stuff about mothers and daughters and it's like a whole you know again, I like the Gilmore Girls will have too, But I don't think this is that, And I wouldn't want to hear whatever the director's name is thoughts about motherhood. But I you know, I personally am often more interested in, like, you know, the bad mother's story than the super wonderful, redeeming isn't she just the greatest mother ever?

01:34:55
Speaker 2: Story?

01:34:56
Speaker 4: Yea, even something like Everything Everywhere, which is a mother daughter's story very little sacraine for somebody like me, but like so just for my own personal taste, like I prefer like a big you know, swing at just an insane rabbit hole of motherhood. Then, like, you know, let's just really try to as a man, get into that mother daughter bond. I'm gonna I'm gonna crack the code on that one. You know, I don't know, just stay out of it. But if you if you're gonna get into it, like I'd rather see this, I guess.

01:35:29
Speaker 5: I mean, everybody comes out unscathed, right, you know motherhood Nobody you know, like, yeah, he got that part.

01:35:38
Speaker 2: We all have baby hands on us the end of the day.

01:35:42
Speaker 4: You don't know what's underneath this moomo who I'm wearing. You have no idea what's underneath?

01:35:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't want to, I guess. Like for me, it's I think there is room to examine stories about mothers and their children, and specifically mothers and daughters and every way that dynamic could possibly go Like that is, those are relationship dynamics worth exploring in movies that rarely are explored because most movies, as we always joke about, but it's true, are about fathers and sons, and so yeah, it is rare to see a mother daughter relationship or just like a depiction of motherhood on screen period. Even attempted to explore right and then and then often when it is it's it is sometimes still told by men, which means it's probably not going to be very nuanced or it's going to come from a very male perspective. Is like, well, this is how I saw my sister interact with my mom, and they were always fighting because women are mad at each other all the time. So that's what my movie is about, you know, that kind of thing.

01:36:52
Speaker 2: And that even that's rare. But I'm like, oh, if my brother made a movie about how he thought my mom and my relationship was, it would just be incorrect. It would just be all made up. But that's on him, and that's a personal call out.

01:37:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, all that to say, like, there should be more stories about motherhood. There should be more stories that explore nuanced relationships between mothers and daughters or mother figures and a younger generation, you know that kind of thing.

01:37:23
Speaker 2: But I felt like, not totally virtuous perfect moms the way that we see that mothers. Maybe watcheth Asia.

01:37:34
Speaker 4: Better things. Pamela Adlon show is one of my other personal favorite mother daughter, her mother, you know, like a three generation mother story. This one had, I guess other than the creepy, super malty witch woman was maybe their grandmother. I don't know. Anyway, I do like a sort of multi generational mother story.

01:37:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, another one we I'm trying. I mean, like Gilmore Girls. Another really fun one we just covered recently, Miss June teenth. That's a great mother daughter story. Like there's so many good ones, and you know, I think sometimes even though this movie was, you know, technically a flop, men work forever. They it's very hard for them to fail. And so even though this was technically a fail, like a financial failure for this director, he's fine. He has three production He's fine. I haven't seen this is unrelated. I haven't seen his next movie, Bones and all. Oh I did hear it's horny and bloody. Is that true?

01:38:41
Speaker 3: That is true? Okay, would other words to describe it, mostly that I didn't like it very much, But that's.

01:38:49
Speaker 2: Just my personal opinion either way. I mean, it's I I like stories about motherhood, and there's I feel like it is not a hot take to say that the best ones and to be written by mother's I think that's fair to say. So brave of you, we have evidence in this very zoom call that that's the case.

01:39:19
Speaker 3: Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss.

01:39:24
Speaker 2: No, that's it for me.

01:39:25
Speaker 5: I would just say that, like, I love the extremity you know of this movie, and I love how like like the depths of how horrible a lot of the mother figures get to be are just two things, two plugs. Since we talked about a lot of antis, I want to make sure I represent that.

01:39:53
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, I just want to touch on that this is a very white cast. Th There are a few members of the staff and dancers who are women of color, but they rarely get lines of dialogue, they get little to no characterization. All of the important characters to the narrative are white, and it just feels especially pointed that the cast does include some women of color, but they are really only there to be in the background. Yeah, and not at all in the foreground.

01:40:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. Only the white characters get any manner of character arc in this movie.

01:40:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:40:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've never seen any other films by this director. They're Italian, but I don't know what their deal is on that topic. Is one off of that or yeah, you know they're cast in their movie.

01:40:49
Speaker 5: I don't know.

01:40:50
Speaker 2: I honestly don't either. I still have controversially not seen call Me by your Name, So I don't know. I did not see Bones and All. But yeah, I also found it frustrating that it's like if the director clearly wanted to have a diverse cast but didn't have an interest in any character outside of the white actors. So that feels double bad to me.

01:41:16
Speaker 3: I will say, Bones and All the Crown the main character is a woman of color, so he course corrected in that movie.

01:41:23
Speaker 2: Yay, Luca.

01:41:25
Speaker 4: I think they probably got the money for this for Tilda Swinton and Dakota Yeah being in it. I assume that's how this thing was funded. Yeah, and then moved out from there. But yeah, I doubt this was an easy funder. Whoever paid for this? I whatever? Yeah, yeah.

01:41:43
Speaker 3: Can you imagine like finance bros who are like, yeah, i'll help fund your movie. Wait it's about a group.

01:41:50
Speaker 2: Of women, or even we're gonna have Tilda Swinton play the six Flags guy, we need twenty million dollars.

01:42:01
Speaker 5: All they would have had to do is show a clip of the floor, fucking like, honestly, now I think.

01:42:09
Speaker 2: You think that I don't.

01:42:11
Speaker 4: They didn't even show anyone breasts. That was the major people, right, Like, I don't know.

01:42:17
Speaker 3: An outline of Dakota.

01:42:20
Speaker 2: It's until the end in the freaky blood covered security footage that you see pretty much everyone that you see me a gothnake, you see. But I mean whatever, Now it sounds creepy and like, I'm keeping counts, so I'm removing myself from this. I've seen him.

01:42:36
Speaker 5: Throw money, you know.

01:42:37
Speaker 2: Last Yeah, I was keeping account of how many nips I saw and that's feminist, just kidding.

01:42:45
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of nips, though, first will before our nipple scale, we will pass once again remind you that the movie definitely passes the Bechdel test.

01:42:55
Speaker 2: Almost over and over. Yeah, yes, yes, except for Flags guy or exchanges about the six Flags guy, that's pretty much.

01:43:04
Speaker 3: It, which again played by a woman. And we talked about gender swapped casting recently on the Hairspray episode because John Traval took place a woman and how it's very rare for a woman to play a male character, and this movie is actually one of the few examples I can think of where that happens. And I think till Swinton does a great job in that performance and in every performance in this movie, and just in general, in every movie she's in. But she does such a convincing job that there were members of the cast of this movie who didn't know that that was Tilda Swinton. So should that be allowed?

01:43:46
Speaker 2: Like should that be allowed?

01:43:48
Speaker 3: That does seem to see what do you mean?

01:43:51
Speaker 4: Like in like a brad grandpat kind of way, like you know, like what do you mean?

01:43:57
Speaker 5: I like, I just wonder if I'm like at work doing my job, not consenting, you know, to like not know who people really are, that's fair.

01:44:09
Speaker 3: I don't know.

01:44:10
Speaker 5: I don't know.

01:44:11
Speaker 4: Oh so if you're like, oh my god, till such a bitch and then you like you tell the old guy, You're like.

01:44:17
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I'm like, thank fucking god, I'm not paint in the barn until the Swinton today.

01:44:24
Speaker 2: And then you're like, oh no, I'm fired. It could happen. She's a chameleon to everyone else's professional detriment. I don't know. Yeah, that's the only thing, because yeah, that's the only thing I specifically remember about this movie's like press run was that at some point it was revealed that till the Swinton was the six Flags guy, and once it was in like the New York Times, like till the Swinton announces she's the six Flags guy, and once you know.

01:44:54
Speaker 3: You don't see the resemblance the sixth Fox guy doesn't have hair.

01:45:01
Speaker 2: Once you see, once you know that that character is played by Tildeswinton, it is very clear in like the voice mostly but I just thought that was funny that that. I don't have an opinion on it, but that's like the thing I most clearly remember. I don't remember it being like it's a reinterpretation of this beloved slasher film. It was like, did you know that till this Winton put on a lot of makeup every day, just like when Jim Carrey was The Grinch? And I didn't know that, and then I proceeded to not see it in theaters? So what does that say about me? Anyway?

01:45:38
Speaker 3: So onto our nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. Again, I am still not quite sure how I feel about the movie. I think things are presented that allow for a read of like, this is a movie about almost entirely women who are powerful and who are expressing themselves creatively, and the dynamics between and among them are interesting, you could argue, And there are strong themes of motherhood and of female creativity and other things that we tend to talk about. So on the surface, I think it's like pretty cool a lot of the things that this movie is doing, but I can't shake the feeling that it I think if this a similar premise was handed over to a writer and director who was a woman and who had a much closer relationship with motherhood, or being a daughter who had a mother, who has a mother, of being a woman who expresses creativity, like and just like knowing how groups of women as witches are so often represented in film, and maybe trying to subvert some of those tropes and subverting the tropes of an older woman being grotesque and wanting to steal the body of a younger woman, you know, things like that.

01:47:24
Speaker 2: But I do.

01:47:25
Speaker 5: I'm old, and I want to steal.

01:47:27
Speaker 4: Till you get there, wait till you get there. I'm just saying, gimme, gim me, gim me, gimme.

01:47:34
Speaker 3: But but here's what I'm gonna I'm just gonna suck the blood of young men. And that's how I'll stay youthful.

01:47:44
Speaker 4: They're not as nearly as beautiful. I'm sorry one woman's opinion. I wouldn't cross the street to.

01:47:58
Speaker 5: No.

01:47:58
Speaker 3: I I don't know. I think this movie there's interesting things. I think visually it's cool and beautiful. I just still don't know quite what I'm supposed to take away as far as like the filmmaker's intentions. I think there's some muddled stuff there that to me appear to just be relying on tropes of well, powerful women who are near each other, Well, they are witches and they're gonna kill you. But also it could just be an examination of power regardless of gender, of the gender of the person who is wielding that power, like that power needs to be kept in check, and you know, just because a woman has power doesn't mean that she should abuse it or something. I don't know. There are a lot of different ways to read the story of this movie, But I don't know. I just I'm so tired of like women are witches and evil stories. So I think I'll give the movie, like, I don't know, two two and a half nipples, and I will give one to Dakota. What is it not Fanning Johnson Coda Johnson, I will give one to alec Weck, who plays the one of the matrons. She is I think the only black woman in the movie who has lines, and she only has like two of them, And I'll give my I'll give my half nipple to friend of the cast Jessica Harper.

01:49:38
Speaker 2: Kay. Yeah, I'm gonna go down the middle on this movie as well. I do think I am like, maybe this opinion I will will be changed, as with most opinions that we've had at various points on this show over time, but this does feel very much to me, even though it was in reduction and in development for so long, the way that it came out feels very of a very specific cultural moment where I think you get a lot of male o tours attempts at having women meaningfully included in their movies, and I think that this very much depends from director to director level of success, level of possibly pandering or guessing their way around an experience that they don't share. It's just like, it just feels very men are making movies post me too, and look at this one a lot of like we've been talking about for the past two hours, not all of it works for me. I think that, yeah, there is a lot of saying the right thing, but the theme kind of undermining the right thing quote unquote that was said. And then there is a lot of like I think, interesting ideas in this movie. I like the historical context it puts everyone into building out the worlds of the women that exist within this coven. I like the fact that, like I like the just general idea because I feel like, in this same span of time and I think this is continuing now, there is this sort of very naive assumption that if if women ruled the world, everything would be perfect, and you're like, well, that excludes literally every other possible element of being a person in a way that is ultimately I think reductive to women to think that women would completely get it right when there's still very much human and there's all of these other elements that factor into being a person. So I like that the women in this story are imperfect in different ways, but overall, especially after reading how the director was kind of gaming it out, I think a lot of it doesn't work and it's not something I will revisit, but you know it I would love to see as much Like I like that Luca Guadnino did this but I would love to see more Coven stories that are written by women. If they're going to majority include women, it still feels like that isn't happening on the level it should be. And in conclusion, I think that's why people should watch teenage Euthanasia. And so I'm going to give this two and a half nipples. I'm going to give one to Dakota Johnson's architectural digest house video, which you can watch on YouTube. It is so funny. She's lying out her ass the whole time. She's some of the only good nepotism available. As far as I know, I love her. I'm going to give one to me a goth, and I will give the remaining half nipple to the Six Flags guy, the actual one.

01:52:54
Speaker 3: Oh sure do do do do?

01:52:56
Speaker 2: Do?

01:52:56
Speaker 3: Do?

01:52:56
Speaker 5: Do? Do?

01:52:57
Speaker 2: Yeah? Exactly and so on.

01:52:59
Speaker 4: Well, I'm not going to defend this this movie to the end of the earth. But I enjoyed watching it, and I enjoyed watching it the first time, and this time I like things that are kind of a mess that you don't know what to make. It's again a personal preference. I don't like a I don't like a straight line. I don't like a I like a pretzel, and I don't like when people tell me what to think, because then I immediately stopped thinking it. So for those people, you might like this, and then I thought it was again I'm all into anything about women creativity. So I don't know. I'm gonna give it a three nipple. I'm not going more than that, but I'm gonna go a little higher, and I'm going to give one to me a goth, and one to the production designer and the wardrobe hair team because it was really fun. Editors were good too. It was a well made movie.

01:53:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, technically, no denying that.

01:53:55
Speaker 5: Hell yeah, can I can I give hollow counts instead of nipples? Yeah, okay. If it didn't have Tilda eating chicken wings, I I think then I would give it a three. But it does have have that, And it was really hard to watch all of the bone breaky thing, you know, like it's very very difficult, you know, to to make me look away. And I thought that, yeah, a lot of like the bone breaky horror.

01:54:33
Speaker 4: Was good, and bone breaky stuff was about the chicken wings.

01:54:41
Speaker 2: The most painful views.

01:54:43
Speaker 5: I mean, if we could have extended that sequence, yeah, then it could have been five hollow cunts. I'm gonna I'm going to go three point five hollow cunts.

01:54:53
Speaker 4: I'm going to do that.

01:54:55
Speaker 5: I like, it's just a weird one, you know, it's a it's a problematic weird one.

01:55:00
Speaker 2: And I liked the ride. And I'll give all.

01:55:04
Speaker 5: Of the hollow cunts to the super witch Mother creature. She needs all the teats and the cunts that she can find, you know.

01:55:15
Speaker 2: Hell yea.

01:55:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's collecting them for an undisclosed.

01:55:18
Speaker 2: Later project, so that she's had in development for the amount of time this movie was in development exactly.

01:55:25
Speaker 3: Well, thank you both so much for joining us for this discussion.

01:55:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was funny.

01:55:31
Speaker 2: Time tell us about teenage Euthanasia and where you can check it out.

01:55:36
Speaker 5: Well, you can check it out on Adult Swim. New episodes drop on Wednesday nights at midnight, and then they're available the next day on Max. You can slide right into season two. You don't need to watch season one first. You can you can kind of like dip, you know, to your hollow count in the water with season two, and then you know, if you like how it feels, you can watch season one. But they are Season one is up in its entirety on Max to stream and available and it is about, yeah, we have we have definitely the dysfunctional matriarchy family funeral home that is run by a woman. It's three generations of you know, female characters passing their trauma down to the other in kind of like a parallel universe post apocalyptic Florida.

01:56:37
Speaker 4: And if you like hollow cunts, you might be disappointed because the main character's vagina is filled with crotch, beetles, magical ones. She's a zombie, reanimated corpse and who has death powers. And also it's animated. We don't have Suspiria level budgets here, so this is an animated program.

01:56:58
Speaker 3: Yes, no, still amazing it is.

01:57:01
Speaker 2: It is if you like the opposite of a hollowed out cunt and just one that is so full, just an over a cornucopia of various with insight, is a teeming cunt, well then do we have the show for you. I feel like I should also full disclosure, I'm a writer on the show and I love it very much and I think you should watch it because it rocks and it's teeming with you know, vaginas full of beetles, and.

01:57:35
Speaker 5: You, I've got to say, have just brought the grossness and the body hord to a level that I think Alison and I could have only dreamed of in our conception of teenage usanasia. So we are just so in our gratitude to you for that.

01:57:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, a tip of the cunt to you, Jamie. It's just an absolute pleasure.

01:57:57
Speaker 2: Oh my cunt runneth over, Thank you so much. No, it's it's the absolute best. I love shoving new disgusting insects into our characters.

01:58:08
Speaker 4: It's the greatest.

01:58:10
Speaker 2: And you can find the Betel Cast in all their regular places. You can find us on Instagram and whatever they're calling it now on at Bechtel Cast. You can follow our Patreon ak Matreon Wow, pretty scary German dance study of us. For five dollars a month, you get two bonus episodes a month. Imagine that.

01:58:34
Speaker 3: Imagine that. You can also grab our merch at teapublic dot com slash the Bechtel Cast for all of your merchandising needs. And just a little reminder that all of our merch is designed by a one Jamie Loftus, so even more reason to get it.

01:58:52
Speaker 2: Cunt run of Over, for merch with them.

01:58:57
Speaker 3: Many talents you go, okay, let's all right, go with into the basement and dance around shed top rotting hearts.

01:59:09
Speaker 2: Bye bye