Poor Things with Amanda Montell

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Attention Bechdel Cast listeners.

00:00:03
Speaker 2: We're going on tour, baby, and it's not just any tour. It's the Shrek Tannic Tour. That's right. Shrek and or Titanic are the movies recovering on this tour at the demand of us, and you question mark, see you there, We'll figure it out.

00:00:21
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:00:22
Speaker 1: Our first leg of the tour is in London on May twenty second. There are two shows that night, a six point thirty show on Shrek and a nine o'clock show on Titanic.

00:00:34
Speaker 2: Next, on May twenty fourth, we are going to be in Oxford as a part of the Saint Audio Podcast Festival.

00:00:42
Speaker 1: Then we're scooting up to Edinburgh. On May twenty sixth we are covering Shrek.

00:00:47
Speaker 2: Then on May twenty eighth we are in Manchester once again covering Titanic.

00:00:53
Speaker 1: And finally a show that we recently added in Dublin on May twenty ninth that is also a Titanic show.

00:01:02
Speaker 2: We're so excited to meet everybody. We chose two of our favorite movies so that we can celebrate the community and just have a good time. So please come out. You can get all of the tickets over at our link Tree, which is in the description link Tree slash Bechdel Cast, and we hope to see you there. We have such ridiculous outfits, oh my gosh, and exclusive merch and everything else.

00:01:27
Speaker 1: So all right, we will see you there.

00:01:29
Speaker 2: See you there.

00:01:30
Speaker 4: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zeph and Vast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

00:01:45
Speaker 1: Gool Googga, I'm horny, Hi, Caitlin, Daddy, God, are you there. It's me Bella Baxter.

00:01:57
Speaker 2: Yes, it's me. God. Let me rationalize why I'm going to be treating you this way for the whole movie.

00:02:03
Speaker 3: Oh my god. When you entered with google Gaga, I thought, since we had just done a sink that required us to count to five, I thought you'd just like run out of numbers, that you know, and started entering sounds.

00:02:17
Speaker 1: Oh no, that was me starting the podcast.

00:02:20
Speaker 3: Cool.

00:02:20
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you said that, because this is actually how we start every episode. We always start with a goog go gaga. Oh, just to make everyone feel safe, I mean Google Gaga is kind of one of the great equalizers we still have. We've all been there.

00:02:33
Speaker 3: True, that is so true. We all are just human beings during the babbling stage.

00:02:40
Speaker 2: It's true. I mean, what is a podcast if not a whole bunch of Google Gaga. We are just in.

00:02:46
Speaker 3: A prolonged babbling stage.

00:02:52
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bexel Cast. My name's Jamie Loftus.

00:02:55
Speaker 1: My name is Caitlin Droonte. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional FELM this lens, using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. I'm like sort of over explaining what the Bechdel test is. I feel like people can just look it up. I'm just tired.

00:03:10
Speaker 2: Wow, Caitlyn is taking no prisoners today.

00:03:13
Speaker 1: Google Goga.

00:03:14
Speaker 2: I'm tired Google Gaga. Look it up, read a book. I guess this is an aggressive way to start the show. There are like three hundred episodes, so if you don't know, you can listen to the beginning of a different episode. We're really eager to get today's episode started, is the thing. Yeah, and also we talk about the Bechdel test basically not at all, sup.

00:03:35
Speaker 1: Right, And there's so much else to talk about with this movie, which is poor things. Yes, that we just have to save all the time we can.

00:03:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, cut the foreplay right.

00:03:46
Speaker 2: The only quick disclaimer we want to give it the top is that if you're listening to this, I feel like when we cover a movie shortly after it comes out, it always ages a little weird because it just came out. So if you're listening to this, it just came out recording it the day after Emma Stone won the Best Actress Oscar. Chances are if you listen to this episode a year from now, I at least will probably feel different about this movie. Name yeah, probably so Yeah. If you go back and listen to us talk about a movie shortly after it comes out, usually our feelings change. But we've decided today and two hours or less, we are going to be the three people to crack this movie. God damn it.

00:04:29
Speaker 3: You know, our takes will age. I'm not gonna say like a fine wine, and I'm not gonna say like milk. I'm gonna say like a cheese cause, you know, like a fresh guda. It tastes different than like a twenty four month age guda. I don't know how long you should age Gouda.

00:04:47
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, a lot of knowledge.

00:04:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, so much fucking cheese knowledge. I do love Dary, despite what my tummy tells me. But I do think that, like you know, this is just like the fresh gooda version of an opinion about poor things.

00:05:03
Speaker 2: That's all I think. That's a beautiful way to put it. Yes, this is the Poor Things episode. Literally hundreds of you have asked for this episode. Okay, here it is. Hope you're happy.

00:05:15
Speaker 3: You're really dumbing your listeners today.

00:05:18
Speaker 2: I know, I don't know. I think it's when we record more than one episode in a day, the second episode gets like needlessly agro But you can say that of this movie as well. Okay, we're covering poor Things. It just came out and we have an incredible guest to figure it out with us.

00:05:36
Speaker 1: Yes we do. She is the author of Cultish and the forthcoming book The Age of Magical Overthinking. She's the host of the podcast sounds like a cult It's Amanda Montelho.

00:05:48
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome. Before we get into it, tell us a little bit about the new book.

00:05:55
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, that's so nice of you to ask. Okay, it's called The Age of Magical Overthinking Notes on modern irrationality, and it's about cognitive biases in the information age modern day do Lulu. So every chapter of the book is dedicated to a different cognitive bias. Confirmation bias, sunk cost fallacy. These are some of the most famous, but there are some other really interesting ones called like the Ikea effect and the Halo effect. And I use each of these as a lens to explore some mysterious irrationality plaguing the zeitgeist and my own life, from celebrity warship to weaponized nostalgia to Instagram manifestation Gurus, So check it out.

00:06:35
Speaker 2: Amazing. That is so exciting. Huge fans of your work Here on the pod, we simply are so excited that you're doing the show.

00:06:44
Speaker 3: H mutual fandom all around, Yippie Google, Gotga Goo Goga.

00:06:51
Speaker 2: We're just like excited little babies. That's my favorite part. I started going to yoga classes in the last year.

00:06:57
Speaker 1: Whoe brag.

00:06:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, not to flag, but almost every morning I like go and then at the end of class you get to be a little.

00:07:05
Speaker 3: Baby, happy baby. I know that one.

00:07:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just get to roll around on your back and goo goo gaga and some beautiful person teaching the class comes and like moves your foot a little bit and it's like a little horny, but you're like, whatever, I'm a baby. That's my poor things. Is beautiful yoga teacher adjusting my foot while I'm a little baby. Well, let's get into it, folks.

00:07:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, Amanda, what is your really? I mean, the movie just came out. Did you see in theaters? Preliminary thoughts?

00:07:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I saw it under really iconic circumstances. I was living in the woods and I watched it in like the one room movie theater that they have in this tiny Woodland town. They pour like the most generous movie pores of wine I've ever seen in my life at this tiny Woodland movie amazing. They were just like, you know what, We're gonna even give you a little extra because this film is wacky. Girlfriend.

00:08:07
Speaker 1: Well, I mean poor things, generous, poor.

00:08:10
Speaker 2: Heavy, poor thing.

00:08:11
Speaker 3: Hello, yeah, they poor things, they did, they poor things.

00:08:16
Speaker 2: I love that system of like we'll give you as much wine as the movie requires.

00:08:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. It was very that, which I appreciated so much. And they also like provide blankets at that movie theater so in case you got a little chilli, you can cozy on up. So I was cozy as hell watching this film and buzzed. And I went in with low expectations just because like your Ghosts is a masturbatory fellow and like I don't love masterbatory fellows h. So I was going in with low expectations but high hopes a good attitude. I also, like have a slight bias against Emma Stone as an ongenu, which we can get into, like I don't love her in an aure new role. I like her as a character actor, and this was kind of both. So I loved it. I mean, we'll just I mean, this is the whole point of this podcast, in this episode is to talk about it and get into it. But I felt like I went in with the right attitude to enjoy the film, and indeed I did.

00:09:21
Speaker 1: Jamie, how about you.

00:09:22
Speaker 2: I have seen this movie three times now. I saw it right when it came out. I saw it in theaters, and I don't know, I think that in part like this was a movie where I saw it, I think the week after it came out, and almost certainly the discourse that I was avoiding still ended up coloring my first viewing of the movie because I like your goes. I haven't seen all of his work, but he has hit or miss for me, and there's certain I think, just in general, and we've talked about this on the show for years at this point, there are a lot of movies that I think are like technically good, but it's always going to be hard for me to be sold on work from a man adapted from another man's work about a woman discovering and being liberated by her body, Like it always just feels, even when it's really well done, it's like hard to get me in the door for that. That was like a big conversation we had around Carrie. A movie I quite like, but it's like a man adapted by a man viewed by a man, like you know, yeah, it doesn't mean you can't get something good out of it, but like I always come in a little bit leery on it. And so the first time I saw it, I left really conflicted, like conflicted leaning on not enjoying it. And then the second time I watched it, I had done some research on the author, I learned a little bit more about the adaptation, and the second and third viewings I'm liking it more and more each time, which turns out I have a very complicated relationship with this movie. I think that there's a lot that it's doing that's really interesting, not all of it hits for me, And then there's like Jerrod Carmichael's performers, there's just like, I don't know, I don't know. I'm hoping to figure out how I feel about this movie today. I have thousands of worts of notes, and I feel no. I know that when I first saw it, I didn't like it, but I felt that way about almost every Yorgo slanthemost movie that I end up coming around on, except for the Favorite, which I just liked every single time. Yeah.

00:11:23
Speaker 3: Actually, your story of your journey reminds me of the most important piece of backstory that I failed to mention, which is that I wasn't even gonna see the movie because I felt already like it was so fucking proud of itself, which irked me right. But then several people who I know to varying degrees of well but since computes independently texted me being like, Amanda, you must see it because of the clothes, Oh, I mean yeah, yeah, and everybody should see it because of the clothes. But I mean it was like a perfect manifestation of what I aspire to dress. Like I was shook by it, And people who don't even know me very well, we're texting me like, Amanda, this movie's clothes, it's you, it's you, especially because like I'm recently engaged. I did the proposing, which I always feel the need to Ooh, I love that disclaim and I want to wear like a super colorful surrealist look on.

00:12:30
Speaker 2: My Gonnabella Baxter dress.

00:12:33
Speaker 3: Like yeah, so people were like, watch the movie for your bridal inspo basically, and not her bridle gown. The rest of it, like the mini buttery yellow shorts and the puffy.

00:12:46
Speaker 2: Blue the blue dress nonsense, Yeah, unbelievable. I mean, yeah, the technical elements of this movie I really love. Like the movie is beautiful. Yorgos Anthemus knows how to make a gorgeous movie. I don't know. I feel bad now being like I didn't come in on this movie side because I just get so I was talking about it with my boyfriend afterwards, like I just get so irked at going into a movie and having mostly male critics say like this is the feminist movie of the year, and it's like, well, how would you know that? And then's made by like seven hundred men. I think what I've come around on and this is something that I feel like has not been super discussed, I guess with this and with Barbie, because also this movie was existing in conversation with Barbie, which I'm like, just let them be separate movies. But a lot of the things I had concerns about with this movie I was put more at ease with upon learning that Emma Stone was an executive producer on the movie, and so she was very much in control of every high level decision, and that made me feel better about a lot of stuff that seemed to be an ongoing discourse, which we'll get around to anyways. I think I like it. I don't know, Caitlin, what's your history of this.

00:14:05
Speaker 1: I also saw it when it came out in theaters and maybe like a week after it opened, and then watched it twice. To prefer this, I've also seen it three times. I would say I think I like it less and less every time I see it.

00:14:18
Speaker 2: Wow, we all have different trajectories.

00:14:22
Speaker 1: The things I like about it, I maintain liking about it. For example, a lot of Bella's dialogue and the way she speaks, and just kind of her general character arc I enjoy. For the most part, there are certain scenes that I think are really funny, Just like the shot where it's a close up of Bella Baxter, a closeup of Max mccandle's and then a close up of a goat is the funniest thing I've seen in a movie in a while. I think the movie is like very well cast and well acted, Like, oh my gosh, Mark Ruffalo's performance, Hello, I loved it. He's gifted around. Obviously his character is despicable, but everyone's doing a great job acting. The production design is interesting, the fish eye lenses, sure, But generally I hate Yorgoslanthemos. I don't like these movies.

00:15:17
Speaker 3: He's so polarizing.

00:15:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh, Dog Tooth and The Lobster and a handful of others. Generally I don't mind the Favorite, but like a lot of his earlier work really upsets me. And he has this fixation on showing cruelty to animals and he does it and every single one of his movies.

00:15:37
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean that is The Lobster that's the whole movie of the Lobster. And then it also just appears in all of his other movies, either as like a joke or as just something that's there for no reason.

00:15:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I can't stand it and it makes me hate.

00:15:52
Speaker 3: It is very contrarian because I don't know if anyone else received this as a literal piece of like creative advice. But I remember a college writing instructor sort of problematically announcing to the class that a way to make a character and you're writing more likable was to have a scene where they're nice to an animal.

00:16:13
Speaker 2: Oh my god.

00:16:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the whole premise of the screenwriting books save the Cat.

00:16:17
Speaker 3: Oh okay, got it all right, So that's like conventional wisdom. But I feel like your ghost this is a part of what makes him frustrating and like masturbatory and all of these things that irk us is that he's performing so many stunts, and he's doing it with like extreme pride in himself. Right, And I think the animal cruelty as like a bit. It's very much like a little kid who might grow up to be a sociopath setting caterpillars on fire, but like make it.

00:16:47
Speaker 2: She sid from toy Story Coded Behavior.

00:16:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.

00:16:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, fortunately the animals are CGI And I do think that the Freaky like at least like a narrative place of why he's doing it in this movie, because yeah, like when it's for no reason, it feels kind of like self satisfied and edge Lordy, which I think edge Lordy, Yes, a lot of his movies can feel anyways, like I don't know, I almost like hesitate to say that because I just know that that causes an avalanche of similar people to be like no, but like it's just how I feel. I don't know. Yeah, there's Caitlyn. I feel like we've talked about this before, but it's now more common for like male O two is to center women in their work. I think this has been an increasing trend of the last ten years. But there's like when it's done in a certain way, it feels very like you're saying me like very self satisfied and very like well I get it, ladies, and it's like.

00:17:53
Speaker 1: Self congratulatory, and it's just like let women make movies, please and thank you.

00:17:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I am put a little idiots that Emma Stone had a huge creative voice in this.

00:18:05
Speaker 3: You're right, that makes a difference. You know, if I could make a prediction, I'd say that if I were to see this movie thrice the way that you each have, and forgive me for my underachievement, but I think I would probably like it less. Well, I would like it less in some ways and more in some ways. I think I would like it more because like again, I just want to keep seeing that fashion and like force feeding it to myself, like fucking fashion foie gras. But I think I would like it less because I would start to like actually scrutinize it. Whereas when I saw it, the element of surprise was really a factor for me because I hadn't read much about it. I was just like ugh, based on vibes, I don't want to go, and so there was so much novelty, there was so much surprise. Again, I was tipsy, I was letting it wash over me. I was giggling. I mean, there are some like really funny frames as you were mentioning, you know, I like laughed so hard at certain points, like there's this one just like very quick cut of Bella going from like partying to like pasted out drunk in a corner. That's just like the timing of it was so funny and like those sort of like silly self unseerious moments just like cued my little laughing machine and I was just like Tee all the way through. But I think if that element of surprise and the novelty were not there anymore, I would actually start to apply my slow thinking to the film, and in those ways, I would like it less.

00:19:42
Speaker 2: That's what we're here to do. Yeah, wreck it for you.

00:19:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm starting to say that like the things I like about the movie, I think I'll like stay liking. But the things I don't like about it, the more and more I see it, the.

00:19:55
Speaker 2: More and more I'm really that excited by them. M Yeah. Learn more about the production of this movie made me feel both better and more ambivalent. But the thing that I was yelling at my boyfriend on the phone about when I was taking the bus back at like one in the morning, after saying, this damn movie, Oh god, look, I'm committed to seeing this movie for some reason. But my favorite, Your Girl's Anathemist movie is probably the most accessible of his the favorite. I really loved the favorite and it's like the movie of his centers women that tracks for me. I think the reason that may be is because it is We talked about this when we covered The Favorite. It's based on a story written by a woman, Deborah Davis, and she adapted it with Tony McNamara. This movie is based on source material by a man and adapted by just Tony McNamara, which I think was a mistake.

00:20:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, Like, when I think about the gaze of those two movies, it really manifests so clearly in the film itself, because I feel like The Favorite is a movie about women from at least somewhat of a female gaze, and this movie feels like a movie about a woman from a male gaze, with the female gaze like trying so fucking hard to bust out, you know.

00:21:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, it's weird. I'm excited to talk about it, But first we should talk about what happens in the movie.

00:21:30
Speaker 1: After this break, yes, and we're back. I'll place a content warning here at the top. Four.

00:21:46
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:21:46
Speaker 1: Everything, there's suicide, there's sexual and domestic abuse that will get brought up either in the recap and or the discussion. There's a lot of stuff going on in this movie. Okay, we are in Victorian era London. We see a woman from behind who jumps off a bridge, presumably to die by suicide. Then we meet Bella Baxter played by Emma Stone google Goga. But then I'm also like, okay, Bella, Bello.

00:22:19
Speaker 2: Bello minions exact exactly. We're back way back.

00:22:24
Speaker 1: So Bella Baxter is acting like a baby. She's speaking in gibberish, she's walking around erradically. She doesn't have motor skills. She spits out her food, she pisses herself, et cetera. Her caretaker slash father figure is doctor Godwin Baxter played by Willem Dafoe, also called God. He is a surgeon and professor at a medical school. He's like this kind of doctor Frankenstein type of doctor where he seems to have Frankenstein very animals together. There's like a dog's head on a chicken body. There's a duck head on a goat's body. Things like that. God asks one of his students, Max mccandle's played by Ramy Yusuf, to assist him with monitoring Bella's progress. God explains to Max that she had suffered a brain injury and her mental age and physical body are not synchronized, and that's why she's acting like a baby. But she's progressing very rapidly, and Max is enthusiastic about this project. He also thinks that Bella is very pretty.

00:23:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think even before Max is like I'm interested in this project, he's like, Wow, she's hot and like this is gonna go well.

00:23:44
Speaker 1: Like, and then we see her progressing where her speech and motor skills improve, but she's still acting very childlike for a while. Bella asks God who she is, where her parents are. He's like, oh, you're an orphan, and we just generally see her be inquisitive and curious about the world. She asks Max to teach her about different places on the world map. She's never been outside and she wants to go out and explore, so God reluctantly takes her to the woods, but she wants to be where the people are, and she starts acting out. She wants to go into town and stuff, and he's like, no, that's not possible, so he chloroforms her and Max is like, what the fuck is going on? And Doctor God reveals the truth that Bella had died. She was the woman we saw jumping off the bridge at the beginning, and she was also very gregnant at the time. Yes, heavy with Greg, very heavy with Greg. So God took the brain from the baby and surgically put it into Bella's head and then reanimated her, which is why she's been acting so baby like.

00:25:00
Speaker 2: Now I have a quick question, and it is disgusting. Uh huh, but they go out of their way to be like a living baby, as you're like, So he did canonically, instead of raising the baby, kill the baby to steal its brain, right, Yeah, I think so.

00:25:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, So I'm now remembering that I actually hated like the first fifteen minutes of the movie, the whole first black and white bit. I was just like, here we fucking go. And I had a negative reaction to it in part because of my own conditioning. I am the daughter of research scientists, like laboratory scientists, and I grew up with a certain amount of disdain in the household for the trope of the evil unethical scientist, because my parents felt like it soiled the already sort of fragile reputation of scientists in this culture, Like it's not cool to be a scientist. It's not cool to be smarter than everyone else else because that's suspicious, you know. So like this trope of a scientist using his powers for evil, it's just like not something that we actually see in real life. And so when I was noticing that in the beginning of the film, I was just like, this is corny, this is damaging, this is cheap, and it's in black and white. I thought there were colors in this movie.

00:26:26
Speaker 2: Wow, that is really interesting. Like that's something I'm aware of, that sort of stock character and like to I don't know, encourage like incuriosity and.

00:26:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, like being smart as evil and like knowing things that other people don't know, yeah, or don't want to know, is evil. Like I actually do bump up against that fair in large part because I was brought up to but like, yeah, I didn't like that.

00:26:50
Speaker 1: Well, I'll just point out that Bella Baxter is not unlike Adam Frankenstein of I frankens Stein fame.

00:27:00
Speaker 2: Our favorite bad movie. Yeah, it's true. Well, she can't do nun Chuck's like Adam Frankenstein, which is actually my biggest criticism of the movie. Exactly, there's no nun Chuck Sequins. Where's the war of Demon's versus Gargoyles? I was sort of waiting for that to start.

00:27:19
Speaker 1: Shame.

00:27:20
Speaker 2: I don't know. Ultimately I would would I rather watch Ey Frankenstein than Four Things? Probably not, but like I don't know. When friends are over, I'm turning on I Frankenstein every time, absolutely, and that's misogynist of me.

00:27:34
Speaker 3: Have either of you seen the film Franken Hooker?

00:27:38
Speaker 2: No, No, what's that?

00:27:39
Speaker 3: That's a really good, bad movie. That movie came out and I want to.

00:27:42
Speaker 2: Say ninety one perfect.

00:27:45
Speaker 3: And I think you both would like it. It's really it's so bad. It's good for sure, but it's about this aspiring mad scientist whose girlfriend is tragically killed in a lawnmower accident. So he goes yes, and he blows up a bunch of sex workers and uses their parts to assemble a new girlfriend. Holy shit, Okay, it's really camp. It's really wacky. It's a pleasure to watch, and it's like a tight ninety.

00:28:18
Speaker 1: Oh wow, oh love that.

00:28:20
Speaker 2: I'm looking at the just the poster. I'm like, yeah, I would watch this. I would watch.

00:28:25
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, and the Franken Hunker in the film. It has some things in common with Mella Maxter now that I think about.

00:28:31
Speaker 1: It, Okay, I'll watch it.

00:28:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bella Baxter is a part of a long legacy of Frankenstein's.

00:28:37
Speaker 3: Fucked up experiments.

00:28:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, oh this is so I'm excited to talk about the science angle of it. I haven't seen that written about it all. All right, sorry, I'm true. Continue.

00:28:46
Speaker 1: Okay, So we left off where God reveals to Max what he actually did with Bella as far as like surgically putting the baby brain into her adult body, and Bella has no idea about any of that, and when she wakes up after being chloroformed, she discovers masturbation and she starts doing it all the time. But other characters have to be like, no, in polite society, we do not do that. And then God is like, hey, Max, you should marry Bella, and He's like, yeah, great idea.

00:29:22
Speaker 2: I love my baby girlfriend Gaga, and I'm the nice guy.

00:29:28
Speaker 1: Somehow, and I'm actually nice.

00:29:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:29:30
Speaker 1: So Max asks Bella to marry him, but God has some conditions, mainly that Max and Bella live at God's house and always like be under his supervision, which would essentially make Bella a prisoner, which she already is, and then God hires a lawyer to write up a legal agreement to this effect. The lawyer is Duncan Wedderburn played by Mark Ruffalo, who immediately takes a liking to Bella and he's very horny and he wants to free Bella from this imprisonment, so he invites her to accompany him to Lisbon, and she recognizes that Duncan is pretty sleazy, but she wants to go and explore the world and explore her blossoming sexuality. God is not happy about this, nor is Max, but Bella goes on this trip nonetheless, So she and Duncan arrive in Lisbon. He introduces her to new food and sights and experiences, and they have a lot of sexy.

00:30:37
Speaker 2: She goes full hedonist in Lisbon, Yes, which is fun. I feel like there's a lot made of the emphasis on sex that this movie has. But she is truly like pleasure chasing in every conceivable way, Like she's pleasure chasing with clothes, with her body, with food, with everything, and then eventually with books.

00:30:59
Speaker 3: And thank god we're in color by now.

00:31:01
Speaker 1: Yes, we're finally in color. It's true, so you know they're traveling together, but they're soon getting on each other's nerves. Duncan is annoyed by Bella's behavior and that it doesn't line up with polite society, and he's annoyed that he can't seem to like control her. He's getting jealous. Meanwhile, Bella just wants to be able to go off and explore and have adventures, and he's like trying to prevent her from doing that. At some point in the trip, a woman comes up to Bella being like, Victoria Blessington, I haven't seen you in years, and Bella is like, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm Bella Baxter, which is gonna pay off later. Then Duncan, who is becoming more and more possessive, abducts Bella by putting her in a trunk and bringing her on a boat.

00:31:53
Speaker 2: The only thing you can say for that is he does ultimately admit that he did it, which is more than most men who kidnap women in movies.

00:31:59
Speaker 1: You do, that is true?

00:32:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, how's that for a yard stick? Do we like that yard stick? Oh?

00:32:07
Speaker 1: The bar is so low. So she is understandably upset by being abducted, but she makes the best of it, I guess, and she makes a couple of friends on the ship, Martha and Harry, which Duncan doesn't like, and he's basically like Bella, you have to marry me or I'll throw you overboard. And also Duncan doesn't like that Bella is less interested in having sex with him, and she has taken more of an interest in reading and learning about different philosophies and expanding her mind. She's uncertain how to view the world and the people in it. She's talking to Harry about it and Martha, but Harry is a cynic. He keeps saying that life and people are cruel, and Bella doesn't want to believe it. But when the ship docks in Alexandria, Harry shows her people who who are living in poverty and who are suffering and starving, and she's devastated and she feels compelled to help them, so she takes all of Duncan's winnings from him gambling at the casino and the ship, and she tries to give them to the poor, but she unknowingly gets swindled by a couple of sailors who take the money.

00:33:23
Speaker 2: Whoops, the Cynic. Okay, the Cynic is my least favorite character, and I love Girod Carmichael. Yeah, oh yeah, the Cynic cracks me up because it feels like this is like a pretty solid adaptation just from like translating from book to movie. But the Cynic feels like such a booky character that you're just like, oh my god, like, do we have to call him the Cynic? Because it just feels very no offense cal It feels very grad school to have a character name the Sinnel.

00:33:53
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, no offense taken. But thank you for mentioning. You basically mentioned my master's degree in screenwriting.

00:34:00
Speaker 2: I know you don't like to bring it out, but I like to bring out that you And maybe I'm just resentful because it's kind of beyond me what's going on with the senec Yeah.

00:34:10
Speaker 1: Sorry, you don't have a master's so you wouldn't really get it.

00:34:14
Speaker 3: I also famously do not have a master's degree, despite the number of blazers I wear.

00:34:21
Speaker 1: No But anyway, so either way, Duncan is furious that Bella took his money and now they have no money, and they wind up in Paris, and Bella tries to procure a hotel room for them, and she approaches a woman outside a hotel which turns out to be a brothel, and the woman, Madam Swiney, played by Catherine Hunter, offers Bella work.

00:34:45
Speaker 2: I didn't realize at first until my second viewing that Catherine Hunter plays the witches in the new Cohen Brothers Macbeth.

00:34:54
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't see that one.

00:34:55
Speaker 2: It's really good. Yes, it's Denzel Washington Macbeth, and she plays all three witches. And I only recognize her voice because she is like shape shifting, like no one's business in that. But would recommend she's so good it's wild.

00:35:10
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah, I like her character a lot in this way.

00:35:13
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:35:14
Speaker 1: Anyway, she offers Bella work, and so Bella has sex with a man for money, and this makes Duncan furious and he leaves to go back to London. Bella continues doing sex work. She's repulsed by most of her clients, but she also tries to make the best of that situation. She befriends another woman at the brothel, Twinette. They eventually develop a sexual slash romantic relationship.

00:35:43
Speaker 2: I think it's important representation that she starts having sex with the person who introduced her to socialism. I felt seen by that.

00:35:52
Speaker 1: I like that a lot you could resist. Also, Twinette is played by Susie Bemba. One day, Bella here yelling outside the brothel and it's Duncan, who never left, and he's there to quote unquote save her.

00:36:07
Speaker 2: He's literally a street car name desiring, which I foolishly did not pick up until my third viewing, which is brave of me to admit. But he's at the bottom going balla.

00:36:18
Speaker 1: Right because instead of saying Stella, he's saying Bella.

00:36:22
Speaker 2: Wow. So for everyone else listening with three brain cells, that was a reference.

00:36:27
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that was the movie. Poor I missed that one.

00:36:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was yeah. I'm happy to blame it on my previous movie, Porus. But in the third one, I was like, oh, okay, okay, you're got seen another movie.

00:36:41
Speaker 3: Chris has watched a movie other than his own. Whoaee.

00:36:45
Speaker 1: So Duncan like wants to save her from this life that she's living, and she's like, go home, you lose her. We also are periodically cutting back to God and Max in London and they are back on their bullshit because they have made a new baby lady and named her Felicity, played by Margaret Qualleyno.

00:37:08
Speaker 3: They're raven haired hotty.

00:37:09
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, it's true. It's true. All the greats they got the gen Z raven haired Hotti.

00:37:14
Speaker 3: Is she properly gen Z?

00:37:16
Speaker 2: I don't know. I feel like she's gen Z marketed.

00:37:18
Speaker 3: She's cuspy.

00:37:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:37:20
Speaker 1: I just found out that she's Andy McDonald's daughter because I went to go see you drive Away Dolls, and I was like, Oh.

00:37:25
Speaker 3: The fact that they masked that well enough for you to miss it reflects well on the like anti NEPO baby sort of like pr campaign.

00:37:33
Speaker 2: It is interesting that it's like NEPO baby Praxis that appears to take the last name of the less famous parent. Oh yeah, that's why I'm like, there are NEPO babies where you're like, you know what, good for Jack Quaid, although Dennis Quaid is somehow his less famous parent.

00:37:50
Speaker 3: Wait, who's his mom?

00:37:52
Speaker 2: Meg Ryan? Oh shit, but then his name would be Jack Ryan and that would suck.

00:37:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, not to get too far away from the topic at hand, but I actually was in class my freshman year of college with Jack Quaid in an essay writing class.

00:38:08
Speaker 1: I'm not God.

00:38:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we were paired once. Wow, I didn't know who the fuck he was. I had no idea. It's probably because his last name wasn't Ryan.

00:38:16
Speaker 2: Now that I'm thinking about it, Jack Ryan would actually like fly You under the Radar a little better. But either way, Yeah, if you're a Nepa, you gotta have the obvious last name.

00:38:25
Speaker 3: You have to.

00:38:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:38:28
Speaker 1: Anyway, So God and Max make Felicity, presumably because they were trying to fill some void when Bella left. Also, we learn that God is dying and Bella receives a letter about this, so she returns to London, and Bella has noticed a C section scar, and so she asks God about it, and he finally tells her that technically she is her baby. She is both her own mother and her own daughter. And she's like, what the fuck?

00:39:02
Speaker 2: I hate that? That's like her the.

00:39:04
Speaker 3: Talk I know, right, that's the birds and the bees Formellobaxer.

00:39:08
Speaker 2: She figures out the birds and the bees on her own like many of us, right.

00:39:12
Speaker 3: I also like that, like I am my own baby. Completely sounds like the name of a TLC special.

00:39:18
Speaker 2: I would watch totally or just like a true life episode, Like there's so many delicious, exploitative meeting.

00:39:29
Speaker 3: I definitely watched a TLC special called I Am My Own Twin, which brings me to another point that I wanted to make, which is like, despite disdaining the evil scientist trope, I love any scene that takes place in an operating theater.

00:39:45
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yes, I remember. I first learned of the operating theater from a series of unfortunate events nice and I was like, now they were onto something there. It's fun. It's a perfect set piece.

00:39:58
Speaker 3: So spooky and cinema.

00:40:00
Speaker 2: I like that Bella thrives in the operating theater. How scary.

00:40:04
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, because it's right around this point of the movie where she says that she plans to become a doctor, following in her daddy God's footsteps. Anyway, so she confronts God ann Max about lying to her and trapping her, and to God for creating her in the first place, and they're all like whoopsies. But then Bello goes forward with marrying Max, and during the wedding, a man comes in and interrupts to be like Bello Victoria. This man is her husband in her former life. His name is General Alfred Blessington, and Duncan had helped the General find Bella because Duncan is very bitter and he thinks that Bella is a succubist from Hell and stuff like that.

00:40:55
Speaker 2: Now, if you think you've met Patriarchy, the guy in this movie, you haven't, You haven't yet.

00:41:01
Speaker 1: He shows up at the very end, but Bella is intrigued by the General and wants to go with him, so she returns to his estate, only to discover that the General is horribly abusive and cruel, and apparently so was she in her former life, and he wants to hold her prisoner, and he threatens to shoot her if she tries to leave, and he intends to have a doctor remove her glitteris that night, so she fights back. She manages to chloroform the General and shoot him in the foot, and then Bella has Max perform surgery on the General and it is revealed that the brain of a goat was put into the General's head, and so that's like the big cathartic end of this movie. Also, God dies Antoinette comes to live with Bella and Max.

00:42:01
Speaker 2: It's a very clean and good for her ending to the movie that deviates significantly from the book.

00:42:08
Speaker 1: Right, So that's the story, and let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss. And we are back, and where shall we start on this movie that will break my brain? And there's so much to talk about.

00:42:34
Speaker 2: Just a fun fact really quick. So Tony McNamara, he also collaborated with mister Yorgos on The Favorite, but his credit before this was a different Emma Stone vehicle. He also wrote the screenplay to Cruella, so he also kind of is now a specialist and good for her style. Emma Stone movies of varying quality. So that's just a fact about Tony. I don't know. Should we start with talking about the source material a little bit?

00:43:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, please educate me because I did not deep dive into the source material and I'm so curious to know.

00:43:09
Speaker 2: That's what we're here, fool. So yeah, this is based on a nineteen ninety two novel by Alistair Gray.

00:43:17
Speaker 3: Okay, ninety two birth year.

00:43:19
Speaker 2: Yes, you're the monkey, solidareity?

00:43:21
Speaker 1: Okay, young people.

00:43:25
Speaker 2: Yes the youth.

00:43:26
Speaker 3: I am my own baby Google.

00:43:30
Speaker 2: Ultimately, we are all babies at the end of the day. We're all baby. Honestly, I bravely had no idea who Alistair Gray was. Turns out he's very famous. He is a Scottish or was a Scottish writer. Who is I don't know, a postmodern writer. That could mean anything. He wrote weird speculative novels. He also did a lot of painting. He was also a visual artist, very well loved, and also in a way that the movie sort of skilled back a little bit. Was also famously a socialist and put socialist themes and ideas in basically all of his work. So that's sort of the overarching what you need to know about him. He passed away in twenty nineteen, but met Yurgoslanthemo's and like had his blessing to make this movie. I don't think he ended up seeing the script before he passed, but I do always kind of like that when it's possible to happen, when there is like a nice two writers usually men hanging out love that, so you know yourgo's got the blessing and when ahead to make the movie. The main difference is in Kitlyn. Please let me know if I missed anything. Ooh, okay, yeah, I have the book on my Libby app. Wow, for all you libby heads out there, I have it, but I have not read it yet.

00:44:52
Speaker 1: Well, that's because we don't read books on this podcast famously.

00:44:56
Speaker 2: I know, but then I'm trying. I'm trying.

00:45:00
Speaker 1: You're trying to read books, Jamie, what the heck?

00:45:02
Speaker 2: And even though people seem to like, the general consensus is this movie is good, but also general consensus is the book is better. Differences between the book and the movie include that all of the book takes place in Scotland and Glasgow specifically, this has changed to London. I don't really know why. The book is far more overtly socialist, which I kind of alluded to. I'm pulling from a piece from Polygon that sort of breaks this down. That Bella which we see it in the movie. We see Bella's political awakening when she goes to Alexandria and basically just witnesses capitalism. I don't like the visual choices made here. I think it really leans into some like savage tropes that like really don't sit well with me. Agreed. In the book, Bella talks to people and that scene is far longer. Is it better? I don't know I haven't read it, but you know, what is basically reduced to a shot for the movie is a whole sequence in the book, and so it is clearer. Even though I think it is clear in the movie that like Bella's political awakening becomes increasingly important as the movie goes on, it's far more explicit and specific in the book, and that sequence in Alexandria is far longer. Lanthamus gave an interview to Polygon and was asked about this and said the following quote, I didn't find that it could be as much a part of the film we were making, which is following her story, that story about a woman, which is a much more universal thing than political awakening. I disagree, but anyways, he says, the book is also a huge essay about a lot of political things, and especially about Scotland and its relationship with the rest of the world, and so yes, that aspect couldn't be an equal part in the film, which does make more sense to me. I don't know. I feel like every Russian novel includes three hundred pages about like agrarian law of that decade, and you're like, yeah, I don't want to see that. In any case, the final large change is the ending, which instead of the kind of the ending to this movie is so weird to me where it's like, I'm not upset that she, you know, fox over her former husband great, but this whole very complex, weird movie coming down to like a wine glass clink like dun Dunn. Like I didn't really love it. Yeah, it just felt like very neat and it's because it's not the end.

00:47:39
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, it was very much like a nineties rom com based on a Shakespearean play kind of ending.

00:47:44
Speaker 2: It felt like fried green Tomatoes, Like it just felt like from a different movie. I don't know. I'm just gonna read directly from this polygon piece here and I want to shut out. It is written by Oly Welsh. We'll link to it in the description of the episode through its extended code and framing devices. The book presents a much more ambivalent account of the rest of Bella's life. She and Archibald I guess he's not Max mccandle's put their medical skills to better use in the book, serving the people of Glasgow with a women's clinic and a public health initiative, but mccandal's is ineffectual and Bella's socialist ideals are eventually thwarted by political reality. She's last seen as an eccentric old woman whose only patients are dogs. It's a much sadder but arguably a less bitter one. So yeah, very very different ending, which I kind of think. I prefer the book to the kind of prescriptive movie ending. So that's adaptation stuff.

00:48:44
Speaker 1: Yes, I have a couple additional things. I also saw the polygon piece. These are a few examples of differences between the book and the movie from a people dot Com piece.

00:48:57
Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, watch out.

00:49:00
Speaker 2: That's the grad school bump.

00:49:02
Speaker 3: Okay, masters great, exactly know.

00:49:05
Speaker 1: I only find the best sources, so this one is called poor things. The biggest differences between the book and the Emma Stone movie iconic Wow, Okay, such things as the wedding plays out a little differently. The novel includes a variety of characters who don't make it into the movies, such as an American professor named doctor Hooker. I don't know exactly where Bella meets him on her travels, but there's this American professor guy. We also meet her father, or rather like Victoria Blessington's father. I think he shows up in the wedding scene, stuff like that. The movie eliminates those characters, but it adds the character of Felicity, the woman who god in Max like Frankenstein together while Bella is traveling. So there are those examples, and then the novel is structured in such a way where it's like letters the memoir from the Max character, right from the Max character. Yeah, and he's like talking about his friendship with the scientist Godwin Baxter and his creation Bella. So it's like more from his point of view, whereas the movie largely focuses on Bella and her point of view and her view of the world and things like.

00:50:26
Speaker 2: That works for me, right. I also feel like historically, like unreliable narrator novels are not usually well adapted. I'm like, yeah, just give us a streamlined version.

00:50:36
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, indeed.

00:50:38
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's the book versus the movie. So let's get into the movie, Amanda. Is there anything that stands out to you that you want to get into right away?

00:50:48
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, I mean, like, something that I thought was very unique about this movie, and that was just like candy for me personally, was the evolution of Bella's language skills. And her idiolect, as it's called, her very unique and personal way of speaking. I don't think I'd ever seen like a real time representation of someone's like totally wacky mastery of the English language, from googo gaga to you know, like multi polysyllabic words. But I was like thoroughly entertained by the way that she spoke. And I think, Caitlin you mentioned that being a highlight for you as well, because I could just really relate as an extremely like verbose lover of ten dollars words for no actual reason. I loved how quickly she went from actual goo goo gaga bella hungry too. I mean, I don't have like one of her lines memorized and at the ready, but.

00:52:07
Speaker 2: But she's like quoting like political theory.

00:52:10
Speaker 1: It has a master's degree basically, she does. Yeah, she has a PhD.

00:52:15
Speaker 3: Even, But the way that she talks is like so authentic to her, like it's so bananas. No one talks like that. No one that she meets talks like that, you know, like nobody in her world talks like that. And I thought that and her style were like true individuality to me, and I really I felt very seen by it because like, I feel like I talk funny. My word choices are funny. That's pointed out to me from time to time. So I felt like the representation for like girlies who talk funny, it was like really appreciated.

00:52:53
Speaker 2: Even though I said earlier that I was like frustrated by the comparisons between Four Things and Barbie, I did enjoy it. Someone like was like poor Things is sort of like if weird. Barbie had her whole movie that happened in the Victorian era, and I was like, yeah, I kind of see it. I mean, Emma Stone won the Best Actress Oscar yesterday at the time we were recording this, and it is like an incredible performance, Like she's she like really goes for it. Her performance is so good, and I like that they give her the space to kind of cook.

00:53:31
Speaker 1: And I mean, not to be bitchy, but Lily Gladstone should have won.

00:53:35
Speaker 2: But I mean sure, I mean no, I mean I think everyone agrees that, remember.

00:53:39
Speaker 1: But I know what you're saying, like she gives an excellent performance.

00:53:42
Speaker 2: I think they're both incredible performances and very different performances. And for sure, the oscars are racist and it's not a meritocracy. Yeah yeah, yeah, but it's a great performance for Mamma Stone. I like that. I mean, I'm glad to hear that you like as someone with a background in linguistics, like that you you like it.

00:54:01
Speaker 3: I loved it.

00:54:02
Speaker 2: It's cool and it does still feel like particular to that character. One of the things that I liked about the movie because I do feel like the criticisms around the emphasis and some people have like said over emphasis on sex with men as a way of understanding yourself, Like I understand why those are. I feel like that has a lot more to do with the visual choices in the movie than the story itself because for me, at a story level, like she is growing constantly at a rate that makes sense, and so much of the story or like where we end up is influenced by like like you do when you're coming of age, where you're like trying to understand your body. You're trying to understand, like what are the rules? I think, like the big thing we come up against is that the thing that is gross and unavoidable in this story is that she has a baby brain and a grown woman's body, which comes up against a version of a trope we've discussed a million times, like the Born Sexy Yesterday, which is been around forever. But I do think that Bella is an interesting variant of this trope because I feel like a lot of the baby lady tropes that we get are still somehow intuiting, the make yourself smaller rules and defer to men rules that exist within society that takes years of conditioning to sort of soak in for a lot of people. But Bella is fully a blank canvas and like if a social norm doesn't make sense to where she says it and does not abide by it, and I feel like that is far rarer and it almost like like challenged how I understood that stock character because you're like, it's not a baby lady really, because babies say what's on their mind, and those characters very rarely say what's on their mind, or if they do, it is like in a very particular way that is still deferential to the man that is teaching them what the world is. So I do feel like she is different in that way.

00:56:17
Speaker 1: Yes, your cat has arrived into the chat.

00:56:20
Speaker 2: Casper's in the mix. He's got thoughts.

00:56:23
Speaker 3: Oh my god, he's so huge.

00:56:26
Speaker 2: Talk about a little baby with big ideas. Oh he just fell. Oh he's good, he's good. Yeah.

00:56:32
Speaker 1: I agree that the because the first time I saw this movie and you see her with her baby brain and her adult body and she's having sex with adult men with adult brains, and I was so grossed out by it.

00:56:46
Speaker 2: It's gross.

00:56:47
Speaker 1: And then I started to realize that, Okay, it seems like the director is making some intentional commentary that seems to suggest that, like, men are so preoccupied with their own sexual desire that they don't eat noticed that the woman they're physically attracted to has the mind of a small child, or if they do notice, they don't seem to care. And so I was like, Okay, that seems to be what your gross is getting out.

00:57:11
Speaker 2: Including the guys that were like theoretically rooting for like that's yeah. I think like Max is a tricky character for me in that regard, because I feel like the movie, in the way that it ends ends up being like Max is a pretty good guy. Yeah, sure, he made some choices that weren't the best, and he justifies it usually by being like, you know how charismatic Willem Dafoe is. I'm like, that doesn't mean that you should have sex with a baby, marry a baby. You can't just be like, well, you know, he's just like when you're in his orbit, it's hard to not marry a baby. And you're like, I just don't believe that's true. I am always sort of responsive to like even the quote unquote good guy that you're told is the good guy is still you know, adhering to this fucked up logic.

00:57:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he is very much to make a Sex in the City reference the Burger, the Jack Berger in the equation, you know, like maybe the evil general that's maybe you know, that's mister big a little bit, and who is Mark Ruffalo and the Sex in the City universe, you know, maybe God. Fortunately I don't think she fucks anyone like that, but good for her, I think. But yes, obviously there is something sinister that I don't know if the movie itself recognizes about treating that character as a good guy in the end. However, my experience of the movie, and I was fully done with my movie poor by this time, so my opinion can't entirely be trusted. I was like, so team Bella Baxter by the end of the movie that I was just like, whatever she wants, you know, like, yeah, she was so smart and badass by that point. I was just like, they'll probably get to worse later. It's clear that this movie is just like trying to wrap itself up because it's twenty minutes too long like most movies. Yeah, and so like, I'm just gonna kind of gently ignore this ending slash take it with a grain of salt because I'm still looking at Emma Stone's outfits and I love her character period.

00:59:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that the ending just like felt weird. Yeah, Like by the ending, I wasn't like I wish themooviie was still happening, but it like just feels funky because I also am like fully team Bella Baxter, and I don't know, I guess just like sort of close the loop on the extensive criticism of this movie's sex scenes. I don't think that it takes up undue narrative space. I think that visually it feels like it's obsessed over more so than any other developmental stage she has. I think that that's like, yeah, where that controversy comes from. No matter where you land on it, you can't argue that the movie is more visually interested in her mental awakening than her physical one. It gives a lot of real estate to her physical awakening.

01:00:12
Speaker 3: But doesn't that just make for like a more fun, sexy, interesting movie.

01:00:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'm not even saying that I don't like that, but I think that that's like why, because as I was like watching it, I was like, I do think that it is like fairly well paced and like where her priorities are and where her developmental stage is. But like visually, the like really intense visual scenes are when she's having sex and not when she's reading a book, because that's technically more interesting to watch. So that's sort of my theory on that. But I also think that like that is a perfectly fair criticism to have of this movie because it is objectively like icky that she's a baby fucking adult.

01:00:55
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. But when I think of like the best sex scenes in the movie, what does she call it? Vigorous jumping? Furious furious jumping? I mean that's a great example of like I love the little constructed phrases that she comes up with. They're so funny and like visceral. But I don't know, like the sex scenes that I remember the most are I guess ones where she's maybe in the like slightly post adolescent phase. She's not literally a baby anymore, so she's like furious jumping.

01:01:30
Speaker 1: Right.

01:01:31
Speaker 3: It's not great, but I don't know. We're all just like going on intuition when we're trying to figure out how creepy any one of these given sex scenes are, and like, yeah, at a certain point pretty soon into the movie, actually, once thank god, we transitioned into the colors, I was like, I am not so creeped out on this anymore. Like I think I really believe that, like this woman is horny.

01:02:00
Speaker 2: Well, I think that that's what helps is like she does initiate most of the sex in the movie.

01:02:08
Speaker 1: So I have two problems with the way like the exploration of female sexuality is handled. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that this movie is again adapted from a book by a man screenwriter, man director man. Because the things that it mishandles, and I'm sure I could come up with more if I watched the movie again or mauled on it longer. But two things that really bugged me was that the movie equates sexual curiosity and sexual feelings with being emotionally ready to have sex with other people, because like children can feel sexual feelings, they can masturbate, they do masturbate, but it doesn't mean that they are emotionally mature enough to start having sex. But this story suggests that Bella when she still has a baby brain, because when she leaves to go on that trip with Duncan in the early days that trip, like she still is a child cognitively and emotionally, but she's like, I'm having sex, I'm ready to have sex. And it's like that doesn't track with how children actually cognitively and emotionally developed. So I just it's one thing if she just like masturbates a lot and she's exploring her sexuality with herself, but I was just like, why are you equating that with her being ready to have sex with other people and like adult men. So that's one thing that really bugged me. And then the other thing was that the more mature and like intellectually enlightened Bella becomes, the less horny she becomes, which kind of suggests like, oh, well, smart and educated women will not be horny, They'll cease to be horny. Because this is also reinforced by the Martha character, who's like, I haven't had sex in twenty years, and I never masturbate hardly. And she's like, I'm more concerned with what's you know, between my ears her brain than what's between my legs her sex organs.

01:04:03
Speaker 3: So but could that be like a menopausal thing?

01:04:06
Speaker 1: I mean maybe sure, But also I'm just like smart women can be so horny.

01:04:13
Speaker 2: I was sort of thrown by that shift. It felt like weirdly conservative. Yeah right, yeah, and what the movie is say otherwise, And that is before she starts working as a sex worker, which I think that that is like this movie's attitude towards sex work is better than most movies attitudes towards sex work is the only thing I wish And I don't know if this is more fleshed out in the book, but like I do wish that we got to know the women who work there better. It felt like they were very like there at the last second, and they are it seems like very important in Bella's developmental growth. That is like where I start to understand the criticism, even though I don't totally agree with it. That like there's quote unquote too much said in this movie is like you see a lot of the sex. You hear that she's going to these meetings, you hear that she is like doing a B and C. You hear that she's connecting with the women who work at the brothel, But you don't really see a lot of it. You just know that it's happening. But when it comes to having sex with men, you see, yeah, and you hear about it. So it does feel like it ends up being like more emphasized by the movie, even if it's not more important in this story. I don't know, it's like it is tricky, but I love that that happens, and I love that, like, I don't know. I mean, you think about how sex workers are stereotyped in movies in any number of ways that we've talked about on this show over the years, and for the most part, that is pretty swiftly avoided in this movie, where the only shame put onto sex workers in this movie are by characters we don't like. I mean, Bella is very frank in her life, even when she's like not loving her job. She's like, I am my own means of production. Like she's like very clear about like why she does what she does. She likes it, even on the days she doesn't. She's not unhappy to be doing it. It's not made out to be coercive. It's like it's a job. It's presented as a job, which I feel like sex work almost never is in movies. It's always like bogged down by shame. And I love that about Bella. I love how she like at any turn when someone tries to entrap her or like projects shame onto her, She's like, that doesn't make sense to me, so I reject it.

01:06:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right that we hear from her lover, her female lover. I forget the character's name, Twinette. Yeah, Twinette significantly less than any of the male lovers, which it's true I didn't love, but in the grand scheme of things, like what a treat for her to like have that character in her life at all? Yeah, I'm back on like some of the exchanges we've just had about like her mental age and how that may or may not be treated appropriately by these men in her life, and in this moment blaming your ghosts once again for this like edge lord fuckery, because like Frankensteining a character that is like provoking us to have this conversation about like when a woman is old enough to be able to like give sexual consent by like putting a baby brain in the body of an adult person. It's just like it's such fuckery, you know what I mean. It's like, what a stupid conversation whose like resolution will not be applicable to literally anything else ever, you know, right, It's like we will spend like the next however long figuring out how we really feel about this, and then we won't be able to use that consensus on anything at all because women, grown women don't have baby brains famously, and babies don't have grown women bodies, like.

01:08:14
Speaker 2: Except in the movies where they do. There, it is weird. I don't know, Like I can see a lot of different I don't know. This movie does feel unique in like it seems like a lot of people's takeaway. It is like very entrenched in personal experience. There's certain things where like Kily and I agree with you, like that implying that thinking about sex and discovering your body means that you are ready and able to consent to sex is like a really really slippery slope that this movie I think takes several steps back from. It doesn't even really want you to think about because I don't think it's like prepared to engage with that question, right. But also it's like, I don't know, the sex scenes that are there are centered on her. You do see men, but they're not focused on But I still like, maybe I'm a fucking prude. And I know, like your Guslanthemus is like contemporary audiences are prude, and I was like, maybe you're just European. I don't know, like maybe I am like an American prude.

01:09:18
Speaker 3: I have question as old as time.

01:09:20
Speaker 2: Truly, like maybe I'm an American prud like I didn't need all of it, but like I wasn't outside of this. I don't know. It's so tricky because it's like in the criticism, you're describing Caitlin like it is gross in terms of like do I have an issue a see a naked actor if they are fully consenting and fine with it, And Emma Stone was because she is an executive producer in the movie, then yeah, I don't really care. I just wish that there was if I could have the exact perfect movie that I wanted. I wouldn't have minded sacrificing some of those sequences in favor of, like, even if it's like sex in the context of her intellectual awakening, because I like how like I mean we were joking about earlier, but like fucking the first person you meet who has good politics, Like that's cool. Like I would have liked to see more of that relationship in her life, because it seemed like for Bellet it was really important, but for the movie it wasn't really important, right.

01:10:20
Speaker 1: I think the movie handles some things well in its examination of things such as male fragility and how men perceive and treat women, and other things it doesn't handle so well, such as its exploration of female sexuality, for example.

01:10:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:10:40
Speaker 1: So it's almost like maybe a woman should have co written, yeah, or directed the movie.

01:10:47
Speaker 2: I really think that that would have helped a lot of the problems.

01:10:51
Speaker 3: I agree. I think we wouldn't feel such cognitive dissonance about like enjoying aspects of the movie and cringing aspects of the movie if simply the female gays were prioritized on the back end when it obviously wasn't, you.

01:11:09
Speaker 2: Know, right, yeah, because it's like I think, like that the male fragility plot stuff is handled really well, probably because it's written and adapted by people who have that experience. Like that, clearly that makes sense. Like I think it works really well, and like Mark Ruffalo is like really good in that role of like the more Bella rejects, you know, falling into these like various traps he's presenting, whether it be being kidnapped, her on a boat, getting married like whatever Victorian trap he's trying to get her in. The more she outsmarts him, the more he becomes a baby. I like that like sort of parallel when she's maturing, he's devolving, and like that all works. I think one thing that we haven't done too yet that I want to talk about because I don't know how to feel about it. I wasn't thinking about it as much on my first viewing, but the way that she relates to God is really interesting to be and I want to hear your thoughts that Amanda is talking about the sort of scientist trope where I wasn't honing in on this, I think because I was annoyed with other stuff on my first viewing. But how there is this cycle of abuse taking place in this freaky mansion that they live in, where we see that God is disabled as a result of abuse he experienced being experimented on by his own father, and he is then perpetuating similar abuses onto people and animals instead of processing his own pain and anchor and resentment. Which is really interesting, But like, I feel like the movie kind of bails on dealing with it like it's not nothing, because Bella does return to say I am upset with you for deceiving me about the circumstances that I was born. It's so weird. I feel like everyone has a more normal version of this conversation with their parents, where you're like, well, I didn't ask to be born, but being alive is pretty sick. But I truly didn't ask to be born, you know, like that whole thing. But she does, like, you know, pretty clearly, say like I'm angry with you, but like hating your parents for certain things that are totally fair, but wanting a relationship with them anyways is a very common experience. I thought it was like well handled, but I still get I like can't shake on every viewing that, Like Williem Dafoe's character ends up like getting off too easy like he does.

01:13:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I gotta say I found that stuff harder to take than the sort of quessifying sexual dynamics that we're discussing, because yeah, it's the thing that I've said where like I don't appreciate this god complex mad scientist trope. I like I literally think it's like not good for the culture. But uh yeah, like I just don't buy it. I like, don't buy perpetuating that kind of mad scientist abuse because you experienced it, like I don't. I don't buy it as an excuse and I certainly don't buy it as an explanation. So yeah, I think we were supposed to. We were supposed to say, like, oh, all this makes sense because of what he's been through and like he's not as bad as these other motherfuckers, So like now we're supposed to re embrace him by or embrace him at all by default. But I couldn't. I couldn't get there.

01:14:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, glad that Bello was able to forgive him, but like I personally was not. Like that didn't work for me, and I feel like going into this last few with that on my mind, it made me dislike the ending even more because the Bella of the book breaks that cycle of abuse and uses what she's learned in medicine to help people, which ties into her socialist awakening of like take what you have and distribute it to other people. But the Bella of the movie does what her father did and continues this cycle of abuse, and you know, is her target far better chosen?

01:15:34
Speaker 3: Like yeah, like she's like Dexter.

01:15:37
Speaker 2: That guy is the most evil guy in the world, so she's not a villain. But I just felt like she was participating in the cycle of abuse in a way that the movie was like, this is awesome. It just felt like a little overly simplistic, And once I found out how the book ended, I was like, yeah, that does seem more in line with like what she's been building towards in her development. It almost feels like a step backwards to do exactly what her father was doing, because she spent all this time finding out who she was and wanting to be different.

01:16:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, do I find it cathartic to see the general bleeding like a goat Hell? Yeah, yeah I do. But also it's like you could have just let him bleed out from his wound and die like it's so much extra effort to perform surgery on them.

01:16:29
Speaker 2: Turn him into your chihuah Yeah.

01:16:31
Speaker 3: Right, you know, sometimes death is too kind.

01:16:33
Speaker 2: It's true. My mom says that all the time.

01:16:39
Speaker 1: Some people deserve a freakier fate.

01:16:43
Speaker 2: Life sentence of being a goat. Honestly, it sounds better in this Dan and Age.

01:16:50
Speaker 3: I'm like, someone go me. Honestly, I want to walk around and bleed, eat grass and just not worry about shit.

01:16:57
Speaker 1: I know, but I think that speaks to the strength of this movie, or one of the stronger aspects of it, which is the examination of the way and I'm speaking generally here, you know, hashtag not all men, but the way that like men tend to perceive women, the way men tend to deceive women, what men tend to value in women, how men want to control women physically and or behaviorally, how men resent women having free will and minds of their own, and sexual autonomy and sexual desire, all that kind of stuff. Because we see that displayed in one way or another in each of these men. Where like with God, it's like an extreme example of a man like taking away slash manipulating the autonomy of a woman as far as like bringing her back from the dead and then putting her own baby's brain in her body and then not telling her he did any of that until the end of the movie. You've got as we've discussed a little bit already, like knowing pretty early on that she has the mind of a child and also doesn't tell her that and falls in love with her despite you know, knowing that she is a baby.

01:18:15
Speaker 2: Right then You've.

01:18:16
Speaker 1: Got Duncan, which is a whole Schmorgas board of stuff where like the first time he meets her, he assaults her, he grows increasingly jealous, and he's trying to control her, constantly control her behavior. He resents that she has sexual desire outside of him, all this stuff, and then he's like driven to the brink of madness because of his resentment toward her.

01:18:45
Speaker 2: All of this is like there is a really like wide gradient of like types of fragile men available in this movie, and I feel like they're all you know, they're like over the top because it's a fantasy movie, but it feels distinctive, feels like rerack disable oh, sure enough. I just wish that you got like more of a gradiot outside of Bella with women, Like, there's just not as much not that I necessarily have confidence in this specific team to like show a wider gradient of women, but I did like the sort of running theme of like Bella is a person when it behooves a guy, and then she's property when it behooves them too, where she like has to shout at the captain at the end like I am not She doesn't say property. What does she say territory? I am not territory. Yeah, Like she has to remind different men in different ways that she is a person, and I feel like that plays really well. And anytime she reminds someone she's a person, generally something bad happens to her, which is I mean even more typical of that time, but still obviously happens, right. I thought, Yeah, this movie does really well with showing like all of the different ways that male possessiveness and insecurity can manifest. But there's just really the one woman, which is like the problem of so many movies.

01:20:16
Speaker 1: It's so weird, I know, because you do have these different relationships that she forms over the course of the movie. You know, Martha is like teaching Bella to enrich her mind and that there's more to life than satiating our most carnal desires, which is like, I guess true, but like you can also be horny and read about philosophy, Martha. There's Twinette who becomes Bella's ally and then later lover, and she like helps Bella learn about socialism and stuff like that, but we kind of learn next to nothing else about Twinette. And I do appreciate representation on screen of like, you know, a queer sex scene, but I'm like, who is this person again? Like can we learn more about Twinette? And then Madam Swiney. There's a number of scenes that are pretty significant between Bella and Madam Swiney, where you know, she's admiring Bella for wanting to carve her own path to freedom, and she's like, let me help you on that journey. But then she's also like, but I need money, and I need you to make money for me, because that's just how it works.

01:21:30
Speaker 2: I think she's interesting for that reason. Yeah, I'll go to bat for Madam Swiney. I feel like she's like this weird socialist writer stock character where she's like, yeah, my politics are great. But you gotta play the game, Bella, you gotta play the game. And she's like, do I And then at the end she's like, I do.

01:21:51
Speaker 3: A relatable internal battle. We all fight every day.

01:21:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, it felt at least like intentionally dissonan, like that was of why she was there.

01:22:01
Speaker 1: Yeah. True. And then there's finally missus prim the like housekeeper at God's house, and at first she hates Bella and thinks she's a nuisance, but then at the end she's like, no, I'm cool with you now that all these men are dead or goats.

01:22:19
Speaker 3: So you know what's weird about these men too, is that why are they all identical? Like it's insane how they're shade of black hair is all exactly the same.

01:22:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're all very similar.

01:22:32
Speaker 3: It is fascinating to me that they're all just these like identical horrible dudes who are like a slightly different flavor. It's like Rocky Road. And then I don't know, whatever, whatever, it's a similar flavor to Rocky Road. I don't eat that much ice cream, I dad, we can't handle it. I eat cheese though. We went over Then, Yes, I did think that it was funny that, like, I almost like scramble the male characters because they all look the same and they're all awful. But I couldn't forget Bella if I tried.

01:23:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, true, And.

01:23:05
Speaker 3: I do think to be optimistic about this whole thing. The one place where Bella and all these men can absolutely agree, there is no fighting. Everyone has the same take on it is her fashion.

01:23:20
Speaker 2: True, everyone's like the looks are solid.

01:23:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, no one's trying to control what she wears. They're like she can clearly handle that. She looks great.

01:23:30
Speaker 1: And again, the movie just one best costume design, Yeah, earned.

01:23:36
Speaker 3: Fully because I love that about the looks because they are sexy, but they're wacky. They're like whack a doodle dandy, which I really I really appreciated that. Again, I just I will forgive so much about this movie because of what she wore.

01:23:56
Speaker 2: The last thing I have, I think is just like a little where and like the way that the source material kind of shines through is on the idea of like labor and what constitutes labor and how Bella's view on labor evolves over time, because I do feel like miss prim is connected in that conversation, even though I don't think the movie really sticks the landing on it. But like Bella doesn't understand a world in which she her needs are not constantly met because she grows up with this immense privilege in her like question Mark, who knows the amount of time this movie is supposed to take place over, I have no fucking clue, But like it's not until she has her political awakening and which again I think is really badly done in this movie with just like a shot of poverty, the cinematic shot or whatever, but like that shot that like changes her view of labor moving forward, and like I feel like that culminates in like she has a job, she's a sex worker. She understands the highs and lows that comes with working in the service industry, and that culminates to like when she sees her mom's ex husband, question Mark, her father, her father, when she's married to her father.

01:25:25
Speaker 1: Again, Yeah, her husband father.

01:25:27
Speaker 2: There's a lot of daddies in this movie. Yeah, but like her husband is also her daddy, and her daddy is also gone, so there's like there's a lot going on.

01:25:38
Speaker 1: The TLC specials and the tale is oldest time when your dad is your god and your dad is also your husband.

01:25:45
Speaker 3: Who among us, and you are also your baby, and.

01:25:48
Speaker 1: You were also your own baby and your own mother, but with.

01:25:51
Speaker 2: Her biological dad technically Captain Blessington whatever the fucking Dave is is like holding his employees at gunpoint and essentially torturing them, and then she learns that her mother and her body did the same thing. Like, I like that is like a full circle on the labor discussion. And I thought like in general, like it wasn't super dwelled on, but I liked it on like further viewings, it's like over the top and ridiculous, but you know, her views on labor definitely evolve and change along with everything else, which is again like why the more the more I watch the movie, the more I'm like, I don't really agree with the sex criticism. I could see a lot of the visual criticism, like I get it if it's uncomfortable, and like you think that that time can be better used elsewhere, but like she's on a lot of journeys, just they're not all visually.

01:26:45
Speaker 1: As interesting as sex and naked bodies. Yeah, yeah, I do think that the movie and we I think already said this to some extent, but that the movie SU spends too long on that chunk because there's no forward momentum. For a while, is just like her learning about sex and exploring her sexuality, and then by the time she starts to like learn about philosophy and learn about socialism and has her like political discovery.

01:27:12
Speaker 2: It's like two hundred books later. But you see every sexual encounter.

01:27:17
Speaker 1: Right, I'm just like, uh, why spend so much time on that, because to me, it would make sense if it was like not in montage necessarily, but a few minutes are spent on her sex life, and then a few more minutes like it, but it just again, that momentum comes to a screeching halt for like twenty minutes while she's like out there fucking a bunch of people or I guess mostly just the one guy. But in any case, I just I feel like there was a better way to use that time, and I wish that there was more about her ARC that has her learning about other things and expanding her mind starts happening sooner, But instead it's like, no, she's having sex with a shitty person, which also relatable. Who among us hasn't.

01:28:08
Speaker 3: That's what I was gonna say is like, weirdly, I felt fine with the amount of time that was spent on her fucking this awful person, because like, it's fun to watch people have sex. It's even fun to watch people have sex that they probably shouldn't be having within certain.

01:28:24
Speaker 2: Boundaries, right, which just like debatable within this movie.

01:28:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is debatable with this movie. For sure. I didn't long to spend more time with her like book in hand, Like here's a montage of her like reading, you know, like I didn't. I don't know if I necessarily would. I mean sure, actually, like that sounds aesthetic and amazing, and I would love to see like her reading outfits. But I do think that more time could have been spent kind of confronting head on the stuff with God and like the stuff with her ultimate husband. And how again, we mentioned that we just like forgave all those people so immediately we were expected to, So if anything, I think we could have cut away some of that stuff, not because it's like offensive or whatever, but because like there was so much that went unaddressed. Again, despite the movie being twenty minutes too long.

01:29:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like it's not that I want to see montages of her reading it's that I would have preferred, but more scenes where you see the result of that reading, because that felt way more rushed.

01:29:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, you're right. I mean I heard it linguistically and I wasn't mad at it. I was like surprised and delighted by it. But with more thought, and indeed, I am becoming the madder at it. It's like she went overnight from Goo Goo Gaga to like, I read Nietzsche and you know, I am incorporating that vernacular into the way that I talk every day. It was, Yeah, it was overnight the movie.

01:30:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, also to speak to the like why does she so readily forgive these awful men, namely God and Max, to the point where she agrees to marry Max. And there is that exchange of dialogue where she says something like I've been a whore, you understand Cox for money inside me, which is a hilarious way to phrase that, And she's like, are you okay with that? Does that challenge the desire for ownership that men have? And Max responds, I find myself merely jealous of the men's time with you, rather than any moral aspersion against you. It is your body. Bella Baxter yours to give freely, and I'm like, okay, good, good attitude to have. But that doesn't mean you have to marry him because you said that. But it's kind of suggested that that's her train of thought because the scene after that is them getting married. So I'm like, right, you don't have to marry him.

01:30:53
Speaker 2: I can get on fervid that as far as like, the first time that marriage is floated, she has no say in it, right, She's presented with like the illusion of choice because she is not able to consent to marriage nor sex because she's.

01:31:08
Speaker 1: Like five, a toddler.

01:31:10
Speaker 2: But when it comes back around, yeah, I think that there could have been another way to get that across, and ultimately she doesn't go through with it, But like, I do like that the second time it is very firmly her choice. That's true, but again it is like choosing something somewhat conventional. But again it makes more sense for me in the book ending, where like the advantage of being married to him in Victorian times is that he is also a doctor and they can work together, and like, just based on what we see of Bella Baxter, I'm assuming that any marriage she's in would not be monogamous. I don't think that she's the closed marriage type. So like I wasn't super bothered by it. I just was more like bummed out by but also felt like, oh, yeah, that's the thing where it's like you marry the first person who like kind of respects you, which totally you know, like that certainly does happen.

01:32:08
Speaker 3: Oh my god, yeah it's happening left right and center. Yeah it was. It did give Stockholm syndrome a little bit. Another b protagonist, miss Bell from Beauty and the Beast, it was a little bit a little bit that, but that dude was less hot than the Beast.

01:32:26
Speaker 2: So anyway, I think Max, like God, is also sort of let off the hook, like we were talking about this earlier where he's just like.

01:32:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, right right.

01:32:35
Speaker 2: But like I feel like the movie forgives him for willingly and with full understanding, participating in trapping her and treating her like property. Yeah yeah, and lusting after her when she was a baby. It doesn't just feel like Bella says, I forgive you. It also feels like the movie is like, and this is the guy for her, and I just like, again, I'm like, I just think maybe if you have a woman co writer that is not the result.

01:33:08
Speaker 3: Agree.

01:33:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, I also wish that because we see Felicity at the end too, when they're like in the little courtyard and the General goat Man is like bah.

01:33:20
Speaker 2: General goat Man is a great character name.

01:33:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then missus prim is being nicer and Max is there just sort of like chilling, and then Felicity was also there, and I'm like, Okay, well, what's going on with Bella and Felicity? Are they friends? Is Bella Felicity's mentor? Like I want to know a little bit more about that too, Okay, Anyway, is there anything else anyone wants to talk about?

01:33:46
Speaker 2: I feel like we cracked it, We figured it out, we cracked it.

01:33:51
Speaker 1: I also feel like we've barely scratched the surface of this very complex movie.

01:33:56
Speaker 2: But actually, the last thing I wanted to say is like I tried to research. I mean, it would be an infinity project to try to track down all of the analysis of this movie, and there's just too fucking much of it. Like we've talked about, there was a fair amount of backlash to the protracted sex scenes with a presumably underage character and all of the stuff that came with that. I also found a number of trans writers that were very pro this movie, reading it as a resurrection within a familiar but new body and like navigating identity inside of a new body and a new identity inside of a body that is familiar but new and like. So I just wanted to acknowledge that read of the movie, which I had heard about but I hadn't like, actually spent any time reading before prepping for this episode. So we can link to several of those essays as well.

01:34:52
Speaker 3: I like knowing that because I don't know if I'm just in my like optimism era or what, but I think it's nice to find excuses to appreciate a piece of art that like a fuck ton of work went into, even if there are critiques that are, yeah, you know what I mean, Like I think for me, the bottom line of this movie is like your ghost Land. The Moost is a little jerkin' off little boy. He loves a stunt. He is an edge lord for me. He loves to like provoke, but not in the way that he thinks he's provoking. And he's asking us to forgive a lot of nonsense because we're so like caught up in that provocation and at the end of the day like it worked because I am actually at the end of the day forgiving a lot, but not for the reasons why he wants me to make those pardons, if that makes sense. Yeah, art is so up to interpretation, Like because there was no woman in the room, I don't think the movie he intended to make is a landing in the same way on all the women viewers who are going to see it.

01:36:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:36:13
Speaker 3: I mean there was Emmastone as an executive producer for sure, but I'm talking about like in the writing of it and.

01:36:17
Speaker 2: Such still like overwhelmingly men.

01:36:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so like, in spite of all that, I do like that there's so much to find in this movie that is positive, empowering, stylish feminists, et cetera, and that reflects well on the viewers, even if the people who made it didn't engineer those things. If that makes sense.

01:36:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. For me, the bottom line is the movie would have benefited from more perspective from women on the storytelling and creative end of things, because the things that I think this movie mishandles are things that if a woman creative was involved, she would have been like no, now, let's not do that, or let's like, you know, make this adaptation change to kind of modernize this or make it more intersectional, or you know, whatever needed to happen. And instead it's just so many men making choices and in some cases like they handled things well. Again, like the way that many of the male characters are behaving in their conduct as it relates to their interactions with women. I think that all tracks very well, but other things not so much. I will say that, and I think we touched on this a little bit already, But something I really appreciated is that because of Bella's baby brain, she moves through the world with this like sense of adventure and wonder and like shamelessness and willingness to indulge that most adults, especially women, are sort of like conditioned and societally forced to unlearn because of like propriety and politeness, especially in this like Victorian era. So the fact that you see this woman and even though she's like again, baby brain for a lot of this, but someone who appears on the surface to be a woman, you see her, you know, eating whatever delicious things she wants whenever she wants. You see her fucking whenever she wants and whoever she wants. You see her just being curious and asking whatever questions she wants and rejecting the notion of the status quo a lot of the time, and challenging the power and behavior of men, and all of these things. We're just very refreshing to see because I too like to eat delicious things and speak my mind.

01:38:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, there's like something to learn from Baby Brain. And it's like, is it baby brain or is it just unmitigated brain? You know, like, yeah, and that's an interesting question to ponder.

01:39:08
Speaker 2: I think that. Yeah. Like where I divert from the Baby Brain critique is that this movie is very much for adults. I don't think that this is a movie that is being marketed at kids or young people. I mean not to say that like people coming of age won't find this movie. That almost always happens, but it's an R rated movie. I think it is like safe to assume that the target audience of this movie knows not to fuck a baby. But if that creative choice is removed from the movie, everything changes and a lot of the commentary becomes impossible. I think, like what bugs me about this I think there's a lot to love about this movie. I ended up liking it. I like, the first time I watched it, I didn't like it. Now I'm like, well, I watch it again anytime soon. No, I've seen it three times. I'd like, if there's anything else to had from this movie, it will never reach me. But I ended up liking it more than I originally did. But I think like the big thing for me here that I like stand by of like original viewing Jamie, is that there is like a clear example within this director's body of work that when he is centering women, he needs a woman in the writing room for it to translate. And that's like very clear between his last movie and this movie. I think the Favorite in general is a stronger work and has more to say about women, very likely because of the one differential, which is that it was adapted by a work from a woman by a woman, not saying that you have to be a woman to have something interesting to say, but it certainly doesn't hurt. And I think your ghost laid the most in Tony mcnamaraned a woman in the room to maximize their joint male sleigh. Okay, that's all I have to say. About this movie. I refuse to say another word. It passes the Bechdel test for sure.

01:41:06
Speaker 1: Yes, quite a bit between a number of different combinations of characters. Bella and Martha are talking about masturbating in philosophy, my two favorite things. Ella and Twinette are talking about socialism and their C section scars. Bella and Madame Swiney are talking about various things. Yeah. So there are many conversations that pass the Bechdel test, although so many of the interactions are between Bella and men, So there's that.

01:41:39
Speaker 3: But it is cool that when those conversations aren't happening and she's talking to women, they're not talking about men. Mostly they almost never are.

01:41:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the second men are gone, Bella is not thinking about them.

01:41:50
Speaker 3: Out of sight, out of mind, Yeah, truly.

01:41:53
Speaker 2: Bella Baxter ultimately like an amazing character. I love her.

01:41:57
Speaker 3: I love her, and that out of sight, out of mind thing reflects another thing that's great about her, which is she is so present. Yes, yeah, which is aspirational.

01:42:07
Speaker 1: She's noticing things.

01:42:09
Speaker 3: She's realizing things.

01:42:11
Speaker 1: When women realize things, it's beautiful. It's huge for us as far as our nipple scale goes. So rating the movie on a scale of zero two five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I'll go I'm somewhere around like a four nipple rating. I think the movie does accomplish a lot. I think its shortcomings are fairly obvious to me, and again wouldn't have to be shortcomings if they had more meaningfully included more women in the creative and storytelling process. But the movie has a clear agenda, which is to show the kind of growth and liberation of a woman and to comment on toxic male behavior, especially the way they perceive and treat women. So I think the movie is doing a lot of those things pretty well, and I'll give it four nipples. Pray, Pray, thank you. My nipples are going to Susie Bumba, who plays Antwinete, or just Twinett is probably a nickname for Antwinette. I'm guessing I'll give one to Martha, i will give one to Madam Swiney, and I'll give one to I'm a Stone.

01:43:39
Speaker 2: The end, I'm going to get fractional. I'm going to do three point seven five, partially just to kind of be a bitch. I think that like I'm gonna go three point seven five just because I don't want to give four men navigating their way around telling a story about woman's awakening. Four I refuse to do it. I cannot.

01:43:58
Speaker 1: That's fair.

01:43:59
Speaker 2: But I think with that limitation, there is still a lot going on in this movie that most movies don't even bother with. And I think that Emma Stone's performance and involvement in production, I think we should always mention when the star of a movie is also a producer, because I feel like you can really feel it in the movie and it answers a lot of questions about like we know that Emma's Stone would not be put into a situation to do a sex scene she didn't want to do because she is in charge, you know. And that's an oversimplification, but stuff like that, I think that this movie has a lot going for it, and you know, a woman's socialist awakening. You know, I can't hate that movie.

01:44:39
Speaker 1: And I won't true.

01:44:41
Speaker 2: So I'll go three point seventy five and I'm gonna just make it clean. I'm going to give all of my nipples to Catherine Hunter, who plays Swiney, just because I think she is such an incredible character actor, and you should watch the Joel Cohen Macbeth where she plays the witches.

01:45:03
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, Amanda, how about you.

01:45:06
Speaker 3: One of my best friends has a third nipple, So I think I'm gonna give three full size nipples and one third nipple nipple if that's okay?

01:45:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, please.

01:45:19
Speaker 3: And I'm gonna give them all as well to one single person. Holly Waddington, the costume designer. Yeah.

01:45:28
Speaker 2: Oh yes, Oscar winner Holly Waddington.

01:45:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, like truly life changing for me.

01:45:38
Speaker 1: She did a great job. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for joining us for this discussion.

01:45:42
Speaker 2: What a blast we did it. We figured it out.

01:45:45
Speaker 1: We cracked the code.

01:45:47
Speaker 3: Oh my god, what a distinct pleasure. Thank you so much.

01:45:52
Speaker 2: Where can we find you online? Where can we buy your new book? Tell us everything?

01:45:56
Speaker 3: Oh that's so nice. So my book is available April ninth, wherever you buy books and hardback ebook audiobook. I read it myself, and you can find my podcast Sounds Like a Cult on all major podcast platforms. Episodes come out on Tuesdays, and stay tuned because these two right here are gonna come on for an episode on Sounds Like a Cult whose topic we're still noodling. It's a show about the modern day cults we all follow, and we're still debating between the cult of Shrek and the cult of Leo DiCaprio. There is a right answer. So far, the listeners have voted for the wrong answer. But I got so many dms specifically requesting the right answer that who knows, we might we might have to stop in the middle of the episode and end up doing who knows, So anyway, that sounds like a cult. And then I am reluctantly on Instagram at Amanda Underscore Motel and I have a substack very good.

01:46:56
Speaker 2: You can find us on Instagram and some Timestell Twitter, at Bechdel Cast. Individually, we are at jamiechrist Superstar and at Caitlin Tourande on Instagram, and you can join our Patreon aka Matreon. We're for five dollars a month. You can get two bonus episodes and access to over one hundred and fifty episodes of back catalog.

01:47:19
Speaker 1: Sleigh, that's right. You can buy our merch at teapublic dot com, slash the Bechdel Cast, and you can see us live on our Shrektanner tour in May in various cities abroad for US.

01:47:36
Speaker 2: Yes, in the UK and Dublin. Oh that's huge, So.

01:47:40
Speaker 1: Go to our link tree link tree slash Bechdel Cast for tickets to those shows. And with that a Google Goga Bye bye.

01:47:49
Speaker 2: Goog goga wineglass clink. We did it, ladies. The man's a goat dundu and let's go goats bye.

01:48:03
Speaker 1: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by mo La Boord. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskressensky. Our logo in merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree slash Bechdel Cast