One Battle After Another with Jess, the PrideBrarian

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start
changing it with the Bechdelcast.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Attention Bechtelcast listeners, we are going on tour.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
And we know we've been on tour many times over
the years, but guess what? This is a very, very,
very special tour that can only happen one time because
it is our 10 year anniversary. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
We are doing a 10 year, whoops, we didn't dismantle
the patriarchy tour.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Anniversary tour. We're so excited. Yeah, we want to really
ring this anniversary in, in style. So throughout the next year,
we will be traveling around the U.S. and Canada doing
our 10-year anniversary celebration show. And we are starting. We
are kicking it off in the Northeast this October.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
With shows in New York City. Ever heard of it?
On October 12th. Baltimore, October 15th. Philadelphia, October 17th. State College,
October 18th. Pittsburgh, October 19th. And Boston, October 21st.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
We are really going to go big. And because it's
so close to Halloween, we would highly encourage you to
dress up as your favorite movie character. We certainly will
be doing so. And it's just going to be a
big celebration. I'm so damn excited.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
You can buy tickets at Linktree slash Bechtelcast. All of
our ticket links are listed there.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
We will see you there, Northeast, and see you rest
of the U.S. and also Canada very soon. See you there.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
The Bechtelcast.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Jamie, Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Caitlin, I've been drinking Mike's Heart Lemonade for 4,000 years.
You cannot expect me to remember a sequence of three things.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Well, then how do I know that you are who
you say you are?

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Oh, my God. Well, maybe let's make a little misogynist.
Isn't it wild in that moment that it's a little
misogynist comment that ends up getting him out of the jam? Right?

Speaker 4 (02:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
You know, I kind of forgot about that. I remembered...
having a giggle of my first watch at him not
remembering but anyways uh yeah we actually we should have
a secret password for the podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Oh yeah what if yeah what if one of us
is an imposter that's.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
True what i mean i guess yeah we we could
answer so many embarrassing questions about the other though that
i feel like we would be able to figure it
out pretty quickly for sure for sure yeah yeah Well,
welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
My name is Caitlin Durante. This is our show where
we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the
Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. And Jamie,
what on earth is that?

Speaker 3 (03:03):
Well, the Bechdel test is a media metric created by
friend of the show, friend of the pod. We've met
her two whole times, Alison Bechdel, who originally made the
Bechdel test as just a one-off joke in her wonderful
comics collection, Dykes to Watch Out For, that was at
the time about how specifically the queer community did not

(03:27):
have explicit representation on screen and would look to sort
of shipping characters in order to create representation in And
has since sort of been adapted into a far more
mainstream media metric. The version that we use, there's many
versions of the test. The version we use requires that
two characters with names of a marginalized gender speak to

(03:51):
each other about something other than a man for more
than two meaningful lines of dialogue. It is our favorite
way to figure out if people actually listen to the
show or not, because we only really talk about it
for about 30 seconds at the end of every episode.
But it's a good North Star. It's a good North
Star to talk about representation and intersectionality. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
And today we have an episode on One Battle After Another,
the movie that was the talk of the town last year.
And we have an incredible guest joining us. She analyzes
representation in media. She is a three-time Emmy-nominated TV producer.
It's Jess, a.k.a.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
The Pribrarian.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Hello. Hello and welcome.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
Hi, guys. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Thanks so much for being here.

Speaker 4 (04:41):
I'm so nervous and excited to be here. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Well, truly like your work is so incredible and so
thorough and so succinct. Like as we were talking about
you coming in the show, it was like, wow, uh,
you know, she can put into four sentences, but it
takes us three hours to articulate. So we're very happy
to have you.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
I appreciate that. I will admit though, it takes me
a while to write down everything and then edit it
into those few sentences, but you know, we'll see how
this goes. Like I am pretty, pretty, what is the word?
I talk a lot. We'll say that.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Then this is going to be perfect.

Speaker 4 (05:21):
Yes, indeed.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Tell us a little bit about your history. I mean,
I know it just came out last year, but what
is your history with One Battle? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:29):
So last year I was obsessed with Sinners and I
saw it maybe three or four times in the movies.
And I was like, this movie is going to win
Best Picture. And then I started to hear about one
battle after another. And I was like, okay, well, you know,
maybe I should, I should check this out. It had

(05:52):
prominent black female characters. And I was like, okay, you know,
I can watch this. Let's see, let's see how this goes.
And I was with my boyfriend and he's like, I
don't want to see this movie. I was like, oh,
you know, let's, let's, let's give it a shot. Let's,
let's see, let's see if it has any substance to it.
And I guess I wish I would have listened to

(06:13):
him because it's, it's just not, it's not my favorite.
And I rewatched it for this podcast and I tried
to go in with an objective lens, you know, to,
to just analyze it and see if there was, you know,
anything there and, and nope. Again, it was just not,

(06:34):
not a great watch. So I hope I'm not, you know,
putting down any of your, if it was one of
your favorite movies, but you know.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
No i mean we are here we are here to
set aside any enjoyment of the movie we might have
had and we're we're here to to really have some
discourse about.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
It we come to this place for discourse.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
For discourse fighting words uh jamie what about you what's
your relationship with it.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
I guess I'm assuming we all have like a similar
like we all we all saw it last year when
it came out. Yeah, I was looking I was sort
of reflecting on I remember this is like one of
many movies I have left with my partner and immediately
gotten into an argument because he was like, I don't know,
I liked it. And I was like, well, but what
about this? And I like. A number of PTA's movies.

(07:31):
I think probably my favorite is Phantom Thread, which we
still haven't covered on the show. I really love that movie.
I was curious what the story was going to be,
how he's going to tackle it. And I left feeling
pretty frustrated, even though craftsmanship-wise, it's a very thrilling movie.

(07:52):
It's very well made. It's very well acted. I'm not
arguing that part of it. But just in terms of like,
you know, who he chooses to focus on and the
tropes that he utilizes to continue to focus on the
DiCaprio character was frustrating when I first saw it. And
especially when you're watching it not to be thrilled or

(08:13):
to get through a plane ride or whatever the case
may be. it gets more frustrating. I mean, my, my
real like thing I was clenching my fists about when
we left that first viewing was the Regina Hall's character, Deandra,
just like he gives her nothing. And it makes me
so like, I, we're, we're big Regina.

Speaker 4 (08:35):
Hall wasted opportunity.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
I mean, like truly, I'm very excited to get into
it because this for me kind of boils down to like,
who is making movies about revolutionaries and who they're going
to be inclined to focus on. Because I feel like,
for me, with the exception of Chase Infinity's character, there's
so many supporting characters that are 20 times more interesting

(08:59):
than the two white guys that end up sort of
pushing the narrative. Or don't even end up pushing the narrative,
but are at the center of the story. But I
think the Regina Hall character was just so egregious to me.
I was like, she... He didn't let her do anything. No.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
And do we even know how things turn out for her?
I feel like she's just kind of written out of
the story.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
And we don't know anything. And it's like, how do
you not end that arc? We had, you know, perfidia.
We know how she betrays the revolution. You never get
to see, I think her name's Deidre. Yeah. In the movie,
you don't get to see her make that choice and
it's left up to interpretation. And I'm like, that's not,

(09:45):
If you're going to have one character kind of betray,
you need that character, the other one to kind of
show the other side of it, the one that is actually,
because Deidre definitely felt like the actual revolutionary.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Yes, the only one. one who sees it through.

Speaker 4 (10:01):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Who wouldn't rat out her friend.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
Yes, thank you. So it's like, it would have been
great to see that on screen, but we're robbed of it.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Totally. Yeah, so I found it frustrating. This was my
first time returning to it since... that first viewing, I have, yeah,
I have a lot of thoughts, but I think for me, like,
especially doing some deep dive into what the feminist community's
reception of this movie was, what the leftist community's reception
of this movie was, and specifically what the black feminist

(10:32):
community's reception of this movie was, there's like so, there's
so much to take in. And I feel like the
question that I was trying to like get to the
core of on this last viewing was like, what does
the French 75 stand for? And I am frustratingly unable
to answer that question. It's really vague, yeah. And I

(10:52):
think intentionally so, and I'm very excited to talk about it. Yeah, Caitlin,
what's your history with this movie? Same thing.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
I saw it in theaters the one time, and I
will admit that Because I was not watching it through
any sort of critical or analytical lens, I enjoyed it.
But I was also aware of and participating in the criticism,
especially of the movie's treatment of the black women characters.

(11:25):
That was present from the very onset of the movie's release.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
So I was aware.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
Of that going in. And to your point, Jamie, like
you said, it's it's well acted. It looks good. It
was filmed in Vista vision. I don't really even know
what that means, but I guess that's significant.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
But and the performance, I mean, like especially the the
women's performances in this movie are are amazing. It's just
like I just wish that they had characters, thoughtful material
to go off.

Speaker 4 (11:57):
Yeah. Yeah. It feels like everybody was on their A-game
with the craftsmanship of moviemaking and the moving image, but
the writing and messaging is where it fell off. And
just because you have... you know, nice cinematography and, and
great acting that does not make a good story.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
That does not a good movie make.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Exactly.

Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yes. Right.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
But it gives us a lot to talk about and
I'm excited to dive in. Shall we take a quick
break and then come back for the recap?

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
And here is the recap of One Battle After Another.
We meet Perfidia Beverly Hills, played by Tiana Taylor, and Pat,
played by Leonardo DiCaprio. They are a couple, and they
are both members of an anti-fascist militant resistance group called

(13:05):
the French 75. Other members include D'Andra, played by Regina Hall,
a character named Jungle Pussy, played by the rapper of
the same name.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Jungle Pussy, yeah. Again, wish she had had more to do.
And the fact that we learn that she's dead via
a joke later in the movie doesn't sit well with me.
It's so gross.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
I was also very happy to see her in the movie.
I remember that was like that got a huge pop
in my theater because we're like, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
So the group breaks into an immigration detention center at
the U.S.-Mexico border to liberate the 300 or so people
who have been detained there. One of the military officials
stationed there is Captain Steven Lockjaw played by Sean Penn,

(13:58):
who perfidia approaches gun pointed at him. She's berating him.
And then she tells him to get it up, AKA
get a boner.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
And he does.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Then the group gets away after successfully completing their mission.
Profitia and Bob are all horny about it. So basically
everyone is aroused in some capacity.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
Not us, though.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Not us. No, we're just like, wow, so many gross
looking men in a row.

Speaker 4 (14:34):
And this is like the first five to ten minutes
of the movie and it just already is making you cringe.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
I was not expecting to see Sean Penn's boner, like,
close-up of his boner within the first few minutes.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
You're just like, we paid to see that, is the
alarming thing. Yeah, and again, as we'll be talking about
throughout the episode, I'm sure, like, if you're looking for
some insight into perfidia here, don't hold your breath.

Speaker 4 (15:09):
Mm-mm. Yeah, this is definitely where my red flags were
going up. And again, like five minutes into the movie,
it's like, okay, please, please don't make her this stereotype.
What's called the Jezebel stereotype. I was like, it's 2025.

(15:29):
Have we not moved past these things?

Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (15:34):
As you said, Jamie, there's not much there, and it's very,
very frustrating and very, very, for me watching it, degrading
to see a black woman just be treated in this way.
And she's such a good actress. So to see not
only that play out on screen, but then to get

(15:55):
awarded as such just tells me, as someone in the industry, that, again,
our stories are just... not what matters. Our stories are,
it feels like our story, Black women's stories are always
there to be a side character in someone else's story.

(16:17):
And a lot of the times stereotypes are used as
shorthand because we are not made to be a full
human being in stories. We're there to be the MacGuffin.
Like in this, both Profitia and her daughter are just
there to be fought over by these two white main characters.

(16:37):
And I really, I know that we're only just starting
the movie, but like, I really, really hoped that that
wouldn't be the case. And again, this is just another
form of disappointment from, from this industry for me.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
Absolutely. And so much of, I don't know, I mean,
there was so much discourse around this movie, which we
are continuing the grand tradition of here. And I'm very
happy we are. But I think what I found so
consistently frustrating in, like, the stereotypes being presented are so unchallenged.

(17:13):
that I don't think that I've, I've seen some kind
of attempts to argue that it's like an attempt to subvert,
but it's, but I think the fact that we have
no insight into perfidia, I mean, that, that is kind
of like all you need to know about where this
movie's priorities lie. I don't have an issue with the
fact that, you know, whatever, it's like, I'm not going

(17:34):
to police the morality of a person who doesn't exist
and be like, why did she rat? Was this blah, blah, blah.
What does, I mean, I think how that relates to,
Who that character seems to be referencing is worth discussing
because people have... And Teyana Taylor said that she pulled
from Assata Shakur, who is not a rat, even remotely.

Speaker 4 (17:53):
That was her whole... The point of her fleeing.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
She was... famously not around.

Speaker 4 (17:58):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
I don't have issues with like perfidia, you know, ratting
people out. I have issues with having no idea why
that is. Like it's, if you're, if you're going to
write a character that makes the choices that perfidia does, like,
I feel like it is like your responsibility as a
writer to give us some insight or you're just perpetuating

(18:21):
the stereotype, which is what he's doing.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
I don't think he had in his mind to make
her a character. Like the, That wasn't even a thought
in his head. He's like, this is what she is.
She's hot. They want her and that's it. But that
thought process is what we should be trying to flip
around in this industry. My whole thing is representation. And
I think that if we had better representation for marginalized

(18:48):
characters on screen, it's a tool in order to help
us be seen as more human in our society. But roles,
movies like this continue to perpetuate that we are not human,
that our stories don't matter. And like you were saying,
you wanted to know her story, but the stopping of

(19:12):
that is just a very, very old practice within Hollywood.
And not to go too media theory, but like there's
a name for it called symbolic annihilation in which- Either
you don't show marginalized characters or you show them in
a stereotypical way. And the point is to reduce their

(19:34):
power within society. And so the more you don't show
us as human, the more our quote unquote power is reduced.
And that's what that felt like. And that's where that
degrading feeling that I was like, here we go again.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
I don't understand.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
Why you couldn't just, she's in the movie, Profitia's in
the movie for like less than 15 minutes of a
three hour movie.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 4 (19:59):
Yeah. And she is the catalyst for the entire story.
And we know nothing about her.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Right.

Speaker 4 (20:07):
How does that happen?

Speaker 3 (20:08):
Truly.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
The one little glimpse of backstory we get for her
is something her mother says, which is that she comes
from three generations of revolutionaries, which also even more begs
the question, why does she rat if she comes from
a long lineage of revolutionaries and she should know better?

(20:31):
But yeah, to your point, Jess, this is a conversation
we've had on the podcast over the years of either, yeah,
movies pretending that marginalized people simply just don't exist. This
comes up whenever we talk about like the versions of
New York City where only white people live. Or, yeah,

(20:51):
or it's the. inclusion of marginalized people but they are
there to be a stereotype they are there to be
the butt of a.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
Joke or in the case of this movie pretty consistently
they're set dressing there's so many extended sequences where people
of color are just meant to set a scene for
like dicaprio to walk through essentially yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:17):
Like the entire uh I know we've kind of gone
off of the recap, but like the entire... Classic us.
Sequence of him going with the sensei.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yes, the whole del Toro sequence.

Speaker 4 (21:32):
And that could have been such, honestly, like, I would
have loved to just see a movie about his character. Yes, yes.
The real revolutionary, like, it almost is like a movie
within a movie. It's like, And we're watching Leonardo flop
around on screen and it's like, no, I want the
actual revolutionary movie that's over there.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
He has built this whole sanctuary for undocumented migrants in
his community that he's offering safe.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Cool as a cucumber the whole time. And I know
that I'm sure, or I guess I want to believe
that That is intentional where we can't see DiCaprio complete
a phone call. He can't do fucking anything. And then
you are watching Benicio Del Toro's character just hyper-competently, cool

(22:24):
as a cucumber, knows exactly what to do. But again,
it's like, who is our focus with? Who are our
priorities with? And whose community do we get to know?
And it's certainly not the sensei's.

Speaker 4 (22:35):
Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
In any case, we've met the French 75. We also
see them do a series of other acts of revolutionary violence.
You might even call them one battle after another, which
they say out loud in the movie.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Always fun. And we're cheering.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
And Lockjaw observes Perfidia from afar and starts masturbating. It
seems that his previous interaction with perfidia has either unlocked
a fetish for him, or maybe he already had it
in the sense that he fetishizes black women, but he

(23:22):
has his attention on perfidia. And then one day he
approaches her and tells her that he will let her
keep doing what she's doing. as a member of this
resistance group, if she meets up with him so that
he can basically indulge his fetish. And she does. They

(23:44):
have some sort of sexual encounter. It's not totally clear
everything they get up to. But we cut to several
months later and Perfidia is pregnant.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
She's pregnant. She is. Sorry.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
I'm so sorry. She is pregnant. The baby is born.
Her name is Charlene. And Prophidia seems to be experiencing
postpartum depression, which is also something that barely gets explored.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Very glazed over.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Although that was something that, because another very valid critique
of this movie was how... unwilling PTA was to acknowledge
it as a political film in interviews, which we can
talk about.

Speaker 4 (24:33):
Makes no sense.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
I'm like, then why fucking do it, man? Whatever, we'll
get there. But yeah, he does explicitly say that perfidia
is struggling with postpartum Which is an interesting thing to
confirm for, again, just like a script that has no
curiosity about how that experience, like it's so invested in

(24:55):
portraying Pat slash Bob's confusion and the fact that he
is a good father, capital G, capital F, that like
it's completely disinterested in her experience with what he says
himself is postpartum depression. Yeah, it's very frustrating. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
So she's dealing with that. And she also insists on
continuing her work with the French 75, even though Pat
is like, um, we have a baby to take care of.
And she's like, I don't care about all that. And
then she participates in a bank robbery that goes wrong
and she is arrested. And while she's in custody, Lockjaw

(25:40):
pays her a visit and says that he can help
her avoid prison.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
If she names names.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
While that's happening, Pat has to flee. He has to
take the baby somewhere and lay low. A fellow comrade
named Howard Somerville gives Pat an envelope full of information
that he needs to memorize and then destroy, as well
as a set of trust devices, which they're hard to explain,

(26:10):
but Basically, if your device is near another person's device,
they will kind of activate each other. And it's a
sign that you can trust whoever other person has that device.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
I forgot to look into if these things are real
or if it's deus ex. It's like a little plot machine.
I genuinely don't know. I forgot to look it up.

Speaker 4 (26:30):
Same.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
I don't know either.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
It's a fun idea. I mean, I guess the movie
does bear out that it is ill-advised and maybe just
sounds cool versus is helpful.

Speaker 4 (26:43):
Right.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Anyway, Pat and Charlene are given new identities. They are
now Bob and Willa Ferguson, and they drive off into
the night. Meanwhile, Perfidia has ratted out her friends, some
of whom are hunted down and killed. And in exchange

(27:05):
for this, she is put in witness protection.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
A little, I guess, PTA Easter egg that I thought
was fun, and I think maybe all directors should do
this is in that perfidia rats out her friends montage
where we see a lot of the french 75 agents
or members i guess get killed he kills off the
protagonist of his last movie alana heim which maybe directors

(27:29):
should just do that at the beginning they should just
kill off the protagonist of the previous.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Movie which i i fucking hated licorice pizza.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
I also did not like licorice pizza, but I just
think as a rule of practice, I thought that was
kind of funny that he was like, oh, you liked her? Well,
she's not in this one.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Especially because that actor is a Zionist. Oh, I did
not know that.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
The Heim sisters were.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
I don't know about all of them, but at least
Alana has been vocally supportive of Israel.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
Well, and that won't be the last mention of Zionism
in this episode, unfortunately.

Speaker 4 (28:10):
Nope.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Okay, so Lockjaw goes to visit Perfidia in witness protection
and like rekindle whatever they had going on. But she
has fled to Mexico. And this really hurts Lockjaw's little feelings.
And then we cut to 16 years later. We meet

(28:35):
a teenage Willa, played by Chase Infinity.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Is that really her name?

Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah. Chase Infinity?

Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah, that's her.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Sounds like a bank.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
I know, but it is her government name.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
Wow, interesting.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
Sorry.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
But yeah, she's studying some type of martial art with
Sergio San Carlos, a.k.a. Sensei, played by Benicio Del Toro. Meanwhile,
Lockjaw has been invited to be considered for membership in
something called the Christmas Adventurers Club, which made me burst

(29:12):
out laughing in the theater. And I was like, oh, wait,
that's that is what it's called.

Speaker 4 (29:18):
I will say that's the only thing that I took
from this movie. I now call all white supremacists Christmas Avengers.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
I mean, I think it's fitting because, yes, they are
this like alt-right white supremacy hate group that's like super
secretive and exclusive.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
And the members of the group ask Lockjaw several questions, including,
has he ever engaged in an interracial relationship? And he says, no,
no way. And then they tell him that they're going
to investigate his past to make sure he meets their

(30:01):
standards for membership. But obviously, Lockjaw did engage in an
interracial relationship with Perfidia. And he also knows that she
got pregnant and had a baby right around the time
that they were engaging in this relationship. And uh-oh, what
if he's the father?

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
So he has some of his military buddies abduct Howard Somerville,
the guy who helped Bob and Willa get away all
of those years ago. And also he's abducted while he's
basically recording a podcast.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
He is independently podcasting when abducted by the feds.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
I thought he was broadcasting to the network or whatever.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
It might have been a live broadcast.

Speaker 4 (30:45):
And I was like, why is he saying all this?
And that makes more sense now that it's a podcast.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
It might be a live broadcast. I'm not entirely sure.
But I like to think he was podcasting. A fellow podcaster.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
Podcasters have their place in the road. I'm just kidding.
We don't.

Speaker 4 (31:02):
Revolutionary to podcast pipeline.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
Yeah, we're really doing the good work here.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
So Somerville gives up information about Bob and Willa and
where they live. which is a sanctuary city called Bacton Cross,
which I believe is in California or it's not a
real place, but it's like set in, I think like
Northern California question mark.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure like every Paul Thomas
Anderson movie basically is somewhere in the San Fernando Valley.

Speaker 4 (31:36):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
So, so Lockjaw heads to Bacton Cross with an army of,
basically ICE agents, because he is using the deportation of
undocumented immigrants who are living and working in Bacton Cross
as a cover for this personal mission of his to
track down Bob and Willa. Meanwhile, Willa goes to a

(32:04):
high school dance, and Lockjaw is on his way to
kidnap her, but D'Andra, the Regina Hall character, gets to
her first to help her get away. And Deandra's trust
device activates Willa's device. So even though Willa doesn't know Deandra,
she knows to trust her and she agrees to go

(32:26):
with her. Meanwhile, a member of the resistance calls Bob
to alert him of what's going on. And she's speaking
in code and he needs to speak in code back
to confirm that he is who he says he is.
But he's high and it's been 84 years since he

(32:48):
memorized all of that information. So he has trouble remembering.
And he definitely doesn't remember at all where the rendezvous
point is. And they refuse to tell him unless... he
can remember a particular line of code.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
He's just so incompetent.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
I did laugh at the part where he says he
has fried his brain from abusing drugs and alcohol. But yeah,
he is very incompetent. And he goes to Sensei for help.
they're running around, they're trying to dodge this ice raid

(33:27):
that's happening slash the military presence that's all over the city.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
And again, this is like essentially used by the movie
and very like, I mean, it, the, the way that
the scene is set is definitely convincing, but it's, it's like,
so as we're watching the sensei take Bob through this sequence,
it is like, unquestionably set dressing of an act of

(33:51):
horrific state violence to get us from point A to
point B for Bob. And I was also, I mean,
I think the first time I saw it in the theater,
I didn't think too much about it because it is,
it is very like propulsive and exciting to like watch
these like long shots. But I was also, I'm curious

(34:12):
what you both think, or like if there's something I'm
missing of like, I know that like Bob is, I
wrote it in my notes. He's like the Ringo of
the French 75. He was there as well, but he's
no one's favorite member. So I understand why the sensei

(34:32):
would know who he is and have some reverence for that.
But I was in the middle of what the sensei
is doing, which seems consequential to hundreds of people. Why
is he prioritizing Bob?

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Bob.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
Why is he getting arrested for Bob?

Speaker 4 (34:49):
Cause Bob's the main character. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
Exactly. It's like, and I felt silly for not like
thinking harder about that the first time, because you're like, well, yeah,
I guess this is what's happening. But on, on the rewatch,
you're like, he's, he is like protecting so many people
and he's going to take the fall for Bob. Come on.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
He should have been like, sorry, Bob, I've got bigger
fish to fry.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Or even just say like, this is as far as
I can take you or something.

Speaker 4 (35:18):
But that's kind of the sacrifice of marginalized characters. Their
lives are on the line, but we got to help Bob.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
But they're there to serve the white protagonist.

Speaker 4 (35:29):
So who cares about if they're going to die or
get deported or if children are going to be separated
from their families? Don't think about that. Think about Bob
getting his cell phone thing to work. You know, that's
what's important.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
And I think that's the tricky thing about this movie
being a well-made and well-performed movie is that like, I
didn't think about that until my second viewing. Like that's,
I don't know. That's also perhaps a skill issue on
my end.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
I don't think so. You know, you're watching a movie
for the first time. Everything is coming at you. It's
all new information that, you know, it's hard to process
super thoroughly on the first watch.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
And there's so much going on that like there were
things that I miss, like the layers of, I guess,
the audacity of this movie, just like how much it
pushes people to the side for these two men to just,
Like it's almost like we're watching people's lives get disrupted

(36:31):
and ruined for their own narrative. And that's frustrating to me. Yes.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
Which is, I, and I love, I love a 40
hour recap, but it's like, there's just so much going
on here where I feel as if, and I think like, sure,
fair enough. But I was thinking about it in the
context of this movie of like how it is like,
to me, at least like clearly like, Part of what

(36:57):
PTA is trying to say here is that the white
protagonists of this movie, including DiCaprio, are ineffectual. They're constantly
in the way and they're acting selfishly. Obviously, Sean Penn
is like the most egregious example of that. He's literally Mr.
White supremacy. But that, you know, DiCaprio is like cannot

(37:19):
get out of his own way, can't do anything, can't
really be of assistance to anyone and has to stumble
his way to the finish line. And it's like, okay,
that is like, I guess, a true and valid point
that so many white men, even in these contexts, are
not helpful. And they're not helpful to the cause. They're

(37:41):
not helpful to themselves. But I feel like he accomplishes
making that point by ignoring so many other perspectives and
underwriting so many other characters and to be like, look
at this character. He's such a, like, he's such a fool.
It's like, well, sure. But what else do you got?
And I feel like the answer is maybe not very much. I, I,

(38:03):
I thought it was like a, um, it's an interesting perspective.

Speaker 4 (38:06):
Cause I didn't, I didn't think of it that way.
Like I thought it was more like, this is his
self insert character. And like, this is what I would
be doing during the revolution. Uh, and yes, Paul may
not be helpful, but he's still the, the main character
of it. And it felt like this, his name is Paul,

(38:28):
Paul Thomas Anderson.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
Knowing that he does have like a black wife and
all that kind of stuff. It felt like his like,
I don't want to say manifesto, but like, his kind
of gift to the revolution. Like, this is my art.
I'm going to make it about the revolution, quote unquote.
And this is what I have to say about it. Like,
that's what I thought it was. But I guess that

(38:52):
is a valid point that he may have been trying
to say that these white dudes are getting in the way.
But if he is saying that, then I don't think
he did a great job of displaying that. Like if
that was his intent, totally because still in the end,

(39:13):
you know, Sean Penn's character does die, but like Leonardo is,
he continues to be the hero, even though his daughter
does help out and stuff like that. It is solely
from his perspective of winning the day.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
So I agree. And I also feel like, and like the,
ending of this movie frustrated me the first time I
saw it and really frustrated me this time, because like
you're saying, Jess, like it is, it does seem like
a movie that he, I mean, he has enough in
common with the DiCaprio character that you have to wonder
there's references to Maya Rudolph's family and, that I didn't

(39:48):
pick up on in the first viewing where he, he
calls like perfidious mother is called grandma Minnie. And Maya
Rudolph's mother was like the iconic singer, Minnie Riperton. Like
there's references like scattered throughout. And he is the white
father to a biracial child, you know? So it's like,
clearly these things were on his mind. And also I

(40:09):
didn't realize in the like inspiration, it's not an adaptation.
I don't know what it is, but like in the
Thomas Pynchon novel, this movie is like pulling from perfidia
is not a black character. She's a white woman. So
like these are choices that he's intentionally making. But I
totally agree, Jess, like that, you know, the DiCaprio character,
especially doesn't really end up having to take a lot

(40:34):
of consequence or even questioning about his, You would think
at the end that Chase Infinity's character would have a
lot of reason to be very upset with him. But
the thing that bothers me about the ending is that
it seems like PTA being like, maybe the kids will
figure it out. And you're like, no man, your generation
still holds all the institutional power. You can't just be like,

(40:56):
best of luck to my kids. Like, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (40:59):
Fascinating. I did not know that about the original novel.
I do wonder like how different perfidious characters from the novel.
And maybe you two might have that answer, but like,
were the, the traits of like just being hyper-sexualized the
same as in a novel as they were in the
movie or, Or were those traits given to Prophidia in

(41:22):
the movie? And I don't know which is worse, because
if it is the same as in the novel, then
you put a black woman into that and made her
that stereotype. Or Thomas, Thomas Anderson? What's his name?

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Paul Thomas Anderson.

Speaker 4 (41:42):
Oh, Paul Thomas.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Oh, yes. Okay, because it's also Thomas Pynchon. There's too
much Thomas going on.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
Love Thomas. Or it's that there weren't those traits in
the novel. And I'm going to forget his name. Paul
Thomas Anderson then gave her those traits willingly. And that's
scary because that means that you did that consciously. And
I really don't know which is worse.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
I can't speak to how the Perfidia counterpart character in
the book is characterized. I haven't read the book, although
I did a little bit of reading on the differences
between the book and the movie. And like you said, Jamie,
you can barely call it an adaptation because there's so

(42:30):
much of it that paul thomas anderson invented on his
own he pulls different things from the book but there's
a lot that he either omits or changes.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
So it seems like most of the like the skeleton
of the story is similar but most of the character
specifics are very much paul thomas anderson's gotcha okay so
that's not great yeah i was like there's not a
good answer.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
And and i guess yeah like either way you're right
like Either way, the outcome is the same. You get
a very, very hyper-sexualized black woman that plays into a
stereotype that we have just seen... You know what? I'm
going to go into it. That is a story that

(43:18):
has just been passed down since slavery. And it is
so ingrained in our society that he just might not
even know that that is a stereotype that he was
playing into. if he put her into that situation, or
if he didn't, then he was doing it. I don't
know if malicious is the word, but it felt malicious.

(43:41):
But that Jezebel stereotype, which is the hyper-sexualized Black woman,
she is promiscuous to a fault. And it was a
story that slave masters kind of told themselves that Black
people had, sorry, that Black people had larger sex organs

(44:02):
and that made them more promiscuous so that when selling men,
they could say, look at his large sex organ. He
can produce a lot more slaves for you going forward.
And for women, we got, I can't even say the
short end of the stick because we're talking about slavery,
but like for women, it was more, it gave slave

(44:26):
masters an excuse to use sexual violence against us. We
were the temptresses that were seducing them and they had
no power over us. And so they just had to
lie with us. But it was that psychological story that
allowed them to have the excuse to feel like they

(44:48):
were constantly in the right. I feel like that's a,
I always bring it up, but like Ta-Nehisi Coates has
a great like passage in his book, The Message that
says that like, if you're going to do such plunders
against other human beings, you have to tell yourself a
story in order to coax your own guilt. And that

(45:10):
is what that Jezebel stereotype is. And look how it
is 400 years later, and we are still using it.
And so that is the, again, going back to symbolic annihilation,
that is the harm that we have been enduring for
400 years in that that is the, the narrative violence

(45:30):
we have been enduring based on that stereotype. And that's, that's,
I have to express, like, I think people don't understand
like how powerful the media is and how powerful representation
is because it's not just what we're seeing on screen.
We don't just intake a movie and then that's it.
It stays with us. And if we're perpetuating these things

(45:52):
over and over again, it gets ingrained in us. And,
these stereotypes just cause real world harm. And in this
case for this specific stereotype, it like, there's no correlation
between watching something and then someone doing violence, but there

(46:14):
is correlation. I read a study on it. When people
see these over sexualized images, then we do have a
psychological tolerance for them. Like when it happens to women
in our real lives. And I just want to express
that when I saw this movie, that is what I

(46:37):
got from it. I know that it is beautifully shot.
I know that it is like a lot of artistry
went into it, but a cherry on top of a
shit cake is still a shit cake. You know what
I mean?

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah. And that's one of the many insidious things about
media tropes is that tropes beget more tropes. So, you know,
the filmmakers who perpetuate tropes watched it happen in the
media that they consumed as a younger person. And then
they're like, oh, well, that's just what, that's what black

(47:11):
people are like. That's what black women are like. So
I'll put it in my movie as well.

Speaker 4 (47:15):
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
It's all so frustrating to me because First of all, Jess,
thank you for that analysis of the Jezebel character, which
is so clearly where perfidy is coming from. And it
just gets back to, I feel like, who gets to
tell stories about revolution? Because PTA seems to sort of

(47:37):
want to, but also very much not want to in
this story, where as you were describing all of the
tropes that come with the Jezebel trope and how extremely
harmful it is, Shades of that appear in what Sean
Penn's character says at the end of the movie when
he's describing his relationship with Perfidia and basically saying that

(48:02):
she assaulted him and that he has no choice but
to have sex with her. He also calls her a
witch and a warrior and talks about her in these
very mystical terms when he is in the car, when
he's kidnapped, Chase Infinity. And so it's like... Again, I

(48:22):
feel like the shortest version of saying it is like
PTA is not the person to be making a cogent
film about. black revolutionaries.

Speaker 4 (48:30):
Um, who would have thought?

Speaker 3 (48:32):
Yeah. Who could have said, and like, we'll get back
to this, but like all of this happening in the
same year that sinners came out and getting some awards
that sinners, uh, you know, I think we agree probably
deserve more, um, is so frustrating, but that like, he
knows enough about the way he's characterizing perfidia to put

(48:52):
those words into the mouth of the worst guy in
the movie, but he doesn't know or care enough i
don't mean to just let him off like doesn't care
enough to actually give us insight into perfidia and not
play into those tropes so that's what is like like
he's i do think that the fact that he puts

(49:12):
this jezebel trope language into the mouth of the villain
means he does know what he's doing so why the
fuck didn't he write a character Like, it's just, it's
so infuriating.

Speaker 4 (49:23):
And I do, I think that's a really good point. And,
you know, I don't want to take away us writing
stories about people from different groups and stuff like that. Like,
you totally can write a story about others but you
need to do your due diligence and it feels like

(49:44):
he stayed very much on the surface i don't know
if it's out of fear or like you said out
of a lack of caring but like not diving deeper
was a bigger disservice to the people you were supposedly
trying to tell the story about right right super super frustrating.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yeah The example I always go back to is Sofia
Coppola directing The Beguiled. And there is a black enslaved
character that she just completely omits because she's like, well,
I don't know how to write that. So that character
just isn't in my movie anymore.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:23):
See, but then that sounds ridiculous to me because it's like,
so because you... felt yourself incompetent, which, okay, that's a
cell phone, but, like, because you felt not up to
the task, then we've lost that representation for good then. Like, so,

(50:44):
what did that accomplish other than making yourself feel feel
better about.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
It right right and if you have to omit characters
because you don't feel equipped to tell their story then
maybe you shouldn't be the one making that movie.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Exactly sophia or just getting back to your point because
we've been talking about this for for 10 years and
can you believe no one's ever listened to us but
um but like that you know what that also says
is that you haven't done your due diligence. It doesn't
mean to erase the parts of a story and the

(51:19):
people that populate that story that make you uncomfortable or
you feel like you don't fully understand. That means that
maybe this is not something you should be taking on
all by yourself. And I do think that there is
value in the fact that PTA can get a massive
budget and eyes on his stories. So it then becomes
kind of like your responsibility as a filmmaker and as

(51:40):
a writer to, to do right by the story you're telling.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:45):
And it's not, it's, I guess I shouldn't say it
like that, but like I was going to say, it's
not that hard because we have Google. You could just
literally look up what stereotypes are for each marginalized group
and then just avoid them. I don't know why. And,
and maybe it comes back to him trying to subvert things,
but then you didn't do a good job subverting it

(52:08):
because it's, And subversion is very, very difficult when it
comes to stereotypes because you first have to perpetuate that stereotype.
So you're already feeding back into it and then subvert it.
But you're still showing it. So I'm not really for
the subversion of stereotypes anymore as we're feeding the machine

(52:31):
that we're trying to get rid of, you know.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
Yeah, it reminds me of like when like a satirical
film will. be like see look at this trope but
then they just still do it because they're presenting it
but they're.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Like we know it's a trope but here it is
and you're like okay so what are you so what's
what's the point yeah this is also i i'm worried
i'm gonna forget to mention it later but this was
like one of the i think because i didn't know
anything about this movie going into it except this is
like a filming detail but i think it's worth mentioning
because i find it So, especially in a movie that

(53:08):
it's just like absurd that anyone would be like, well,
I don't want to talk about the politics of it.
It's like, well, then make a different movie. Make Licorice
Pizza 2 or whatever. But like, but that in the
shooting of this movie, there was a sequence. I don't
know what sequence. was shot in Sacramento on location. And
there were unhoused encampments that were fully swept to make

(53:30):
room for the filming of certain sequences in one battle
after another.

Speaker 4 (53:34):
Are you kidding me?

Speaker 3 (53:36):
I'm not. Because I remember, shout out to We The Unhoused,
that we talked about that on that show. Like, that...
Hollywood productions, especially in California and New York, will very
frequently have no issue with not just presenting really insidious
stereotypes around unhoused people, but also literally displace unhoused people

(53:57):
to tell those stories. And so in a movie that
is so clearly... at least in a surface way, touching
on displacement to displace people in service of doing that.
Like that, that was just like one of the things
that I remember that was like what I took into
the theater being like, cause I just, I, that's so

(54:19):
vile and, to me. And that's, you know, that's the
film industry and city governments working like that. It takes
more than Warner Brothers wanting a sweep to happen to
make it happen. But I just, it's still just very,
especially with what this movie appears to want you to
think it's doing is very gross.

Speaker 4 (54:37):
It's like performative activism. Like the movie wants you to
make it feel like it's for revolution while literally feeding
into the establishment that stops us from progressing as a society.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (54:53):
I did not know that. That makes me hate this more.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
It really pisses me off. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
No, it's infuriating.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
Well, I guess back to the recap.

Speaker 4 (55:05):
We're still recapping.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
Oh, my God. We're in like minute four of the movie.
We're about halfway through, I think.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
We're at the part where Sensei is helping Bob... get
to the rendezvous point, except that Bob still doesn't know
where that is. So he keeps calling the like resistance hotline.
And after several conversations, he is finally able to get
the rendezvous point, which is a place called Sisters of

(55:32):
the Brave Beaver. So Bob sets off toward that place.
He's like following a group of skateboarding parkour guys who
are like jumping from rooftop to rooftop. And Bob falls
off a roof and gets caught and arrested by the police.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
He gets tased. I did like the taste moment, the
DiCaprio getting tased moment.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah, I was for it. Meanwhile, Willa and D'Andra are
also making their way to the rendezvous point. Willa has
a secret cell phone, which her father didn't know about.
He doesn't let her have a phone because it can
be traced.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
I also did love that. I think that was my
favorite detail in the movie where it's like, I know
that he's updating the story from, I think like the
sixties and seventies into the modern era. And like, I
think that the way this movie, I don't know, I, I,
I really like paying attention to how a movie works
its way around the existence of phones. And I think
this movie threads that needle well, because of course she

(56:32):
has a secret phone. What the hell do you mean?

Speaker 4 (56:35):
She's a teenager.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
She's a teen girl.

Speaker 4 (56:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
The original, the, the book, Like the present of the
story takes place in like Reagan era 80s and then
like the flashbacks or whatever.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
It's like washed up hippies.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Yeah, the 60s and 70s. Got it. Anyway, so she
has a secret cell phone, which the military does trace
because one of her friends gives up her number. So
there's a lot of rats among them.

Speaker 4 (57:05):
And can we talk about that really quick? Like the
only LGBT character or outwardly LGBT character rats their friend out.
And it's like, this is kind of a problem with tokenism,
like where you only have one character representing an entire

(57:25):
group of people. That's the only image that people who
don't interact with the LGBT community get of our community. And,
and because I am, I am bisexual and all that
kind of stuff. But like that also pissed me off
because it's like, really, it could have been, there were
three friend characters and you picked the only one, the

(57:49):
only representation that we had and gave it to and
made them a, again, which does play into another stereotype
that LGBT people in media are usually villains and stuff
like that. That's an old stereotype that we're kind of
getting out of these days. But here again, this movie
just loves its stereotypes that, of course, that would happen.

(58:13):
And I feel like Paul Thomas Anderson, I feel like
we've been bouncing back and forth in whether he knows
or not. And I'm getting into the camp that he knows.
Because it's too many times that he uses very, very
specific stereotypes for marginalized characters. He knows they exist. And
I don't know if he cares. And so to me,

(58:37):
this movie then doesn't become... Well, it was never going
to be. I mean, a movie is not going to
be a revolutionary catalyst or anything like that. But it
felt like that's what it was trying to be.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
It cannot.

Speaker 4 (58:53):
It cannot throw so many marginalized people under the bus
and expect us to then want to go out.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
And incite revolution.

Speaker 4 (59:03):
Thank you. Yes.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
Yeah, that that was a wild one uh to to
to me where it's like i i i guess in
that specific case i like could not discern i'm like
just because there's like outside of chase infinity so few
young people get any sort of meaningful screen time that
i'm like even if it wasn't necessarily explicitly intended, it

(59:28):
looks really bad. It looks quite bad for the movie
because just the perspectives. For a movie that at its
end says the kids have got this probably, hopefully, I'm
going to stay home and smoke weed and wait for
my daughter to get home. For a movie to end
on that note and have really only interest in a

(59:49):
single character that is sort of being presented as the
next generation is... is a choice. For sure.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
Also, to go back to the queer character who rats
out Willa, the way they are talked about by the
protagonist of this movie, Bob, where it seems like Bob, like, sure,
I might be an anti-fascist revolutionary, but Things are too
woke these days.

Speaker 4 (01:00:17):
And I can't catch up.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
I can't understand. What does non-binary mean? Oh, you're triggered,
you little snowflake.

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
I will say there are some aging leftists that have
that behind.

Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
Fair, fair.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
But I feel like in this movie, that characteristic of
Bob is presented as it's definitely framed as a joke
like we're meant to like ha ha ha he's that's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Well yeah there's like the moment where the guy who
needs to know like what the password is or whatever
is like getting like it felt like a very kind
of cheap shot of like i'm triggered by the tone
of your voice.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
You're violating my safe space yeah right and that and
that he's bob is calling that person an ableist slur
he's saying you're you're ridiculous you snowflake and i think
that I think that we're supposed to like be endeared
to Bob with the way that he's responding to that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
Yeah, I agree. And I also think that he's like
in the form of that character on the phone who
is kind of being annoying. I think he's kind of
like creating a straw man because I'm like, I was
sort of frustrated with how organized leftists were presented in
certain moments where, I don't know. I mean, there's like

(01:01:34):
a lot of ways to look at it, but I
felt like, yeah, that phone operator in particular was sort
of like a snowflake straw man who I don't really
think exists in the world in quite that way. Right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
We should hope.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Okay. So Willa's phone is tracked. And so the military
have a sense of where she's headed.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Meanwhile, Willa and D'Andra arrive at Sisters of the Brave Beaver,
which turns out to be a convent full of nuns
who grow weed.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Fun.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Fun.

Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
And is that name like a euphemism?

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
Like.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
I was.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Curious about that. I think for sure, right? Beaver, come on.

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
Everything in this movie is very on the nose.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
Yeah, that feels like in the same camp as the
white supremacist Christmas club or whatever. You're just like, sure,
I guess that's what we're calling it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
And we also learn at some point that Willa thinks
her mom was a hero and that she is dead
and Lockjaw killed her. She doesn't know that her mom
ratted out her friends and then ditched everyone. And soon
Willa learns the truth and then has to grapple with
that information, another thread that gets mostly dropped.

Speaker 4 (01:02:57):
I would say.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Yeah. Her relationship to her mom in general. I also
like with Willa, I feel like there are certain Mary
Sue tropes that are avoided with her. I agree. That
I appreciated. But I think especially like, I mean, it
just goes to the fact that every opportunity that Willa
has to develop a bond with another woman or even

(01:03:20):
just like her conception of her mom, it's kind of
interrupted by either her father or adoptive or biological in
every single possible opportunity. Because I was wondering, because we
don't really get a ton of time with her and
Bob at the top of the movie, she seems to
have very strong feelings about ratting out revolutionaries. And I

(01:03:43):
was like, was she raised with an idea around revolutionaries
and that ratting is bad? Like, what is her, I
thought she was, I guess, being kept at arm's length
from revolutionary activity altogether for her own safety like i
just had a lot of questions around it that again
like you're saying caitlin are kind of not are just
like not under explored yeah because i was like wow

(01:04:06):
she really was like betrayed to find out that her
mother had ratted her friends out which is like of
course there's plenty of people that feel that but i
just was like i i wanted more into her conception
of her mother but it also like emphasizes the fact
that what we know about perfidia is only shaped by
lockjaw and Bob. And she never really gets the chance

(01:04:28):
to talk to talk to Deandra long enough.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:32):
And I would say that, like, I think again, that's
by design because I don't think Willa is supposed to be,
I don't think she's supposed to be a character. I'll
say like, I think kind of like I was saying
earlier on, I think both she and her mom are,
are just MacGuffins for what the two white protagonists want.

(01:04:55):
And other than that, like I do appreciate that they
gave her, you know, some things to do, but her
character as a whole is kind of what each scene,
kind of what each scene needs. Like, and that's why
it's inconsistent. And, and I'm not sure who said it,
but like by the end of it, because she is

(01:05:17):
our only teen next generation character, And because we don't
know anything about her upbringing, we don't know what she
feels about the revolution, it being random for her to
be mad that her mom's a rat. We don't know
why she wants to pick up the baton and move

(01:05:41):
forward for the next generation. There's just nothing there. We
have to assume everything about this character rather than it
being fleshed out in the story. Which is, again, a
lot of narrative baggage is put onto Profitia and Willa.
Instead of them being a part of the story, they
are just cogs. And it's like, okay, we need you

(01:06:04):
to be this right now type of thing. I hope
that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
No, definitely. I think I was impressed after the first
watch that Willa is presented as more than just like
a typical damsel in distress who can't do anything and
has to wait until the white man protagonist saves her.
But that's not enough. You also have to characterize that character.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
It's just more than we're used to. It's just so unfortunate. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
Okay, so I swear the movie is... It's also a
long movie. It is very long.

Speaker 4 (01:06:41):
It's three hours.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
But we're nearing the end. So we cut back to
the Christmas Adventurers Club, who, after digging into Lockjaw's past,
have discovered a claim that he is the father of
a mixed race child. And they know that he is
currently in Bacton Cross attempting to find this child, a.k.a.

(01:07:03):
Willa Ferguson. So they send one of their members, this
guy named Tim, to go after Lockjaw and eliminate him
since he lied and betrayed the Christmas club and is
making a fool of them or whatever. Then we cut
back to Bob who.
Is being processed after his arrest, but one of the

(01:07:26):
people who is interacting with him seems to be an
associate of Sensei's, and she helps him escape. Actually, two
people end up helping him escape, and then Sensei picks
Bob up, and they continue on toward the rendezvous point.
Sensei's mission to help the undocumented migrants that he is

(01:07:49):
like providing safety for be damned. Who cares about them?
He's got Bob to help.

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):
But, but Benicio Contreras, del toro is cooking so hard
in this sequence that i neglected to question why he
was doing what he was doing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Oh he's like i've had a few small beers and
we're like ha ha ha.

Speaker 4 (01:08:08):
Exactly such a great character.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
So good so so good i uh really quick uh
i this was just like something that i remembered thinking
and then forgot to look up when i saw it
in theaters The Christmas Club guy, I was like, he
looks so familiar. Who is this? Who is this? Who
is this man?

Speaker 4 (01:08:27):
Oh, the guy from Scandal?

Speaker 3 (01:08:28):
It's literally the president from Scandal.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
Tony Goldwyn.

Speaker 4 (01:08:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Yeah. I, like, shouted in the middle of watching. I
was like, Scandal guy. Right. Anyways, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:08:40):
Talking about that sequence, the fact that Del Toro, Guillermo
Del Toro?

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
Benicio Del Toro.

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
Benicio Del Toro. Like his network goes into hospitals and
I i just found that so much more fascinating than
the underground railroad where he has so many people moving
and so many different intricacies within we talked about the

(01:09:13):
skateboarders and now the hospital like it how much work
that how much work how much trust that he has
to have in the community is so very interesting to
get around the system that is that is oppressing them yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
Which like again when you think about it more because
i kind of forgot how i hate that i have
like madam web brain where i'm like his web connects
them all we're so sick uh we got sick but
um but I forgot how much his web connects them all,
but like how, how robust this, I mean, because I

(01:09:53):
think as it's presented in the movie, it's almost like
his web extends to whatever the narrative needs to get
him out of a jam. But, but again, it's so impressive.
And like, you just want a whole movie with him
because why would this character go down for the Ringo
of the French 75? It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 4 (01:10:12):
Truly.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Um, Okay, so meanwhile, Lockjaw has figured out where Willa is.
He raids the coven. Sorry, not the coven.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
The coven. He raids the convent.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
I always mix those two words up. He raids the
convent and abducts Willa. He has a paternity test kit
briefcase with him to determine whether or not she is
his biological child. And it turns out she is. So
Lockjaw basically needs to get rid of her. He turns

(01:10:50):
her over to a bounty hunter that he has hired
to murder her. But this bounty hunter refuses to kill
children or minors.

Speaker 3 (01:11:01):
I think trafficking in some pretty insidious native stereotypes in
pursuit of doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
And then, yeah, so Lockjaw pays him to take Willa
to someone who will kill her. Meanwhile, Bob has stolen
a car and he's tracking Lockjaw around, chasing everyone. Then Tim,
the Christmas adventurer guy, pulls up beside Lockjaw and shoots

(01:11:35):
him in the head. His car careens off the road.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
Bob.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
approaches and finds the vehicle, freaks out because he thinks
Willa is inside, but discovers that she's not there. So
he keeps looking for her. Meanwhile, the bounty hunter takes
Willa to some house where she will be killed, but
then he has a change of heart and decides to
set Willa free. There's a shootout and all of the

(01:12:02):
men are killed. Willa escapes in the bounty hunter's car,
but oh no, she's being followed by Tim, Mr. Christmas,
who I think intends to kill her as well. And
then Bob is following both of them. Willa outsmarts Tim
and shoots and kills him. Bob arrives on the scene

(01:12:23):
and his and Willa's trust devices are activated. And so
Father and son. Sorry, father and son. This is not
a movie about.

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
No, this is actually, for once, a movie about fathers
and daughters.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
I'm so used to saying fathers and sons. So father
and daughter reunite and drive off. But wait, somehow Lockjaw
survived both being shot in the head and.
What appeared to be a fatal car crash. And so
we cut to, I think one of the most unnecessary

(01:12:56):
scenes in any movie ever, because let him just die.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
When he gets shot. Oh, I guess I'll, I'll be, I'll,
I'll have the dissenting opinion here. I really loved to
watch him think he got what he wanted and then
die in the most embarrassing way possible. He deserved a
more violent death than that. But I liked that they
hit the nail on like, And even the white supremacists
don't fuck with this guy. I don't know. I guess

(01:13:23):
I do like that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
That is kind of satisfying. But I'm like, the movie's.

Speaker 3 (01:13:27):
Already two and a half hours long.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
Wrap it up. Anyway, but he's being interviewed again by
the Christmas Adventurers who ask him if he had a
romantic relationship with Perfidia Beverly Hills. He tells them something
that we alluded to earlier, which is that she drugged
and raped him. And he's accepted into the club, or

(01:13:50):
so he thinks, because he's escorted to his new office.
But it's a trap and he's locked inside and a
poisonous gas is released into the room, killing him.

Speaker 3 (01:14:02):
It reminded me of that scene in Goodfellas. Do you
know the one I'm talking about? Oh, the Joe Pesci? Yes,
where Joe Pesci walks into the room and they're immediately,
because he also, I think he was a rat, right?
I forget why they off him. It reminded me of that,
where he's like, hee hee, yay, best day ever. And
then he's killed immediately. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
Oh, my gosh. I don't remember if Joe Pesci is
a rat. Ray Liotta's character is definitely a rat.

Speaker 4 (01:14:30):
That's the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (01:14:30):
Oh, maybe that's what I was confusing. But either way,
they off Joe Pesci, I think, in a similar fashion.
I don't know. I don't know why I'm a sucker for, like,
a bad character going in and being like, do-do-do-do-do, and
then just immediately getting whacked. I guess I love to
see it. I don't know why.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
That is fun. Anyway, we cut back to Bob and Willa.
He gives her a heartfelt letter from her mom expressing
a desire to possibly reconnect one day. And then the
movie ends with Willa heading to a protest in Oakland for,
I think, the like ice equivalent of this movie doing

(01:15:08):
another mass abduction of migrant people. And she's going to
protest that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
Alone.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
Alone.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:15:16):
Why is he not going with her? Truly.

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
But that's, oh, that's like the whole thesis issue where
it's like, best of luck kids. And it reminded me,
I know we have to go to a break, but
it reminded me so much. And maybe this, I hope
that this is like not too out of pocket and
random feeling, but just, I get so frustrated by that
message because and that kind of messaging in general, it

(01:15:40):
feels so like a refusal to engage with your generation's
contribution to the problem. And it reminds me a lot of,
I feel like I first, the first time it really
connected for me was in the early 2010s when gun
violence in schools had such a sharp uptick and that

(01:16:02):
it seemed like a lot of the press messaging at
that time was like very, understandably behind student groups that
wanted gun law to be reformed and to be fixed
and to make it impossible for this to happen. But
it was more like, Oh, the kids have got it.
Like Gen Z is going to save us all. And
that kind of messaging versus anyone with actual institutional power

(01:16:26):
or even proximity to it, putting something on the line
to do it. And it seems like in the closing
shot of this movie, we are literally told, uh, well,
DiCaprio's done his part and now he can just chill
and watch his Roku while his daughter puts her body
on the line. It just feels like a very evasive
way to end this story.

Speaker 4 (01:16:49):
Very much so. And I think that's a problem with
kind of what we're going through right now in the
world and protests and stuff like that. I feel like
a lot of, we don't learn from the generation before us. Like,
Perfidia says in her letter, she's like, we failed. And

(01:17:09):
it's like, okay, but how did you fail? How did
you succeed? History can be very much a roadmap to
how things could either progress or regress now. And like,
looking back at the civil rights movement, they weren't just
out in the streets. They were protesting in all kinds

(01:17:31):
of different ways. And I feel like it can't just
be the performative.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
Um, going to like a no Kings March.

Speaker 4 (01:17:40):
Exactly. And like, and I, I went to that and
I'm like, Oh, we're not doing anything. The, the, the, the,
like the March on Washington, uh, the, the famous one, um, uh,
wasn't just the March on Washington. It was the March
on Washington for jobs and freedom. There was a specific goal.
And I feel like every time we go out now,

(01:18:03):
it's just, well, I don't like this thing. And it's like, okay, sure.

Speaker 3 (01:18:06):
We have to be more specific, though.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
What are we going to do about it?

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:18:11):
What is your goal? A protest is just like acting
if it does not have a goal. And I feel
like that's... that's this movie. It's goal is to feel
like it's doing something without doing it at all.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Definitely.

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
You know, it would have been for, I just had
this thought, but I was like, just to give this
movie a little more, because I feel like a movie
that presents this many massive topics and really only touches
many of them on the surface, like needs a less, like,
The ending to this movie, just like based on the

(01:18:46):
conversation we've had so far feels too like concise and
too like literally i mean even the choice of like
the tom petty like she was an american girl just
feels so like i i this i feel like we
needed something more ambiguous here i'm like even a scene
where not to argue to make the movie longer, but
a scene that I really wanted that the script seemed

(01:19:08):
to not want us to have was a longer period
of time, a chance for Willa to talk to Deandra.
And it's like, have Willa visit Deandra in jail or
give us some insight into what happened to Deandra because
Deandra is, from what I can tell, the character who
can actually help Willa become an effective revolutionary. But for

(01:19:31):
whatever reason, like, it has to be vague and optimistic
and unspecific when it's like, I think that the character
who has these answers for her and they're difficult answers,
but like she was just kind of written out of
the movie 45 minutes ago.

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:19:48):
And talk about like another, another movie that I would
have loved to see. I would have loved to see
it from Deandra's perspective because you know, All revolutions, I mean,
they're circles. That's what a revolution is. So it's like
they have their time when they start and they come back. And,
you know, it's like a merry-go-round. That's when the next

(01:20:08):
generation kind of hops on and takes over. But like,
it would have been nice to see... because it seemed
like she was at least one of the leaders within
the group, see this leader in their heyday and to
see it fall and to hopefully see it pick back up.
It feels like that is a whole other movie within

(01:20:29):
this that could have been just so very interesting, but
because the movie that we got was not interested in
delving into what real revolutionary practices are. Right. we got
the surface level. We can't have D'Andra come back because
then we'd have to talk about those things. And I

(01:20:50):
don't want to talk about those things. I want the
happy ending and all that jazz.

Speaker 3 (01:20:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
On that note, let's take another quick break and then
we'll come back.

Speaker 3 (01:21:01):
To keep discussing. And we're back.

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
We've already been discussing a lot of things throughout the recap.
What else would you like to either touch on or
expand on?

Speaker 3 (01:21:25):
Yeah, we went through a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:21:27):
I think it's just like, I just feel like stories,
they are how we communicate with each other and how
we express ourselves. how we feel about the world around
us and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
Yeah, how we make sense of the world.

Speaker 4 (01:21:45):
Yes. And it feels like when we keep telling the
same stories, if they're going to be a tool in
helping us progress, if we keep telling the same stories,
then we're going to stay in the same place. It's
like we're running in place. And seeing Sinners and then
seeing this movie in the same category for Best Picture

(01:22:08):
just tells me that and maybe this, I hope this
is not too pessimistic, but it feels like we don't
want to move forward, at least with storytelling and stuff.
And I would love to hear what you guys think.
I just think stories are so powerful, and that's why
I do what I do and break them down so
much and obsess over them. But it's like going back

(01:22:33):
to slavery. Look how that one story has traveled over
four centuries for us to be here talking about it
in this movie. Like that's a great power and we
just have to be more responsible with it. So that's, that's,
that's what I got to say. Sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
No, no. Um, it, it, it seems especially Hollywood financed
and distributed movies are going to typically uphold the the
status quo, the status quo being patriarchy, white supremacy, et cetera,
because it's, it's a capitalist industry. And so there can't

(01:23:13):
be anything, there can't be any stories that are too
radical or revolutionary within the Hollywood system.

Speaker 3 (01:23:20):
Right. Or they don't get the financing. I mean, I
feel like the only outlier or not the only, but
one of the outliers that I feel like we or
that I think about who is also constantly undermined by
that exact same system is Boots Riley, right? Like who
makes explicitly political films that, I mean, I think even
we haven't covered, we haven't covered his most recent film

(01:23:44):
yet because we usually will give it a year or
so before covering a recent movie. But I Love Boosters
was not given the same promotional push that other movies
around that time were made. And I think that, again,
it's like clearly Boots Riley's audience is there, but filmmakers

(01:24:07):
who want to make explicitly... political movies and want a
budget it's always going to be a huge complication because
like who's holding the purse strings and where do their
interests lie i guess yeah especially with a production that
is willing to again like sweep unhoused encampments in order
to make this very kind of surface level political story.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
Right to that point and we touched on this a
little bit already but During the awards cycle that this
movie was very present in, the Oscars, the BAFTAs, the
AFI Awards, all of these prestigious awards, Paul Thomas Anderson

(01:24:51):
insisted on staying neutral slash apolitical slash silent, despite having
made a film that... for all its shortcomings, does have
a noticeable political undercurrent and maybe even an overcurrent. But like,
and we have and we'll talk more about the ways

(01:25:12):
in which this, again, falls short. But there's no doubt
that there's a political stance to some degree in this movie.
But he's just like, no, no, no, I can't even
talk about that.

Speaker 3 (01:25:25):
What?

Speaker 2 (01:25:25):
I'm not political. He complied with the president of the
Berlin Film Festival who told the participants to stay out
of politics. And then at the BAFTAs, he dodged a
question about whether or not high profile filmmakers should speak
on politics. He's just, he's like, I can't talk about that.

Speaker 3 (01:25:46):
And also because I think that would introduce questions about
his collaborators and him that would probably be very difficult
for him to answer with any honesty because we have
Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead who is famously holds pro-Israel Zionist standpoints.
He is working with Leonardo DiCaprio who wants to seem

(01:26:10):
to look more progressive than he is by taking this
part because he has a massive stake in Israeli hotels
and You know, we could get into the Sean Penn
of it all, where Sean Penn has been extensively, incredibly
accused of abusing women and other people. Like, there is
just kind of no end to it. I was like disappointed,

(01:26:33):
but not surprised that he didn't open himself up to
that kind of criticism because the work will not hold
if he opens himself up to that kind of criticism
at a time where that kind of political bravery is
like so needed. This was like the same. I mean,
as we're recording this, there's like a big conversation around
Mark Ruffalo right now, who has been very politically courageous. And,

(01:26:56):
but around the time of this same award cycle, Javier
Bardem was extremely outspoken about Palestine in like the same
award ceremonies that Paul Thomas Anderson is just sitting there
with his hands folded. Yeah. I don't know. I wasn't
surprised to see it, but it is so frustrating. I'm like,

(01:27:19):
why did you make... I do want more political... blockbuster
movies to be coming out, but I just don't, I
don't understand why you would make this movie and then
refuse to acknowledge that it is obviously political.

Speaker 4 (01:27:33):
Well, it's almost like, you know, he has that privilege
to do so, you know, when, sorry that I keep
bringing up sinners, but like also an inherently political film. Unfortunately,
Ryan Coogler can't avoid those questions. Thomas Anderson can and

(01:27:53):
like we were saying how it's because where the bag
comes from where the money comes from and all that
kind of stuff and I appreciate that Ryan Coogler is
building his own you know within this industry like his
own path and his own production company and stuff like
that where he can fund his own movies so that

(01:28:14):
he doesn't have to be beholden to those same I
hate to say it but like Zionist where it's like,
you have to say what we want you to say,
or you have to ignore what we want you to
ignore so that we can keep the status quo. And
I feel like art is inherently, like, it has always

(01:28:39):
been political independence. has always been like the voice of
you know i don't want to say it like it's
it has been like a catalyst for like revolution and
stuff but it has most definitely been a.

Speaker 3 (01:28:54):
It's a tool. A tool. Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:28:57):
Yeah. Because like, you know, if we go back to
the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X
learned from James Baldwin. James Baldwin was not like the
big activist out in the street. He was just an
author and had the mind. And you learn from his art,
you learn from his books, and then the revolutionaries can

(01:29:18):
go out there and take that with them when they're
out in the streets. I see that in Sinner's When
you have a story like One Battle After Another, which
refuses both to engage with its political messaging within the story,
and then Paul Thomas Anderson not engaging with it outside

(01:29:39):
of the story, well, then what is this? It doesn't
feel like a piece of art. It feels like... someone
trying to sell me something, excuse the, the SpongeBob reference,
but like, that's.

Speaker 3 (01:29:54):
What I feel. Welcome.

Speaker 4 (01:29:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:29:57):
This is a, this is a safe space for SpongeBob fans. No, I, I, I,
I totally see what you're saying. It's so, I think
that like the Oscars and the, the award conversation with
these two films in the same year is very relevant.
And I, I, and I saw other people sort of
speculating similarly, that this movie getting more just in terms

(01:30:22):
of like awards hardware at the Oscars than Sinners is
not going to be something that ages particularly well. It
just isn't. And that like with, as you were talking
about Ryan Coogler building up his own ability to finance
his own work on this scale, it reminds me a
lot of how we've seen Historically, but I think specifically

(01:30:45):
in the last couple of years, how that seems that
is sort of one of the things that enables artists,
entertainers in general to speak in a politically liberated way.
I think a lot about like. feel like I'm constantly
citing Miss Rachel in this conversation, but it's true.

Speaker 4 (01:31:06):
She's awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:31:07):
She's amazing. And she is very politically concise and clear
about where she stands. And I think that a lot
of the reason she's able to do that, that I
wish people talked about more, is because she owns her work.
She licenses it out to Netflix. Netflix can't tell her
to shut up. No one can tell her to shut
up because she owns it. And as artists and as entertainers,

(01:31:28):
I think that that's like something that is really difficult
to achieve but important to like support and empower when
someone does achieve it because otherwise you kind of end
up you know there's certain filmmakers that I think end
up kind of making stuff that feels pretty muzzled and
you're like and who fucking knows what they actually think
you know like it's like what we know for sure

(01:31:50):
is they've agreed to play ball and then that that
work that comes out is what's going to have the
cultural impact and I feel like every that one battle
after another is a an example of that where I
think it's, you know, based on who PTA works with
and comments he's made in the past. And I mean, it,
it seems clear that he is, has no issue taking

(01:32:15):
money from Zionist institutions, but yeah, they're like that. I
don't know. I really admire and I worry about like
us culturally putting so much on Ryan Kugler's shoulders because
he is doing so much right too. And it's, that's
a lot of pressure.

Speaker 4 (01:32:30):
And I appreciate you saying that because it shouldn't just
be on and a lot of times with marginalized groups
it all is on just like one person to like
get us through everything but I wholeheartedly agree with like
the age of the internet you can find your audience
you can and if you have a big enough audience

(01:32:52):
they can back your projects and it's like when I
first started, not when I first started, but like Hollywood
has always been gay kept and that's just how the
industry was. And for a long time, it was just
like straight white dudes who could make the movie, star
in the movies and have their stories told and all

(01:33:12):
that kind of stuff. But now it's, I won't say
it's perfect, but like at least, you know, sometimes we
harp on technology, but the great thing about the internet
is that the gate is open and, and we only
have to step through it to just, to continue to
tell our stories. And like you said, Miss Rachel, nobody
can tell her what the fuck to say. And, and

(01:33:34):
they want, they want so hard to shut her up
and she just keeps standing with Palestine. She keeps standing
with black children, any, all of, of all colors. And I,
I like wholeheartedly, like, I'm just like, do your thing
girls because i i sorry i'm i'm kind of like

(01:33:55):
just fangirling over miss rachel but like because no she's
not beholden to anyone she can do and say what
she wants and she is putting out good into the
world for our kids and uh kids media and i
wholeheartedly think that you know, a lot of our, this
has nothing to do with one battle, but like a

(01:34:17):
lot of our children's media is getting like infantilized and
that we no longer, like in the days of like Mr.
Rogers and Arthur and all those kinds of things that
kids learned and kids learn to be emotionally intelligent and
all those kinds of things that can take that with
them into the world. Kids media is just not, at

(01:34:38):
least mainstream media is getting Dumber and dumber on purpose
so that they're less equipped to go out into the world.
And she's combating that. And I appreciate that. That's my
soapbox for Miss Rachel.

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
No, and it's well-deserved. And I mean, and then you
have someone like Paul Thomas Anderson, who is beholden to
the Hollywood system and seems perfectly fine with that.

Speaker 3 (01:35:03):
It seems comfortable with that. That's the other thing.

Speaker 2 (01:35:06):
Because as we also already touched on, he has presented
this group of, you know, the French 75, they are
doing revolutionary violence. And I do think there is value
in presenting revolutionary violence as a legitimate approach to toppling fascism.

Speaker 4 (01:35:26):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:35:26):
And that's pretty rare to see in a movie of
this scale. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:35:31):
So I think there is value in that. However, as
we already talked about, it is, it's almost there to
serve more as like world building and backdrop and set
dressing than actual showing anything meaningful about how revolutionary violence works,

(01:35:51):
what it can achieve, anything like that.

Speaker 3 (01:35:54):
And like what that community looks like. Cause I think
we get a lot of, and again, like through underdeveloped characters,
because I think about like all of the women and,
most often black women who are introduced, who we don't
really get to know throughout. I'm thinking of all of
the nuns. I'm thinking of in the flashback sequences, jungle

(01:36:16):
pussy seems to be perfidious best friend, but we only
get a couple of lines of dialogue from her. And
then we find out she's dead from the Christmas club later.
Like there's all of these revolutionary characters and we see,
you know, something that is, basically true, which is that
when there are revolutionary groups, that there is always an
interest from a white supremacist state to undermine them, to

(01:36:40):
infiltrate them, to turn them against each other by any
means necessary. I think that that's a valid point to make,
but I don't think that we got really a chance
to see the value of what they had. I think
you need to see the value of the community and
the organizing that they had in order to understand what's
really lost. We're told that this revolutionary movement was lost

(01:37:03):
and that it ultimately was undermined by a fascist state
and failed. But I don't think that we spent enough
time seeing what they were doing and why they were
doing it. Although I agree with you, Caitlin, I think
that like showing revolutionary tactics as valid and effective is
very important. And I wish we had just for so
many reasons, I wish we had spent more time there.

(01:37:26):
Because it felt like the interest of the movie was
with the system which undermined them rather than the revolution itself. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:37:34):
I was going to recommend a movie with the caveat
that I haven't seen it since it came out a
few years ago. But I remember being quite affected by it.
And it actually does focus on characters who are doing
revolutionary violence. And that is what the story is about.
is the movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline.

Speaker 3 (01:37:54):
Oh, yes. By a friend of the cast, Isa Mazzei. Oh,
my gosh. Who was a producer on that movie. No kidding.
Shout out, Isa.

Speaker 2 (01:38:04):
I want to re-watch the movie, but I remember, again,
I was like, whoa, this is the type of art
that could inspire people to do revolution.

Speaker 3 (01:38:14):
And How to Blow Up a Pipeline isn't getting the
budget or push that movies like one battle is.

Speaker 2 (01:38:22):
I feel like it probably flew under most people's radar.

Speaker 4 (01:38:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:38:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:38:26):
I got to check that out. I would say another is, uh,
which this movie actually shows both the activism and also
the infiltration and how dismantling our communities, how that happens,
is Judas and the Black Messiah.

Speaker 3 (01:38:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:38:46):
About Fred Hampton.

Speaker 1 (01:38:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:38:48):
Like I remember watching the, yeah. Oh gosh. If you guys,
if I didn't want to come back, I would love to.
Cause I, I just remember watching that and being like,
there it is. That is what we are missing right now. As,
as we make our movements, like we're all in our

(01:39:09):
corners and Fred Hampton just did a great job of
showing us that we, We have so much more in
common than we have differences. And our real enemy is
those people at the top that are continually trying to
divide us. I'm trying to remember, there's this one scene

(01:39:32):
from it where he goes into, I think it's, he
goes into a white supremacist bar and it just brings
everyone together. And I think that's, I know I'm, not
painting it as great as it is in the movie,
but I would really hope that if that movie is seen,

(01:39:53):
that that's what we could take away from what we
need to do today. And it also shows how easy
it is and how fragile everything is and how quickly
that hope could be snuffed out.

Speaker 3 (01:40:09):
No, absolutely. Yeah. That's, I'm like, that's a good reminder
for us to cover that movie. Cause I feel like
it's not talked about enough and is like, I remember
the director of that movie. I think his name, let
me just double check. Yes. Shaka King is, was a
student of Spike Lee's. And so it's like another kind
of like, okay, so in order to have these stories

(01:40:31):
told effectively, it's not out of the question that a
director of any race could tell a story like this effectively,
but we should be having more generationally, more black directors
telling these stories. I mean, one battle after another is
unfortunately a great example of how a white director can
whiff it out of, it seems like at least in

(01:40:51):
some part due to a lack of curiosity. Or thought
outside of his own experience.

Speaker 2 (01:40:57):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (01:40:57):
And just a total lack of understanding and empathy for
the people of color and women within the story. Because
if you had that empathy, then Profitia would not be
a cartoon character as she turned out to be.

Speaker 2 (01:41:16):
Like so cartoonishly horny that she wants to have sex
next to a bomb that's about to go off like
what are you talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:41:27):
It's so cringeworthy like just that whole 15 minute sequence
i'm just like i know you can't see my face
but i'm giving the most disgusted look.

Speaker 3 (01:41:39):
And I also don't think that that takes away from
how impressive Tiana Taylor's performance is with what she's given, too.
Because it's like she commits.

Speaker 2 (01:41:49):
I found a great piece about this movie on the
sub stack of Brooke Obie, a.k.a. Black Girl Watching, entitled
One Fetish After Another, PTA Exploits Black Women and Averts Revolution.

Speaker 3 (01:42:04):
Ooh.

Speaker 2 (01:42:05):
It's behind a paywall, but I think it's well worth
the subscription fee to read her work. But I wanted
to pull a few quotes from it. Brooke writes, quote,
Anderson isn't commenting on the white male fetishization of black women.
He's directly participating in it. His camera leers on Taylor's

(01:42:30):
body just as Lockjaw does because the audience only sees
her through the lens of the white men who fetishize her.
Celebrating their successful liberation of the camp, Perfidia makes out
with Pat in the backseat of the getaway car. She
breaks away from the kiss only to ask Jungle Pussy
and D'Andra, do you think he likes black girls? They

(01:42:50):
laugh as he yells, of course I like black girls.
That's why I'm here. One can assume his attraction to
black girls is what earns him the moniker Ghetto Pat.
Like most insufferable swirl couples you know, the French 75
insists that interracial relationships with white people are the revolution.
Race is imperative to the lust all of the characters

(01:43:13):
portrayed in sexual relationships feel for each other. The piece
goes on to say, Perfidia seems to feel the same
about whiteness, naming herself after a city, parentheses Beverly Hills,
famous for all the promise that white American-ness can hold, fame, wealth, power.
But mutually lusting across racial lines doesn't make perfidia and

(01:43:35):
her fetishizers equal. There is a huge power imbalance along
racial and gender lines that perfidia seems to ignore because
Anderson ignores it in the writing of the script, let
alone the character. And then skipping ahead a little bit,
just this last quote here. Perfidia's mother appears briefly to
lecture Pat about being wrong for her daughter, who comes

(01:43:57):
from a whole line of revolutionaries. What does that legacy
mean to Perfidia? How does she reconcile the ancestral tradition
with her own fetishizing of whiteness? Why is she trying
to feel like fictional white male drug lord Tony Montana
if she's got a revolutionary lineage to draw from? When

(01:44:20):
all of her fucking leads to pregnancy, she chooses to
have the baby at the height of her activism.

Speaker 3 (01:44:26):
Why?

Speaker 2 (01:44:26):
We'll never know because Anderson isn't interested in perfidia as
a character, but black women revolutionaries as caricature.

Speaker 3 (01:44:35):
Unquote. Not to poke a tiny, tiny, tiny hole in that,
which I think is very valid and also speaks to
how to the side the politics of this movie are.
I think the reason that she has the baby and
this is like in an aside that I didn't notice
in my first viewing and I don't think is made clear.

(01:44:56):
It seems like part of what the French 75 is
fighting against in that opening sequence is the fact that
abortion has been made illegal again. So I think that
there's a possibility that she has the child theoretically because.
She doesn't have the option to not have the child.
I mean, I very much agree with the majority of that.

(01:45:17):
But I wanted to mention that because I had it
in my notes as well of like, this is, again,
another massive issue that is referenced but completely unexplored. So
I think that it's very possible, you know, in this
movie is under exploration and kind of in curiosity about postpartum.
that she never wanted to be a mother and that

(01:45:37):
this was something that was essentially forced upon her in
so many ways because of the political reality that this
story has, but also doesn't engage with to the point
where like, I fully missed that until this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:45:54):
Yeah. I mean, either way, her relationship to motherhood and
whether or not she wanted to be a mother and
Is still something that the movie doesn't touch on at all.

Speaker 4 (01:46:06):
No idea. Yeah. Because it just doesn't seem to care
to find out.

Speaker 3 (01:46:12):
Definitely not.

Speaker 4 (01:46:13):
I have to read that. That was very, very well said.

Speaker 2 (01:46:16):
We will include the link in the show notes. But yeah,
it's an excellent read. I recommend it. Shelling out eight
dollars and reading it.

Speaker 3 (01:46:27):
I wanted to touch on really quickly. We talked about
this with this movie. A lot of key players who
are pretty. undeniably Zionist. There's also the Sean Penn of
it all. We've talked about it in other episodes, so
we don't need to get too much into it, but
he has been credibly accused in the past of domestic abuse,

(01:46:48):
of assaulting people, of just general anger issues that has
made him a difficult sell for me to wanna, I'm
not showing up for his movies. And I found relevant
to our show something I hadn't seen before. But I
guess in 2022, for whatever reason, he decided I'm going
to make some annoying comments about masculinity.

Speaker 2 (01:47:11):
Oh, yes.

Speaker 3 (01:47:11):
I saw this, too. Let's all get mad together about
whatever the hell people are talking about here. So he
makes two sets of comments, but they're basically the same thing.
He says, I am in the club that believes that
men in American culture have become wildly feminized. I don't
think that being a brute or having insensitivity or disrespect
for women is anything to do with masculinity or ever did.

(01:47:34):
But I don't think that in order to be fair
to women, we should become them. Which doesn't just have
a strong whiff of transphobia attached to it. It also
is just so, I don't know, maybe he's well used
in this character, who I'm sure would agree with what
Sean Penn is saying here.

Speaker 4 (01:47:54):
It doesn't seem like he was acting at all.

Speaker 3 (01:47:56):
It doesn't seem like he was acting. And if, if,
if you, if you also needed a reminder that Sean
Penn's a fucking, like at best a fucking asshole, there's,
there's your reminder for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:48:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:48:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:48:12):
Does anyone have anything else they want to talk about?

Speaker 3 (01:48:15):
Hmm. I think we've at least touched on everything. that I,
I mean, I could talk about this movie for another
two hours, but, um, it's a rich text. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:48:28):
Yes. I will say like, uh, I do think there
is a pattern that we're kind of missing when it
comes to what is awarded and what is not. since
it was such a big story with the Oscars and
stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:48:44):
13 nominations, as many as Titanic got, right?

Speaker 4 (01:48:49):
Yeah, I think so. I think 12 or 13 was Titanic. Yeah,
something like that. It feels like, always coming back to
the two juggernauts that were there, it was one battle
after another and Sinners. And I think that the reason
why Sinners, as fantastic as that movie was... it did

(01:49:10):
not take home the big prize because of its lack
of whiteness within the movie. And it's something that I
call like the white anchor. Like if a movie is
about people of color, then it is usually pushed to
the side and called like a black movie or a
Latino movie or an Asian movie. And it's not for

(01:49:33):
the quote unquote mainstream though. unless it has that one
character that white people can kind of latch on to.
Sinners only had the white supremacists, and nobody wants to
feel like they're a white supremacist, even though, you know,
we've got a few in this country. But one battle
after another, though it should be, it really, really should

(01:49:56):
have been a black movie. It should have been about
these black female revolutionaries who, They had to slot in
Leonardo DiCaprio's character. They had to slot in Sean Penn's
character so that, okay, now this movie has mainstream appeal
in the eyes of Hollywood. But if you look at

(01:50:18):
its competitor with the all-black cast, how far that movie reached,
it shows that you don't need that, that our stories
can be universal, that it shouldn't matter much. who the
protagonist is on screen, you should be able to relate
to them just as, as, you know, growing up, I

(01:50:39):
didn't see a lot of black main characters on screen,
but I was able to relate to them and it should,
it should go the other direction. I hope that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:50:47):
Absolutely. I mean, I think that so like basically Ryan
Coogler's entire filmography and many other movies kind of bear
this out is that when there's Hollywood conversations around, um,
like you're saying Jess how it it's like in any
like I feel like cogent telling of one battle after

(01:51:08):
another at best the two people who are the protagonists
of this story are side characters fully and that the
story should be around the black revolutionary women who are
sort of very much intentionally kept at arm's length but
all of Ryan Coogler's movies including especially Sinner's is proof
that when people say that, like, oh, well, you need

(01:51:30):
a famous white actor in your movie, they're talking about
in order to get money, not in order to get
an audience. Because the audience... was there for sinners a
hundred trillion percent i'm pretty sure it made a lot
more money than one battle at the box office it.

Speaker 2 (01:51:45):
Did it outperformed one battle by about 150 million dollars
at the box office and sinners had a lower budget
which means it it made even more of a profit than.

Speaker 3 (01:51:56):
So battle after another yeah so it's like i i
very much encourage our listeners and i'm sure we're preaching
to the choir but like you know when those narratives
show up of like I feel like it almost always
has more to do with who's financing the movies versus
then who's actually seeing them.

Speaker 4 (01:52:14):
We're just dying for, for new stories to be told.
It feels like, and that, that very much proves it.
There are so many unique and fascinating artists out there
and who deserve to, to have their stories, you know,
up on the big screen or, or in books or
wherever they would like to, you know, tell their story. But,

(01:52:37):
it just shows that when those stories are out there,
they are universal. For sure.

Speaker 2 (01:52:43):
Well, the movie does pass the Bechdel test.

Speaker 3 (01:52:46):
It does. It certainly could pass more. It certainly, as
we've spent the last two hours extrapolating on, it should
have passed a lot more than it did, but it
does technically pass the Bechdel test at various points in
the movie. Imperfect metric.

Speaker 2 (01:53:01):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 (01:53:02):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:53:02):
But the perfect metric, of course, is the Bechtelcast Nipple Scale.

Speaker 3 (01:53:08):
Iconic.

Speaker 2 (01:53:09):
Yes, where we rate the movie on a scale of
0 to 5 nipples based on examining the movie through
an intersectional feminist lens. For this, I'm going to give it....

Speaker 4 (01:53:26):
I'll give it 1.5.

Speaker 2 (01:53:30):
For a couple things. Again, I do think that there
is value in a mainstream studio movie to show revolutionary
violence and not demonize it. And I do appreciate that
Willa is not a typical damsel in distress. She more

(01:53:51):
or less saves herself. Which kind of renders... Bob's whole
story kind of pointless.

Speaker 3 (01:54:00):
Like she would have been fine without him.

Speaker 2 (01:54:03):
So why are we following him the entire time?

Speaker 3 (01:54:06):
The world may never know.

Speaker 4 (01:54:07):
You know what?

Speaker 2 (01:54:08):
I'm going to, I'm going to go down to one
nipple because of that. Um, there are a few small
things that are lightly interesting about it to me, but
by and large, it like whiffs on so many opportunities.
It's representation of black women particularly is, um, appalling so

(01:54:28):
one nipple I'll give it to chase infinity.

Speaker 3 (01:54:34):
I'll go I'll go one and a half I think
because I agree with what you're saying Caitlin I think
that I'm going at the extra half because the perform
like any revolutionary anything even though I think we've been
talking about for a while now how this movie's conception
of revolution is I think intentionally quite vague yeah and

(01:54:56):
like PTA's refusal to expand on any of the topics
that the movie lightly touches on sort of bears that
out that this movie is not trying to be revolutionary
and that its creators are not really willing to put
anything on the line to defend what they may or
may not have been trying to say with it So
it feels like there's just all kinds of stolen valor

(01:55:16):
going on there.

Speaker 4 (01:55:17):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:55:18):
But I do think that the, and there's a piece
I really enjoyed from friend of the cast, Angelica Jade Bastien,
that kind of makes this point more. I mean, she's
just like an amazing writer, so she's going to make
it better than I ever could, but that the performances
from specifically the black actresses in this movie are so
strong and give dimension to characters that are not written

(01:55:41):
to have the dimension that, You feel when you're watching
the performances and and that that should not be a
position that three incredible black actresses should be put into.
And again, I will harp on Regina Hall because I'm
just I'm still I will never get over how underutilized

(01:56:02):
she is in this movie. So the rest I think
we've discussed.

Speaker 1 (01:56:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:56:06):
So I'll go one and a half. I'm going to
give one to Regina Hall and then I'll give the
other half to Chase Infinity because, you know, if nothing else,
this movie will hopefully launch a cool career for her.
She seems great.

Speaker 2 (01:56:19):
Jess, how about you?

Speaker 4 (01:56:21):
Yeah. And just to piggyback off of what you just said, Jamie,
like I realize, you know, because there's so little representation of,
in Hollywood for, you know, black actresses, they have to take,
you know, these roles. There's how else are they going
to build their career and how else are they going to,

(01:56:43):
you know, get that bag and be seen, you know,
like these are the roles provided. So there is no,
no guilt on their part. So my half of a
nipple goes to the actresses, the actors, the, the grips,
the lighting director, all those people that worked on the film, uh,

(01:57:05):
that did their very best to give it a nice
wrapping on the outside. But, uh, I can't give it
more than half a nipple for the just blatant uses
of very, very dangerous stereotypes and that were not only
like harmful, but awarded and, They have enough awards. They

(01:57:29):
don't get any nipples.

Speaker 2 (01:57:31):
Totally fair. Well, thank you so much for joining us.
This has been such a wonderful conversation.

Speaker 4 (01:57:36):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:57:37):
Please come back anytime.

Speaker 2 (01:57:38):
Come back anytime.

Speaker 3 (01:57:39):
With a movie you love next time, too. We won't
torture you again.

Speaker 4 (01:57:43):
I promise. I love films, so I don't like shitting
on it so very much. But this one was wow.
This one deserves the shit. And I really appreciate you
guys and the work that you guys are doing. So
I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 3 (01:58:04):
Likewise. Thank you so much for all of your work
and for hanging with us. This was so much fun.

Speaker 4 (01:58:09):
It was.

Speaker 3 (01:58:10):
And speaking of.

Speaker 2 (01:58:10):
Your work, tell us more about it. Plug anything you
want to plug.

Speaker 4 (01:58:15):
Oh, thank you. You know, I talk representation in media
on my YouTube channel called Prybrary. And it's different social
media handles, all Prybrary. So you can You can find
me on there, and we just love breaking down how
important representation is and how it connects to the world

(01:58:36):
around us, as you saw, kind of like what we
just did in this episode. So come check me out.

Speaker 2 (01:58:45):
Please do. And check us out on... Instagram at Bechtelcast,
as well as our Patreon, aka Matreon. That's the best
way to support the show. We do two bonus episodes
every month on a genius theme that Jamie and I
cook up.

Speaker 3 (01:59:03):
And often our listeners help. So yes, if you want
to directly support the show, that is truly the way
to do it. And you get access to a backlog
of I think going on 300 episodes. You can also
check us out on tour. We are in the midst
right now of our 10-year anniversary tour. You can check
us out in October across the East Coast. So if

(01:59:27):
you live basically anywhere in Pennsylvania, as well as Baltimore, Boston,
or New York, come check us out. And we will
be continuing that tour throughout the year. So if you're
in another region, patience, patience. We're working on it.

Speaker 2 (01:59:42):
Indeed. You can get tickets online. Two of those shows
at linktree.com. And with that, I don't know, should we
all go and have a few small beers?

Speaker 3 (01:59:55):
Let's do it.

Speaker 4 (01:59:56):
I need a drink.

Speaker 3 (01:59:57):
Bye.

Speaker 4 (01:59:58):
Bye. See you.

Speaker 3 (02:00:02):
The Bechdelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced
by me, Jamie Loftus. And me, Caitlin Durante.

Speaker 2 (02:00:09):
The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichterman.

Speaker 3 (02:00:12):
And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them? That's me.

Speaker 2 (02:00:16):
And our logo and merch and all of our artwork,
in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 3 (02:00:23):
Ever heard of her? Oh, my God. And our theme song,
by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan.

Speaker 2 (02:00:28):
With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.

Speaker 3 (02:00:31):
Iconic. And a special thanks to the one and only
Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 2 (02:00:36):
For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.com.

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