Soul Food (1997) with Nydia Simone

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On The Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they
have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zeff, and best start changing
it with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hey, Jamie, Hey Caitlyn, do you want to come over
for Sunday dinner.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
I don't think I have a choice. I think I'm
disloyal to the family if I don't show up.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
It's true, it's true, But I do.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Want to get into a petty argument because that's what
family dinners are all.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
About, exactly exactly. And sorry in advance for my cooking
being terrible, but you'll probably make a snide comment about
it anyway.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
So that's okay. I'm bringing something from the grocery store
and heating it up in a pan and saying that
I made it. Hell yeah, and bragging about it until
someone catches me. So wonderful kind of this thing I've
been getting into sounds great. Well. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.
My name is Jamie.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Loft, my name is Caitlyn Durante, and this is our
show where we we examine movies through an intersectional feminist
lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point.
We're just using it to initiate larger conversations about representation
and things. But Jamie, what even is the Bechdel test?

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Well, the Bechel test is a media metric created by
queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It's sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test.
It was a test that she originally wrote into a
comic collection she published in the eighties and nineties, Dikes
To Watch Out For. It was a bit. It was
a joke to point out how infrequently women in movies

(01:37):
talk to each other about anything but men in the movie.
But it has since turned into a metric that people
use as sort of a soft jumping off point for
discussion about representation in movies. And that's how we use it.
Our version of the test requires that there be two
people of a marginalized gender with names who speak to

(02:01):
each other about something other than a man for more
than two lines of dialogue.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
It's not that hard, it's not.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
But and yet, if you're Christopher Nolan, he's goddamn near impossible.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
He's never heard of it, and he won't hear of it.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
This is so wildly off topic, but I feel like,
so I saw Oppenheimer bravely, oh brag. I just like,
at this point I view Christopher Nolan's women as like
camp masterpieces, because I'm like, he's never gonna get it.
I can't. I don't have the energy to get mad
about it anymore. And like, yeah, sure, that's that's what

(02:36):
we're like, all right, you got us pegged.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Florence Peugh's sitting naked in a chair for no reason.
That's camp Bless his heart.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
I mean, you know, he's I genuinely do think that
he's doing his best in that department, and that is
kind of tragic. Okay, anyways, it's not Oppenheimer day. Thankfully,
we have an incredible guest and want to get her
in the mix.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yes, let's do it. She's a filmmaker, curator, and founder
of Black Tina Media, a community which elevates and amplifies
the voices of Afro, Latin X and Caribbean people. It's
an idea simone Hello and welcome by y'all.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Welcome.

Speaker 4 (03:18):
I'm like, I wish I would have practiced my intro.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Oh my gosh, no, you nailed it.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
Stuck all I'm like all the slang terms.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
So today's movie is soul Food. So tell us about
your relationship with the movie Soul Food.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
Okay, So first, like, my mom is African American, my
dad is Panamanian. I'm black on both sides, so like
that movie is actually popular and like both communities and
all of the themes. Uh just so well with both
of the like families that I have, And that movie

(04:06):
is a true black classic, that's an African American classic.
Like and so many people I've like recited the lines
when Vanessa Williams character is like fuck the family, like
that whole sequence, Like everybody knows every single line and
it's so real and it's so realistic, like this has

(04:29):
happened to multiple fams. Like you at a party, there's
an argument and a kitchen in the kitchen, it's always
the kitchen. It's always the kitchen, and it spills out.
It was like it's a beautiful moment. I love the movie.
I love all the themes like it represents. I know
it passes the Bachelor test with Cristure. I'm having a

(04:52):
hard time pronouncing that word. But yeah, a lot of
the movies, though I watch are like a bunch of women,
So I love that there's I have sisters, lots of drama,
good food, Like I just I have a strong relationship
with the film. Themes of the film are still relevant
to me and my family today. And yeah, all the actors.

(05:14):
I love all the actors. I grew up watching all
those pastors, The Hookah Fox, Vanessa Williams, Macay pif Forer like.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Dreambone, not his character, but.

Speaker 4 (05:29):
Oh yeah, yeah, but he's a cool dude, Like yeah,
you wise nice.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah, It's like I've never heard a bad word about
Mackay Fifer, and I hope I never do.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
My relationship with this movie isn't super extensive. I feel like,
as an avid TNT watcher, I've seen bits and pieces
of this movie. I feel like that's my answer half
the time on this podcast is like I probably watched
it on TNT when I was too young to understand
anything happening in the movie. But I am a fan

(06:04):
of this director, George Tillman Junior, Like he's wonderful, still
very much working. I mean, I think I definitely saw
all the barber shops and Beauty Shop and most recently
The Hate You Give, and so I'm a fan of
his work, but I had never actually sat down with

(06:24):
Soul Food, and I certainly haven't seen this movie since
I think I was cognizant of how wildly stacked this
cast is, right down to like Gina Rivera from The Closer,
which was another TNT staple that I did watch.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Also, we talked about her recently because she was in Showgirls.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, this cast is absolutely nuts. It's great. Yeah, And
so I mean, I really enjoyed learning about what this
movie meant to George Tillman Junior because he wrote and
directed it, which he doesn't always necessarily do. He usually directs,
and so I really enjoyed it. I love I love
a family drama, and I especially love a family drama
that centers the sisters instead of the brothers, because brothers

(07:07):
are not as interesting to me. But it's also very
much a product of the nineties, So there's certain elements
where it's like, let's discuss but I'm very excited to
talk about it.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
And there was a spin off TV show. Yeah, they're different.
For Willis who I think she the same. It's so
confusing because like in the black community, we talk about
Vness Williams. It's like what the light skin want or
the dark skin want. And that's like it's because it's
like they are in the same circles and stuff like that.

(07:39):
I don't know in real life, but like you see
all them in like different like films.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
And stuff like that, but right the same like era
to the.

Speaker 4 (07:46):
TV show was very popular too, Like so I feel like, uh,
this director does not get he did not get his flowers.
He's not getting his flowers. He's still pretty young, like
so yeah, maybe he'll get some flowers soon after his
solar return, his second solar return.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
So, oh my god, I was reading fur my Saturn.
I'm finishing up my Saturn return, which is also why
I'm blaming that everything in my life going on. Yeah,
George Tillmans is coming up. He's fifty four, so his
renaissance has yet to come. But he's so accomplished too.
It's like right, right, he directed the I did not

(08:23):
see it, the George Foreman biopic that came out this year. Yes,
just a fun fact, it's true. I vaguely remembered that
was a thing, but I didn't see it. I should
see it, Caitlin, was your history with self?

Speaker 1 (08:38):
I had never seen it. I knew about it, but
it is not something that I watched. I'm not as
big of a fan of family drama films. I'm more like,
let's watch characters go on a little quest kind of person.
So I missed this one. But yeah, I wasn't fully
aware of the Stacked cast until I started watching it

(09:02):
and researching it, and I was like, Wow, look at
all these great actors who are also so good looking.
And I enjoyed the movie and I'm really excited to
talk about it. There's lots to discuss, so should we
get into it?

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yes, because there's many characters. Yeah, there's a lot of story.
I feel like some family dramas really over or undershoot,
like balancing the characters. But I thought this one was
so well done where it's like you, I feel like
every character got a satisfying arc, or like, when I
say satisfying, I didn't necessarily love how all the stories went,

(09:42):
but they all happened like no movie lost in the shuffle,
which is so impressive.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
True. Yeah, definitely. Okay, here is the recap of Soul Food.
So we open on a wedding. A family is celebrating
Bird played by Nia Long getting married to Lem that's
Makai Pfeiffer, and Bird has two sisters, Terry and Maxine

(10:11):
played by Vanessa Williams and Vivica A. Fox, respectively, and
we learn about each of them. Maxine is married to
Kenny played by Jeffrey D. Sam's. They have two kids
plus a baby on the way. One of the kids
is this young boy named Ahmad, and he's like the

(10:32):
narrator of the story. The whole thing is told through
his point of.

Speaker 4 (10:36):
View, which was so cool, like to see it through
a child's POV. Yeah, I was a kid two at
the time because I was like seven in nineteen ninety seven,
so it was like I could. It was a really
great way for me to connect with these adult themes,
you know, and in his relationship with his mom.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Okay, yep, oh, I know. It's really sweet.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
I loved especially because I don't know, I feel like
there's so many like wise child tropes where it's like,
for kid is beyond his years, which a mod is,
but he's also still very much a little stinker, telling
weird lies to get his family to hang out with
each other, and I was like, that is the right
amount of little stinker.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
He's like, let's go on a treasure hunt in the house.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Oh, it's like yeah, that's a very like you know,
I don't know how old the like eleven year old
behavior or however.

Speaker 4 (11:28):
He also was like, oh, they want money, Like he
was like, he was like, oh okay, money.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, he knows how to get adults interested in his scheme. Yeah, yeah,
for sure.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
And then they're like, oh no, yeah, we came here
because we love each other, Like yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
They all show up and they're like, oh right, we're
a family. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So the story
is told through a mod's point of view, and we
also get to know more about Terry. She's married to
Miles played by Michael Beach. They're both lawyers. They're like
the wealthier members of the family.

Speaker 4 (12:10):
Is to be a musician.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, and she is not supportive sometimes.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
And this is just my current moment, but I'm so
triggered by like and triggered, I mean extremely like triggered
by husbands who want to quit their jobs and become musicians.
I'm just like, enough is enough. It reminds me of
Jason Bateman. And Juno where it's like, it's not gonna
happen to be the best of luck. Though. I have

(12:39):
a quick aside, which is, for the whole time I
was watching this movie, I was like, a mod looks
so familiar. A mod looks so familiar, And it's because
he's to me anyways, he's accomplished child actor, but baby
Michael Jordan and space jam Oh I did not make
And he's the one that is outside doing in the

(13:00):
house all night long. I just I've seen it's basically
him five thousand times.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
I did not make that connection. I was looking at
his IMDb and apparently he's in Mars attacks, which we
do need to cover some days. Oh my gosh, Jamie,
I think you love it.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
I think I would too, just based on the posters.
I don't know how I haven't seen it.

Speaker 4 (13:24):
Yeah, but yeah, I wanted to be with the aliens.
I was like, let's go.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Like.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Seriously anyway. So he yes, he's he's in a lot
of stuff. Okay. So then we meet Big Mama Joe.
She is bird Terry and Maxine's mom Joe because their
last name is Joseph. She's played by Irma p. Hall
and There's.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
Also her name is Josephine, so it could.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Really Oh oh that makes more sense. Yeah, Joe Josephine,
joseph is her name.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
Yeah, she's just wearing Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Love that. Okay, So there's already drama because at the wedding,
lem is grinding on the dance floor with another woman
who is not his bride. And then Bird's ex boyfriend
Samuel shows up and he's bad news. But Big Mama
always knows what to do to dissipate the drama in

(14:22):
the family and set things right, so she does that.
Then we cut to their weekly Sunday dinner, a forty
year tradition where the whole family gets together at Big
Mama's house. Sorry I had to say it, starring Martin Lawrence,
and she cooks a bunch of delicious soul food, fried chicken,
collar greens, cornbread, mac and cheese, chitlins, hamhocks, things like that,

(14:47):
and the food always brings the family together.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
And I love that they show the food. Sometimes they
feel like they're like the food at dinner was amazing,
and then you don't see it and you're like, was
it where is it? Beautiful food views in this movie
great spread.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
So then Ahmad in his voiceover narration, is talking about
Big Mama and her husband who passed away some years before.
He ran a few successful businesses, and there's this family
rumor that they had saved up money and stowed some
of it away in the house somewhere. So there's like

(15:26):
this kind of underlying, like secret stash of money that
no one really knows where it is.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
If I was old and had money, I would want
to do that just to fuck with my family.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
It's like there's always money in the Banana Stan kind
of thing. But it's like, yeah, there's always money in
Uncle Pete's television set. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
The third act is really loaded in so many things
happen in a row where if you blank, you're like, what,
the house is on fire. Uncle Pete's TV's full of money.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
It's rerilling, Yeah, because also in the house lives Big
Mama's brother, Uncle Pete, who is a reck loose who
never comes out of his room. Okay, so the women
they're preparing Sunday dinner. By the way, Terry and Maxine
don't get along because when they were younger, Terry was

(16:19):
dating Kenny, who left her for Maxine, and Terry never
forgave her for it. Then, as they're like preparing the meal,
we get a reveal that Big Mama has diabetes, but
she brushes it off. She says, I don't need to
go to a doctor. Everyone sits down to dinner and
then cousin Faith shows up played by Gina Rivera, and

(16:40):
Big Mama is delighted to see her, but no one
else in the family seems thrilled. They seem like they
don't really like her because she's got kind of like
a quote unquote bad reputation, which they're.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Like, she moved to La and I was like, yeah,
that sign right evil thing to do.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Just then Maxine, who is gregnant as heck, goes into labor,
so the family rushes to the hospital. She has a baby.
Also at the hospital, I think in a separate day,
separate situation, Big Mama is told that her leg needs
to be amputated because of complications due to her diabetes.

(17:25):
She again kind of brushes it off. Meanwhile, Samuel shows
up to Bird's work, she runs a hair salon. He
gives her a wedding present, but he clearly has ulterior motives.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
He has like resting villain face big time, Like, yeah, handsome,
a handsome, resting fence, but resting villain face. Nonetheless, why
you wear him again?

Speaker 4 (17:53):
Why you didn't? Just what's the issue? What was the
problem with this guy? Like?

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Right, it's never quick, clear clear hmm.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Maybe I just I truly was. I was just like
just the way that the actor was carrying himself in
the part, and I was like, Oh, it's the guy
in the suit that's up to no good god right, And.

Speaker 4 (18:11):
It's what a man wants. They want the woman to
be with the freaking dude. They have to do all
the work to help them. It's like, yeah, you know
it is written by a man, you know, why is it.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
Okay? So Simuel shows up to work, he's being scheming.
Then Lem shows up at Maxine and Kenny's house and
he tells Kenny that he lost his job because he
had lied on his application about having been convicted of
a crime because he spent time in jail. He recently
got out of jail, but he lied about this on

(18:48):
his application. His employer found out and he got fired.
So now he's looking for a new job and he
wants Kenny to help him, and Kenny's like, don't worry.
I got you. Then we check in with Terry and Miles.
He tells her that he wants to invest more time
and money in his music. She's not happy about it.

(19:09):
She's like, you're a lawyer, just be a lawyer. She's
also not happy about cousin Faate.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
Tele not supposed to be on her side there, but
and maybe it's just but I was like, I'm in
finesse of Williams society. Men shouldn't follow.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
Their treat everybody now is like she was right, Terry
was right. Terry was in the right the entire time.
She was being taken advantage of. She's literally holding everything together.
But she's supposed to be the bad persons taken care
of the house. Nobody else's paid a tax, you know,
but she's like the villain.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
I was very team Terry there. Yeah, I was like,
she just wants a little bit of appreciation than you. Like,
I understand that sometimes it is like not presented in
the most tasteful way maybe, and I understand why her
sisters would be frustrated with her, But I'm like, it's
not absolutely out of the question that she would want

(20:05):
to be acknowledged for how much she's doing, and I
just don't think her husband should follow his dreams. He
was annoying to me. I wanted, or at least I
don't know whatever. We'll talk about how the story goes,
but I feel like, yeah, the way that Terry his
story went was like kind of treated as like, well,
of course this would happen because look how Terry was

(20:26):
telling him to stop playing the keyboard, and you're like,
stop playing the keyboard man.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah. She's portrayed as being very frigid, but yeah, she's
like actually making sure the family is like being held together.
She's also like very elitist about it. She's like, I'm
richer than all of you, and I went to law school,
and I'm like, okay, someone who's always talking about their
advanced degree certainly not me, someone who went to Boston

(20:55):
University to get a master's in screenwriting, because I never
mentioned that.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
I've never heard that before.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
But she's always mentioning her law degree anyway.

Speaker 4 (21:04):
And doesn't she mention also that she put her sisters
through school. I don't know if I'm oh that right.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
She does say that she pays for Bird's wedding. She
mentions different things she has paid for to like you know,
and she oh, she gives a loan to Bird also
to open up the beauty shop. Different things like that.

Speaker 4 (21:27):
Yeah, so she's like me, like she's a parentified child,
Like even though she's a sister, she was being very
maternal to her sisters.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Because she's the eldest too, the way a lot of
like eldest siblings often take on a role like that. Yeah, okay,
So we check in with Terry and Miles. She's not
happy about him pursuing his music. She's also not happy
about cousin Faith crashing with them. Then Big Mama is

(21:58):
convinced to have the surgery, so she goes through with
the surgery, but she has a stroke during it and
falls into a coma, and the family is devastated, and
her not being around sets off this kind of chain
reaction of things going wrong in the family. For example,

(22:20):
the forty year tradition of Sunday dinners falls apart, especially
because Terry and Maxine get in a fight about it
because they're never getting along. Meanwhile, Terry and her marriage
with Miles is on edge again she does not respect
his musical ambitions.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
And then I kept up being on her side about this,
I just refuse.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Also, one night, Miles and cousin Faith are flirting. Later,
he helps her with a dance audition she has, and
then eventually they have sex, and Terry comes home and
sees them. Miles doesn't know that she saw them until
she confronts him at a party later that evening and

(23:08):
chases him around with a butcher knife.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Again, she did nothing wrong.

Speaker 4 (23:13):
She did nothing. I mean, she didn't kill him.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
Nope. Yeah, she just had to make a point there.
You know, technically what she did was wrong, but.

Speaker 5 (23:26):
She did in their marital home.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
The view of a full open window he had. I'm
just like cheaters in monogamous relationships gross hate it, but
especially when they're bad at it or like lazy about it.
I'm just like, oh my god, you're not even good
at this.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
You didn't even try to conceal this. A child almost
saw it, like.

Speaker 4 (23:51):
Right, because a mod was because she's doing more and
that's not even her kids don't she can't even have
kitchen busy working all the time. If it's not work,
it's homework. Yeah, and it's yeah ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
Yeah, I'm a she did nothing wrong. But really quick
back to Gina Rivera because just like the mid nineties,
there's so many good Gena Rivera dance scenes committed to
film because we just covered Showgirls, and so I just
wanted to shout it out. I liked and also thought
it was like very nineties that anytime that there's music

(24:26):
or dancing in this movie, you see like a lot
of it, so much like you see the whole song
and you're kind of like, huh, why, I'm not mad
about it, but okay, great, Like when Miles is in
his band, you see them play the whole song and
you're like, okay, great, sure, good job you guys.

Speaker 4 (24:43):
But I also feel like that's like normal, like in
black film, like art is so important, like in black film,
like even prayer, like no who like, oh I pray it.
It's like you see people actually praying, you hear them.
It's like you get the whole experience. And with the dance,
like I feel like that, like I've seen so many

(25:05):
specifically like African American films, see the entire dance. And
also people will get upset if it doesn't feel real.
So like in sure you know the show, like Poe's
Ripeople's got canceled like when he had that audition and
people were like, he would have never been accepted with
that audition. What the heck?

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Like?

Speaker 4 (25:27):
And you know, because I feel like we have this
history of like, if you're like usually black film, them
people dancing, it's like Janet Jackson's background dancer, and like
they have actual dancers, actual singers, And I.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Mean in this you know that Gina Rivera did that
entire routine because they're not doing any fancy cutting or
I mean the dancing in particular was beautiful. I didn't
know that that was like a feature of black film.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
That's cool to know, definitely. So then we get that
chunk of Terry and Miles's subplot meanwhile, where we're checking
in with Bird and Lem. She finds out that he
was fired from his job and he can't find another one,

(26:17):
so she calls upon her ex Samuel to hook him
up with a job. And then Lem finds out about
this favor she called in and he feels emasculated and
he goes ballistic on both Samuel and Bird. We'll talk
about this whole subplot in more detail later on. But

(26:39):
then Terry calls another cousin of theirs to basically like
go rough Lem up, and when that happens, there's like
this bar fight and Lim pulls a gun and gets
arrested and ends up back in jail. Then the sisters
and their spouses have this conversation about how they're going

(26:59):
to pay for Big Mama's hospital bills. Terry wants to
sell once again Big Mama's House, starring Martin, Lawrence and
Maxine as opposed to this, and no one really knows
what to do. And little Ahmad goes to visit Big
Mama in the hospital and while he's there, she comes

(27:21):
out of the coma and tries to tell Amd something
that she wants him to do, but she can't finish.
She starts coughing doctor's Russian and then we get a
reveal that she has passed away, so the family grieves.
Everyone's a mess. Bird finds out that she's pregnant. Terry

(27:42):
calls in a lawyer favor and classic lawyer, classic lawyer behavior,
she gets Lem bailed out of jail. Meanwhile, Ahmad thinks
that what Big Mama wanted him to do was to
get the whole family together again for Sunday dinner, so
he goes to each member of the family and tells

(28:02):
them that before she died, Big Mama told him about
that stash of money that's hidden away somewhere in the
house and that he needs their help to find it.
And he's like, I'll give you a finder's fee, you know,
like sweetening the deal, and little Stinker love right, because
what he's really trying to do is just get everyone

(28:23):
in the house at the same time for family dinner.
So everyone shows up and they realize that it was
just a ploy to get everyone together, and they feel
uneasy about it, but they roll with it and they
sit down to dinner. During the dinner, some grievances are aired,
and then they're also like, well, what about this stash
of money though, and Ahmad is like, mm yeah, I

(28:46):
just made that up to get everyone together again, because
all you do is fight, and he's crying, and then
there's a fire in the kitchen and everyone's scrambling to
put it out, and then suddenly Uncle Pete, thelu relative
who lives upstairs, shows up in the kitchen holding a
suitcase full of that cash that was there all along,

(29:09):
and the family is like, we and then the movie
ends with Ahmad's voiceover saying, now I understand what soul
food is all about. Because during slavery, black folks didn't
have a lot to celebrate, So cooking became the way
that we expressed our love for each other. And that's
what Sunday dinners meant to us. It was a time

(29:30):
for sharing our joys and sorrows. And then we flash
forward to see the family getting along, they're having a
nice time, they're in a better place.

Speaker 4 (29:39):
They didn't sell the house.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
They didn't, yes, exactly.

Speaker 4 (29:42):
Because that's why I had the fight in the kitchen,
was because Harry's I'm selling.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
House, right, So the house stays in the family and
everyone is just doing pretty well. And that's the end
of the movie. So let's take a quick break and
we'll come to discuss, and we're back.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
And we're back. We usually defer to our guest nah
an idea. Is there anywhere you, in particular, would like
to start the discussion.

Speaker 4 (30:21):
Hmmm, I guess, like with this film, there's so many things,
so many things. I really like how it's like a play,
Like there's a lot of setups in the first act,
like everything like means something, and it comes back like
even at the end when the fire happens. There's a

(30:42):
reason she specifically said, you don't put anything on like
lying bomb said, don't put anything on the stove, because
that's how fires happen. And he accidentally and it was
like he didn't think of it. He just put it
by the stove because they like, ahmad, come here, and
that's when they realize, yeah, here for some money. I'll
hear somebody, you know, and they and that's how like

(31:04):
the whole fire got started and they all had to
work together to like put it out in the which
led to Uncle Pete coming out of his room because
he thought he was about to die because he's about
to smoke, and then dropped he holding TV.

Speaker 5 (31:18):
He wasn't gonna steal the money, but I didn't even
didn't he know.

Speaker 4 (31:20):
That there was money, and maybe he knew there was money,
and then he was like, oh, I gotta get that.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Money unclear, Yeah, because the TV appeared to be bursting
with money.

Speaker 4 (31:29):
And then we you know, now the money's ride everywhere
and it's like, oh my gosh, we don't have to
sell the house anymore. We got it. But I love
that film because it's a complete story beginning, middle.

Speaker 5 (31:41):
And end.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
And as like I guess like a black child, it
felt like very relatable, like, oh my god, I would
love to get my family together. You know. However, she
died because of diabetes due to some of that food.
Some of that food needed to be substituted. And this

(32:05):
is actually a big, big area of consistion for a
lot of black communities with people calling soul food bad.
And it's not that it's bad, it's just some people
will not have greens, or they will have greens with
the meat inside. You can substitute some of these things.
And then also everybody's not making stuff from scratch anymore.
So that's really the issue because back in slavery days,

(32:28):
people were literally killing the chicken that night and like
we're making we're having chicken. That's how we got this chicken. Nowadays,
there's so much crap in the food, like it's not
this we're not eating the same food. Like there's no
I don't wanna say there's no people doing it from scratch,
but it's like a completely different.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
World so processed.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
Yeah, but that's how she died. And I I really
wanted them. I know they had the garden cause they're like, oh,
we have the garden like Terry's in the garden like
at the end and everything. But some of those things
is like okay, like we eating the same food that
led to her getting the diabetes, and also like having

(33:12):
more conversations about health in our communities because there's a
lot of fear of doctors, which is why like a
lot of elderly people, especially black men, will be like
I'm not going to a doctor. I don't want to go,
like I've had horrible experiences at the doctor, like you know,
like at the guy, know with like white women. So
like I get why you'll be like, well, it's my time.

(33:35):
Like if it's my time, it's my time.

Speaker 5 (33:37):
I'm old.

Speaker 4 (33:38):
Like so I get that, but like I think about
that when I think about the movie, it's just like
black health food health, and also like families, like how
do you how do you communicate with your family? And
it was really messed up. It was really messed up.
You don't take your sister's man, you really don't.

Speaker 5 (33:57):
That's like.

Speaker 4 (34:00):
Written by a man, written by a man, because that's
the fantasy is like sleeping when I buy in a family,
Like so.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
I need to get around to all the sisters, right, well.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
I want to talk more about the theme of food.
Obviously it's the name of the movie. I think it's
like super well contextualized within the movie that not only
is soul food integral to this family, but to black
culture in general. But yeah, the way that it affects
Mama Joe is like I was like, what is he

(34:31):
trying to get at there? Like, I guess that it's
open to discussion. I was looking up interviews to see
if George Tillman Junior had spoken to why he made
that choice for her character, and I was kind of
unclear on it, Like I don't necessarily object to it
because it's like, of course, diabetes, like is an issue

(34:52):
that a lot of people have, and you don't see
it put on film very often. I went down a
rabbit hole of like how often do you see diabetic character?
And usually whenever you do, which I guess this movie
isn't an exception to it's as a plot point where
eventually they will be severely affected by or die as

(35:13):
a result of diabetes. There's very few examples of a
character that just has diabetes and is treating it or
is just sort of living as a person with diabetes.
I feel for Mama Joe so terribly because of her
understandable issues with doctors, and but the way that, Yeah,

(35:34):
I was how did everybody feel about the way that
that plot point was treated. I feel like sometimes in
family dramas in general, there's a lot of like, well,
we have to sort of take out the matriarch or
the patriarch and watch the rest of the family go
wild in their absence, which, at least I don't know

(35:55):
like that feels true to life. That's certainly been true
in my experience, where you know, like your grandparent dies
and all these traditions go with them if your family's
messy and can't keep up with them.

Speaker 4 (36:08):
No, that happened in my life, specifically, choosing diabetes.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
It was an interesting choice, and I didn't quite know
what to make of it, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Especially because that's the thing that basically like tears the
family apart. Like you said, it's the plot point that
instigates a lot of this family melodrama. And I feel
like a lot of depictions of diabetes come with some

(36:37):
form of shame, like oh, if the character hadn't eaten
this way, or had this diet or you know, made
this this and this choice, they wouldn't have diabetes. I
don't think the movie is explicitly shaming her, but I
don't know like the optics of like, she has diabetes.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
And that explicitly say that, though I don't remember if
it was voiceover narration or a character speaking to her
where they're like, Mom, we told you to blah blah
blah blah blah with the food.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
I think taking the medicine too. Was she like not
taking her medicine or something.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
I think they say like, you need to take your
insulin or something along those lines. And again, it's super
understandable that Big Mama would be wary of doctors because
there is so much institutionalized racism in the medical field.
But it does almost feel like the movies kind of
shaming her for her choices with health and diet and

(37:38):
things like that.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah. Yeah, And in a movie where I felt like
not a ton of plot points were really dropped, that
felt like one of them where I was like, that's sorry,
my kat's walking through my armpits. That's funny. Yeah, he's
gonna be also pretty loud because he's gonna want some attention.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
It's hungry for Sunday dinner.

Speaker 6 (38:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess it was just I don't
think it was done maliciously, but it just felt like
a plot point that could have been explored a little
bit more in a way that would have been more
fair to.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
The character, who's clearly a character that everyone in the
story loves, and if she wasn't taking the insulin, you know,
it would have been at least interesting to explore why,
because I feel like it's presented sort of in a
more judgmental way than maybe it was intended. But I
don't know, I could be overthinking it too.

Speaker 4 (38:34):
I think also, we didn't have those conversations. I don't
want to say we didn't have those conversations, but in
the public sphere we're having those conversations way more. Yeah,
Like it was like certain communities were having these conversations,
and now like we're all talking like black maternal health,
like everybody's talking about it. It's not just black women anymore.

(38:57):
So I think the time times have changed as well.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
For sure. Yeah, because yeah, we're in this movie came
out twenty six years ago now, so.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Ninety seven, the same year that Titanic came out. Anyway, Wow,
I just have to shout that out obviously, so but yeah,
I do appreciate that there's such a strong focus though,
as you were saying, an idea on the sisters and
their dynamic, because.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
It's just so so different, like.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Super different, very distinguishable, and it's just rare in general
for a movie to be about a group of sisters,
and even rarer for a movie written and directed by
a man. But he, like George Tillman Jr. Very deliberately
wanted to make a movie that had a focus on
female characters. He wanted it to be about the importance

(39:54):
of family. He told the Chicago Tribune in an interview, quote,
I wanted to make a movie about a black family
in Middle America. I wanted to make a film where
everyone can look at them and say, this is my family. Unquote.
So he, you know, he just he wanted to make
this movie about a relatable family and one that focused

(40:17):
on the sisters and not only they're like interpersonal relationships,
but then their subplots with their other you know, their
spouses and their careers and things like that. So I
appreciate that there's just like so much focus on all
of that in a way that feels extremely authentic, like

(40:37):
their relationships, their conflicts. You could argue that it's that
tired trope of like two women not getting along because
one like quote unquote stole the other's man.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
I feel like that. I not to because I do
think that there are elements of how women are written
in this movie that feel very like boying women did
not write this, and I can tell, but I don't know.
I'm gonna jump to his defense a little bit there
because they're sisters, and like how we very often see

(41:12):
if there's infidelity and there's a woman and a man
and it's like someone's husband cheated on them with another woman.
We see in movies, especially of the nineties, that she
is only mad at the other woman and a husband
is like, well, he couldn't help himself. She tempted him,
and that's the story we kind of hear over and over.

(41:33):
I do think the dynamics are different if it's someone
that you've known your whole entire life, because it's almost
like you would want more loyalty from your I would
expect more loyalty from my sister than from my husband.

Speaker 4 (41:46):
I also agree, and I did appreciate like that Harry
was more upset. She wasn't upset with Faith, not really.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
Yeah, there's a quick moment where when she has the
butcher knife that she's wielding at her husband, she kind
of like pivots a little bit and kind of waves
it at Faith. But other than that, she's like, well,
I don't know. There's a few moments where she's like,
you know, I let like fuck the whole like monologue
where she's like, fuck the family, I let the family

(42:16):
into my house and.

Speaker 5 (42:17):
Family, my family fucked my husband.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
So she is targeting some of her anger, but I
don't think it's necessarily that thing that you were talking about, Jamie,
as far as like, oh, I'm directing my anger only
at the other woman because there's this I mean, we've
talked about this quite a bit, and we I think
we talked about it a lot on the like Waiting
to Exhale episode where the one who had been cheated
on targets all of her anger to the other woman

(42:45):
and like letting the man who did the cheating mostly
off the hook, which often has just like sexist implications
as far as like, well, women can't get along and
women are so petty, so obviously they're gonna find any
excuse to be mad at each other. That's not quite
what's happening here, because it's like, well, she's just mad

(43:06):
at everyone for betraying her.

Speaker 4 (43:08):
She's right, she's like, my.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Family, you can't betray me like that. You're my husband,
you can't betray me like that.

Speaker 4 (43:14):
Yeah, And then also like what did she have to
give up to be everything to everybody in this family
because everybody has their own little things that they're into
with bird and the salon, like she's working, but I
get the idea that she's working at this job because
it's very lucrative and it allows her to like fulfill
her responsibilities. But like if she didn't have to have

(43:37):
that role, how would she be Because in the position
she's in, she's not gonna.

Speaker 5 (43:42):
Be like, hey, guys, what's up?

Speaker 4 (43:44):
Like you know, like she has to remember dates, doctor's
appointments when we have to pay all these bills, like
you know, her husband's out doing jazz club things, and
like fucking the cousin, like you know, she's taking a
mod when even though magazine took her and she's the
on that takes him out and does you know, make
sure he has what he needs.

Speaker 5 (44:05):
So it's like that's.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
How she's gonna be considering the environment.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
That's the thing where like I feel like so many
women are blamed for like just doing the labor that
it takes to keep a family together. Because she's like
she's doing household labor, she's doing familial labor. She's like
financial she's like the.

Speaker 4 (44:29):
Maazing's out here trying to scare this man so he
don't beat up her sister.

Speaker 5 (44:33):
She's she's doing.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
All the things like she's I need you to do
something because he not gonna beat up on her like that,
and then she gotta go and find a lawyer to
get the man out.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
She's doing literally everything. And but it's the way that
like woman like that will often be perceived, either just
in real life or in media as being like frigid.
I really think the movie wants you to think that, oh,
she's got to stick up her ass. She's like not
only did like her family not acknowledge everything she's doing
for them, but like neither does the movie, it feels like,

(45:10):
but also not in a way that it's like we
should be grateful for everything she's doing to help.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
It's true, and then also the world like to be
a black woman in a corporate space like that, who
do you have to be to be actually successful? She
has a corner office, she's not she doesn't have a cubicle.
Like she's a boss for real, for real.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
She's like about to make partner and.

Speaker 4 (45:31):
Stuff, right, So, like what does it take to be
that person? But I think a lot of the audience
like nowadays, like back in the day, it was like, oh, Terry,
you know, now everybody's everybody's on Terry's side.

Speaker 5 (45:45):
Everybody's like, yo.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah, we've said it before, we'll say it again. Terry
did nothing wrong. But the movie is treating her as
though she's this uppity, frigid woman. And yes, she is,
like again holding her degree and her accolades and her
money over people the way that like oftentimes a family

(46:09):
member with more money will kind of try to exert
that power in a way which is like not grey.
We don't love to see it, right, And I.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Totally understand why family members that had less than her
would be somewhat resentful of that. Like I think, I
don't know, if you've been on any side of that
family dynamic, it's always going to be really tricky. It
seems like sometimes Terry wants to be acknowledged for what
she's bringing to the table and it's being taken as

(46:42):
punitive or insulting in a way that it just feels
like more of a communication issue, because I don't think
anyone is necessarily wrong, Like I don't think Bird is
being an asshole by being like I don't need to
thank you every second for investing in my beauty shop,
which is very successful. And I also don't think that

(47:02):
Terry is a monster for wanting to be acknowledged for
having done that, And so it just feels like sisterly
communication for sure.

Speaker 4 (47:10):
But also it's also on the mother a lot of times,
like the mom put Terry in that position. She should
have never been in a position where she had to
be maternal to her sisters, especially if they had a father,
Like why is Terry doing all of this? You know,
if you have a husband. We didn't even get into that,
Like the movie doesn't get into that. They don't address that,

(47:33):
like because Terry's a print to child, like she didn't
get to be just ae sister, Like she has to
take care of her mother, her sisters, her sister's kids,
her uncle, her husband, like so yeah, that isn't addressed,
and I just think people don't realize how much work
it is to be like the oldest daughter.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Yeah, yes, for sure, do we have any oldest daughters
in the house?

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Okay, saying I'm an old child?

Speaker 3 (48:03):
Sorry, unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
I know.

Speaker 3 (48:06):
Again, it's just like a very specific stage of the
life thing. But I do feel like, yeah, like oldest
kids a very girls, and sometimes you come off as
maternalistic and like you're trying to take care of everybody.
But usually like sometimes, and it seems like with Terry
this was the case at different points, like you saw

(48:27):
kind of the worst of it, where it's alluded to
a few times that girl's father, Joe's husband had a
gambling problem and that this was something that really deeply
affected their family. And I think, based on the timeline
it's described, that the eldest would have been the most

(48:48):
exposed to that and how it affected the family in
a very particular way. And I do think that like
when you grow up in a family with addiction or
infidelity or just a very strong core issue, the eldest
absorbs a lot of that and the way that they
process it is not always good. But I do think

(49:08):
it is like relevant to who Terry is that it
makes total sense to me that she both wants to
and seems like she like genuinely wants to take care
of her family, Like she doesn't dislike her family, she
just feels unappreciated.

Speaker 4 (49:25):
But also like it's also because she's a woman, because
if there was an older boy, he would not have
the same responsibilities. Like I even have friends who are
they're the oldest girl, and they have older brothers, and
they take care of their older brothers, you know, so
it's like they don't get to be the middle kid,
you know, or the youngest if they're the oldest girl,

(49:46):
because now you're a mother and now you have labor.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
To do exactly.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
That's actually familiar to me because I have an older
brother and a younger sister and so.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
So you're technically so we're all spirits.

Speaker 4 (50:00):
Yeah, yes, yeah, children here, Hello, we need a break,
we need a massage.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
I wish there would have been there would have been
more acknowledgment of like everything that Terry does for the family.
Every like it's contextualized why she is the way that
she is, but it's not necessarily explicitly those connections aren't
necessarily explicitly made, and it's just like Terry needs to

(50:28):
lighten up, and it's like, well, let's explore maybe what
she's going through, right, Can we let's take a quick break,
and then we'll come back for more discussion. And we

(50:52):
are back. Could we talk about the aspect of the
story of Lem losing his job and his difficulty finding
another one, because there's an awful lot to talk about here.
It's a pretty big focal point of the movie that
Lem has gotten fired because his employer found out that

(51:13):
he lied on his application about having a criminal record.
And then Lem has difficulty finding another job because he
starts telling the truth on his applications about having been
convicted of a crime, and so he's having trouble landing
another job not only because he has a criminal record,

(51:34):
but specifically because he's a black man with a criminal record.
Because I mean, black people with the same qualifications as
their white counterparts are often less likely to be offered
jobs than white people, and then black people with a
criminal record are statistically way less likely to be offered
a job than white people with a criminal record. So

(51:58):
we see this man infesting in Lem's character and he's
talking to Bird about how like I lied on the application,
like I'm doing this and like I'm struggling with this
because it's about this bullshit system. He says something like
they lock you up and expect you to do something
better with your life, but when you get out, there

(52:20):
isn't anything better because like the white people who have
everything don't give you a second chance. And then Bird
is like, that's bullshit, like stop using the white man
as an excuse, which surprised me that she took that
stance because, like Lem is absolutely right, it has everything
to do with systemic racism. But I also feel like

(52:43):
Bird's response to that is her holding on to these
biases when it comes to rigid gender roles and what
she expects of a man having to be like the provider,
because that becomes this whole other component of this story
where Lem goes to Kenny and Kenny's like, don't tell

(53:07):
your wife that you're unemployed, Like, never tell a black
woman that you don't have a job. You know, it's
all right for them to lie around the house, but like,
not the man. And even if you're doing household work,
like they won't respect you unless you have a job
out in the world earning money, which again like just

(53:27):
like speaks to like these rigid gender roles that both
that like men and women harbor because like patriarchy conditions
all genders to hold onto these like certain expectations where
I don't know, like the men, the men have some
messed up values in this movie, but so do the women,

(53:47):
Like women like Bird not valuing like her husband doing
household labor and she's conditioned to think, like, well, that's
like a woman's work, and right, men shouldn't be doing that,
should be going out and earning. So I don't know,
like the movie starts to comment on this, but then
where it lands feels kind of dissonant because it comes

(54:09):
down on the side of like reinforcing those gender expectations
because of like how forgiving it is to various male
characters after they've displayed some pretty nasty behavior, right, So
I don't know, it feels like all over the place.
I wish it had like kind of made some more

(54:30):
definitive statements about how like wow, these gender roles that
are forced upon us and these expectations based on gender,
they're so rigid. Can't we like just do whatever we're
able to do to participate and help with the family unit.
But certain characters are just like holding too tightly onto

(54:51):
certain expectations. And then you have like Lemb like being
abusive to multiple people and everyone's just like.

Speaker 4 (55:02):
That's just his personality. Yeah, Like, but I also feel
like it's respectability politics, Like it's like you have to
be a good boy and a good girl in this world,
and this is what it looks like for a black
person to be good. Like Terry is good. You know,
she does a good job, she's making a lot of money,
she's a lawyer. She gets to check with Maxine. I

(55:26):
think Maxine is a stay at home mom. Yes, she's
a stay at home mom, but I do think she
is smart. Like I always thought, like why is she
stay at home mom? She could do so many cool things,
like she has all of these skills, but she's stay
at home mom and that's like her role.

Speaker 5 (55:45):
And with Limb, like I was like I understand.

Speaker 4 (55:48):
Where it's like, Okay, you gotta don't use that as
an excuse because growing up, like I grew up with
a lot of guys in and out of Juvie, and
they would make so many excuses. But you would give
them an opportunity, like, oh, why don't you try this,
you have this skill here, like go a little further,
and they wouldn't do it. They wouldn't even put the
effort in to make those changes. So I'm a little

(56:10):
mixed on that, but definitely chuck full of respectability in
the society, Like there are a lot of like boxes
that people are stuck in, like a with Terry's husband
not being allowed to be an artist, like it not
even being a serious conversation because he's actually he's actually
very talented, which is why faith in him connected because

(56:35):
they're both very talented artists. And I think was it
Casey and Jojo at the hand, it was like.

Speaker 5 (56:44):
This is crazy, like you're really good.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
Like so it's like, but that wasn't even a real
option because it's like, you can't be a musician even
though you are good, Like he could have probably been
one of the top pianists or whatever, or like traveling
the world making a bunch of money, but that wasn't
accessible where like you lived and stuff like that. So

(57:08):
I feel like there's a lot of respectability in a movie,
but that also like reflected those times and what people
were proud of what you could be proud of, Like, ah,
like I can't be proud of you as a musician
because like I'd rather you do your corporate job, like
you have more value there, you know, instead of like

(57:29):
being an artist.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Terry even puts a number on it. She's like thirty
one thousand of the blah blah blah, and our joint account.

Speaker 5 (57:35):
Is yours, right, yeah, And she's.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Like putting a value on him, the monetary like specific
number value on him, or she.

Speaker 4 (57:45):
Would know she pan all the bills.

Speaker 5 (57:47):
Yeah, right, he's not paying a bills.

Speaker 4 (57:49):
So it's like it's like, yeah, but if he was
a musician who was handling things, like what if he
was handling things, like if he was doing shows and
he was like I got a lot of money, don't
worry about the house. I got it, don't worry about
amadituition or whatever she's doing because I know she's paying

(58:10):
bills with Mexican Party.

Speaker 5 (58:12):
Yeah, but like I got it.

Speaker 4 (58:13):
Like so it's also you want to be this musician,
but you're still leaning so heavy. We got to get
away from Terry because we're like.

Speaker 5 (58:22):
It's becoming this so hard.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Terry is a nuclear Rod, But it's like, but with her,
I'm so invested in Terry, where I wonder in her relationship,
would she have been more willing and amenable to supporting
her husband's musical ambitions if she felt appreciated by him
in the first place, Because it does seem like with

(58:47):
Terry there is this inherent I don't know, and I
think that this is like something that exists in a
lot of successful women, an inherent insecurity of like how
am I viewed and if someone is threatened by me?
What is the quote unquote consequence of that? Which I
think is very much a thing and it shouldn't be.
But I it like Terry's reactions as as I think

(59:11):
sometimes harsh as they can seem, and I think as
they are perceived in the movies, I don't know, like
I do wonder, and we don't have a ton of
context for that of like, well, how has he behaved
for this entire relationship? Is he saying that I am
not that it's her place to block his dreams? But
they're in a partnership and she has to take on

(59:32):
some financial burden and she deserves to know if that's
something that is happening and it feels like that goes
unexplored a little.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
Yeah, he took five grand out of their account to
like build his at home studio without consulting her.

Speaker 3 (59:48):
And that's not just their money, that's also their house.
You're like, he just do something like that to the house.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Yeah, right, And it's like, yeah, It's like it would
be one thing if he was like like, hey, babe,
I'm interested in pursuing music, Like would you entertain the
idea of like me building this home studio. It's gonna
be an investment, but like I'll use my money and like,
you know, having just an open conversation about it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
But he did that discussion.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Yeah, he just goes behind her back and doesn't have
an open conversation about it at all, and then he
resents when she's not more supportive. But it's like, well,
like you put her in this position where you're not
being open and honest with her, So yeah, I understand
her not being fully supportive.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
And even though this is not Miles's fault, we have
context for Terry that she has serious trust issues, right people,
because of this experience with her sister, right, And so
that is not on Miles, but that is context for
how Terry behaves in situations like that, where I feel
like she shuts down and like absorbs a lot and

(01:00:57):
comes off really defensive. I feel so much for Terry.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
Justice for Terry. We see her get cheated on in
two different scenes by two different people.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Let her have her butcher knife.

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
That are supposed to women, and these are women in
her family, are not her friends, betraying that her the
girl who works at the dairy queen. It's like, this
is my sister and this is my cousin.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Yeah, right, And I do think.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
That, yeah, like the way that this conversation goes around
in fidelity would be different if it was the girl
at the dairy Queen or like someone that we don't
know and don't see again, because then it feels more
woman versus woman. But it's like Terry, I don't know.
And then even at the end, I was like, Wow,
no justice for Terry, where they're like Terry and Miles
broke up, but Miles was still around a lot.

Speaker 5 (01:01:44):
And you're like, why who's out of here?

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Didn't care anyway, it's probably Ama just being like hey
uncle Miles.

Speaker 4 (01:01:57):
I know, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
It's like inviting people who know one's.

Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
Around paying for your boarding school right now? Who's paying
for basketball practice? Right? Because you want to be a
basketball player?

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Like he wants to be right right, that's his dream
and it works well alert for a space jam.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
Yeah, good for him.

Speaker 4 (01:02:27):
Shout out to Terry and all the work she did
so he could become the NBA.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
It's true without Terry, we wouldn't have Michael Jordan, and
no one talks about that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
Terry going underappreciated again, damn. I think another clue that
this was written and directed by a man is and
I alluded to this already, but how easily so many
of the men are like let off the hook by
the end as far as like I mean to me.
The biggest example is Lem where he like goes ballistic

(01:03:03):
multiple times, like beating people up, shoving his wife, like
being so emasculated and acting out in violent ways like
and then everyone's like, well, even like Maxine defends him.
She's talking to Bird and she's like, you can't go

(01:03:23):
behind your man's back and have your eggs get a
job for him, Like a man has to be a man.
And he if he feels like you took that away
from him, then he has nothing, which like, again, don't
go behind people's backs and do things. That's the thing
that it seems like everyone in this family needs to learn,
because Ahmad does it, Miles does it, Bird does it,
Everyone's doing it all the time. So really this family

(01:03:46):
just needs to learn how to communicate. But I'm just like.

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
Maxine, like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Why are you defending this guy who like feels so
emasculated for like, i mean, pretty dated reasons of course,
like this was the mental of the time. Not that
that excuses anything, but I don't know for her to
like lightly defend.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
Yeah, I mean, as far as Lem goes, I found
it frustrating because I feel like, like we were just
talking about Lem's character illustrates so many realities about incarcerated
black men trying to re enter society in a way
that is fair, and how there's so much I mean,

(01:04:30):
I think we see him encounter the most direct racism
of anyone in the movie. And I appreciated at the
beginning of this conversation the dynamic between him and Bird
where it's like she doesn't quite get it, but she
wants to, and it seems like this is something that
they want to work on within their relationship and that

(01:04:52):
all felt like, Wow, that was like really well done.
But then I was really frustrated with where they took
his character from there, because he is abusive towards her,
like outright, and then when he comes back at the
end of the movie, he even talks with Ahmad a
child and is like, I would never hit a woman,

(01:05:13):
and You're like, but I've been watching this whole movie
and I don't want to like put it squarely on
this movie or this filmmaker, because I do think it's
like an of the time thing, but like the definition
of what constitutes spousal abuse and assaults very off. Like
he there's no question I think in like a modern

(01:05:35):
lens that what Lem did to Bird was extremely abusive.
And then he came back and was like, well, I didn't,
you know, strike her across the face and I would
never do that, and that's my boundary, so it's fine,
and I should be bought in back, which he was immediately,
and everyone agrees. Yeah, it made that character so frustrating.

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
Yeah, and I know, like some of the things that
like Bird couldn't understand was also because of how supportive
her family had been to her, and she's the baby
you know she's so protected, which is like, why of
course you're gonna go find this dude, Like, you know,
you could have been anybody else. Everybody want you and

(01:06:16):
you how'd y'all meet?

Speaker 5 (01:06:18):
Was he in jail?

Speaker 4 (01:06:19):
Like?

Speaker 5 (01:06:20):
I was always like, did you meet him in jail?

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:06:23):
Like because I feel.

Speaker 4 (01:06:24):
Like, you know, women meet people in jail, like, which is,
how'd you meet this guy? Okay?

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
Cool?

Speaker 4 (01:06:31):
But I think Lim doesn't have family, and I think
that has become his family and he has to learn
how to be in a family because he's so used
to defending himself, even to people who I'm sure are
supposed to be in his corner. And I get that.
I've seen that a lot in like some of the
people I know who've been in and out of jail,

(01:06:54):
they have a hard time trust in people, you know,
and believing that somebody loves and cares and stuff like that.
So they kind of like do the same things and
they know it's them, but it's hard to like break
that cycle within yourself. So I feel like he definitely
was abusive and that would be in a hard household
to live in, like to bring if you like you're

(01:07:15):
literally trying to trying to intimidate her physically, like you're
trying to scare her, You're trying to donate her physically.
You're doing it. All these people know who you are,
We see what you're doing. And he needs he needs
I don't want to say we need more in therapy,
but I felt really annoyed that getting him a job

(01:07:36):
was supposed to be a bad thing. It's like, isn't
that proof that you love this person so much and
you want them to be okay that you would literally
go to the person you shouldn't be going to to
give him a job.

Speaker 5 (01:07:47):
And she's not sleeping with the man.

Speaker 4 (01:07:49):
M m.

Speaker 5 (01:07:50):
She She's not giving him no punani to get the job.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
She's just gonna go to dinner with him.

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):
That's you know, which is also like not a fair
position for her to be in and a huge concession
on her end, because we know she does not want
to be around this guy at all exactly. And I
can get as far with Lim in that situation of
him being angry about the lie and angry about feeling
like because it feels like Lem has a deep seated

(01:08:17):
issue with feeling like someone's doing him a favor. He
wants to feel like it's just happened organically or and
I understand that, Like that makes sense, and I can
understand like finding that out, especially from the asshole that
did it, who was clearly egging him on and clearly
wanted him to be angry and clearly wanted to fire him.
I can understand why that would be upsetting. But it's like,

(01:08:40):
how is the answer to attack your wife without talking
to her first? But it just feels like Lem's really
left off the hook.

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
For yeah, like okay, like we know U can't you
a jailbird, so we know that's what's expect.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
Right, Like it seems like it's unfair to Bird and
to Limb because it's like Lemon is playing into the
exact stereotypes that his character has been pushing against the
entire movie. And then Bird and the whole family are like, oh, well,
he didn't strike her across the face, so he's a
good guy, which I was really Yeah, that was like

(01:09:20):
I think that was like the big thing that stood
out to me as like a really dated view of abuse.
And then Maxine, it's so interesting because she's a very
important character, but I feel like she gets the least
screen time of the sisters, and.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
She doesn't have quite the same arc or subplot that
Bird plus Limb and Terry plus Miles get.

Speaker 3 (01:09:46):
And I mean, maybe I'm just like in discourse brain
wormhole here, So stop me if this feels off, But
I was feeling like because Maxine has sort of less
of an arc than the other sisters. She's pretty consistent
in her views, story, her marriage is stable, like seems

(01:10:10):
like she's generally like okay, and her as sort of
the mother of the family and she's told you are
the wise one. She seems sort of like the chosen
one by her own mother, as like the new matriarch
of the family. And she's also the character to deliver
this kind of like retro view of gender at the

(01:10:31):
end of the movie, and it felt pointed to me
that it's like the new matriarch and the only mother
of this group of sisters thus far is also the
one that thinks that you should let a man be
a man and don't get in the way of him
being a man. It just felt like symbolic in a
way that felt a little icky to me, like and

(01:10:53):
it didn't wreck anything, but it just it feels like
again Team Terry of like how it's sort of I
don't know. I think led to believe that, like Terry's
professional life is part of why her marriage doesn't work,
and it's Maxine's commitment to her family that is why

(01:11:14):
she is the chosen one, and that she because she
lets a man be a man. She's the only one
that has a stable marriage and.

Speaker 5 (01:11:21):
She don't just have a dar.

Speaker 3 (01:11:24):
Right, which is fine, but it's like it just felt
weird for the one sister that was the stay at
home mom to be the moral authority.

Speaker 4 (01:11:33):
In who's not in the act, goes to the world,
doesn't have to pay any bills, doesn't have like if
she goes to fans, she's just gonna call Terry, like
you know, so.

Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
That is true.

Speaker 4 (01:11:43):
I feel like her role in the movie is totally
momb like, Like even when she has that scene with
a mod talking about like what he wants to do
and how he wants to get the family together when
they're walking. I love that scene too, Like I was like, oh,
it's so cool. Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
She's like I was in labor with you for twenty
three hours, forty five minutes and ten seconds, and he
like recites it along with her as if she tells
him this at least once a week.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
Classic mom behavior.

Speaker 4 (01:12:10):
My mom used to do that too with my sister.
She's like, you guys are not three years apart. You're
eleven months, twelve days, and like, what is it thirteen
minutes or something like that. It's like it's like she
has all of the like how far apart we are?
So like I love that, but I'm just like, her
role is really mother. It's like mother, but it's not

(01:12:35):
real without the responsibility of mother.

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):
Well, I don't even have an issue with her being
a stay at home mom. I feel like anytime though
that you have a spread of characters and you have
a stay at home mother, and you have a professional
who doesn't have kids, or you have like a spread
of different kinds of characters, when any one character is
made to be like the moral voice of the movie,
because I feel like there's a lot of modern movies

(01:13:00):
that have the reverse problem, where it's like being the
childless professional, you are the moral authority, which is also
unfair to people making other choices. But it's just like
any anytime one character has made the moral authority, it
feels pointed, even if it's not quite intended that way.
I couldn't tell if it was intended, but I felt
like the stay at home on being like I'm doing

(01:13:21):
the right thing because I'm doing what a woman is
supposed to do, and it just felt like it erased
other stuff, which that little resimplification.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
But no, but I agree, and not only like her
being poisoned aous with a moral authority character, but her
being the only one of the three sisters to not
have a more distinct arc and like thing that she
was dealing love. So to me, it feels like, oh,
the mother character, like we don't really need to check
in with her and see what is happening in her life.

(01:13:52):
She'll be in scenes, but like we don't really need
to give her like a fleshed out story line. It
just also feels some stuff right.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
Which probably has to do with a man reading the movies,
like good she's good mom.

Speaker 4 (01:14:05):
Yeah, probably literally has no clue what are Yeah, we
probably literally couldn't even tell you, like what their life
would be like as a new.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
Mom, right because she has two young kids a mod's sister.
I know, we learn her name, but also she's such
a nothing character. She's like in a couple of scenes
where we see her eating, but I don't think she
has any lines. Maybe it's just because like she's six,
and they're like, you don't child actors enough lines?

Speaker 4 (01:14:35):
We give the grand she's so cute, but already.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
Yeah, she gets no anything. And then but yeah, why
isn't there a story where Maxine is dealing with something
in her life, whether it is related to motherhood, whether
it's related to her relationship with Kenny, maybe it's her
relationship with her son, Like why isn't there something more
that we're given? But instead she just is kind of

(01:15:01):
like popping in now and then to be like, let
me reinforce rigid gender expectations, okay, bye.

Speaker 3 (01:15:08):
Yeah, and I don't And it felt also pointed that
that conversation is between Maxine and Bird after Bird finds
out that she's pregnant, because now Bird's going to be
a mother, and she's like, let me pass down this
institutional maternal knowledge. Let men do whatever they want. Bye, Like,

(01:15:31):
in a way, I don't know, it felt very that
seems specifically, even though I liked the sister dynamic, but
that seems specifically felt the most obviously written by a
man to me, because even if that is the way
that a woman feels. As a writer, I feel like
there would be more nuance to it than just like
a man needs to be a man, and what's happening

(01:15:53):
to Terry And what happened to Terry is because she
didn't let a man be a man. And you're like,
that's your sister, dude, come on.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
I find the advice should have been like, look, sister,
like men are so fragile and they're so easily emasculated,
so you need to uh find a therapist for your
husband or like convince him to go to therapy or
something like that should have been the advice.

Speaker 4 (01:16:20):
Yeah, and it would be like, or y'all need to
have better communication, right, because that needs a really talk
because yeah, on different pages.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
Yeah yeah, because that scene also felt like Maxine was
like tacitly okay with how abusive Limb was towards Bird,
and right away that also felt unfair to a character
we love. I don't know. Yeah, Maxine is all over
the place for me because it's like it's vivid a fox,
So I'm on board, right, it's gonna be really hard

(01:16:50):
to turn me against this, right love. But her actions
to me are because it's like she's obviously a great mom,
and it seems like she really enjoys being a stay
at home mom, which is great, but it yeah, there
was like this sort of edge of judgment towards women
who are not stay at home moms, and I feel

(01:17:11):
like that also tied into I think Mama Joe is
a stay at home mother as well, and she was
the person who held the family together and she passes
that role on to the stay at home mother, and
it just is I don't know. I mean, I'm sure
that that does happen in families, but it would have
been cool to see it explored a little more than it's.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
Oh, we do get a little mentioned from Mama Joe
that she she said like I worked on my hands
and knees, like I think she said something like cleaning
up after white folk. Oh yes, yes, But it feels
like maybe she did that in response to her husband's
gambling and they were in debt, So maybe she was
a stay at home mom for a while but then
had to start working for those reasons unclear. We don't

(01:17:56):
get a whole lot of the details of her backstory.

Speaker 3 (01:18:00):
And then is it also Maxine. Now I feel like
I'm becoming anti vaxine. It's not how I have to feel,
But isn't it also a Maxine who's like, well, when
our father got us deep into debt gambling, mom took
care of it and she didn't say a thing about it,
and she didn't humiliate or emasculate him. Oh I think
it is caused that problem and she was right to

(01:18:23):
do that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
And it's like, it is not women's responsibility to clean
up the messes that men make.

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):
Right, And that wasn't fair to Mama Joe, But it
felt like the movie felt like it was.

Speaker 4 (01:18:36):
Right, like that was her responsibility as a wife.

Speaker 1 (01:18:39):
Right very nineties in before mentality for sure. The other
man who I feel like has really let off the
hook is Reverend Williams, who is a pervert. He's always
trying to kiss women without their consent. He's always saying gross,
like very sexually charged things.

Speaker 3 (01:18:58):
Such as meat. He called the meat at one point.

Speaker 1 (01:19:02):
And he's like, oh, we're about to eat these delicious
legs under the table, I mean on the table, and
it's like, right, sir, But this is like played as
a joke by the movie, like, oh yeah, Reverend, he's
a creep. But isn't it funny? And it's like, no,
get this guy away.

Speaker 3 (01:19:21):
That felt very nineties to me. I was like, that's
very like nineties comedy.

Speaker 4 (01:19:25):
Nineties for sure, because y'all remember Martin, You remember Jerome.
I had Jerome in the house watching out. That's all
he did was being nasty. All his character was being
a nasty man, and it was it was a joke,
like it wasn't like, yo, like we need to talk
to this dude. He's feeling all the girls in the

(01:19:45):
club like we gotta stop you, like, you know, what
are you doing? They're not gonna come back out if
you keep treating him like this? Why are you treating
women like this? And that's your whole person out that's
that was his person like his character.

Speaker 3 (01:20:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's so many. It's like god, I feel
across like for generations, there have been so many famous
like comedy characters or just sitcom characters that are just
like man who sexually harasses people. I mean, it's it's
the quagmire paradox to bring things to family guy for

(01:20:22):
no reason. But it's just like that's the joke is
that he's creepy and awful to women, which is not
unique to this movie certainly, but it's like, well, if
the cast didn't confirm that this movie is firmly in
nineteen ninety seven, that character does.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
I want to rattle off a couple other very like
nineties mentality things that appear in the movie. We've got
let's see Bird's real name is Ryla, but there's voice
over this says we call her Bird because she used
to be skinny, and it's like, uh, I'm sorry, I'm
looking at Na Long right now, and she's thin, what
do you? I don't, I don't know. There's like a

(01:20:59):
very sex work shamy mentality because there's a reference to
how Faith used to be a stripper and everyone's very
very judgmental of that. And she's also and we've talked
about this before, like because there's such a huge stigma
around sex work, and even people who have done sex

(01:21:19):
work may internalize that shame because of just all the
external shame. Because she says at a certain point, like
she's talking about her career goals with Miles, and she's like,
I want to dance, No, I mean really dance, Like
I want to do Broadway musicals, as if like doing
erotic dance is not quote unquote real work kind of thing,

(01:21:40):
so she's like internalizing that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
I think there's like a number of tropes attached to
her as a former occurrent. It's unclear stripper or sex
worker to any capacity, because it's also implied that, like
I think this is another common trope with sex workers,
is like they're gonna steal your boyfriend. It's like, yeah, right,

(01:22:03):
they do not want to fuck your weird husband, like
believe it. And also that they're like reckless and bad
with money and these agents of chaos, and the way
that I think Faith is pretty uncritically shown. And I
think that Faith is a bad cousin like she is,

(01:22:23):
and I understand why Terry fucking hates her, but it
feels like the way that she's characterized is also like
pretty steeped in a lot of tropes around, like erotic
dancers and strippers in general, where it's like realistically in
the real world, Like I don't know, I think it's
more interesting if it's just like she is interested in
Miles because he takes her art seriously and she takes

(01:22:45):
his art seriously, and there's no one in their family
that feels that way. So that connection even makes total
sense to me, but it feels like there's just like
tropes around it that made it messier than it needed
to be made.

Speaker 4 (01:22:58):
Sure, And I think she carries that shame too, like
she you know, when she goes in the house, like
I think Mama Joel's like, you can stay, like and
everybody's like you can stay, you can stay. She knows
she's not wanted. She knowss like you know, she's kind
of not supposed to be there, and she has to
be like validated in that space. I think it's like

(01:23:19):
Maxine who validates.

Speaker 7 (01:23:21):
Her yeah, and yeah, it is a little all over
the place with like okay, now, but you're gonna let
the whole stay, like y'all are obsessed with the approval
of men, but but she can stay.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
It's confusing and also it's just like God, faith, if
there's one thing you shouldn't do, it's first of all, don't.

Speaker 4 (01:23:39):
Of all the husbands.

Speaker 3 (01:23:40):
Sex with them, any of them, but much less the
person who has agreed to host you. No, no, all.

Speaker 1 (01:23:50):
I almost feel and maybe I'm just reading this incorrectly,
but it almost feels to me like her little affair
with Miles is like see Terry, this is what happens
when you're not more supportive to your man, you know,
And because even she at the final family dinner when

(01:24:12):
I think Maxine says something like, Terry, you need to
worry about your own husband because he's out there sleeping
around and she's like, was that it? Like? Did I
not like care for you well enough? Was I not
a good enough wife? Kind of thing? And then he says, like,
you know, we just haven't been happy in a long time.
We used to have fun with each other, and she
replies with like, yeah, I guess, I don't know what happened,

(01:24:33):
but like I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:24:35):
And it's dropped as if because it's like all of
that can be true and a relationship, and it doesn't
justify what he did, and it doesn't mean that Terry
brought it on herself, like they weren't happy, So it's
overly simplicity to say talk about it, but like you
can't just be like, well, so I had no choice
but to fuck your cousin, like, yes, you did, you did, Miles,

(01:24:58):
you did.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
Can we talk a little bit more about the Gina
rivera character, and I want to especially talk about it
as it relates to a piece that you wrote in
Pop Sugar called the Struggle for Afro Latinx Visibility in
media still exists. I highly recommend everyone read it. Will
link it in the show notes. But the reason it's

(01:25:22):
relevant here is so the actor Gina Rivera, who plays
Faith in the movie. This actor is mixed African American
and Puerto Rican. Her character does not appear to be
Afro Latina in any way. So it's an example of
an actor's Latini dad being erased, which is what your

(01:25:45):
piece is largely about. How Afro LATINX people are erased
from media about and from LATINX communities because the media
favors lighter skinned LATINX people. How Afro LATINX people are
erased from Black communities because like in the US, for example,

(01:26:07):
black people, and I mean this happens all around the world,
but Black people are lumped together as a monolith and
just treated as though they all have the same culture
in the same background, the way that many marginalized communities
are treated as a monolith. And you talk about how,
you know, a lot of prominent LATINX folks in media, artists, athletes,

(01:26:29):
you know, things like that their Latini dad is erased.
And this is just another example because I feel like
her character could have easily been Latina because she's related
to them on her mother's side, but like her dad
could have been Afro Latinos. So I don't know if
you want to speak to that any further, but it's

(01:26:50):
just something I wanted to bring up.

Speaker 4 (01:26:52):
Yeah, thank you, thank you so much for that.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
Check it out.

Speaker 4 (01:26:55):
I really enjoyed writing that piece. It was like a
lot of drama even getting there because of so like
it's like such a charged conversation in the global black community,
like all the nuances, Like I went viral in the
preparation of that in a negative way, like I got
dragged on Twitter. Oh now it's extra. But he lived

(01:27:20):
and I lived and I lived, So yeah, like that's
an interesting conversation. Like personally, my mom's African American, my
father is the Latino one. And a lot of times
I always like press Puerto Ricans because it's like, Okay,
you're Puerto Rican, but are you black Puerto Rican or
white Puerto Rican? Because like you know, Loisa exists, like
it's like a black town, you know, like which part

(01:27:42):
are tudl Schomberg was from Santuse, Puerto Rico, like, and
we had the Schomberg Museum that's in Harlem right now,
and a lot of people don't even know that he's
Puerto Rican and like he came from Puerto Rico and
that's where he started archiving black history. I think the
conversation is new a little bit, and I don't know why,

(01:28:02):
because when we think of history, Langston Hughes was working
with Afro Puerto Rican artists and like building with them,
and we have this history of collectives. But in modern
times it doesn't feel that way. It doesn't feel like
you can talk about blackness on a global scale. And
then media and film is very very tricky. I notice,

(01:28:27):
like when it's a LATINX character, they're usually like they
can't be black. It's like supposed to be that. Afro
Latinos are not supposed to exist, you know. And if
you are black, you are African American. That's all you
get to be.

Speaker 1 (01:28:42):
I can think of exactly one mainstream movie that prominently
features an Afro Latino character that is identified that way,
and it's into the Spider Verse and across the Spider Verse,
and that's Mars.

Speaker 4 (01:28:54):
That's not even a perfect situation because the guy is
an African American character and a lot of the characteristics,
like his family is technically not an Afro Latino family,
Like he has a white Latina mom and an African
American father, so he's kind of Afro Latino. But Afro

(01:29:15):
Latinos have black parents. That's normal, Like it's normal to
have black parents in Latin America. Like that's like a
very normal thing. And I think it goes down to,
just like the storytellers, it's really difficult for Afro LATINX
people to get into these opportunities. As you guys know,
Hollywood is a grind for any person, but having all

(01:29:37):
these different identities, it gets really difficult to explain to
Americans who you are when as a black person, you're
not supposed to have all of this stuff going on
for me, Like that's why I started my company, Black
Tina Media, because I wanted us to be celebrated. I
wanted our stories to be acknowledged when it comes to this, Like,

(01:29:59):
I happy she was cast for the role period, and
a lot of like Afro LATINX people in general, if
they are black presenting and identify as black people, they
usually are playing African American characters right.

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
And a lot of people don't know the distinction between
someone who is Afro LATINX and African American.

Speaker 3 (01:30:23):
I mean, I will fully admit that I did not
have a good understanding of Afro Latin X representation because
I hadn't seen it really and because like you were
just saying, NAIDI. Yet, like the only sort of allegedly
Afro LATINX character that we have in pop culture right
now is still pretty muddled and misunderstood because who are

(01:30:47):
the storytellers. It's still vustly white people.

Speaker 4 (01:30:49):
They're They're like Celia Cruz. I feel like she's the
most known Afro Latina in the world sphere, Like her
music is all over the world, Like she is a
world renowned name, Christina Milian. She's Cuban, she's black, but

(01:31:10):
she's also lumped as like African American. But like, oh,
she's she's mixed. It's just like, oh, she must be mixed,
you know, And the fact that she is Cuban is
enough to make her mix.

Speaker 5 (01:31:24):
She doesn't actually have to be like not because.

Speaker 4 (01:31:25):
She's mixed for real, for real, But to be mixed
is to not be African American Like there's like that
I've noticed that because people like, oh, you're mixed. It's
like I'm not mixed, Like my father is a dark
Sian black man. My mom is a dark skin African
American woman. But it's like, oh, no, you're mixed because
your dad is Panamanian, right, And it's like.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
Be black and Panama Superama man.

Speaker 5 (01:31:50):
You need to go to and see all the black
people that you think.

Speaker 4 (01:31:53):
Don't exist, Like yeah, so that, and then in Hollywood,
I think like it's like erase sure of like just
blackness in general, like we're not supposed to have culture,
Like we're not supposed to have nuanced culture because even
in African American film and television, it never gets that
deep unless you're talking about Daughters of the Dust where

(01:32:15):
they talk about Gligichi ancestry and that they wouldn't let
her make another move for twenty years after she did that.
Julie Dash a Dash she's killing it now. Also, is
it Casey Lennon.

Speaker 1 (01:32:30):
Case Yes, Yeah, we've covered that.

Speaker 4 (01:32:34):
Yes, so she did Ease Value, which talks about like
the creole ancestry. We have some of these films, but
blackness in film is supposed to be like you from
the South, and in the South, it's not all the same,
Like they're still not a monolism, not the same as Louisiana.

(01:32:55):
Which part of Louisiana you're coming from, not sing Texas,
Like you got the black appellations too, black appellation history,
like Tony Morrison talks about like all these black appellations.
So I think in general, when we talk about blackness,
we're not allowed to have nuance. And when black people
get a little bit of power, there's all of this
pressure to just like get like a tap on the

(01:33:18):
shoulder by like the white executive and be like, good job,
black person. So people kind of erase themselves. And this
happens in the Latino community all the time, like people
will erase themselves before they get a chance to even
be like erasists, Like I don't even want to go
there because I don't want to have to have a
conversation or I don't want them to say no, or

(01:33:42):
maybe I've tried and somebody else said no and don't.
I don't want to have to go there. I just
want to go straight to the top. I want to
get the budget and I want them to say yes.
So there's a lot of things going on, but I
think we need more nuance in black film in general. Sure, also,
is George Tillman Junior? Is he qualified to have an
Afro LATINX character. A lot of African Americans are so

(01:34:05):
confused when it comes to Afrolatane that I've worked with
African American production companies. They didn't get it. They couldn't
understand how a black person had an immigrant experience, because
the immigrant experience is usually like you're not allowed to
be an immigrant if you're black, So it's like, how
could you You don't understand what's going through even though
the people who are getting deported the most are black people.

(01:34:26):
It's Haitians. It's literally Haitians getting deported the most, like
at the border, like those are the people. So it's crazy,
isn't it crazy?

Speaker 3 (01:34:34):
I just think about how many immigrant stories we get
in mainstream media that are like hyper specific white immigrant communities.
Where you can have a whole movie about Swedish immigrants,
you can have a whole movie about Italian immigrants, about
Irish immigrants, And there's famous movies across the board about
very specific groups of white immigrants in the US and
you don't get that for a.

Speaker 1 (01:34:54):
Movie called Brooklyn about sorry those like Irish immigrants, Like
have you been to Brooklyn and see what it looks like?

Speaker 5 (01:35:01):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:35:01):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:35:02):
But yeah, it's Nadia. I know it's like inherent to
what you do and you know it better than anybody,
but it seems to have It's just so much to
do with who holds the institutional power and who holds
the money, and those are white people who have no
understanding of these issues, and so it puts so much
pressure on Afro LATINX creators, like it's an unfair amount

(01:35:24):
of pressure to be under.

Speaker 4 (01:35:25):
It's and also we have to take accountability for how
we present ourselves. Like I've seen stuff created by the
LATINX community is full of tropes and you know, stereotypes,
and it's like this you got the budget, and this
is what you made. This is where you decided to
put the budget. You know. So it's it is. I

(01:35:46):
don't want to just say, oh, the white people they
got all the control. They always doing this to us,
you know, because it's also white Latinos. White Latinos have
a lot of power, they have a lot of money.
You know, why aren't white Latinos supporting Latinos the same
reason why white Americans don't support black Americans. Like it's
like it's the same thing. But I think we have

(01:36:08):
to hold ourselves accountable because I've seen just living all
around the world for the past like four years and
being in all these different communities. It's like I'm like, oh, wow,
I see how our own actions are negatively affecting us.
Like we are invested in the same systems killing us
because we think this is going to help us. You know,

(01:36:29):
it's like, oh, let me play the game. It's like no,
you're getting played. You're just getting played. So I don't know.
It's not like I have like an answer to it.
We just need more diversity. People need to be more
confident and be more bold in storytelling and take more chances.
And also people want happy films. Everything doesn't have to

(01:36:52):
be like the next specsed American screenplay. It's just like
people want to laugh. Can we be entertained? Do you
have to kill us to entertain us? Do we have
do people have to die? You know, like why can't
we have entertainment that's like just purely entertaining with no trauma.
Because a lot of the stuff I've seen in the

(01:37:14):
last like five eight years. Everything is so sad and
everybody's dying, you know, and it's just like can we
just be happy? And but people are like no, I
want to show that Latino's the all we do is
not party, dude? We a party people. What's wrong with
having a party? Like it's like we're no type people,

(01:37:37):
Like that's what we do is key? Key? All right?
Now I'm in Martha's vineyard and what the trainey doing
with the Jamaica I'm doing what the black people do.

Speaker 5 (01:37:44):
We having a cookout on the beach.

Speaker 4 (01:37:47):
There's a cookout, bringing grill. Make it like this is
what we do. This is our culture, Like it's okay,
Like you know, so I feel like just looking deep
into ourselves and be like where am I seeking white validation?
Why do I need to present myself in this way?
Like who is this for? Is this for me? And

(01:38:09):
I feel like as humans we have to always be,
you know, critiquing ourselves so we can be authentic.

Speaker 1 (01:38:16):
And that's like absolutely, yeah, thank you so much for
sharing your perspective on all that.

Speaker 4 (01:38:22):
Thanks for asking.

Speaker 1 (01:38:24):
Of course, we're fans, We're are fans. Does anyone have
anything else they want to talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:38:31):
I just wanted to shout out because we obviously have
discussed George Tillman, Junior, prominant black director still working during
his second Saturn Return. A lot of things to love
about George Tillman Jr. I was looking into the production
team and I think this is a rare example of
we have a majority black production team on this movie

(01:38:54):
as well, I will say excus heavily male. However, it
seems like George Tillman Jr. Was very invested in having
a heavily black production crew as well. I don't know
about the actual crew, but in terms of the highest level,
we have majority black producers. I believe we have a
black cinematographer, but there's two Paul Elliotts who are cinematographers,
so I'm not totally sure which person. And most interestingly

(01:39:17):
to me, this movie has a black editor, a man
named John Carter, and I read a little bit about him,
and he's like historically significant and really fucking cool. He
was the first African American film editor to work in
New York ever, so he was working since the fifties
and he's like a famous figure in the editing community,

(01:39:40):
which I am not a part of, So I had
not heard of him before, but I really enjoyed learning
about him. He started on The Ed Sullivan Show and
then transitioned to majority black film later in his career
and is just like this very famous, respected guy who
just died five years ago at the age of ninety five.
So I just wanted to shout out John Carter because

(01:40:02):
I just I hadn't heard of him before.

Speaker 4 (01:40:03):
That's beautiful shout out to him. I think a lot
like I heard because when I was a little kid,
you know how they say, oh, I never saw myself,
like a lot of like black actors will be like
I never saw myself on DD and that's why I'm acting.
So when I started said, oh, I'm going to be
an actor, I really thought I was like, I'm gonna

(01:40:24):
be in all the dopest films because I saw so
many dope like black films, black people in TV. My
mom she watched a lot of television, and she loved
watching like black characters but also like women. So Zena
Charmed The Parkers, Girlfriends Half and all those up. Like,

(01:40:50):
I didn't realize that it was so bad because that
part of my life. I was like growing up to
Steve Harvey show, you know, and I didn't realize that
these actors were grossly underpaid. I didn't realize they were
not getting invites to Emmy's even though they had they
all had hit shows, Like I didn't know they weren't
being treated at the same as like their white counterparts.

(01:41:13):
But I learned like a lot of it was independent
and they would have different deals in the way the
business worked was different in the nineties and now, even
though black people are working at I guess higher levels,
in a way, there's almost like less creative control in

(01:41:33):
a lot of spaces, and so it's like you're not
going to have like a black film crew because this
is not your show, Like you're the showrunner, but you
have to hire like this whole white crew that's your crew.
So everything is being translated differently, whereas like with Half
and Half, it's like it's like all of these like

(01:41:53):
they get to change the lines, like living single, they
get to they were really involved and like the writing
and stuff. Even in Charmed Hoo's Phoebe what's her name,
Melisa Molana, Oh my god, Yeah, she was talking about
how like they were really integral into writing things in Charmed,

(01:42:14):
and Charmed had a lot of like normal black characters,
Like they weren't a bunch of tropes. It wasn't like, oh,
the scary black parents gonna come up the street. Like
one of the episodes was a guy who had lost
his wife. They had recently lost the wife, and the
little boy developed powers and technology, and the father was
held hostage and that's how they ended up finding the

(01:42:37):
sisters getting little chills of obviously I love movies with sisters.
And they had to like save him and like tell
him like, hey, your powers are good, like you don't
have to hide this, you don't have to feel bad
about having these powers. And I don't know if they
like stripped the powers or made it, but the father
was like a corporate guy, like a nerdy corporate dad

(01:42:59):
who had no who had to handle all of this stuff.
He was not in the magic. And there were many
instances of like black characters, you know, I in my opinion,
even when they had like the African like even though
they made the African stuff a little scary, like I
think they made like one of the guys he had
like the Vudan priestess was like scary and like you know,

(01:43:23):
but but it didn't feel like I felt like I
had a space in that show too, Like I would
be like I could be friends with one of the sisters,
Like I didn't feel like I had to go over
here because they wouldn't let me in the house and
they would in Kiki. I was like, Oh, Phoebe's gonna
be my best Sie, Like me and Phoebe are going
on the spade, Like I'm gonna get proved of like

(01:43:44):
me and work so hard, you know, because she she
only likes hard workers.

Speaker 3 (01:43:48):
Like so I was obsessed with Phoebe, but I feel
like I'm more of a Piper, and it breaks my heart.
Piper was dope.

Speaker 4 (01:43:56):
They did a good job with her art.

Speaker 3 (01:43:59):
Yeah, and she made shit happen. Someone had to do it.

Speaker 4 (01:44:02):
She became that big sis she did.

Speaker 1 (01:44:05):
I've never seen the show. I'm so sorry, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 4 (01:44:08):
So good.

Speaker 3 (01:44:10):
It doesn't all hold up, but the parts that do
are wonderful.

Speaker 4 (01:44:14):
It gets depressing after a while. It's like, okay, guys,
whoa Like what's happening? Everything is sad. Everybody's dying all
the time, Like what happened to Like.

Speaker 3 (01:44:23):
The Warlock boyfriends, like I want sister conflict and I
want Warlock boyfriends that disappear after a week.

Speaker 4 (01:44:30):
And fairies. We want fairies. We want to find gold,
like come on, like enough with the scary underworld magic school.
Who wants to steal this kid? What kidnapping?

Speaker 1 (01:44:43):
Like?

Speaker 4 (01:44:44):
Remember when like why it was getting like I'm getting
now it's becoming a.

Speaker 3 (01:44:48):
Sending me back, sending me back.

Speaker 1 (01:44:51):
Yeah. Well, speaking of soul food though, Yes, does the
movie past the Bechdel test. Yes, it does quite a bit.
They're talking about food, they're talking about cooking, They're talking
a lot of it is conversations between characters who like
don't necessarily get along very well. And it's Terry being like, hey, Maxine,

(01:45:11):
I'm better than you because I went to law school.
But not all of those conversations are like that. And
it passes a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:45:19):
Yeah, and there's like a huge I think, just like
speaking to the spirit of the Bechdel test, there's so
many women in this movie, and so many like different
there's such a wide variety of women perspectives and they,
you know, while they have to deal with the men
in their orbit, that's not what it's solely focused on
so right, indeed satisfied.

Speaker 1 (01:45:41):
Yes, And then as far as our nipple scale, our
scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples
based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, I
think i'll give this I'll give it three nipples. I'm
docking it for some of the like of the time

(01:46:03):
kind of characters reinforcing pretty rigid gender roles and not
really doing anything to challenge those characters, like lem you know,
engaging in some really awful behavior and being let off
the hook very easily by the end and things like that.

(01:46:23):
But I love that there's a movie that centers on
sisterhood and specifically black sisterhood and the joy and struggles
within that. It's like a nice balance of examining these
characters lives, the positives, the negatives, and just like showing

(01:46:47):
well developed, very distinguishable from each other women, And I
think that's really cool. There's other things the movie handles
on not so well that we've discussed, but I don't know. Overall,
it's really cool, and I appreciate that there's a male
director like this one who wanted to center women. And

(01:47:10):
I think his first a short that he made I
don't know if he made it when he was instill
in film school or shortly after he graduated, but it
was about a single mother or am I getting that right?
It's about a woman, So he like seems to have
a vested interest in telling women's stories.

Speaker 3 (01:47:27):
Yeah, And I think that his career has sort of
continued in that where it's like it's not uncommon at all.
I mean, I think it's maybe an even split, but
for a male director, even that's kind of incredible where
he is not shy about centering women. And I think that, Yeah,
especially the further back you go in time, there will
be the issues that we talked about where it's like, yeah,

(01:47:49):
I think it's good when male directors want to center
women and also they should maybe you know, get a
co writer who's a woman, say right when I'm talking
to each other?

Speaker 4 (01:48:00):
Makes sense. I wanted to speak to that because earlier
I wanted to say how things have changed because Tyler
Perry gets a lot of flack for sisters because there's
no writers, it's just him. And like in the black community,
a lot of these black male directors, they do a
lot of talking about black women. But Tyler Perry has

(01:48:22):
also financed black women directors. So I feel like, you know,
good on Tyler Perry, but I feel like things have
definitely changed now whereas people are like, Okay, if you're
gonna speak for us, you need to have a woman writer,
Like it can't just be y'all just telling our lives.

(01:48:42):
So with recently, like there was the Best Man TV
Show with Malcolm Dee Lee and gosh, I forgot this
woman's name, and he had a co writer that was
a black woman, And that I think is like we're
going in the right direction because there have been like
there's a lot of film that are written by black
men about black women that don't necessarily authentically speak to

(01:49:06):
the black women's experience. So I feel like it's great
and I love soul food, but I also love that
like in the future now, like black women are going
to are a part of that experience, you know. Yeah,
And I think, yeah, things have totally changed because like
Tyler Perry has gotten so much like negative vibes for

(01:49:29):
sisters and people are like, why are you writing a
show about four women in a way that if it
was the nineties, he would have been praised for doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:49:41):
Yeah. True.

Speaker 3 (01:49:42):
I think also if Mike White with writing every season
of The White Lotus completely by himself, and everyone's like, oh,
these women characters are so involved, and we're like, but
I don't think it is like overly nitpicky to expect
him to hire a woman to hire especially that's like
a whole other conversation because there's a lot of shit

(01:50:04):
going on.

Speaker 1 (01:50:04):
With that show.

Speaker 3 (01:50:05):
But it feels like the difference of wanting to appear
inclusive and actually having a vested interest in it and
wanting to you know, not only like bring appropriate like
writers and perspectives into your project, but also get people
into the industry because you have institutional power, which I
guess to be fair. George Tillman, I don't think did

(01:50:26):
at this time. This is his first big movie, so
maybe there wasn't a budget for that, Like whatever, I
think now it's.

Speaker 4 (01:50:33):
It's good, and it's also I think if when it's good,
people have less of an issue if it feels like
what if it's like the reason that it wasn't is
because you don't have help, like you know, so that's
that's that's the thing too. But do we live in

(01:50:54):
a world where a bunch of women can get away
with writing about a bunch of brothers and would they
be able to do that?

Speaker 3 (01:51:03):
Like, I'd like to try them.

Speaker 4 (01:51:05):
Yeah, I'd love to try. Like, but honestly, I was like,
I'm rather right about girls. But like you try, I'll
watch a movie and watch your teav.

Speaker 3 (01:51:15):
I want brothers across the world to go ballistic when
they see how I think brothers talk to each other. There.

Speaker 4 (01:51:23):
Oh wait, the nipple test. Can you explain a little
bit more about nipples, because I when intersectionality, I feel
like it for me if it's a lot of nipples,
if they lose, like I would give it a lot
of nipples if they lose, or maybe just one nipple.
If the nipple, it's like less nipples mean less intersectionality.
Because queer women, I feel like I don't see a

(01:51:43):
lot of representation when it comes to queer women and
queer lesbians have such a big part of our lives,
like a part of our literature. Film, I don't think
we see enough support of queer women. We don't see
a lot of queer women unlike screen unless like they're

(01:52:04):
getting raped for being lesbian, and like a man, you
should be with a man. Why you don't want to
be with a man like, you know, so so that
I feel like he like docks some points for that.
But yeah, I want to say that because I was like,
there's no queer.

Speaker 1 (01:52:20):
Definitely no queer visible. Well except there's the guy who
Bird works with the salon. We don't know his name.
He's queer coded, but he's right. But I was like,
I loved watching him when he was on screen, but yeah,
we know nothing about him, including I don't even think
his name, so but yeah, could definitely be more queer

(01:52:43):
visibility in most movies. The nipple scale, you're trying to
apply logic to something very logic a scale like it's yeah,
it's we just sort of make it up as we go.
But that said, I will definitively give it three and
I will give one to Terry because justice for Terry.

(01:53:04):
I will give one to Uncle Pete because I feel
like some tropes about elderly people were used with his
character and I, you know, didn't love to see that,
So justice for Uncle Pete. And then yeah, I'll give
my third nipple two queer icon the guy with dyed
red hair who Bird works with at the salon, who

(01:53:28):
was fun to watch, so that is that, Jamie, how
about you?

Speaker 3 (01:53:34):
I'm between at three and a three and a half
because I respect this movie's place in movie history and
specifically black movie history. I think that especially with family dramas,
it is very rare to see a middle class black
family drama that is like something that we don't see
a lot even now, And I like that there is

(01:53:57):
sort of I mean, I think that Terry sort of
gets the line and share of the judgment for it,
but there is commentary on class that takes place within
a black family in ways that I feel like in
movies that are you know, that get wide releases, at
least in the US, is not something that we see
very often. And I think I just I really like

(01:54:17):
George Tillman Jr. I feel like the best is yet
to come from him, and I think this is just
just strictly from like a writing filmmaking standpoint, like it's
so wild that this is his first movie, Like it's
so I mean, I know that he had a previous
movie that didn't end up coming out, so it was
technically his second movie, but his verse why release? Holy shit,

(01:54:38):
it's so good and I think that it's very Again,
I don't want to like overly hand it to him.
But as a first time male director, choosing to center
sisters in this story I think is really cool. But
there's everything else we've talked about. I think that there's
a sort of fundamental misunderstanding of domestic abuse that me cringe,

(01:55:01):
sort of in the way it's presented and how easily
it's forgiven. And there is the Terry issue, where Terry
I feel did nothing wrong, amongst other things. But I
think I'm going to go I might go three point five,
and I am going to give one to Terry. Obviously,

(01:55:21):
I'm going to give one to Bird. I'm going to
give one to Face because I feel like her character
was similarly kind of a little all over the place
in a way that wasn't always fair to her. Although
don't have sex with your cousin's husband, I do feel
that strongly. And I'm going to give the last half

(01:55:41):
nipple to John Carter, who I really enjoyed learning about
and who would go on to edit future George Tillman projects,
including Barbershop.

Speaker 1 (01:55:53):
So there you go, very cool idea. How about you?
What would you write it on our perfect nipple scale?
That makes so much I.

Speaker 4 (01:56:02):
Like so confused about nipples, So I'm just gonna give
them to who I want. You guys gave nipples to Cherry.
I'm gonna give a nipple to Terry. I'm going to
give a nipple to Bird. I'll give a nipple to
Limb because I feel like it was kind of tough.
His situation was pretty tough. We don't know where he
came from. And then I want to give up a
nipple to a mod I don't know what that means,

(01:56:23):
but they're all getting nipples.

Speaker 1 (01:56:24):
So nice.

Speaker 3 (01:56:26):
Perfect, It's just a showing of your favorite character, is basically.

Speaker 4 (01:56:30):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:56:31):
Yeah, well, thank you so much for joining us. It's
been such a treat. Come back anytime and tell us
where people can check you out online, read your stuff,
plug anything you want to plug.

Speaker 4 (01:56:46):
Okay, So you can find me at black Dina on
Instagram and really like I own the trademark for black Dina,
so anywhere there's black Tina, like, it's going to be
Mels of the time that's spelled b lacti in a.
Also my website Blackdinamedia dot com. I also have an

(01:57:07):
art business where I saw art from like Haitian migrants
in the Dominican Republic Black Dina Galleria that's on Instagram.
That is like kind of a slow cooking situation plugging
Hispanic Heritage month. This comment is right around the corner.
So hire me for your panels, for your schools, like

(01:57:29):
for your promotions. If anybody wants to give me a
budget to work on a TV show or film either
in the United States or Latin America or the Caribbean,
happy to do that. English or Spanish or Portuguese. Happy
to do that. Just moving the conversations forward and so
we can have more nuance to entertainment when it comes

(01:57:50):
to blackness, because it's so nuanced and it just we
have such an amazing culture. It's crazy like that it's
put in this box because the black experience is so
like diverse globally. Within the LATINX community. I believe, what
is there like two hundred million Afro Latinos in Latin America.

(01:58:12):
I'm not sure how many in the United States and
like Western countries, but it's it's super diverse. It's really
really fun and we're missing out on a lot of
entertainment right now.

Speaker 1 (01:58:22):
So thank you again so much. You can follow us
at Bechtel cast on various social media platform whatever they're called.

Speaker 3 (01:58:33):
Now know it could be different by the time you
hear this. We're on the things, except for Facebook because
that is a stressful place to go, so we're not there.

Speaker 1 (01:58:42):
But definitely follow us. Slash subscribe to our Matreon at
patreon dot com slash Bectel Cast. You get two bonus
episodes every month, plus access to all the back catalog episodes,
all for five dollars a month, imagine.

Speaker 3 (01:58:59):
And then if you want some merch, if you have
merch needs, you can find us at teapublic dot com
slash the Bechtel Cast. And with that, let's get all
the money out of this TV and have a happy.

Speaker 1 (01:59:14):
Ending Wow and non nomnom on some delicious soul food. Bye.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Soul Food (1997) with Nydia Simone