September 12, 2018 • 61 mins
Episode? More like an EPICsode, because this is a two-parter! In Part 1, Caitlin Durante, Jamie Loftus, and special guest Anna Salinas, aka "The Fellowship of the Podcast," decide to embark on the long and difficult journey of discussing the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
(This episode contains spoilers)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bell Cast. The questions asked if movies have
win inum, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
or do they have individualism the patriarchy Zef and best
start changing it with the beck del Cast. Hello, and
welcome to the Victal Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus
and my name is Caitlin Dronte, and this is our
(00:21):
podcast where we talked about the well jee right again there,
I'm sorry. Actually, you know what, I'm not going to
start again. If I'm sounding fatigued, it's because we had
to watch nine hundred hours of movies for this episode
today and and this is also the third episode we
are recording today. Yeah, so it's gonna it's gonna be
(00:44):
a buck episode. There, the hinges are off and we
are ready to have discourse. I feel like I feel
like I got my second wind. I'm feeling very excited
about this episode and feeling excited about these movies. This
is your We're we are firmly in Caitlin's wheelos. Yes,
I mean you have the pictures to back it up.
(01:07):
I'm okay, so that we should say with the podcast
this week, so we talked about the role of women
in some of your favorite movies. We use the Betel
test as a jumping off point for our discussion. Hey,
what is the Betel test? Well, it's just this test
that you apply to movies. For example, it requires that
(01:29):
the movie has at least two women in it, so
already most movies fail. Those two women have to have names,
they have to speak to each other, and even more
movies fail that, and that conversation between those two women
cannot be about men. Let's demo it really quick. Sure, Hey, Caitlin, Jamie,
(01:52):
did you know that movie can be nine and a
half hours long and still not pass the Factel test.
That sounds alarming and crazy, but I would believe it
because it's a mainstream Hollywood film. Unbelievable, and that it
is still very cherished. Yeah, transition the movie series we're
(02:17):
talking about today. Hey, it's Lord of the Rings movie.
Caitlyn has dressed up as proto for Halloween. Sorry I
waked it wrong. Not Halloween, it was the midnight screening
of Return of the King. Actually, that's so much worse.
(02:46):
Have you I are you for other people dressed up?
Or was it just you? Some? Oh my god, not
a lot of people. Wait, sorry. That was one of
the times I dressed up as Proto. A second time
was in a movie that I made in my senior
year of high school called Car Wars Return of the Jedda.
(03:08):
I'm having a panic, so I had I dressed up
as I did a cameo as Frodo where I like
get out of a car and someone off screen says, Froto,
this is Return of the JEDDI not Return of the King,
and I say whoops, and then I put on the
ring and disappear. It's a hilarious visual joke. So I
(03:28):
dressed as Fronto for that. And then a third time
I dressed up as Froto to school as a senior
in high school. It was spirit week and you had
to dress up as your favorite character. So I dressed
up as Frodo a third time for that. Okay, I
guess in times like this you just have to say okay,
(03:53):
and that is good and we love it. In conclusion, oh,
I found the picture I had. It's on my Instagram, right,
I found it on your Facebook. It's uh, I forgot
you're also playing Proto because it's um we will post
(04:13):
it on the Becto cast Instagram I mean, we simply must.
But yeah, scared. I feel like you're all acting as
though I should be powerful, acting as I should be
embarrassed of me dressing up as photos of my nose.
I am extremely proud of this. It's good. Anyway, Let's
introduce our guest. I'm yeah, I'm sorry that we just
(04:36):
a really long spiral. Okay, okay, So our guest today.
She's wonderful. She is a writer, a comedian, and creator
of bad comics by Anna Anna Selena's. Hi, guys, thanks
for being here, Thanks for having me, Thank you so much. Um. Yeah,
so let's talk about your relationship to Lord's Sure. Well,
(05:01):
let me say this, you shouldn't be ashamed of dressing
up rod, thank you. I am uh Lord of the
Rings fan. Certainly. I like anything fantasy. I was really
into fantasy in middle school. But I am a diehard
Harry Potter fan, so I can relate because I used
to go to the midnight screenings and dress up and
the book releases and dress up, but I never really
(05:24):
did for Lord of the Rings. I think part of
it was like the fandom of Lord of the Rings
feels like it spans ages a bit more like in
my life. There were a lot of older men who
like The Lord of the Rings. I was like, that's
that's not for me as much. Because the books were
first published in like they a lot of parents were
really into it, but my mom was not. And so
(05:49):
we would watch the movies together. We like started from
the beginning and watched all the movies and theaters together. Yeah,
which is weird for a movie that is not about
women at all, Right, mother daughter, Yeah, bonding thing. But
I love Elijah would um, I've done an entire comedy
(06:09):
show about him. Well yeah really yeah, yeah. We did
a pickle hour maybe a year and a half ago,
maybe more about Elijah would like a PowerPoint presentation that
was like the backbone of the show. And I think
what you learn is his career has kept going strong.
You know, he was, he's been doing things. Yeah, he's
(06:31):
he's around. Sometimes I confuse him with Toby McGuire. It's
just a fact. I mean, that'll happen. I would say
he has a better career than Toby McGuire. Yeah, he listened.
He paid in Spider Man two. Yes, we all know
that was his best roal. I never saw Seveis kits
so I can't say anything about it, but Spider Man
two with good Spider Man three when he had the
(06:51):
emo air cut hair. But the dance scene in Spider
Man three, yeah, is iconic. Is iconic name a community,
that scene is iconic within it. That scene connects with everyone.
It is a great equal. It was a meme before me, Jamie,
what's your history with Lord of the Rings? Um? I read?
(07:14):
I read The Hobbit in sixth grade. My whole class
did because my teacher, I think, was really into Lord
of the Rings, but we were like not old enough
to read the actual books. And then the same as
you and I would go and see it with my mom,
specifically every year. I don't think my dad saw these
movies or had any interest in seeing them, but my
mom and I did, And I think maybe it's because
(07:37):
they were coming out once a year at the same
time Harry Potter movies were starting to come out. Someone
was like, oh, and I remember my mom making a
big deal of it because those were the first PG
thirteen movies I saw in theaters, and my mom was like,
you're not old enough. You're actually like this is kind
of like Forbidden Fruit, but we're going to go see
a three hour movie and you're not gonna like it,
(07:58):
and so but we did. I remember not really retaining
any information, but just like watching them very passively and
being like, wow, that was a lot, like just being
very ug and be like that was a lot of
images in a row. I don't know, but but I
I have never been big on fantasy, and so so
(08:20):
it is a bit of a slog for me. Sure
I understand it's deep fantasy too. So like Harry Potter,
it's like, oh, it's about a boy and its crushes
at school. Lord of the Rings there's you just get
dropped in this complicated world. There's so there's so much lore,
and it's like, I'm not going to do the homework.
(08:41):
So just to give you a brief history of Caitlin's
experience with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I did
not see Fellowship of the Ring in theaters because I did,
like I watched the trailer. That was around the time
that Harry Potter was like the Harry Potter movies were
starting to be released, and I was like, I started
in one, right, I think, so that seems right. I
(09:03):
had never heard of Lord of the Rings before because
I grew up under a rock and I was like,
what is this cheap Harry Potter knock off? That's what
I thought Lord of the Rings was. But then I
saw a few months after it came out on DVD,
and I was like, wait a minute, this is really good.
I like this a lot. And then I watched that
movie a bunch of times. My mom got like the
extended edition that we got, the whole box set. I
(09:23):
saw Two Towers in Theaters five times. I saw A
Return of the King and Theaters six times. My sister
has a cat named Precious, after what Gollum calls the ring.
It runs deep for me. Um and I have not
revisited these movies, probably in ten years or so. But
when we were all rewatching them together, I was reminded
(09:46):
that I can recite all of the dialogue to all
of the movies. Confirmed. We watched them all. We watched
them all with super producer Sophie. We we watched every minute. Yeah,
it was a long day, all nine hours and twenty
minutes roughly. Yeah, boy was it nine hours and two heads?
(10:09):
So yeah, shall I do the recap the very brief
freaking yeah, And the interest of this not being also
nine hours long. Basically, the story takes place in Middle Earth.
It's like a very like Middle Ages, Anglo sex and
fantasy world where there's men, there's dwarves, there's elves, there's hobbits,
(10:32):
there's orcs. All of them are men, all of them
are male identifying. There are somehow no women in this world,
except except for some elves. Yeah. So there is a
dark lord named Sauron. He has he made a secret
ring because the power and control is is held within rings.
(10:52):
He used to be good, but now he's bad. I
think he was always bad. He was bad, but he
used to be Gandel's friend. But now he's bad and
he's not Gandles. That's Saramon. I'm talking about Soron. I
(11:13):
fantasy is an annoying genre. Okay, so Saron, do we
see him? Do we know he looks like? Is he
just an idea he has? He's like, he's a figure,
he's tall, he has a mask. We don't really know
what his face looks like in the beginning, Yeah, well
they don't specify. Oh yeah, I when she said it,
(11:35):
I was like, oh, the same, sor he becomes the
eye because okay, so he has a ring. He's poured
all of his evil and life forced into it. The
ring gets chopped off of his hand. Was him? That
was him? So then he so he effectively dies. But
because his life, the ring is basically his hor crux,
(11:55):
so he attaches his thank you for in terms of planters.
So because the ring survived three thousand years later, the
spirit of Saron endures. So so he becomes the fireball
the eyeball. Yeah, right, got it? Okay, because that's what
I when I think when I think Saron, Apparently I
(12:18):
think Saramon. But what I meant was I think of
the flaming eyeball. Right, Sarmon stands next to right, just
renames Saramon. Why why do that? Very poor? Seems unfair
name choices. Yes, it's just like all the women in
this movie are the same, like four vowels, just in
different orders. Here's my girlfriend al just like who is this? Sorry? Okay? So,
(12:44):
then so the ring ends up in the hands of
first Gollum and then Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo gives his ring,
which they do not know is the Ring of Power,
this like evil ring yet h he gives it to
his nephew Frodo who is our here, cutie? And this
is after Bilbo has gone off on an adventure with it.
(13:06):
He yeah, that was already been in three boring movies. Yeah,
confusingly because at this point we didn't know that, right,
And the less is older right and bend at a
cumber badges there. Yeah, and it's so long also, So
Gandolf Frodo and Bilbo's friend is like, wait a minute,
(13:27):
I think this is the Ring of Power, which he confirms.
Then he's like, we gotta do something with this ring.
So they meet up in Rivendell at the Council of
El Rondo, which is a boring scene and is that
El elf elf Land? Yeah? Yeah. The representatives are like,
(13:50):
what shall we do? Yeah, So we've got a dwarf there,
We've got an elf there, we've got another man from
Gone Door. We've got aragorn Is there who helps out.
There also a few other hobbits, so and it basically
they have to They're like, oh, yeah, we should take
the ring to more Door to destroy because that's the
one place that it can be destroyed because if it
falls back into Saron's hands or I, then he'll regain
(14:15):
power and cover Middle Earth and darkness. So they're like, great,
let's have a fellowship. We'll all take this ring together
to more door. Frodo being the main ring bearer, they
go full power of myth at this point Hero's journey
to a t uh and then they get split up
at the end of the first movie. The second movie
(14:37):
is basically I mean the second movie. I don't know
how much. It's very important. Um Ergorn, Aerogorn, Gamble and
Leglists have to save Mary and Pippen, who are too
other hobbits that get um captured by the Urakai. Then
we are those trees. No, those are Goblin orc hybrid yelling. Yeah,
(15:00):
there's a lot of names of things that I don't know.
I'm here to be your Lord of the Rings dictionary
and like fan and in fantasy too, like JRR Tolkien
probably has a great reason for naming everything a very
specific thing, and that somehow makes it worse for me. Yeah,
he invented a whole language for this book. He invented
(15:21):
Elvish a door to get a life of frick get Like,
inventing a new language is for door. But you know
what do you speak it? Oh? No? But people speak Yes,
that's next level. That's next level. I'm not quite there.
We had to learn how to write our names in
(15:43):
Elvin in sixth grade. I remember Corey Spiby being all
this is dumb. He's like, isn't this for nerds? And
my teacher was like, no, it's not, which has just
proved my teacher was a nerd. Yeah, shout out Corey's Biby.
So so the rest of the second movie, Frodo in
(16:04):
Sam his best friend Slash Gardener go off together. They're
heading towards more door. The power dynamics of their relationship
is question refusing because like Frodo is Sam's boss, but
also their friends. Are we beating around the bush on this? Well,
we'll get to the context of their friendship later, because
(16:26):
there's a I'm curious. I mean, if listen, if we
have listeners who, first of all, sorry I called you dorks.
Only time I call our listeners dorks, they get very
upset with me. But sometimes I gotta tell you I
have to do it to you. Sometimes you're you guys
are dorks. But but if we do have anyone who
has read the books, I'd be interested in examining, like
(16:47):
some of the subtexts of the relationships in the movies
as opposed to the books, because I my guests would
be that the subtext in the books are not as
lissit and homo erotic as they are in the movies.
But we'll get to of that too. Sure. So Sam
and Frodo are heading towards more to Or they kind
of like split off from the group and head there alone,
and then they meet up with Gollum, who's being troublesome.
(17:10):
And then the third movie is like everyone's trying to
get closer to more Door. There's some battles, all kinds
of ship happens. It's I'm not doing a good job
with this recap, but because I'm skipping over, you know,
nine hours worth of content, but right wild because it
sometimes takes longer for us to recap an hour and
(17:31):
a half movie, and it's almost like not a lot. Actually, well,
that whole battle at the end is like thirty minutes.
It's very long, at the end of which they do
fulfill their mission. Frodo finally tosses the ring into Mountain
Doom after a little scuffle with Gollum, and then everything
(17:51):
is fixed. And then there's about thirteen conclusions to the story,
which makes sense. I mean, it's a very long story.
It is funny how many are You're just like, because
it keeps the endings. I think it's because the endings
keep fading to black. Yeah, and then especially after you've
been watching for nine and a half hours, it's good.
(18:12):
It's like, we know it's good. Now do we really
have to see everything wrap up? But the last ending
does suck me up a little bit. When you see
Sam and the girl from the first movie and their
kids and the feet are huge, just like, it's that
sucks you up a little. I cried, Yeah, you know what,
I don't like it because I'm like, do you really
love that woman? That's true? I don't know. I just
(18:33):
I felt noting for seven hours. I hadn't felt the
thing in seven hours, and then I was just like, oh,
their lives can go on. So I skipped over a lot,
including all of the female all three of the female characters,
and it's made because they're hardly consequential to the story.
But there are a few of them, and they do
(18:54):
some stuff here and there, but kind of not really
which we'll talk about um. But yeah, that's effectively the story.
Good people set out to destroy evil and then they
destroy evil. So let's take a quick break and then
we will return to Middle Earth for the discussion. Do okay,
(19:15):
we'll be right back, and we're back. Okay, so we
have oh wait, you know what Gollum. That's who we
left out of well, I mentioned him, but I really
doubt it. Everyone's favorite part is cute about on the
(19:39):
daily I guess last week when we were on it
together is cute. The cutest boy in the movie is
the cutest Orlando Bloom. Okay, I my crush is from
this movie because even if I don't like a movie,
I've got a crush on someone. Gollum was a crush,
Orlando Bloom was a cry and who else? Oh, in
(20:01):
like Elijah would was like, Frodo is such a cutie
pie and he has great hair and beautiful eyes. Yeah, yeah,
his eyes are beautiful, but also I found him to
be I just think Frodo and Sam feel a little
gender fluid in the movie gender fluid. Yeah, I don't. Okay,
(20:22):
that's giving it a lot of credit, a lot more
credit than it deserves. But um, Frodo in particular, in
my mind watching I was like, yeah, I could see
myself in that. Well, I would argue, well, I think
Hobbits of all of the races that we see, which
are all white people except for the bad guys that
(20:42):
have dark skin, um of those hobbits are like the
least agro you know. They're like that's like just farm
and like, you know, live off the land. We're gonna
have little hobbit holes and we're going to be nice.
They love to dance, Yeah, they love to dang out. Yeah,
that's their purpose, right, So at least they're displaying the
(21:05):
least amount of toxic masculinity of all of the characters
we see in the movies. Well, yeah, so let's get
into that really quickly. So it has been said by
many that there are gay undertones to Frodo and Sam's friendship.
I think that the movie does at sometimes go out
(21:27):
of its way a little bit to hit that point
kind of hard, you think the movie, I think the movie. Yeah,
I think that the movie is implying it a little
bit without implying it in the way that movies sometimes do,
where male friendships are portrayed on screen as being kind
of homo erotic. And I and Caitlin and I were
(21:47):
talking about this a little bit before we started recording,
and and it's weird. I think that you can even
draw a line from scenes that we see between Sam
and Frodo, which are nice scenes, like I have no
issue with the actual scene itself or the friendship or
anything like that, but you can almost draw a line
from there to like a jet Apatow buddy comedy of like, Okay,
(22:12):
what are other examples of male friendships we see in cinema?
And like where you have let me see, I'm trying
to other big example correctly, Yeah, where it's like there's
a lot of like, oh, we're friends, let me care
about each other, no homo where this isn't the type
of movie that would say that, but there's I don't know,
I see what you're saying. I think there's an element
(22:32):
of a we care about each other more than anything else,
which can carry a bit of a like homorotic undertone.
And I think I don't give Peter Jackson in particular
any credit for setting that up in any kind of
progressive way, but I think because the performances are so
heartfelt and the characters themselves are so emotional and sweet
(22:56):
and earnest, The result is this on adult traded love
for each other free from toxic masculinity, which is like
in real life. If Sam and Frodo lived, I think
they would experiment because I don't think they would have
hang ups. Maybe Sam more, I don't know. I mean
(23:16):
that in let me be clear, if these two Hobbits
lived in our real world, if we saw them at
the frolic Room Tonight Room, that's just the bar around
here that I like the best. It's a fun little guy.
Yeah exactly, Yeah, I mean. And then something I thought
(23:37):
was really great with Hobbits in particular is and you
were touching on this a little earlier, Gutland. It's like
they are so openly emotional in a way that we
don't see Eric Gorn. We definitely don't see Leglis a
k A hacker computer boy. But I think that if
we bring Leglis into the real world, he's straight up
(23:58):
Mr Robot because he's always every time people are having
feelings like us, is standing to the side like we
need to go. He's not mean about it. But we
do not see him cry. We don't. But the Hobbits
are are very emotionally expressive. We see them cry a lot.
I mean, Froto is just sobbing for quite a bit
of yeah yeah, like they're there, and and Mary and
(24:22):
Pippen as well to a lesser extent. But I think
it's just because they're like more humorous characters, but we
see them cry multiple times, and so I guess I
can't say exactly what it is, but it's something about
the tone of the scenes between Froto and Sam that
are a little bit different than Mary and Yeah, the
scenes we see between, even if they are emotionally charged scenes,
(24:46):
it's laid on a little bit thicker for those two characters,
probably because they're more main characters. I don't know that.
And it is Frotos. His burden is being the ring bearer,
so like he carries the most steaks, you could say,
and the stakes in this story are super high. I mean,
it's like a world so because he and Sam is
(25:08):
with him every step of the way, I would say
that the stakes are so high and there's so much
emotion attached to whether or not they accomplish this quest
that I think it makes sense for them to have
such like emotionally impactful scenes because they're carrying the weight
of the world on their shoulders. I think so. In
(25:31):
terms of Freda and Sam's relationship, I don't want to
erase or deny the existence of a same sex relationship
if that is in fact what it is. But I
think there's a tendency to see a close male platonic
friendship and label it as gay, which I would argue.
(25:51):
I think that can be harmful because it kind of
implies that men are not allowed to or that it's
not normal to have a close platon friendship between two
straight men, or between like a gay man and a
straight man. Because men feeling like they can't have closeness
and emotional intimacy with other men in a non sexual way,
(26:11):
I think contributes to toxic masculinity, because I mean, toxic
masculinity stems from a lot of different things. One of
them is men suppressing their feelings and thinking they can't
be emotionally vulnerable with people, especially other men, because that's
a sign of weakness. I totally agree with you, and
I think I love you man is a response to that.
(26:32):
I mean, I don't want to over credit jet Apatow
because he's super problematic, but I think he's horrible. But
I think I love you man was an attempt to
be like, whoa, No, men can be emotionally bound as
best friends and it's and it's not weird. Guys. Look,
he's also married. That is what I was attempting to
(26:54):
say earlier. And I feel like I need I needed
it set up in a way and had not been
set up, and I felt very secure about it. But yeah,
I think that that is true where it's like, because
those movies did come out later, it's like, oh, let's
normalize male friendship, but the asterisks in those movies like,
but it's not gay like the way Appata does it
(27:16):
is homophobic because he's like, yeah, straight dudes can be
friends in a way that's not gay coded. Yea. And
that does seem in a way a response to scenes
like the way and I can't like, I literally can't
describe exactly what it is, but the tone of those
scenes to me is different and in a way that
I always liked, Like I I love, I'm fully here
(27:39):
for Sam and Frodo in the real world. I think
what you both are saying is true in exists sort
of parallel because you Jamie, you see it, you feel it,
and I'm sure no part of you was like, men
can't be friends and if they're friends, it's gay. But
there is the I understand Kalen you too. There is
that danger when at is the narrative we're pushing that
(28:02):
people will read it and say, well, I guess guys
can't be friends because if we try and put it
in things, it'll just be seen as homo erotic um.
But I think they're both true. But I do want
to add what's interesting. I know this is not supposed
to be about I love you man, but there is
a gay character. There are a few gay characters and
I love you man. And even that, to me was
(28:23):
super problematic because Andy Sandberg plays like, okay, you'd put
he's broy. What it's like great. The movie is trying
to be like, look how innovative we are by having
a broy queer character. Yeah, has never done a good
thing in his life. I think we can agree. I
haven't seen Freaks and Gigs because I can't look at
(28:45):
Seth Rogum without wanting to pull my own head off.
And yeah, the time to watch it may have passed.
Is it done? Should I not bother? I like Martin Starr.
Mart He's a good one. He seems great. It was
good when I saw it when I was like fifteen. Yeah,
I haven't revisited it in a long time, but um yeah.
(29:05):
So just to finish this thought, I just like to
see like a close male friendship on screen and automatically,
like automatically assume that it's like a gay sexual relationship.
I just think can doesn't necessarily have to, but it
can further perpetuate the idea that it's like weird or
abnormal to have straight men have emotional closeness with other
(29:26):
straight men, and I think that helps keep toxic masculinity alive.
And well, have I been guilty of doing this myself
where I've seen two men on screen who are friends
and like the other gay. Yes, I have done that.
I'm guilty of that. But then there's the separate analog
of like fan culture, which I think is divorced from
what we were just talking about. There's so many different
ways to look at this one relationship. Erotic fan fiction
(29:49):
in particular, which is hot in rules. It's oh, it's
super hot and rules, but it it took Frodo Sam
and it built world, a whole world, whole new world,
whole horny new for all um, and then I ran
this this whole, you know, train of thought that I
have about their relationship. I ran it past my friend
(30:11):
j T, friend of the cast Twilight episode, and he said, yeah,
that's all well and good, but keep in mind that
queer people seeing media like this that has a close
male friendship will like ship those two characters together because
(30:33):
there's such a lack of visibility of queer characters in
mainstream media that they'll say, yeah, those two men are gay,
and I see myself represented in their relationship, because that's
pretty much all I have to choose from, right, So
I think if the queer community is seeing relationships like
that and saying like, yeah, I see gay undertones in that,
(30:54):
like they know better than straight people, so I think
it's maybe more appropriate it when that happens. Yeah, this
Lord of the Rings in particular, and I guess, like
I guess I would extend this to a lot of
fantasy and and possibly sci fi as well. Is there's
like so many different ways to watch it, Like I
(31:16):
feel like almost more so than other genres when you're
looking at hyper fictional characters, like it almost depends on
who you are and what your life experiences based on
how you're going to view it. Because if you're you know,
like a queer person wanting to see yourself represented in
a movie like this, and aren't seeing yourself explicitly represented,
(31:37):
then it makes sense that you would see that scene
and be like, oh cool, I feel at least a
little bit scene because of how I'm viewing this scene.
Where if you're a young toxic man who sees that
and is off put by it, and it is like
that you know, sees that same friendship and thinks I'm
less likely to want to be like close friends with
another man because I don't want to be seen in
(31:58):
this way. So it's it depends on who you are,
what your life experiences. Let me ask you this true
right that lack of visibility. Is it possible to make
a feminist argument for Lord of the Rings using sort
of that same logic of like, well, there aren't a
lot of, um, you know, obvious opportunities here for feminist visibility,
But are there ways in which toxic masculinity is subverted
(32:22):
that makes this in some way a feminist movie? I
think that in the way the Hobbits in particular subvert
masculinity worked for me, but just because it subverts masculinity
doesn't mean it's feminist. But then there's the I am
no man argument with and I'm going to try to
say this name, but it is all soft voweli there
(32:45):
owen a owen, which is what you're saying is how
you pronounced you and McGregor's name is Oh yeah. I'd
like to issue a formal apology to all of our
Scottish fans who slam my mention saying it's allan McGregor
or you and McGregor, which I had. I also just
(33:09):
made mouth thoses that time I swarke. I was not
trying to say his name, it's you and McGregor. I
had said it correctly a year previously, and then in
the year between recording that and the time I funked
it up nine times I met him and parked with
his girlfriend for six months, and then I learned how
(33:29):
to say his name the total wrong way, and everyone
got mad at But how wasn't she saying his name
all the time. She was saying his name, and she
was saying it correctly, obviously, But I was like, you
know what I should say? Well, you know, what's your name?
Scorci Ronan, who was in Brooklyn Ronan another movie. There
(33:56):
we go h o O N is that it win
not to be confused with Arwin the other that's annoying.
You don't do that, and you're, hey, if you're writing something,
don't make everyone's name the same name, writing one oh
one different first let that should be left behind you
(34:17):
in the second grade where you've got like Stephanie Oh
and Stephanie t um. Anyways, you can make the I
have the thing because I tried to research, like, okay,
are there feminist arguments for this series and they seem
to mostly fall to a Owen because she is a
(34:37):
woman we see in combat and she also says and
I feel like with these arguments they tend to boil
down to like one or two things the character says
in the space of nine hours. But she says the
line I am no man, and that seems to be
the core. They're like, well, someone said they weren't a
man and that was true. Also, she rode a horse,
(34:59):
so it's a feminist text. Well, yeah, riding a horse,
driving a car, right, women can do it all. Yeah,
I like that character the same, and she don't want
to text in love with her and he's like sorry,
which fine, yeah, oh wait what I don't I mean,
it's your your take on Vigo. I have a skewed
(35:22):
view of Vigo because he made my mom so horny
that she almost died like that. That's why we saught
with our moms. Something you want to do? Yeah, because
it's like Orlando for the young girls, Vigo for the
mom and Frodo you know, Elijah for an evening in between.
Frodo is like basically I was like, yeah, if you
had a crush on Harry Potter, Elijah, what's gonna give
(35:44):
you that vibe as well? Because he's the size of
a ten year olds according to this movie. Yeah, um,
so you're like, you know, I see it and they
have piercing blue eyes. Thank you for bringing that up. Sorry,
I have to interrupt for a moment because is okay.
When I was listing all the characters, all the main
named characters in this movie, I ended up color coding
(36:07):
their names in my notes based on the color of
their eyes, because nearly every single character in this movie
has blue eyes. Go back and watch it. I did
not notice this until my viewing of this trilogy, but Frodo,
Sam Wise, Gandolf, Mary Pippin, Arragorn, Leglis, Boromir, Gollum, Grima,
(36:33):
worm Tongue, the Steward of Gondora, I forget his name,
l Round farremre King, Theoden bilbo Is steel Door, how dear,
he's one of the elves. Arwin, Gladriel and a Owen,
plus a bunch of other like secondary characters all have
blue eyes. Well, I don't know if you know this,
(36:53):
but Middle Earth is an area should be there. I
personally aspire to be a blue eyed hobbit, hobbit or
any I'd take blue eyed elf, blue eyed anything. We'll
get to the racism in this movie Elf, but well,
(37:14):
because everything there's a lot of Yeah, there's weird anyways.
So yeah, pretty much all the good guys and some
of the bad guys in this movie have blue eyes.
The only good guys in this movie who do not
have blue eyes are Gimli Amer. If anyone knows how
(37:34):
to say it, it's me and and Treebeard. Name it.
It's cheating. Oh that's that's too funny of a name.
But I've got notes on that name, which is that
it's so funny. Another fun fact about eye color in
this movie, So Orlando Bloom has brown eyes. He was
(37:57):
given blue context so that legal Us would have blue
eyes in this movie because you know, this is an
area nation and whatever. But Orlando Bloom hated his blue
contexts and sometimes they would forget to put them in,
so whenever they did, he would just not tell anyone
and then the movie would get shot with him in
his brown eyes. So there are some scenes where he
(38:19):
has brown eyes and they didn't fix it in post
or anything like that. So that's really funny. What a
weird choice that seems easy to fix. I know I
was gonna say earlier before we got into the blue
eyes theory that because of Airgorn, Airgorn was I think
there for the moms. Casting wise, Vigo was there to
(38:40):
make your mom for Roth, and I think he was
successful in a lot in the case of many moms.
But I think that two thousand and three was probably
one of my mom's horny or cinematic years, because that's
also the year where Captain Jack Sparrow debuted. Um that
made a lot of moms right, something for the mom,
something for the And then again in that same movie
(39:01):
Orlandos for the younger set. Yeah, there's a clear formula
operating in Hollywood at this time. Absolutely, yeah, whiz. Anyways, well, uh,
I just want everyone to know that we do fully
acknowledge the irony of having only talked about men so
far on a podcast about women. Tried to talk about
a Yeah, so let's take so let's just take a
(39:28):
quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about
the freaking women. The women A k Okay, So we'll
take a quick break and we'll be right back and
we're back. So let's talk about the female characters in
Lord of the Rings. There are exactly three four if
(39:53):
you count Rosie who Sam Mary's at the end, but
I don't. I would say you could so easily cut
her out of the story with very little impact besides
me crying at the end. It's fine. So I feel
like I don't know if this is true or not,
but I feel like this movie cares less about women
(40:14):
being in the story than maybe any movie we've come
across so far. But in a way that is like
it's confusing. I'm trying. I feel like we've maybe covered
one movie where I also got this vibe where the
movie is not outwardly hateful of women really at any point,
(40:37):
but it's just a world war. Women don't exist until
you get to elve and the Right, and then that
even still there's very few two Elves, and then glad
Reel only gets a couple of minutes of screen time.
Glad Reel is Kate Blanchett. She's mainly used for exposition
more important, and this is I don't know if there's
(40:58):
a question you can answer if like you probably can't.
Is she more important though, in the world of Lord
of the Rings than we get in the movies. I
don't super know that, having not read the books, I
tapped out and I don't even know. She's not even
she's in the Hobbit movies, but not in the Hobbit book.
I don't think um because she's presented yeah by I
(41:21):
mean she's an exposition. Yeah, that pure and simple. But
I felt watching it that she was somehow super powerful.
She's well, she's powerful, but in the context of the story,
she's given so little focus that I think you could
easily remove her or replace her like function with like
(41:42):
l Rondo. Because so her thing is she's the first
voice you hear in the movie, because she does provide
all the voice over narration in the very beginning, where
she's like doing all the world building and like, here's
what Middle Earth is and there's some fucking rings and ship.
We do meet her on screen in Fellowship of the Ring.
She's one of the like leader is at Las Lorean.
But I mean, talk about presenting a character as virginal
(42:05):
where she is dressed in all white and she's literally
glowing with having never fucked like that, do you think
she's never fucked? I think that there. I think that
it could be there could be a very easy argument
made of like she could have fucked. But I'm just like,
strictly presentation rise it's like the classically virginal, like it
almost fair maiden for sure, right. So and then so
(42:29):
the first time we meet her on screen in Las Lorean,
where she's like the she's described as being like an
elf witch and a sorceress, which sounds like a sandwich
of elf like some of the Keebler keel. So when
(42:49):
we see her on screen for the first time, she's like,
she's like being escorted by a male elf who I
don't know if this is true or not. I think
that might be her like elf husband. I'm not sure
there is a dude with her, and he seems to
be like an elf king and she's sort of like
the elf queen. I don't know, but she is definitely
like very like fair maiden. But she's all she's spoken
(43:13):
about as like being very powerful, highly regarded. Uh so
it is weird that like, oh, but a man has
to hold her hand either she doesn't she's a pacifist.
But then that just makes it a jarring movie experience
where I'm like, you're not even going to comment on
the fact that women have nothing to do, know, there
(43:34):
nowhere in this whole world. It's like if we were
surrounded by like if there was like the same thing
was in the whole world and we just never acknowledged it.
Like every we're just like, oh, we're living as if
they don't exist, because they don't exist. Like well, female
characters written by men wouldn't notice that, because men don't
notice when they write stories with only men in them. Um, right,
(43:59):
because there's there are three female characters in this movie
worth talking about and forty male characters who are like
named and like, not all of them are fleshed out fully,
but like every single person in the In the fellowship,
it's nine people and they're all male. It's wild. So
the last thing. I'm glad Reel. She appears again throughout
(44:23):
the course of the movies. Usually she's talking to l Rond,
but they're never on screen together. They have this is
the Elf king guy in Rivendel. Yes, so there's different
like Elf realms, Brunette elf is that. Yeah, that's Rwin's dad.
It does feel like the Elfish Kingdom is a patriarchy. Yes,
(44:47):
I mean the whole the structure of every community in
this movie is, which I think is made really clear
through Arwin's character too. Sorry I said Arwyn, not out
not that well, there's Arwin. Yeah, I know, I know.
Stupid if you only have to come up with three
female names and a four D character and two names
(45:10):
sound exactly the same. For Galadriel, the one scene that
stuck out to me where it seems like she had
the most to do was the scene she has with
Frodo where Frodo's I don't know, tiptoe and around, just
done a little stroll with his little ring has just
(45:32):
passed away. Gandalf did that thing where he's like sea
and dropped off a cliff. It was like, you're not
even gonna try and okay, but then it's he's fine. Whatever.
So there's a scene between Galadriel and Frodo where basically
Galadriel is tempted by the rings power but then overcomes
(45:55):
that temptation and it's basically like I passed the test
and like high fives herself. Certainly not the Bechdel test,
wish the ring test. And then she also has like
another Harry Pottery thing where she's like, I have a
pen sieve. Is that the Harry Potter thing where you
can you're that you can look into your own memories
with a pensive right? So but she but did she
(46:18):
just show the future? She has the gift of foresight
like many elves seemed to and that's a raven who
might be and we don't know. It's not fully explored,
but I would like to think that's a raven is
an extension of the Lord of the of course Bafely,
I think we can say that. So, yeah, she has
that scene where she shows like weakness and being like, yes,
(46:42):
I would be tempted if I had the ring, because
Forrhoto is like I don't really like this whole ring
bearer thing, why don't you take it? Glad reel like
I want to be a flower girl right there, It's like,
seems like a more jobs they give it. So, not
to defend the sexism of this movie, there's a reason
that Hobbits are best suited to carry the ring, right,
(47:05):
which is they're so pure of heart, right right, they're
resilient to its evil. Yes, what's weird is that only
hobbit men were available for that duty. But that is
my giving a little space too well on that. So
you could maybe make an argument that, like, yeah, why
wouldn't a woman have been considered for this, because we've
(47:27):
seen throughout history women being less corrupted by power, But
maybe that's only because women have never been given power,
so we don't know how corruptible they are. But we
could ship up, yeah we could, right right right, But yeah,
that is that is Bilbo presumably wouldn't think of that
because he's just like my buddies. Do you know anything
(47:47):
about well and also his nephew, anything about front of
parents um or like he why he must be an
orphan I'm guessing I don't know, Yeah, because Billbo is
his uncle yeah, and there's no parents intervening, being like,
don't give him the worst thing ever, that's true. No
one cares that he's going. I think his only family
(48:09):
is well. And Bilbo also does the rudest thing ever.
He's such a drama queen. He when he goes to
his own birthday at the beginning of the Fellowship of
the Ring and he's like, hey, everybody, just telling you
I'm leaving forever power and then he disappears and leaves
with lets say goodbye to literally anyone. It was pretty rude. Yeah,
(48:29):
it was a weird move. But he's a little corrupted
by that point. He is, I think he yeah, like
he gets nervous around the Ring and he's like, I
have to get the funk out of here. He feels it.
He does feels it by the end to write, right,
we just got word from super producer Sophie that Froto's
parents drowned. Oh go wait, in like the Hobbit, No,
(48:51):
because we don't meet Froto or any I don't think
any of the other Baggins is in the Hobbit. There's
probably some backstory somewhere in the books that we learned,
or maybe like an appendacees or something. Frodo is just
another example that I think you could apply to this
almost this whole world, because gender is dealt with in
such a passive way in this entire world where you
(49:12):
could gender switch. Most of the characters in these movies,
I think that they're with no impact. I think like
characters like are Gorn to be a little bit trickier.
Characters directly involved in the patriarchy at least seemed to
be making some sort of commentary. But all of the Hobbits,
I would say, because they are so also emotionally open.
(49:35):
They're all nice, not involved in overt love triangles, and
they're not oppressing. They're not doing like they're Frodo could
easily be a female character with really nothing about the
story changing. Well, yes, about this story changing, right, If
the writers of the Lord of the Rings movies had
(49:56):
made Frodo or a girl, it would certainly have been
a different movie because and we're writing it. Oh, I
don't think it would be the same. Yeah, no, it
it wouldn't be treated. I don't think that a studio
would invest like a jillion dollars into a female lead
film franchise in two thousand and one, especially based on
because the source material, like all of the like old
(50:17):
school fans of Lord of the Rings would be like, oh,
Peter Jackson, fran Walsh a woman and Philip A. Boyan's
a woman co wrote these movies. What so it's one
man and two women doing most of the Oh my god,
(50:37):
Well this just gets back to, uh, not all women are.
That is mind going because the movie itself could have
made the choice to make these women more important. Well
it did because from what I understand, again, haven't read
the books, so I might be a little wrong on this,
but like our Win's involvement in the story in the
(50:57):
books is like hardly there at all, and they took
mostly stuff from the appendices and beefed up her character
much more than it had been in the books. Is
Rwin liv Tyler? Yeah, but that feels like more of
a movie thing because they're like, yeah, that's a she's
a tricky character. Because it's like I, I, of course
(51:19):
I want to see women in these movies more. But
the way that they amplify her character is so like
there's such an agenda behind it that it's like almost
like I don't know if I would prefer more general neutrality,
or to see live Tyler specifically, so that she can
be you know, like coveted and her father can just
(51:41):
be like, I don't want you to do this, so don't.
And that's so many and they're all all the scenes
are so quiet, and he's like, listen up, bitch, you
cannot do anything. And she's like, but I would like
to do something and he's like, tough ship, you can't
do it, and then crying, and then you're just like
(52:02):
this movie is very long. Well, let's get into Darwin.
She is the daughter of l Rond and in some
ways the daughter of Steven Tyler. You could argue that
you could also argue El Rond is Steven Tyler if
you look at him. That's I think Steven Tyler was
(52:23):
really slept on in the casting process. Well, doesn't have
blue eyes, because if not, they could not count. For
I remember my mom because I'm from Boston, Ak the
land of Arrowsmith, where literally the year the Aerosmith roller
coaster debuted at Disney World. Why does that place exist, Uh,
the air Smith roller coaster, not Didney World. My mom
(52:43):
made us all go that year. But she I have
like a very specific memory of my mom looking at
liv Tyler in the movie, leaning over to me and
being like Steven Tyler's Daughta is so beautiful. I was
like ah. Anyway, So her story is that she has
(53:03):
to decide if she wants to stay in Mental Earth
and be with Aragorn, which means she would need to
sacrifice her immortality, or if she wants to sail away
with her elf people to the Undying Lands so that
she can stay immortal. Wait, a woman's storyline is a
rooted in whether she's going to sacrifice something for a
(53:26):
man or not, And that's a do or think of that.
I don't see why that bumps anyone. So both l
around her father and Aragorn are encouraging her not to
make this sacrifice, but she decides to stay, which means
I suppose she's given a little bit of agency in
order to be able to make this life changing choice.
(53:49):
But of course the choice that she makes is to
sacrifice a huge part of herself for a man. Yeah,
I mean, and it's her choice she does. I I appreciate,
And again we're going bear minimum argument that the story
at least lets her make her choice and doesn't go
(54:13):
the route of like, because if you go like way
back in mythology, there's so many examples of like a
female character who makes a choice and is killed because
she made the choice she wanted to and didn't do
what her father told her to do. So at least
that's not an example of that like ancient trope of
women being punished when they do what they want. But
(54:39):
it's not it's not good, it doesn't bode well. That's
the only thing we really get to see her think
about or trapple with, is like she's basically choosing between
her father and Vigo. She has an agency, but she's
still just in accessory right right, And part of the
reason that she makes this choice to stay with air
Corn is because she also has foresight abilities, some clairvoyance
(55:03):
if you will, and she foresees she foresees that she
will have a son with Aragorn, So like, now motherhood
is a daughter that that really annoying where she stares
into the woods and she's like, what if I had
a son? I was like, even you can't imagine women
(55:24):
in this world, yeah, because you've never met one. Well,
there needs to be a male heir, because you know,
Agorn does accept his destiny to be can't be in charge.
It's the rules that is. But what's really getting me
down is you know that two women co wrote this
with Peter Jackson. I mean, and I also wonder to
(55:47):
what degree were they calling the shots? Who knows? Who knows.
It's a different times, it was a different it was
almost twenty years ago, you know. Oh God, but this
is so within our lifetimes. It is so frustrating to
think of like this nice memory that we have of
like seeing a movie with our mom, and it's like, oh,
(56:07):
we were not represented in the away and didn't even
notice it. Yeah, it's just it's just unfortunately huge franchise.
They tried a little harder. Again, I haven't seen Hobbit one,
just Hobbit Too. There's also a third one, sad, I
mean number two was smill fucking heavy. They smoke, but
(56:32):
they do dry to make that female character more active.
Interesting that you mentioned that, because, um, well, a friend
of the cast, Lindsay Ellis, I was hoping we talked
about this. She made a three part video essay series
about the Hobbit trilogy. She made a straight up Future
(56:53):
Link documentary. It's amazing. It's like everything she does. It's amazing.
I encourage you to refer to part two of this
video series. There's a section between around minute nineteen nineteen
and where she talks about the character of Tariel, which
is the Elf maiden played by Evangeline Lily in the
(57:16):
Hobbit trilogy. So she was added in just like this
character kind of like created from nothing, because I'm pretty
sure she's not in the Hobbit book. She gets she
gets added into this narrative as a warrior lady because
the studios thought this movie would be more marketable to
(57:36):
a female audience if there was a lady in it.
That was that is misguided positive, but the movies are
so lame right Well then, also, as Lindsay Ellis points
out in the video, her being present in the story
in the context that she is in the story, which
is like a warrior, creates a contradiction in the Middle
(57:57):
Earth universe because in the Lord of the Rings trilogy
is established that women don't do battle, and like a
Owen has to disguise herself as being a man in
order to ride into battle in Return of the King.
So like there's like these very rigid gender roles that
are established in the Lord of the Rings trilogy where like,
you know, save the women and children. They have to
(58:19):
be like protected and put away into the caves. They
can't fight, And she's all and a win is all like, well,
I'm competent with the sword. I want to fight for
this causes I believe in, Like why shouldn't I be
able to fight? So she so we'll get to a Owen.
But like, she's easily the most active character. But the
Hobbit trilogy like really fucks up the rules that are
(58:39):
established in this universe by putting this Tariel character into
those movies. Um. But anyway, so back to our own
really quick. Um. She does do a couple of small
things that influenced the direction of the story, Like she
saves Frodo from the Ring Raiths that are chasing him
in the Fellowship of the Ring. In the first movie,
(59:01):
she tells her dad Elrond to have the sword reforged
so that Aergorn can fulfill his destiny to become king.
So she doesn't forge the sword herself, she tells a
man to do it. Um, and for a man. Women
can't touch swords, so except your unless you're a win.
(59:22):
So yet if the sword is a standing for the fallace,
then this is a very homerotic movie. Then you better
be jerking off that sword, Pale. But basically you discard game. Yeah,
you can pretty easily remove her character from this narrative
(59:42):
and the story would be pretty much unchanged. Like, she
doesn't have that much to do. We only see we
don't even see her on screen in the first movie
until I think it's an hour in eight minutes into
the movie, to be fair, there's a lot left after
that point, that's true. But she's only in the movie,
you know. But she's on screen then for about four
(01:00:05):
minutes during that like chase scene. Yeah, she is mostly
absent from the movie. Meanwhile, there's eight hundred men in it. Well, hey, gang, Hey,
it's us. I'm sick now you're so yeah, you suddenly
got sick. In a matter of seconds, I'll break the
fourth wall and be like, yeah, we recorded this months ago.
Uh there. So this is a two parter because, as
(01:00:28):
you know, The Lord of the Rings is extremely long,
So stay tuned. We have the second part of this
episode with our wonderful gust on a coming up very soon.
In the meantime, you can follow us at all the
normal places. You follow us on Instagram at bechtel Cast,
Twitter at bechtel Cast, Patreon ak Matrion five dollars a
(01:00:51):
month to bonus episodes. Also, if you live in the
Los Angeles area, come to our live show on September
fift at nine pm at the Ruby. We are covering
Edward Scissor Hands with guests Maggie may Fish. We're so excited,
it's gonna be great. I won't be sick anymore than yeah,
(01:01:11):
you'll be in tip top shape, I promise, sah. And
if you want to come to that, um tickets are
going fast, so get them while you can. And to
do that, go to our website becktel cast dot com
and go to the live appearances tab and there's a
link to buy tickets there and it's always in good
to our merch store if you need any of the merch. Uh,
(01:01:32):
it's what you do. Would you need it? Listen you
need it And that's at t public dot com. Slash
the Bechtel Cast, the Battel Cast. I was going to
get it wrong. We'll see you for part two of
the Lord of the Rings episodes soon live long and
get that ring. Hey, wond ring to rule them all
(01:01:52):
but two parts to this episode, Love It, Bye Bye,
On the Bell Cast. The questions asked if movies have
win inum, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
or do they have individualism the patriarchy Zef and best
start changing it with the beck del Cast. Hello, and
welcome to the Victal Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus
and my name is Caitlin Dronte, and this is our
(00:21):
podcast where we talked about the well jee right again there,
I'm sorry. Actually, you know what, I'm not going to
start again. If I'm sounding fatigued, it's because we had
to watch nine hundred hours of movies for this episode
today and and this is also the third episode we
are recording today. Yeah, so it's gonna it's gonna be
(00:44):
a buck episode. There, the hinges are off and we
are ready to have discourse. I feel like I feel
like I got my second wind. I'm feeling very excited
about this episode and feeling excited about these movies. This
is your We're we are firmly in Caitlin's wheelos. Yes,
I mean you have the pictures to back it up.
(01:07):
I'm okay, so that we should say with the podcast
this week, so we talked about the role of women
in some of your favorite movies. We use the Betel
test as a jumping off point for our discussion. Hey,
what is the Betel test? Well, it's just this test
that you apply to movies. For example, it requires that
(01:29):
the movie has at least two women in it, so
already most movies fail. Those two women have to have names,
they have to speak to each other, and even more
movies fail that, and that conversation between those two women
cannot be about men. Let's demo it really quick. Sure, Hey, Caitlin, Jamie,
(01:52):
did you know that movie can be nine and a
half hours long and still not pass the Factel test.
That sounds alarming and crazy, but I would believe it
because it's a mainstream Hollywood film. Unbelievable, and that it
is still very cherished. Yeah, transition the movie series we're
(02:17):
talking about today. Hey, it's Lord of the Rings movie.
Caitlyn has dressed up as proto for Halloween. Sorry I
waked it wrong. Not Halloween, it was the midnight screening
of Return of the King. Actually, that's so much worse.
(02:46):
Have you I are you for other people dressed up?
Or was it just you? Some? Oh my god, not
a lot of people. Wait, sorry. That was one of
the times I dressed up as Proto. A second time
was in a movie that I made in my senior
year of high school called Car Wars Return of the Jedda.
(03:08):
I'm having a panic, so I had I dressed up
as I did a cameo as Frodo where I like
get out of a car and someone off screen says, Froto,
this is Return of the JEDDI not Return of the King,
and I say whoops, and then I put on the
ring and disappear. It's a hilarious visual joke. So I
(03:28):
dressed as Fronto for that. And then a third time
I dressed up as Froto to school as a senior
in high school. It was spirit week and you had
to dress up as your favorite character. So I dressed
up as Frodo a third time for that. Okay, I
guess in times like this you just have to say okay,
(03:53):
and that is good and we love it. In conclusion, oh,
I found the picture I had. It's on my Instagram, right,
I found it on your Facebook. It's uh, I forgot
you're also playing Proto because it's um we will post
(04:13):
it on the Becto cast Instagram I mean, we simply must.
But yeah, scared. I feel like you're all acting as
though I should be powerful, acting as I should be
embarrassed of me dressing up as photos of my nose.
I am extremely proud of this. It's good. Anyway, Let's
introduce our guest. I'm yeah, I'm sorry that we just
(04:36):
a really long spiral. Okay, okay, So our guest today.
She's wonderful. She is a writer, a comedian, and creator
of bad comics by Anna Anna Selena's. Hi, guys, thanks
for being here, Thanks for having me, Thank you so much. Um. Yeah,
so let's talk about your relationship to Lord's Sure. Well,
(05:01):
let me say this, you shouldn't be ashamed of dressing
up rod, thank you. I am uh Lord of the
Rings fan. Certainly. I like anything fantasy. I was really
into fantasy in middle school. But I am a diehard
Harry Potter fan, so I can relate because I used
to go to the midnight screenings and dress up and
the book releases and dress up, but I never really
(05:24):
did for Lord of the Rings. I think part of
it was like the fandom of Lord of the Rings
feels like it spans ages a bit more like in
my life. There were a lot of older men who
like The Lord of the Rings. I was like, that's
that's not for me as much. Because the books were
first published in like they a lot of parents were
really into it, but my mom was not. And so
(05:49):
we would watch the movies together. We like started from
the beginning and watched all the movies and theaters together. Yeah,
which is weird for a movie that is not about
women at all, Right, mother daughter, Yeah, bonding thing. But
I love Elijah would um, I've done an entire comedy
(06:09):
show about him. Well yeah really yeah, yeah. We did
a pickle hour maybe a year and a half ago,
maybe more about Elijah would like a PowerPoint presentation that
was like the backbone of the show. And I think
what you learn is his career has kept going strong.
You know, he was, he's been doing things. Yeah, he's
(06:31):
he's around. Sometimes I confuse him with Toby McGuire. It's
just a fact. I mean, that'll happen. I would say
he has a better career than Toby McGuire. Yeah, he listened.
He paid in Spider Man two. Yes, we all know
that was his best roal. I never saw Seveis kits
so I can't say anything about it, but Spider Man
two with good Spider Man three when he had the
(06:51):
emo air cut hair. But the dance scene in Spider
Man three, yeah, is iconic. Is iconic name a community,
that scene is iconic within it. That scene connects with everyone.
It is a great equal. It was a meme before me, Jamie,
what's your history with Lord of the Rings? Um? I read?
(07:14):
I read The Hobbit in sixth grade. My whole class
did because my teacher, I think, was really into Lord
of the Rings, but we were like not old enough
to read the actual books. And then the same as
you and I would go and see it with my mom,
specifically every year. I don't think my dad saw these
movies or had any interest in seeing them, but my
mom and I did, And I think maybe it's because
(07:37):
they were coming out once a year at the same
time Harry Potter movies were starting to come out. Someone
was like, oh, and I remember my mom making a
big deal of it because those were the first PG
thirteen movies I saw in theaters, and my mom was like,
you're not old enough. You're actually like this is kind
of like Forbidden Fruit, but we're going to go see
a three hour movie and you're not gonna like it,
(07:58):
and so but we did. I remember not really retaining
any information, but just like watching them very passively and
being like, wow, that was a lot, like just being
very ug and be like that was a lot of
images in a row. I don't know, but but I
I have never been big on fantasy, and so so
(08:20):
it is a bit of a slog for me. Sure
I understand it's deep fantasy too. So like Harry Potter,
it's like, oh, it's about a boy and its crushes
at school. Lord of the Rings there's you just get
dropped in this complicated world. There's so there's so much lore,
and it's like, I'm not going to do the homework.
(08:41):
So just to give you a brief history of Caitlin's
experience with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I did
not see Fellowship of the Ring in theaters because I did,
like I watched the trailer. That was around the time
that Harry Potter was like the Harry Potter movies were
starting to be released, and I was like, I started
in one, right, I think, so that seems right. I
(09:03):
had never heard of Lord of the Rings before because
I grew up under a rock and I was like,
what is this cheap Harry Potter knock off? That's what
I thought Lord of the Rings was. But then I
saw a few months after it came out on DVD,
and I was like, wait a minute, this is really good.
I like this a lot. And then I watched that
movie a bunch of times. My mom got like the
extended edition that we got, the whole box set. I
(09:23):
saw Two Towers in Theaters five times. I saw A
Return of the King and Theaters six times. My sister
has a cat named Precious, after what Gollum calls the ring.
It runs deep for me. Um and I have not
revisited these movies, probably in ten years or so. But
when we were all rewatching them together, I was reminded
(09:46):
that I can recite all of the dialogue to all
of the movies. Confirmed. We watched them all. We watched
them all with super producer Sophie. We we watched every minute. Yeah,
it was a long day, all nine hours and twenty
minutes roughly. Yeah, boy was it nine hours and two heads?
(10:09):
So yeah, shall I do the recap the very brief
freaking yeah, And the interest of this not being also
nine hours long. Basically, the story takes place in Middle Earth.
It's like a very like Middle Ages, Anglo sex and
fantasy world where there's men, there's dwarves, there's elves, there's hobbits,
(10:32):
there's orcs. All of them are men, all of them
are male identifying. There are somehow no women in this world,
except except for some elves. Yeah. So there is a
dark lord named Sauron. He has he made a secret
ring because the power and control is is held within rings.
(10:52):
He used to be good, but now he's bad. I
think he was always bad. He was bad, but he
used to be Gandel's friend. But now he's bad and
he's not Gandles. That's Saramon. I'm talking about Soron. I
(11:13):
fantasy is an annoying genre. Okay, so Saron, do we
see him? Do we know he looks like? Is he
just an idea he has? He's like, he's a figure,
he's tall, he has a mask. We don't really know
what his face looks like in the beginning, Yeah, well
they don't specify. Oh yeah, I when she said it,
(11:35):
I was like, oh, the same, sor he becomes the
eye because okay, so he has a ring. He's poured
all of his evil and life forced into it. The
ring gets chopped off of his hand. Was him? That
was him? So then he so he effectively dies. But
because his life, the ring is basically his hor crux,
(11:55):
so he attaches his thank you for in terms of planters.
So because the ring survived three thousand years later, the
spirit of Saron endures. So so he becomes the fireball
the eyeball. Yeah, right, got it? Okay, because that's what
I when I think when I think Saron, Apparently I
(12:18):
think Saramon. But what I meant was I think of
the flaming eyeball. Right, Sarmon stands next to right, just
renames Saramon. Why why do that? Very poor? Seems unfair
name choices. Yes, it's just like all the women in
this movie are the same, like four vowels, just in
different orders. Here's my girlfriend al just like who is this? Sorry? Okay? So,
(12:44):
then so the ring ends up in the hands of
first Gollum and then Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo gives his ring,
which they do not know is the Ring of Power,
this like evil ring yet h he gives it to
his nephew Frodo who is our here, cutie? And this
is after Bilbo has gone off on an adventure with it.
(13:06):
He yeah, that was already been in three boring movies. Yeah,
confusingly because at this point we didn't know that, right,
And the less is older right and bend at a
cumber badges there. Yeah, and it's so long also, So
Gandolf Frodo and Bilbo's friend is like, wait a minute,
(13:27):
I think this is the Ring of Power, which he confirms.
Then he's like, we gotta do something with this ring.
So they meet up in Rivendell at the Council of
El Rondo, which is a boring scene and is that
El elf elf Land? Yeah? Yeah. The representatives are like,
(13:50):
what shall we do? Yeah, So we've got a dwarf there,
We've got an elf there, we've got another man from
Gone Door. We've got aragorn Is there who helps out.
There also a few other hobbits, so and it basically
they have to They're like, oh, yeah, we should take
the ring to more Door to destroy because that's the
one place that it can be destroyed because if it
falls back into Saron's hands or I, then he'll regain
(14:15):
power and cover Middle Earth and darkness. So they're like, great,
let's have a fellowship. We'll all take this ring together
to more door. Frodo being the main ring bearer, they
go full power of myth at this point Hero's journey
to a t uh and then they get split up
at the end of the first movie. The second movie
(14:37):
is basically I mean the second movie. I don't know
how much. It's very important. Um Ergorn, Aerogorn, Gamble and
Leglists have to save Mary and Pippen, who are too
other hobbits that get um captured by the Urakai. Then
we are those trees. No, those are Goblin orc hybrid yelling. Yeah,
(15:00):
there's a lot of names of things that I don't know.
I'm here to be your Lord of the Rings dictionary
and like fan and in fantasy too, like JRR Tolkien
probably has a great reason for naming everything a very
specific thing, and that somehow makes it worse for me. Yeah,
he invented a whole language for this book. He invented
(15:21):
Elvish a door to get a life of frick get Like,
inventing a new language is for door. But you know
what do you speak it? Oh? No? But people speak Yes,
that's next level. That's next level. I'm not quite there.
We had to learn how to write our names in
(15:43):
Elvin in sixth grade. I remember Corey Spiby being all
this is dumb. He's like, isn't this for nerds? And
my teacher was like, no, it's not, which has just
proved my teacher was a nerd. Yeah, shout out Corey's Biby.
So so the rest of the second movie, Frodo in
(16:04):
Sam his best friend Slash Gardener go off together. They're
heading towards more door. The power dynamics of their relationship
is question refusing because like Frodo is Sam's boss, but
also their friends. Are we beating around the bush on this? Well,
we'll get to the context of their friendship later, because
(16:26):
there's a I'm curious. I mean, if listen, if we
have listeners who, first of all, sorry I called you dorks.
Only time I call our listeners dorks, they get very
upset with me. But sometimes I gotta tell you I
have to do it to you. Sometimes you're you guys
are dorks. But but if we do have anyone who
has read the books, I'd be interested in examining, like
(16:47):
some of the subtexts of the relationships in the movies
as opposed to the books, because I my guests would
be that the subtext in the books are not as
lissit and homo erotic as they are in the movies.
But we'll get to of that too. Sure. So Sam
and Frodo are heading towards more to Or they kind
of like split off from the group and head there alone,
and then they meet up with Gollum, who's being troublesome.
(17:10):
And then the third movie is like everyone's trying to
get closer to more Door. There's some battles, all kinds
of ship happens. It's I'm not doing a good job
with this recap, but because I'm skipping over, you know,
nine hours worth of content, but right wild because it
sometimes takes longer for us to recap an hour and
(17:31):
a half movie, and it's almost like not a lot. Actually, well,
that whole battle at the end is like thirty minutes.
It's very long, at the end of which they do
fulfill their mission. Frodo finally tosses the ring into Mountain
Doom after a little scuffle with Gollum, and then everything
(17:51):
is fixed. And then there's about thirteen conclusions to the story,
which makes sense. I mean, it's a very long story.
It is funny how many are You're just like, because
it keeps the endings. I think it's because the endings
keep fading to black. Yeah, and then especially after you've
been watching for nine and a half hours, it's good.
(18:12):
It's like, we know it's good. Now do we really
have to see everything wrap up? But the last ending
does suck me up a little bit. When you see
Sam and the girl from the first movie and their
kids and the feet are huge, just like, it's that
sucks you up a little. I cried, Yeah, you know what,
I don't like it because I'm like, do you really
love that woman? That's true? I don't know. I just
(18:33):
I felt noting for seven hours. I hadn't felt the
thing in seven hours, and then I was just like, oh,
their lives can go on. So I skipped over a lot,
including all of the female all three of the female characters,
and it's made because they're hardly consequential to the story.
But there are a few of them, and they do
(18:54):
some stuff here and there, but kind of not really
which we'll talk about um. But yeah, that's effectively the story.
Good people set out to destroy evil and then they
destroy evil. So let's take a quick break and then
we will return to Middle Earth for the discussion. Do okay,
(19:15):
we'll be right back, and we're back. Okay, so we
have oh wait, you know what Gollum. That's who we
left out of well, I mentioned him, but I really
doubt it. Everyone's favorite part is cute about on the
(19:39):
daily I guess last week when we were on it
together is cute. The cutest boy in the movie is
the cutest Orlando Bloom. Okay, I my crush is from
this movie because even if I don't like a movie,
I've got a crush on someone. Gollum was a crush,
Orlando Bloom was a cry and who else? Oh, in
(20:01):
like Elijah would was like, Frodo is such a cutie
pie and he has great hair and beautiful eyes. Yeah, yeah,
his eyes are beautiful, but also I found him to
be I just think Frodo and Sam feel a little
gender fluid in the movie gender fluid. Yeah, I don't. Okay,
(20:22):
that's giving it a lot of credit, a lot more
credit than it deserves. But um, Frodo in particular, in
my mind watching I was like, yeah, I could see
myself in that. Well, I would argue, well, I think
Hobbits of all of the races that we see, which
are all white people except for the bad guys that
(20:42):
have dark skin, um of those hobbits are like the
least agro you know. They're like that's like just farm
and like, you know, live off the land. We're gonna
have little hobbit holes and we're going to be nice.
They love to dance, Yeah, they love to dang out. Yeah,
that's their purpose, right, So at least they're displaying the
(21:05):
least amount of toxic masculinity of all of the characters
we see in the movies. Well, yeah, so let's get
into that really quickly. So it has been said by
many that there are gay undertones to Frodo and Sam's friendship.
I think that the movie does at sometimes go out
(21:27):
of its way a little bit to hit that point
kind of hard, you think the movie, I think the movie. Yeah,
I think that the movie is implying it a little
bit without implying it in the way that movies sometimes do,
where male friendships are portrayed on screen as being kind
of homo erotic. And I and Caitlin and I were
(21:47):
talking about this a little bit before we started recording,
and and it's weird. I think that you can even
draw a line from scenes that we see between Sam
and Frodo, which are nice scenes, like I have no
issue with the actual scene itself or the friendship or
anything like that, but you can almost draw a line
from there to like a jet Apatow buddy comedy of like, Okay,
(22:12):
what are other examples of male friendships we see in cinema?
And like where you have let me see, I'm trying
to other big example correctly, Yeah, where it's like there's
a lot of like, oh, we're friends, let me care
about each other, no homo where this isn't the type
of movie that would say that, but there's I don't know,
I see what you're saying. I think there's an element
(22:32):
of a we care about each other more than anything else,
which can carry a bit of a like homorotic undertone.
And I think I don't give Peter Jackson in particular
any credit for setting that up in any kind of
progressive way, but I think because the performances are so
heartfelt and the characters themselves are so emotional and sweet
(22:56):
and earnest, The result is this on adult traded love
for each other free from toxic masculinity, which is like
in real life. If Sam and Frodo lived, I think
they would experiment because I don't think they would have
hang ups. Maybe Sam more, I don't know. I mean
(23:16):
that in let me be clear, if these two Hobbits
lived in our real world, if we saw them at
the frolic Room Tonight Room, that's just the bar around
here that I like the best. It's a fun little guy.
Yeah exactly, Yeah, I mean. And then something I thought
(23:37):
was really great with Hobbits in particular is and you
were touching on this a little earlier, Gutland. It's like
they are so openly emotional in a way that we
don't see Eric Gorn. We definitely don't see Leglis a
k A hacker computer boy. But I think that if
we bring Leglis into the real world, he's straight up
(23:58):
Mr Robot because he's always every time people are having
feelings like us, is standing to the side like we
need to go. He's not mean about it. But we
do not see him cry. We don't. But the Hobbits
are are very emotionally expressive. We see them cry a lot.
I mean, Froto is just sobbing for quite a bit
of yeah yeah, like they're there, and and Mary and
(24:22):
Pippen as well to a lesser extent. But I think
it's just because they're like more humorous characters, but we
see them cry multiple times, and so I guess I
can't say exactly what it is, but it's something about
the tone of the scenes between Froto and Sam that
are a little bit different than Mary and Yeah, the
scenes we see between, even if they are emotionally charged scenes,
(24:46):
it's laid on a little bit thicker for those two characters,
probably because they're more main characters. I don't know that.
And it is Frotos. His burden is being the ring bearer,
so like he carries the most steaks, you could say,
and the stakes in this story are super high. I mean,
it's like a world so because he and Sam is
(25:08):
with him every step of the way, I would say
that the stakes are so high and there's so much
emotion attached to whether or not they accomplish this quest
that I think it makes sense for them to have
such like emotionally impactful scenes because they're carrying the weight
of the world on their shoulders. I think so. In
(25:31):
terms of Freda and Sam's relationship, I don't want to
erase or deny the existence of a same sex relationship
if that is in fact what it is. But I
think there's a tendency to see a close male platonic
friendship and label it as gay, which I would argue.
(25:51):
I think that can be harmful because it kind of
implies that men are not allowed to or that it's
not normal to have a close platon friendship between two
straight men, or between like a gay man and a
straight man. Because men feeling like they can't have closeness
and emotional intimacy with other men in a non sexual way,
(26:11):
I think contributes to toxic masculinity, because I mean, toxic
masculinity stems from a lot of different things. One of
them is men suppressing their feelings and thinking they can't
be emotionally vulnerable with people, especially other men, because that's
a sign of weakness. I totally agree with you, and
I think I love you man is a response to that.
(26:32):
I mean, I don't want to over credit jet Apatow
because he's super problematic, but I think he's horrible. But
I think I love you man was an attempt to
be like, whoa, No, men can be emotionally bound as
best friends and it's and it's not weird. Guys. Look,
he's also married. That is what I was attempting to
(26:54):
say earlier. And I feel like I need I needed
it set up in a way and had not been
set up, and I felt very secure about it. But yeah,
I think that that is true where it's like, because
those movies did come out later, it's like, oh, let's
normalize male friendship, but the asterisks in those movies like,
but it's not gay like the way Appata does it
(27:16):
is homophobic because he's like, yeah, straight dudes can be
friends in a way that's not gay coded. Yea. And
that does seem in a way a response to scenes
like the way and I can't like, I literally can't
describe exactly what it is, but the tone of those
scenes to me is different and in a way that
I always liked, Like I I love, I'm fully here
(27:39):
for Sam and Frodo in the real world. I think
what you both are saying is true in exists sort
of parallel because you Jamie, you see it, you feel it,
and I'm sure no part of you was like, men
can't be friends and if they're friends, it's gay. But
there is the I understand Kalen you too. There is
that danger when at is the narrative we're pushing that
(28:02):
people will read it and say, well, I guess guys
can't be friends because if we try and put it
in things, it'll just be seen as homo erotic um.
But I think they're both true. But I do want
to add what's interesting. I know this is not supposed
to be about I love you man, but there is
a gay character. There are a few gay characters and
I love you man. And even that, to me was
(28:23):
super problematic because Andy Sandberg plays like, okay, you'd put
he's broy. What it's like great. The movie is trying
to be like, look how innovative we are by having
a broy queer character. Yeah, has never done a good
thing in his life. I think we can agree. I
haven't seen Freaks and Gigs because I can't look at
(28:45):
Seth Rogum without wanting to pull my own head off.
And yeah, the time to watch it may have passed.
Is it done? Should I not bother? I like Martin Starr.
Mart He's a good one. He seems great. It was
good when I saw it when I was like fifteen. Yeah,
I haven't revisited it in a long time, but um yeah.
(29:05):
So just to finish this thought, I just like to
see like a close male friendship on screen and automatically,
like automatically assume that it's like a gay sexual relationship.
I just think can doesn't necessarily have to, but it
can further perpetuate the idea that it's like weird or
abnormal to have straight men have emotional closeness with other
(29:26):
straight men, and I think that helps keep toxic masculinity alive.
And well, have I been guilty of doing this myself
where I've seen two men on screen who are friends
and like the other gay. Yes, I have done that.
I'm guilty of that. But then there's the separate analog
of like fan culture, which I think is divorced from
what we were just talking about. There's so many different
ways to look at this one relationship. Erotic fan fiction
(29:49):
in particular, which is hot in rules. It's oh, it's
super hot and rules, but it it took Frodo Sam
and it built world, a whole world, whole new world,
whole horny new for all um, and then I ran
this this whole, you know, train of thought that I
have about their relationship. I ran it past my friend
(30:11):
j T, friend of the cast Twilight episode, and he said, yeah,
that's all well and good, but keep in mind that
queer people seeing media like this that has a close
male friendship will like ship those two characters together because
(30:33):
there's such a lack of visibility of queer characters in
mainstream media that they'll say, yeah, those two men are gay,
and I see myself represented in their relationship, because that's
pretty much all I have to choose from, right, So
I think if the queer community is seeing relationships like
that and saying like, yeah, I see gay undertones in that,
(30:54):
like they know better than straight people, so I think
it's maybe more appropriate it when that happens. Yeah, this
Lord of the Rings in particular, and I guess, like
I guess I would extend this to a lot of
fantasy and and possibly sci fi as well. Is there's
like so many different ways to watch it, Like I
(31:16):
feel like almost more so than other genres when you're
looking at hyper fictional characters, like it almost depends on
who you are and what your life experiences based on
how you're going to view it. Because if you're you know,
like a queer person wanting to see yourself represented in
a movie like this, and aren't seeing yourself explicitly represented,
(31:37):
then it makes sense that you would see that scene
and be like, oh cool, I feel at least a
little bit scene because of how I'm viewing this scene.
Where if you're a young toxic man who sees that
and is off put by it, and it is like
that you know, sees that same friendship and thinks I'm
less likely to want to be like close friends with
another man because I don't want to be seen in
(31:58):
this way. So it's it depends on who you are,
what your life experiences. Let me ask you this true
right that lack of visibility. Is it possible to make
a feminist argument for Lord of the Rings using sort
of that same logic of like, well, there aren't a
lot of, um, you know, obvious opportunities here for feminist visibility,
But are there ways in which toxic masculinity is subverted
(32:22):
that makes this in some way a feminist movie? I
think that in the way the Hobbits in particular subvert
masculinity worked for me, but just because it subverts masculinity
doesn't mean it's feminist. But then there's the I am
no man argument with and I'm going to try to
say this name, but it is all soft voweli there
(32:45):
owen a owen, which is what you're saying is how
you pronounced you and McGregor's name is Oh yeah. I'd
like to issue a formal apology to all of our
Scottish fans who slam my mention saying it's allan McGregor
or you and McGregor, which I had. I also just
(33:09):
made mouth thoses that time I swarke. I was not
trying to say his name, it's you and McGregor. I
had said it correctly a year previously, and then in
the year between recording that and the time I funked
it up nine times I met him and parked with
his girlfriend for six months, and then I learned how
(33:29):
to say his name the total wrong way, and everyone
got mad at But how wasn't she saying his name
all the time. She was saying his name, and she
was saying it correctly, obviously, But I was like, you
know what I should say? Well, you know, what's your name?
Scorci Ronan, who was in Brooklyn Ronan another movie. There
(33:56):
we go h o O N is that it win
not to be confused with Arwin the other that's annoying.
You don't do that, and you're, hey, if you're writing something,
don't make everyone's name the same name, writing one oh
one different first let that should be left behind you
(34:17):
in the second grade where you've got like Stephanie Oh
and Stephanie t um. Anyways, you can make the I
have the thing because I tried to research, like, okay,
are there feminist arguments for this series and they seem
to mostly fall to a Owen because she is a
(34:37):
woman we see in combat and she also says and
I feel like with these arguments they tend to boil
down to like one or two things the character says
in the space of nine hours. But she says the
line I am no man, and that seems to be
the core. They're like, well, someone said they weren't a
man and that was true. Also, she rode a horse,
(34:59):
so it's a feminist text. Well, yeah, riding a horse,
driving a car, right, women can do it all. Yeah,
I like that character the same, and she don't want
to text in love with her and he's like sorry,
which fine, yeah, oh wait what I don't I mean,
it's your your take on Vigo. I have a skewed
(35:22):
view of Vigo because he made my mom so horny
that she almost died like that. That's why we saught
with our moms. Something you want to do? Yeah, because
it's like Orlando for the young girls, Vigo for the
mom and Frodo you know, Elijah for an evening in between.
Frodo is like basically I was like, yeah, if you
had a crush on Harry Potter, Elijah, what's gonna give
(35:44):
you that vibe as well? Because he's the size of
a ten year olds according to this movie. Yeah, um,
so you're like, you know, I see it and they
have piercing blue eyes. Thank you for bringing that up. Sorry,
I have to interrupt for a moment because is okay.
When I was listing all the characters, all the main
named characters in this movie, I ended up color coding
(36:07):
their names in my notes based on the color of
their eyes, because nearly every single character in this movie
has blue eyes. Go back and watch it. I did
not notice this until my viewing of this trilogy, but Frodo,
Sam Wise, Gandolf, Mary Pippin, Arragorn, Leglis, Boromir, Gollum, Grima,
(36:33):
worm Tongue, the Steward of Gondora, I forget his name,
l Round farremre King, Theoden bilbo Is steel Door, how dear,
he's one of the elves. Arwin, Gladriel and a Owen,
plus a bunch of other like secondary characters all have
blue eyes. Well, I don't know if you know this,
(36:53):
but Middle Earth is an area should be there. I
personally aspire to be a blue eyed hobbit, hobbit or
any I'd take blue eyed elf, blue eyed anything. We'll
get to the racism in this movie Elf, but well,
(37:14):
because everything there's a lot of Yeah, there's weird anyways.
So yeah, pretty much all the good guys and some
of the bad guys in this movie have blue eyes.
The only good guys in this movie who do not
have blue eyes are Gimli Amer. If anyone knows how
(37:34):
to say it, it's me and and Treebeard. Name it.
It's cheating. Oh that's that's too funny of a name.
But I've got notes on that name, which is that
it's so funny. Another fun fact about eye color in
this movie, So Orlando Bloom has brown eyes. He was
(37:57):
given blue context so that legal Us would have blue
eyes in this movie because you know, this is an
area nation and whatever. But Orlando Bloom hated his blue
contexts and sometimes they would forget to put them in,
so whenever they did, he would just not tell anyone
and then the movie would get shot with him in
his brown eyes. So there are some scenes where he
(38:19):
has brown eyes and they didn't fix it in post
or anything like that. So that's really funny. What a
weird choice that seems easy to fix. I know I
was gonna say earlier before we got into the blue
eyes theory that because of Airgorn, Airgorn was I think
there for the moms. Casting wise, Vigo was there to
(38:40):
make your mom for Roth, and I think he was
successful in a lot in the case of many moms.
But I think that two thousand and three was probably
one of my mom's horny or cinematic years, because that's
also the year where Captain Jack Sparrow debuted. Um that
made a lot of moms right, something for the mom,
something for the And then again in that same movie
(39:01):
Orlandos for the younger set. Yeah, there's a clear formula
operating in Hollywood at this time. Absolutely, yeah, whiz. Anyways, well, uh,
I just want everyone to know that we do fully
acknowledge the irony of having only talked about men so
far on a podcast about women. Tried to talk about
a Yeah, so let's take so let's just take a
(39:28):
quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about
the freaking women. The women A k Okay, So we'll
take a quick break and we'll be right back and
we're back. So let's talk about the female characters in
Lord of the Rings. There are exactly three four if
(39:53):
you count Rosie who Sam Mary's at the end, but
I don't. I would say you could so easily cut
her out of the story with very little impact besides
me crying at the end. It's fine. So I feel
like I don't know if this is true or not,
but I feel like this movie cares less about women
(40:14):
being in the story than maybe any movie we've come
across so far. But in a way that is like
it's confusing. I'm trying. I feel like we've maybe covered
one movie where I also got this vibe where the
movie is not outwardly hateful of women really at any point,
(40:37):
but it's just a world war. Women don't exist until
you get to elve and the Right, and then that
even still there's very few two Elves, and then glad
Reel only gets a couple of minutes of screen time.
Glad Reel is Kate Blanchett. She's mainly used for exposition
more important, and this is I don't know if there's
(40:58):
a question you can answer if like you probably can't.
Is she more important though, in the world of Lord
of the Rings than we get in the movies. I
don't super know that, having not read the books, I
tapped out and I don't even know. She's not even
she's in the Hobbit movies, but not in the Hobbit book.
I don't think um because she's presented yeah by I
(41:21):
mean she's an exposition. Yeah, that pure and simple. But
I felt watching it that she was somehow super powerful.
She's well, she's powerful, but in the context of the story,
she's given so little focus that I think you could
easily remove her or replace her like function with like
(41:42):
l Rondo. Because so her thing is she's the first
voice you hear in the movie, because she does provide
all the voice over narration in the very beginning, where
she's like doing all the world building and like, here's
what Middle Earth is and there's some fucking rings and ship.
We do meet her on screen in Fellowship of the Ring.
She's one of the like leader is at Las Lorean.
But I mean, talk about presenting a character as virginal
(42:05):
where she is dressed in all white and she's literally
glowing with having never fucked like that, do you think
she's never fucked? I think that there. I think that
it could be there could be a very easy argument
made of like she could have fucked. But I'm just like,
strictly presentation rise it's like the classically virginal, like it
almost fair maiden for sure, right. So and then so
(42:29):
the first time we meet her on screen in Las Lorean,
where she's like the she's described as being like an
elf witch and a sorceress, which sounds like a sandwich
of elf like some of the Keebler keel. So when
(42:49):
we see her on screen for the first time, she's like,
she's like being escorted by a male elf who I
don't know if this is true or not. I think
that might be her like elf husband. I'm not sure
there is a dude with her, and he seems to
be like an elf king and she's sort of like
the elf queen. I don't know, but she is definitely
like very like fair maiden. But she's all she's spoken
(43:13):
about as like being very powerful, highly regarded. Uh so
it is weird that like, oh, but a man has
to hold her hand either she doesn't she's a pacifist.
But then that just makes it a jarring movie experience
where I'm like, you're not even going to comment on
the fact that women have nothing to do, know, there
(43:34):
nowhere in this whole world. It's like if we were
surrounded by like if there was like the same thing
was in the whole world and we just never acknowledged it.
Like every we're just like, oh, we're living as if
they don't exist, because they don't exist. Like well, female
characters written by men wouldn't notice that, because men don't
notice when they write stories with only men in them. Um, right,
(43:59):
because there's there are three female characters in this movie
worth talking about and forty male characters who are like
named and like, not all of them are fleshed out fully,
but like every single person in the In the fellowship,
it's nine people and they're all male. It's wild. So
the last thing. I'm glad Reel. She appears again throughout
(44:23):
the course of the movies. Usually she's talking to l Rond,
but they're never on screen together. They have this is
the Elf king guy in Rivendel. Yes, so there's different
like Elf realms, Brunette elf is that. Yeah, that's Rwin's dad.
It does feel like the Elfish Kingdom is a patriarchy. Yes,
(44:47):
I mean the whole the structure of every community in
this movie is, which I think is made really clear
through Arwin's character too. Sorry I said Arwyn, not out
not that well, there's Arwin. Yeah, I know, I know.
Stupid if you only have to come up with three
female names and a four D character and two names
(45:10):
sound exactly the same. For Galadriel, the one scene that
stuck out to me where it seems like she had
the most to do was the scene she has with
Frodo where Frodo's I don't know, tiptoe and around, just
done a little stroll with his little ring has just
(45:32):
passed away. Gandalf did that thing where he's like sea
and dropped off a cliff. It was like, you're not
even gonna try and okay, but then it's he's fine. Whatever.
So there's a scene between Galadriel and Frodo where basically
Galadriel is tempted by the rings power but then overcomes
(45:55):
that temptation and it's basically like I passed the test
and like high fives herself. Certainly not the Bechdel test,
wish the ring test. And then she also has like
another Harry Pottery thing where she's like, I have a
pen sieve. Is that the Harry Potter thing where you
can you're that you can look into your own memories
with a pensive right? So but she but did she
(46:18):
just show the future? She has the gift of foresight
like many elves seemed to and that's a raven who
might be and we don't know. It's not fully explored,
but I would like to think that's a raven is
an extension of the Lord of the of course Bafely,
I think we can say that. So, yeah, she has
that scene where she shows like weakness and being like, yes,
(46:42):
I would be tempted if I had the ring, because
Forrhoto is like I don't really like this whole ring
bearer thing, why don't you take it? Glad reel like
I want to be a flower girl right there, It's like,
seems like a more jobs they give it. So, not
to defend the sexism of this movie, there's a reason
that Hobbits are best suited to carry the ring, right,
(47:05):
which is they're so pure of heart, right right, they're
resilient to its evil. Yes, what's weird is that only
hobbit men were available for that duty. But that is
my giving a little space too well on that. So
you could maybe make an argument that, like, yeah, why
wouldn't a woman have been considered for this, because we've
(47:27):
seen throughout history women being less corrupted by power, But
maybe that's only because women have never been given power,
so we don't know how corruptible they are. But we
could ship up, yeah we could, right right right, But yeah,
that is that is Bilbo presumably wouldn't think of that
because he's just like my buddies. Do you know anything
(47:47):
about well and also his nephew, anything about front of
parents um or like he why he must be an
orphan I'm guessing I don't know, Yeah, because Billbo is
his uncle yeah, and there's no parents intervening, being like,
don't give him the worst thing ever, that's true. No
one cares that he's going. I think his only family
(48:09):
is well. And Bilbo also does the rudest thing ever.
He's such a drama queen. He when he goes to
his own birthday at the beginning of the Fellowship of
the Ring and he's like, hey, everybody, just telling you
I'm leaving forever power and then he disappears and leaves
with lets say goodbye to literally anyone. It was pretty rude. Yeah,
(48:29):
it was a weird move. But he's a little corrupted
by that point. He is, I think he yeah, like
he gets nervous around the Ring and he's like, I
have to get the funk out of here. He feels it.
He does feels it by the end to write, right,
we just got word from super producer Sophie that Froto's
parents drowned. Oh go wait, in like the Hobbit, No,
(48:51):
because we don't meet Froto or any I don't think
any of the other Baggins is in the Hobbit. There's
probably some backstory somewhere in the books that we learned,
or maybe like an appendacees or something. Frodo is just
another example that I think you could apply to this
almost this whole world, because gender is dealt with in
such a passive way in this entire world where you
(49:12):
could gender switch. Most of the characters in these movies,
I think that they're with no impact. I think like
characters like are Gorn to be a little bit trickier.
Characters directly involved in the patriarchy at least seemed to
be making some sort of commentary. But all of the Hobbits,
I would say, because they are so also emotionally open.
(49:35):
They're all nice, not involved in overt love triangles, and
they're not oppressing. They're not doing like they're Frodo could
easily be a female character with really nothing about the
story changing. Well, yes, about this story changing, right, If
the writers of the Lord of the Rings movies had
(49:56):
made Frodo or a girl, it would certainly have been
a different movie because and we're writing it. Oh, I
don't think it would be the same. Yeah, no, it
it wouldn't be treated. I don't think that a studio
would invest like a jillion dollars into a female lead
film franchise in two thousand and one, especially based on
because the source material, like all of the like old
(50:17):
school fans of Lord of the Rings would be like, oh,
Peter Jackson, fran Walsh a woman and Philip A. Boyan's
a woman co wrote these movies. What so it's one
man and two women doing most of the Oh my god,
(50:37):
Well this just gets back to, uh, not all women are.
That is mind going because the movie itself could have
made the choice to make these women more important. Well
it did because from what I understand, again, haven't read
the books, so I might be a little wrong on this,
but like our Win's involvement in the story in the
(50:57):
books is like hardly there at all, and they took
mostly stuff from the appendices and beefed up her character
much more than it had been in the books. Is
Rwin liv Tyler? Yeah, but that feels like more of
a movie thing because they're like, yeah, that's a she's
a tricky character. Because it's like I, I, of course
(51:19):
I want to see women in these movies more. But
the way that they amplify her character is so like
there's such an agenda behind it that it's like almost
like I don't know if I would prefer more general neutrality,
or to see live Tyler specifically, so that she can
be you know, like coveted and her father can just
(51:41):
be like, I don't want you to do this, so don't.
And that's so many and they're all all the scenes
are so quiet, and he's like, listen up, bitch, you
cannot do anything. And she's like, but I would like
to do something and he's like, tough ship, you can't
do it, and then crying, and then you're just like
(52:02):
this movie is very long. Well, let's get into Darwin.
She is the daughter of l Rond and in some
ways the daughter of Steven Tyler. You could argue that
you could also argue El Rond is Steven Tyler if
you look at him. That's I think Steven Tyler was
(52:23):
really slept on in the casting process. Well, doesn't have
blue eyes, because if not, they could not count. For
I remember my mom because I'm from Boston, Ak the
land of Arrowsmith, where literally the year the Aerosmith roller
coaster debuted at Disney World. Why does that place exist, Uh,
the air Smith roller coaster, not Didney World. My mom
(52:43):
made us all go that year. But she I have
like a very specific memory of my mom looking at
liv Tyler in the movie, leaning over to me and
being like Steven Tyler's Daughta is so beautiful. I was
like ah. Anyway, So her story is that she has
(53:03):
to decide if she wants to stay in Mental Earth
and be with Aragorn, which means she would need to
sacrifice her immortality, or if she wants to sail away
with her elf people to the Undying Lands so that
she can stay immortal. Wait, a woman's storyline is a
rooted in whether she's going to sacrifice something for a
(53:26):
man or not, And that's a do or think of that.
I don't see why that bumps anyone. So both l
around her father and Aragorn are encouraging her not to
make this sacrifice, but she decides to stay, which means
I suppose she's given a little bit of agency in
order to be able to make this life changing choice.
(53:49):
But of course the choice that she makes is to
sacrifice a huge part of herself for a man. Yeah,
I mean, and it's her choice she does. I I appreciate,
And again we're going bear minimum argument that the story
at least lets her make her choice and doesn't go
(54:13):
the route of like, because if you go like way
back in mythology, there's so many examples of like a
female character who makes a choice and is killed because
she made the choice she wanted to and didn't do
what her father told her to do. So at least
that's not an example of that like ancient trope of
women being punished when they do what they want. But
(54:39):
it's not it's not good, it doesn't bode well. That's
the only thing we really get to see her think
about or trapple with, is like she's basically choosing between
her father and Vigo. She has an agency, but she's
still just in accessory right right, And part of the
reason that she makes this choice to stay with air
Corn is because she also has foresight abilities, some clairvoyance
(55:03):
if you will, and she foresees she foresees that she
will have a son with Aragorn, So like, now motherhood
is a daughter that that really annoying where she stares
into the woods and she's like, what if I had
a son? I was like, even you can't imagine women
(55:24):
in this world, yeah, because you've never met one. Well,
there needs to be a male heir, because you know,
Agorn does accept his destiny to be can't be in charge.
It's the rules that is. But what's really getting me
down is you know that two women co wrote this
with Peter Jackson. I mean, and I also wonder to
(55:47):
what degree were they calling the shots? Who knows? Who knows.
It's a different times, it was a different it was
almost twenty years ago, you know. Oh God, but this
is so within our lifetimes. It is so frustrating to
think of like this nice memory that we have of
like seeing a movie with our mom, and it's like, oh,
(56:07):
we were not represented in the away and didn't even
notice it. Yeah, it's just it's just unfortunately huge franchise.
They tried a little harder. Again, I haven't seen Hobbit one,
just Hobbit Too. There's also a third one, sad, I
mean number two was smill fucking heavy. They smoke, but
(56:32):
they do dry to make that female character more active.
Interesting that you mentioned that, because, um, well, a friend
of the cast, Lindsay Ellis, I was hoping we talked
about this. She made a three part video essay series
about the Hobbit trilogy. She made a straight up Future
(56:53):
Link documentary. It's amazing. It's like everything she does. It's amazing.
I encourage you to refer to part two of this
video series. There's a section between around minute nineteen nineteen
and where she talks about the character of Tariel, which
is the Elf maiden played by Evangeline Lily in the
(57:16):
Hobbit trilogy. So she was added in just like this
character kind of like created from nothing, because I'm pretty
sure she's not in the Hobbit book. She gets she
gets added into this narrative as a warrior lady because
the studios thought this movie would be more marketable to
(57:36):
a female audience if there was a lady in it.
That was that is misguided positive, but the movies are
so lame right Well then, also, as Lindsay Ellis points
out in the video, her being present in the story
in the context that she is in the story, which
is like a warrior, creates a contradiction in the Middle
(57:57):
Earth universe because in the Lord of the Rings trilogy
is established that women don't do battle, and like a
Owen has to disguise herself as being a man in
order to ride into battle in Return of the King.
So like there's like these very rigid gender roles that
are established in the Lord of the Rings trilogy where like,
you know, save the women and children. They have to
(58:19):
be like protected and put away into the caves. They
can't fight, And she's all and a win is all like, well,
I'm competent with the sword. I want to fight for
this causes I believe in, Like why shouldn't I be
able to fight? So she so we'll get to a Owen.
But like, she's easily the most active character. But the
Hobbit trilogy like really fucks up the rules that are
(58:39):
established in this universe by putting this Tariel character into
those movies. Um. But anyway, so back to our own
really quick. Um. She does do a couple of small
things that influenced the direction of the story, Like she
saves Frodo from the Ring Raiths that are chasing him
in the Fellowship of the Ring. In the first movie,
(59:01):
she tells her dad Elrond to have the sword reforged
so that Aergorn can fulfill his destiny to become king.
So she doesn't forge the sword herself, she tells a
man to do it. Um, and for a man. Women
can't touch swords, so except your unless you're a win.
(59:22):
So yet if the sword is a standing for the fallace,
then this is a very homerotic movie. Then you better
be jerking off that sword, Pale. But basically you discard game. Yeah,
you can pretty easily remove her character from this narrative
(59:42):
and the story would be pretty much unchanged. Like, she
doesn't have that much to do. We only see we
don't even see her on screen in the first movie
until I think it's an hour in eight minutes into
the movie, to be fair, there's a lot left after
that point, that's true. But she's only in the movie,
you know. But she's on screen then for about four
(01:00:05):
minutes during that like chase scene. Yeah, she is mostly
absent from the movie. Meanwhile, there's eight hundred men in it. Well, hey, gang, Hey,
it's us. I'm sick now you're so yeah, you suddenly
got sick. In a matter of seconds, I'll break the
fourth wall and be like, yeah, we recorded this months ago.
Uh there. So this is a two parter because, as
(01:00:28):
you know, The Lord of the Rings is extremely long,
So stay tuned. We have the second part of this
episode with our wonderful gust on a coming up very soon.
In the meantime, you can follow us at all the
normal places. You follow us on Instagram at bechtel Cast,
Twitter at bechtel Cast, Patreon ak Matrion five dollars a
(01:00:51):
month to bonus episodes. Also, if you live in the
Los Angeles area, come to our live show on September
fift at nine pm at the Ruby. We are covering
Edward Scissor Hands with guests Maggie may Fish. We're so excited,
it's gonna be great. I won't be sick anymore than yeah,
(01:01:11):
you'll be in tip top shape, I promise, sah. And
if you want to come to that, um tickets are
going fast, so get them while you can. And to
do that, go to our website becktel cast dot com
and go to the live appearances tab and there's a
link to buy tickets there and it's always in good
to our merch store if you need any of the merch. Uh,
(01:01:32):
it's what you do. Would you need it? Listen you
need it And that's at t public dot com. Slash
the Bechtel Cast, the Battel Cast. I was going to
get it wrong. We'll see you for part two of
the Lord of the Rings episodes soon live long and
get that ring. Hey, wond ring to rule them all
(01:01:52):
but two parts to this episode, Love It, Bye Bye,
The Bechdel Cast News
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Caitlin Durante
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