The Road to El Dorado with José María Luna

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
On the Bechdel Cast, the questions ask if movies have
women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zeph and
bast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Our glorious podcast. Uh huh was built by dividities, by.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Us, we are gods, we are mean there. I love
how this movie opens with just like they're like, let's
get into the false history moment one. Let's not waste
a shred of time. Let's not waste a micro second
with the truth or the or scene setting. Let's just

(00:45):
cut to the shit we made up. Yeah, welcome to
the Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie loftus aka God.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
My name is Caitlin Droonte, also aka God, and this
is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional
feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping
off point. Jamie, what is it though?

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Oh boy, not that it's going to come into play today,
but no, so so everyone knows. It is a media
metric originally created or co created by Alison Bechdel, a
queer cartoonist, co created with her friend Liz Wallace, which
is why it's often called the Bechdel Wallace test, because
that makes sense. It originally appeared in her really funny

(01:31):
classic comic collection Dix to Watch out For. Is originally
used in a queer context, it has since been sort
of co opted to examine how people of marginalized genders
speak to each other in general. So the version of
the test we use on the show is that there
should be two characters of a marginalized gender with names
who speak to each other about something other than a

(01:52):
man for at least two lines of dialogue. And you think,
surely that's not too much to ask, but then the
movie says, no, no.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yes it is.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
It's actually part too much ask. Grow up. And here's
another Elton John song. The problem. Okay, we're getting to
a popular request, extremely difficult movie to cover because there's
just so many angles from which this movie is fucked up,
and the soundtrack is imprinted on my brain and I can't, like,

(02:21):
I can never remove it. Unfortunately, it is like one
of one of those movies. We're talking about the Road
to El Dorado today, and we have so much to
talk about that I think we should just get our
guests in here.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Let's do it. He's a filmmaker and video essayist. You
know him from our episode on Dora in the Lost
City of Gold. So our resident expert on stories about
Gold cities. It's Jose Maria Luna.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
Hi. Welcome back, welcome back, Thank you so much. I'm
so happy to be back here.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Oh there's so much to discuss.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
I am the resident Gold City expert. Just any friend,
group by man, that's with my job I do.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
I Yeah. If people listening art on the matread it
is one of my all time favorite Matreon episodes. It's
a blast.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
I think, well we read, oh yeah, we unlocked it,
didn't we Yeah, we unlocked it on the main feed
a little while later.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
It's simply that good. Yes, okay, Well you can also
listen for zero dollars and isn't that a treat?

Speaker 4 (03:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
They were so excited to have you back. You have
made almost you know, two or three years ago. Now,
I think you made a fantastic video that touched on
the Road to El Dorado significantly, called Decolonizing Adventure a
cinematic Road to El Dorado. So there was absolutely no
one else we were considering for this episode. You have
covered the topic so thoroughly, so if anyone hasn't seen

(03:46):
the video, we're gonna link it in the description. But yeah,
I mean, I want to know about your history with
this specific movie and also what inspired you to put
together that video because it's so thoroughly research there's multiple locations,
it's just wonderful.

Speaker 4 (04:03):
Well, thank you so much for the kind words. I
have an interesting experience with this movie. I might have
seen it in theaters, but I was like three years old,
but I did have it on BHS and it was
on regular rotation because ever since, like in kindergarten or whatever,
we learned Colombian mythology and one of the most popular

(04:27):
myths originated in Colombia is or the territory that later
came to be known as Columbia because it is older
than the country, is the one about El Dorado. And
I was always very happy as a kid that there
was a movie talking about it. But even as a kid,
it made me very mad because even when I was

(04:50):
very young and I was like very nerdy, I could
tell that the movie at no point really touched on
the actual history behind the myth, which is it's a
whole very interesting story altogether. So I would watch the
movie a lot, especially because it is very charming on
a surface level. Then the animation is very pretty to

(05:11):
look at. I remember the textures of the CGI gold
are like ingrained in my brain. I just wanted to
reach out and touch that, and even rewatching now it's wild.
I'm always like thinking about how much it influenced my
like games like my play time, the whole thing with

(05:32):
the controlling the jaguar thing, or the I remember the
ledge from which they throw the gold. I remember recreating
stuff inspired by that on like the bathtub with like
the faucet. I don't know, a lot of this stuff
is like ingraining my brain, but I remember as a
kid the movie frustrated me. So I have a long
history of really engaging with the mythology, and this is

(05:54):
this myth is very particular because it's not it's not
an indigenous myth, right, it has a whole different story altogether,
but it is still like a myth and it was
originated here, and it is so often, as I remark
on my video, divorced from its setting. I enjoy talking
about it, and we here, particularly in Boda, we have

(06:16):
I'm Colombian. I don't know if we mentioned that the subtext,
but we have a very close relationship with the concept
of El Dorado, and that inspired me to make the
video in the first place, because I was like, oh,
this is a cool little history that I would love
to share. And I also have an interesting relationship with

(06:39):
a lot of the stuff that I talk about in it,
so it was like, yeah, we should re examine these things,
especially because it is such a It is one of
those movies that is like very beloved by a certain
millennial demographic. It's like very nostalgic to them, and including
I guess myself, it is nostalgic to me. I don't

(06:59):
belove it, but it is one of those movies that
people cheat us if it was like a like a
hidden jam. Yeah, that is sort of like an underrated classic.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
The narrative, Yeah, because it flopped in its time and now, yeah,
it feels like in the last even like five years,
there's like a huge contingency of people who are like,
actually it's it's awesome. You're like, no, we can, we can,
you know, we can lead.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
To the point where a flop it's okay, to the
point where when I was on the Shrek Tannic tour
a few months ago doing the show in London. On Shrek,
I was doing this section on the co director of Shrek,
which is a woman and what's her name I don't remember, oops,

(07:44):
but she had previously worked on the Road to El Dorado.
And as soon as I said that in front of
a crowd of people, everyone was like whoo. And I
was like, wait a minute, do people like that movie? Because,
as we'll discuss in a moment, it like missed me.
I'm like too old of a millennial to have cared
about it. So I was like, wait a minute, should
we cover this on the podcast? And people were clapping

(08:05):
and cheering, So yeah, here we are. I mean it
really does.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, Like there is a huge I mean, most of
the videos that exist about the Road to El Dorado
on YouTube, it was interesting going back, are pretty uncritical
and are like this it's like economically queer movie, which
it isn't, but I get why, you know, but like
they're like, look it. This is like it's actually good.

(08:31):
And the best I can say for it is that
it is unusual for a children's movie of that era.
There's a lot of things that are not in most
children's movies, including just I mean, the theme of colonialism
in general is very prevalent. But also I think one
of the hornier cartoon movies I've ever seen in my life.

(08:53):
Like it is absurdly horny. Two the characters canonically fuck,
which I all stuple times, yeah, which I do, I do?
I do? Remember, Sorry, Jose, we didn't need to cut
you off as yeah.

Speaker 4 (09:07):
Oh, I just thought the conversation was flowing.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
We just wanted to talk about the fucking as quickly
as possible.

Speaker 4 (09:15):
When I was showing this movie to my boyfriend, who
had never seen it, at one point I was like, wait,
does the villain have like such a slutty waste? And
he was like, they all have slutty waste, yeah, like
they're snatched. It's wild.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
It's also the fact, I mean this this movie ticks
all of the boxes of colonial completely underthought story. But
the thing that really struck me this time was I
was like, Okay, let's look into the voice cast because
it is just like nonsensical top to bottom, Like the
guy who voices Checkle Khan is Irish Italian. You're like what,

(09:55):
Like it was like so absurd, like and then even
the colonizing carearacter is like they couldn't be bothered to
find even a Spanish actor, Like it was like, no,
a British guy and an American guy and they're in love,
and then that you're just like, uh huh uh huh huh.
Jim Cummings plays Quarte. Also, the fact that I mean

(10:18):
of this movie is many crimes. The fact that her
Non Cortez, who you know you can trace twenty million
deaths too, is the secondary villain of the story. Wild
absolutely nuts. Well, okay, okay, Caitlin, what's your history with
this movie.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
I had never seen it before. Interesting, it came out
in two thousand. I was a teenager at that point,
so I was like, I can't be watching animated movies
right now. I'm too cool for that.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Ain't a baby.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
And then, as I've discussed on the show before, a
few years later, I came back around and I was like, no,
actually animating awesome. I'm eighteen, but I'm the baby still
and I've loved animated movies ever since. But there was
that period of a few years where I missed, like Mulan,
I missed any movie from like nineteen ninety eight till

(11:14):
like two thousand and three or four, with the exception
of like Pixar movies and any other like. As soon
as a lot of animated movies moved to CGI.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
Adults were allowed to see. I mean, I would argue
that Wally is not for children, it's for adults. It's boring.
I've never met a sink. I mean, not that I'm
around meeting children all the time, but like my niece,
my cousin tried to put on Wally for my niece
and she was like, what the fuck is this like
Hotel Transylvania three again, please, Like, that's a movie for children?

Speaker 4 (11:52):
Yes, yes, Wally. Come on. When I was like eleven
and I saw it in theaters and I cried, And
I remember telling the kids at school, oh, I loved
Wally so much. And someone was like, nothing happens in Wally, weirdo,
And I was like, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
It's beautiful. I mean, it's we should cover it. It's
basically an art movie being marketed as a children's movie.
But yeah, it's Hotel Transylvania three. I passed. I passed
a restaurant the other day that it was so genius.
They just had Hotel Transylvania three playing just on the
TVs and it was full of families. Because there is

(12:27):
something really potent about Hotel Transylvania three to children, and
it is the third one. And I don't know why,
but my cousin, I mean, she's really sick of it,
and she's like, they put something in this movie. They
put something that is it's like a whistle that can
only be heard by dogs. Like adults cannot understand the
raw appeal of Hotel Transylvania three. Listeners with kids, please

(12:50):
let us I'm just curre, or you just DM me directly.
Does your kid also watch Hotel Transylvania three five times
a day? Because it seems like a common, an underdiscussed
plague that is affecting our culture.

Speaker 4 (13:04):
Get there on that.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Oh sorry, and I should say it's Hotel Transylvania three
summer vacation.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Oh my gosh, we should have covered it this past summer. Well,
I mean next summer.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
I guess Dracula at the Beach. I understand. I understand
why I would be laughing if I was seven, and
maybe I would just be laughing in general. I don't know.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Well, let me tell I'll tell a very quick story
and then we'll get back on track. I went to
go see Paranormal Activity three, I think, in theaters with
my friends. This was many years ago, and I quickly
discovered that there were creepy children in Paranormal Activity three,
and I cannot. I can't do creepy children in movies.

(13:49):
So I walked out. I almost never walk out of
a movie in a theater, but I was like, I can't.
WHOA And I walked into a screening of Hotel Transylvania one,
I believe. And the thing is, it wasn't three D
and I did not have three D glasses. So I
sat through a three D screening of a Hotel Transylvania one,
walking in probably like twenty or twenty five minutes after

(14:11):
it had already started, and sat through the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
And did you love it? Question Mark?

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Did she love my favorite movie? Now? Yes? Anyway, it
was that's my that's my exposure to Hotel Transylvania.

Speaker 4 (14:26):
Incredible.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
That's I am now looking at And it was made
by oh gosh, I hope I'm saying his name right, Uh,
Gendy Tartakovski. And now I understand because he made Dexter's
Lab and Samurai Jack and like he does put a
secret ingredient in his stuff. He did Powerpuff Girls, like okay,
so they yeah, had no idea. Yeah, he's directed all

(14:49):
three all four? What four? There's four Hotel Transylvania.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
That's how many Shreks there are.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
It's wild that he's like.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Until Shrek five comes out soon.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
I would say he's like a really he's a fine artist,
and yet he is also a respected Okay. Anyway, now
that we've fully talked about Hotels Transylvania three summer vacation,
it's time.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
To get back to El Dorado. I had never seen could.

Speaker 4 (15:12):
Have known watch it for.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
Sorry, it was part of it's part of the prep,
part of the home in the prep.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
No, but I had never seen the Road to El
Dorado before, and I was expecting bad things from a
movie from two thousand, but not as bad as what
we see in this movie. So I'm very excited to
talk about it. Jamie, what's your history?

Speaker 3 (15:36):
So unfortunately this is a Three Bears situation where I
was the exact right age too. I like this movie
was marketed to me. I was like six or seven
when this came out, So yeah, I am assuming I
saw it in theaters. I remember that. My really, my
main takeaway was I loved the soundtrack to this movie

(15:59):
so much. I remember that like my aunt somehow found
a like I loved it so much that I received
a karaoke CD that was like unlicensed. I have no
idea where she found it, but my aunt like gave
me and my brother the karaoke CD to the Road
to El Dorado for Crispas that year. Yeah, it's weird.

(16:20):
I mean it's weird because I didn't feel super attached
to the story. I remember thinking like parts were funny.
I generally liked the movie, but it was the soundtrack
hit really hard for me, my brother and I still yeah,
my I have like a memory of my brother who
was like three when this came out, and he used
to sing the theme song by heart, but like with

(16:41):
baby brains, so he would he would say like one
thousand years oh, like he just couldn't do the g sound.
So I have I have a lot of nostalgia attached
to this movie because it was something that my brother
and I both enjoyed together. However, it is I mean,

(17:02):
what is I think really why I'm glad the film
failed is because while you know, if you learn and
you educate yourself as you get older, it's really quickly
clear that this is a pretty like dangerous approach to storytelling,
and it is completely based in colonial and narratives. There's
narratives here that are just taking four hundred year old

(17:26):
colonial texts as reality. There's the idea that like it
is can into this world, that Miguel and Julio are
smarter than everyone around that I mean, all of these
things that we'll get into today. But what struck me
is that at the time, I had not seen any
media that would contradict this narrative. So I just didn't know.

(17:48):
And it's like embarrassing to admit that, but it is true.
I think it's true for a lot of Americans just like,
I mean, just like were poorly educated intentions so on
indigenous culture and on colonizer narratives. And I mean, my
my first favorite movie was Pocahontas, which is a movie

(18:08):
we will one day cover on this show. And so
I was like, I you know, was drinking the colonial
kool aid with these kinds of stories, and it's embarrassing,
but it's also like it's it's on you. I mean,
Jose you sort of say this in the conclusion to
your video, It's on you to educate yourself and remove
your like I would never in my life show Pocahontas

(18:30):
or The Road to El Dorado to a kid. Now,
you know. It's it's because I think part of the
problem with these movies is that they are well made.
I understand why people like them, and that's what makes
them dangerous. So I'm hoping that, yeah, by like having
these discussions and by like continuing to educate myself and
encourage other people, like it's that the legacy of these

(18:52):
movies will be single generation and that we're not going
to have to have like decolonize this movie that was
just like I had an addictive soundtrack because Elton John, like,
why there's I Yeah, so I did. I really I
had a lot of nostalgia for this movie and have
intentionally not revisited it in at least ten years because

(19:16):
it's so deeply uncomfortable to watch and also have like,
you know, your little baby brain being like this song
is awesome, and then you read the lyrics and you're
like no, it's not. There's a there's a song in
this movie called sixteenth Century Man. I don't believe it
shows up in the text. It might be during the
credits or something, but it is like unbelievably racist, and

(19:41):
it is just like Elton John singing one of the
most racist songs I've ever heard. Yeah, this movie like
it's bad for the world, and it's the fact that
it is. So I mean, let's get into it. But yeah,
that's my that's my confession.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
I mean, we are products of our environment. So let's
take quick break and then we'll come back to do
the recap. And we're back. Here's the recap. I will

(20:17):
place a content warning as we will be discussing anti
indigenous tropes, racism, violence, things of that nature. We open
on a sequence slash Elton John song about how the
gods built El Dorado, which is, according to this movie

(20:38):
and many other stories, a real place. It's a marvelous
city made of gold. Then we cut to Spain fifteen nineteen,
where Cortes and his conquistadors are about to travel to
the New World to quote unquote search for gold aka

(20:58):
to colonize steel land in resources, to rape murder.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
This is a wild trend during this period of animation
because we like, you know, Hernan Cortez was a very
real person and murdered millions of people, like we're tying
a Hitler grade villain appearing in the cartoon movie. But
this is something that I also it reminded me of
Genghis Khan and Mulan like a real life character. It's like, well,

(21:27):
if you're putting this movie in such a specific moment
with a real life, famously colonial murderer, would you not
want to get a single fact right? Like why put
it in such a specific context if you weren't going
to bother?

Speaker 4 (21:42):
I don't know. And I think, like, on that same note,
it is interesting how from the very first moment the
movie is already having that like loose approach to like
a very a very delicate history in that in a
very subtle way, and it is that the city canonically
is named El Dorado, which is, you know, it's a

(22:04):
Spanish term in which we'll probably get into the whole
detail later, but it is. It is interesting how from
the very get go it kind of like acknowledges that
it is a white perspective on ostensibly a story set
in like pre conquest America's so with that and the

(22:28):
immediate introduction of Alancortez, who is not like necessarily portray
in a positive way, but it is. It is so
loose with very real history without ever taking that seriously,
and it's all like a fun ramp and whatever. But
the undertones are very they're sinister in a way.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
I agree. It's like it's not like he is shown
as a good person. I mean this racist song I
was talking about sixteenth century, they're like Cortez, bad Cortez,
we don't like him, but like he's never shown to
be worse, Like it's implied that Chukal Khan is worse
for sure than a real person who was a career

(23:16):
genocide er.

Speaker 4 (23:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, it's absurd. And also going through the history behind this,
it was like I learned stuff because I have been
so under educated about this period of history.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yes, so we learn about this upcoming conquest. Meanwhile we
meet two Spaniard dudes, Tulio voiced by Kevin Klein and
Miguel voiced by Kenneth Brownow it's.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Just I will say they do have chemistry together. I
guess that, like I just as an animation head. I
was like, it sounds like they're in the same room together,
and they were, which is good approach to animation. That's
how they record the dialogue for Bob's Burgers. I feel
like you can feel it. Oh yes, yes, that said
the movie is dangerous. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (24:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
So they are gambling via some dice game and they
win a map to El Dorado. So already side note here,
but the movie starts out very similar to the way
Titanic starts out, because we open on a hidden treasure
of sorts either the city of El Dorado or the

(24:32):
shipwreck of the Titanic. We meet the rich villain Cortes
slash col and we meet a couple of scrappy guys.
One of them's blonde, one's brunette, and they are gambling
and they win something that gets them closer to this treasure,
a map or tickets to the Titanic.

Speaker 4 (24:52):
So we got man departing from Europe to the New World.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
To get on a ship to go to the.

Speaker 4 (24:59):
Whoa, oh my god, makes you think I hope they
am here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Here, that is where the similarities and because so the
townspeople discover that Tulio and Miguel had been cheating and
playing with loaded dice, so they have to run away
and they end up on Cortes's ship, where they are
discovered and imprisoned for being stowaways, but Tulio and Miguel
managed to escape in a lifeboat along with Cortes's horse Altivo,

(25:30):
who is voiced by Scooby Sorry.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
I know, Frank Welker.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Yeah, we've brought up Frank Welker quite a bit in
the show, and it is fun to find the Frank
Welker where it's like and this horse, there's one man
and he can be any animal. So yeah, I think
we should be asking Frank Welker to issue a statement
disavowing himself from the movie. But I was like, of course,

(25:57):
he's the horse.

Speaker 4 (25:58):
I do love the design of the horse. He's like
a little chonky and he has like this like his
face almost looks like a cow facing. How they over
emphasize that, Yeah, I don't know. I love the expressions
on that horse. I also had the Burger King toyo
of the horse as a kid, and I think I

(26:19):
had all the toys and watching the movie, I just
feel like I'm more familiar with the toys than with
the animation design, so it's a little bit weird. Anyway,
I love the design of the horse and Frank Welker
did a great job. She should disavow it, as you say,
you should this himself.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
The other beloved Bachtel cast stand by that is in
this movie is Tobin Bell. And wait, Caitlyn, that's Jigsaw
is in the Road to El Dorado, and we like,
do have to talk about it. It's a small part
because I have no idea who this is. Tobin Bell
as Zara Goza, a sailor on the voyage to the
New World of El Dorado and the original owner of

(26:55):
the map, which he loses to Tulio. So he's in
the dice game.

Speaker 4 (26:58):
Oh yeah, he's the guy who disc the ruse, which.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
Is kind of wild because in the Road to Elorado
he's playing a little game.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
He loves to play a little game.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
Tobyn Belt like was not reading the script carefully enough.
He's just like, oh, a little game. This is my wheelhouse. Yeah,
I'll be in one scene and there's going to be
a little game. So that's where the fun facts end.
But yes, Scooby and Jigsaw managed to be in their
Road to.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
El Dorodo amazing.

Speaker 4 (27:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Well, okay, so the characters Tulio and Miguel, they end
up on the lifeboat with the horse. They spend a
few days stranded at sea, and they nearly die, but
then they eventually make it to land. The movie isn't
very specific about where they are, but Jose you mentioned
in your video that it's meant to be present day Mexico.

Speaker 4 (27:56):
I think it is. The I mean, the aesthetics are
of it all over the place. I noticed that at
one point they get like attacked by piranhas, which you
you don't get those in meso America. But I think
like the implication, especially because the ship was headed to Cuba,
is that they are somewhere in the Mexican territory, and

(28:17):
all the aesthetics of the culture are very much like this,
like Mayan, Aztec, all mech even like hybrid. Yeah, so
I think it is. That's why I say it's in
present day in Mexico, but.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
It is vague, like the movie is not specific about.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Yeah, it does feel, I mean and hosaia. I'm interested
in talking about it more in the discussion, but that
there is a lot of YadA YadA in the way
indigenous culture is represented and multiple cultures are rolled into
each other in a way that is just like, well,
how are how is like a white American gonna will
this seem authentic to a white American that has never
learned anything about this?

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Right?

Speaker 4 (28:56):
And it probably will.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
Yeah, that's the speaking from experience. I was not I
did not have questions at the time, Like so.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, So they land and Tulio still has the map
to El Dorado, so they embark on a quest to
find the legendary city and steal its gold. That is
like their specific goal here.

Speaker 4 (29:19):
They're literally colonists, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
For sure, big time.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
And they just so happened to very conveniently land exactly
where the starting point of the map is. So that's
nice for the plot of the movie, and we get
a montage of them traveling. They're following the map, they're
reaching the different landmarks, and they finally arrive at what

(29:43):
they think will be the city of El Dorado, which
turns out to be a big statue with some images
carved into it, and they think they've been duped, but
it turns out that the entrance to the city is concealed.
Then group of indigenous warriors show up. They are chasing

(30:04):
a woman who seems to have stolen something, and the
warriors take Miguel Tulio and the woman. This is cell
by the way, voiced by Rosy Perez. They take them
into El Dorado, this magnificent city of gold inhabited by
a thriving community of indigenous people. Miguel and Tulio are

(30:28):
seemingly taken as prisoners, but then zeklcn, the high priest
of the city.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
Famous Irish Italian village Chaco Khan unbelievable. This is like
just flagrant, flagrant anyways.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
So he announces that these two men are actually gods
whose arrival they have been awaiting for a long time
and also worth mentioning here. We'll talk about it later
as well. But everyone, no one can understand each other
because the pre contact indigenous people are speaking the same

(31:07):
language as the Spaniards, which is English.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
We all speak yeah, I mean, it's it's Pocahontas all
over again. We're like, oh, we all speak contemporary American English,
right right.

Speaker 4 (31:19):
Well, Pocahontas was like bold about it. It was like
it's magic. They can understand each other with magic. Here
they don't even bother.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
They don't even bother to explain it.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Yeah, but magic is real in this world too, like
it's very fast and loose with like when magic is
and is not real, smoothie socks. All right, well, let's keep.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
It anyway, right. So then Chief Tenebuck voiced by Edward
James almost introduces himself, though he is skeptical that Tulio
and Miguel are divine beings and he wants them to
prove it. And then, by mere coincidence, Tulio and Miguel
seem to stop a volcano from erupting, so the people

(32:02):
of El Dorado now fully believe that they are indeed gods. Meanwhile,
Chell is let off the hook, claiming that she was
trying to help these gods find their way to El Dorado,
and then she overhears Tulio and Miguel revealing themselves to
be not real gods, saying that if they maintain this facade,

(32:27):
they can live like kings and steal the gold. So
she tells them she won't wrap them out as long
as they let her in on their scheme, because she
wants much more than this provincial life. And we'll talk
about that as well.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
But yeah, I mean but they're like, oh, well, has
she lived here? Oh her life? Does she have family?
Does she have friends? Or does she just exist in this?
Does she have this? Why does she want to leave?

Speaker 4 (32:55):
Well?

Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah, all questions, if you had them, will not be
answered correct.

Speaker 4 (33:01):
Yeah, it's just like, yeah, I'm bored. And the end
of the conversation, it's like, okay, okay.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
It would have it even great to get that, you know.
It's like, I'm bored in horny.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Right, too horny for this place, too horny to live here. Yeah,
we don't know. So Tulio and Miguel embrace their god
status and everything seems awesome until they realized that the
high priest sekulcn is about to make a human sacrifice

(33:33):
to pay tribute to these quote unquote gods. So Tulio
and Miguel swoop in to be like, no, no, no, we
don't want you to kill people. How about gold as
the tribute. So the people start throwing in gold into
this kind of whirl polly entrance to the spirit world Shabbalba.

(33:56):
But then they're like, no, no, no, we want the gold
near us. We want to be able to bask in it.
So they agree, and then they're like, by the way,
we're going to take that gold with us back to
the heavens, which we're gonna do soon, so please build
us a boat so that we can get to the
heavens via boat. And the chief is like, no problem,

(34:19):
we'll build a boat for you in three days. So
now Miguel and Tulio have to figure out how to
keep up this ruse for three days. Tulio wants them
to lay low during this time, especially because Miguel has
a tendency to cause a ruckus, and sure enough, he
does not.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
Lay lows caused.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
He's causing the ruckus. He goes out into the city
and he makes friends with everyone in a sequence that
suggests these indigenous people don't know how to have fun
until this white colonizer comes along and teaches them how
to enjoy themselves.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
But these these indigenous people are under the tyranny of
this best spot, and the white guy needs to come
in and be like, hey, chill.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, don't kill each other.

Speaker 4 (35:12):
Right.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
They're like me, as a grifter from a colonizing culture
that aspires to steal from you and leave. Listen to me.
I know what's going on. It also, I mean, we're
about to get into this part, but as they're found out,
it's like the way the indigenous characters are treated is
so baffling. I cannot get into. It's heavily hinted that

(35:34):
the chief knows that they're con artists, and he's like whatever,
He's like, it's.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Okay, take the goal.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
You can stay in the position of God. Like what,
it just doesn't Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Yeah. So while Miguel is out having fun on the town,
Tulio and Cell are fuckucking.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
Yeah it is. It's not subtext, it's text.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
It's text that they are not.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
They're simply fucking. This is where Cell's character goes off
the fucking rails. I don't understand why. She's like, let
Miguel go, Like, why does she do that? And I
guess because she wants to fuck Tulio. And then the
second she fucks Tulio, all of her agency as a
character turns into vapor.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yes, well that's happening. Cortes has landed in the same
spot that Tulio and Miguel did, and he and the
other conquistadors are making their way toward the city. Then
there's a scene where Suco Cohn makes Tulio and Miguel
play sports with a bunch of these like warrior athletes,

(36:45):
and the two guys end up cheating via an armadillo
so that no one will realize that they're not gods.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
I honestly, I did love that armadillo. I thought that
armadillo was hilarious. Loved the armadilla.

Speaker 4 (37:01):
The armadilla who can fly and manipulate the loss of physics. Yes, yes,
and it's somehow bouncy. I love him.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
You're like the but you're like magic, Is it is
the armadillo magic? Or is he just awesome? Like, we
don't drunk, we don't know. Even the it's so weird that,
like even the like Animal Friend, if we're going into
like the Disney model, this is clearly pulling from even
the Animal Friend is kind of like weird and horny.

(37:28):
You're like, why why, Like I there's so many questions,
like were people just too horny to make a movie
that makes sense?

Speaker 2 (37:39):
I don't know, I don't know. And this is when
cucle Khan really starts wilding out. He's obsessed with human
sacrifices and quote unquote cleansing the city, and he keeps
trying to get Tulio and Miguel to sacrifice people, but
they always refuse. Soucle Con is now starting to suspect

(38:02):
that they are not God's after all. After three days,
the boat is finished, but Miguel is having second thoughts
about going though. Tulio invites Chell to go back to
Spain with him, and she's like, what about Miguel, And
he's like, forget Miguel, which Miguel overhears. So I love a.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Plot contrivance like this, and evesdropped this late second act.
This happens in Shrek. Wow, sorry, true it does.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
There are Shrek tannic parallels.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
It's one of the laziest plot contrivances. You're like, and
then he was in the doorway and he's like, my
boyfriend broke up with me, which is the subtext to it.
He's like, my boyfriend broke up with me. And also
Miguel takes it so literally where it's it feels so
clearly like yeah, I forget him, like, which is rightful.
But he's like I've been dumped, Like he's he's about

(38:58):
to move because he over received breakup which I've done.
I don't know, I mean we.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
All have, so now they're kind of feuding. Meanwhile, cecle
Con makes some potion or something magical happens and he
brings this huge stone statue to life, which attacks the
city and goes after Tulio and Miguel, but they outsmart
cycle Con and he falls into the whirlpool entrance of Shibalba,

(39:30):
which spits him out in this lake right at the
feet of Cortes. So now he gangs up with Cortes,
but they don't know that, and Miguel and Tulio have
you know, White Savior style saved the city for now,
but they're still feuding, and Miguel still wants to stay

(39:51):
in El Dorado and Tulio still wants to go back
to Spain with cell so he makes arrangements to leave
on the boat with a ton of gold. But before
he goes, everyone learns that Sukulcan is leading Cortes to
the city, so Tulio comes up with a plan to
destroy the entrance to El Dorado by crashing the boat

(40:13):
into the pillars so that Cortes won't be able to
find the city, even though it'll mean they'll lose all
the gold, but it's a sacrifice that Tulio is willing
to make.

Speaker 4 (40:25):
Which is like it's a it's an interesting I was like,
don't they like trade with other people? Like that was
the entrance to their city. Yeah, like what are they
going to do now?

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Also the fact that the like all of a sudden,
the chief is able to almost single handedly hold up
a pillar. Yeah, then weighs tons and tons and tons.
He's like, yeah, no problem, this plan makes sense again,
just like a moment where there's like five hundred ways
where that and it's like it's bad riding. And also

(40:59):
it's just like, at no point is Chell going to
give a passing shit about everyone she knows, Like it's
so weird that this moment is I understand why, but
it's like it just reveals the flaws. So it's like, well,
this is the first character growth we've ever seen in Tulio.
But it's ultimately it's his idea just to act white

(41:24):
savior to white savior the place that he was in
the middle of colonizing.

Speaker 4 (41:29):
Like yeah, it's just like very sloppily put together, Like
the climax is very evidently sloppily put together, and it
in hindsight makes like the seams of the rest of
the movie show a lot more. It's like, oh, it's
a very contrived movie in general.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
It's so weird and also I mean, just like the
just to shout out a very two thousand element, there's
clearly like it's a mix of two D and three
D animation in a way that's very jarring. There's just
like barrels and like you see gold, You're like, why
just the gold? Like there, it's very I feel like
there's a million early two thousands of movies that are

(42:06):
like they won't notice, they'll love this, and you're like
it looks bad.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Yeah, jose, I know you said you remembered the Gold
like it was very memorable. But like seeing this for
the first time, I was like, this looks like shit,
Like it looks bad and weird.

Speaker 4 (42:21):
Like it's one of those things that I find charming
because it's like, oh, it was very in its infancy.
There's like bland. But like there's like a lot of
things that I feel like because I watched them when
I was very young, Like the textures really stuck with me,
Like the the clouds in hercules also have that effect. Yes, yes,
on me. The jungle in Tarzan as well. I was

(42:42):
very fascinated by that because like I could tell that
they were like using something new, and I was like,
I was very fascinated by it. But I was saying that,
and but my boyfriend, who hadn't seen the movie, was like,
it's very weird. It is right, You're not attached.

Speaker 3 (42:59):
Right, right, I mean this movie, like an attachment to
it does make all the difference, which is why Kiln,
I'm kind of glad you like didn't grow up with it,
because there is like things that I will be like,
well but this, and You're like, well, no, not really,
and I'll be like no, no, And I was like, wow,
Kenu's being such a bitch today.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Classic meme.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
It reminded me of like Star Wars prequel stuff too,
where you're just like there's all of a sudden something
that is like so old computery looking, or when they
like when you see prequel Yoda or whatever, and you're like,
oh what yucky? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Anyway, So they collapse the gate. The gold is spilled,
but El Dobrado is now safe from the conquistadors, and
Miguel decides to join Tulio and cell on their adventure
back to Spain.

Speaker 5 (43:51):
The end very abrupt ending. I will say, yes that too.
Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
And we're back. Where do we begin?

Speaker 4 (44:16):
I don't know so much going on?

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Yeah, who say, does anything stand out to you? Where
would you like to begin?

Speaker 4 (44:23):
I think that obviously, like removing ourselves from the movie itself,
I think that the most interesting scene in it for
me is the Shibalba scene where they show the tribute
there they start throwing the tribute to the whirlpool, because
that is, weirdly enough, it's the only accurate scene in

(44:47):
the whole movie regarding the myth that it's based on.
In that, just for I guess, I guess that's a
good as good a place to start as any. That
the myth of El Dorado is not a myth that
is indigenous to the Americas, and it is rather the
result of the projections that Spanish people arriving to the

(45:09):
continent had of it, and it's clash with the local culture.
So basically, there's this Colombian historian, her name is Diano Due,
and she she has like this history podcast. She's incredible,
and she describes it as this clash between like all

(45:30):
the projections that the Spanish had of a world that
ultimately ended up challenging their ability to imagine the universe. Right,
these people arrive to a continent who have no notion
of how to process it. It challenges every single notion
of civilization that they have, every single notion of like
geography and history and even religion, and what they end

(45:55):
up finding does not mesh with their expectations of it.
So both of those things end up clashing together, and
they start to see all of the local population, the
local customs, everything the culture. They start to see it
through this very eurocentric lens, like in a very literal way.

(46:16):
So what happened when the Spanish people arrived to the
Caribbean coast of what is now Colombia. So they arrived
to what is now Santa Marta and Cartagena, these two
coastal cities, and they start making their way down the
Magdalena River to the Andes, up to the Andes. Wait,
how I've always struggled in English? People say the Andes.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
I think, yeah, say Andes.

Speaker 4 (46:47):
Okay, Now I just want to make it. I just
want to say that that's what I'm talking about now,
because obviously I'll pronounce them like in Spanish. So they
make their way through the Andes and they start hearing
of this population farther down south that has a lot
of gold, and they begin to process that as like
they think that gold has the same value there that

(47:08):
it has in Europe. They think it's also monetary, when
in fact, the cultures here had a very different relationship
with gold. If you ever make your way to Bubbadad,
there's the Gold Museum, which is the largest collection of
gold artifacts in the world, and it is established as
a way to recontextualize gold not as a commodity, but
rather as an important cultural good, akin to like painting

(47:32):
or sculpture. It's very much a part of their everyday
lives in a more spiritual and cultural way than just money.
But obviously that Eurocentric lens creates this distortion of it,
and so they're like, oh, they're very rich people. And
the farther than Sow they get, they keep hearing of
this place called the Muiska. It's called it was the

(47:53):
Muiska Confederation. It was a series of populations native populations
that fell under the Muiska government, and they occupy present
day Bogata in like central Columbia, and either they witness
or they hear or they start hearing of this ritual.
Where in Lake Ukuatawita, which is this lake it's like

(48:16):
two hours away from Bagada. It's gorgeous, another thing that
people should visit, and it's this perfectly circular lagoon that
kind of looks like a meteor fell and just fill
up with water. That's not what happened, but that was
a theory for a while, but it kind of looks
like that. It kind of looks like this big crater
full with water, and it's this gorgeous like blue green water.

(48:37):
So it is a very mystical place in a lot
of ways. And what happened there was that that lagoon
was a sacred site. It was the origin of life
for the Muisca. And every time that a new leader
would ascend, he would cover himself in gold dust across
the lagoon in a raft and submerge himself in the

(48:59):
center of the lagoon, and then the people all around
the lagoon would offer gold and would throw the gold
into the lagoon because it was a way of it
was like a religious ceremony of tribute to the gods
and to the origin of life itself, and people start
hearing of this Golden Man or how they would call

(49:20):
it in Spanish like Eldorado, like the Golden Man or
the golden period, because in Spanish you have tacit nouns.
So this is where the Eldorado concept is born. It's
from Spanish interpretation of the traditions of the indigenous population,
specifically of the Muizka population, and their imaginations start running wild,

(49:46):
and they're like, these people are so rich in gold
that they just throw it into this lagoon. So not
only is there a lot of gold at the bottom
of that lagoon, there's also probably a lot of gold elsewhere.
And again because they we're expecting kind of like reserves
of gold like this, like piles and piles of gold
like stored up instead of everyday items that they used.

(50:08):
If you go to the Gold Museum, you see that
they would wear a gold and jewelry, but also like
I guess, a lot of like different jewelry like chest plates, belt, crowns,
but jars were also made of gold. Like the jars
were they stored food and coca leaves all these things.
They expect a reserve, they expect a place where gold

(50:31):
is stored, and they keep looking for it, and they
don't find it, because again, that is not the relationship
that these people had with gold, and so they begin
to believe that it must be hidden somewhere, and that
is how It's snow balls into the perception of a
city made out of gold that is hidden somewhere in
first in the area that is now Columbia, but later

(50:52):
on the whole continent became subject of that search, to
a point where there were myths about it being like
deeping the amaz rainforest, or even in like more like
North America. Seven Golden Cities of Cibola. I think it's
it's one of the ones that was in I think
like the southern United States, southwestern All this to say

(51:15):
that the one thing that stays from the origin of
this myth is the scene where everyone starts throwing gold
for tribute into the lagoon, which was what I found
very fascinating as a kid, because I was like, well,
they knew what they were adapting, but like, why is
everything else so weird?

Speaker 2 (51:32):
And they make a specific reference to Hibbalba, which is
the actual name of the underworld in Maya mythology. Right,
but that's kind of the only thing that seems vaguely
rooted in something that was actually part of actual mythology

(51:54):
from that area.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
Yeah, it's really bizarre to be what this movie because
like that to me demonstrates like, you know, this production
had the capacity to do their homework, but they But
even the way that that is presented is, well, how
foolish is this? You know, like it's presented from the
colonizer's perspective of like, well, why would you do this?

(52:18):
You know, this is so like it's presented in a
very i think like pejorative way.

Speaker 4 (52:23):
It's any Michelle is like it's like kind of like
she's in on it and like, oh, yeah, this is no,
don't do that. Don't let them do that.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Right, like my own people are so foolish.

Speaker 4 (52:34):
Yeah, And it is still in that regard because a
lot of the things that they are throwing are in fact,
like the kinds of stuff that I was describing that
were like of common use, like jars, pottery, Well, I
guess it's not pottery if it's not ceramics, but like
that kind of like thing, it's like the civilization itself
is kind of like in that mindset of like gold

(52:55):
not as currency, yeah, but it is still being processed
from the point of view of gold ass currency, so
it it has like this class that makes it very
inconsistent like internally, I guess, and from that outside point
of view, like you said, like they had the opportunity
of like they did research, they investigated this, but it

(53:16):
feels like they were playing off from the very start
to like the expectations of what a movie like this
would be. And the esthetics of El Dorado within the
movie are all like mess America, and it's like this
like pyramids, which you know, there were not pyramids around
here specifically, and all these like the artistic motifs that

(53:37):
you see a lot in mess American art are like
in Aztec and in Mayan art, the designs of the gods.
That kind of stuff is very much all rooted in
that kind of like conglomerate of cultures, even though they
are talking about something that originated in a place where
the aesthetics were much different. But you know, it's not
as marketable, I guess. People here didn't living like huge

(54:01):
exciting pyramids, so it's not as cool to portray.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
It's not a cinematic yeah, quote unquote, you know.

Speaker 4 (54:08):
And Indiana Jones does the same thing in the fourth
Indiana Jones movie, for he also discovers the City of Gold.
They do the same thing, but during the Amazon and
suddenly there's like pyramids there.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Right, all that meso American architecture in.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
The classic mass it is. I feel like that scene
is in retrospect a clear tell that it's like this
production had the capacity to do their which is obvious.
You know, it's a multimillion dollar production, but any creative
involved with this that we're like, well we didn't, we
didn't know. It's like, well, you knew enough to authentically

(54:43):
present something, but you presented it as if it were
full like and the rest is essentially made up. It's
really frustrating, and I guess, Jose, I want to encourage
all of our listeners to watch your full video, but
I did want to ask about, you know, where this
sort of falls in, because you cover in your videos
so thoroughly, how frequently El Dorado comes up in the

(55:06):
adventure genre in general, generally with white protagonists, and where
does this movie fall? Where had we seen these like
why did no one blink when this movie came out
unless they were, you know, aware of actual history or
indigenous themselves.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
Well, I think that part of the the interesting thing
about this where this movie is said, is that it
is right at the end of that wave of like
nineties more sympathetic portrayals of indigenous people in movies, which
I think arguably probably started with like Dances with Wolves,
in which it was like kind of like that like
Hollywood notion of like why can't we all just get along,

(55:45):
you know, like we're not so different? Which obviously it
doesn't mean that the art was less flawed. It was
just flawed in a different way in which we were
no longer dealing with like racist caricatures like in a
lot of like westerns.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Yeah, that's something that the documentary Real Engine, which we
covered a while back on the podcast, examines, like this
sort of shift in media for a little while as
far as the way indigenous characters were represented on screen,
still by and large, not respectfully responsibly, but with a

(56:21):
little bit more empathy.

Speaker 4 (56:23):
Yeah, you know, you see that a lot in like
Pocacontas and then in ro To Colorado, in that it
was so that it was also meant in like movies
that were going to be accessible to children. It was
not just going to be like serious dramas like Dad
says with wolves, but it was also going to be
like like I think that everyone could talk about in

(56:46):
a way. But and that kind of shows how naive
it was from the get go. It does have like
that kind of like children's movie mentality of things are
not as complex as they seem. We're more similar than
we are different. This can all be solved by just
talking to each other, which is kind of like the
resolution in Pocahontas to a very complicated conflict.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
Yeah, that it has no interest in portraying.

Speaker 4 (57:11):
Yeah, exactly. So it's just the movie comes out at
the end of that wave of attempting more humanistic approaches
to portraying indigenous people. But it still has all the
baggage of its predecessors, and most importantly, it has all
the it carries on the tropes that by that time
people were already realizing that they were they were outdated.

(57:34):
I mean, it's not like when Pocahontas came out, there
wasn't any controversy. There was probably when this movie came
out there wasn't because nobody saw it. In its original
theatrical run. It was a flop, right, but it.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
Was a flop compared to its budget. But it's it
made seventy six million dollars at the box office.

Speaker 4 (57:52):
So oh yeah, it's more than I thought.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Yeah, yeah, it made a lot of money. But it's
just the animated movies are so expensive and comparative. I
feel like it was like, yeah, used as an example
of like Jeffrey Katzenberg doesn't know what he's doing, which
is true.

Speaker 4 (58:07):
It almost always is.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Yeah, yeah, but this is you know, we are counting
down to Shrek. Shark comes out in oh one and
then Katzenberg says fuck you for all eternity, even though
he's like, you know, one of the most ridiculous people
to have ever lived. True.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
But I think that it is very telling that this
movie kind of on the Katzenburg end, it wanted to
have it all in regards to the last ten years
of Disney. It was like, we're going to try to
be more serious like Pocahontas, but we're also going to
have like the writers of Aladdin, make it into like
a fun adventure, right, and we're gonna have Alton John

(58:47):
do the songs. Alton John kind of like winging it.
I'm not as I guess. I grew up with the
Spanish dubs of the songs and it wasn't until very
recently that I listened to the ones in English. I
was like, it kind of sounds like he's making them
up as he goes. But see at the time.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
I was like, wow, five their earworms. Look, this is
where I get to bet I'm like theirs. A child
might want the karaoke CD. It's not inconceivable.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
I think they're boring there.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
Well you you don't, You're not six. Uh. I do
think it's interesting. I mean that is like well Worth Benching.
I wanted to get to that where this writing team,
Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, they sort of specialized in
this kind of colonizer narrative because they are or just
in in in Disney in general, where the opening sequence,

(59:42):
the way we meet Miguel and Tulio. I was like, oh,
this is like a ripoff of Aladdin, and you're like, oh, well,
it's the writers of Aladdin. And they also wrote the
Mask of Zorro. They are credited on Truck. Sorry, it's true.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
Pirates of the Caribbean.

Speaker 4 (59:57):
And then they went on to the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
Yeah, it's yeah, so it's like this is kind of
their bread and butter. It's like misrepresenting history to create
successful or attempted blockbusters.

Speaker 4 (01:00:09):
Yeah, and you can definitely tell that that they were
going for, like that kind of Aladdin tone, but with
like the added Elton John of it all and the
more serious like topic quote unquote, with like with Pocahontas,
which was famously Jeffre Katzenberg's attempt at like Oscar Bold. So, yeah,

(01:00:29):
it is it is kind of like trying to have
it all in regards to that while still borrowing the
problematic aspects of not only those stories but also the
ones that came before, because it is kind of like,
in a way an update on the Bob Hope and
who was it with Bob Hope? Oh yes, that they

(01:00:50):
would have these adventure movies like the duo Crosby Bing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:54):
Crosby famously unproblematic.

Speaker 4 (01:00:57):
Yeah, yeah, you know, so it imports so much stuff
from previous movies in an attempt to do something as
good as them, quote unquote, but it does not in
doing so, it imports all these like problematic elements that
also feel end up feeling incredibly disjointed, like narratively, and

(01:01:18):
every every one of the three main indigenous characters are
like a different stereotype, like infamous stereotype in a way,
Like you know, you have like the jolly kind of
like himbo ish chief who who is just wants everyone
to get along, and you have like the the fearmongering

(01:01:39):
evil priests whose magical, magical, generically magical and mystical.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
And it is a pretty comprehensive you know, indigenous tropes
one oh one, like most are present in this.

Speaker 4 (01:01:53):
Yeah, right, And like even Pocahontas had, like you felt
like it had like actual characters, even if they were
like surrounded by a baffling movie in hindsight in a
lot of ways, but you know, you could feel that
they were characters here. They just feel like these tropes
that by then we're already feeling very tired. Obviously the

(01:02:15):
cornerstone of the whole conversation, because this is the Bechdel
cast after all, Shell who is who's just.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
Like has a colonizer's brain put into an indigenous body
out of context, Like why.

Speaker 4 (01:02:29):
It even goes to her design like she is the
only indigenous character in the movie that does not have
like a cartoonishly exaggeratedly pronounced nose. You know, because cycle
Con looks like almost like the Native Americans in Peter
Pan like levels of like cartoonish exaggeration of racial features

(01:02:50):
like the the cheekbones, and the nose and like the forehead.
They're all they all feel very reminiscent of that like
racist cartoon carry catcher rization of a whole like ethnicity.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Right, Yeah, her features are anglicized.

Speaker 4 (01:03:06):
Yeah, I am. I mean my boyfriend when he first
saw her, I'm gonna steal a lot of jokes from
my boyfriend. Sorry, I watched it with him.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
What are boyfriends for?

Speaker 4 (01:03:15):
Yeah, he was like, why does she look like New
Yurekan And I was like, she's voiced by Rosie Perez
and He's like, called it right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
They designed the character around Rosie Perez versus the story.

Speaker 4 (01:03:28):
She's the only one that does not have like overly
pronounced indigenous features. But she's just the right amount of
like exotically designed so as to be like sensual and
seductive and very sexually available to the first white man
that she meets.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
Unbelievably, So let's get to that. I just wanted to
really quickly mention how just in terms of like where
this falls in animation, I think the I've never I
don't know, maybe I just haven't looked into it enough,
but this movie feel very much in conversation with a
Disney movie that makes a lot of the same choices

(01:04:05):
that came out at the same year and was successful,
The Emperor's New Groove, which also I mean it's down
to the production changes that were made because The Emperor's
New Groove, you know, like you've have maybe seen it
another movie. I have a lot of nostalgic attachment to.

Speaker 4 (01:04:24):
The same that one I did love as a kid,
like an adultterated love, and I still have a lot
of love for it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
Unfortunately, it is funny and like and it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
Is a better movie than this, Like as a movie,
it is a lot better.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
More No, it's like definitely a more fully realized story,
but it also is like still a you know, americanized
colonially you know colonial lens, you know, view of the
Incan Empire. I think that something that kind of saves
it is the fact that there is not a Colonizer narrative.
All of the characters are for even though they were

(01:05:01):
voiced by David Spade and John Goodman. But what I
thought was interesting is first of all, that these movies
came out the same year there was clearly some internal
interest in representing indigenous cultures badly, and that there is
the same change at a certain point in production. Where
I didn't know this about The Road to El Dorado,

(01:05:21):
I knew it about The Emperor's New Groove because there's
a whole really interesting documentary about it. Incredible, yes, really great,
Like if you haven't seen it, I'm pretty sure it
was made by like Sting's wife at the time, which
is wild. But there's so many similar things that I
think are very much pulling from the success of The
Lion King and Toy Story, where you know, it's like

(01:05:42):
I mean, especially The Lion King, where it is a
group of white creatives presenting a very serious story about
a culture that is not their own, and then bringing
on a huge pop star to write the music that
is the Lion King playbook to a tea. It was
very successful with The Lion King, and you see these
sort of failed attempts to recreate that magic in a

(01:06:04):
way that gets increasingly offensive over time. And so by
two thousand you get The Road to El Dorado by
Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was involved in The Lion King, and
then on the Disney side you get The Emperor's New Groove.
And both of these movies were pitched as very serious
and were meant to be more like The Lion King
in the culture they're representing. And this isn't to say

(01:06:27):
that The Lion King got it right. You can listen
to our episode about it. But the movies were pitched
with a very serious tone, tested horribly, and then were
switched to be American comedies that took place in indigenous
cultures but presented a completely colonial Americanized Western sensibility and

(01:06:47):
sense of humor. And that happened to both of those movies.
This like movie was originally in the Road to El Dorado,
was in production for a long time. It was not
pitched as a comedy, and then it was changed when
they're like, well, this movie is a fucking mess, which
I'm sure it was, but they're like, okay, we're just
going to turn it into a comedy and kind of

(01:07:08):
forget everything else.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
You know, we'll turn it into a different mess.

Speaker 4 (01:07:13):
Yeah, I think it is. Also it's also interesting that
you bring that up, because yeah, I was also thinking
of and Personal Groove, but they both came at a
time where right after like the Latin invasion in terms
of you know, you have Ricky Martin and Jalo and
all this, like like the Macarina you have all this,
uh top three, Yeah exactly, that's that's a cultural exports,

(01:07:38):
important cultural exports exports. Both Ricky Martin and Jalo are American,
but it is like the Latin invasion of in mainstream
culture of like music and stuff, and they start to
realize that, like the Latino public in the US is
not neglible, like they can cater to it. And I

(01:07:58):
think that Personal Groove was actually the first Disney movie
to open in Spanish in the US as well as
in English. There was this notion of like in some
way that the want this like desire to cater to
Latino audiences without really getting Latino or Latino adjacent voices

(01:08:20):
in a figurative way, not like literal, although in the
case of Emperson who grew very literal, they didn't even
get any Latino voice actors, but you know, it was
like unlike later on when they would try this again
with like Coco or Encanto or all these like other
like pieces of media that were in some way courting

(01:08:42):
Latin American perspective, a Latin American public, I mean with
a perspective. They didn't have that here. So those two
movies are very good examples of that, right of what
happens when you were you have this desire to explore
these other cultures without giving a seat on the table
to the people who come from those cultures, and you

(01:09:03):
get even it gets even more complicated when it comes
to indigenous cultures because obviously there is a difference between
the Latino population and the indigenous population of Latin America,
and that is something that a lot of Americans, and
like the mainstream, those were not the conversations that were having.
So that's why the the Hispanic characters in the movie

(01:09:23):
are voiced by white guys and the Indigenous people are
voiced by latinos.

Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
Well two or three, uh right, there is the Irish
Italian guy. Yeah, let's not forget.

Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
Yeah, So it is it is an interesting moment in
regards to all the conversions of all these different waves
and ongoing desires of the industry that aged very badly
because they were not done with like a that kind
of openness to perspective, just openness to consumers for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
Yeah, let's let's unpack all of that via starting with
Cell first. So she is the one woman we meet
in the entire story.

Speaker 3 (01:10:10):
Shell exists in an unprecedented void, like a void heretofore unseen.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
In movies before instance, truly, So it's not even though
she's like not like the other girls because she's has
a colonizer mind, she's we don't even meet the other girls, right, Yeah,
we don't have a comparative, you know, we don't meet it.
There's another there's another woman mentioned, but she's very much

(01:10:38):
like what is the name of the character? Like missus smurf, Like,
I'm like, are there we see other women in passing,
but I don't think that another woman really speaks.

Speaker 3 (01:10:51):
Yeah, I mean we we think so, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:10:54):
No, do they have a name? Like this fails the
Bechdel test on every single.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
Possible and a test was not made wild.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
No, we don't even learn her name. For a while.
We learn very little about her and her backstory. The
only thing we really learn is her interest in capitalism
and colonialism. We'll get to that in a moment.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
And having that presented as agency too is really tricky.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Yeah, right, she is hyper sexualized the way that many
indigenous women and women of color in general are represented
in media, especially compared to their white counterparts. And then like,
part of the way she convinces the two men to
let her in on their scam is that she's you know,

(01:11:41):
being hyper seductive and flirtatious and you know, influencing them
using her feminine wiles, that kind of thing. So, not
only in her character design and costuming, but also her behavior,
is she hyper sexualized? And earlier versions of the script
I read that she was sexualized even more. She had

(01:12:04):
even steamier love sequences, she was even more scantily dressed
as far as her clothing design.

Speaker 3 (01:12:12):
Unfortunately, you can find a lot of early concept art
of cel and early like half animated sequences with her
at Tulio, and you're like, it's it's wild. It is
h Yeah, I actually you know, maybe don't maybe don't
don't watch it, but it is true.

Speaker 4 (01:12:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Yeah. And then during some rewrites of the script, the
romance between her and Tulio was toned down and new
clothing was designed for her, and Worth repeating that the
hyper sexualization of Indigenous women in media has real world consequences,
where Indigenous women are raped, abducted, murdered at disproportionately high rates.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
I feel like trope that we see all the time
encourages the interpretation that this abuse, this disproportionate abuse, is
brought on by them and brought on by their presentation,
and that which is frustrating because women should be you know,
maybe not in a kid's movie, but like, you know,
women should be able to present however they however they like.

(01:13:22):
But it's because you know, these are white guys. These
are the guys that wrote Jasmine, who are also writing Cell.
It's i know, a different animation company, but there's a
lot of the same players. And I do feel like
when people are presented in children's media as more promiscuous
than white European people, that it is like the subtext

(01:13:44):
to it is like, so if anything happens to them,
it's because they were presenting this way. They were not
whatever enough, And that is I feel like, really present
in Cell. And then you're like, well, at least her
character and then you're like, well, well no, just ding,
just kidding, because her character also I think I have

(01:14:05):
seen some reclaiming. But it goes with Jose what you
were talking about earlier, the narratives that have sort of
popped up in the last half decade of this being
a you know, gem, a hidden gem of like well
you know cell, Sure there's a lot of tropes present,
but is she not an active character? And the answer

(01:14:26):
is like, well, she's active to a point. The second
she's in a relationship with Tulio, her agency completely goes away.
And the ways in which she's active is with a
colonizer mindset. So it's like, I don't think that, you know,
like she's particularly reclaimable is like will you miswatched it?

Speaker 4 (01:14:47):
Right? Yeah? With Shell in particular, I think she calls
to there's this figure in Mexican culture named La Malinche.
I don't know if you know about her.

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
I don't think so.

Speaker 4 (01:15:02):
Now, so she was this is Mexican culture, so it's
not my own fortep but yeah, okay, just confirmed it.
She was the indigenous woman, like the Aztec indigenous woman
who served as Cortes's kind of like guide, an interpreter
and at first she was kind of like framed like

(01:15:24):
during the colonial leer, she was kind of like a
frame like as an ideal like kind of almost like
a noble savage kind of thing. And she ended up
marrying I don't want to get this wrong again, not
my culture, but it is something that I am. Okay,
she ended up marrying a colonizer from the expedition, not

(01:15:45):
Cortez himself. That was almost the mistake that I made. Oh,
she actually had a son with Cortez actually, But so
for a while, it was kind of like she was
kind of like a noble savage figure, and then after
the Mexican War of Independence, she became reframed as more
of a kind of like a trader, right because she

(01:16:05):
ate it in a lot of ways to the colonization
of what is now the Mexican territory and like the
end of the Aztec Empire and to this day in Mexico.
It is kind of like an insult, like when someone
calls someone a malin che, it's specifically a way of
calling them like either a trader or like to use

(01:16:27):
Internet's lank, kind of like a white man's whore in
a way. So I feel like Chell in a way
is very much a malin che figure, which is weird.
I don't even know if they were aware of that,
but she kind of plays us one as kind of
like this this woman who well, in my opinion, shouldn't

(01:16:49):
necessarily be like demonized or anything, because you know, she
was also part of a probably very like she was
probably coerced in a way in to all of this. Right,
We can't know.

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):
Right because I think that she was like a teenager
when she met Cortez and like all of these things
where it's like it's I'm sure that she is inappropriately maligned,
but that's the way, Like this movie is so in
conversation with Pocahontas, where I mean and Pocahontas almost I mean,
I don't want to say that Pogacontas does this better.
It doesn't. It does it wrong in a different way.

(01:17:23):
But like I feel like cell is presented so uncritically
as like you know, playing into third wave feminism, tropes
around like, well, she's sassy and she like pushes back
and she stands up for herself, So she is a
feminist character, and it just like falls under a microsecond
of scrutiny because she is presented yet hyper sexualized with

(01:17:45):
a colonizer mentality that I have no idea how she
would even you know, Like it's just it's like nonsensical
where even if she were, you know, a rebellious teenager
coming from El Dorado, like rebellion and would not look
like a place she doesn't know exists, and like we're
fully but and like you know, they're like embracing there

(01:18:08):
and like fundamentally understanding from moment one their values and goals.
Like it's just she's so underwritten and and yeah, ultimately
I think like you're saying, like presented as like it's
the right thing for her to go to Spain in
the same way that it's presented at the end of
you know, Pocahontas. Well, I guess it's not. I guess poke,

(01:18:30):
I'm talking about Pocahontas too, where it's like it's, uh, Pocahontas,
you know, moving to England. She's she's just a fish
out of water. This is funny, this is weird, and
like I feel like these narratives are I mean, not
only is the history done not at all and like
presenting the colonizer's mindset, but it also like presents in

(01:18:54):
the same way of like what you were saying before, Jose,
of like, well, we just need to talk to each other,
and that completely erases any previous historical power dynamic between
It presents all cultures as having experienced equal power throughout history,
and like erases any reason why these like it's just

(01:19:17):
it's like fantastical thinking.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
Right, and to an earlier point as far as like
her being kind of mapped onto that woman who was
later considered a trader, that is very much what Chelle
is doing. She's betraying her own people by like sneakily
helping the Europeans because her intentions are capitalistic, even though

(01:19:42):
she would have no frame of reference for that ideology,
but she wants a portion of the gold for herself.

Speaker 3 (01:19:49):
She negotiates girl boss.

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):
She right, like the ways in which she is an
active character and who has agency, Like the context for
it is like very girl stuff, So it's not good
or feminist. You know, she's helping these white Westerners do colonialism.
She's presented as believing that her people, her communities, customs

(01:20:12):
are just too quaint, they're too they're uncivilized actually, and
she wants to join these Westerners, these colonizers on their adventures,
because she's like, I want to go to Spain with you.
But historically, when Indigenous women were taken to Europe, they
were being stolen and trafficked. And then again she's shown

(01:20:33):
as seducing Tulio and they're having consensual sex in the movie,
but again, in reality, white colonizers were routinely raping and
murdering Indigenous women. So it's just rewriting all of that history.

Speaker 3 (01:20:50):
It's just like a complete void. It's yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):
And because she's positioned as a love interest for Tulio,
because women can't exist in a story without being the
love interest of a male hero, this movie does not
pass the Ali Nati test created by Friend of the
Pod Ali Naddi, which, if listeners aren't familiar, it is
a test that in order to pass, a piece of

(01:21:15):
media has to have a main character who is an
indigenous slash Aboriginal woman who does not fall in love
with a white man, and who is not raped or
murdered at any point in the story. So because she
falls in love with a white man and has a
colonizer mindset, huge failure of the Ali Nati test, and

(01:21:40):
she has to be saved by him at the end,
and then she's removed from the action toward the end whenever,
like the giant statue is attacking Tulio and Miguel. So
just like tropes on top of tropes on top of tropes.

Speaker 4 (01:21:55):
I think that like what characterized that specifically, this moment
that we were talking about in terms of indigenous representation,
I guess with a lot of also ethnic and racial minorities,
it was this condescension of kind of like not giving
these characters the opportunity to be like real characters, and

(01:22:17):
they just had to like wholly depend on these other
narratives that were empathetic in name. But again, that condescension
kind of makes it all fall flat. It just ends
up feeling, which I think is like, I think one
of the movies that try to do this and succeeded
to like more than the others, I guess, is a

(01:22:39):
Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which a lot of
the problematic elements of the depiction are kind of written
into the story, but the way the character herself is
portrayed does not necessarily fall into this condescension. I think
that's what makes Esmeralda in a Hunchback of notreiame kind
of like an outlier in this specific era of animated movies,

(01:23:01):
animated children, movies about racial tensions.

Speaker 3 (01:23:06):
But a wild subcategory.

Speaker 4 (01:23:08):
Yeah. Yeah, it's weird that it happened so many times. Yeah,
but and I know that portrayal that I'm referencing positively
also has a lot of issues. But here you don't
even get like that kind of actual agency or taking
the character seriously in a way that kind of makes

(01:23:31):
her memorable beyond her her design is very memorable for
I mean, there is not great reasons you can.

Speaker 3 (01:23:40):
Trace a lot of Like I mean, I think so
much of why this movie is thought of like pleasantly
in retrospective is because it seems like, connected to the
three main characters, a lot of people had sexual awakenings
connected to those.

Speaker 4 (01:23:56):
Characters, which it can respect, I guess, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:02):
It's like that's your truth.

Speaker 3 (01:24:04):
That's your truth. It does not make the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:24:09):
Good or a hidden gem or underrated classic.

Speaker 3 (01:24:13):
Yeah. I feel like there is like so much of
a movie criticisms, just like just because it made you
horny when you were ten doesn't mean that it is
a good or culturally valuable movie. But I think that
that is a lot of unfortunately, and I'm sure we've
been guilty of this at that point. A lot of
millennial film criticism boils down to it made me horny

(01:24:33):
when I was ten, and therefore I will do olympic
backflips to find a way to declare this movie as
technically great. And you're like, as, no, you got horny
when you were ten, congratulations, Like where a lot of
us are in the same boat. The characters are hyper sexualized,
I think. I think like Chell obviously is because she's

(01:24:56):
the only woman and she is very scantily clad, which
also the the other women we see but don't hear
speak are not. So she's also othered in the way
that she like she's not wearing the same kind of
outfit that others.

Speaker 4 (01:25:12):
Are, and it kind of ties into that her features
are also not as sure right, like phenotypically indigenous as
the other unspeak.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
Like non speaking women.

Speaker 4 (01:25:25):
Yeah, that's the word that I was looking for.

Speaker 3 (01:25:27):
Who're all presented as I think mothers because we mostly
see them around children, But like, there's no other woman
in the story that not even has narrative agency but
just does anything. It's like, it's wild.

Speaker 4 (01:25:43):
They're non entities essentially. Yeah, it's incredibly like even even
at that point that must have felt very dated.

Speaker 3 (01:25:52):
That that tapers into something I wanted to acknowledge, which
is that there were always haters of this and like
from the moment it was released, there were protests done
on the representation of Indigenous culture outside of screenings. I
don't think that that was the reason that this movie
failed financially. Most of the criticism you can find from

(01:26:14):
the movie at the time was like the movie isn't
very good versus it is perpetuating a very colonized or
racist viewpoint. So it suffered from a lot. But I
wanted to just revisit this op ed published in the
La Times when this movie came out from a writer
named Olin to Scott Leipoca, who was at the time

(01:26:38):
the director of the Machika Movement and Indigenous Rights Education
Organization specifically about people of Mexican and Central American descent,
And this was published around the same time that there were,
I think driven by, but not defined by the Michika
Movement protests of this movie in the way that it

(01:26:58):
portrayed indigenous culture in general. And I want to just
read from it because I feel like it's really easy
for us to characterize now like, oh, well, in hindsight,
we can see that this was wrong, when very often
those criticisms were very present and just not talked about
very much when the movie actually came out. So the
piece opens by, you know, well, I'll just read from it.

(01:27:21):
There's a lot worth reading. Imagine you're leaving a couple
of centuries in the future and have never heard of
World War two or Nazis. Further, imagine that you're being
shown a movie about the Nazi commandant portrayed as a happy,
go lucky, romantic guy at a concentration camp. This is
a recreational Jewish camp where everyone is picnicking and having
a great time. Fritz, who is the character that the

(01:27:45):
Raiders naming whatever, is constantly looking to get rich off
the Jewish campers, and they freely offer him their gold fillings,
Swiss savings accounts, and other valuables. He meets an evil
rabbi who wants the valuables for himself, and a beautiful
Jewish girl who offers herself as a sex toy without
ever mentioning World War II. Nazis or the Holocaust. The
film ends with Fritz living happily ever after with the

(01:28:07):
wealth he has acquired from the Jewish people at the camp.
This racist, sexist scenario of lies is the equivalent to
what is being done to us, the indigenous people of
Mexican and Central American descent by the new animated film
The Road to El Dorado, Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks and Universal
Studios present the story of two Spaniards who stow away
to the New World in the sixteenth century and wind

(01:28:28):
up saving the village of El Dorado from a powerful
priest intent on carrying out human sacrifices. This is an
outrage given the reality that the Spanish conquerors were responsible
for the genocide of twenty three million of our people,
killing ninety five percent of our population. The film makes
it look as if we were immoral and evil, when
it was the Spaniards who were immoral. They stole our gold, labor,

(01:28:50):
and land. They raped and culturally castrated our population, enslaving
us to their Spanish names, language, and interests. DreamWorks is
claiming that the film is a complete fantasy fairy tale,
but the scenario of the concentration camp above would never
be accepted as a complete fantasy fairy tale by anyone.
DreamWorks thinks it's acceptable here because the story is only

(01:29:11):
about Indigenous people. They have no respect for people, no shame,
and the piece goes on. We'll link it in the
description to this episode. But it's it's clear that, you know,
since this movie came out, people have been understandably outraged
about it and hearing it compared to the Holocaust in

(01:29:32):
that way. I mean, we are talking about a genocide
of equivalent and the fact that one is you know
that because it is an indigenous population, everyone is happy
to accept the narrative being presented.

Speaker 5 (01:29:47):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:29:48):
It's like so sad because we are already coming in
at the end of like not at the end, but
like at the we we are coming in after like
decades and decades of stories that perpetrate those exact like
mistruths surrounding the colonization of the Americas, that have become
so normalized to a point that people just assume that

(01:30:10):
certain things were are as depicted in these kinds of stories,
which were started relatively shortly after the conquest in order
to perpetrate this idea of civilization. This idea, like this
kind of like white men's burden esque idea that I
feel like it is very present in the movie. That
is literally one of my notes that it's super white

(01:30:32):
man's burden coded, not even coded, it's just straight up
kind of that. But it's very textual and the way
that these stories keep it between things that are assumed,
like just taken for granted, like the whole human sacrifice
aspect that has become a huge component of stories about
indigenous people, which like in a lot of ways they

(01:30:53):
exaggerate and if human sacrifice what was happening in in
the America is like, yeah, that is I guess bad obviously,
but it is not a thing where the Europeans coming
in had any moral authority in regards to handling it,
because not only did they carry out a genocide, but
like human sacrifice through a peace gods, is what the

(01:31:14):
Spanish Inquisition was all about, and that was in full
swing at the time that this movie takes place. So
it always reframes things in a way that when you
hear about the Spanish Inquisition, it's like, oh, yeah, that's
that's messed up, But you hear human sacrifice that is like, oh, yeah,
it was a battle between two evils, or there's this

(01:31:35):
whole series of myths that are told to justify it,
like oh, but so many tribes ally themselves with Cortez
to take down the Aztec Empire. And it's like yeah,
but like do you know that because of stories written
by the Spanish people that were like probably forcibly recruiting
Native soldiers in order to do this, or like they

(01:31:57):
were welcomed as God's things, which has never been present
in indigenous narratives about their own history, but it's always
present in these kinds of stories when there is no
actual historical evidence that Europeans were ever taken in as
like gods when they arrived to the New Continent, Right, that's.

Speaker 3 (01:32:17):
A story that they they indicated, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:32:20):
They told themselves. It's like this thing where in I
don't know the specifics of it, but in certain indigenous
narratives I don't remember telling where I know they were
mess for American but the whole thing was like, oh,
they thought they were being received as gods because they
were being received with like these like ointments and like
this instance type things and stuff. But in reality, it's

(01:32:42):
just that they just got off a ship and they
smelled really bad, and so they were like kind of
like purifying the air around them, and they thought it
was a sign of honor. I don't know if this
is like actually based on historical narrative, indigenous historical narrative,
but it kind of demonstrates that, like notion that there
are always going to be different to this official story
regarding the colonization of the Americas, and it does not

(01:33:05):
do anyone any favors to misportray them, even if you're
elevating them to the realm of fantasy, which it's not
like it's it might be a fairy tale, it might
be like a fantasy history, but you are participating in
not only the retelling but the perpetration of this. It's
perpetration or real word, sorry, perpetrating. I think so, yeah,

(01:33:31):
you're perpetrating the story is in the first place, like
you're making sure that they keep getting told. But these
lies or these like racist myths keep getting told, and
that is just a deservice to the victims of the
genocide that was brought forth by colonization, but also to

(01:33:53):
the ongoing consequences of it. The fact that you know
Indigenous people in all across the Americas are still subjected
to systemic discrimination, to disproportionate poverty, to sexual violence. These
are all all, in one way or another part of
this story that is like this animated kids movie. Like

(01:34:16):
in any other movie, I would like this kind of
ending of like, oh, well, we don't have anything, but
we're going to keep going and adventure and whatever. It's
like I like that sentiment, but if it follows like
ninety minutes of these people taking their white man's burden
over this fictional indigenous culture, it just ends up bringing

(01:34:37):
very hollow like the people did not venture there to
with nothing and just make their luck. They actively stole,
they actively ravaged, they murdered, they kidnapped, etc. And it
just makes me kind of angry. Despite how charming the
movie might be at point, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:34:56):
Just that's like it's the friendly Colonizer that again, it's like,
because we know that these character are being presented in
a way that's palatable, they're being played by white movie stars,
and like, you know, everything is setting us up or
setting up an uninformed audience, which I think the majority
of this audience would have been to children right to

(01:35:17):
swallow it all because you're like, oh, well, this is
the funny guy, because the music and the animation and
the focus is telling me that this is the person
I should be rooting for. And yeah, it's like giving
you know, I mean, even Cortes receiving I think at
best neutral press, you know, over four hundred years later
is unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):
It's that he is not the primary villain, and that
an indigenous character is.

Speaker 3 (01:35:43):
A heavily trope the primary villain.

Speaker 4 (01:35:45):
Yeah, the magical sinister uh.

Speaker 2 (01:35:48):
Right, right, perpetuating that trope of the you know, magical,
mystical indigenous person.

Speaker 3 (01:35:53):
The elements of El Dorado's culture that we are shown,
sub of which is pulled from real indigenous culture, some
of which is made up, is like it's ultimately shown
to be like beautiful but silly, and the Hibalba sequence
is like played for comedy. It's played for like why

(01:36:14):
would you do this? And does no examination into why
this was a real practice or I mean Jako Khan's character,
any element of the religion that's present is shown to
be a force of evil and the reason that we
are supposed to like Shelle, she has no connection to

(01:36:36):
her culture at all. The reason that we're rooting for
her is because and like the times we are laughing,
is because she's engaging with capitalism like that is like her,
only like he he gatcha moments are her negotiating, right,
It's ridiculous. So even when we are shown, you know,
an attempt at culture, it's always like with this implied

(01:37:00):
eye roll of like, well, of course this doesn't work.
Of course this culture is not present today because it's silly,
not because it was willfully extinguiradicated.

Speaker 4 (01:37:11):
Right. And the idea that in some way to a
white guys participated in preserving a part of this the culture.

Speaker 2 (01:37:21):
By stealing off the city from.

Speaker 4 (01:37:24):
The protecting it from exactly, it's just so in poor taste.
The example in the in the op ed that you
mentioned Jamie really like drives a point home. Just because
these figures are so historically separated from us by time
does not mean that they are fair game for this, right,

(01:37:44):
and in fact it ends up being in very poor
taste when you realize the consequences of the events portrayed
in the movie, even if they're portrayed from like this
whimsical fictional point.

Speaker 3 (01:37:57):
Yeah, I want to. Unfortunately I do want to call
back to that song sixteenth century Man that I'm glad
doesn't have greater prominence in the movie, but I feel
like it just really betrays what this movie's beliefs are
rooted in. Because Elton john wrote and recorded this, Oh,
it's great to say our homeland breathe the Iberian atmosphere.

(01:38:17):
Just because we are Hispanic doesn't mean we're oceanic. Quite frankly,
we've had water up to hear, we've made waves to
last a lifetime. We've been saturated, almost drowned. We are Spanish,
not Caribbean. We are human not Amphibian. We'll seek our
fortunes on Spain's solid ground. Just on the soundtrack of

(01:38:40):
this movie. And it's unbelievably violent and dismissive and like
comparing Caribbean people to amphibian and yeah to animals animal
like just saying like Spanish people human indigenous populations. Not
that's just in an Elton Johnson.

Speaker 4 (01:38:58):
I need to talk to who who was this Tim Rice?
Who did the lyrics?

Speaker 3 (01:39:04):
Uh, let me check that is a good question.

Speaker 4 (01:39:07):
It was Tim Rise. Okay, I need to have a
conversation with Tim Rice to sit him down. Sir tim Rise,
we need to talk.

Speaker 2 (01:39:16):
Well, even a song that is in the movie and
not in whatever like a credit sequence, I think it's
happening when they are like montaging their way through the
forest and the lyrics are about how they're blazing a
trail and going into uncharted territory, which like pushes that

(01:39:36):
false narrative of Western discovery, erasing the fact and they're
coming upon like clearly man made structures and it's like
we are the first to be here, and it's like, well,
who made those that? Like it's just erasing the fact
that indigenous people had already been there for millennia. But
that doesn't match up with their you know, narrative that

(01:39:57):
they have to push that, no, we discovered.

Speaker 3 (01:39:59):
This well, hose that that I think it connects back
to what your your video from a few years ago
is about that. So many, even though this movie wasn't
particularly successful, that Hollywood adventure movies are rooted in this
very colonial mentality of discovery not claiming something that is

(01:40:22):
not yours. I mean, I know, you talked about Indiana Jones,
you talked about Tintin, you talked about all of these
sort of famous I know Tintin's not American, but you
know all of these famous Western and European narratives that
present this very uncritically.

Speaker 4 (01:40:36):
Yeah, and it hurts a little because, you know, this
is a genre that I've always really enjoyed. I've always
liked the idea of it, and it pushed me to
like learn about like geography and about like all these
like ancient wonders of the world and stuff like that,
because I like the idea of these journeying to different

(01:40:56):
places and you know, for the sake of adventure, and
I'm obviously growing up you start to realize that a
lot of it pushes these like colonialist narratives of discovery,
of like pillaging of all these real world atrocities in
a way that are just kind of you don't think
about that much because harryson Ford is incredibly charming and

(01:41:20):
hot and please call me but.

Speaker 2 (01:41:27):
Apologize for some of your movies.

Speaker 4 (01:41:30):
But I do love Indiana Jones movies, and I do
think that it is interesting that my favorite one is
The Last Crusade, and I mentioned that one video it
is the best one.

Speaker 3 (01:41:41):
And that's something I have no attachment to whatsoever. And
you're like, these are racists next, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:41:48):
But what I like so much about that one specifically
is that he kind of realizes that not everything needs
to be discovered, that not everything has to be in
a museum, that you can leave the alone. And he
only discovers that when the item in question is like
the Holy Grail. It's like part of in a way,
he's upbringing. He's like Catholic or Christian upbringing. I really

(01:42:12):
like that, and I feel like that opens the doors
up for like all sorts of different stories that can
indulge in all these fun things that we love about
the adventure genre that this movie clearly has a love for,
in like that whole song about like blazing the trail
and everything. That's like the charm of these stories, but

(01:42:32):
we can engage with them in a way that does
not alienate real cultures, that that does not like treat
them as The reason why I made the video specifically
surrounding the City of Gold narrative and the Eldorado narrative
is that it is a great encapsulation of you know,
Europeans just made up a place and then this destroyed
like the continent looking for it, and now it has

(01:42:55):
become like this like stand in for a lot of
real cultures, a lot of real places that were lost
to colonization. They're not lost geographically, they're lost because they
were destroyed by colonization. And there are a lot of
ways to indulge in the in the genre, to explore
the genre in ways that reconnect real people with real

(01:43:20):
lost things instead of having to make them up, instead
of having to make up these cultures to make fun
of them.

Speaker 2 (01:43:27):
Such as Mowana, which I know you bring up in
your video and they're big fans of that movie. But
even that, I mean not without its problems. It was
made by yeah, white filmmakers.

Speaker 4 (01:43:38):
But it is it is the step in like, oh,
she is discovering something about her own past, about her
own culture, and she's setting off to find it because
it was at some point stolen, there was at some
point like misplaced or stuffing like that. I love that.
I love that angle. And obviously Mona was still made
by white guys and by the Disney Core creation, but

(01:44:01):
it is a way of having more being aware of
the art that you're making and the consequences, the real
world consequences that they have.

Speaker 3 (01:44:10):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:44:11):
I do love Moana.

Speaker 3 (01:44:12):
I know so I'm so excited for Mowana too, I know,
but I well, this is a whole other thing. But
they did not get Limbwell Miranda to write the music,
the only thing he's good for writing music for Moana.

Speaker 4 (01:44:24):
They got. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:44:27):
I was like, yah, prospects if they if they, if
they fuck up Mowana, I just I don't know what
I'll do. Yeah, I don't know. I guess yeah. I
don't understand more than ever. I mean, like, the reclaiming
of this narrative is never quite tracked for me. I
understand that there is a nostalgia, but I feel I

(01:44:47):
wish ultimately that there was a step back in general
from conflating nostalgia with morality, which is what I think
a lot of these reclaiming narratives have to do, is
that it is the morally upright and correct thing to
you know, say that this movie is doing something that
it very clearly is not, or that like you're just

(01:45:10):
not watching it correctly. It's like, you, nostalgia should be
removed from a critical view. That's like like what we
attempt to do all the time, and it's fucking hard,
you know, but this movie feels like a particular one
where it has been aggressively reclaimed I think by focusing
on elements of the movie that are more fun and

(01:45:33):
kind of YadA yachting and the rest and being like, well,
sure it doesn't hold up, well, sure it is racist.
Well sure it is technically really sexist as well. But
they're basically gay, right, and like that is the thing
that is what you see and and I agree, I
agree that, yeah, they're friends.

Speaker 6 (01:45:53):
They are like they there is a very bisexual energy
I guess to shout out that element that definitely seems
to stand out to people is.

Speaker 3 (01:46:03):
Like they I don't know, maybe they have this weird
colonial polycule by the end of the movie where maybe
the only canonical couple is a hetero couple. But the
way I mean, but I do, I get it. Tulio
and Miguel are boyfriend coded. They're taking naked swims together.

(01:46:24):
They are weeping and saying, you made my life an adventure,
you made my life rich. They are very touchy, I think,
more than you would see a lot of you know,
a lot of cartoon characters in general. They're very touchy
with each other. They're very like I totally understand and
like I can't like it is a very horny movie.

(01:46:46):
I understand the argument that these are by characters. Obviously
they're not like canonical by characters, but spiritually I get it.
But the but the takeaway being that like bisexuals can
also colonize is just such a non starter. Like, yeah,
but does that make it a good movie to show
to children? I just don't think so.

Speaker 4 (01:47:08):
I don't know. Yeah, I mean again, I understand. I
have my my movies that I like. I get sore
when they like when someone like critiques them in a
way that like hurts my nostalgia. But I've never understood
the impulse to be just like overly protective about them
in a way, like to morally justify them. Yeah, Like, yeah,

(01:47:32):
we all liked problematic things when we were kids. That's
a lot of kids. Media is doesn't always age well,
and it's like might.

Speaker 3 (01:47:40):
Be all you had, Like whatever, Yeah, you.

Speaker 4 (01:47:43):
Form a relationship with it, and that's like perfectly fine.
But I don't think it does ourselves any favors to
just act like that makes them secretly great and moral.
And I don't know, I like breaking apart things that
I like, so I can't relate to the impulse necessarily.

Speaker 2 (01:48:02):
That's why we do this podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:48:04):
Yeah, yeah, we love to we love to ruin others
good times. But it is like, I mean, it does
feel very Yeah, this movie feels like a standout of
like it's unusually bizarre that and not even moral. But
a lot of the reclaimings are like, this is actually
a well structured which It's like, there's as far as

(01:48:24):
I've considered, there's no argument there. It's poorly written.

Speaker 4 (01:48:27):
It is very badly written. Like everything in the plot
happens out of like a coincidence.

Speaker 3 (01:48:34):
Yeah, overy, it's it's all And I guess because we
have co writers of Shrek. They also recycled the convenient eavesdropping.
It's also there a woman who exists out of contact,
I mean, Fiona, maybe a more fully realized character, and
isn't that a shame?

Speaker 2 (01:48:52):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:48:52):
But yeah, these writers love to have two men and
a lady. I mean a lot of writers love to
have two men in a lady or.

Speaker 4 (01:49:00):
A man a dounken a lady.

Speaker 3 (01:49:02):
Right, I guess, or a man, a monkey and a
lady in the case of Aladdin. I mean, this is
Dales's oldest time. They've got they've got a playbook. It
is generally successful, but I think like these are not
the writers you hire to talk about colonial history. It's
they're out of their depth and you can feel it.

(01:49:23):
And also, I mean, I I don't know because this
movie was said like The Emperor's New Groove again was
said to be heavily rewritten, so it's really hard to
trace things to even a single person or the credited writers.
I mean kind of this is a movie where it's
like God knows who wrote.

Speaker 4 (01:49:39):
This, but Jeffrey Katzenberg himself just fuck it.

Speaker 2 (01:49:47):
Jeffrey kats with his diet coke, he worked all night.

Speaker 3 (01:49:50):
Yeah, jail for him. I just got Jeffre Katzenberg a
couple of years ago. I feel like this didn't make
you know, this didn't break out of the local sphere.
But like Jeffrey Katzenberg marched down to Los Angeles City
Hall saying that he had the he knew how to
solve the homelessness crisis, and I was like, shut up,

(01:50:11):
walk into traffic, like shut up, you fucking loser. Yeah,
part was one of your billion dollars. But he marched
down to city Hall and he's like, folks, I've figured
it out, and You're like, you're like burn in hell.

Speaker 4 (01:50:24):
No one should ever listen to Jeffrey Katzenberg about anything,
let alone heavily like systemic social issues.

Speaker 3 (01:50:32):
Just like the the fucking Goal. I just I hate
him anyways. Anything else to say about The Road to
El Dorada two thousand.

Speaker 2 (01:50:41):
Chief tene book is I believe the only fat character
in the movie, and he is depicted in a way
speaking role at least at least that has right, And
he has depicted in a way that many fat characters
often are in media, which is that, you know, he's
very jolly and friendly and kind of a dufist, and
even though he seems to realize that these characters aren't God's,

(01:51:04):
he doesn't care. He's too good natured to care about that.
And I just felt like a very trophy depiction of that.

Speaker 4 (01:51:14):
It frustrated me when Miguel is like, oh, yeah, sorry,
my mistake or something, and the Chief kind of like
cheekily is like, oh, it's great toere is to be
human or towere is human whatever, because in any other
movie I would like that callback a lot. I think
like that little moment between them is very cute, but
also it's like dude, why are you going along with

(01:51:36):
this ruse? How does it benefit you?

Speaker 2 (01:51:38):
Yeah, what is the point of this right, You're you're
just basically endorsing him stealing your materials, your gold, and like.

Speaker 3 (01:51:47):
The and it's it's very telling that the two indigenous
characters we are meant to have an emotional attachment to
are the Chief and Shell, who both are pro their
community being colonized by these random fucking liars like that thing.
I did not remember that scene, and you're like, not that.

(01:52:09):
It is much better to play that. You know, he
is so ignorant that he could not see what was happening,
but they're like they had there why bother saying that?
And he knew and he thought it was actually really
cool what they were doing. But he also instinctually knows
that what Cortes is doing is bad, but he's taking
political advice from the other colonizer, who is good. And

(01:52:34):
this is all just like unspoken in like the game
of five D chess being played in this Chiefs frame,
like it does not scan at all. Why would he
hate Cortes and love Miguel The goal is the same.
I guess that with Cortes, it's like It's almost made
to seem like, well, Julio and Miguel's goals are non violent,

(01:52:56):
so it's fine, they're just sort of little rascals.

Speaker 4 (01:53:00):
Let me actually just trust the guys that have been
lying to us for three days like I have.

Speaker 3 (01:53:07):
I just do not understand, even from like a plot standpoint,
why you would indicate that that character was well aware
of what was happening, Like, what does that add other
than confusion? I mean, I mean it does add more
pro colonial Like it's actually like wink wink, really awesome,
and maybe indigenous populations were completely open.

Speaker 2 (01:53:26):
To this, right, It's an extension of the idea of
Indigenous people don't understand what's going on in the world
around them. They don't know any better. They're uncivilized and
they're not as smart as Westerners, and therefore they need
the guidance of Westerners to exist.

Speaker 4 (01:53:46):
Condescension that makes the whole movie so frustrating. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
this little indigenous paradise that also is ruled by an
evil priest who needs to be stopped.

Speaker 2 (01:53:59):
Yeah, it's like by the white saviors.

Speaker 3 (01:54:02):
Right, right, which just goes on to again like demonize
a native religion. While you know, we're not really hearing
how obsessively religious Spanish colonizers were. That's not brought up.

Speaker 4 (01:54:17):
Oh, which is actually very interesting because I did have
a point about that. In the opening scene when they
introduced Cortez, he says for Spain for glory, for gold,
and it is incredible because it is constantly said that
the three tenets of Spanish colonization was God, glory, gold,
and they specifically changed the God for Spain in order

(01:54:40):
to remove the evangelization aspect of the colonization, which I
was like, oh, whatever, they wanted that out, But as
soon as you said that, I was like, oh my god.
They are literally downplaying the religious cellotry of the colonizers
while demonizing the religious figure in the indigenous culture. And

(01:55:02):
that just makes it like evil.

Speaker 3 (01:55:04):
Yeah I did. I honestly, I didn't know that, but
that makes it. I mean, there is like a flattening
of what the colonizer's culture was motivated by. It's made to,
which almost feels like a weird americanization of it of
like it's strictly capital. It's strictly nationalism and capital that
is driving this, which.

Speaker 2 (01:55:22):
And those things are good, right, and we can't have
anything that demonizes Christianity. Yeah, it's it's such a mind fuck.

Speaker 4 (01:55:30):
It's well because, like I mean, Americans love like demonizing Catholics.
They could have taken that angle.

Speaker 3 (01:55:37):
Yeah, it's true. It's true. It was a national pastime
for a while.

Speaker 4 (01:55:41):
Cowardly Protestantism strikes again. Okay, yeah, now.

Speaker 3 (01:55:50):
Do we have anything else to say? No, I think
we forgot. There's also yeah, a religious Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:55:57):
The movie does not pass the Bechdel tests.

Speaker 3 (01:56:01):
Not even close. An attempt was not made.

Speaker 2 (01:56:05):
Again, it does not pass the Alley naughty test, and
on the Bechtel cast nipple scale, where we rate the
movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based
on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, I give
the movie zero nipples. Yeah, not a nipple insight for
the Road to El Dorado.

Speaker 3 (01:56:25):
Yeah, hard to argue that point. I will meet you
at a solid zero, Jose.

Speaker 4 (01:56:34):
I mean I have to concur no, nothing in this
movie is nipple worthy.

Speaker 3 (01:56:41):
I haven't a nipple to give.

Speaker 4 (01:56:42):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:56:43):
Well, Hose, thank you so much for joining us again.

Speaker 4 (01:56:46):
Oh as fun as last time. I love this. Thank
you so much for thinking of me and having me.

Speaker 3 (01:56:53):
Oh my gosh, thank you for joining us. Come back
for a movie that isn't about a city of golf.
Next time, you know, whatever you.

Speaker 4 (01:57:01):
Want, we're running out of them.

Speaker 2 (01:57:03):
It's true because we already did National Treasure Book of Secrets,
Jamie and I and the two of us and.

Speaker 4 (01:57:11):
Oh, I need to listen to you. Just you just
released My best Friend's Wedding and I love that movie.

Speaker 2 (01:57:18):
Well, sorry, we don't love that.

Speaker 4 (01:57:20):
No, that's okay again. I love it. My mom loves it,
and I watched it with my mom a lot. But
I love conversations about it, like I feel like it's
one of those movies where even people who don't like it,
even if I do, really like it, and I have
a lot of positive things to say about it, like
from form. I love hearing people's takes about it, like

(01:57:43):
negative takes, because I feel like it is a movie
that was kind of designed for that kind of conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:57:49):
True, yeah, it is a litmus test. It was at
least that was an attempt. I can't say that for
the Road to Al Doorado. My best Friend's Friending was
an attempt.

Speaker 4 (01:57:57):
I'm excited to listen to the episode.

Speaker 3 (01:58:00):
Well, truly come back anytime. We're so happy to have you.
It's always like fun, chaotic adventure.

Speaker 4 (01:58:08):
Thank you so much. Yeah, the real just like with them,
the real adventure was the friends we made along the way,
my gosh, and we didn't have to we didn't have
to colonize anyone for it.

Speaker 3 (01:58:18):
No, and that's commonly misunderstood in popular narratives. You can
just have a You can't just be normal.

Speaker 2 (01:58:26):
And not scarce and have a friendship and not colonized.

Speaker 4 (01:58:30):
Not colonized.

Speaker 3 (01:58:32):
Shocking but true.

Speaker 2 (01:58:34):
Jose where can people follow you on social media? Check
out your stuff? Tell us everything?

Speaker 4 (01:58:41):
So I'm on Twitter at jose m Luna and I
am on YouTube so Maria Luna. It's my full legal
name because I couldn't come up with uh a name
for a channel. So it's just it's hard, you know,
it is hard. And I have a real exciting video
coming up, so I hope people will check that out.

Speaker 3 (01:59:03):
I'm excited.

Speaker 4 (01:59:04):
It's gonna be fun. It does not have to do
with gold cities or colonialism.

Speaker 3 (01:59:09):
Love that.

Speaker 4 (01:59:09):
So yeah, but it cool, and thank you so much
for having me. Really, it's a pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:59:17):
Oh please, I mean yeah, listeners, if you are not
subscribed to hosei channel, you are missing out it like
it is truly just like some of the most thoughtful
work on YouTube, which is you know, found few and
far between. So congrats with that. And as for us,
you can find us in all the usual places. You
can follows as mentioned our Patreon aka Matreon, we're for
five dollars a month. You can get two bonus episodes

(01:59:39):
a month hosted by Caitlin and myself and occasionally a
guest based off of a very specific theme we force
upon our audience. We can be found on Instagram and
occasionally Twitter when we feel like it at Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (01:59:51):
Indeed, you can grab some merch at teapublic dot com
slash the Bechdel Cast. Oh you want want to find
some treasure, you want to go on a treasure hunt?
We'll go to tea Public and buy our merch.

Speaker 3 (02:00:05):
Yeah, and with that, let's end this episode as abruptly
as the movie and be like.

Speaker 2 (02:00:12):
Well, yeah, bye, bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a
production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie loftis
produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mola Board. Our theme
song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskresenski.

(02:00:33):
Our logo in Merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and
a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about
the podcast, please visit link tree Slash Bechdel Cast

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Road to El Dorado with José María Luna