The Women (1939) with Ramzi Fawaz

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdecast, the questions asked if movies have.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn bast
start changing.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
With the Bechdel cast.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Oh hello, hey, did you want to hear some gossip
about Jamie Loftis that stupid bitch?

Speaker 4 (00:23):
What to wait?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
That's not a word that we use here, certainly not
outside of Kennel's. Oh yeah, Also, this is Jamie on
the phone.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
What the hell you're Jamie loftis?

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Oh noah no, and I'm I'm fucking your husband?

Speaker 4 (00:39):
Oh sorry, wow, sorry.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Look a girl. A girl has to survive. I'm just
I'm just kidding. They hate think you found me in
a perfume counter. There's nothing I could do. Job, It's fine.
Welcome to the Bexdel Cast. Really feminist exchange we just had.
Oh we can do a mid Atlantic accents today. My
name is Jamie Loftis.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
My name is Caitlin Doronte.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Okay, come on, get on.

Speaker 4 (01:01):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
I find the way they speak in this whole era
very grading. I'm so sorry everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
I look, I think you may be alone on the
zoom call but we will, we will fortune.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
I'm going I'm going to be the villain of this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
I think you're going to be the joan of the episode.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah, so true. Yeah, oh my gosh, Yeah, I'm the Crystal.
What's her name?

Speaker 5 (01:23):
Crystal Adams mess, Crystal Alan, Crystal Allan, great character name,
great character name, all around.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
I can't wait.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, we're talking about the women in nineteen thirty nine today.
Very thrilling. But before we get there, before we get
to words that aren't frequently spoken outside of Kennel's, let's
talk about what the hell this show is because it's
actually very very relevant to the themes of our show today, Kitlyn,
where are we?

Speaker 6 (01:54):
What's happening?

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Well?

Speaker 3 (01:56):
This is the Bechdel Cast, a podcast where we examine
movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test
simply as a jumping off point, that, of course, being
a media metric created by dear friend of the show,
Alison Bechdel alumni. Indeed, there are many versions of this test.

(02:16):
The one that we use is do two people of
a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other?
And is there conversation about something other than a man,
and then we particularly like it when it's a narratively
meaningful conversation and not just like throwaway dialogue that you
could cut out and the story would be no different.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
And just to get ahead of our conversation about this,
because this movie, the movie we're covering today, nineteen thirty
nine's The Women, adapted from a nineteen thirty six play,
is a movie that's come up on the show. Oh,
I think almost is the first yes, because there are
a lot of popular, I think popular narratives around this
movie that are not necessarily true when you watch the movie.

(03:00):
I think that this was almost like a memafied piece
of like twenty tens information that would make the rounds
every so often is that The Women is a movie
that came out in the nineteen thirties that features only
women on screen, but doesn't pass the Bachtel test after
I mean, this is a beloved movie for me. We'll
talk about our respective histories, but I think that that really,

(03:21):
if this is a memafied piece of information you've absorbed
by osmosis I certainly had. I think you will find
yourself pleasantly surprised by how what what a dense, rich
text this is at least for two thirds of the
movie and then the end of But I wanted to

(03:42):
address that at the top of the episode because I
think we have referenced this movie in a number of ways,
and I'm sure the further back you go, the you know,
less sophisticated the conversation becomes and now we're perfect geniuses.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
So we have to correct the record, of course.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
But I just I'm so excited to talk about I
can feel myself talking faster for having watched this movie
twice in the last two days. It's going to be
fabulous darting. So yes, that is the Bechdel test, and
we have an incredible guest today, so let's hop to it.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Let's do it. He is a professor of English at
the University of Wisconsin Madison, host of the podcast Nerd
from the Future, and author of the books The New
Mutants and Queer Forms. It's Ramsey Fawas. Hello, welcome, Hey, thanks.

Speaker 6 (04:33):
For having me.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Oh my gosh, really brave. I was like, wow, I
can already fill our guests being like he him on
the episode about the women.

Speaker 6 (04:41):
Listen lock In, lock In, we bound through it. I'm
lost in.

Speaker 7 (04:47):
I have listened I've always felt the affinity with women
from the beginning of time. I say at the end
of my book Queer Forms, I say, this book is
a love letter to feminism and the women in my life.
So I have never felt any problem with the idea
of cross identification, like let's go.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
I mean, it's a Q core movie, like this is
this is a girl's in Cays kind of.

Speaker 6 (05:06):
Movie, and yes, yes, it's really.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
We're so excited to have you. First of all, thank
you for coming.

Speaker 6 (05:12):
Thank you me too. I can't believe I haven't been
here before.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
I know.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
We're being huge the dogs they put in kennels by
not having Yeah, but we love your work.

Speaker 6 (05:26):
And I thank you. That's so humbly well.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Truly, And I'm very curious because I've had a Celsius
today and I'm vibrating. I'm so curious what your history
with this movie is.

Speaker 7 (05:39):
So, you know, when I was asked to create a
list of movies to potentially talk with you both about,
this was one of the ones that popped out from
from you guys sent me a list of possibilities that
I was like, Oh, the women they haven't talked about
the women.

Speaker 6 (05:52):
Amazing. I encountered the women in the single most formative.

Speaker 7 (05:57):
Undergraduate course I ever took at UC Berkeley. I took
a class on the year nineteen thirty nine.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Oh, I'm so jealous.

Speaker 6 (06:05):
That's cool.

Speaker 7 (06:06):
My mentor, my great mentor, Kathleen Moran, who's on my
own podcast.

Speaker 6 (06:10):
She's on one of the last episodes of the first season.
She's incredible. She had invented this.

Speaker 7 (06:15):
Class with a brilliant political theorist who was her best
friend named Michael Rogan, who had just died a year
before I came to Berkeley. So it was the first
time she was teaching it on her own, and people,
if people don't know, the audience doesn't know. Nineteen thirty
nine is this unbelievably momentous year in American politics, history, culture.
It's the moment of sort of the waning of the

(06:36):
Great Depression as we entered World War Two. It's the
moment that we start to commit ourselves to the arms
race leading up to World War Two. It's also the
golden age of Hollywood, So it's like that year alone
produces the Wizard of Oz MGM, the Grapes of Wrath Gone.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
With the win, mister Smith goes to.

Speaker 7 (06:57):
Yes, misters Smith, we watched that amazing. I mean, these
are that one year. Four of the films are considered
by the British Film Institute to be four of the
most important movies ever made. So I found that class
just extraordinary that you could study, like all the different
dimensions of American culture through the prism of this one year.
Of course, we study things that were also fell outside

(07:19):
of that year. We study things that are sort of
mid thirties, early forties. But it was an amazing and
transformative thing, and I want your listenership to.

Speaker 6 (07:28):
Know how I watched it.

Speaker 7 (07:29):
We read the work of Elizabeth Hawes, who was a socialist,
feminist fashion designer.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Each word better than the last, isn't this that's like fascinating.

Speaker 7 (07:41):
She wrote this incredible book that nobody reads now, but
everybody should get their hands on it called Fashion Is Spinach,
and it was basically her saying that for her early
part of her career she worked for all these couturiers
in France, and she said, basically, what would happen is
that there are these companies where they would send people
like me to go look at the designer clothes on

(08:02):
the runway for Dior and to copy them for middle
class women who couldn't afford the originals. And she said,
at some point I was like, why am I wasting
my life doing this?

Speaker 6 (08:13):
I should bring couture level clothes to working class people.

Speaker 7 (08:17):
And so she comes back to the United States and
she starts making ready to wear clothes but that are
made with a coturier's eye for men who work in factories.
And so it forced us as the students to think
about The Women as a movie that is partly about
fashion and about how women use fashion to exert.

Speaker 6 (08:40):
Some kind of social control in the world.

Speaker 7 (08:43):
We'll talk today about how like there's suddenly a full
color sequence that's a fashion show in the middle of
the movie.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
God and another minute queer icon moment for it because
it's all Adrian clothes too, which is like, yeah, I
had every time I watch this movie, because I watched
it about six months ago just for because it was
on Canopy. Yeah, the first outfit we see Roslin russelln
with the eyeballs, and like I would, I would cut
my own head off to own that. I know.

Speaker 6 (09:10):
Good honey, this is modernism and this is daw Da.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
The disembodied hand during the Bashi Job.

Speaker 7 (09:16):
Yeah, this is like the Lesbians of the Left Bank. Honey,
we go like it's it's wide what we see on screen.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Truly, mm hmmm, truly.

Speaker 6 (09:26):
So that's kind of my history with it.

Speaker 7 (09:27):
And then I remember seeing the two thousand and eight
version and sort of being like, oh, I feel like
they missed the point of what this movie is about,
even though it's entertaining and I like all the people
in it, and it stuck with me. The last thing,
I'll say, it stuck with me deeply because there is
a book that I adore that I wish more people read.
There's a book by this feminist cultural studies scholar named
Janie Scandura. She wrote this amazing book called Down in

(09:49):
the Dumps about depressive modernity and needs. The book that
is all about the idea that American modernism, which is
all about the future and progress and advancement and civilization,
requires the production of a culture of waste, of throwing
away of the fact that like in the Great Depression,
millions of appliances that people could no longer afford had

(10:10):
to be thrown and were thrown away into dumpsters and
all of this stuff. And she does a chapter about
Reno as the dumpster factory for women, the idea that
Reno was this place in Nevada that women were basically
disposed of in our culture, like they're thrown away when
they get divorces. And I remember reviewing the movie after
I had read that book and being like, oh my god,

(10:33):
this is a document of Reno as this place right
where they say, where women get renovated so that they
can get married again. And so that was the other
kind of dimension of my relationship to the movie.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Oh kidding, this is Oh you just gave me an
incredible reading list.

Speaker 6 (10:48):
Thank you, such a good book. It's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
I mean, this movie really does. I've seen different depictions
of Reno in media, old and new. I mean I
think also about how in mad And there was like
a whole Reno narrative way back in the day. But like, yeah,
but this is the most compelling. Yeah, and also manages
to make Reno look kind of fun, a dreamy, yeah,

(11:12):
kind of like oh, it's just kind of like girls camp.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yes, yeah, you're horseback riding.

Speaker 6 (11:17):
You know, we're vibing.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
I'm like we should all just maybe stay here.

Speaker 6 (11:19):
This is like the beginnings of a compound.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
We're so close.

Speaker 7 (11:22):
There's another representation of Reno, I would say, in this
very famous, very dark drama with Marilyn Monroe, which was
written for her by Arthur Miller after they had divorced.
It's one of the last movies that she makes. I
don't know why I'm forgetting the title.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
It's so Clark Gable one or not that's before that.

Speaker 8 (11:43):
Okay.

Speaker 7 (11:43):
It has another very famous male lead, but it is
about a woman who's been divorced and she's in Reno,
and it is a very dark, brilliant I mean, I
think Monroe is a genius, and I think like it's
her first time trying to do a dramatic role, and
Miller sort of writes this role that's.

Speaker 6 (12:00):
Both amazingly suited to her and that's very punishing.

Speaker 7 (12:03):
He makes her seem sort of liking a promiscuous woman
because he's mad at her about the failure of their marriage.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
And so make love.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
Is that it?

Speaker 6 (12:13):
That might be it? That might be it?

Speaker 4 (12:15):
Okay?

Speaker 6 (12:15):
If so?

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Directed by George Kucore. Pretty cool.

Speaker 6 (12:19):
Oh stop?

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, parallels. Wow, that's that's incredible. Yeah. I think that
her her last movie is The Misfits, that's what I'm
thinking of.

Speaker 6 (12:27):
That's what it is.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
It's the Missing It is okay, great, it's.

Speaker 7 (12:30):
Incredible that people should be watching that movie. That's an
incredible movie.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
I've got to see it. I still have never seen it. Yeah,
I feel like I hear it reference constantly.

Speaker 4 (12:38):
I haven't actually seen it.

Speaker 7 (12:39):
It is very moving and very powerful, and of course
written by one of the greatest playwrights of all time.

Speaker 6 (12:45):
Yes, you're right, it is Clark Gable. It is like
kind of at the end of his career when he
becomes sort of a little bit of a has been.

Speaker 7 (12:51):
Sort of like you know, actually like Leonardo DiCaprio's character
in Once Upon a Time on Hollywood. He's still a
hard throb and he's still a big deal, but is
like waning and it is a pretty it's a very
moving film.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
And Montgomery Clift. Wow, there's so.

Speaker 6 (13:05):
Much Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, wow, Okay, I'm having a great time. Thank you,
Thank you for that. Caitlyn. What is your history with
the women?

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well, and here comes my villainy go for it.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
Go well.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Listeners of the show will probably know that I am
not that big of a fan of the classic Hollywood
era Okay. There are very few movies from this time period,
and I've seen many of them, but there are very
few that I connect with or have any affection for,
and this one, so sorry, not really one of them.

Speaker 6 (13:43):
It's a hard pass.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Well, So I saw it for the first time a
few years ago because it would come up on the
show here and there.

Speaker 6 (13:53):
So interesting, and it wasn't really on.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
My radar before that, but it would. It would be
referenced pretty frequently by you, Jamie or guests, and I
was like, what's this movie? So I watched it and
I was like, oh, okay, it just doesn't really appeal
to my sensibilities. You know, I have a lot to say,
a lot to talk about. I'm still sort of like

(14:15):
forming opinions about it. The end drives me nuts.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yes, but I don't think it could have ended any
other way in nineteen thirty nine.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
But right, so, but yeah, it's it's it gives us
lots to talk about. Yeah, but again, I'm not as
enthusiastic about this era of cinema in general. So I'm
gonna be the nah person on the show.

Speaker 6 (14:41):
The kill Joy. Yeah, we always need a kill.

Speaker 4 (14:43):
Joy, we do. Thank you.

Speaker 6 (14:45):
Balance by the way.

Speaker 7 (14:46):
I'm about to be a kill joy for Heated Rivalry
because I keep telling you, I'm writing an essay for
Film Quarterly about how much I can't stand it, not
even not the actors who I adore, and I'm so
glad that they're getting all the success.

Speaker 6 (14:59):
And it is a very sexy and hot show. I
think it's message is awful, and I think people's.

Speaker 7 (15:03):
Unhinged obsession with it really needs to be put in
its place. And so I listen, we all need to
occupy that seat at some point or another.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
People just have to come in and be a female
dog in a kennel. Yeah, yes, yeah, I still haven't
seen Heated Rivalry, but I just know that everyone I
talked to is obsessed with it.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
So yeah, I'm going to wait until I get the flu,
and then I'm going to watch Heated Rivalry.

Speaker 6 (15:31):
Right, not a bad idea, I think that's right.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
That's how I watch most television, as I wish.

Speaker 6 (15:35):
Okay, so that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah, Jamie, what is your relationship with the women in
nineteen thirty nine?

Speaker 1 (15:42):
I really love it. I've trying to remember specifically what
when I first saw it. I think it probably would
have been in college. But I've been on a journey
with this movie where I did sort of feel, you know,
buy into a lot of popular narratives around this movie.
Prior to oh, I think probably around twenty twenty one
would have been my big turning point with this movie

(16:04):
because I'd seen it.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
I enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
I enjoy this like dialogue Cadence, I like old Hollywood divas,
like a lot of it works for me. And I
also like the you know, sort of, for lack of
a better phrase, gimmick of this of we don't see
a man, we simply don't and how refreshing not.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
A single man, not a single man's voice. Even the
animals on screen are all female ANIMs.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yes, I like, I really appreciate that, But I did
I think in prior references to this, I sort of like,
even though I'd seen it, i'd like, basically enjoyed it.
I also find the ending very dated and frustrating in
a way that I feel, like, you know, I think
that there are reclaimable elements to it, particularly the more

(16:48):
I learned about the context of who wrote it, how
it was written, when it was written, all this, But
I still do find the ending like I'm never looking
forward to the ending of the Women. I'm looking forward
to the first hour and a half. But I had
a churning point with this movie probably around yeah, around
the pandemic, because that was the time that I was

(17:08):
working on Act Cast, which listeners of the show probably
already know, was a podcast that took a look at
the Kathie comics of the seventies into the twenty tens
and how it was sort of this mirror to in
conversation with feminist movements of the time and before, and
so to do that I did, like my first which

(17:30):
feels kind of like ridiculous, but like my first deep
feminist history research, at least in America. And since doing that,
going back to movies of this era has been interesting
because you can pick up on what it's in conversation with,
which I think this movie is very much in conversation
with the results of the first wave of feminism, and weirdly,

(17:52):
I mean, but also before World War Two, in the
sense that we are not encouraging women to be in
the workplace quite yet. It's not seen as a noble thing.
It's seen as kind of embarrassing. So I really enjoyed
especially the first two thirds of this movie that it
is doing a lot. It's written by women all the
way down, and like fascinating women. It is directed by

(18:15):
like one of the most famous queer directors ever, George Qcore.
It features designs by Adrian It's just like it's girls
and gays. It's girls and gays, and so it is
impossible for me to dislike. But my favorite thing learning
about it in this round as I never really I
knew that the there's two women screenwriters, which already nineteen

(18:38):
thirty nine is like amazing. I really do appreciate that
to a larger extent than the majority of productions at
this time, and still like that there is some level
of commitment to the women behind the camera as well,
where it's based on a work by a woman and
it is adapted by two women, including someone we've talked

(18:59):
about before show Anita Lows, who wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
and also adapted Gigi for Broadway. Just like a complete legend.

Speaker 4 (19:09):
She's a genius, she really is.

Speaker 7 (19:11):
I mean, I recommend people to go read the original
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It's a work of nineteen twenties modernism.
It is experimental and avant garde. She's playing with language
and she is exploring what it looks like for women
to have to invent a language of sounding dumb while
being smart.

Speaker 6 (19:31):
That's the whole point of the book.

Speaker 7 (19:33):
It's about these two women who basically are using our
intentionally sounding stupid to men because they know that it
is a way to manipulate social like socially constructed mores
around gender to get what they want. And there's that
great you know, in the Marilyn Monroe adaptation in the fifties,

(19:54):
there's that great moment right at the end where the
father of the man she's marrying just can't stand to
her because he's like, you're a gold digger, and she's like, no,
I love your son and also want his money. Yeah,
And she's like, if you had a daughter, wouldn't you
want her to marry for love.

Speaker 6 (20:11):
And money because you're rich.

Speaker 7 (20:13):
And he looks at her and he's like, you know what,
You're right, And it's a kind of an amazing moment
where Lewis is saying, like, we're all playing a certain
game within this arrangement, and like, let's just admit that
women know what the game is right, and let's act naive.

Speaker 4 (20:28):
I really appreciate.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
I mean, we cover gentlemen prefer Blondes all the way
back in twenty eighteen with such a good movie Koreana
Longworth the legend. But it's something I want to revisit
and kind of take another crack at, because yeah, no,
Anita Lowe's is wonderful.

Speaker 4 (20:41):
Co written with Jane Murfin, who's also a prolific writer
of the time at a time where it's like women
working professionally as writers.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Was so rare, and the fact that this was you know,
a part of the marketing was that it was made
by women. Again, Yeah, it is telling of the misogyny
of the time then, and that it is a marketing
gimmick that women made it.

Speaker 6 (21:04):
Sure, but I think.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
It's really impressive and really cool, And yeah, this was
my first time learning about sort of getting back to it.
I knew about the screenwriters, I didn't really know about
the original playwright, Claire booth Loose, who will talk about
her in the contact section of the episode, but just like,
holy shit, she's so cool. I was so blown away

(21:26):
by like just her life in general, because in ways
where I.

Speaker 4 (21:30):
Was trying to understand. I think I'm always trying to understand.
It is clear to me that.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
The writers and actors and director all love these characters,
where even when characters are presented I think in a
heavily stereotyped way, in certain cases it feels less.

Speaker 4 (21:49):
Punching down than you would expect.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
I think, particularly in the case of Sylvia's character, which
we'll talk about, I feel like Sylvia.

Speaker 4 (21:57):
I was like, I think that she's.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
So funny and you are given the proper context to
understand why she's doing.

Speaker 4 (22:04):
What she's doing, even though what she's doing is horrible.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
And I'm very excited to talk about that because Claire
Booth Loose was the other woman, you know, like she
and in the same way with Crystal, where like Crystal
is framed as a villain, but also like you have
the information you need to understand why she's doing what
she's doing, and she.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
Gets she gets. I guess there's two last words in
this movie. She gets the better one. Yeah, frankly, because
Norvas sheers like pride is for losers.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
I'm going back to my husband and you're like, well,
I think the line about bitches is far better. But
Claire Booth loose has been both of those women, and
I think that, like you can feel that where she
wrote this play and produced it a year after being
the Crystal Allen in her then husband's relationship, where she

(22:52):
you know, whatever that dynamic played out he left his
wife for her. Then she wrote this play and released it,
and it feels like it was like an attempt to
process in a very kind of brutal way, just the
roles that women have to fill in how they relate
to each other. I'm going to shut up because it's
been like four hundred minutes since I started talking, But

(23:12):
I just.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
I really really appreciate this spuffee.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
I like it so much, and it makes me want
to talk really fast for a week.

Speaker 6 (23:19):
Ooh.

Speaker 7 (23:19):
Always, I think that's already how I live, so to
speak to Caitlin's point, I completely get it. But I
also like I speak and operate in this ballistic mode.
So while I don't always enjoy watching it, I'm fascinated
by it, and I think I have a lot to
say about that in a minute when we get back
to that.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
Wonderful well, let's take a quick break and then we
will come back for the recap.

Speaker 8 (23:41):
Yay and we're back.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Here is the story of the women.

Speaker 4 (23:57):
That's yes, and we are introduced to just to set
the scene. It did crack me up.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
It was it did not escape me that we do
begin the movie by introducing all of our main characters
by comparing them.

Speaker 4 (24:09):
To wait for it, animal animals look look.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Very pretty, pretty like and and oh the older the
women get, the more cows and donkeys.

Speaker 6 (24:21):
You're seeing horses.

Speaker 4 (24:22):
Ye, horses.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
You're You're like, okay, this is now, now let's hear
them out.

Speaker 4 (24:28):
But that is a bad look, the bad luck to
start with, sure.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Right, because you have like the main character Mary is
a sweet, little innocent dough and then.

Speaker 6 (24:37):
Yeah, Crystal is a panther.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Gnarling, and Sylvia is a is a black cat going.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Amazing, which I was like, I wasn't even really quite getting.

Speaker 4 (24:50):
There were some of the comparisons that I'm like, yeah, right.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Right, maybe it's just a reference to how some women
are catty, so they literally have cats.

Speaker 9 (25:00):
Oh yeah, the woman who gets into the late stage
cat fight in which it is said that Rosalind Russell
actually bit and gave a permanent scart to the other actor.

Speaker 6 (25:10):
No, because it's hilarious.

Speaker 4 (25:12):
And again that it's one of those old Hollywood anecdotes.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
It's been rehashed so many times that you're like, it
might not be true, but sure, I've read it in more.

Speaker 4 (25:19):
Than one place, so let's just leave it at that.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
Amazing for sure. Yeah, Okay. So we open at a
salon full of women doing various beauty treatments because women
be doing their hair and nails and stuff, and a
manicurist is gossiping about a Missus Haynes and how her
husband is cheating on her, and she tells this to

(25:45):
Sylvia Fowler played by Rosalind Russell, who is friends with
this Missus Haynes, and then Sylvia also tells another of
their mutual friends, Edith, played by Phyllis Pova, and the
two of them are kind of like reveling in this information,

(26:07):
this gossip, and they're trying to decide what to do
with it. Again, very caddy stuff. We cut to missus
Mary Haynes played by Norma Shear and her daughter Little Mary,
their horse riding together because they're rich. It seems like
every woman in this movie is a socialite who has

(26:31):
access to wealth to some degree, and Mary and her
daughter talk at length about Mary's husband, Stephen slash Little
Mary's father, and how they love him dearly, and it
seems like a very happy family. If Stephen is cheating
on her, Mary has no idea. Then Mary invites several

(26:53):
of her friends over for lunch, including Sylvia and Edith,
who we just met.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Sylvia wearing truly one of the greatest the eyeball articles
of clothing I've ever.

Speaker 6 (27:05):
Seen, very Salvador Dolly.

Speaker 4 (27:08):
It's just like and it's so it's like so character
driven that.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
It's almost too much, but kind of like there's no
such thing as too much in this movie, and I
love that.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
So they're there as well as Peggy, a sweet young
woman who got married recently, and then Nancy, an older
career woman, a writer who never got married.

Speaker 7 (27:34):
So an old maid, as she says exactly. She's aware
of her.

Speaker 6 (27:38):
Status as whatever spoiled goods.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
Yes, but she has frozen assets, let's not forget. And
so she is society's worst nightmare. And she's well aware.
I every character, every almost every character, I'm like, you,
I die for them, Yeah, I die for them.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah. And so these women are all chatting and they're
like insulting each other, but in very like veiled ways. Again,
the cattiness is very present, and Sylvia keeps making all
of these remarks about Mary's husband, Stephen, insinuating that he's
cheating on her, stepping out, which stepping out on her.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
I'm curious how, because there is just simply so much
dialogue in this movie.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
I always forget and I try to figure out if
I miss it or if it just is very telegraphed
in one line of dialogue pretty late in the movie
that Mary and Sylvia are cousins. Yes, correct, which to
me because I feel like that not to stereotype all cousins,
but that contextualizes so much of Sylvia's behavior. It's like

(28:43):
this is her perfect older cousin. Sure, I don't think
it's said enough. I think that I that I needed
the Stranger Things Netflix treatment of being reminded they were
cousins at certain times.

Speaker 7 (28:53):
This is like a crucial moment when the career woman
of the group says to Sylvia, like, of course you're
being about Mary because you can't.

Speaker 6 (29:02):
Be happy that she's happy, right, She's actually contented.

Speaker 7 (29:05):
There's an amazing line we could talk about later where
she says, you know you're unhappy that Mary is a
woman and that and Edith and Sylvia.

Speaker 6 (29:13):
Say, well, what are we? She says, well, you're.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Females, right, like suggesting that like a woman is like
someone who is more evolved, someone.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
Who is like a yeah, yeah, and there is.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
But like, I just think it was really a really
smart choice to introduce like a familial jealousy. I feel
like it helps me get away from the like the
cattiness of it all, where you're like, oh, at any
time someone's related, I feel like I will tolerate thirty
percent more pettiness and all behavior.

Speaker 10 (29:40):
You know.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah. So we see this interaction and Mary is like, hmm,
is my husband cheating on me? Then Stephen calls her
to tell her that he has to cancel a two
week trip to Canada that they were about to take
because he simply can't get away from work. And Mary
is very disappointed. And maybe because she is suspicious, or

(30:04):
maybe she's just taking Sylvia's nail color recommendation, but Mary.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yes, so iconic.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
Mary pays a visit to Sylvia's manicurist, the one who
is known for being super gossipy, and not realizing who
she's speaking to, the manicurist reveals that Mary's husband, Stephen,
is in fact having an affair with a woman named
Crystal Allen, who he met at a department store. Mary

(30:35):
is devastated by this. Her mother comes over and tells
Mary that basically all men cheat, including Mary's father, but
Stephen probably doesn't love this other woman, so Mary shouldn't
say anything or confront him, and basically just pretend like
it's not happening, especially because they have a daughter to

(30:58):
think about this.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
One of the many things they appreciate about this movie
is its attention to generational differences at this exact moment.
It's really and because I think in a lesser movie,
you know, while there is a clear argument and it's
not totally wrong to say that the older women in
this movie are portrayed as silly, right, but their perspectives

(31:22):
are clearly telegraphed and taken seriously. Absolutely as well as
her daughter, Like where I think that, you know so
often we see like oh little also such a.

Speaker 4 (31:31):
Power move when women name their daughters after themselves. I
love that very Gilmore girls to do.

Speaker 6 (31:37):
I think the daughter is totally weird.

Speaker 7 (31:39):
The daughter is We're gonna come back to that. I
actually think the daughter is like very psychoanalytic. There's like
a whole Freudian thing going on it where she's having
like an electrocomplex where she's obsessed with her mom and
she almost wants to be her mom's girlfriend, and like,
I kind of love all that, but also like.

Speaker 6 (31:56):
It's done in a way that's like not fun. It's
like weird.

Speaker 4 (31:59):
If you're talking about the whole backscratching thing. I used
to do that with my.

Speaker 7 (32:03):
Mom, but all of it, she's always like do you
love me as much as you love dad?

Speaker 3 (32:07):
And like are you in love with me?

Speaker 4 (32:08):
Mom?

Speaker 6 (32:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (32:09):
She can't understand the idea that like the love between
a husband and a wife is different than the love
but like it's just like it's it's so accentuated in
the story that it's symptomatic.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
I think the issue for me was that, like she
just seems a little bit too old to be thinking about.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
That's exactly it for me.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
That's fair one thing where it's like if you're six,
you're like what is this? But like she seems like eleven,
and I'm like.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah, she looks like she's eleven.

Speaker 6 (32:34):
She's like, do you really love me?

Speaker 7 (32:35):
Mommy, and you're like, your mom is obsessed with you,
Like you just said, she just named herself you after herself,
so like, relax.

Speaker 4 (32:42):
Little Mary. Such a flex to do.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, I wish I liked my first name better because
that would be such a flex little Damie.

Speaker 7 (32:49):
But I do want to say that the conversation with
the mom, I hope we were churned. That's one of
my favorite moments in the entire movie.

Speaker 6 (32:54):
I think it's brilliant.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
It's fascinating because it's like, you whatever, even in like
almost one hundred years later, you find yourself being like, well,
I hear what she's saying generationally, but like, no, Mary
needs to stand up for herself. And then she literally does,
and she's like, you know, it's just it's really cool.

Speaker 4 (33:11):
I wish that this movie was allowed to end differently.
But also Hayes code, you know, yeah, we cannot be
disparaging marriage and the home. And that's later to bring
that back any day. Now, Hay's code is gonna come back,
coming back. He's good two point zero, Yeah, somehow worse.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah. In any case, So Mary's mother is trying to
convince Mary to not do anything about the knowledge of
this affair because basically, boys will be boys and just
accept it and move on. Mary is not willing really
to do this, and it seems like maybe to sort
of like take a break from this whole situation, she

(33:53):
decides to take her mother to Bermuda.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
Well, and it's also a power move.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
I think, like something that I thought was interesting tracking
Mary's behavior through this time, because I think, I don't know,
I've heard a lot of stuff.

Speaker 4 (34:05):
That is a little more dismissive of Mary.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
Than I feel of like, oh, she's too perfect, blah
blah blah, she's the perfect wife.

Speaker 4 (34:11):
But it's like you can see that she's making decisions
not because.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
She actually wants to be away from home, but because
she thinks that by leave, her husband will miss her
and that.

Speaker 4 (34:21):
Will resolve the problem.

Speaker 6 (34:23):
Which is what her mom told her. That was her
mom's idea exactly.

Speaker 4 (34:27):
Yeah, right, right, right right. I feel for her.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
I think she's having like a weird like Frances hostile
vacation where she like does not want to be doing yet,
but is like it feels like I should be doing this.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
Yeah. So, while Mary is away, we meet Crystal Allen
played by Joan Crawford. She receives a phone call from Stephen,
who is canceling their dinner plans that night, even though
it's her birthday, because it seems like he is trying
to spend more time with and that he's like trying

(35:01):
to his wife is trying to focus on his marriage.
Then Mary's friends, Sylvia and Edith, the very gossipy ones,
go to the department store where Crystal works to find
her and basically fuck with her. They keep mentioning Stephen
Haynes and his wife and she's not like falling for it.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
No, this is also like it doesn't I think we're
encouraged to think that this is not Crystal's first rodeo
when it comes to managing a situation like this. Yeah,
but this is her first rodeo dealing with these difas specifically.

Speaker 4 (35:37):
But I just think it's so like and again we'll
come back to this, but there.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Is well, I do think it's like easy to reduce
that interaction to cattiness between women.

Speaker 4 (35:47):
There is a clear class dynamic going on there too,
and oh for.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Throughout like again, just like the Shades of Gray that
I feel like this movie doesn't often get credit for.
It includes like care for generational perspectives and for class perspectives,
because not only is everyone every person we see on
screen a woman, and addressing the elephant in the room
now as we will later, majority majority, majority white women.

(36:13):
I think that there's two or three characters who are
black women who exist strictly in service roles.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
Sure, I don't even think you could call them characters.
They're on screen for a minute or less.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
They're there to react to what white women are doing,
including Butterfly McQueen, who also was in GOM with the
Win that year.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yes, but this movie.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Is clearly only interested in the interests and affairs in
politics of white women, which.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
Is very very relevant.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Within there there are generational and class perspectives that I
was like, especially doing like a close read of it
for this, like you're like, oh, there is more here
than I you know, generally give it credit for even
as a movie that I really like.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yes, absolutely, Okay. So then we cut to a couple
weeks later, Mary and her mother have returned from Bermuda,
and it seems like ever since then, Stephen has been
more attentive in their marriage, though we do not see
this on screen because again famously, there are no men
on screen at any.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Point, we just have to take back, bring it back,
So we're just kind of taking Mary's word for it.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Then Mary and a few of her friends attend a
technicolor fashion show that lasts for again, like six minutes
on screen. It seems like it's just sort of like
a commercial wedged into the middle of the movie.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, does any was anyone able to find in your
like research what the hell is going on there?

Speaker 4 (37:42):
I actually did. I forgot to go out of my
way to figure out why that is there. In that way, I.

Speaker 7 (37:47):
Didn't research it, but I think it's something we can
talk about that it is. I mean, it's if you
read it in a Freudian way, it's simp it's symptomatic, right,
like the fact that there is an explosion of technicolor
in the middle of this black and white movie that
is all about fashion, and that the fashion show is
a performance of the entire arc of the daily life

(38:07):
of a rich woman, starting with playing sports in the morning, tennis,
all the way through going to the zoo, so all
the way through going to a dinner party with a
gown and whatever. Like, there is something it is like
a Freudian slip like the movie.

Speaker 6 (38:23):
Is telling on itself.

Speaker 7 (38:25):
It's saying, like, this is actually the fantasy that is
at play in living this life, and the fantasy is
radically different than the reality. I mean, I think that's
part of the place where the movie is so smart
is that the movie is very aware of the fantasies
that women have to navigate, the forms of denial that

(38:45):
they have to live to navigate the sexual arrangements of
mid century American life. And I think that the technicolor
moment is also giving the audience the joy, the pure
unbridled joy of that fantasy before it says, u uh uh,
that's not what you're gonna get. That's not what this
whole movie is gonna be. Right, Like this whole movie

(39:05):
we could the whole movie could have been technicolor. That's
what The Wizard of Oz does.

Speaker 4 (39:09):
It's incredible, Like I I know that.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
I Mean, the most thing I was able to find
out is that George Kkor did not like that.

Speaker 4 (39:16):
I think that that was sort of like something he
was forced to.

Speaker 6 (39:19):
Do, got it by like the studios.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, he felt it like it it disrupted the rhythm
of the movie, which I think is true, but also.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
It definitely does.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
However, I think in some ways, Kitlyn, let me know,
you think, like if you do, if you are kind
of exhausted by how fast this movie is, this is
kind it kind of functions as an intermission.

Speaker 4 (39:40):
Of like, uh, all right, it's true, you know, get
catch your breath and buckle in because they're gonna be
talking even faster in the back half. Yeah, And I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
And also just because nineteen thirty nine there's so many
fun like overlaps here.

Speaker 4 (39:53):
We're like Adrian Queer Icon who had like a.

Speaker 10 (39:57):
Famous lavender marriage to Janet Gaynor, also designed the ruby
slippers and may like he was having a hell of
a year in nineteen thirty nine, just just a legend.

Speaker 6 (40:10):
And that's incredible.

Speaker 4 (40:11):
Did all the costume designs for the Wizard of Oz
as well. Okay, so yeah he was. He was really
cooking this year.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
So I'm like, while I do find it a little weird,
I don't hate it only I mean it is kind
of an intermission.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
I love the disembodied hand dress.

Speaker 6 (40:25):
Oh my, so that's incredible.

Speaker 4 (40:27):
At the end of the day, I'm not mad.

Speaker 6 (40:28):
That's modernism, honey.

Speaker 4 (40:29):
It is just oh, it's so weird. I love it.

Speaker 6 (40:32):
Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 7 (40:34):
I would just say as a side note, you know,
there's this extraordinary book by a dear friend of mine,
brilliant film scholar who should totally have on this podcast
named Matthew Tinkham. He actually wrote the British Film Institute.

Speaker 6 (40:44):
Book on Greg Gardens.

Speaker 7 (40:45):
Oh oh, and he wrote a book called Brokeback Mountain
and Queer Theory.

Speaker 6 (40:50):
Incredible.

Speaker 4 (40:51):
Should have covered and we haven't yet.

Speaker 7 (40:53):
So oh my god, Greg, I have on for Greg Gardens. Honey,
he will blow your minds hell.

Speaker 10 (41:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (41:00):
So he makes this amazing argument of that book where
he says Golden age Hollywood system, while it was intensely homophobic,
was obsessed with the cultural labor of gay men because
it believed like there was a there was an understanding,
a cultural understanding within the film industry in the nineteen

(41:21):
thirties and after that. Gay men had a distinct aesthetic
style that was extravagant, that was over the top, that
was flamboyant and beautiful, and that fit beautifully with the
desire of Warner Brothers in MGM to.

Speaker 6 (41:37):
Do these extravagant musicals. And he shows you.

Speaker 7 (41:39):
He has a chapter about how like he gets the
title of his book from an amazing interview of the
head assistant to oh why am I forgetting his same
He's like one of the most famous musical directors, Judy
Garland's first husband.

Speaker 4 (41:53):
Is it Vincent Manelli?

Speaker 7 (41:54):
Thank you, yes, thank you yes, that Vincent Manelli's head
assistant in the fifties and sixties was interviewed looking back, and.

Speaker 6 (42:02):
She says to the interviewer, I don't know how else
to say it.

Speaker 7 (42:04):
And I don't mean it at all as a dig
She's like he worked like a homosexual, Like he had.

Speaker 6 (42:11):
A style, right.

Speaker 7 (42:13):
And so the idea was that audiences when they viewed
those movies and they're incredible, over the top technicolor extravagance,
they didn't think gay. They thought that's entertainment, right, And
so he talks about how like gayness was was woven
into the fabric of the esthetic of the Hollywood musical

(42:33):
Star is Born, Wizard of Oz, all of these movies
of Singing in the Rain, but that it could be coded,
and that is very true here. I think the explosion
of technicolor here is also about the celebration of extravagant femininity,
that is pleasurable to gay audiences and also women.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
I hear that, and this movie has all of that,
like oh yeah, and and the fact that I feel
like the most again like echoing what you were just saying,
like the most prominent voices and fingerprints you see on
this are women and queer people, Like, yeah, George ku
Koor was like you know, obviously not open to the public,

(43:16):
but like known to be openly gay and as well
as like I think probably maybe this is wrong, but
one of the if not the first director who was
known to be like women loved working with him. Yes,
And so part of what I mean we can get
into because there's some interesting like production narratives that come up.

(43:36):
But like for all of the like maybe true, maybe
not true narratives about how the stars of this movie
interacted throughout production, what no one ever disagrees on, and
I've never seen anyone say, is that George Kukre was
not like deeply respectful and reverent toward women actors, which
I think, particularly given the time, must have been such

(43:58):
a breath of fresh air. Almost any story you hear
about a director of like gaystrake whatever, like yeah, it
was okay to treat to quote movies like The Women,
to treat women like chattel and to treat them like
they were garbage, and that they were like, you know, meat.

Speaker 4 (44:15):
Puppets to be to do what you were supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
And George Kukor was like collaborative and respectful and everyone
loved him.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
It's so nice.

Speaker 7 (44:25):
I mean, think about the fact that he is one
of the directors of The Wizard.

Speaker 8 (44:29):
Of Oz.

Speaker 4 (44:31):
All the CPS sequences, right, yeah, King.

Speaker 7 (44:33):
Dar and he most of his greatest movies, Philadelphia Story,
A Star is Born with Judy Garland are female led,
like behemoths of film history.

Speaker 4 (44:44):
We love George.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
We love George, and in Adrian another very like queer
artist whose fingerprints are everywhere.

Speaker 4 (44:53):
And then it's written by women and you're just I'm cheering.
I love it.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
Also, George k Kerr directed Gaslight like he's just so
in the conversation he's awesome, amazing.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Sorry, contin well, I was gonna say. Apparently there are
two uncredited screenwriters of the movie, according to IMDb, at
least who are men, including f Scott Fitzgerald.

Speaker 6 (45:18):
That makes a lot of.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Sense because of Anita Lowe's and I'm pretty sure Anita
or was it the other screenwriter?

Speaker 4 (45:24):
Maybe I think it was Anita Lowe's let me double check.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
Anita Lows worked with and on fitzgerald projects pretty thoroughly
throughout her career, so that that makes sense, given like
the time and the place.

Speaker 4 (45:38):
I don't know, honestly. I mean, I've read The Great Gatsby.
I don't know that much about Scott Fitzgerald. I've never
fallen down that particular rabbit hole.

Speaker 7 (45:47):
I mean, the main thing you need to know is
like one of the greatest kind of chroniclers of the
misery of the of the rich. I mean that's really
like right, Like he was incredible at being able to
capture both the allure, the aesthetic allure, the color, the lights,
the fashion, the parties.

Speaker 6 (46:06):
Of an emergent nouveau reche.

Speaker 7 (46:08):
Class in the nineteen twenties and the misery that that
culture produced. I mean, he is essentially writing about today,
right He is writing.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
About what Jesse Armstrong is doing right now.

Speaker 6 (46:21):
Yeah, decadence.

Speaker 4 (46:22):
Yeah, that's so cool.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (46:24):
Sorry, we just did a ten minute de reil ie
of where are we in the movie. It just started, oh,
a fashion sequest.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
The fashion show, and then Afterward, the women ever heard
of them are deciding which dresses they want to buy,
and then Crystal Allen comes in and orders a bunch
of expensive dresses and it seems like Stephen will be
footing the bill and Mary is gutted by this. This
is her first time seeing Crystal face to face. The

(46:54):
drama loving Sylvia wants Mary to confront Crystal, which Mary
finally does, being like, hello, miss Allen, I believe you
know my husband, but you won't be knowing him any longer.
And Crystal is like, well, bitch, that's not for you

(47:15):
to decide. I can do whatever the hell I want.

Speaker 4 (47:19):
Love her.

Speaker 11 (47:19):
The next thing we know, it is also wearing like
this like gold lea May She's doing She's Whenever you
see Mary and Crystal in this, you're just like, okay, yes,
these are these are very different, the women very different.

Speaker 4 (47:33):
The women's I love it, Yes.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
Yes, yes, yes, indeed. The next thing we know, Mary
has asked Stephen for a divorce. There's a scene where
Mary and Stephen have a big fight, but once again
it's off screen because we don't ever see men.

Speaker 7 (47:48):
This is I want to just say real quick, this
is important. And again we should come back to this
the entire fight between her and like, because men are
not in the movie, Yeah, they have to come up
with all of these really smart and interesting narrative and
visual techniques to represent what's.

Speaker 6 (48:05):
Happening with men without them in the picture.

Speaker 7 (48:07):
And the way they do this is that the two
women who work in the house, the woman who runs
the kitchen in the apartment and the woman who's like
cleans the house, they are gossiping with each other, and
the younger one is narrating to the older one all
of the fight that she's hearing.

Speaker 6 (48:24):
Yes, and so what you get is.

Speaker 7 (48:26):
Working class people, people who work in the service side
of serving rich people, interpreting what they are hearing. They
not only repeat what they're hearing of the fight between
Mary and her husband, they also interpret it. And they're
also like thoughtfully judgmental of both of them. They're just like,

(48:46):
why is he talking like this? Why is she saying
that she should know better? He should know better? Like
there's a really canny knowingness among working class people that's
sort of like, we love these people, but also like
what an eye roll?

Speaker 6 (48:59):
They know how to blow up their own lives, like
get grow up?

Speaker 3 (49:02):
The older woman especially is providing some very colorful commentary
during those where the whole thing she's like, men ain't shit,
they're all liars, they cannot be trusted, they suck the
horrible I.

Speaker 4 (49:14):
Mean, something I appreciate, and I do think there's shades
of this in real life. I think every woman over forty.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Five, that is the main narratives that they are presenting
us with, even if they're like and I do it
all again.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
But like men more like love.

Speaker 6 (49:33):
She loves love.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
She loves love, you know so much that she is
fully I mean, and again there's a class privilege to
this that you can afford to have your life.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
Blown up time and she'll get five divorces. But yeah,
so you could afford to keep getting back on that train.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
But there is a really cool element of that where yeah,
every woman who is like not in their thirties or
younger basically are like, yeah, men are.

Speaker 4 (49:55):
Awful, and you choose to engage with them or you don't.
And I don't know, there is a timelessness to that message.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, yeah, I just thought that was like such a
smart writing choice where I think that there is an
argument for like, I wish that we outside of Crystal,
and even that, I feel like there's something left to
be desired.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
But outside of Crystal, the working class girls, we really.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Don't get to know what their inner lives are, but
we mainly get insight into we know their perspective exactly exactly,
and it's like, you know, one movie can't do everything,
but yeah, I don't know, I just again it feels
like peanuts. But like even having their perspectives considered and
included is so unusual, especially in a way that doesn't

(50:39):
feel you know, trauma, poorn or like condescending in a
way that I think that, like, you know, working class
people are so frequently treated in movies.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
Yeah, okay, So Mary starts divorce proceedings and she tells
her daughter that she and her father are splitting up,
and little Mary is very sad, she's crying. Then Mary
heads to Reno, Nevada. Because at this time, and we
alluded to this already a little bit. We can talk

(51:09):
more about it later, but at this time in the US,
getting a divorce was very difficult in most states and
most areas in general, except for in Reno, there were
certain laws that just made it very easy if you
basically moved there for a few weeks, set up residency.
You could basically get a divorce, no questions asked. So

(51:32):
that's what a lot of people, and especially I think
a lot of women did during this time. So Mary
heads there on the train to Reno. She meets several
other women who are in the middle of a divorce,
some of whom are despondent about that, including her friend Peggy,
but a couple of the women seem to be thrilled

(51:54):
about getting a divorce, including an older woman named the Count.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
Just a love I love.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Her, I love her who at this point has been
married and divorced four times. She's like, in the middle
of her fourth divorce.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Who among us doesn't have an aunt that is somewhat
like this, ye, Lamore, lamour.

Speaker 6 (52:14):
It's two of them tried to murder her. Just oh
my god.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
And again it's like, okay, we could we can academic
afy that to death.

Speaker 4 (52:23):
But just the.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
The casualness that she presents it with, yeah, I feel
like is actually really powerful. Where it's like, oh, of
course women can be expected to have attempts on their
wife done casual and YadA, YadA whatever.

Speaker 4 (52:34):
I get back on the train, and uh no harm,
no bowel. That was like I love the energy, love
the energy.

Speaker 8 (52:40):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
So there's her, and then there's a younger woman named
Miriam played by Paulette Goddard with her is getting her
first divorce.

Speaker 4 (52:47):
With a with a with a Bob of the century.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Her bangs start all the way back at the back
of her head.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
Her bangs start like on her butt. It's like her
bang is It's so there are so many really interesting
characters introduced very deep into the movie.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
Yes, yeah, yeah, And so Mary starts kind of piling
around with these two women who perhaps are helping to
give her a new perspective on divorce that maybe it's
not so bad. We cut to Reno. Mary has been
there for six weeks and her divorce is almost final.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
Because I think you have to like establish residency, like
there's a whole you basically have to agree to go
to like divorce summer camp, which again the movie does
manage to make look pretty fun for most people.

Speaker 3 (53:35):
Yeah, yeah, I would like to see a movie made
now but set in whatever thirties, forties, fifties agree about,
like Reno Divorce Summer Camp. I think that would be
about load of fun. Yeah, but so you know Mary,
the divorce is almost final, and she seems content about

(53:58):
her choices and her life. For the most part, Sylvia
shows up. She's also getting divorced.

Speaker 6 (54:05):
Because come up, then has happened?

Speaker 3 (54:07):
Yes, yes, her husband has been having an affair with
It turns out that Mariam, woman we just met.

Speaker 4 (54:16):
I did appreciate it. This was the first time I
really like clocked this. But how because I really do
love Barry. I hate that she goes back to that.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Loser, but I love I have a lot of love
for Mary, and I really appreciated that she was able
to when when Sylvia showed up at divorce camp, be
like welcome instead of being like you fucking sat, which
would have been well deserved for Sylvia.

Speaker 4 (54:40):
I think she's just like, welcome, the water's fine here.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Like I just was like, Wow, she's really good at
being the bigger person.

Speaker 4 (54:47):
She just shouldn't have gone back to that.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
Those are but nineteen thirty nine, we have to reinforce
hays Code.

Speaker 4 (54:53):
Hayes Code.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
Indeed, indeed, yes, so, so Sylvia pretty quickly finds out
that this Miriam Will who her husband was having an
affair with or currently is is right there. So they
get in a physical fight. They're pulling each other's hair,
they're whipping each other's clothes. Sylvia bites Mariam et cetera.

Speaker 4 (55:13):
Yes, and and and look, it is what it sounds like. Listen,
it is what it sounds like. I did appreciate.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
Again, we get so defensive of every choice in this
movie for no reason that at least we get to
see the other women enjoying the fight.

Speaker 12 (55:28):
We get to see them be like, let them Yes,
happens all the time, don't worry about it.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
Let's like get a drink, let's see what happens. I
was fun.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
There's a woman who I left out of the recap.
I believe her name is Lucy. She's sort of like
I don't know if she's like a cook at this
summer camp.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Or seems to be like I guess I viewed her
as sort of like this is a poor comparison, but
like the house mother of like divorce Cass seems like it.

Speaker 4 (55:55):
But yeah, she I mean I thought she again a very.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
A very stareeotyped character that the actor made their own
in a way that I got. And again, the details
we learn are like and it's it's partially just like
the very frank kind of cynical view that this movie
has for the first two thirds.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
But like we we do learn a lot about this character.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Who we are introduced to as I believe a donkey,
which is like, yeah, I am assuming a man's.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
Fault, okay, shrek vibes.

Speaker 4 (56:23):
Oh okay, we're reclaiming donky.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
So that's actually a huge compliment to become of the context.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Of so a very shreky in choice but intended as insulting.
But we do learn that, like, you know, she as
another working class character who is presented.

Speaker 4 (56:41):
In a heavily stereotype way.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
However, we do learn that like she you know, has
a very i mean, speaking to your point, Ramsey, like
a very specific perspective on where she is and what
she's doing and how it connects to her own life.
We learn that she is the victim of tremendous domestic
abuse and has internalized it and to accept it. And like,
that is a lot to learn about a character who

(57:06):
is intended as comedic relief.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
But I don't think that again, it's just like I
don't know if it's like the George Q. Koor of
it all if it's the writing, if it's a performance.
But I feel like as well as this.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
Movie can handle it, It's clear that she is intended
as comedic relief.

Speaker 4 (57:21):
But the comedic relief is not that she's abused, true, which.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Is a difficult needle to thread. And I think, you know,
could could it have been more sensitive? Sure, but like
in the context of a big, you know, talkie comedy,
I think it does pretty well.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
Yeah, I agree. So Okay, So Sylvia and Miriam have
had this big cat fight and Sylvia is pissed at
Mary for not defending her and kind of taking Miriam's side,
so they have a falling out about it. Then it
seems Mary's perspective maybe starts to change back too, Well,

(58:01):
maybe I shouldn't get divorced, maybe my marriage can work.
After a couple things happen. One is that she sees
her friend Peggy, who has just found out that she's gregnant,
and Peggy tells her like soon to be ex husband,
that she's expecting a baby, and he decides, oh, we
shouldn't get divorced, let's get back together, so they reconcile

(58:24):
in their marriage is quote unquote saved. So Mary sees that,
and then she also has a conversation with Miriam, who
tells her about the importance of a woman's role in
a marriage, such as being a caretaker in all capacities,
being a mother and a nurse maid and all these

(58:44):
things like very traditional prescriptive gender role stuff by our
modern standards, of course. Ye, but Mary takes this to
heart also, like Mariam is like, you're a coward for
not fighting for your man. You should have tried harder
to stay with Stephen.

Speaker 7 (59:02):
I actually love this conversation. We're going to come back
because I don't want to. I don't I want You're
almost at the end, yes, but we're going to come back.
I actually love that conversation. I think it's so smart.

Speaker 4 (59:12):
Oh, I'm interested.

Speaker 6 (59:13):
It's the one that you have a hard time like recuperating.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
It is. Yeah, it is like so much so. And
it's like I think that it's because this conversation happens
when the movie is actively losing me God that I'm like,
I don't know how to feel about that, and then
the movie moves so quickly through the end, yet I
feel like I've never really fully understood how to feel
about it.

Speaker 4 (59:33):
Yeah, right, we'll talk about it.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
So Mary is like, hmm, maybe she's right, Maybe I
do need to go back to being a wife and
a caretaker to my husband. Then Mary receives a call
from Stephen, and she's coming in with this renewed sense
of love and hope, and it seems like she's willing
to call the divorce off until she learns that the

(59:58):
reason Stephen is calling is to tell her that he
married Crystal Allan earlier that day. So Mary is devastated
all over again.

Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
Night before. Why why aggressive?

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
Like, literally the moment she gets divorced, he goes out
and gets married to someone else.

Speaker 7 (01:00:19):
Time to die, Time to just life in prison without
the possibility.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
Of work, anti KURSRL, except for.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
Step except for Stephen. Okay, we cut to Crystal. It's
I believe, like a year and a half later. She's
in the bathtub and she she's horrible, she's entitled, she's cruel,
and she is cheating on Stephen with another man. And
she and Little Mary have a chat because she's now

(01:00:49):
little Mary's stepmother, and Little Mary is like, oh, you
think I don't like you, Well, you're right, I hate you,
but I never said it, but I never said it
because I'm polite.

Speaker 6 (01:01:00):
Polite, I'm proper.

Speaker 7 (01:01:01):
I didn't say it to your face, but you made
me say it to me because now you said that
I don't like you when you're right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
And you're right. Then Sylvia comes in because she and
Crystal are friends now, and Sylvia learns that Crystal's new
lover is a man named buck Winston, who is the
current husband of the Countess de lave No, Mary's friend
who she met on the train to Reno.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Who has who has basically fab we later learned fabricated
the career to make her loser, cheating husband feel better.
And you're just like ooh ooh, okay, anti cars rule,
but maybe not for buck Winston.

Speaker 6 (01:01:39):
Maybe yeah, abolition but not for him.

Speaker 4 (01:01:41):
Maybe jail for him, Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Then Mary has a conversation with her daughter where Little
Mary reveals that Stephen is miserable in his relationship with
Crystal and that Crystal is clearly having an affair with
someone else, which once again gives Mary a renewed sense
of hope. She's ecstatic, thinking that she can possibly win

(01:02:05):
Stephen back, so she rushes off to a restaurant where
she knows that Sylvia and Crystal and Stephen are going
to be Yes, there's this convoluted thing that I was
having a hard time following, But basically she gets Sylvia
to admit that Cristal is having an affair with Buck
Winston in front of and I don't know if this

(01:02:26):
person is a gossip columnist or someone.

Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
Who just okay the gossip columnists.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
I was like, maybe she just like spreads gossip for fun.
But rather than writing about it, this gossip columnist just
runs into the room and loudly announces to everyone about
this affair.

Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
That's how that job works, right, it does Macana.

Speaker 6 (01:02:45):
I mean, I think you can call it that it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
Is gossip x Macana.

Speaker 6 (01:02:48):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
So now Stephen knows that his new wife Cristal is
cheating on him, and so he wants to reconcile with Mary,
so she runs back to him, and then the movie
ends with the implication that Mary and Stephen will get
back together the end.

Speaker 7 (01:03:08):
I think it's important to remember also that the final
shot is Mary putting her hands out super melodramatically crying
but with joy rushing towards Stephen, and we are the
first time that we get that close to the subjectivity
of a man. We are this is like male gaze
one oh one, right. We are in the position as

(01:03:29):
the audience of Stephen, So while we never see him,
we inhabit him figuratively as she's rushing towards us, which
one could use to argue either way that it's a
deeply sexist ending or that it's actually kind of an
amazing ending. We're really the romance stories between the audience
and Norma Shearer and not Stephen.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Sure, okay, And then before we kick to break, it's
like it's worth mentioning that that gossip columnist is played
by the gossip calumnists of.

Speaker 4 (01:03:57):
The day had a hopper who comes up.

Speaker 6 (01:03:58):
Wow, I didn't know that.

Speaker 4 (01:04:00):
Yeah, that's really a really fun cameo in the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
Okay, and with that, yes, let's take a quick break
and we'll be back to discuss. And we're back.

Speaker 4 (01:04:21):
Oh my gosh, where the hell to start?

Speaker 7 (01:04:24):
Can I before we start with specifics, can I do
like a like a I don't know, this isn't exactly
a read, but I want to like lay out.

Speaker 6 (01:04:31):
The case, please please please?

Speaker 7 (01:04:34):
Okay, So I want to start by saying, like to
anyone's current eyes if you were to watch this movie today,
on its face, it is so obviously sexist as to
be like not even a question. And let's lay out
what those are. The comparison at the beginning of women
to animals coming in hut, The idea that women seem

(01:04:54):
to live in a universe where all they do is
talk about men and their relationships with men, their entire
life orbits of the desire of men, the money of men, etc.
The perception that women are against each other, that they
turn on each other.

Speaker 6 (01:05:07):
That they are caddy.

Speaker 7 (01:05:08):
It begins with another animal allegory where these two rich
women are walking into a salon and their dogs are fighting,
and the dogs fighting are symbolic of women fighting with
each other.

Speaker 8 (01:05:23):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:05:24):
There is a continual blame the victim story in which
women are made to feel that it's their fault that
men cheat on them, that they aren't understanding enough. And
of course the ending, which is a reconciliation with a
cheating husband that would appear to tell you.

Speaker 6 (01:05:39):
Like this is so sexist. However, what I want to
say is that those elements are the.

Speaker 7 (01:05:46):
Movies payoff to Hollywood to be able to do something
feminist like the ending is the way in which Hollywood
gets its way so that women can take center stage.
And if you think about it, the structure of that
is completely undermined by the formal logic of the movie.

(01:06:11):
So if the plot appears to be really sexist, everything
about the form is not.

Speaker 6 (01:06:17):
It is a movie that is only about women.

Speaker 7 (01:06:19):
Women are the center of the screen, and they are
presented in a way that both allows for the male
gaze but is really about the gaze.

Speaker 6 (01:06:30):
And their gaze on women. Right.

Speaker 7 (01:06:33):
So like, while we do see women in this pleasurable,
fetishized way, it's usually to celebrate fashion, and it's usually
to celebrate the pleasure of a woman's form.

Speaker 6 (01:06:44):
So number one, there's that. Number two, it.

Speaker 7 (01:06:47):
Is a movie that is ballistic dialogue between women. It
caused every single sequence is like a seven minute extended
moment in which women are talking to each other constantly,
and even if patch the Bechdel test they are always
talking about men, what they're really talking about is what

(01:07:10):
the feminist psychoanalyst Dorothy.

Speaker 6 (01:07:12):
Dinnersteine would call sexual arrangement.

Speaker 7 (01:07:15):
The movie continually presents different competing theories of what gender is,
so like in every moment, there is a woman in
every different class saying well, I think gender is this.
I think gender is this. The mom is like, gender
is compromise, right, like other people are like, actually, gender

(01:07:35):
should be about liberation.

Speaker 6 (01:07:37):
Actually it should be about this. There are competing visions of.

Speaker 7 (01:07:40):
What gender is, and the fact that a movie in
nineteen thirty nine is presenting a bunch of women talking
about competing models of gender. The reason it seems sexist
to us today is because one of the models that
is not acceptable in the moment is simply the idea
that women could exist without men. But the economic structure

(01:08:01):
of American society does not even make that viable, because
to be without a man is to essentially be working class,
and rather thence make that invisible.

Speaker 6 (01:08:10):
We see it all over the movie.

Speaker 7 (01:08:12):
We see many single women who are working class, who
are like, the only way I can work within the
system is to try to steal a rich woman's husband.
Those women are very aware that the arrangements of gender
are always temporary, and so part of what is so
feminist about the movie is that because the women talk
so openly and honestly about different models of gender, they

(01:08:34):
always acknowledge that gender is sort of miserable that gendered
arrangements between men and women provide temporary security. The Countess
de lav will have this amazing moment at the end
where she's like, she seems like she's happily married for
a fifth time, and she looks at all the women
and she says, isn't it so lovely that we're all
settled for now at least, right? And she is so

(01:08:58):
aware they're all aware that it's all bullshit, that the
entire system is temporary, it's contingent, it's always being overthrown,
and the working class women know what the best Because
when Crystal Allen, while she fights so hard to get
her quote unquote meal ticket by marrying this guy, when
she ruins it all and it blows up in her face,

(01:09:19):
how quick she is to say, h, I guess I'll
work at the counter again. She knows that all of
these arrangements are temporary, and so at the end of
the day, the movie is so unbelievably realistic about how
the fantasy at the end of getting back with your
husband or whatever is just that it's a fantasy and
it's temporary, and so I think part of its genius

(01:09:41):
is that it's honest about the fantasy.

Speaker 6 (01:09:43):
And the last thing I will say for the moment,
for the.

Speaker 7 (01:09:45):
Case is that it is one of the rare texts
that we could say that this is really patriarchal, but
that acknowledges that men are part of that arrangement and
that men are also miserable with it, right that, Like,
that's why I love that conversation with Mary, because Marianne
is not totally wrong. She's like, Mary, what do you
think your husband was gonna do? He's now been publicly

(01:10:08):
embarrassed by his infidelity. He has to make the infidelity legitimate.
So he's gonna do the silliest thing ever, which is
what men always do. He's gonna get married to this woman.
He doesn't even love to make it look legitimate. Yeah,
And she's saying, like, you created the conditions.

Speaker 6 (01:10:23):
You were also part of the game.

Speaker 7 (01:10:26):
And I think what's important is we live in a
moment today where we think that feminism means women are
always right, they are always injured by men, as opposed
to like a radical feminist view in the seventies is like,
women are injured by men, but women also participate in
injuring men and in creating the conditions where they are

(01:10:46):
injured by men.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
Well, I think that that is still a facet of
modern feminism as well.

Speaker 4 (01:10:51):
It's like holding other women to account.

Speaker 6 (01:10:52):
Oh for sure.

Speaker 7 (01:10:53):
I don't think it's the popular discourse of feminism.

Speaker 4 (01:10:56):
I guess I disagree.

Speaker 6 (01:10:58):
Oh okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:11:00):
I think my experience has been that men are basically
like their view of feminism today is like everything we
do is wrong.

Speaker 4 (01:11:06):
Yeah, but men are always wrong, so that I actually.

Speaker 6 (01:11:10):
Can go along with that. I think it's also fair
to say that women are also wrong sometimes.

Speaker 4 (01:11:13):
No, but that's what I'm saying, is like that women.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
I do think there is a lot of vital discussion
among women in modern feminism, holding each other to account
and figure it out. I don't think that there is
like a through line of like, yeah, oh, we all
agree with each other and we have only.

Speaker 4 (01:11:29):
Been injured by men, and men cannot possibly be our allies.

Speaker 7 (01:11:32):
No, you're totally right, I think. Tell me if you
agree with this. I don't think that nuance has been
translating to the mass public.

Speaker 4 (01:11:42):
I definitely don't think it's translated to the internet.

Speaker 6 (01:11:44):
Okay, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 7 (01:11:46):
I mean when I teach young men, even really progressive men.
They have not received the message that there is a
nuanced conversation going on within contemporary feminism that includes any
of their interests or the idea that they might also
be injured and that they might all like, I don't
think they perceive that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
I agree, but I guess I like a lot of
my read of why that is is not necessarily primarily
because of how feminists are talking to or about men.
It has to do with how feminism is presented to
them by other men, and like, I feel so much
of that, so much like the I don't know, I've
done like a fair amount of like research and repretting

(01:12:25):
on the manisphere and how the.

Speaker 4 (01:12:27):
Ideas of feminism are twisted to seem completely exclusionary to
men and then.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Having it sold back to like don't even try, yeah,
to talk to women because they hate you.

Speaker 4 (01:12:37):
And I don't think that's true.

Speaker 6 (01:12:38):
Totally Yeah, No, I think that's totally fair.

Speaker 7 (01:12:41):
But I like that the movie it never really deeply
investigates this, but it suggests that men and women are
participating mutually in a quite miserable and unhappy sexual arrangement. Yes,
that should be changed, but the movie doesn't exactly know
how to change it.

Speaker 6 (01:13:00):
It does have the conversation totally.

Speaker 8 (01:13:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
I would also add that, like monogamy, culture contributes to
a lot of this, and like, yeah, for some people,
monogamy is very restrictive. And it appears to me that
a lot of the characters in this movie, men and
women alike, are non monogamous. They're not practicing it ethically,

(01:13:26):
but they seem interested in having multiple partners at the
same time, because almost everyone in this movie is cheating
on their spouse. But the expectation at the time was
that everyone present to society as though they are monogamous.
But if these characters were more open to like I
don't know, like using older terminology, but like being swingers,

(01:13:51):
like some.

Speaker 4 (01:13:51):
Of them kind of like soft are anyway.

Speaker 6 (01:13:54):
Oh god, right, yeah, well that's also it's so sexual.

Speaker 7 (01:13:58):
There's so much sex happening without it being erotic movie
at all. And he does seem like everybody's cheating on everybody,
and it's kind of commonly known that that happens, and
divorce has happened now, right right.

Speaker 4 (01:14:08):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (01:14:08):
I mean I think going off of that was like
thank you for articularly in that this is so good.

Speaker 6 (01:14:15):
So I just wanted to lay out the larger Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
Yeah, I mean I feel like, for me, this movie
is presenting a lot of stereotypes of the time that
are I mean, it is really bizarre watching this like
eighty seven year old movie and seeing like, oh.

Speaker 4 (01:14:31):
A lot of this is making a really intense comeback.

Speaker 1 (01:14:34):
Right now, including the values of marriage and what does
it mean and all this stuff. Yeah, but what I
think like saves this movie from becoming impossibly dated is
you're right, like women writers and women lend productions at
this time had to play ball yeah to be released.

Speaker 4 (01:14:53):
And while I do think.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
A lot of stereotypes and stereotypical misogyny are presented, almost
all of it is common upon yes, and like the
characters are frustrated by it, even if they are playing
into it.

Speaker 4 (01:15:06):
That's part of why I find I think Sylvia is
my favorite character.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Oh interesting, I really appreciate her from a number of levels,
but also like she just seems to me someone who
I think.

Speaker 4 (01:15:21):
Maybe on the page, is like internalize a lot of
misogyny and.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Is projecting it back, and it's like presented almost as
like she's doing it for fun.

Speaker 4 (01:15:29):
I think you can really find someone like who's very wounded.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
In her because she's never the way she talks about
her husband, who eventually.

Speaker 4 (01:15:38):
Leaves her for another woman, she's very dismissive of him.
She's like, I don't care fuck that guy, blah blah blah.

Speaker 6 (01:15:43):
She's also like, I gave you my youth.

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
It's not resentful, but it's I think that a lot
of the ways, really, with the exception of Mary, the
ways that the women in this story talk about men,
it's not about them, it's about how it's about survival
in an environment that is not designed for their independent survival.

Speaker 4 (01:16:03):
So it's like about survival and it's.

Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
About how they're perceived by the women around them, which
is part of why I kind of feel for Sylvia.
Where she's not trying to get a man, she's not
trying to keep a man. She is hyper fixated on
what the women around her are doing and trying to
like win their favor or not. Where like how she
like gloms on to Crystal after her falling out with

(01:16:25):
Mary feels so telling where it's just like, yes, it's
their approval that matters. It's not her fucking loser husband,
but the losing her husband affects how women see her,
and losing her husband affects her ability to survive. And
it's just like, I don't know, Yeah, there's like so
much interesting stuff going on.

Speaker 4 (01:16:42):
That I feel like it's like, oh, let me know,
how do you feel about this?

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
But I think that like Mary is the only person
in this movie who seems to.

Speaker 4 (01:16:51):
Genuinely have affection for her spouse, and the.

Speaker 1 (01:16:53):
Rest is like it's survived because like you're saying, like,
how old are you going to survive at this time
particular before I mean, and again, this is a very
white conversation.

Speaker 13 (01:17:05):
Yeah, because white women were actively encouraged to not work,
and it was the shape like and and that was
not the case for any other racial demographic at the
time that are completely ignored by this story, partially because
of the Hayes.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
Code, but also if you keep scrolling on Claire Looses,
I mean, I wanted to say, like, she's an incredible figure,
but she gets pretty conservative later in her life. She
was elected to office, she served at the House of Representatives,
like started pro Roosevelt, then later turns on him.

Speaker 7 (01:17:37):
Interesting, also groundbreaking. I mean, that's a pretty cliche. That's
a pretty cliche arc right, Yeah, for a lot of people,
for a lot of people in the culture industry.

Speaker 4 (01:17:47):
It's very exactly. Yeah. I was like, and we can whatever,
how many people can we think of now? I mean
we can start with jk. Rowling, the the like successful
woman writer, tough for people person pipeline.

Speaker 6 (01:18:01):
I know what is going on, so.

Speaker 4 (01:18:05):
Not to like endorse all of her views because she
to this day there is like I'm seeing like.

Speaker 1 (01:18:11):
A loose like conservative women's club that exists to this day,
which is pretty diabolical.

Speaker 4 (01:18:17):
But anyways, getting back to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:18):
I feel like this this movie, even though the tagline
is it's all about men, I don't think that's true.

Speaker 4 (01:18:24):
I think it is about how women.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):
Perceive each other. Yeah, at this time, and I wish
that they that we got to see more of it.
I wish that we got to you know, like it
would be. I think there is room in this movie
to have a better understanding of the working class women's
lives outside of how they perceive the upper class.

Speaker 4 (01:18:45):
There's sure there's room for a lot of different things.
But I don't know. Yeah, I guess if.

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
You go with this movie's marketing, it's all about men,
but it's just like it is it just it clearly
isn't It's about a lot of frustrated women trying to
figure out how they're going to survive in a political
climate that is designed to leave them reliant on men.

Speaker 3 (01:19:07):
Yes, and well, speaking to both the stereotypes present in
this movie and the rampant whiteness, and to your point, Ramsey,
like one of the reasons that this movie, again looking
at it through our modern twenty twenty six lens, the
way the women are presented and their interests and their behavior,

(01:19:29):
so much of it is again very catty, very gossipy.
Women are superficial, They're obsessed with their appearance and their
beauty regimens, like all these very stereotypical things. But also
we have to remember that most of the characters in
this movie are affluent white women who are classist and

(01:19:50):
racist and fatshlobic and a number of other things. And
the thing like, affluent white women usually are caddy and
superficial and cruel and harbor a lot of prejudices toward
marginalized people. And I know that, like there are you know,
you can read deeper into that, and you know there

(01:20:10):
is a discussion about, like, well, the context behind why
these women are so caddy is because there is a
survival component and because there are so many constraints to
how they are able to survive, so they have to
sort of game the system or play the game or whatever.

Speaker 6 (01:20:24):
Yeah, that I think the.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
Movie, you know, a lot of it is like contextual
and implicit. There aren't that many explicit conversations about that.
And you know, again, it's nineteen thirty nine, it's whatever.
But I kind of came away from it being like, yeah,
we do see a lot of stereotypes about women, but
it's a bunch of rich white women and.

Speaker 4 (01:20:47):
It feels pretty true, like how, yeah, like how women
in this position would have behaved.

Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
I don't know, because I do think like there are moments. Yeah,
I'm curious about you.

Speaker 4 (01:20:58):
You think Gramsey of like, I think you have one
specific class moment in the movie that I don't remember.
I think it's Edith. There's one hundred and forty women
in the movie. I'm pretty sure it's Edith.

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
It's after what I think, because I like, I love
Roslin russell performances and her physical.

Speaker 4 (01:21:17):
Comedy is just like she's following a crash. She's like
the Hillary Duff of her time she is pratt falling, yeah,
and that I have always loved that, like weird Pilates scene, or.

Speaker 1 (01:21:28):
She's like whipping her legs around and delivering forty pages.

Speaker 4 (01:21:32):
Of dialogue like it's unreal.

Speaker 6 (01:21:35):
Well, and that's okay.

Speaker 7 (01:21:35):
So this if I if I'm if my premonition is correct,
you're gonna tak That's an amazing moment. Yes, where she
has paid along with her friend Peggy. She has paid
for them to have a class, an exercise class that
is calisthenics, and she wastes it by gossiping the whole
time and then kind of cutting it short. And the
woman who's leading the class is like, are.

Speaker 6 (01:21:57):
You sure you want me to leave?

Speaker 7 (01:21:58):
And she's like, yeah, I do. And finally the woman
is like, this is such a waste of money.

Speaker 4 (01:22:02):
Yeah, she says like shut the hell up. But she says,
if you could just relax your muscles from the chin up,
and you're like, oh, okay, right.

Speaker 7 (01:22:11):
But I do think that it is a moment in
which a certain kind of wealth in the United States,
like returning to Gilded Age moment. There are women who
are watching this wealth being wasted and saying like oh
my God, like your emotional and sexual profligacy, like the
fact that you guys are all miserable in your marriages
and it's all sort of a sham. Is redoubled in

(01:22:33):
the fact that you guys waste so much money, like
in the service industry, and that is like shocking to people.
But I want to also comment on types and stereotypes, right, Like,
stereotypes are not all the same in the sense that
some are more pernicious than others. We can say that
stereotyping in all forms is pernicious, but the reality is

(01:22:53):
that human beings in habit types, and not because we're
innately or essentially so, but because Like the problem with stereotypes,
right is that they say, well, this group of people
is essentially like this, all black people are like this,
or all queer people are like this. If you have
a different view of typology that says types are socially
constructed and we see them modeled for us the way

(01:23:15):
gender is. Right, Like, the flamboyant gay man is a type,
and I have inhabited that type.

Speaker 6 (01:23:21):
I know a lot of people who've inhabited that. When
you watch gay media, like Looking or Fellow Travelers, you're like, oh.

Speaker 7 (01:23:27):
My god, that's that gay guy. That's that gay guy.
I know that person, right, I recognize that person. What
the movie does that's so great. I think it drills
down less into stereotype although it's all over the movie,
and more into types. It's about the there's a reason
why there's so many women in the movie because it's

(01:23:47):
multiplying the types of women that you see in a
crowd like this. And one of the ways that type
apology is played out is that different types are represented
by their individual choices of the kinds of psychological compensatory
things they pursue to make up for the failures of marriage.

(01:24:08):
Edith is the one that decides, I'll have an endless
number of babies. Oh yeah, and that's a type, right.
They keep making fun of her because they're just like,
oh my god, like another.

Speaker 3 (01:24:18):
One of eight children.

Speaker 4 (01:24:19):
Now it's I was like, okay, Catholic coded. They're totally so.

Speaker 7 (01:24:24):
The idea that like, she's the type of woman who
compensates for the failures of marriage to live up to
all of its promises by having a lot of babies.
Rosalind Russell's Sylvia compensates by taking everybody down a peg, right,
like that is her joy.

Speaker 1 (01:24:43):
Yeah, out of clear insecurity, which I think is like
clearly telegraphed in the performance and on the page.

Speaker 4 (01:24:51):
Yeah there's Yeah, I found the lae I was looking for.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
It is a line from again I'm like one of
the older women. I'm not totally sure because she also
covered in cosmetics.

Speaker 4 (01:25:01):
But it's after that moment you were talking about Ramsey.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
Where like, yeah, the pilates or whatever, the exercise instructor
is like all right, I'm gonna leave.

Speaker 4 (01:25:10):
Yeah, and she's.

Speaker 14 (01:25:12):
So clueless, and it's like it is a good pestige
of like clueless, wealthy white women, where she says, honestly,
the class feeling you run into, I'm so sick of
paying creatures like that to insult me, calling a working
class woman a creature, and also fully not questioning that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
She may have been in the wrong, like it's just,
it's just and it's it's kind of fun seeing that
played out by actors.

Speaker 4 (01:25:33):
Who are we know, privileged white women.

Speaker 3 (01:25:36):
Yes, yeah, totally also in that scene because Peggy eventually
comes in and starts doing the Calisenics with truly the
worst form I've ever seen, like the form of these.

Speaker 4 (01:25:49):
I know, like Frankensteining toward the camera. Totally so funny.

Speaker 3 (01:25:53):
Yeah, it made me laugh. But Peggy comes in, So
she's the one who is newly married. She seems to
be a bit naive, and it also seems as though
she makes more money than her husband.

Speaker 6 (01:26:06):
And her husband that's a problem.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
Very clearly resents her for it. He makes her give
him the money that she earns. He won't let her
buy a car with her own money, like all of
these things, and she tries to So she is sort
of in a different place class wise than her peers
because she has a job. We don't know what it is.
I don't think she works for her own money. And

(01:26:30):
her husband, unlike all these other women, is not wealthy,
so she's sort of in a different position in class
than her peers. She tries to confide in Sylvia and
then later and Mary about this financial situation she has
had with her husband. Neither of them really know what

(01:26:51):
to do in response to this. But I also like
to speak to your point about types, like we do
see so many different types of well not so many
different types, but different types of women. They are various
positions in life. There are various perspectives in life. Some
of that is informed by class, some of it is
informed by generation and age and experience, some of you know,

(01:27:12):
all these different things. And that is one of the
things I appreciate about this movie. And I don't know
if we want to turn gears to Mary's mother, but
I feel like we all have so much to say
she about her fascinating. She's major because she's one of
the older characters. She's an older generation than most of

(01:27:33):
the women who are like piling around together. She is
very much someone who like recognizes that, like men's behavior
is often questionable, a lot of them tend to lie
and cheat, but she insists that you just have to
accept it. So in that way, she's she's upholding patriarchal

(01:27:56):
expectations and like allowing men to have the power to
be shitty and to display all this horrible behavior. She's
just like, that's how we have to survive. Don't even
say anything about it, don't do anything about it, just
accept it. Boys will be boys.

Speaker 1 (01:28:12):
And also reveals, I mean, yeah, that seemed really always
kind of stops me in my tracks because it also
reveals that like it comes from a place of like
a very personal place, because she experienced it, yeah, and
that her daughter had no idea as.

Speaker 4 (01:28:29):
A very much an adult. I just that seems so much.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
It's so weird to watch now because I think that,
you know, while it is cool to see Norma Chera's
character stand up to her mother about that, because it
is clearly ideals that need to be pushed back on
and exist in a larger conversation, but there is like
a level of like pragmatism that a lot of this
movie talks about that I think is again, like you've

(01:28:56):
both referenced, at this point, there is no clear solution,
but it's interesting. I'm like, I don't know if it's
my I don't know how to feel about it, but
I definitely notice.

Speaker 4 (01:29:06):
That there is this element of like.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
Mary acts on her righteous anger and her righteous feeling disrespected,
and she acts on her personal politics and her personal values,
and she sulfers for it, and that is like a
very I think that that's something we don't often see
in movies, because movies are meant to show you like
that following your heart can only.

Speaker 4 (01:29:31):
Achieve a positive and uncomplicated result.

Speaker 1 (01:29:34):
This does not achieve a positive and uncomplicated result.

Speaker 4 (01:29:38):
She's very like I mean she she finds.

Speaker 1 (01:29:40):
I like that we see her find herself over time,
but it is not immediate.

Speaker 4 (01:29:45):
I still don't think she should go back to Steven
at the end, but I think that it is interesting
watching her Reno narrative and watching the eighteen months later narrative.

Speaker 1 (01:29:54):
Where you see her like learn to be okay, but
the world is judging her for it, and that is
is like I think, a more realistic view of people
whose you know, personal politics and values don't align with
their culture acting on them like it is a long
and difficult road, and I appreciate that her.

Speaker 4 (01:30:13):
Mother is able to accept that, even.

Speaker 1 (01:30:17):
If she doesn't completely agree with it. I was reminded,
I don't know like my parent, like my It's just
interesting that to know that that that line of thinking
doesn't go away, especially when it comes to like how
do you manage this situation when there's children involved?

Speaker 4 (01:30:34):
And I really love there's a line with Mary that
feels very.

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
Just reminiscent of many divorces, including my parents, where it's
like she says something like, well, what good is it
going to do little Mary if she grows up in
this like miserable household that is full of tension and
unresolved contra conflict.

Speaker 4 (01:30:53):
What is the point of that?

Speaker 1 (01:30:54):
Yeah, and she's right, and also that doesn't mean that
this divorce isn't going to be very difficult and complicated
for everybody. And I just like, especially in the in
like the context of like a pretty fast paced talkie comedy,
to have complicated ideas like that presented with the almost
like realism of like and we don't know how to
resolve it.

Speaker 15 (01:31:14):
It's part of why I find the ending so like, ooh,
I would like even if there was a way under
the Hayze code for the ending to be more ambiguous
than it is.

Speaker 4 (01:31:26):
Whatever it was eighty seven years ago, I get it.

Speaker 3 (01:31:28):
But it's been eighty four years.

Speaker 4 (01:31:30):
It's been and then some.

Speaker 1 (01:31:33):
But like, it's just it is really interesting to see
these cyclical conversations that exist among women and within feminism
presented so clearly.

Speaker 4 (01:31:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:31:47):
Yeah, because I mean, if you think about that conversation,
the part of it that is boys will be boys
is when she says, this is how men resolve their unhappiness.
Women do it by change their hair or remodeling their house.
So that part is essentialist, right, She's saying, well, women
have a way of doing it.

Speaker 4 (01:32:06):
Men have a way of doing it.

Speaker 7 (01:32:08):
Yeah, but the underlying message is actually way more complex.
She's saying men and women are equal in the fact
that they're existentially both unhappy. Like that is such a
powerful thing, And all I could think of when I
rewatched it, if you put it in the current moment,
is that if you think about the you know, the
brilliant psychotherapist as their Parrell who writes all about how

(01:32:32):
like we now have in our current era, this obsession
with the idea that if someone cheats on you, it
should destroy the whole relationship and blah blah blah, blah blah.
And she says, that's a completely new paradigm. The idea
that people have affairs and that that's basically normalized was
completely like that was common knowledge, you know, before this era,

(01:32:54):
because the idea was security mattered more than sexual fidelity,
right that having a lot like right, like the mom
says it matters who you and like who's with you
at the end, right, And Parrela is not saying the
earlier model is good and the new model is bad.
She's saying each one of them are good and bad
in their own ways, and She says, one of the
bad parts of the contemporary model is that we play

(01:33:17):
such a premium on sexual fidelity that if someone cheats
on you, there's no possibility for repair. It's not seen
as the potential for the beginning of a new chapter
of the relationship. And there is no attempt to understand
why someone cheated. And I think that there's an amazing,
you know, thing that the movie is saying that is, like,

(01:33:38):
maybe it's worth exploring that men do these things because
they're unhappy, and women also do things because they're unhappy.
The movie can't accept the idea that women also cheat,
that women also have affairs.

Speaker 4 (01:33:49):
Well, but Crystal, you know, like Crystal, that's actually right.

Speaker 1 (01:33:54):
I take that back, and Miriam, it's pretty accepted that
Miriam does, so yeah, you're so right.

Speaker 4 (01:34:00):
Is interesting though, Yeah, I totally. I mean, if we
start talking about the politics of cheating, will be her
all night.

Speaker 1 (01:34:07):
Sure, But like, it is interesting how this movie approaches it,
because I don't know, like, in my perspective, the way
that cheating is handled culturally is like almost irrelevant to
the point where like it's it's culturally relevant, but it's.

Speaker 4 (01:34:23):
Like it just depends on the people involved, right, Like,
it's just like there are some people who can whatever.
It's it's all circumstantial.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
Yeah, and for Mary, she can't tolerate it, you know,
and that and she acts on that, and then there
are relationships.

Speaker 4 (01:34:38):
That can withstand that can and like handle that stress test.
But I don't know, it is like you're totally right
like that that.

Speaker 16 (01:34:46):
That can of worms is opened and it's an unresolvable
can of worms. Oh totally and like and I like
that the movie doesn't pretend I mean again, the ending
kind of feels like nope, if you're I guess like
that's part of why.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
It's an idea introduced in this fascinating way by her
mom in a way that is clearly personal, in a
way that is clearly pragmatic, in a way that she
doesn't want to see.

Speaker 4 (01:35:09):
Her daughter lose the security that she has.

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
So it's almost like, you know, love isn't enough, but
it's nineteen thirty nine, so what are you going to do?

Speaker 4 (01:35:19):
It's an interesting idea to present, but then I feel
like the.

Speaker 12 (01:35:21):
End of the movie kind of overvalidates it by I
don't know, I guess, like the way that this movie
is in conversation with like first wave feminism is interesting
because obviously, like first wave feminism was deeply racist.

Speaker 1 (01:35:36):
And homopholedic, as is to some degree every way of feminism.
But with regards to like marriage, first wave feminism did
accomplish a lot in terms of like pushing back on the.

Speaker 4 (01:35:47):
Idea that a man is essential to survival.

Speaker 1 (01:35:50):
And I feel like the movies that we see in
the years following women getting the vote are trying to
interact with that idea.

Speaker 4 (01:35:57):
While subtly being like, but you should still probably be married,
you know, like that, and that's the ending.

Speaker 7 (01:36:04):
And let's add that they need to for economic reasons.
I mean, something we haven't talked about is like the
movie It very honestly dramatizes the fact that this dysfunctional
sexual arrangement between men and women that we call heterosexuality
feeds our economy.

Speaker 6 (01:36:21):
Yes, like it is absolutely important.

Speaker 7 (01:36:24):
The fact that women respond to feeling left alone, feeling undesirable, unloved,
that they go and spend tons of money on clothes,
that they buy tons of things for the house, that
they travel, that they go on vacation. The idea that
like this arrangement keeps people in their place and keeps
the economy running. Reno is basically like funded by the

(01:36:49):
fact that tons of women go there and pay money
to be in these like sort of halfway houses and
all of this stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:36:56):
So I think that the movie is really honest.

Speaker 7 (01:36:58):
About the fact that heterosexuality also feeds the economy. And
I think it's an interesting historical context to think that
the movie is right on the cusp of the moment
when millions of American women will enter the workforce as
part of the World War two effort, right, and they
will end at the end of that many of them
will end up like Peggy, which is that they will

(01:37:18):
be making their own money and they will start to
be like, do I really want to go back?

Speaker 4 (01:37:23):
Right?

Speaker 6 (01:37:23):
The government has to go through a.

Speaker 7 (01:37:25):
Massive cultural effort to literally fund making people go back
into the suburban. Like the GI Bill is the government
saying we will pay you a check and pay for
you to go to school and buy a house if
you get married and if women stop working, like that's
the payoff. So I think like the movie is at
the cusp of that moment.

Speaker 1 (01:37:46):
Yeah, it's it is such a weird historical moment for
this movie to come out, But it's so interesting and like, yeah,
unfortunately because we're living in love fucking ra boris Like
it feels very real evant to a lot of stuff
that we're talking about now, where it's like we have
significant government forces trying to force marriage back upon women,

(01:38:09):
force comphet ideals and punish people who are who resist that,
And I don't know, it is interesting having a character
like Mary who's pushing back on it, but the moral
I mean, the last words out of her mouth are like,
I don't have time for pride.

Speaker 4 (01:38:25):
I'm in love.

Speaker 1 (01:38:27):
Like but having that, like we've been talking about, like
having that sort of like challenged by the working class
girls where there is still even though Mary's come so
far as a person, there's always going to be sort
of this baseline privileged naivete about her worldview she can
afford to, you know, be doing this. Crystal is like

(01:38:48):
survival wise in this world, I have to go back
to work, if.

Speaker 17 (01:38:52):
You know, and absolutely work making sucks ass and there's
not a lot of like fun interesting jobs available to
women at this time and so like, I don't know,
I just I have a lot of I mean, Crystal
is So it's also just fun watching like a Joan
Crawford villain.

Speaker 1 (01:39:07):
Oh sure, because she's just so good at being a bitch.

Speaker 6 (01:39:12):
She's like wicked. She looks like wicked.

Speaker 4 (01:39:15):
Eyebrows, and it's just like amazing. I know.

Speaker 7 (01:39:18):
The fact that it's painted on is also kind of
Hollywood saying like she's an authentic her and her eyebrows.

Speaker 4 (01:39:25):
Yeah, her and Rosalind Russell.

Speaker 1 (01:39:26):
In anytime they're together on screen, I'm like, woo, it's
just I love them. But but yeah, like that that,
you know, she has to sort of go back, but
it doesn't feel like I don't know, like by the
end of the movie, it almost feels like this weird
handshake between the two.

Speaker 4 (01:39:43):
Women where she like, it's not they're never gonna be friends,
like why the hell would they be, But it's almost like,
all right, you in this round, we play the game,
Yeah you next time, bitch, Like it's kind of fun.
I don't know, And is that misogynous?

Speaker 17 (01:39:58):
Yeah, but there, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:40:00):
It's just it's such a beefy little text.

Speaker 6 (01:40:03):
It's also honest in a way.

Speaker 1 (01:40:05):
Yeah, right, because it's like the world is not going
to repair in their favor anytime soon, so the chances
are we will be encountering this issue again until the
world is different totally well.

Speaker 3 (01:40:16):
To me, there are three major reasons why the ending
is so frustrating. One is that for a while, the
movie seems to be on a trajectory where we think
it's going to end with Mary like fully realizing and
coming to terms and being content with the decision she

(01:40:36):
has made to leave her husband and not settle for
a man who is dishonest and doesn't meet her emotional needs.
But then she goes back with him after he realizes
that his current wife is cheating on him. So that's
reason number one, where there's a certain trajectory, a certain

(01:41:00):
of expectation that the movie starts to set up for
the audience, and then it's like, just kidding, Nope, never mind. Yeah,
number two and this is kind of part of this,
but Stephen has done nothing to redeem himself, nothing true,
earn her back or anything like that. It's just that
he's gotten a taste of his own medicine. He's been
cheated on, and now he knows how it feels, so

(01:41:22):
he'll go back with his first wife.

Speaker 4 (01:41:23):
And you're just like, that's not how that works. That
there is an element of like he started it. She
was not doing anything wrong. She was driving, she was
driving horses. She was whatever she was doing when.

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):
She was quote unquote supposed to do, which is also
I don't know, just like such a I whatever, my
dad's dead, it's fine, like my but like listening to
how my mom processed infidelity within their relationship, it was
like not dissimilar to Mary.

Speaker 4 (01:41:50):
I mean, if we didn't have fucking horses, we were poor.

Speaker 1 (01:41:53):
But the idea of like I was doing all of
the right things, how could this have possibly happened to me?
And like almost like it's the disappointment and anchor of
being cheated on, But it's also the like I mean
questioning the entire view of the world where it's like
you've done everything right and your worst case scenario still happens,
So what now?

Speaker 4 (01:42:14):
And I feel like, Yeah, the ending does not really
pay off on that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:18):
Because it's like, oh, she goes on this whole journey
of self discovery, she seems basically happy, and then she
just goes back to where she was.

Speaker 3 (01:42:25):
Yeah, like the arc that the movie seems like it
was setting up for her is just like completely abandoned.
And again Hollywood movies of this era had to adhere
to the restrictions of the Hayes Code, which was all
about promoting you know, family values aka conservative Christian American values. Yeah,
but it still makes for a frustrating conclusion to this narrative.

(01:42:48):
And then the third reason that I find this ending
to be frustrating is that Mary cooks up this little
scheme where she exposes Crystal for having an affair, and
this happens at the expense of her friend, the Countess,
who humiliated. She's devastated, and Mary does not seem to

(01:43:09):
give a single shit that she hurt her friend.

Speaker 7 (01:43:13):
I think it's because Mary wants to exercise a degree
of wickedness that she's never been able to write. Like
the movie allows her this because she's been jilted.

Speaker 4 (01:43:24):
But like the Countess catches a serious stray.

Speaker 1 (01:43:27):
Yes, yeah, I didn't even I honestly hadn't really fully
connected that because the ending moves so fast.

Speaker 3 (01:43:33):
Totally, yeah, it really does. But yeah, I'm just like
my second watch, I was like, oh my god, Like, yeah,
the Countess is devastated, she's crying, she's been publicly humiliated,
and Mary's just like it doesn't matter. I have my
husband back.

Speaker 8 (01:43:48):
Hah.

Speaker 6 (01:43:49):
It's like she'll take one for the team.

Speaker 1 (01:43:50):
Yeah, right, But it's like Countess has I don't know,
I really have liked the Countess Lucy, like older wiser
women who are presented as types, but who are also
does fundamentally wont to be supportive to the.

Speaker 4 (01:44:04):
Younger women going through what they've already been through.

Speaker 1 (01:44:06):
And so it's like that in that specifically, like in
that context that is so like they should be.

Speaker 4 (01:44:12):
Respect your elders. Norma Shearer.

Speaker 3 (01:44:15):
Yeah, Caitlin and Jamie jumping in with a quick pickup
because future us future us here. We ran out of
time during our recording with Ramsey, but we just wanted
to jump in here with just a quick pickup to
talk briefly about a character named Lulu. So basically, we

(01:44:37):
see a character at the department store where Crystal works.
I believe it's one of Crystal's colleagues who makes a
racist joke about this character, Lulu, who we see very
briefly in a different scene, played by Butterfly McQueen. She
I believe plays a maid who works for Crystal.

Speaker 4 (01:44:59):
Which I believe it's true.

Speaker 18 (01:45:00):
But the fact that we have to guess tells you
how much we know about this character precisely, And Butterfly
McQueen was type cast very often as a maid, the
way that for many many years in Hollywood, black women
were type cast in service roles.

Speaker 3 (01:45:19):
Black actors in general were very limited, and.

Speaker 1 (01:45:23):
This same year, Butterfly McQueen famously played an enslaved character
and Gone with the.

Speaker 3 (01:45:29):
Wind, Yes, exactly. So I just wanted to share a
quote from her that is relevant to her character in
this movie, because she says, quote, I didn't mind playing
a maid the first time, because I thought that was
how you got into the business. But after I did
the same thing over and over, I resented it. I

(01:45:50):
didn't mind being funny, but I didn't like being stupid unquote.
As far as she's presented in this movie, i've I mean,
we only see her in that very brief seen and
then we see white characters say racist things about her,
and that's really just all we get.

Speaker 1 (01:46:07):
And unfortunately, this is like nowhere near again. It's like,
just speaking to Butterfly McQueen's nineteen thirty nine, this is
nowhere near the most offensive way that this actor has
been portrayed in this calendar year.

Speaker 4 (01:46:22):
So just again to speak to it.

Speaker 6 (01:46:23):
And this is also still.

Speaker 1 (01:46:25):
While the Hayes Code is in effect and it will
be for many years to come, which just inherently limited
the roles that were available to black actors, even if
creatives wanted to provide better roles, which is I mean, we.

Speaker 6 (01:46:41):
Could do it.

Speaker 1 (01:46:42):
Doctoral thesis is worth of discussion about.

Speaker 4 (01:46:44):
That, but feel's important to reference here.

Speaker 3 (01:46:48):
Absolutely, So, yeah, we just wanted to call attention to
that and shout out Butterfly McQueen. And then the last
thing and very seamlessly we're jumping back into the episode
is to examine whether or not this movie passes the
Bechdel test because there is a discussion to be had

(01:47:11):
around it.

Speaker 4 (01:47:11):
Does I think it does too.

Speaker 3 (01:47:13):
It is mostly women talking about men. I would say
probably ninety percent of the conversations are women talking about men. However,
there are short exchanges where women talk about perfume, dresses,
your right hair, sekincare, nail polish.

Speaker 1 (01:47:31):
Well.

Speaker 4 (01:47:31):
I also, I'll push back a little more.

Speaker 1 (01:47:33):
I think that there are a number of conversations in
this movie that are about how women perceive each other.

Speaker 4 (01:47:39):
It is not the.

Speaker 1 (01:47:40):
Majority of the movie, but it is enough of it
that I feel like I'm officially against the tagline of
the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:47:48):
It's not all about men. It is a lot about men,
but it's not all about men.

Speaker 6 (01:47:53):
That's fair.

Speaker 3 (01:47:53):
Yeah, I actually agree with you both.

Speaker 7 (01:47:55):
I think that's exactly right. I also think, you know,
the women, it's very meta. The women talk about not
just men, but their relationship to the problem of relating
to men, like right, Like that I think is so interesting.
I mean, the one thing I wanted to say in
this episode also was like, the movie that this reminds

(01:48:16):
me of the most is The Boys in the Band from.

Speaker 4 (01:48:19):
Nineteen seventy familiar.

Speaker 6 (01:48:21):
It's astonishing movie.

Speaker 7 (01:48:22):
It's the first movie with all out gay men as
main characters. The majority of the cast are gay men.
There's two straight men in it. They're not straight in
the movie, but they're straight in real life. And you know,
it was first also a play on Broadway. It ran
for like a thousand shows, sold out. And what's amazing
is it has very similar structure that it is like

(01:48:46):
about a group of gay men living in New York,
most of whom are upper middle class, not rich at all.
Most of them work, but they're middle upper class and
it's them screaming at each other for an entire evening
about their experiant of homophobia. And so one could argue
that it's a group of men talking about men, but

(01:49:06):
really what they're doing I have a whole chapter of
my second book about that happens, and I'm obsessed with it.
They are talking about their their emotional and effective relationship
to the problem of male desire, right, Like they're just
like desiring men puts us in this marginalized position, but
also sort of is like sexy and makes life also

(01:49:29):
kind of a nightmare because men treat each other like garbage,
and like there's so much internalized homophobia, and it's them
working that out, and they do it in a way
that's very vicious towards each other.

Speaker 6 (01:49:41):
And what I love about the movie is it was
panned in.

Speaker 7 (01:49:44):
Its moments as homophobic, as stereotypes and blah blah blah.
And one of the things I argue in my work
is like, but the genius of the movie is that
it's honest about the fact that when people who've been
marginalized first start to un pack the depth of their oppression,
they are going to be mean to each other. Like

(01:50:06):
it's going to bring up so much unresolved rage that
cannot be adequately projected onto the right sources, that they
will do it to each other. And that's honest, and
expecting people from jump to be super nice while they're
doing that right is unrealistic. And I love that the
movie basically says like there's a great moment at the

(01:50:28):
end where after this one friend has basically like annihilated
everybody and he gets socially punished by his friends for it,
and in the last moment, one of his best friends
looks at him and like just nails him to the wall,
like just is like you, how you have behaved tonight
is so disgusting.

Speaker 6 (01:50:45):
And then at the end of it is like I'll
call you tomorrow, all right, Like yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:50:49):
There's this amazing like like we know. And I think
The Women is an earlier version of this that is
about women trying to relieve themselves of the amount of rage, irritation,
and frustration they feel towards the way that men are
treating them, and they take it out on each other,
but they also have a very thick skin and their

(01:51:09):
ability to survive it and to also sort of like
be like Okay, whatever, I forgive you you know, like,
I guess i'll see it, see it tomorrow. Right, There
is this sense that that I think is the meat
of the movie, and I think the idea that it
ends with her returning the last thing I'll say about
the end. I think it's fair to say there's enough
of an intelligent audience who watched that movie and we're like, oh,

(01:51:31):
that's ridiculous, but I love the movie.

Speaker 6 (01:51:33):
Yeah, right, who can see the ending as ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (01:51:36):
It's it is ridiculous, as ridiculous as fantasy.

Speaker 1 (01:51:39):
Yes, and also is like, well, I think what it
had to be to be released in the time it
came out, correct, Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:51:48):
I mean you could do you could do a super
cut from this movie that's just all the lines of
dialogue where women are saying something like men cannot be trusted,
men only want one thing.

Speaker 7 (01:52:02):
Men, You're living enough fools paradise across generations, across class.

Speaker 3 (01:52:07):
That super cut would be like ten minutes long. Like,
there are so many examples absolutely this, and so what
you know, we we joke on the podcast sometimes that
it does pass the Bechdel test when women are like
shit talking men.

Speaker 6 (01:52:19):
Sure, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:52:21):
I think this is a movie where you could actually
really make that argument, because yeah, some extent, it's.

Speaker 4 (01:52:26):
Like in the period you're writing and releasing it into
what can you get away with?

Speaker 2 (01:52:31):
And I think that this movie is doing almost everything
it can, not quite but more than most movies, and
more the most popular movies at this time could to
get away with a lot of stuff that even almost
one hundred years later, you're.

Speaker 4 (01:52:45):
Like, oh, that was a good one, totally.

Speaker 6 (01:52:47):
It's really amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:52:50):
The Bechdel test is one thing that what about the
world's only perfect media metric, which is the bechel Cast
Nipple scale.

Speaker 3 (01:52:57):
The nipple scale where we rate the movie on a
scale of z. I wrote to five nipples based on
examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. Now here's
the thing with this movie. To me, The Bechdel Cast
Nipples scale is such a modern metric, and to apply
it to a movie that's almost ninety years old, I don't.

(01:53:18):
I Just what I'm saying is I might I might
refrain from rating on the nipple scale because I have
no freaking idea.

Speaker 7 (01:53:25):
Well, I will, I will get I will whether we
rate it or Notah, I'm not overly attached to giving
it a rating.

Speaker 1 (01:53:33):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:53:33):
Jennifer Nash, famous black feminist, she says, you know, in
her book Black Feminism Reimagined, She's like, one of the
problems with intersectional thought is that it has centered race
so intensely that it leaves out the question of, like,
can you do an intersectional read where race is not
the dominant sure category? Right, And in this movie race

(01:53:57):
is everywhere without being talked about in terms of whiteness,
but blackness is not that which was centered or.

Speaker 6 (01:54:05):
Other forms of racialization.

Speaker 7 (01:54:07):
And yet it intersects age and class so intensely. Those
two you guys talked about the intergenerational competition. There's three
generations of women, the grandmothers, the mothers, and the daughters basically,
and I think that classes everywhere. So I think, whether

(01:54:27):
you rat it or not, it is a deeply intersectional film.
It's just not intersectional in the way that we associate
with with its origins and black feminist thought, because it
is it does not centralize race and or blackness specifically
as a primary vector of cultural analysis, which so few
movies from this era did totally, which is why, which

(01:54:48):
is why.

Speaker 4 (01:54:49):
It's like it's hard to apply this scale.

Speaker 3 (01:54:51):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 6 (01:54:52):
Yeah, so well.

Speaker 4 (01:54:53):
We can, we can, we can say we're going to
forego it.

Speaker 1 (01:54:56):
And if you want to know what we think, we
just recorded over two hours, so yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:55:02):
Yeah yeah, just rewind and listen again. So with that, Ramsey,
thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 6 (01:55:07):
Oh my pleasure, this is such a GIF. Thank you
for having.

Speaker 4 (01:55:10):
Me come back for I would love you whatever you want.

Speaker 6 (01:55:13):
Okay, there's a million ideas I have.

Speaker 4 (01:55:15):
We could totally oh yay perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:55:18):
Where can people follow your work? Check out your writing?
Plug anything you'd like to plug?

Speaker 7 (01:55:24):
So, ramseyfowas dot com is a phenomenal resource. I have
all of my published essays available open source for people there.
I have links to all my books, to the special
issues that I have edited, and I also have information
there about my yearly or annual courses at the Esslin Institute.

(01:55:44):
The Esslin Institute is an extraordinary, world famous consciousness expansion
retreat on the edge of Big Sur, California. It's one
of the most beautiful, miraculous places you could go in.
Every year, I offer a five day seminar where I
kind of take a lot of the ideas from my
scholarly work and I package them in a wellness model
where I kind of talk about how feminist feminist thought

(01:56:08):
can also benefit reducing your anxiety and actually like changing
your relationship to the world. So I'm teaching a seminar
in June called the Thrill of Groundlessness Flowing through Life
without Absolutes. People can find information about that on my website.

Speaker 4 (01:56:24):
Yeah, there so cool flow.

Speaker 7 (01:56:28):
It's such a beautiful environment. We're gonna read, We're gonna
read a little short excerpts from different texts, and we're
gonna watch movies. We're gonna talk about them. And it's
an amazing place. And I'm also a columnist for Film Quarterly,
where I write a column every three to six months
about a different media form.

Speaker 6 (01:56:43):
I just published a piece about.

Speaker 7 (01:56:45):
And or amazing show, revolutionary show, and I will be
writing my next piece about heated rivalry, and so you
can find all of that on my website.

Speaker 4 (01:56:55):
Arts will be Broken. I can't wait.

Speaker 7 (01:56:57):
Art's gotta be broken. Listen, sometimes we got to get
out of that fantasy. I'm gonna be the kill Joy.
I'm gonna be Caitlin in that essay.

Speaker 6 (01:57:04):
Love It Brave, Oh a blessing. I nerd from the
Future on Instagram.

Speaker 1 (01:57:09):
Yes, perfect, check that out, listeners, and you can find
us in all the normal places, which is really just
two places. You can find us on our Patreon aka Matreon,
where for five dollars a month you can get access to.

Speaker 4 (01:57:22):
Two new episodes a month on a theme of your
choosing with me and Caitlin, as well as back catalog
going back.

Speaker 2 (01:57:29):
Like eight years, So a couple hundred episodes for your enjoyment,
all for five dollars a month, a price that we
might add has never ever changed.

Speaker 3 (01:57:37):
What a damn good special. Yeah, damn good with that.
Should we all get on a train to Reno and
drink a bunch of champagne?

Speaker 4 (01:57:45):
Oh honest, yeah, that sounds perfect.

Speaker 6 (01:57:47):
Honey, Let's divorce from Patriots.

Speaker 7 (01:57:50):
Let's say yes, Let's get a divorce from the patriotchy
Bye bye.

Speaker 1 (01:57:58):
The Bechdel Cast is a pretty action of iHeartMedia, hosted
and produced by me Jamie Loftus and.

Speaker 3 (01:58:04):
Me Kitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann.

Speaker 1 (01:58:09):
And edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of them? That's
me and our logo and merch and all of our
artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus ever heard
of her? Oh My God, and our theme song, by
the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by
Katherine Voskrasinski Iconic and a special thanks to the one

(01:58:30):
and only Aristotle Asceveo.

Speaker 3 (01:58:32):
For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree, slash
Spcdelcast

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

The Bechdel Cast News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Caitlin Durante

Jamie Loftus

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Fudd Around And Find Out

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.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 Women (1939) with Ramzi Fawaz