Speaker 1: On the Bechdecast, the questions asked if movies have women
Speaker 1: in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
Speaker 1: Beast start changing it with the Bechdelcast.
Speaker 2: Oh it was worth it, thank you? Oh oh oh.
Speaker 2: It's the big day, Caitlin.
Speaker 3: It's the Big Days, it's the.
Speaker 2: Big show, and it's Caitlin's birthday episode. We come to
Speaker 2: this place, We come to this podcast to celebrate Caitlyn
Speaker 2: Duranta's birthday, and on their birthday, we of course cover
Speaker 2: one of their favorite movies. But first, this is the
Speaker 2: Bechdel Cast. It is which means that, yeah, what does
Speaker 2: it mean? I'm Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean that you're Jamie loftas, it means I'm
Speaker 3: Caitlin Derante, And it means that we talk about movies
Speaker 3: through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply
Speaker 3: as a jumping off point. Jamie, what is that?
Speaker 2: Sorry, my mouth's full of biscuit.
Speaker 3: That's what you are, the baiscuit gobbler, as we've established
Speaker 3: five minutes ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I proudly self identify there's a biscuit. It's complicated. Listeners,
Speaker 2: there's a really gentrified biscuit place that opened down the
Speaker 2: street and I've been I've been gobbling it up. I
Speaker 2: don't feel good about it.
Speaker 3: Gobbled those biscuits, Jamie, but.
Speaker 2: I do get so hungry. Here's what the Bechdel test is.
Speaker 3: That passed. The Bechdel to us talking about gobbling biscuits,
Speaker 3: that passes.
Speaker 2: It's true because biscuits are famously genderless. So the Bechel
Speaker 2: test is a media metric created by queer cartoon as
Speaker 2: Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test. Lots of
Speaker 2: versions of this test was originally made as a bit
Speaker 2: as a joke for Alice Bechtel's Amazing comic collection Likes
Speaker 2: to watch out for a lot of versions of the test.
Speaker 2: Here's the one we use. We require that therapy two
Speaker 2: characters of a marginalized gender with names speaking to each
Speaker 2: other about something other than a man for more than
Speaker 2: two lines of dialogue. And sometimes and I'm just like
Speaker 2: spitballing here. There's movies that could be three hours long
Speaker 2: and not past this test. It's true, but yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the one we use. And then we also use a
Speaker 2: more important metric, which is the one that we made
Speaker 2: up called the nipple.
Speaker 3: Scale, perfect, flawless.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I would want the nipple scale
Speaker 2: to be called if we started the podcast today. I
Speaker 2: feel like we could a bunch.
Speaker 3: Of disagree if we had to do it all over again.
Speaker 3: That's the one thing.
Speaker 2: No regrets, no regrets that I keep. Well, Happy birthday, Caitlin,
Speaker 2: it's your birthday, it.
Speaker 3: Is my birthday, and as such I have selected one
Speaker 3: of my a recent favorite, but one of my favorite
Speaker 3: movies are R R, which is a Telugu language movie
Speaker 3: from India, so it's Tollywood, not a Bollywood film that
Speaker 3: I saw last year. So it was released in March
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two. It had a release in the US
Speaker 3: and kind of by word of mouth, it grew in popularity.
Speaker 3: I saw it in July or maybe June or July
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty two. A friend of mine was like,
Speaker 3: what you haven't seen rr You'd love it? So I
Speaker 3: went to the theater.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is a ramp.
Speaker 3: It is it is a romp. Yeah, romp.
Speaker 2: It's a round ron ramp.
Speaker 3: And I was in not a super full theater because
Speaker 3: it was just sort of like a regae the screening,
Speaker 3: but it was a rowdy crowd. The best way to
Speaker 3: experience this movie is in a theater with a crowd
Speaker 3: who is cheering and clapping. And that's how I saw
Speaker 3: it the first time. And then I've since seen it
Speaker 3: six times in theaters total.
Speaker 2: Often in Q and A settings, right, yeah, the.
Speaker 3: Director with the director in like huge theaters, you know.
Speaker 3: I think the biggest one was a like a fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred seat theater in downtown Los Angeles. I saw it
Speaker 3: at the Chinese Theater a few months before that.
Speaker 2: We saw it on the West Side at some point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we saw it in Santa Monica.
Speaker 2: Because Caitlin did. And I enjoyed the movie. But you
Speaker 2: dragged every single person in your expanded universe to this movie,
Speaker 2: to a screening at one point or another's, and it's
Speaker 2: not to a screening, then to your personal home where yes,
Speaker 2: it is true, and Sammy would show it you were
Speaker 2: you were working full time, unpaid You're in a full time,
Speaker 2: unpaid intern for the movie. R r R.
Speaker 3: This movie really spoke to me because and we'll talk
Speaker 3: about its many issues later on, but there's also I
Speaker 3: think a lot to love about this movie. I think
Speaker 3: probably most people are at least familiar with it if
Speaker 3: they haven't yet seen it. It is on Netflix. The
Speaker 3: version on Netflix is the Hindi dub, so it's not
Speaker 3: in its original language. And then it won a Golden
Speaker 3: Globe and an Oscar for Best Original Song. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I think it's like on people's radars for the most part.
Speaker 2: If you're if I think even if you're like a
Speaker 2: casual movie fan, this has probably come across your desk
Speaker 2: at some point, right, But yeah, it did feel like
Speaker 2: kind of a rare And we talk about this with
Speaker 2: our guests in a bit, and I guess we're formatting
Speaker 2: our episode a little bit different today where most of
Speaker 2: the discussion will be with Caitlin and myself and we
Speaker 2: have an amazing guest coming in later to give us
Speaker 2: more historical context. And the reason I say that is
Speaker 2: because there are very few Indian movies that cross over
Speaker 2: into the West in the way our r R has right.
Speaker 2: And I think honestly, like in preparing for this episode
Speaker 2: and watching this movie through the Bechdel test lens and
Speaker 2: Rebctel cast lens, rather it's just recurring. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: I know so little about Indian film, and yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know it. It made me, It made me think,
Speaker 2: made me think. And also RR is such a fun movie,
Speaker 2: and if you don't know any historical context for it,
Speaker 2: maybe watch it once without knowing and then listen to
Speaker 2: the second half of the episode and then go back
Speaker 2: and watch it again and watch responsibly. But it was
Speaker 2: really like because you insisted making it so like I
Speaker 2: was under duress, but I did. It was a it
Speaker 2: was a car load of Bechdel cast luminaries because it
Speaker 2: was you and me went and we're the hosts of
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 3: It's true, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: There's never been any others. And then also guest Sammy
Speaker 2: Junio and Catherine Leon were also with us. Katherine and
Speaker 2: I had not seen it before you and Sammy had
Speaker 2: seen it maybe fifty billion times at that point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 2: And so it was exciting, I mean, like watching people
Speaker 2: react to the movie in real time, and like, I mean,
Speaker 2: it was a bit scary at times, sure, but you know,
Speaker 2: it was very we come to this place vibes. I
Speaker 2: really liked it.
Speaker 3: It's a movie that feels like a movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, I truly. I'd never seen a I mean, I'd
Speaker 2: seen Indian movies before, but never like a big epic
Speaker 2: the way that this is. And it's I think it's
Speaker 2: kind of interesting for Western audiences because we're just like
Speaker 2: not used to it to have a movie that changes
Speaker 2: genres several times when like it's almost it's like a
Speaker 2: really pleasant creative jump scare where you're like, oh, I
Speaker 2: guess you could just start singing too, like And I
Speaker 2: know that that is like pretty commonplace in a lot
Speaker 2: of Indian movies. And also there's such a huge diverse
Speaker 2: film community because there's so many languages, there's all of
Speaker 2: these different industries. But I know in the East that
Speaker 2: that is a more common sort of film filmic language.
Speaker 2: But for a crowd full of people in Santa Monica,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh my god, it's a rom com Oh
Speaker 2: my god, it's an action movie. Oh my god, it's.
Speaker 3: Like buddy comedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like there's so much happening. I looked up
Speaker 2: the budget for this movie. What would you guess the
Speaker 2: budget for this movie was.
Speaker 3: I don't have to guess, I already know.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, Well, it's the highest budget movie I believe
Speaker 2: ever made in India.
Speaker 3: I think that's true, Yes, but it made.
Speaker 2: Me laugh at Hollywood movies because there there can be
Speaker 2: such slops where it's like the last Star Wars movie
Speaker 2: costs like two hundred and seventy five million dollars, is
Speaker 2: like running on absolute fumes. Babu Frick truly the only
Speaker 2: shock of life that exists in that movie. Meanwhile, this
Speaker 2: movie is on all cylinders whole fucking time, and it
Speaker 2: was seventy two million dollars. Yeah, USD.
Speaker 3: It really makes you wonder what Hollywood is spending money
Speaker 3: on with these wildly inflated budgets.
Speaker 2: I hope they paid Babu Freak one hundred million the poppit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's the third highest grossing Indian film worldwide
Speaker 3: and the second highest grossing Telugu film worldwide, the highest
Speaker 3: grossing one being another of this director's movies, Bahu Bali.
Speaker 3: Oh shoot. I don't know if it's part one or
Speaker 3: two because there's like the beginning and then the conclusion.
Speaker 3: All this to say that this is a huge movie globally,
Speaker 3: Like you said, Jamie, one of the few movies from
Speaker 3: India that crossed over and had and has like a
Speaker 3: huge following in audience in the US. It also has
Speaker 3: a huge following in Japan. And I'm kind of speculating here,
Speaker 3: but I think something that might account for that is
Speaker 3: that and I'm not super familiar with a lot of anime,
Speaker 3: but everyone I know who does know a lot about
Speaker 3: anime and who has also seen RRR, They're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: RRR is just an anime feel like a live action anime.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, So I think that might account for at
Speaker 3: least partly why it was so successful in Japan. And yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's like this global phenomenon.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the kind of movie where it's
Speaker 2: like there's fucking something for truly everyone. It's like, if
Speaker 2: you're not loving this movie, just like, wait twenty minutes,
Speaker 2: like and yeah, probably something totally different that you might
Speaker 2: like a lot better will probably be happening at that point.
Speaker 2: It's pretty like, it's pretty amazing. I really hope that.
Speaker 2: I mean I know that there are there are well,
Speaker 2: actually I don't, I don't know. I don't know what.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I am very pro and now
Speaker 2: we're doing this, but it still feels like it's all
Speaker 2: cohesive enough. There are sometimes where we were like hmm,
Speaker 2: that guy just changed rather quickly. They're like, I think
Speaker 2: right there. I do think that there is a moment
Speaker 2: in them. And this isn't even a criticism, but there's
Speaker 2: a moment in the movie where Beam goes from being
Speaker 2: such a dufus to like the most bloodthirsty man in
Speaker 2: the world. He has a good half hour of just
Speaker 2: full on dufus and then he's like, actually, now I'm
Speaker 2: hard as fuck for the rest of the movie, and you're.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, all right. His love for Jenny made him doofy.
Speaker 2: He's kind of like Hillary duffing a little bit. I not,
Speaker 2: He's kind of just like, oh, like, you know, yeah.
Speaker 3: Then he's like, wait a minute, I remember the mission
Speaker 3: that I'm on I have to save a little girl,
Speaker 3: and then yeah, he does that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would love to see Hillary Duff on
Speaker 2: a rescue mission movie. It's just not what. It's just
Speaker 2: not yet. At the time of this recording, Hillary Duff
Speaker 2: has not headlined a blockbuster action franchise. But but never
Speaker 2: say never.
Speaker 3: Well, that's because we have yet to write it.
Speaker 2: She uh, I mean, my unproblematic queen. I think hard
Speaker 2: to say. I think, as far as we know, haven't
Speaker 2: heard a bad word about her. I just know she's
Speaker 2: like married a lot of hockey players, which I think
Speaker 2: is just like a fun habit.
Speaker 3: Good for her.
Speaker 2: It's not the sort of thing you would think would
Speaker 2: happen more than once anyway. True.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's take a quick break and then I'm
Speaker 3: back and do the recap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, we'll be right back, and we are back a
Speaker 3: little context before I even begin the recap. So this
Speaker 3: movie is loosely based on two Indian freedom fighters who
Speaker 3: I don't think ever collaborated in real life. But basically
Speaker 3: this movie like re envisions history and is like what
Speaker 3: if they did collaborate and what if they were best friends?
Speaker 2: And also is a very it's funny. I don't again,
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever seen a movie framed this
Speaker 2: way precisely where there is a lot of and we
Speaker 2: talk about this a little bit with our guest as well,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot at the beginning of like, hey,
Speaker 2: this is these are real people, but the story is
Speaker 2: not real. So like you cannot get upset and you
Speaker 2: can't be mad, and you can't see me and you
Speaker 2: can't yell at me because it's not it's not real.
Speaker 2: It's made I made it up. It's real people, but
Speaker 2: I made it up, right, Okay, And you're like it
Speaker 2: almost like I don't know not to keep I just
Speaker 2: love to compare things because I'm judgmental, but it almost
Speaker 2: reminded me. But this like doesn't happen in inglorious bastards,
Speaker 2: but it almost feels like an inglorious bastard's level of like,
Speaker 2: for sure none of this shit happened. Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 2: I honestly didn't look in to see if these two
Speaker 2: people had ever collaborated and Raju, but I also know
Speaker 2: that it's like a very like overly simplistic, almost like
Speaker 2: a mythic view of these figures versus being super based
Speaker 2: in their actual politics or critical of any of their
Speaker 2: political legacies, which we'll talk about later in the episode.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's like I was honestly surprised to see
Speaker 2: that they were using actual historical figures for this because
Speaker 2: it feels so like mythic.
Speaker 3: I don't know, right, Yeah, because it takes again these
Speaker 3: two real life Indian revolutionaries Aluri Sita Rama Raju and
Speaker 3: comoram Beim and envisions them as superheroes.
Speaker 2: Basically, right so, and especially after doing some research and
Speaker 2: speaking with our guest, this movie is also very centered
Speaker 2: on Hindu figures and is pretty exclusionary of Muslim figures,
Speaker 2: which is something that we talk about in our interview
Speaker 2: because I think that a lot of Westerners who just
Speaker 2: like who went to this movie and got fucking pumped, like,
Speaker 2: we don't all have that context. So if you don't
Speaker 2: have that context, don't feel bad.
Speaker 3: But you know, I certainly didn't the first time I
Speaker 3: watched it, and had to do a lot of my
Speaker 3: own just sort of research and digging to learn about
Speaker 3: just a lot of things regarding Indian history, the current
Speaker 3: political climate of India, and how this movie fits into
Speaker 3: all of that. And that's something, yeah, we'll get into.
Speaker 2: Later, yet another way that the American schooling system failed us.
Speaker 2: I don't think I learned anything about India in school
Speaker 2: for the most part, honestly, sight of British colonization that's
Speaker 2: all I knew about.
Speaker 3: I mean, when I was a kid, my major frame
Speaker 3: of reference for India and Indian culture came from watching movies,
Speaker 3: and many of those movies, yeah, were horribly racists, such
Speaker 3: as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or they
Speaker 3: were told from a colonizer's perspective, like I watched The
Speaker 3: Little Princess a lot, and.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I mean, we're we're exposed to so much
Speaker 2: colonizer perspective in media. And then also even with I
Speaker 2: feel like I keep foreshadowing this interview because this is
Speaker 2: in our normal format, right, but also with r r R,
Speaker 2: it's like r R is very anti colonial and anti
Speaker 2: imperial on its face, but also excludes a lot of
Speaker 2: contexts that it's like not quite as radical as it appears.
Speaker 2: And so it's so I don't know, I think we've
Speaker 2: been we also listeners, you'll know that we recently covered
Speaker 2: The Woman King, and so we've just been like covering
Speaker 2: a lot of like loosely historical epics recently that are
Speaker 2: obviously going to influence people's views of the time and
Speaker 2: the people that are being discussed in the movie. I mean,
Speaker 2: and even for us watching r R for the first
Speaker 2: time last year, it gave us kind of a skewed
Speaker 2: view of of I mean a lot of different issues,
Speaker 2: and so I just I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 2: what to say. I just it's it's a very tricky
Speaker 2: problem because it's like it shouldn't be the job of
Speaker 2: movies to educate you. But it's also like willfully kind
Speaker 2: of ignorant to say like, well, I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't I'm I'm just I'm just a creative goofy goof
Speaker 2: messing around, and you're.
Speaker 3: Like, well, but but you also kind of have a
Speaker 3: responsibility to represent things responsibly.
Speaker 2: Right, And it doesn't mean that every movie has to
Speaker 2: be a documentary like but I don't know, uh, complicated,
Speaker 2: ongoing discussion. I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of
Speaker 2: it and the changes will be permanent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we will fix society because of it.
Speaker 2: Surely, this isn't an unknowable question anyways, So let's talk. Okay,
Speaker 2: So for this first chunk we are going to be
Speaker 2: talking about the movie and the story, and then we
Speaker 2: will return to the historical context because otherwise my brain
Speaker 2: will explode.
Speaker 3: Yes, so here's the recap. The movie is very long.
Speaker 3: It's not as long as Titanic, No, it's ten minutes shorter.
Speaker 2: But they and at the theater, they give you a
Speaker 2: they give you an intermission, which I think is so fun.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yes, oh felt good.
Speaker 3: So the movie is very long, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: leave out some details and characters, but this is the
Speaker 3: gist of it. We open on a village in the
Speaker 3: Adela bad forest in India. It's the nineteen twenties. The
Speaker 3: GND people who live in the village are playing reluctant
Speaker 3: host to Governor Scott and his wife, Lady Buxton, whose.
Speaker 2: Name is Kathy Too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, I'm sensitive to Kathy slander, but
Speaker 2: this Kathy is the worst Kathy in the world.
Speaker 3: She's really bad. So Governor Scott makes it seem like
Speaker 3: his last name is Scott, but it's Scott Buxton, so
Speaker 3: Scott is his first name. So that would be if
Speaker 3: people were like, oh, Governor Jamie, that's.
Speaker 2: So her president Joe, Yeah what, But.
Speaker 3: Everyone calls him Governor Scott, so that's great his name.
Speaker 3: So they are British imperialist colonizers. A young girl, Malay,
Speaker 3: is painting skin art on Lady Buxton. She's singing a
Speaker 3: song and Lady Buxton decides that she wants to keep Malay,
Speaker 3: so they abduct her from the village. Her mother is
Speaker 3: obviously crying and devastated.
Speaker 2: That first, I mean, yeah, it's absolutely brutal. She's kidnapped,
Speaker 2: She's kidnapped right in front of her, and then her mom.
Speaker 2: I thought the first time I saw the movie that
Speaker 2: her mother was killed, but fortunately she's not killed, but
Speaker 2: she was her I mean a yeah. In the opening sequence,
Speaker 2: there is a young girl who is abducted and another
Speaker 2: woman who is beat brutally. Yes, so right out the gate,
Speaker 2: it's very intense. Also, I just wanted to shout out
Speaker 2: the young actor who plays Molly's name is Twinkle Sharma,
Speaker 2: which is my favorite name I've ever heard. Love that
Speaker 2: like Twinkle. I love it. I love it, I love her.
Speaker 2: Will continue to follow this young star's career, We.
Speaker 3: Sure will, so we see this devastating opening sequence. Then
Speaker 3: we cut to the outskirts of Delhi, where we meet
Speaker 3: Rama Raju played by Ramcharan, a police officer working for
Speaker 3: the British government who is tasked with arresting a protester.
Speaker 3: We then see a long sequence of him beating his
Speaker 3: way through a crowd of hundreds of protesters and eventually
Speaker 3: reaching and arresting the guy.
Speaker 2: And it's like, it is, it is why, it's it's wild,
Speaker 2: it is really you. It's hard to describe how many
Speaker 2: things happen, because so many things happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if we didn't make this clear yet, this movie
Speaker 3: is like everything is dialed up to an eleven. Yes,
Speaker 3: the action sequences, the there's also almost constant music happening
Speaker 3: and like.
Speaker 2: And it's big music.
Speaker 3: Yeah, big epic music.
Speaker 2: As musicians, the music big.
Speaker 3: The music is big. We are scholars. It's one of
Speaker 3: my favorite scores of all time. It's such a beautiful
Speaker 3: arrangement of music. But yeah, everything is just like cranked
Speaker 3: all the way up in this movie. There's no subtlety whatsoever.
Speaker 3: Everything is just like.
Speaker 2: There's no boom boom boom, there's no rest. So if
Speaker 2: something sounds really intense.
Speaker 3: It is. That's what it's like.
Speaker 2: But yeah, huge, huge fight scene to establish the strength
Speaker 2: and will of ram Right and also that he is
Speaker 2: working for the British at the beginning of the movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we will come to understand Rom's particular motivation
Speaker 3: for being an officer later on. And even though he
Speaker 3: like accomplishes this like Banana's feat of like beating his
Speaker 3: way through this crowd and arresting this person, he is
Speaker 3: still not promoted to special officer, which upsets him so
Speaker 3: much that he punches a hole in a punching bag. Oh,
Speaker 3: because he really wants to be special Officer for again,
Speaker 3: reasons we will understand later. Then we see a meeting
Speaker 3: where this guy Edward, who is Governor Scott's right hand man.
Speaker 3: He is being advised to return Malay, the girl who
Speaker 3: was taken from the village, because there is a man
Speaker 3: from her tribe who will stop at nothing to hunt
Speaker 3: down her captors and find her.
Speaker 2: Oh. And then there's a really thrilling intro shot unlike
Speaker 2: anything you've ever seen.
Speaker 3: Just oh.
Speaker 2: Shot, it's really good.
Speaker 3: Yes, we meet camaraan Beam played by Nti rama Ro
Speaker 3: Junior aka NTR Junior, while he's chasing wolves and tigers
Speaker 3: in the jungle to capture them for reasons that will
Speaker 3: also become clear later. And then Beam heads to Delhi
Speaker 3: where he and his brother Lachu and a couple of
Speaker 3: their friends are trying to figure out how to get
Speaker 3: into the palace to rescue Maley. They notice this woman Jenny,
Speaker 3: who lives in the palace, and she seems nice.
Speaker 2: So Jenny's whole thing is every I mean. And again
Speaker 2: it's like part of this really broad storytelling of like
Speaker 2: she is the one British nice she's the nice colonizer.
Speaker 2: Yeah you like her? Okay, I guess no, we like her.
Speaker 2: She's Governor Scott's niece. But sometimes she's like, hey stop that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's literally the extent of her allyship is hey cut
Speaker 2: that out, don't do it. Yeah, that's how we meet her.
Speaker 2: She's saying, hey, cut that out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When an officer is beating a man for no reason,
Speaker 2: she says, hey cut that out.
Speaker 3: Yes, And then so Beam is like a woga who's that.
Speaker 3: She's pretty and she's nice, and they figure that if
Speaker 3: they can befriend her, she could be their ticket into
Speaker 3: the palace. Meanwhile, Edward and Lady Buxton are like, hm,
Speaker 3: I guess we should be worried about this guy who
Speaker 3: is going to come for the girl, but we also
Speaker 3: know nothing about him, his name, what he looks like,
Speaker 3: anything like that. But whoever is able to capture this
Speaker 3: man will be promoted to special officer. So Rom is like,
Speaker 3: I'll do it. I want to be special officer. So
Speaker 3: he and his uncle figure that this guy will probably
Speaker 3: be going to revolutionary meetings, So they go to one
Speaker 3: such meeting, and sure enough they meet Beam's brother Lachu,
Speaker 3: and so Rom and his uncle pretend to be Lachu's ally,
Speaker 3: but Lachu figures out that Rom is an undercover police officer,
Speaker 3: so he runs. There's a chase and Lachu escapes into
Speaker 3: a huge crowd nearby. A train is like leaking oil everywhere.
Speaker 3: It explodes and derails.
Speaker 2: And there's a little boy in the middle of the waters.
Speaker 2: It's like the steaks are always like a million guy high.
Speaker 2: This little kid is going to explode if Rom and
Speaker 2: Beam don't become friends right now, right.
Speaker 3: So what happens is there's this little boy who's about
Speaker 3: to die. No one seems to want to risk their
Speaker 3: life to save him, except for Beam and Rom. So
Speaker 3: they team up, not realizing that the other one is
Speaker 3: their enemy. They save the boy, and this is the
Speaker 3: beginning of them becoming best friends, because we get this
Speaker 3: montage of something.
Speaker 2: That's usually reserved for like falling in love, like falling
Speaker 2: in love, you know, but it's just like them having
Speaker 2: a fun time together. They're eating, they're going on little
Speaker 2: day trips.
Speaker 3: Oh, they're riding horses and motorcycles. Oh they're frolicking through field.
Speaker 3: Oh they're playing tug of war.
Speaker 2: Pretty nice. Oh.
Speaker 3: Beam is doing squats with Rom on his shoulders. Also,
Speaker 3: while this is happening, there's a song playing called Dosti
Speaker 3: and the lyrics are like, Wow, it's pretty wild that
Speaker 3: these two guys have become friends and that they don't
Speaker 3: know that they're actually enemies. This is probably gonna end
Speaker 3: in bloodshed and betrayal. Huh.
Speaker 2: And we're like, hold on, what I'm kidding? I do
Speaker 2: I do love and I know that this isn't this happened,
Speaker 2: but it's just like the exposition montage was really delivering
Speaker 2: for me. I loved it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a Greek chorus kind of thing. Because
Speaker 3: also this movie is like a Greek tragedy. It's just
Speaker 3: it's everything. So one day Ram helps Beam meet Jenny.
Speaker 3: We will talk about this meet cute later. There's no time.
Speaker 2: It's egregious. Yeah, this movie is a lot of things,
Speaker 2: particularly interested in women. Nope, it is not.
Speaker 3: But basically the movie becomes a rom com for a while.
Speaker 2: And a half hour.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Beam meets Jenny and spends the afternoon with her,
Speaker 3: and even though they don't speak the same language, they
Speaker 3: hit it off and she invites him to an upc
Speaker 3: party So Beam and rom get all dressed up and
Speaker 3: go to this big fancy party in a scene that
Speaker 3: was giving me because there are some Titanic parallels. But
Speaker 3: there's a scene where like Rom is giving Beam a
Speaker 3: little makeover and like putting him in a suit because
Speaker 3: he's like, what are you gonna wear to the party?
Speaker 3: And Beam is like this and he's like, no, you
Speaker 3: have to wear a suit. And it's very much like
Speaker 3: Molly Brown being like Jack, what are you gonna wear
Speaker 3: to dinner?
Speaker 2: And you shine up like a new penny y. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was that was very sweet. And then they got
Speaker 2: to the party and they look great.
Speaker 3: Oh, they look so great.
Speaker 2: And now they're at the big Colonizer party and yeah,
Speaker 2: we're about to have a dance off. This is the
Speaker 2: iconic Oscar winning song.
Speaker 3: Yes, because there's this British guy at the party who's
Speaker 3: super racist and he's like, you don't know anything about
Speaker 3: art or finesse or dance, and they're like, have you
Speaker 3: ever heard of natu? And then they do the na
Speaker 3: to na to song and dance and they win an
Speaker 3: Oscar about it, or rather, mm Kiravani does because he's
Speaker 3: the one who composed the music. For Flim.
Speaker 2: That scene is so just exciting, it's so good and
Speaker 2: also especially like I don't know seeing it for the
Speaker 2: first time, you don't see it coming, like you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is going to be like a rom com, comedy
Speaker 2: of manners, more stuff with like Beam and Jenny. But
Speaker 2: then it's like, no, it's a huge dance number. It's
Speaker 2: it's gigantic. It's just like so terrible. It's my favorite scene,
Speaker 2: no contest. It rocks the best.
Speaker 3: Jenny also loves it and she's like, wow, Beam, it
Speaker 3: was so cool when you danced. Do you want to
Speaker 3: come to the palace with me? So he goes to
Speaker 3: the palace where he finds Molly and she's locked up
Speaker 3: behind bars. She's treated as a prisoner and Beam is like,
Speaker 3: I can't rescue you now, but don't worry, I'll come
Speaker 3: back for you. So he and his friends plan their
Speaker 3: siege of the palace, but oh no, Ram has captured
Speaker 3: Lachu and he's like, where's your brother, still not realizing
Speaker 3: that the man who Ram is looking for is his
Speaker 3: own best friend Beam. Then we cut to Ram's home
Speaker 3: village where we meet his lady love Cita, and all
Speaker 3: of the people are like when is rom coming back?
Speaker 3: He's been gone for years and she's a flaw. He's
Speaker 3: a flop and he doesn't even remember you. And she's like,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But Cita is like she's like Christ like in her
Speaker 2: faith and patience in her fiance. And I mean, I know,
Speaker 2: like everyone in this movie is a huge star, but
Speaker 2: I think she in particular. I want to make sure
Speaker 2: that I'm saying her name right Alia Bot. She's like
Speaker 2: a huge, huge star, and I feel like she gets
Speaker 2: like the star reveal shot when she's because you turn
Speaker 2: around and then there's like a pause for applause and
Speaker 2: she's great. I just I would just wish that we
Speaker 2: had more. I mean, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just I was like, Wow, she's so virtuous, awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's really just sort of passively waiting around for
Speaker 3: her fiance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was like, Wow. If I was Cita, I
Speaker 2: would be getting a nosebleed fucking daily, being like probably
Speaker 2: like walking around being like he's probably dead, Like.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna move on and kiss someone else. Oh god,
Speaker 3: that's what that would be me.
Speaker 2: That's see, we're different. I would be walking around having
Speaker 2: a panic attack.
Speaker 3: But she'd be like, oh, you've been gone for three days,
Speaker 3: Well it's time to move on find another.
Speaker 2: Lover, I feel like, but she's doing neither of those things.
Speaker 2: She's just like, no, I believe everything is great because
Speaker 2: he's the greatest and and I'd be like, he's probably
Speaker 2: cheating on me. Wow, I'm stuck back here in Floptown there.
Speaker 3: So back in the city, Lachu throws a poisonous snake
Speaker 3: onto Rom and he gets bitten, and so Rom is
Speaker 3: like stumbling around and dying. Beam finds him and saves
Speaker 3: his life and then reveals his true identity to Rom,
Speaker 3: and Rom is still like actively dying, so he can't
Speaker 3: do anything about it. But he's like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: my best friend is the guy who I've been hunting
Speaker 3: down this whole time. What do I do? And then
Speaker 3: he recovers because Beam has saved him, and he's punching
Speaker 3: his punching bag some more and he's upset. Then it's
Speaker 3: the night of this big celebration to honor Governor Scott,
Speaker 3: which is when Beam and his friends unleash an attack
Speaker 3: so they can rescue Malay. They crash into the party
Speaker 3: and let a bunch of animals loose, including that tiger
Speaker 3: from the beginning. There's just like utter chaos as all
Speaker 3: these animals are running around.
Speaker 2: It is another I was like, because we like Hollywood
Speaker 2: movies have so many badly cgied animals, these are well
Speaker 2: cgied animals.
Speaker 3: They look good. They look pretty good. I would say
Speaker 3: it's not the best I've seen.
Speaker 2: I mean, no, cgi animal looks amazing, but like it's
Speaker 2: certainly for Paddington, it's I don't know, we can't get
Speaker 2: into this today. I think Paddington's looks a little scary sometimes,
Speaker 2: but but I mean it's certainly doing don'nuts around like
Speaker 2: the Lion King reboot and shit like that. But you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: like you can't look at.
Speaker 3: It horrifying looking so all this chaos is happening. But
Speaker 3: before Beam can reach Malay Rom shows up to arrest him,
Speaker 3: and Beam is like, what the fuck, you're a cop,
Speaker 3: you're my enemy, And then they fight each other for
Speaker 3: a long time. They're beating each other up, and then
Speaker 3: it culminates in Beam being captured, which is where we
Speaker 3: get the intermission or the interval. Then Ram gets promoted
Speaker 3: to special officer because he captured Beam, just like he
Speaker 3: always wanted, And then we see a flashback with Ram's backstory. So,
Speaker 3: when Ram was a child, his father was training their
Speaker 3: whole village to fight back against the British, but they
Speaker 3: don't have real weapons. So the reason that Ram wanted
Speaker 3: to be a special officer so badly is that it
Speaker 3: would give him access to a lot of guns, which
Speaker 3: he would basically steal and distribute among his village. And
Speaker 3: he had made this promise to his father that he
Speaker 3: would supply everyone in the village with a gun. Because
Speaker 3: one day, while Ram is still a child, the British
Speaker 3: Army raids their village and kills Ram's whole family. So
Speaker 3: he sees like his mother and his little brother and
Speaker 3: his father killed in front of him.
Speaker 2: It's horrible and it's also very mythic in the way
Speaker 2: it's presented as.
Speaker 3: Well, for sure. Yeah. Back to the present, Rom is
Speaker 3: feeling very conflicted because he wants to help his people
Speaker 3: and his village, but he realizes he's hurting people along
Speaker 3: the way, including his new best friend. Then there's a
Speaker 3: scene where Rom has to flog Beam publicly, and Governor
Speaker 3: Scott makes everyone come to watch because he wants to
Speaker 3: make an example of Beam, and during this beating, Beam
Speaker 3: sings a song that empowers the crowd to riot and
Speaker 3: revolt against all the British soldiers, after which Rom realizes
Speaker 3: he needs to help Beam escape, especially after Beam is
Speaker 3: sentenced to death by hanging. So Rom orchestrates this rescue
Speaker 3: mission for Beam and Malay and they successfully get away.
Speaker 3: Though Beam doesn't know that Ram helped him, he still
Speaker 3: thinks that Ram is his enemy. So then Beam and
Speaker 3: Malay go into hiding because the entire British military is
Speaker 3: out looking for them, and they happen to cross paths
Speaker 3: with Sita, Ram's lady Love, who tells Beam about Ram's
Speaker 3: grand plan to become a special officer so that he
Speaker 3: can supply his village with weapons so they can revolt
Speaker 3: against British colonialism, but that he kind of lost his
Speaker 3: way and betrayed his best friend, but then he got
Speaker 3: caught and now he's going to be executed, and Baim
Speaker 3: is like, damn okay, he was helping me. I have
Speaker 3: to go save him. So Bam goes to the barracks
Speaker 3: where Ram is being held prisoner breaks him out. There's
Speaker 3: another like extended fight sequence where they're fighting their way
Speaker 3: through the British soldiers with Ram on Beam's shoulders because
Speaker 3: his legs were badly beaten. They escape the barracks and
Speaker 3: go into the woods. More British soldiers come. There's another
Speaker 3: long fight sequence where Rom and Beam kill all of them.
Speaker 3: Beam is throwing a motorcycle around, Ram is firing arrows
Speaker 3: with grenades attached to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at this point, as we'll talk about in
Speaker 2: a bit, Ram looks like the mythic way that Ram
Speaker 2: is presented and like they're start or no, this is
Speaker 2: a little bit before that happens, right.
Speaker 3: So after they escape the barracks, Beam yes, because he
Speaker 3: knows medicine, he treats Ram's wounds. And then there's like
Speaker 3: these like orange flags nearby this place of warship. So
Speaker 3: he like takes the flags and the bow and arrow
Speaker 3: from this like Rama god statue and then basically styles
Speaker 3: Ram to look like this and do God. And then
Speaker 3: they fight the people in the woods, and then they
Speaker 3: are like, all right, bitch, it's time to kill Scott.
Speaker 3: So they head to Governor Scott's palace. They steal a
Speaker 3: bunch of guns for Rom's village. They destroy the palace
Speaker 3: and kill Lady Buxton and Governor Scott.
Speaker 2: And they kill And it's a great plant and payoff
Speaker 2: moment when they kill Governor Scott, because there was this
Speaker 2: whole long, evil speech that he seems to make all the.
Speaker 3: Time, all the time about the value of a bullet.
Speaker 2: Yes, which you can imagine. I thought that that was
Speaker 2: kind of a fun touch of like most fucking evil
Speaker 2: colonial blowhards like that have like one speech they know
Speaker 2: how to give, but then they're always like hot, like god.
Speaker 2: So anyways, they give the speech to him and then
Speaker 2: they fucking yeah kill him. Boing boying.
Speaker 3: It's very cathartic.
Speaker 2: It is very very exciting, and if you have no
Speaker 2: context for the rest of the movie, you're like, wow,
Speaker 2: this is a radical movie, right, and then you read
Speaker 2: a book and then you're like, oh, oh wait, no
Speaker 2: it's not. But it's still a good moment. It's a
Speaker 2: good moment, yes, indeed.
Speaker 3: So then, having defeated the villain, Beam and Rom return home.
Speaker 3: Rom is reunited with Tita, Jenny is there for some reason,
Speaker 3: Malay is returned to her mother, and the movie ends
Speaker 3: with a big song and dance number that pays tribute
Speaker 3: to a bunch of Indian Revolutionaries, although.
Speaker 2: Specifics there's a lot of omissions. Yes, and the director
Speaker 2: as as Russian movie, is in the conclusion like he
Speaker 2: is in the final scene, and so it's like this
Speaker 2: fourth wall break that is sort of like stating with
Speaker 2: the thesis of the movie was, which is I guess
Speaker 2: when you think about it, a little bit pretty nationalistic.
Speaker 2: And then it's like, not only is that there's like
Speaker 2: the big thesis song, but also the director of the
Speaker 2: movie like joins in which again I wouldn't like, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't hate that if Martin Scorsese started doing that. At
Speaker 2: the end he comes out, he's like, what'd you think, Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 3: And then we'd be like, yes, clap, clap, cheer, cheer,
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: It's like those awkward I feel like it's only happened
Speaker 2: since movie theaters have been opened, but every once in
Speaker 2: a while you'll go see a movie and then it's
Speaker 2: just like Margot Robbie being like, Hi, thanks for coming
Speaker 2: to Babylon at the movie theater. Enjoy the movie, and
Speaker 2: you're like, what the fuck was that? I do? Do that?
Speaker 3: Just yeah, So it's like we know, I mean in
Speaker 3: the same way that why is Nicole Kidman doing an
Speaker 3: advertisement for the theater that you're already in and about
Speaker 3: to see.
Speaker 2: For the culture.
Speaker 3: It's for the culture, and we come to this place
Speaker 3: for that culture.
Speaker 2: But those little flips that are like barely produced and
Speaker 2: clearly in the middle of a press junk at day
Speaker 2: and they look like they want to die. I'm like,
Speaker 2: this is not getting me excited for the movie. I forget.
Speaker 2: There was like a director too that was like welcome
Speaker 2: back to them, and you're like, oh my god, just
Speaker 2: start the movie enough.
Speaker 3: Yes, So let's say, well that's our yes, and let's
Speaker 3: take another break and we'll come back to discuss. And
Speaker 3: we are back and we are about to include our
Speaker 3: segment that we did with our special guest, who will
Speaker 3: introduce in a moment. But we just wanted to kind
Speaker 3: of give a little bit more context for the production
Speaker 3: of the movie. So it was written and directed by
Speaker 3: ss Raja Mouley aka SSR. So screenplay by SSR, Story
Speaker 3: by vj Andre Presad who is sa are his dad dad.
Speaker 3: They collaborate a lot.
Speaker 2: With Okay, fathers and sons. Yeah, and so SSR look
Speaker 2: hot topic these days. He's an Eppo baby, Folks, His
Speaker 2: dad is a very well regarded screenwriter in India who's
Speaker 2: been working since the eighties, I believe, and now they
Speaker 2: very often will collaborate together, including on this. So sometimes
Speaker 2: movies are about fathers and sons, including this one. Other
Speaker 2: times movies are made by fathers and sons.
Speaker 3: And often they are made for fathers and sons.
Speaker 2: Those are kind of those tend to be who movies
Speaker 2: are made for. So you know, good for you guys,
Speaker 2: you fuckos. But no, very very famous, not just director,
Speaker 2: but from a famous movie family.
Speaker 3: Yes, the two main stars, Ramcharan and Antir Junior are
Speaker 3: also from like acting dynasties.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, as is the actor who plays Sita. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: there's so much I mean, it's this is just entertainment
Speaker 2: in general. But and how power works, right but yeah,
Speaker 2: we just because we talk about it in the guest segment.
Speaker 2: As if you already know who made the movie, what
Speaker 2: you need to know is that S. S. Roja Movie
Speaker 2: is a very successful film director who collaborates frequently with
Speaker 2: his father. His politics. He doesn't like to talk about politics,
Speaker 2: which usually means something and and he makes these I mean,
Speaker 2: especially in this phase of his career. It seems like
Speaker 2: he makes big, big blockbuster movies for sure.
Speaker 3: And with that, let's bring on our guest, who is
Speaker 3: a writer critic. You've seen their byelines in Vox, Panel
Speaker 3: by Panel, Polygon, among others, and they were the author
Speaker 3: of a particular piece in Vox that we found and
Speaker 3: really loved entitled R R R is an incredible action
Speaker 3: movie with seriously troubling politics. It's reveish Babu. Hello, Hello, Hello,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 4: Happy to be here, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's our pleasure, so pleasure.
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, okay, I feel like I'm contributing.
Speaker 3: Yes, tell us, you're just kind of general thoughts on
Speaker 3: the film? Are are are? What's your relationship with it?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So the film is, you know, the latest entry
Speaker 4: by the filmmaker South Indian filmmaker from Natalia wood industry,
Speaker 4: which is, you know, the Deli wood language speaking cinema
Speaker 4: industry of India. It's the latest film by the biggest
Speaker 4: filmmaker of that industry who is now also India's film naker.
Speaker 4: And I grew up with his films, like I think
Speaker 4: I remember watching his first movie as a kid, and
Speaker 4: I've kind of always known his films like I watched
Speaker 4: everyone as it came out because like my father would
Speaker 4: make me watch them, and so they were like a
Speaker 4: thing that I always pretty much knew. And so it's
Speaker 4: been a weird, interesting experience to watch, like the guy
Speaker 4: your dad talks about at your home suddenly become like
Speaker 4: the guy everybody and their mom talks about, you know, globally.
Speaker 4: That it's kind of a weird experience, but it's been interesting.
Speaker 4: So this is the latest film he's made, and it's
Speaker 4: kind of like the biggest explosive porsion of what he does,
Speaker 4: and my relationship to it is it's complicated, is definitely
Speaker 4: the word I would use, because it's a film that
Speaker 4: is a great, big spectacle that works as a big
Speaker 4: action spectacle, but is also reflective of all the flaws
Speaker 4: and like the limitations of the filmmaker and the kind
Speaker 4: of space that remoiches from end. So there's a weird
Speaker 4: sit there that is kind of like, yeah, this is fun.
Speaker 4: But like I remember walking out of theater, I had
Speaker 4: a great time at the theater. I went to watch
Speaker 4: my dad and it was like it was a blast
Speaker 4: to watch, but I sat there with it not in
Speaker 4: my chest. Throughout, Like even as I walked that, I
Speaker 4: was like, there was that not until I actually sat
Speaker 4: down a road it read about it. It was kind of
Speaker 4: like it was a weird experience where I just untangled
Speaker 4: that not and kind of like think about it. So
Speaker 4: that's kind of where even wedding but it came from, right.
Speaker 2: I think that that's so because this was very much
Speaker 2: my entry point to his catalog. Reading your work and
Speaker 2: others work on just their relationship with this director in
Speaker 2: addition to this movie and sort of all of the
Speaker 2: baggage that comes with it is so interesting because I think, like,
Speaker 2: as you have witnessed, it's sort of like in Western
Speaker 2: movie culture, it's like, oh, you know, it's like a secret, like, oh,
Speaker 2: you've seen this movie that is one of the hugest
Speaker 2: movies in the world, But here it's sort of relegated
Speaker 2: to like really enthusiastic letterboxed users filling a movie theater
Speaker 2: on the West Side. And so honestly, when I first
Speaker 2: saw this movie, I did not know that the story
Speaker 2: was rooted in any sort of political ideology at all
Speaker 2: until I read your.
Speaker 3: Work and just to speak to your kind of complicated
Speaker 3: relationship with the movie, that's also, like so many of
Speaker 3: the movies we cover on this podcast, especially ones that
Speaker 3: we grew up with or have some kind of nostalgic
Speaker 3: attachment to or love in any way, we sort of
Speaker 3: have to reconcile that, like, oh yeah, it was a
Speaker 3: really entertaining movie to watch, but oh no, there's all
Speaker 3: these things that you have to unravel.
Speaker 4: Art isn't always once, and that's internal struggle for sure.
Speaker 3: So we've been kind of hinting at this sort of
Speaker 3: political and cultural context that again if you're not pretty
Speaker 3: intimately familiar with already, which like Jamie, I was not
Speaker 3: either I only I mean, I of course know of
Speaker 3: the caste system in India, but I don't know or
Speaker 3: I didn't know really any of the nuances of it.
Speaker 3: I didn't There's just a lot of things about it
Speaker 3: that I didn't fully comprehend. And also it was only
Speaker 3: very recently that I learned about the far right like
Speaker 3: Hindu centric government that exists in India right now, and
Speaker 3: how that informs quite a bit of media and like
Speaker 3: there's a lot of like propaganda and a lot of
Speaker 3: people are calling RRR like Hindu castist propaganda. So and
Speaker 3: this is what your piece. The writing that you've done
Speaker 3: about this movie is largely about that. So we're just
Speaker 3: curious kind of your thoughts on all that.
Speaker 4: Regarding the cast thing, you know, the guy and get
Speaker 4: at the white guy, and get at who's like I
Speaker 4: would have voted for Obama a third time or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like that kind of vibes where people are like Obama won,
Speaker 4: Racism is defeated, it's over, and like people act like that,
Speaker 4: but like reality is, it's like absolutely not. Castism is
Speaker 4: kind of life everywhere, and castism is built into a
Speaker 4: little sect of like the white things work. So that's
Speaker 4: kind of how that works. But regarding the movie itself,
Speaker 4: it's genesis is in the very specific who speaking region
Speaker 4: in South India weren't there was one state. It was
Speaker 4: called entrepredaesh Andra is the place Brebace essentially means place
Speaker 4: or state andreprebaish And what happened was a few years
Speaker 4: back in the mid twenty tens, they divided the state
Speaker 4: into you know, a state called Andra and like you
Speaker 4: had under the state formed called Langhana, which was a
Speaker 4: long thought, you know struggle like that state being formed
Speaker 4: was a long movement and one of the he figures
Speaker 4: out that sort of movement was comer Empin, who's you know,
Speaker 4: one of the figures in the movie, and the other
Speaker 4: figure in the movie, Sidramaraju, is like the under figure.
Speaker 4: So essentially, the movie, as Roger Mole tells, it, began
Speaker 4: with the idea of watching this one state become two
Speaker 4: states boats speaking essentially the same language but like the
Speaker 4: same language but like in different dialects for the most part,
Speaker 4: and trying to make a movie to kind of like
Speaker 4: showcase their unity essentially. And so Flangana's symbol being pen
Speaker 4: and like under symbol being ram and they're sort of
Speaker 4: like imagined constructive brotherhood on screen as a way of
Speaker 4: like symbolizing that sort of imagined friendship and unity of
Speaker 4: the states. And this is right through sort of like
Speaker 4: you know, Roger Molly's big sort of mythic influences, where
Speaker 4: like he grew up reading you know, some directors, like
Speaker 4: if you're in America, you grew up reading I don't know,
Speaker 4: some Spider Man comics, Orman comics or stuff like that,
Speaker 4: right because those are American pop culture. But like for
Speaker 4: someone like Roger Mole, he up on comics which are
Speaker 4: like essentially Amara means immortal ship, Throm means you know,
Speaker 4: picture Kata means stories, so immortal picture stories. He grew
Speaker 4: up on those comics, which are largely about retellings of
Speaker 4: like Hindu mythology and like stories about gods and like
Speaker 4: demi gods and figures like that. So those kind of
Speaker 4: informed his work and so and that's you see that
Speaker 4: evidently as prior film. Most evidently they're inbopability, which is
Speaker 4: two parts and it was a huge thing a few
Speaker 4: years back. But you've also see here where like his
Speaker 4: mythic influences and like all of those films are into
Speaker 4: the film where you know, Ram is framed at the
Speaker 4: end of the movie, like the mythic Ram god, right,
Speaker 4: you know, and Pim is like almost framed in the
Speaker 4: context of like the films like Pen from the Mahavaratha.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of stuff like that where and
Speaker 4: it's like you see his influences and the way the
Speaker 4: film works is essentially it's a big rallying cry. It's
Speaker 4: like celebratory and nationalistic. But the problem is in the
Speaker 4: way it is. See this is interesting because like when
Speaker 4: you see a movie like this, like you when the
Speaker 4: West first discovered RRR, A response was largely kind of
Speaker 4: like almost built in, like a sort of hyperbolic reaction like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, this is the greatest nope I've ever seen.
Speaker 4: I've never seen anything like this. There's a tiger and like,
Speaker 4: you know, it's kind of like over the top response, right.
Speaker 4: And also there's the kind of like and I think
Speaker 4: that there's a certain I understand that on a certain
Speaker 4: level because like when you look at Call of You,
Speaker 4: what what all of these movies are made in is
Speaker 4: a sort of like white Western hegemony, and so everything
Speaker 4: kind of exists and comes out through that mechanism, and
Speaker 4: that machine means certain kinds of films just don't get made.
Speaker 4: There are films that do sometimes get made are kind
Speaker 4: of exceptions. So when you see something where like you know,
Speaker 4: the bridish of like the white people are kind of
Speaker 4: largely twitted, like the way you know, I say, Indiana Jones,
Speaker 4: Sweet's the Nazis, they're like, oh my god, this is
Speaker 4: so cool. This is kind of like radical and like
Speaker 4: all of that because like this is anti colonialness, anti imperialists.
Speaker 4: But the reality is when you look at post colonials
Speaker 4: sieties and push bolomul nations. What happens is like when
Speaker 4: they're taken over and inflicted with all of that they're
Speaker 4: inflicted with across time, and when the oppressor is kind
Speaker 4: of like left and there's the independence, what's left is
Speaker 4: the sense of like there's a kind of whole of
Speaker 4: like what we were, what we became and we aren't,
Speaker 4: and what we are going to be, and so the
Speaker 4: sense of a lost past, but a lost what we
Speaker 4: could have been that is sought and seen. And so
Speaker 4: a lot of the times it's with stuff like that
Speaker 4: that nationalism is built. And when there's when you're a
Speaker 4: colony and when you're oppressed, that sort of nationalism is
Speaker 4: a very powerful revolutionary radical act to like you know,
Speaker 4: fight against the oppressor. But after the oppressor's gone in
Speaker 4: like decades have passed on and like it's almost been
Speaker 4: a century, right, that nationalism can sort of take on
Speaker 4: a different sort of flavor or fervor, and like it
Speaker 4: can feel of a different because like at that point
Speaker 4: it's kind of all internal mechanicians and politics, and so
Speaker 4: that's kind of what you're dealing with. Because like the
Speaker 4: Hindu nationalism and hindusw it animates a lot of the
Speaker 4: stuff that you see now about India and rooted in India.
Speaker 4: It goes back to the early nineteenth century when India
Speaker 4: was still occupied by the British, where in like you know,
Speaker 4: the Hindu right wing figures like literally went over to
Speaker 4: like Mussolini's Ghetaly and like toured all of that fascist
Speaker 4: nonsense and we're like, yeah, you know, this is pretty
Speaker 4: fucking cool. We should like we should get into this.
Speaker 4: And so it's kind of like taken from that and
Speaker 4: like combining it with like the worst aspects of like
Speaker 4: old school Hinduism and you get this very right wing
Speaker 4: ideology which forms the RSS, which is a stupid death
Speaker 4: cult of like fascist idiots. And that cult is what
Speaker 4: the members of that cult is the person that killed
Speaker 4: and shot Gandhi and so that cult got banned very
Speaker 4: early on for ages. But later on in the twentieth century,
Speaker 4: what happened is essentially you have figures like I think
Speaker 4: it was exactly the nineteen eighties when like the RSS
Speaker 4: kind of came back and like you know, made a
Speaker 4: kind of big thing, and they made a party called
Speaker 4: the BJP, and then the BGP would slowly grow and
Speaker 4: you know, now it's kind of it kind of runs
Speaker 4: the country much like the RSS ones everything. It's they're
Speaker 4: bigger than ever, and it's kind of a distressing affair. Yeah,
Speaker 4: back to the movie, it's kind of is it's very
Speaker 4: much a status pro movie in the sense of like
Speaker 4: the most average you know MCU or like an American
Speaker 4: blockbuster is kind of like it. You don't go to
Speaker 4: these movies for radical politics, right because, like in the
Speaker 4: context of a film like this, even though for a
Speaker 4: Western audience this might seem radical because it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: all the white people are not kind of great, and
Speaker 4: you know, it's kind of like anti colonial, anti imperialist,
Speaker 4: the reality in the context of post colonial societies is
Speaker 4: like when you look at a film like this, being
Speaker 4: anti imperialist and anti colonialist can still very much be
Speaker 4: a conservative position as opposed to a radical position when
Speaker 4: you're dealing with liasis, where like naturalism and all of
Speaker 4: that is used to your writing purses.
Speaker 3: Right because again, like on the surface, just for like
Speaker 3: a you know, average American viewer watching this movie, it's like, Wow,
Speaker 3: here's a big, fun spectacle with music and dancing and
Speaker 3: over the top action and it's got these themes of
Speaker 3: anti imperialism and anti colonialism and also friendship and the
Speaker 3: British people are.
Speaker 2: The bad guys. Friends defeat imperialism together, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's just like again, the first time I
Speaker 3: saw it, I was just like, woohoo, I'm cheering in
Speaker 3: the theater. I'm having so much fun. And then, you know,
Speaker 3: I started to do some digging about the like context
Speaker 3: from which this movie comes out, and as you outline
Speaker 3: in your vox piece and there's another piece you wrote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the words that you use in your
Speaker 2: vox face that really stuck with me is that this
Speaker 2: movie decontextualizes a lot of history, which I mean seems
Speaker 2: absolutely true, and also does it under sort of false pretenses,
Speaker 2: because if you don't know the history, it does seem
Speaker 2: like either this is made up if you're not familiar
Speaker 2: with the figures, or you're receiving some sort of grand
Speaker 2: historical epic context. Because we were. We just covered the
Speaker 2: Woman King as well, and there's a not a similar issue,
Speaker 2: but a historical figure who is represented as being abolitionist
Speaker 2: who absolutely was not, but that's how it's presented in
Speaker 2: the movie. And unfortunately, you know, and this is like
Speaker 2: an issue with historical epics across everything, but that's often
Speaker 2: about as far as people will, you know, take an interest.
Speaker 2: And so this movie breaking through with this specific viewpoint.
Speaker 2: It's a bit scary.
Speaker 3: Because you talk in your piece about how there's a
Speaker 3: lot of Indian media that again it's coming out in
Speaker 3: this pro Hindu is it pronounced? Which is this political
Speaker 3: ideology that is like reinforced by militant groups that's just
Speaker 3: like pro Hindu anti Islam.
Speaker 4: That it is the idea that it is the idea
Speaker 4: that India is essentially a Hindu state and should always
Speaker 4: be a Hindu state.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of just it's repellent, right which and
Speaker 3: it's and it's leading to, you know, extreme oppression and
Speaker 3: violence toward Muslim people who live in India. And then
Speaker 3: it's also reinforcing the caste system, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: a very elitist and oppressive system.
Speaker 4: Idea of a hierarchy, which is kind of always there.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting. It's like you look at this film
Speaker 4: and because we're you know, we're we are on the
Speaker 4: Bechtel cast So let's talk about that aspect of it.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure this movie actually past the adult test
Speaker 4: because like this movie is rife with a male centrism
Speaker 4: that is like very indicative of Roger Mally's work, and like,
Speaker 4: in fairness to him, I think it's also just like
Speaker 4: the kind of space humor just from so it's not
Speaker 4: just specific to his work, but definitely the movie is
Speaker 4: a glaring display of like limitations in that sense, because
Speaker 4: you look at them female characters in the movie and
Speaker 4: it's like it's Jenny and you know, it's Seetha, and
Speaker 4: both of them are kind of just framed in relation
Speaker 4: to these man and kind of all they do is
Speaker 4: kind of in service of the great Man's story. Like
Speaker 4: I remember recently there was a great interview with The
Speaker 4: New Yorker, you know, conducted by Simon Abrams with Roger Moully,
Speaker 4: the director, and Roger Moull completely imprompted, brings up the
Speaker 4: fact that he loves Iron Rand and like the fountain
Speaker 4: Head and shit like that. Yeah, and suddenly everything kind
Speaker 4: of makes perfect sense. It's like it fits, and like
Speaker 4: I think that kind of helps contextualize for Western audience
Speaker 4: in some regards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I've been to multiple screenings of this movie
Speaker 3: where SSR was is like there to do a Q
Speaker 3: and A. It's when he he was coming to the
Speaker 3: US a lot to campaign for like awards, to like
Speaker 3: try to get nominated for oscars and stuff like that worked.
Speaker 3: And so I've seen him in the flesh four times
Speaker 3: brag and people would always ask, like they would try
Speaker 3: to like get him to say that this was like
Speaker 3: a political film making political statements, and he would always
Speaker 3: refuse to say that. And and at one point he
Speaker 3: was like, oh, some of my influences in like American
Speaker 3: cinema are Mel Gibson. And I was like, no, yeah, funny.
Speaker 2: Oh I was so fun there for that one. You're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: we're having like a nice time.
Speaker 4: No Ill that interview, that very same New Rope interview,
Speaker 4: he talked like, Okay, So his dad is a screenwriter, right,
Speaker 4: and that's kind of how he broke him. His dad
Speaker 4: was a screenwriter. Establish screenwriter he got him working, like
Speaker 4: that's where he broke into the industry and and all that.
Speaker 4: His dad is a seasoned screenwriter and he's currently working
Speaker 4: on a big RSS movie for this fascist stupid death
Speaker 4: cult you know runs every He so the dad who
Speaker 4: wrote Coro, you know, worked on RR with me because
Speaker 4: like Roger Old. Every movie Roger Mullien makes mostly with
Speaker 4: his dad, that dad and his writer and closest collaborator
Speaker 4: is working on this RSS movie for the RSS is
Speaker 4: hired by them, and having done the research and work
Speaker 4: on that movie, he came out of it with a
Speaker 4: very favorable view towards this organization. And when asked about this,
Speaker 4: Roger Mulli in that interview is like, well, I don't
Speaker 4: really know what the RSS is, but I read the
Speaker 4: script and I cried, and it's an amazing script and
Speaker 4: it's so emotional and it's it would be a beautiful movie.
Speaker 4: And it's kind of like, that's what the exact moment
Speaker 4: of Like okay, one, saying he does not know much
Speaker 4: about the RSS is like total bullshit in the context
Speaker 4: in the modern India he lives in, that's kind of
Speaker 4: just disingenuous.
Speaker 2: It was, that sounds like a lie.
Speaker 4: And like two, it's kind of like it lays there,
Speaker 4: the bullshit, like I'm a political filmmaker, Like no, what
Speaker 4: even your supposed quote un a political stance is a
Speaker 4: clearly political stance because his stance is essentially a bare
Speaker 4: minimum basic statistical forming stance. And the thing about the
Speaker 4: status real forming stances is that like it largely affirms
Speaker 4: the systems and the way things are as opposed to
Speaker 4: any actual radical change. It doesn't actually have an imagination
Speaker 4: imagine beyond what it is. They can only see what.
Speaker 3: Has been right.
Speaker 2: That's something I've read that New Yorker interview as well,
Speaker 2: and it's really interesting, and that you mentioned that about
Speaker 2: seeing as SR speak in person, Caitlin, where it does
Speaker 2: seem like any time he is confronted with a political question,
Speaker 2: there's this tendency to be like, well, I'm just an entertainer,
Speaker 2: which is definitely a pattern that I recognize, and people
Speaker 2: who are clearly making political stuff but don't want to
Speaker 2: necessarily label themselves as such, because that even that I
Speaker 2: rand question. He says, I understand parts of her philosophy,
Speaker 2: but that goes over my head when she gets into it.
Speaker 2: I'm not such a deep thinker. I'm more of a
Speaker 2: dramatic thinker. So I like the drama part of it,
Speaker 2: and it's like yeah, but.
Speaker 4: You know, yeah, it's it's the essential like decontextualize. It's
Speaker 4: the idea of decontextualizing something and making a pure character drama.
Speaker 4: But you he does not seem to realize, or maybe
Speaker 4: he doesn't. He's not, you know, willing to admit it
Speaker 4: openly that you can't really decontextualize certain ideas in certain
Speaker 4: fantasies from their nature when you're you know, his essential
Speaker 4: problem then it's a problem that you'll see acrosss work
Speaker 4: is that he takes things and you know, presents them,
Speaker 4: but he never actually critically engages with them or is like, hey,
Speaker 4: maybe wait a minute, what does this actually mean? What
Speaker 4: does this choice or what does me packaging or representing
Speaker 4: this kind of thing implicate. He does not really think
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 3: He's just like, wow, cool, right, there's no interrogation of
Speaker 3: oppressive structures and systems that he has to be well
Speaker 3: aware exists, even though he's having deniability about it. So, like,
Speaker 3: the thing with R r R is that it's not
Speaker 3: like obviously and outwardly hateful toward marginalized groups in India
Speaker 3: such as Muslims and people who belong to lower casts,
Speaker 3: but it is centering and uplifting already privileged groups of
Speaker 3: people and subtly or maybe not so subtly, promoting this
Speaker 3: existing Hindufa ideology. Because as you say, in your vox piece.
Speaker 3: There's a number of Indian films that have come out
Speaker 3: just over the decades that frame a Muslim character as
Speaker 3: like the evil villain or or.
Speaker 4: More likely like there's things like the christianir Filds, which
Speaker 4: are l like vile, evil and kind of like this is.
Speaker 4: You can't even stand to watch this fucking frame of it.
Speaker 4: It's like it's so wild and heinous. It's kind of
Speaker 4: just disgusting and repugnant on site. And that's like a
Speaker 4: very clear for right wing extremist film. But like something
Speaker 4: like rr Is, I think something like it's a much
Speaker 4: more it's a quote unquote liberal film and that you
Speaker 4: have you know, Muslims, but like or even when like
Speaker 4: he is kind of like portrayed as a Muslims, he's
Speaker 4: kind of like the simpleton, or like it's very much
Speaker 4: the idea of like it's liberal and then like everybody
Speaker 4: and everything is subservient to this sort of like the
Speaker 4: Super Hindu Hero, which is kind of rom like right,
Speaker 4: everything is kind of like there's a hierarchical perspective is
Speaker 4: kind of what it highlights, even as it does not
Speaker 4: necessarily want to demonize anything, if.
Speaker 3: That makes sense, exactly.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's that's what I mean, the status pro yeah, right.
Speaker 3: And another example is Beam is an indigenous person in
Speaker 3: real life, and the character is indigenous and comes from
Speaker 3: the Gond tribe, and the movie kind of like rewrites
Speaker 3: who that character was. Yeah, calmar On Bim was a
Speaker 3: well educated person who could read and write, but the
Speaker 3: movie paints him as this sort of like uncivilized simpleton
Speaker 3: along with the entire community he comes from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like at the end the end of the movie, right,
Speaker 4: the big sort of like climax has him ask Peam,
Speaker 4: you know this figure for like the gift of education,
Speaker 4: when like in reality, Pem was an educated man. I
Speaker 4: think that kind of is illustrative of like the sort
Speaker 4: of hierarchical view the movie has and presents, which is
Speaker 4: kind of like the baked and casts of like gragernalized
Speaker 4: films you'll see again and you know if you watch
Speaker 4: Baba Belie, which is the big, you know, metaological blockbuster film,
Speaker 4: and the castism is kind of also rife there. So
Speaker 4: that it's the hierarchical perspective idea of why hierarchies and
Speaker 4: who gets to be on that and the way stereotypes
Speaker 4: derived from that perspective, that's.
Speaker 2: What you see it here, right, it does. And like
Speaker 2: if we are viewing this as a propaganda film, to
Speaker 2: some extent, it's very effective because you don't really realize
Speaker 2: it's happening. It's not good propaganda if it feels like propaganda.
Speaker 4: Right, it's kind of like you know a lot of
Speaker 4: American blockbusters, right, like the politics, you're like you kind
Speaker 4: of just accept that they're going to kind of be
Speaker 4: fucked in a lot of words. Like you watch Top
Speaker 4: Gun and like, I was just gonna it's a fun,
Speaker 4: cool movie if it's like a fun sports movie, like
Speaker 4: the first one is a fun sports movie, the second
Speaker 4: ones but like the dads and sons and stuff, and
Speaker 4: it's fun. But like if you stop for second to
Speaker 4: think about it, it's like, yeah, you know, this is
Speaker 4: really fucked the American imperiless propaganda absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's bought and paid for by the American military.
Speaker 2: Like Top Gun invented that whole of the system. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I mean that's certainly not what everyone I know
Speaker 2: thought the first time they saw Top Gun, and and
Speaker 2: the numbers sort of bear that out. There was like
Speaker 2: a spike in air force after that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: Guess this is maybe an extremely oversimpl like overly simplistic question,
Speaker 2: but for our listeners, what do you feel are kind
Speaker 2: of the most glaring oversimplifications or changes that really makes
Speaker 2: two history for the for the sake of this.
Speaker 4: Movie, well, definitely the one I mentioned about being and
Speaker 4: like not being educated, having to ask for the gift
Speaker 4: of education from a sort of Rom who is presented
Speaker 4: as like the war tragic. You know, Beam is not
Speaker 4: afford of the interiority of like Ram. If you watch
Speaker 4: the movie, Ram is like this complex, tragic figure, burdened
Speaker 4: and like all of these things, whereas Being kind of
Speaker 4: isn't a Beam is kind of like the simpleton who's
Speaker 4: kind of in response and reaction to the great complex
Speaker 4: figure of Rom. And so there's definitely that aspect of it.
Speaker 3: You also get a long sequence of Rom's backstory, and
Speaker 3: you get no information about Beam's backstory. The movie doesn't
Speaker 3: care to contextualize his character.
Speaker 4: That's it's the thing of like everything and every everybody
Speaker 4: kind of becomes subserving into the story of this great figure.
Speaker 4: And it's kind of very much like that. And it's interesting.
Speaker 4: It's like I look at this film and there's a
Speaker 4: lot of it is about like people talk about history
Speaker 4: and like history isn't just an assembly of facts, right,
Speaker 4: History is something that is constructed over and over and
Speaker 4: over again, and how it is presented, how it is
Speaker 4: like built and curated. And that's kind of like when
Speaker 4: you look at the end credits of this film, it
Speaker 4: is very much a specific curation of history with the
Speaker 4: historical figures, and he chooses to show like, for instance,
Speaker 4: it'll on you will not see you know a bit
Speaker 4: burn and the end of the film, who's a legendary
Speaker 4: Delta activist and is kind of like a father of
Speaker 4: the Indian constitution and possibly the greatest Indian figure that
Speaker 4: like the West probably should know over Gandhi, but somehow
Speaker 4: Gandhi is the one people know anyway. But like you
Speaker 4: don't see figures like that, but you will see I
Speaker 4: don't know Shivaji and those credits, and like it's baffling
Speaker 4: because like Shivaji was like had nothing to do with
Speaker 4: fighting against the British, like that was kind of after
Speaker 4: his time. The guy is kind of now a figurehead
Speaker 4: in like the modern kind of HINDUO discourse, so like
Speaker 4: he's in there. It's very much a kind of like
Speaker 4: I'm not being political, but I also I totally am
Speaker 4: by just like.
Speaker 2: Just creating things, right, Yeah, yeah, it sounds like a
Speaker 2: lot of it is by omission versus by explicit rewriting.
Speaker 4: He's more a product of like being a very uncritical
Speaker 4: and unthinking creator and artist. And at some points, like
Speaker 4: when the guy says, oh, I don't know much about
Speaker 4: the RSS or anything, that's sort of dishonesty.
Speaker 2: Right right, right, because when he's backed into a corner,
Speaker 2: you just have to start lying at some point.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also in the end credits, he omits a number of
Speaker 3: Muslim revolutionaries revolutionaries from casts that are considered to be
Speaker 3: quote unquote lower it's secular revolutionaries.
Speaker 4: Also, to add to another aspect of the film, I
Speaker 4: think it's interesting, like one of the things that I
Speaker 4: found people who are really calling too is just the
Speaker 4: idea of like this film finally portrays like you know,
Speaker 4: these white Brits is like the total bad guys and
Speaker 4: like absolute monsters caricatures, or like the Nazis and Indiana
Speaker 4: Jones are like, you know, these terrible monsters, and that
Speaker 4: as being about choice and like being something very cool.
Speaker 4: But what I found fascinating and telling is that, like
Speaker 4: the movie's conceptualization and presentation of whiteness is so simplistic,
Speaker 4: so it's very much all the white people are bad,
Speaker 4: and then there is this one white person who is good.
Speaker 4: It's Jenny, as opposed to actually thinking or reckoning with
Speaker 4: the idea of a complicity and system and like Jenny
Speaker 4: has complicit and the privileges for being who she is
Speaker 4: and her relation to that. It's kind of never really
Speaker 4: the movie has no conception of that. It's just simple,
Speaker 4: there's good, there's bad. It's a simple idea, so there's
Speaker 4: not much actually radical or interesting things. It doesn't actually
Speaker 4: think of complete in terms of systems or complicity. It
Speaker 4: just thinks in terms of like these sole individual figures
Speaker 4: doing things. And it's kind of it's the limitation both
Speaker 4: Roger Willi and the film.
Speaker 2: Right yeah.
Speaker 3: I at the end when like Beam reunites with Jenny
Speaker 3: and everyone claps in the theater every time, I'm just like,
Speaker 3: what are we clapping for? This woman is so complicit,
Speaker 3: Like her family are literally the governor's she lives in
Speaker 3: the palace with these imperialist colonizers, Like, what what are
Speaker 3: we celebrating here?
Speaker 4: It's the case of like a film not really having
Speaker 4: capacity to think or like really do anything. It's kind
Speaker 4: of just a very simplistic piece of work in that sense.
Speaker 4: Now that every you know, big super action blockbuster needs
Speaker 4: to you know, really reckoned with complicity and avoidance of
Speaker 4: all of that income. But like, if you're actually saying
Speaker 4: this is radical, I think it has to actually be
Speaker 4: radical as opposed to like being you know, really simplicity.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Yes, I wanted to ask about because this stuck with
Speaker 2: me the first time I saw this movie. That disclaimer
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the movie is really intense and
Speaker 2: in pretty long, and it's i mean, like going in
Speaker 2: with little to no context. You're like, ooh, what is this?
Speaker 2: Like this feels defensive. I wonder what like this is
Speaker 2: kind of going up against. But you know, like this film,
Speaker 2: apart from showcasing the culture and geography of India, doesn't
Speaker 2: imitate or imply any person, whether living or dead, doesn't
Speaker 2: indicate any race, cast, creed, or tribe. Any resemblance whatsoever
Speaker 2: is purely coincidental. The producer, the director, or the technicians
Speaker 2: of the movie have no intention whatsoever of hurting anyone's
Speaker 2: sentiments or disrespecting any traditions or maligning the beliefs of
Speaker 2: any individual or group. What do you make of that?
Speaker 4: I just think it's kind of like it's indicative like
Speaker 4: a film rather, isn't it. It's kind of like this,
Speaker 4: don't think of this as anything except cool character drama. Guys,
Speaker 4: don't think of this as anything meaning anything. It's like,
Speaker 4: it's not political. I'm just a cool dramatist, right.
Speaker 3: Like, don't yell at me. I'm not doing anything bad.
Speaker 3: And it's like, yeah, well you are, though, And I
Speaker 3: still I can't not love this movie. Like it's it's
Speaker 3: a fun time.
Speaker 4: It's a fun movie, and like I think that's okay.
Speaker 4: It's just a case of like you can like like
Speaker 4: I love hop and I love hopkuin Maverick and like
Speaker 4: the key is knowing, Hey, these are fun movies about
Speaker 4: like fathers and sons and like tool sports, action ship,
Speaker 4: but also like it's kind of fucked and like you
Speaker 4: kind of have like look with that complexity.
Speaker 3: That's our the I mean, the whole ethos of our
Speaker 3: show is you're allowed to love whatever you love, just
Speaker 3: be critical of the media you consume.
Speaker 4: Yeah, interesting, and that's.
Speaker 2: What we're doing which you think, but uh, you know,
Speaker 2: most people don't do it. And this makes this I've
Speaker 2: been thinking so much about just historical epics in general.
Speaker 2: It makes me want to go back and revisit more
Speaker 2: of them because no, I'm kidding, Oh.
Speaker 4: My god, that's actually a big influence on the guy,
Speaker 4: is it?
Speaker 3: That makes sense?
Speaker 2: I mean, because they're whatever they historical genre and I
Speaker 2: think I would put this movie in that category for
Speaker 2: at least big chunks of the movie, and almost every
Speaker 2: single time they have a very loose grasp on history
Speaker 2: and are often sort of the only interaction that a
Speaker 2: lot of people have with the with the history at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And it's interesting because like you look at art, right,
Speaker 4: art is Art's purpose isn't exactly, you know, to recreate
Speaker 4: history necessarily, But it's a case of you judge art
Speaker 4: on the merit of like, Okay, what is this trying
Speaker 4: to say? And what is this constructing? And what is
Speaker 4: this construct for and what does it mean? So even
Speaker 4: if it isn't necessarily historically accurate, you look at Okay,
Speaker 4: what is this trying to tell me? Yeah, and you
Speaker 4: judge it on bat merit, And like I think a
Speaker 4: lot of the films kind of when they do construct history,
Speaker 4: they kind of struggle with not thinking certain things through,
Speaker 4: and that's kind of where the pitfall is. But if
Speaker 4: you actually think things through, like can do something with it,
Speaker 4: I think you're kind of like more okay with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, this is my last question, but I I
Speaker 2: guess yeah, with any historical epic, it's like, well, why
Speaker 2: are we choosing this story to produce on such a
Speaker 2: large scale at this moment? Do you have an opinion
Speaker 2: on that of why SSR would choose this story in
Speaker 2: this moment?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely like to go back to the original point.
Speaker 4: He talked about the genesis of the film being, you know,
Speaker 4: the separation of those two states, and like so I
Speaker 4: kind of understand why because like in Andre Ram is
Speaker 4: kind of a big figure who's known, like you'll see
Speaker 4: if you go around a street, you will see like
Speaker 4: big you know, statues of the guy around the streets
Speaker 4: and stuff like that, and so, and he was a
Speaker 4: huge figure for that film and kind of movement. So
Speaker 4: there's a kind of sense of like, oh, he would
Speaker 4: of course he would make that movie, And that kind
Speaker 4: of makes sense, especially because there was a tradition of
Speaker 4: like having made films on you know, Ram before. There's
Speaker 4: a big classic movie based on Ram two before like
Speaker 4: eight years ago, was starting a big iconic star back
Speaker 4: in the day. So it's not new essentially, So he's
Speaker 4: just kind of part of that tradition and making films
Speaker 4: that no, and like even the interesting thing is like
Speaker 4: you look at a lot of the lugucinema and like
Speaker 4: there is a lot of it that draws on mythology
Speaker 4: and constructions frames its heroes or figures through that divine
Speaker 4: lens or like frames and Makinder goods and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: So he is part of that lineage and tradition. So
Speaker 4: I think there's a sense of oh, of course he
Speaker 4: would make this movie, Like it makes sense to me
Speaker 4: in that sense. But then you hear something like yeah,
Speaker 4: we're working on our r R two now, and like
Speaker 4: we're like we're working on a script and they're like
Speaker 4: but why though, why it's kind of baffling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, who's that gonna be about?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, I mean I wasn't able to find a
Speaker 2: lot of information on it outside of just like anytime
Speaker 2: something is successful, they're like, do it seven more times?
Speaker 2: But it's like, though, this is these are these were
Speaker 2: people like, what are you what are you intending to add?
Speaker 4: Everything is IP now truly?
Speaker 3: Do you have any final thoughts anything else you'd like
Speaker 3: to share.
Speaker 4: On the film itself? The way I think about it
Speaker 4: is just like it's a fun movie and I think
Speaker 4: people can like have whatever feelings they have about it.
Speaker 4: But it's just a case of like I would like
Speaker 4: people just think through and like kind of like understand
Speaker 4: what they're watching and kind of if anything, see's the
Speaker 4: saddest thing about the movie. For me, it was just
Speaker 4: like watching people watch this and kind of watching the response, going, Man,
Speaker 4: people really know nothing about Indian cinema at all, huh,
Speaker 4: because like we're India is a huge country with like
Speaker 4: hundreds of languages, and each state is almost into a
Speaker 4: nation of itself in the sense of like each state
Speaker 4: has its own language, it's its own like whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And it's kind of like it's it's comparable more to
Speaker 4: Europe in the sense of like it's a big thing,
Speaker 4: where as I as opposed to just one you know
Speaker 4: thing that's like it's a hugely diverse place and there's
Speaker 4: like almost twenty industries that are separate for each language.
Speaker 4: To make separate movies in those languages, and there's a rich,
Speaker 4: long tradition of movies all of them. And I was
Speaker 4: really strufy the idea of, like, wow, people know nothing
Speaker 4: about this, and it was kind of like, so, if
Speaker 4: I have any last thing, it's I guess just like
Speaker 4: I would like people to explore Indian cinema more, and
Speaker 4: just like, rather than going, okay, I watched this, and
Speaker 4: it kind of I would like people to like engage
Speaker 4: with and like see more movies in general, and kind
Speaker 4: of like, I don't know, develop a taste a sense
Speaker 4: for it as opposed to just kind of like making
Speaker 4: this one hit thing, right, I would like people to
Speaker 4: watch more movies period.
Speaker 3: Do you have any recommendations of films to check out
Speaker 3: that don't like uphold a troubling status quo the way
Speaker 3: that R R R does well.
Speaker 4: So the interesting thing is, I've really been liking the
Speaker 4: sort of recent tunnel movement in the tunnel in film
Speaker 4: industry has recently, in the few years, seen a movement
Speaker 4: of like delict filmmakers and like artists who have been
Speaker 4: making their own art, and so I would really recommend
Speaker 4: people check out stuff like that. So, like prune it
Speaker 4: and folks like that. I've been doing some interesting work.
Speaker 4: I would say, definitely check that out. That's interesting perspective
Speaker 4: and like that's a lot of like I think, where
Speaker 4: a lot of future stuff is going. But yeah, mostly
Speaker 4: I would say I want people to understand and like
Speaker 4: engage with film across the work. There's so much cool
Speaker 4: history to film beyond just the sort of like okay,
Speaker 4: there's like America, and then in dialogue with America because
Speaker 4: of monster movies and samurai movies, there's Japan and then
Speaker 4: there's Hong Kong as opposed to just kind of that's
Speaker 4: kind of like, let's kind of fully grasp with that.
Speaker 3: Cool. Yeah, I'm going I have a subscription to Z five,
Speaker 3: which is a streaming service for anyone who doesn't know,
Speaker 3: is I think dedicated specifically and primarily to Indian film
Speaker 3: and TV. So I have access to a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: well real, thank you so much for joining us. This
Speaker 3: has been such a delight, and thank.
Speaker 2: You for your work too. I yeah, it was incredibly
Speaker 2: useful and I'm very glad doing it.
Speaker 4: Appreciate it. Thank you of.
Speaker 3: Course, Where can people check out more of your work
Speaker 3: and follow you online? All that good stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I'm at writer pretty much everywhere and you
Speaker 4: can find me there and I'm a newsletter. I guess
Speaker 4: you can subscribe to that, though I haven't written more
Speaker 4: since my r or piece com is my website, So
Speaker 4: if you want to hit me up, that's where you
Speaker 4: do it. And that's kind of it.
Speaker 2: Amazing cool.
Speaker 3: Thank you again so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. This was fun. Yay.
Speaker 2: Once again, we wanted to thank Ravesh Babu for coming
Speaker 2: on the show giving us some context and giving us
Speaker 2: better insight into the movie. That was so awesome, very helpful.
Speaker 2: I like to, I mean, we like to at least
Speaker 2: try to be honest about our biases in watching movies
Speaker 2: and what we you know, you don't know, what you
Speaker 2: don't know. And even after I saw R R R
Speaker 2: with you, I read his work like that night and
Speaker 2: it was so so helpful and I don't know, it
Speaker 2: was really cool for him to come on the show,
Speaker 2: look at us praising a man sickos okay, and and
Speaker 2: now return to business, which is with that historical context
Speaker 2: in mind, let's talk about the characters. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: the relationships in the movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, shall we start with the representation of women. Ever
Speaker 3: heard of it? It's bad, It's bad. Here's what I'll say.
Speaker 2: It's not good, not good oil. Honestly it was. It
Speaker 2: was pissing me off, but in at least different flavors
Speaker 2: of not good. But I did. There was repeat it.
Speaker 2: Anytime man was talking to or about a woman. It
Speaker 2: was stuff like wait, I would cover writing it down.
Speaker 2: Anytime Rom talks to Sita, he says one thing and
Speaker 2: he's like, you're you're my strength, baby, Like like I
Speaker 2: am fighting for freedom and you are my strength, and
Speaker 2: like that is how men view women. Sita, my courage
Speaker 2: has always been my strength, but your courage will help
Speaker 2: me succeed. It's just very it's very reductive of Cita.
Speaker 2: But we also see Ram's father discuss Ram's mother in
Speaker 2: that way, exactly, saying that, oh, she is my courage,
Speaker 2: she is my strength, which you know, I think's interesting
Speaker 2: because it's like that sounds good, but it also inherently
Speaker 2: implies in action and implies like you hold down the
Speaker 2: fort while I go to man stuff exactly truly what
Speaker 2: it is where he is just asking her to and
Speaker 2: not to say that that is unimportant or valueless. Work.
Speaker 2: It's not, but it's very I think, very gender essential
Speaker 2: to be like, all right, you were my strength. If
Speaker 2: you weren't my my fucking wife, like I couldn't kill
Speaker 2: all these guys or whatever. You know, it's just very
Speaker 2: traditional view of gender, right, And.
Speaker 3: I know that that happened historically because of gender roles
Speaker 3: and patriarchical nothing.
Speaker 2: In this movie happened, so you could. As we just
Speaker 2: talked about for an hour, this movie doesn't have much
Speaker 2: of an interest in being historically accurate. So it does
Speaker 2: feel like a modern decision like that that was a
Speaker 2: twenty whatever, twenty twenty whatever decision to sideline women in
Speaker 2: this way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, women don't exist to be men's inspiration and sorts
Speaker 3: of strength.
Speaker 2: Exactly, I mean, but there are like slightly different flav
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, the only women that we get to
Speaker 2: know are Sita, Kathy, and Jenny, so three very different women,
Speaker 2: which and let's sideline Kathy for a second. The two
Speaker 2: women we are supposed to like are Sita and Jenny. Right, Sita,
Speaker 2: for the most part, like we were just saying, she
Speaker 2: is waiting, she's waiting, she's waiting, she's waiting around come
Speaker 2: home past reassuring everyone Mom's got this. Towards the end,
Speaker 2: she does get some stuff to do. I've noticed that
Speaker 2: Sita and Jenny both iconically do one thing. Yes. Uh,
Speaker 2: Sita's one thing is that she thinks really quickly when
Speaker 2: police raid the space where she has just met Beam
Speaker 2: and Molly. Yeah, and she says that someone has what
Speaker 2: the disease smallpox? Small pox? Yes, so she says that
Speaker 2: someone has smallpox, and then the police get the fuck
Speaker 2: out of there, and that is like her active, her
Speaker 2: one thing to protect someone else, which is great, for sure,
Speaker 2: It's one thing in three hours, but it's great. And
Speaker 2: then Jenny's one thing happens in montage from what I
Speaker 2: could tell. But the one thing Jenny does is she
Speaker 2: gives Beam a map likeware to rest, which is I
Speaker 2: think the only time we see her be like explicitly rebellious.
Speaker 3: Towards yeah, her family.
Speaker 2: We'll get to her in a second, but yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: they both do.
Speaker 3: One thing, and the thing that Sita does is accompanied
Speaker 3: by some violence, And so I wanted to bring up
Speaker 3: the kind of use of violence in this movie, which
Speaker 3: there is a lot of. This is a violent action movie, yes,
Speaker 3: but violence is used to brutalize women in this movie
Speaker 3: in a way that it's generally not used to brutalize men,
Speaker 3: with a few exceptions that I'll get to, But there's
Speaker 3: the scene where Cita like does this quick thinking and
Speaker 3: she's like, oh, someone has smallpox, and then she is
Speaker 3: violently kicked by a British officer. There's another scene early
Speaker 3: on where Maley's mother is struck on the head. We
Speaker 3: mentioned that one already. Both are moments of brutal violence
Speaker 3: that sort of seem to imply like, look how weak
Speaker 3: and helpless these women are, while when men do violence
Speaker 3: in this movie it's like exciting action sequences, with a
Speaker 3: few exceptions that I can think of, all involving Beam,
Speaker 3: such as the scene where Beam is brutally beaten by
Speaker 3: that one officer who brings his motorcycle to the mechanic shop,
Speaker 3: as well as the scene where Beam is flogged publicly
Speaker 3: by Ram, which, as we've discussed, Beam is treated differently
Speaker 3: from Ram, where unlike Ram, Beam is not elevated to
Speaker 3: this godlike status, He's not given a backstory. All these
Speaker 3: different things that like create this like imbalance between these
Speaker 3: two characters who we are supposed to like who are
Speaker 3: supposed to be equally important, but Ram is like elevated
Speaker 3: in this particular way, probably because Beam is Indigenous and
Speaker 3: indigenous people in India at this time. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if this is still true today. Again, I only have
Speaker 3: a pretty peripheral understanding of the caste system, but this
Speaker 3: was definitely true at the time, that indigenous people exist
Speaker 3: outside of the caste system because they are considered to
Speaker 3: be below brah monoical supremacy, which is the ideology that
Speaker 3: dictates the hierarchy and elitism of the caste system. So
Speaker 3: I think because Beam is Indigenous, and I know we're
Speaker 3: talking about the women, and I am sidetracking and talking no, no, no,
Speaker 3: this is important to Beam. But I just wanted to
Speaker 3: like point out the ways in which marginalized people such
Speaker 3: as women and indigenous people, the way violence is handled
Speaker 3: with them versus when like Ram is doing violence. It's like,
Speaker 3: look at this fucking awesome superhero and like all of
Speaker 3: his cool action.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, that takes it takes you to what we
Speaker 2: were talking about in our interview, where it was presented
Speaker 2: that Beam was not an educated man and he was
Speaker 2: serves the purpose of this story to downplay that and
Speaker 2: an exchange that I didn't remember to bring up was
Speaker 2: at the end one of the last interactions, maybe the
Speaker 2: last interaction that Rom and Beam have clearly establishes like
Speaker 2: Rom is the guy, which the political implications of that
Speaker 2: is Beam at the end is like, I want you
Speaker 2: to teach me Like that is so he like they
Speaker 2: don't really end as equals, which is so weird because
Speaker 2: the whole thing is that they're holding each other's hands
Speaker 2: and it looks like that fucking meme where it's like yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's like the power dynamic between them is actually
Speaker 2: always a little uneven because it's implied that Rom has
Speaker 2: an education and Beam does not. Rom is bilin well,
Speaker 2: Beam is not. Like there's all of these things that
Speaker 2: always give Ram like quote unquote the edge over Beam,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't nullify their friendship, but it does. But
Speaker 2: the movie still sort of ends with that being the case,
Speaker 2: where Beam is like, I want to be your student, Ram,
Speaker 2: and it's like.
Speaker 3: And the movie ends with yeah, Beam saying like teach
Speaker 3: me to read and write, and then Ram writes a
Speaker 3: phrase on a flag that real life historical figure Comoran
Speaker 3: Beam that was his saying, like that was his like ah,
Speaker 3: but instead it has Ram Raju, like this movie attributes
Speaker 3: that phrase to him. The phrase is jall jangle zamin.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I'm not pronouncing that correctly, but it translates
Speaker 3: in English to water, forest land, and it makes sense
Speaker 3: that an indigenous person would value those things and have
Speaker 3: that be their slogan for freedom. But instead this movie
Speaker 3: tribute ttes like the coining of that phrase or that
Speaker 3: slogan to Rom. Also, there's a scene in the movie
Speaker 3: where Sita is explaining to Beam why Rom went into
Speaker 3: the police force, and Beam responds by basically saying, like, oh,
Speaker 3: my vision has been so narrow here. I am only
Speaker 3: trying to save one person, but Ram is trying to
Speaker 3: start this whole big revolution, like his scale is so
Speaker 3: much grander than mine. And then Beam says the tribal
Speaker 3: that I am, I did not understand. So again it's
Speaker 3: positioning Beam, this indigenous person as being simple minded and
Speaker 3: not able to see the bigger picture, which is just
Speaker 3: so insulting and reductive to characterize an indigenous person in
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 2: Do not like all right, back back to back to
Speaker 2: the gaps. Yes, yes, so Tita, Yes, I think that
Speaker 2: Tita is presented as kind of your classically virtuous It's
Speaker 2: it almost it is like a you know, woman waiting
Speaker 2: for her man to come home from war kind of character.
Speaker 2: She does get to do one thing, she is subjected
Speaker 2: to violence immediately, And I totally agree with what you're
Speaker 2: saying there is like the violence is to demonstrate that
Speaker 2: they that like.
Speaker 3: They need men to protect them kind of thing.
Speaker 2: They cannot protect themselves. And then we have Jenny, who
Speaker 2: has a whole different set of issues. I mean, I
Speaker 2: just like, I don't know, I mean, Jenny and Tita
Speaker 2: are written very differently. Jenny, as we discussed. I think
Speaker 2: it is a big weird problem that like she is
Speaker 2: so I don't even know. It's like whatever the level
Speaker 2: above complicity is, Like it feels like too simple to
Speaker 2: say that she's complicit. Her aunt Kathy is on the
Speaker 2: other hand, like a full on fucking tyrant and is
Speaker 2: actively I mean, there's that whole sequence when Beam is
Speaker 2: being beat by rom It's such a hard scene to
Speaker 2: watch where she keeps suggesting like more and more brutal
Speaker 2: weapons to hurt him, when.
Speaker 3: She just has a spiky whip in her dress question Mark,
Speaker 3: and she's like here, use this, Yeah, I forgot.
Speaker 2: She had it on her. So she is obviously not
Speaker 2: the top colonizer, that's Governor Scott. But she is actively
Speaker 2: perpetuating violence against Indian people the entire movie and is
Speaker 2: often suggesting to her husband to turn it up to
Speaker 2: and eleven and make the violence even more brutal. So
Speaker 2: she is a very active character in the worst way, which,
Speaker 2: as we were talking about, that is sort of one
Speaker 2: of the things this movie gets really right is like
Speaker 2: and I think is very striking to I mean all audiences,
Speaker 2: but I think Western audiences in particular, where we're i
Speaker 2: think kind of used to being asked to empathize with
Speaker 2: the colonizer or to see that, like even in modern movies,
Speaker 2: to be like, okay, so colonization's obviously wrong. But the
Speaker 2: way that the tone of this movie makes it completely
Speaker 2: possible for all of the colonizers to just be like
Speaker 2: cartoonishly like as cartoonishly evil as colonizers are. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: it's like fun and cathartic totally.
Speaker 3: Though the movie, she's the one exception of like white
Speaker 3: colonizer woman who doesn't get let off the hook, because
Speaker 3: the movie lets all the other ones off the hook,
Speaker 3: and the only other one we really get to know
Speaker 3: is Jenny. But like Jenny, there's that whole party Jenny's friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's exactly yeah, like which recontextualizes the party in
Speaker 2: a way. You're like, it's such a good dance scene,
Speaker 2: but like what are we doing?
Speaker 3: And yeah, like all the all the white women are like,
Speaker 3: let's dance along to the not too not too song
Speaker 3: and these men are boyfriends. They feel threatened by these
Speaker 3: brown men, and they're trying to compete against them.
Speaker 2: Right, like every white woman is an ally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's like, well, no, that's not how that happened.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I appreciate Lady Buxton being in the movie
Speaker 3: and like depicted the way she was in a weird way.
Speaker 3: Because the racism and other prejudices that a lot of
Speaker 3: white women perpetuate should not be ignored or let off
Speaker 3: the hook, although they are too often, So I appreciate
Speaker 3: that this movie shows like, yes, like white women can
Speaker 3: be complicit and or actively perpetuating.
Speaker 2: Yes, Like, just because you are not the most powerful
Speaker 2: person in the world right, does not mean that you
Speaker 2: do not hold a lot of privilege and cannot weaponize
Speaker 2: it against other people.
Speaker 3: Also, fun fact, lady Buxton is played by Alison Duty,
Speaker 3: who is the Nazi woman from Indiana Jones and The
Speaker 3: Last Crusade. So she is very good at playing evil
Speaker 3: white women.
Speaker 2: What an interesting life of typecasting like wild Yes, okay,
Speaker 2: so back to Jenny, Back to Jenny. Okay, So like
Speaker 2: point while taken with Lady Buxton, I agree, but then
Speaker 2: also like Jenny undercuts that same thing right where Jenny
Speaker 2: is their niece and it's I'm not saying that, like
Speaker 2: it's within Jenny's power to dismantle colonialism, Like that's an
Speaker 2: unreasonable expectation. However, I feel like she's presented because she
Speaker 2: is nice and because she is not actively individually perpetuating
Speaker 2: harm against individuals and has I think there's like two
Speaker 2: different instances. One is when Beam first sees her, she
Speaker 2: tells off a police officer for beating someone for no reason,
Speaker 2: and that is like her technically using her privilege for
Speaker 2: good because she has more clout than he does and
Speaker 2: so he stops good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then the other time that we see Jenny likely
Speaker 2: likely push against a system of oppression is when she
Speaker 2: brings Beam back to the palace or the hat whatever,
Speaker 2: the big the big man, the big old place colonial
Speaker 2: manner and an officer or a guard or a soldier,
Speaker 2: what's the difference some guy, you know, some guy assumes
Speaker 2: that Beam is the help, and Jenny says fuck off
Speaker 2: and then apologizes to Beam and they kind of move on.
Speaker 2: So it's like, individually, sure, you know, she does the
Speaker 2: right thing in those moments, but I feel like those
Speaker 2: moments are illustrated of like therefore she is totally good,
Speaker 2: and like, I don't know, I just thought that like
Speaker 2: her level complicity was not examined in any meaningful way,
Speaker 2: in a way that there was room in this movie
Speaker 2: to happen, like and it seems like I know that Beam,
Speaker 2: you know, loves her, but it seems like he is
Speaker 2: the sort of person because he is so smart and
Speaker 2: because he is so motivated to dismantle the colonialism that's
Speaker 2: affecting everyone he knows, it seems like the sort of
Speaker 2: thing that he would want to talk about. So it's
Speaker 2: kind of like it feels like it suggests that, like
Speaker 2: women are so wayfish and powerless that it's like not
Speaker 2: even worth the discussion to examine their complicity or like
Speaker 2: I don't really know what that decision was. It felt
Speaker 2: a little out of step with who we know Beam
Speaker 2: to be. But the whole like Beam rom Com section
Speaker 2: of the movie feels a little out of step with
Speaker 2: who Beam is for the rest of the movie.
Speaker 3: Right, It's just like, I don't know if it's suggesting
Speaker 3: like the attention of a woman softens him up a
Speaker 3: little bit for a while or something. I don't know,
Speaker 3: because see.
Speaker 2: The at one point when the when the tiger is
Speaker 2: attacking everybody, he like puts Jenny in a.
Speaker 3: Car, who is dressed exactly like Belle from Beauty and
Speaker 3: the Beast. In that moment, me.
Speaker 2: Is and she she is very bell I mean, she
Speaker 2: looks like Belle too, But he I don't. Every time
Speaker 2: I see that scene and he puts her in the car,
Speaker 2: and it's supposed to be like I will protect you,
Speaker 2: You're my GF, now whatever, But he puts her in
Speaker 2: a car, I'm like, that could be that could be
Speaker 2: a kiss of death. That could be so bad for her. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that car can explode Like this, I wouldn't want to
Speaker 2: be locked in a car in the middle of a
Speaker 2: war zone. It just feels like you're almost more more
Speaker 2: vulnerable than if you could move. But what do I know.
Speaker 3: It's hard to say.
Speaker 2: In any case. With the three main women that we
Speaker 2: get to know, they are different enough. I think Sa
Speaker 2: and Jenny have certain qualities in commons, such as passivity
Speaker 2: and only being able to do one thing.
Speaker 3: Oh that's what I was gonna say. There's that scene
Speaker 3: when Beam is beating Oh yeah, there's another moment where
Speaker 3: like an indigenous character is being brutalized. When Rom beats Lachu,
Speaker 3: Beam's brother. He's like flailing his web his like stick
Speaker 3: around and his bacelet flies off. Men be flailing their
Speaker 3: sticks around and his and Rom's bracelet flies off, and
Speaker 3: we get a flashback where we see like the significance
Speaker 3: of this bracelet because like Cita has the other half
Speaker 3: of it, and it's sort of like, oh, they.
Speaker 2: Literally have like Claire's necklaces on that are like best friends.
Speaker 3: And he's like, wait a minute, I'm reminded that I
Speaker 3: have a girlfriend and maybe I should be conflicted about
Speaker 3: how I'm beating my fellow Indian. You know, Like it's
Speaker 3: just such a weird, like the way the function of
Speaker 3: women in this movie is, yeah, just like to be passive,
Speaker 3: to be the.
Speaker 2: Like also to represent purity and goodness and nonviolence and like,
Speaker 2: can't we just stop fighting? And you're like, and even
Speaker 2: with I mean MOLLI is I feel like Mali represents
Speaker 2: something similar to what the women of the story, or
Speaker 2: at least Tita and Jenny represent, which is like, this
Speaker 2: is what we're fighting for, that kind of like nationalistic
Speaker 2: and I guess Jenny doesn't actually really factor in there,
Speaker 2: but like Tita and Mali, I feel like definitely represent
Speaker 2: like this is why we do what we do for
Speaker 2: the women, which is in any nationalistic narrative. I feel
Speaker 2: like that always comes up. I mean, it certainly comes
Speaker 2: up in American media all the time. It comes up
Speaker 2: in Mulan. They all want a girl worth fighting for,
Speaker 2: and it's a very common and this movie doesn't challenge that.
Speaker 2: This movie, I mean, honestly, once you can get past
Speaker 2: the thrill of it, this movie doesn't challenge very much
Speaker 2: outside of imperialism and colonialism, which is very important to
Speaker 2: challenge obviously, But.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as we've discussed, it upholds the status quo in
Speaker 3: many other ways. The other thing I wanted to say
Speaker 3: about Jenny is the see the meet cute. Yes, so
Speaker 3: there's a really wild scene where so Ram is like
Speaker 3: I'll be your wingman. Beam, Oh, you want to talk
Speaker 3: to Jenny? Okay? So Rom grabs a handful of nails
Speaker 3: and throws them in front of Jenny's car to flatten
Speaker 3: her tires so that Beam will have an excuse to
Speaker 3: talk to her Jenny.
Speaker 2: The scene has played so goody.
Speaker 3: It's an extremely goofy scene. Jenny is completely oblivious as
Speaker 3: to what is happening because she's driving her car, but
Speaker 3: she is not looking at the road She's seen just
Speaker 3: like staring off at the distance, being like do do doo.
Speaker 3: And then when Beam realizes what Rom did, like you
Speaker 3: would expect that reaction, his reaction to be something like
Speaker 3: what the fuck, dude, you can't just like throw nails
Speaker 3: in front of a woman's car to get her attention.
Speaker 3: But instead Beam is like, thanks, bro, it was awesome
Speaker 3: that you did that, and Rom is like, yeah, it
Speaker 3: was pretty awesome that I did that, and Jenny is like,
Speaker 3: what happened? My tires are flat for some reason? Hahah.
Speaker 2: Literally, it is so like it it is it seems
Speaker 2: like it's almost like Vaudevillian in the way that it
Speaker 2: plays out, because you're like, yeah, I mean, it is
Speaker 2: very weird that Beam is like, oh cool, thank you.
Speaker 2: And also it doesn't seem like Beam really notices that Rob,
Speaker 2: like why can no one see that this is happening?
Speaker 2: And it also presents Jenny as being like not very
Speaker 2: smart and completely oblivious to the world around her, because
Speaker 2: you could, like, as an audience member, you can feel
Speaker 2: you can hear the nails fall to the ground, and
Speaker 2: the way she's driving is like she's not looking at
Speaker 2: the road, She's like looking at the yeads. Here's like
Speaker 2: they're just they make her look like, oh, like she
Speaker 2: has like two brain cells. Yeah, yeah, like it which
Speaker 2: is again, which is like doesn't feel like a very
Speaker 2: Again it's I know it's a different film industry than
Speaker 2: we cover, but it's like it felt weird to me
Speaker 2: of like twenty twenty two really.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, a movie like I have no doubt that
Speaker 3: men did things like this throughout history, because men are
Speaker 3: famous for doing scary things to get the attention of women.
Speaker 3: But because this movie came out in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: you would think that there would be a more modern
Speaker 3: version of that where at the very least, like if
Speaker 3: rom Is gonna throw the nails, Beam would be like
Speaker 3: what you can't just be flattening women's tires.
Speaker 2: Bro, Like, yeah, yeah, this movie is takes so many
Speaker 2: creative liberties that in moments where it's like, no, I
Speaker 2: think that that is I'm not saying that this is
Speaker 2: something that SSR has ever spoken to or as far
Speaker 2: as I can tell, Ben asked about, because it is
Speaker 2: like this is very much our wheelhouse of like what
Speaker 2: we what we would talk to him about. But like
Speaker 2: I feel like in big movies like this, this is
Speaker 2: a very broad statement and feel free to disagree, but
Speaker 2: like it seems like it's only in moments like that
Speaker 2: that creatives will like who maybe are not very interested
Speaker 2: in telling women's stories or anyone, but men's stories will
Speaker 2: be like, well that was the history. That's that would
Speaker 2: that's historically accurate, Like yeah, you also had a guy
Speaker 2: like beat a tiger, Like why is your stickler? Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like why is this the place that you are sticking to?
Speaker 2: Like well, this is how it would have gone in
Speaker 2: this state, and you're just like all right, man, sure
Speaker 2: fucking sure.
Speaker 3: And speaking of not being interested in telling women's stories,
Speaker 3: there are a number of women who fought for Indian independence,
Speaker 3: though as per usual, their stories are usually not told
Speaker 3: history tends to erase them, and media about Indian freedom fighters,
Speaker 3: like RRR tends to focus on men and ignore women's contributions.
Speaker 3: I'm pulling from scholarly journal Wikipedia, of course, but just
Speaker 3: to just to name a few. Prita Lata Wadidar was
Speaker 3: a member of an Indian Republican army who died after
Speaker 3: leading a siege a successful siege on a European club
Speaker 3: in Chittagong. Sur Genie Nadou was an Indian political activist
Speaker 3: and poet. She was a proponent of civil rights, women's emancipation,
Speaker 3: and anti imperialist ideas. Ronnie Lakshmibe was a leading figure
Speaker 3: of the Indian Rebellion of eighteen fifty seven and became
Speaker 3: a symbol of resistance to the British Raj for Indian nationalists.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that means the same thing as well.
Speaker 3: I think it means, but maybe I don't know anyway.
Speaker 3: And then there is Katsturba Gandhi who was a political
Speaker 3: activist married to Mohandas Gandhi and with her husband and son,
Speaker 3: she was involved in the independence movement for India. So
Speaker 3: those are just a handful I'm sure there were many
Speaker 3: more leaders of the movement. And then also just again,
Speaker 3: women's contributions to a movement like this in general are
Speaker 3: still crucial, but their stories are often never told. Even
Speaker 3: if they weren't like leaders of the rebellion, women were
Speaker 3: still doing shit and people often ignore those narratives.
Speaker 2: So yes, and I feel like that is something that
Speaker 2: again it's like, it's so tricky. Again. We just covered
Speaker 2: the woman King, and it seems like there is just
Speaker 2: now there is some or more interest in portraying women
Speaker 2: through history like this, which I think is a really
Speaker 2: good thing. And but then the tricky part of that
Speaker 2: is like, Okay, I don't know, this is kind of
Speaker 2: a discussion for another day, and this isn't about the
Speaker 2: women King specifically, but I always worry where it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: now we're going to show like war heroes who were women,
Speaker 2: And then it's like, okay, but are we gonna undo
Speaker 2: any of the really fucked up like narratives that happen
Speaker 2: in war movies and the glarification and the nationalism or
Speaker 2: are we just going to leave that as is? And
Speaker 2: now it's it's like a I'm so sick of this, right,
Speaker 2: But like it's like a girl bossy kind of thing
Speaker 2: of like, well, now we're going to show women perpetuating
Speaker 2: women can be war law words, right, oppressive war likes, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, that's a broad just gut feeling that
Speaker 2: I feel like we've seen that happen before in various genres,
Speaker 2: and now it's seems like it may have become time
Speaker 2: for this genre. So it's interesting. I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't know. We're all we're you know the world's can
Speaker 2: explode in like ten years is really hard to say.
Speaker 2: But yeah, did you have any other thoughts on the
Speaker 2: women of that?
Speaker 3: On the women's But I do want to talk about
Speaker 3: something that often gets discussed in movies about male friendship
Speaker 3: or where there are men who are friends, which is
Speaker 3: everyone is like they're gay. We've talked about this before.
Speaker 2: On It's like our Top Gun episode.
Speaker 3: We've talked about it. I think Fast and the Furious
Speaker 3: we talked about it. It's like the Frodo and Sam
Speaker 3: from Lord of the Rings thing. Yes, yeah, where close
Speaker 3: male friend ships are often perceived as having queer undertones
Speaker 3: because male platonic closeness is so foreign to people that
Speaker 3: when people see it They often ascribe a romantic or
Speaker 3: sexual component to it, which might be true for some
Speaker 3: male friendships, but it's often like the default reaction where
Speaker 3: so many people who I know who saw this movie
Speaker 3: were like, oh, Ram and Beam like oh, they're so
Speaker 3: gay for each other, which like that being the default
Speaker 3: reaction is complicated.
Speaker 2: It's like an onion discussion because you might want to
Speaker 2: be like no, no, straight, but also it's like they're yeah,
Speaker 2: It's like I feel like that. I don't know.
Speaker 3: It doesn't allow for the normalization of close platonic male friendship.
Speaker 2: Exactly with any sexuality, like across the spectrum, like you
Speaker 2: should be able to have intimacy with your friend without
Speaker 2: it being implied as romantic, and especially with men again,
Speaker 2: like across the sexuality spectrum men, I feel the way
Speaker 2: men are generally socially conditioned globally with few exceptions, it
Speaker 2: makes it difficult or there is this like implication of
Speaker 2: you should be ashamed to have an intimate and I
Speaker 2: mean like emotionally intimate friendship with another man or often
Speaker 2: another person at all, because we you know of deep
Speaker 2: platonic friendships between men and women. Is also always like oh,
Speaker 2: you guys are in love with each other and it's like.
Speaker 4: Not.
Speaker 2: And like the shift of.
Speaker 3: This reaction I think has gone a bit from like, oh,
Speaker 3: they're so gay and isn't that gross more to just like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's two guys and they're gay, and like, did I
Speaker 3: want to see Beam and rom kiss?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Kind of.
Speaker 3: So it's complicated, but also.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think it's like I agree with that
Speaker 2: you're saying. It's like, just normalizing a strong, deep, platonic
Speaker 2: friendship is like a worthy thing to do, and I
Speaker 2: feel like this movie does. It is one of the
Speaker 2: things that this movie does very successfully. The idea of
Speaker 2: like loyalty to your friend is an important thing. I
Speaker 2: think that that's really nice. I think it's good.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 2: Also, the last thing I want to say was anytime
Speaker 2: I think that, like, yeah, in the movies that we
Speaker 2: grew up with, and this doesn't really happen anymore except
Speaker 2: if it's like still happening on like network TV or something.
Speaker 2: But anytime there's you know, two, I'm thinking of like
Speaker 2: peak jud Appatow movies, where it's like anytime, like men
Speaker 2: can be friends in those movies, but they have to
Speaker 2: constantly qualify that they're straight. Anytime they experience a moment
Speaker 2: of like if they hug, if they if they touch,
Speaker 2: they're like what no, like just totally not like kind
Speaker 2: of god, what a what a distressing time that was? Anyways,
Speaker 2: not the case for Ram and Beam. They openly express
Speaker 2: their affection for each other by spending time together, by
Speaker 2: going on day trips. By I mean, they are like
Speaker 2: physically expressive with the way they love each other. And
Speaker 2: also like, because the tone of this movie is so
Speaker 2: soap opera, like, these men are certainly emoting, you don't
Speaker 2: seek I think like a lot of Western movies show
Speaker 2: like a male protagonist swallowing the pain and it becomes
Speaker 2: a fucking brick and his stomach and you're like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's acting. Meanwhile, Rom is like, yeah.
Speaker 3: They're they're both crying at different points like this, They're
Speaker 3: having emotions besides rage, because like rage, especially in like
Speaker 3: Hollywood movies, is like the only acceptable or like has
Speaker 3: been considered to be the only acceptable true emotion that
Speaker 3: men are allowed to express and feel. But guess what, everyone,
Speaker 3: the full range of emotions is available to people of
Speaker 3: all genders everyone. But also Rom often expresses his emotions
Speaker 3: by punching a punching bag. So there's that. Do you
Speaker 3: have anything else you want to talk about?
Speaker 2: I don't really think so. Yeah. I think that that
Speaker 2: that We've had a pretty comprehensive discussion. Also, listeners, especially
Speaker 2: our Indian listeners, we recognize that we've probably gotten some
Speaker 2: stuff wrong in this episode. We did our best in
Speaker 2: terms of prep and all of that, but we are
Speaker 2: very interested in what particularly our Indian listeners have to
Speaker 2: say about this. Yes, please, and just in general, because
Speaker 2: we always want to know what you think and tackling
Speaker 2: a big historical epic with which you are not familiar
Speaker 2: with the history can be kind of tricky. So if
Speaker 2: there's anything that we missed, please let us know and
Speaker 2: we will, you know, do do what we always do. Indeed, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's all I've got.
Speaker 3: Ah same. Does this movie past the Bechdel test?
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: There are a few small moments where women interact or
Speaker 3: female characters interact, such as when Jenny gives Molly a
Speaker 3: few gifts but Molly doesn't respond. No. There's also a
Speaker 3: scene at the party where a lady says hey Jenny.
Speaker 3: Jenny says, hi, Maggie, how's Max. Maggie says goddamn. Oh
Speaker 3: he's great, and Jenny says wonderful.
Speaker 2: I guess that Hi, Jenny, high Maggie. But that's not
Speaker 2: it doesn't count.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because immediately she's like, how's Max, And it's like,
Speaker 3: who's Max? Who cares?
Speaker 2: Like what do you? That's also with Jenny. That's another
Speaker 2: way that Jenny is shown to be kind. She's the
Speaker 2: only person who's kind to a child they've kidnapped. You're like,
Speaker 2: that's not, that's not enough. I don't know. I think
Speaker 2: I'm pretty frad I our captive address, and you're like,
Speaker 2: fuck you anyways.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, let's move on to the perfect metric our
Speaker 3: nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a scale
Speaker 3: of zero to five nipples based on looking at the
Speaker 3: movie through an intersectional feminist lens. Okay, let me talk
Speaker 3: through this. So on one hand, Okay, this is a
Speaker 3: movie about Indian people rising up against British oppression and
Speaker 3: imperial rule in colonization and obliterating it, which is very
Speaker 3: cathartic to see, and it's very exciting. It's a fun
Speaker 3: movie and the music and the two men are so hot,
Speaker 3: and well that's.
Speaker 2: An intersectional feminist win.
Speaker 3: And yes, So those are the good parts of the movie,
Speaker 3: but as we've discussed, it upholds the status quo of
Speaker 3: the current scale, very political climate of India, and it's
Speaker 3: more or less serving as Indian nationalists propaganda. I also
Speaker 3: want to be clear that our criticism of right wing
Speaker 3: Hindu centric Indian government is not a criticism of the
Speaker 3: Hindu religion. I'm sure our listeners understand that, but I
Speaker 3: just want to make that abundantly clear that we are
Speaker 3: criticizing oppressive fasci governments and political ideologies. Yes, so the
Speaker 3: kind of like upholding of the status quo and which
Speaker 3: again is a scary status quo, along with the movies
Speaker 3: treatment of women and indigenous people being very abysmal. I
Speaker 3: also wanted to point out that again Comaron Beim was
Speaker 3: an indigenous person of the gand tribe and tr Junior,
Speaker 3: who plays him is not a Gandhi actor. So there's that.
Speaker 3: But then you see Governor Scott's blood splatter over the
Speaker 3: words the Sun never sets on the British Empire, and.
Speaker 2: You're like, WHOA, right, it's I mean it is. I
Speaker 2: think that like this movie is so unseubtle too its
Speaker 2: strength and it's detriment. Yes, and its strength is certainly
Speaker 2: like best shown with its attitudes towards imperialism and British colonialism,
Speaker 2: and that all plays very well. But yeah, in terms
Speaker 2: of it having propaganda qualities, right, if not just being propaganda,
Speaker 2: it is kind of I don't know. Yeah, it is
Speaker 2: kind of freaky that like this movie can come to
Speaker 2: the come to a Western audience and like it didn't
Speaker 2: register for I think a lot of Western fans of
Speaker 2: this movie for sure, and so it's scary.
Speaker 3: It is scary and it's complicated. With all of that
Speaker 3: in mind, I think i'll give it like one and
Speaker 3: a half nipples. Still love this movie. I'm I'm gonna
Speaker 3: keep revisiting it, knowing its issues and knowing its many problems.
Speaker 3: But as far as like entertainment value goes, it's a
Speaker 3: ten out of ten on the Rampo meter.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, it's like seven movies and one. It's
Speaker 2: pretty fucking cool.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot to love about this movie. But
Speaker 3: we also, as always, we are going to acknowledge the
Speaker 3: things that must be criticized about any movie. So one
Speaker 3: point five nipples. I'll give one to Sita because I
Speaker 3: just wanted so much more for her.
Speaker 2: She could have done two things.
Speaker 3: She could have done two, maybe even three. Now, let's
Speaker 3: but reason, I'll calm down.
Speaker 2: That would be one thing per hour. Caitlin, I don't
Speaker 2: know that's too much. Uh.
Speaker 3: And I'll give my half nipple to Malley. What's her name, Twinkle,
Speaker 3: Twinkle Sharma. Oh my god, what a name, Twinkle?
Speaker 2: Incredible?
Speaker 3: What say you, Jamie?
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm coming down kind of hard. I'm
Speaker 2: going to give it one in terms again, entertainment value, gigantic.
Speaker 2: Do I enjoy watching the movie? Yes, the I mean,
Speaker 2: for kind of our classic spectel cast purposes. Women are
Speaker 2: in no way centered and they're like you're saying, like
Speaker 2: in like, there have been many women who have fought
Speaker 2: for freedom in India, And you know, this movie sort
Speaker 2: of casts a very wide, very broad, very familiar view
Speaker 2: of women as docile, domestic waiting for men to get home.
Speaker 2: The reason we fight certainly not the people who would
Speaker 2: be allowed to do anything. So in that way, I
Speaker 2: thought it was like a very kind of traditional view
Speaker 2: of gender. The way that Jenny's character is positioned as
Speaker 2: the one nice colonizer is weird. I don't think that
Speaker 2: that's an intersectional win of any sort. And also I
Speaker 2: think that I'm coming down kind of hard on it
Speaker 2: because we've covered these historical epics recently and in terms
Speaker 2: of intersectionality, and no movie is going to get history
Speaker 2: exactly right. And it's not the duty of fiction movies
Speaker 2: to be documentaries. I'm not implying that, but there is
Speaker 2: I think, like our discussion today speaks to like when
Speaker 2: you get history so wrong or there's a lot of
Speaker 2: omission like that can perpetuate harm against marginalized communities, which
Speaker 2: is what our whole contextual discussion was. And so I
Speaker 2: feel and again I know that it's like I am
Speaker 2: not well versed in these issues at all. I'm still
Speaker 2: a ton to learn, and a lot of this is
Speaker 2: new information. So if I'm coming down too hard, I apologize,
Speaker 2: But from the information I have presently, it just seems
Speaker 2: like this, this movie gets history or willfully emits a
Speaker 2: lot of important history in a way that doesn't you know,
Speaker 2: it like erases a lot of marginalized communities and uplifts
Speaker 2: some harmful status quos, which a lot of movies do.
Speaker 2: But because again, like we talked about this in The
Speaker 2: Women King episode two, when you involve actual historical figures.
Speaker 2: That's when it gets super super super messy. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: so that is sort of where I stand on that.
Speaker 2: It's a super fun movie to watch. It's really exciting.
Speaker 2: I like, and the live viewing experience. Someone threw a
Speaker 2: fucking like inflatable tiger at the screen.
Speaker 3: It was just like it was a lot people get
Speaker 3: up and dance along with the not to not too scene. Like,
Speaker 3: it's just an an electric viewing experience.
Speaker 2: It's intense, yeah, I mean, and so for the movie
Speaker 2: going experience, it's fucking unbelievable. Like Russian movie is an
Speaker 2: incredibly talented filmmaker, but a lot of the writing is
Speaker 2: a bit concerning. And so I'm gonna give it one nipple.
Speaker 2: I apologize if that's too harsh, and I'm gonna give
Speaker 2: it to Sorry, I guess I'm gonna give it to
Speaker 2: I'll split it between Molly and her mom because it
Speaker 2: is such a brutal two punch opening scene and I'm
Speaker 2: glad that they are reunited. I really thought that they
Speaker 2: killed her mom, and I am. The movie is so
Speaker 2: long that sometimes I forget that she does live between
Speaker 2: the beginning and the end, because.
Speaker 3: You only see her in the opening sequence and then
Speaker 3: in the credit sequence like yeah, she gets brought back
Speaker 3: to screen after the movie has ended and they're playing
Speaker 3: like the big credit song and dance number.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm just glad that Molly got to reunite with
Speaker 2: her whole family. I think that that is very It's
Speaker 2: what she deserved. So yeah, give it, give it one nipple. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I love you, happy birthday.
Speaker 3: I mean I give it only a half nipple more
Speaker 3: than you, so we're pretty much the same. But thank you.
Speaker 3: It is my birthday.
Speaker 2: Media, it's so complicated. Well, I'm covering Minion's Rise of
Speaker 2: Group for my birthday and we're gonna have a hell
Speaker 2: of a time.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Yeah, I can't wait. Yep, listeners, that's our
Speaker 3: r r r r r r r r r r
Speaker 3: r or thanks again to our guest with ash Baboo.
Speaker 3: Make sure to check out there writing and you can
Speaker 3: follow us. Hey, you know what, because it's my birthday,
Speaker 3: you can follow me on social media?
Speaker 2: Oh such as unfollow me in observiance of Kaitlyn's birthday.
Speaker 3: Yeah, take your follow take your follow away from Jamie
Speaker 3: and give it to me. Just kidding. You can follow
Speaker 3: anyone you want. But especially me on my special day.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to be more active on TikTok, which I
Speaker 3: don't know how to feel about. I'm less active on
Speaker 3: Twitter than I've ever been before, except to convince people
Speaker 3: to cast me in Paddington three, which is at the
Speaker 3: time of this recording, and we're recording pretty far out
Speaker 3: but so hopefully this doesn't change by the time this
Speaker 3: episode comes out. But production on Paddington three is slated
Speaker 3: to begin in July, so there's still time to cast me,
Speaker 3: and then Instagram and I'm at all of those places
Speaker 3: at Caitlin Deronte, please follow me.
Speaker 2: You can also follow our Patreon aka Maatreon at patreon
Speaker 2: dot com slash bachtel cast. Five bucks a month gets
Speaker 2: you a number of bonus episodes.
Speaker 5: And that number is too I don't know why I
Speaker 5: put it like that, And you also can do per
Speaker 5: month per month, and yes, you get access to I
Speaker 5: think close to one hundred and fifty back episode cat
Speaker 5: logs at this point, and then we'll be covering some
Speaker 5: of Caitlin's thaves on the Matreon this month, so check
Speaker 5: that out.
Speaker 2: You can also follow the Bechdel Cast on Instagram and
Speaker 2: Twitter at Bechdel.
Speaker 3: Cast, and you can buy our merch at teapublic dot
Speaker 3: com slash the Bechdel Cast. Treat yourself to a little
Speaker 3: t shirt, a little phone case, a little little pillow,
Speaker 3: whatever you want. It's my birthday, so you treat yourself
Speaker 3: in observance of the national holiday. Yes, yes, wonderful.
Speaker 2: Okay, well there's the episode We love you so much.
Speaker 2: Go have a nice springtime day, do it. Oh, also,
Speaker 2: my book comes out next week. Oh my god, yes,
Speaker 2: rad Dog May twenty third. We're gonna be covering it
Speaker 2: in our well, not the book. We're gonna be covering
Speaker 2: sausage Party next week. Sorry, bye bye