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