Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, 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: vest start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Hey, Jamie, what, Caitlin.
Speaker 3: I have a very particular set of podcasting skills, well,
Speaker 3: skills I have acquired over a very long career in podcasting,
Speaker 3: skills that make me a blessing for people like you,
Speaker 3: my co host of the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah wow.
Speaker 1: I mean, if charisma were a defense mechanism, maybe we'd
Speaker 1: stand a chance. But unfortunately, in the world of Taken,
Speaker 1: we're fucking cooked. What are his skills exactly? Not that sorry,
Speaker 1: finding people and killing people? Really, I guess that's what
Speaker 1: he promised. I guess in that way he does deliver.
Speaker 1: It is frustrating that even when you're like this movie
Speaker 1: is a force of evil face, or at least a
Speaker 1: force of like foolishness, the monologue still hits, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're just like, what is with that? Why is
Speaker 1: it such a good monologue? Like even in the middle
Speaker 1: of your like oh hate it, no, stop, no, no,
Speaker 1: And then the monologue stars and You're like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's hear him out. Let's hear him out.
Speaker 3: You're like, Okay, this guy's kind of a thing or
Speaker 3: two to say, and I'm listening.
Speaker 1: He has a particular set of what you know, like,
Speaker 1: let's let's hear him out. It's too bad anyway.
Speaker 3: It's the taken episode of the Bechdel Cast. Hello, my
Speaker 3: name is Caitlin Durante.
Speaker 1: My name is Jamie Loftus. And yeah, we have a
Speaker 1: very particular set of skills that would not get us
Speaker 1: out of any emergency situation, because this is the podcast
Speaker 1: where we take your favorite movies and look at them
Speaker 1: using an intersectional feminist lens. And we have chosen a
Speaker 1: movie that I feel is both on an easy and
Speaker 1: high difficulty level, depending on the way you look at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, but we're
Speaker 3: gonna use our particular set of skills to really analyze
Speaker 3: the shit out of this movie.
Speaker 1: It's true. We are talking about the two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight thriller Action Ba Bah taken Yes this week, But first, Kaitlyn,
Speaker 1: could you let me know what the hell the Bechdel
Speaker 1: test is? And by the bechel test, I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: spoiler alert. A media metric this movie has no interest
Speaker 1: in none whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Uh. Yes.
Speaker 3: The Bechdel Test is a media metric created by queer
Speaker 3: cartoonist Alison Bechdel disappearing in her comic dex to Watch
Speaker 3: Out for It was a test that appears to kind
Speaker 3: of examine how women don't really talk to each other
Speaker 3: and a lot of media or often there's just not
Speaker 3: two of them. There just aren't two women. And if
Speaker 3: there are two women, they're talking about men usually, So
Speaker 3: that's the test. There are many versions of it. The
Speaker 3: one that we use is do two characters of a
Speaker 3: marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other?
Speaker 3: And is there conversation about something other than a man?
Speaker 3: And yeah, this movie even if it like passes on
Speaker 3: a technicality which I honestly was not even paying attention to,
Speaker 3: because it doesn't, okay.
Speaker 1: I absolutely was keeping track. Was like, wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: funny if this movie somehow passed? No. I think that
Speaker 1: there is one arguable past At the end, when Kim
Speaker 1: is untaken and she's back from the airport, parentheses not
Speaker 1: reported to the authorities, and she says mom, and then
Speaker 1: her mom says Kim and you're like, You're like, I
Speaker 1: guess that. I mean that is important because that means
Speaker 1: she got home. But we can't. We can't know on
Speaker 1: vibes alone. This movie completely and utterly fails.
Speaker 2: So very true.
Speaker 1: Well that's the episode, bye, Yes, we were talking about
Speaker 1: Taken this week. I did not realize who some of
Speaker 1: the primary players in this movie are, which I feel
Speaker 1: like is revealing as to perhaps why it is the
Speaker 1: way it is the first. Caitlin, what is your history
Speaker 1: with the movie Taken?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: Take Can is a movie I have seen before once,
Speaker 3: though not when it came out. I slept on it
Speaker 3: for a long time because as much as I do
Speaker 3: like action movies, this is a subgenre of action that
Speaker 3: I don't give a shit about at all.
Speaker 1: How would you qualify this sub action.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess just like toxic dudes saving a woman
Speaker 3: question mark, I don't know why.
Speaker 1: Is sort of like I guess you could put it
Speaker 1: under a revenge movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like kind of thing, and I'm fine with some
Speaker 3: revenge stories. I don't like inherently dismiss all of those.
Speaker 3: The action movies I do like are ones that are
Speaker 3: like action adventure or I love like a kind of espionage,
Speaker 3: you know, Mission Impossible, James Bond kind of thing generally,
Speaker 3: and ones that have some degree of like comic relief
Speaker 3: or fun or rompiness to them. This movie is not
Speaker 3: a romp because it's just it's not light at all.
Speaker 3: It's not fun.
Speaker 2: It's too dark.
Speaker 1: Now, the parts of this movie that are funny are
Speaker 1: completely by accident. Yes, my biggest laugh of this because
Speaker 1: I will talk about my history with it in a second,
Speaker 1: but like, I just hadn't seen this movie in a
Speaker 1: long time, and I forgot the inciting act is that
Speaker 1: a seventeen year old girl in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: is going to follow you too around Europe. I was like,
Speaker 1: these fucking like also Luke Beason screenplay and we'll get
Speaker 1: to him. I mean, but like a known sex criminal
Speaker 1: co wrote this. Yes, but the fact that they couldn't
Speaker 1: even bother to look up act more women are tempested
Speaker 1: in like they're like, who would have who would I
Speaker 1: have followed around twenty years ago?
Speaker 2: Oh? You too?
Speaker 1: I guess I just can't imagine a world where and
Speaker 1: now there's like one millennial YOUTWO fan shaking their fists.
Speaker 1: But I'm just like, statistically unlikely, right, especially because we're
Speaker 1: introduced with like, she's a huge fan of this pop singer,
Speaker 1: but she's willing to put her life on the line
Speaker 1: to see you too.
Speaker 3: In multiple cities, following you two around Europe.
Speaker 1: Crip, young women these days see you two strictly by accident,
Speaker 1: Like it's just so, that's the funny part of the bit.
Speaker 1: But no, Yeah, this movie takes itself very seriously. That's
Speaker 1: a non starter. With a lot of action movies for me,
Speaker 1: I don't like but it's just one guy. I prefer
Speaker 1: a group. I prefer a little bit of levity adventure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not an adventure. This is very punishing, for sure.
Speaker 3: So I didn't see it for many years, but I
Speaker 3: kept seeing the meme the I have a particular shutter
Speaker 3: skull as blah blah blah, and I was like, should
Speaker 3: I see this movie? I guess, And then I watched
Speaker 3: it and I was like, well, that was fucking racist
Speaker 3: and shitty and sexist and all the horrible things. So
Speaker 3: I didn't ever revisit it. What is your relationship with
Speaker 3: the movie, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Shockingly, I saw this movie in theaters when it came
Speaker 1: out because I was in I mean, primarily because I
Speaker 1: was in high school when this movie came out, sure,
Speaker 1: and it was Friday. I think that that's the extent
Speaker 1: of it. I remember going to see this movie with
Speaker 1: my friend Kim, which was a source of fun because
Speaker 1: the girl who's taken his name is Kim. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so for you know, weeks, months years after, you'd be like,
Speaker 1: where are you? So that's my primary association with this
Speaker 1: movie is just like sort of a pleasant night out
Speaker 1: with friends. But having lived it, I can say this
Speaker 1: movie I didn't remember because I'd only seen it once,
Speaker 1: because even in eight I was like, this is not
Speaker 1: my kind of movie. I just like, am I'm here
Speaker 1: for the ride? Whatever? Yeah, But I do vive more
Speaker 1: so than any detail in the movie. Besides the monologue,
Speaker 1: I remember like people were the theater was absolutely packed.
Speaker 1: This movie was wildly successful in spite of what it is,
Speaker 1: which is like, also, I feel like it is interesting
Speaker 1: to revisit movies from like this specific set of years
Speaker 1: right now because we're heading into I think a similar
Speaker 1: era in movies where it's just like recession era movies
Speaker 1: and movies that have Bizarrely, I think we're like disproportionately
Speaker 1: right wing y themes are becoming, you know, like critically
Speaker 1: and commercially successful in a way that they might not
Speaker 1: be outside of my recession. Anyway, I saw this movie
Speaker 1: during the recession, and yeah, the crowd was freaking loving it.
Speaker 1: I just remember like every line, like every monology Lineleamnising
Speaker 1: gave the crowd was like like it was just it
Speaker 1: was a very the vibe was electric the movie, I
Speaker 1: thought then and more so now. At the time, I
Speaker 1: was just like, ugh, this is boring, depressing, and I
Speaker 1: don't like it. And now as an adult feminist, just like,
Speaker 1: this movie is boring, depressing and also racist and pro
Speaker 1: military and hates women. So yeah, I didn't like it then,
Speaker 1: but I do vividly remember seeing it. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean this as a positive, this is a neutral statement,
Speaker 1: but I understand why this movie was successful when it
Speaker 1: was successful, and because we're going into another era of
Speaker 1: procession era movies, I think it's interesting to revisit. I
Speaker 1: also knew I was aware of the sequels. I can't
Speaker 1: say I ever took interest, but I was like, I
Speaker 1: wonder if they first of all get rid of Lucas
Speaker 1: on at any time they did not or like what happened.
Speaker 3: I was also curious. I was like, does the daughter
Speaker 3: just keep does she get taken? I can tell you,
Speaker 3: please indulge me.
Speaker 1: Taken to Leonor is taken, Yes, and then it seems
Speaker 1: that Kim sort of helps during the second act, but
Speaker 1: then she's removed from the help by the end of
Speaker 1: the movie. So I feel like Taken two might be
Speaker 1: the closest to women being involved in the plot just
Speaker 1: off of Wikipedia. Kim is helpful at some points, yes,
Speaker 1: but it seems like mainly through executing what her dad
Speaker 1: tells her, but she does do things. Taken three is
Speaker 1: a return to form, but even worse because Leonor is murdered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Brian aka Liam Neesai, I'm not gonna call how this
Speaker 1: character Brian liam Neeson is accused of her murder. Now
Speaker 1: Kim is pregnant, she's heavy with Greg.
Speaker 2: Pregnant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's pregnant and Taken three and then she's taken again.
Speaker 1: So Taking three feels just like, what can we do
Speaker 1: to these women? We can get them pregnant and we
Speaker 1: can kill them. And I do feel like that is
Speaker 1: ultimately the politics of this world is what are women
Speaker 1: good for? Sex and property? Because that's the thing. Like,
Speaker 1: when it comes down to it, I don't know this movie.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of a lot of a lot, a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of movies, and some of them are
Speaker 1: better than others. But it's just like I kept hearing
Speaker 1: the like Sean pen read of it from Mystic River
Speaker 1: where he's like my daughter, Like, it's like, that's all
Speaker 1: this movie is is. It's like taking all of the
Speaker 1: tropes around, specifically the relationship of fathers being possessive and
Speaker 1: overprotective of their daughters, and creating a world in which
Speaker 1: this is the most rational behavior that could possibly be.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's like a pretty like four DHS
Speaker 1: vile kind of movie. But it was, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't really remember much about it, so I was
Speaker 1: coming in pretty fresh.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: Well, let's take a quick break and then come back
Speaker 3: for the recap. Let's take in.
Speaker 1: Let's take it.
Speaker 4: No cale, Yeah, don't get taken during the BAK going
Speaker 4: to take you to an ad break. Describe the products
Speaker 4: and services well, quite frankly, we don't know what's about
Speaker 4: to play, but say it as loud as you can
Speaker 4: on the phone.
Speaker 2: Okay, BRB, and we're okay.
Speaker 1: We're back.
Speaker 2: We're back.
Speaker 1: Don't you think it's funny that? I mean, I understand
Speaker 1: the I guess, I sort of. I don't understand. I
Speaker 1: don't even if the writers understand. But when Kim is
Speaker 1: taken and then Leam Neeson goes to France that he
Speaker 1: gets under the same bed and is like my daughters
Speaker 1: under this bed, it's.
Speaker 2: A little goofy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an extremely goofy movie. This horrible movie. But anyway, sorry,
Speaker 1: welcome back. Let's find out what happens and taken. Let's
Speaker 1: rip the band aid off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, first all place of content Warning four things like coercion, abduction, sex, trafficking,
Speaker 3: things of that nature.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Liam Neeson is a guy named Brian Mills, and he
Speaker 3: has a seventeen year old his daughter named Kim played
Speaker 3: by Maggie Grace, who I recognized from Lost I believe.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I didn't watch she's in Lost. Anyway, Brian
Speaker 3: doesn't see his daughter Kim that often because he was
Speaker 3: a bit of an absentee father. He had this very
Speaker 3: demanding job for a long time. And now he and
Speaker 3: his wife or his ex wife, Lenore played by Famka Jansen,
Speaker 3: are divorced and Kim lives with Lenore and her new husband,
Speaker 3: this uber rich guy named Stuart, not to be confused
Speaker 3: with Stuart the.
Speaker 1: Minion, Although you know, we can't rule out that that
Speaker 1: is who he's inspired by.
Speaker 2: We cannot roll it out at all.
Speaker 1: Unlikely but not impossible. Hm.
Speaker 3: So, Brian is now retired and trying to reconnect with Kim,
Speaker 3: but he's not making much progress. Like he tries to
Speaker 3: go to her birthday party and give her a karaoke
Speaker 3: machine because she's always wanted to be a singer. But
Speaker 3: she's like, that's cool, But what about this horse that
Speaker 3: my stepdad Stewart just gave me.
Speaker 1: I was like, was she younger in the original draft
Speaker 1: of this right? The way she acts and I know
Speaker 1: she's given I'm like, it's giving thirteen, like it's not
Speaker 1: being seventeen at all.
Speaker 2: Ten Like, yeah, it's right.
Speaker 3: I think these men who made this movie just don't
Speaker 3: know what seventeen year old girls are. Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I was like, if I met this girl,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, sure, Kim, Like I wouldn't be like
Speaker 1: she's so cool, She's so.
Speaker 2: Like, she's weird.
Speaker 1: She's weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why is she acting like a ten year old. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so the point is Brian is trying to kind of
Speaker 3: reconnect with his daughter.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Then Brian has a boys night with three of his
Speaker 3: his little buddies, who are all former CIA operatives or something.
Speaker 1: I have no idea, like, I just listeners are gonna
Speaker 1: have to under I don't understand who they're working for.
Speaker 1: I know it's the government and it's bad and they
Speaker 1: think it's good. And that's as far as I was
Speaker 1: willing to reflect.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, And he agrees to do a job with
Speaker 3: his buddies. I love calling adult men and their friends' buddies.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what the minions do. That is that's why
Speaker 1: you love it, buddies, they say, buddies. The whole minion
Speaker 1: you gave me. I keep it on my desk.
Speaker 2: Ah, it's really cute.
Speaker 1: It's my security minion.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of security.
Speaker 1: He is a security minion.
Speaker 3: Brian agrees to do a job with his buddies being
Speaker 3: security escorts for this pop star at a concert, and
Speaker 3: we're like, wait a minute, lady Raven wrap Alard.
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, how cool would it be like
Speaker 1: in the world where this followed the rules of trap,
Speaker 1: like Bono would end up untaking Liam Neeson's daughter like
Speaker 1: he would be on FaceTime, being like, girls, you've got
Speaker 1: to get me out of this bathroom. Everyone go see Trap,
Speaker 1: whether you like it or not, I just want to.
Speaker 1: I'll give m Night Shimalan money forever. I know he
Speaker 1: doesn't need it, but I'll keep giving it to him.
Speaker 3: Well, that's your prerogative. So in this movie, it's not
Speaker 3: Lady Raven, it's a pop star named Shira.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And after the concert, a man tries to attack Shira
Speaker 3: with a knife and Brian steps in and saves her.
Speaker 3: He fights the attacker off in a highly trained combat
Speaker 3: kind of way, and we're like, hmm.
Speaker 1: Very particular set of skills.
Speaker 3: Vibes exactly, And Shira is very grateful to Brian for
Speaker 3: saving her life and she wants to help his daughter, Kim,
Speaker 3: become a singer. The following day, Brian, his daughter, Kim,
Speaker 3: and Lenore have where Kim reveals that she's going to
Speaker 3: Paris with her friend Amanda and Amanda's cousins and she
Speaker 3: needs Brian's written permission, but he isn't comfortable letting her
Speaker 3: go because it's just going to be a bunch of
Speaker 3: you know, teens and young women traveling around Europe on
Speaker 3: their own. But he does give permission eventually on the
Speaker 3: condition that Kim let him know where she is and
Speaker 3: who she's with at all times.
Speaker 1: It's very much implied that he is pressured into doing this.
Speaker 2: By Lenore, his ex wife.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yeah, because Lenor is framed as being.
Speaker 1: She's made out to be like and this is his
Speaker 1: bitch ex wife, yes, which we'll talk about, which is
Speaker 1: absurd if you go through what we know about Leonore
Speaker 1: in no way, Like I feel like the way that
Speaker 1: she's written is to seem overly severe. But there is
Speaker 1: a read of this movie multiples almost every scene where
Speaker 1: the two parents are talking, like if this was a
Speaker 1: movie that was marketed towards women, she would be the
Speaker 1: hero of the story and Liam Neeson would be the deadbeat,
Speaker 1: dead antagonist basically right, Like, she's not doing anything overtly unreasonable.
Speaker 3: Not at all. Yeah, it's him who's unreliable, unstable, scary,
Speaker 3: and she seems to be doing a pretty good job.
Speaker 1: And regardless, it's not like she is, Like I feel
Speaker 1: like the movie treats it like she's forbidding him from
Speaker 1: being close with his daughter, where it's like she's not.
Speaker 1: She's clearly not thrilled to be spending all this time
Speaker 1: with him, but it's not like she's preventing him from
Speaker 1: being around her. She's just trying to enforce healthy boundaries,
Speaker 1: understandably because he was so negligent towards her and Kim
Speaker 1: by both of their accounts, She's like not thrilled, but
Speaker 1: she's like, Okay, well, if Kim wants it, it's fine.
Speaker 1: But especially that one line where it's like you're talking
Speaker 1: about at the cafe where she says something like she's
Speaker 1: going to you know, like you have to let her
Speaker 1: grow up or she's going to push you away like
Speaker 1: that is a line in an independent coming of age
Speaker 1: movie of a teenage girl where the mother is completely correct,
Speaker 1: Like it's just so weird that it's presented like, ugh,
Speaker 1: how could she? But it's because we know she's going
Speaker 1: to be taken. And then Liam Neeson cannot be wrong
Speaker 1: in the world of this movie. He's never wrong, right, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Very frustrating to watch. So Kim and her friend Amanda
Speaker 3: head to Paris, and when they arrive, this man named
Speaker 3: Peter asks them if they want to share a cab
Speaker 3: ride with him. From the airport. They get to the
Speaker 3: flat where they'll be staying and this guy, Peter is like, wow,
Speaker 3: nice place, and Amanda is like, yeah, TIHI, we're staying
Speaker 3: here all by ourselves.
Speaker 2: And he's like.
Speaker 3: Cool, want to come to a party tonight and Kim
Speaker 3: is like, we don't know this guy, but Amanda is like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's party.
Speaker 3: And then as Peter is walking away, he makes a
Speaker 3: very suspicious phone call giving someone the address of this
Speaker 3: flat and he says like two girls around eighteen years old,
Speaker 3: and we're like, oh no, what's happening now. Shortly thereafter,
Speaker 3: some men come into the flat and abduct Amanda nar
Speaker 3: which Kim sees from a different room while she's on
Speaker 3: the phone with Brian, and he's like, Okay, they're going
Speaker 3: to take you, but I need you to shout out
Speaker 3: any details that you notice about them because he's going
Speaker 3: to use those details to track them down and find
Speaker 3: them and kill them. So the men grab Kim and
Speaker 3: she yells out like six foot beard tattoo on hand
Speaker 3: of Moon and Star, and then one of the abductors
Speaker 3: picks up the cell phone and this is when Liam
Speaker 3: Neeson delivers the line, I have a very particular set
Speaker 3: of skills and d D.
Speaker 1: I'm making the fart noise. But also maybe this is like,
Speaker 1: unfortunately like a millennial sleep or cell where I hear
Speaker 1: the speech and I was like, I did, like really
Speaker 1: lock in because there are certain sequences of this movie
Speaker 1: where it's just hard to pay attention. Sure, but yeah,
Speaker 1: this speech I was there. I mean, to this day,
Speaker 1: I feel like it is a cultural osmosis moment at
Speaker 1: this point where you can quote sections of this speech
Speaker 1: and not even fully know what you're quoting or the
Speaker 1: context you're quoting it in. It is for sure, for
Speaker 1: better or worrese iconic.
Speaker 3: A similar speech for me is the Bill Pullman president
Speaker 3: speech in Independence Day, Like I have the same visceral
Speaker 3: reaction when I hear any segment of that.
Speaker 1: See, Okay, so it is maybe it is like a
Speaker 1: microgeneration because I think I couldn't tell you what that
Speaker 1: speech says, but if you gave me a line from it,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh, yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: That right anyway, So you know, Brian delivers this whole
Speaker 3: monologue and the man on the other end says good luck,
Speaker 3: and then the line disconnects. Thus starts Brian's search to
Speaker 3: find his daughter, and based on the dialect of Albanian
Speaker 3: that the kidnappers were speaking and the hand tattoo that
Speaker 3: Kim had noticed, Brian learns that this is a group
Speaker 3: of organized criminals who abduct and sex traffic women. And
Speaker 3: based on the data, Brian learns that he has about
Speaker 3: a ninety six hour window from the time they were
Speaker 3: abducted to a point where they'll never be found. So
Speaker 3: Brian arrives in Paris and he breaks into the flat
Speaker 3: where Kim and Amanda were going to be staying. He
Speaker 3: finds the SD card or whatever from the smashed phone
Speaker 3: of Kim's.
Speaker 1: Good two thousand and eight detail yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And he looks through the photos that were on
Speaker 3: the phone and finds a picture that Peter took of
Speaker 3: Kim and Amanda at the airport, which shows a reflection
Speaker 3: of Peter and the whole action movie thing of enhance,
Speaker 3: you know, zooming into a very pixelated photo that suddenly
Speaker 3: magically becomes very crystal clear, a.
Speaker 1: Lot of like, yeah, hacker, who coudes YadA YadA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of fun.
Speaker 3: M hm. And so now Brian knows what Peter looks like,
Speaker 3: and he finds Peter at the airport, trying the same
Speaker 3: taxi sharing trick on another woman. Brian attacks him and
Speaker 3: chases Peter, who gets hit by a truck and killed.
Speaker 3: So then Brian links up with a friend slash colleague
Speaker 3: slash French cop named Sean Claude who tells him about
Speaker 3: a specific area, Porte de Clichi, Frenchy, where these traffickers
Speaker 3: are known to hang out. So Brian goes to this
Speaker 3: area and talks to a woman who has been sex
Speaker 3: trafficked and asks her a bunch of questions. Basically, he's
Speaker 3: stalling knowing that a trafficker will come up and hassle him,
Speaker 3: which is what he wanted so that he can plant
Speaker 3: a microphone on freight sky.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so then Brian has a translator interpret the conversation
Speaker 3: that these traffickers are having in Albanian, which is about
Speaker 3: a construction site and a problem with the quote unquote
Speaker 3: new merchandise cut to this construction site. We don't know
Speaker 3: how Brian figured out where it was or anything like that,
Speaker 3: but he conveniently and magically find.
Speaker 1: A very particular set of skills, which is his particular
Speaker 1: set of skills is that he actually has a copy
Speaker 1: of the script.
Speaker 3: Takes yeah, and he knew exactly what location to go
Speaker 3: to yeh. So he goes there and this construction site
Speaker 3: turns out to be a derelict brothel and he's looking
Speaker 3: around and he finds the jacket Kim was wearing when
Speaker 3: she flew to Paris. But the woman in this like
Speaker 3: enclosure is not his daughter. He takes this woman with him.
Speaker 1: He takens her.
Speaker 3: He takens yes, but not in a bad way. He
Speaker 3: takens her in a good way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, question for good.
Speaker 3: After he fights off several of the traffickers and he
Speaker 3: gets to a hotel room and provides medical care to
Speaker 3: the woman. She seems heavily drugged, and she eventually comes
Speaker 3: to and tells Brian that Kim gave her the jacket
Speaker 3: while they were in the house with the red door,
Speaker 3: and she remembers what STREETA was on. So Brian goes
Speaker 3: to the house with the red door, pretending to be
Speaker 3: a cop who is there under the guise of negotiating
Speaker 3: an extortion deal. Basically, the traffickers will pay law enforcement
Speaker 3: to keep quiet about the illegal things they're doing, but
Speaker 3: what Brian is actually there to do is to find
Speaker 3: which guy he spoke to on the phone who told
Speaker 3: him good luck. It's this boss named Marcos.
Speaker 1: They play the voice and I was like, it honestly
Speaker 1: doesn't sound doesn't sound the same, it's similar. I was like, what,
Speaker 1: uh huh. I guess yeah, if you say so, But
Speaker 1: I was like, that could have been most guys.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: But somehow he identifies Marcos and he kills the dozen
Speaker 3: or so other men in the house. He finds a
Speaker 3: bunch of trafficked women there, one of whom is Kim's
Speaker 3: friend Amanda, who is dead from an apparent drug overdose,
Speaker 3: but he does not find Kim, so Brian tortures Marcos,
Speaker 3: who reveals that they don't keep women who are virgins. Instead,
Speaker 3: they traffic them further to different traffickers, this particular boss
Speaker 3: named Patrise Saint Clair, but Marcos doesn't know where to
Speaker 3: find this guy. Then there's a scene where Brian goes
Speaker 3: back to his cop friend Jean Claude to his house,
Speaker 3: suspecting that he might be involved in actual, you know,
Speaker 3: extortion and collusion that the French police are doing with
Speaker 3: the traffickers, and Brian is correct in this assumption, so
Speaker 3: he shoots Jean Claude's wife in the arm to show
Speaker 3: him that he means business, and then he has Jean
Speaker 3: Claude look up Patrise Saint Clair in the police database
Speaker 3: and get an address for him. So Brian goes to
Speaker 3: this address. It's a mansion. There's some kind of party happening,
Speaker 3: and there's also an auction happening where this Patrise guy
Speaker 3: is auctioning off these trafficked women for hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of dollars. Brian goes into this private room of one
Speaker 3: of the buyers and forces him to buy Kim, and
Speaker 3: he thinks this is going to be how he rescues Kim,
Speaker 3: but then Brian is knocked out by one of Patrese's minions.
Speaker 3: Brian wakes up, he fights back. He finds out where
Speaker 3: they're taking Kim. She's being loaded onto a yacht, so
Speaker 3: he kills Patrise and then goes after this that belongs
Speaker 3: to a sheikh who had bought Kim. Brian jumps on board,
Speaker 3: kills everyone, and saves his daughter, and then the movie
Speaker 3: ends with Kim safe at home with her family and
Speaker 3: Brian surprises her by taking her to the home of Shira,
Speaker 3: the pop star from earlier. So that she can help
Speaker 3: Kim with her music career.
Speaker 1: The oh my god, it's stressful.
Speaker 3: Let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss.
Speaker 3: And we're back from having taken a break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're back at lax after narrowly escaping our doom
Speaker 1: where she begins. I mean, I want to say, like,
Speaker 1: I just want to lead with the fact that I
Speaker 1: felt like there was no amount of research that I
Speaker 1: could have done that was going to be a propriate
Speaker 1: for this episode. This is a deceptively complicated movie to
Speaker 1: talk about, yes, because of all of the various heavy
Speaker 1: themes that it is attempting to address. Not a heavy
Speaker 1: lift to say that maybe it's not sufficient, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like this movie suffers from a lot of
Speaker 1: the tropes were used to seeing in action thrillers. That
Speaker 1: being a really you know, pro military, pro masculine, sidelining
Speaker 1: women characters, marginalizing any non white character. This is all
Speaker 1: part and parcel to action thrillers, and this movie is
Speaker 1: not pushing back on any of those very common problems.
Speaker 1: But on top of that, it's adding the deeply complicated
Speaker 1: issue of sex traffic. Yes, in a way that I
Speaker 1: honestly I mean, it's an issue that I am under
Speaker 1: educated on and is particularly for a group of writers
Speaker 1: that include a known sex criminal.
Speaker 3: Known sex criminal Luke Basson, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Using sex trafficking in what appears to be a very
Speaker 1: callous plot driven way, like just add sort of an
Speaker 1: extra layer to this movie where you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like at this point, you know, you can talk about
Speaker 1: the tropes that surround action thrillers, and we have on
Speaker 1: this show quite a bit, and we will again today,
Speaker 1: but like, and I guess I would be curious of
Speaker 1: what I was struggling to find. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you found anything to this effect, and I'd be curious
Speaker 1: if listeners have thoughts on this is like, is there
Speaker 1: a reason that that layer is being added in this
Speaker 1: particular moment, you know where It's like there's plenty of
Speaker 1: action thrillers that have come out before and since that
Speaker 1: do not include this element. Is this a unclear why
Speaker 1: this is the moment where sex trafficking is being introduced
Speaker 1: into the action thriller space or is there a particular
Speaker 1: reason why the late two thousands, like there was a
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously not interest, but like a market for
Speaker 1: this particular theme. I really like I mean, if I
Speaker 1: had had several days to get ready, I would maybe
Speaker 1: understand better. But yeah, that layer added to again just
Speaker 1: all of the things that we are used to pushing
Speaker 1: back on in this genre was very jarring.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I didn't find anything about possible like cultural context that
Speaker 3: might have informed why that layer was added. It could
Speaker 3: just be well, we haven't seen many movies yet where
Speaker 3: this is the thing, so let's try it. I have
Speaker 3: no idea. What I do know is that they horribly
Speaker 3: misred present what sex trafficking is. Yes, I found something
Speaker 3: from the Polaris Project, which is a nonprofit organization that
Speaker 3: is leading a survivor centered and justice and equity driven
Speaker 3: movement to end human trafficking.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 3: Everyone, it's Caitlin from the future. Wanted to jump in
Speaker 3: right here and say that. After we released this episode,
Speaker 3: a few listeners pointed out that the Polaris Project has
Speaker 3: a history of problematic behavior, such as they have been
Speaker 3: known to spread misinformation, Their hotline doesn't respond to tips
Speaker 3: related to people doing consensual sex work. They've lobbied for
Speaker 3: policies that harm sex workers, things of that nature. We
Speaker 3: did not realize that at the time. We absolutely should
Speaker 3: have investigated this organization more closely to say there's no
Speaker 3: merit to the work they do, but it is not
Speaker 3: the best resource we could have consulted, considering Jamie's and
Speaker 3: my stance on being pro consensual sex work is legitimate work,
Speaker 3: pro workers' rights of sex workers. So, as you're about
Speaker 3: to hear, we quote from the Polaris Project a few times,
Speaker 3: mostly in relation to what they say about this specific movie.
Speaker 3: But we just wanted to acknowledge that we now know
Speaker 3: more about this organization and we apologize for not researching
Speaker 3: them more carefully before recording this episode. Thank you so
Speaker 3: much to those listeners who provided more information to us.
Speaker 3: We always appreciate listeners doing that. We're always wanting to
Speaker 3: learn and grow, so thank you again. So again, just
Speaker 3: wanted to pop in here and provide that additional context
Speaker 3: acknowledge some of the shortcomings of this organization. And we're
Speaker 3: about to cut back into the original episode now talking
Speaker 3: about something that this organization published on their website regarding
Speaker 3: the movie. So here we go back to the original episode,
Speaker 3: and they put out a like an online guide entitled
Speaker 3: telling the Real Story of Human Trafficking, and it basically
Speaker 3: gives a bunch of information about what human trafficking actually.
Speaker 1: Is, like, right, because this movie is so frequently conflates
Speaker 1: sex trafficking with sex work, which is like one of
Speaker 1: the more dangerous things that it does.
Speaker 3: Right, And this guide offers guidance imagine that, oh, on
Speaker 3: how to make content and tell stories about human trafficking
Speaker 3: if that's something you're interested in doing in an accurate
Speaker 3: and responsible way. Saying that quote in the anti human
Speaker 3: trafficking world, Taken has become a shorthand for how not
Speaker 3: to make content about human trafficking.
Speaker 1: Yes, I saw this piece as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this guide starts by saying about the film
Speaker 3: Taken quote. Unfortunately, it has the unintended effect of completely
Speaker 3: miseducating the public about what human trafficking is, how it happens,
Speaker 3: and who it happens too. Nearly fifteen years later, those
Speaker 3: of us who work in the anti trafficking field are
Speaker 3: still managing the consequences. Indeed, we often start out saying
Speaker 3: things like, you know that movie Taken, Well, that's not
Speaker 3: really how trafficking happens unquote.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, and I remember that being a conversation
Speaker 1: at the time the movie came out. I don't know
Speaker 1: as we're talking about it, because I'm also seeing that
Speaker 1: there was. It's interesting because I feel like this is
Speaker 1: sort of side to take in. But I guess just
Speaker 1: in terms of the issue of sex trafficking and miseducation
Speaker 1: around sex trafficking being prevalent in American culture at this time,
Speaker 1: there were congressional laws passed around this time, but it
Speaker 1: had to do more with cyber sex trafficking, which is
Speaker 1: really not what Taken is talking about it all, which
Speaker 1: I think is interesting, like it is off of a
Speaker 1: real world encounter. Just I don't know. This is like
Speaker 1: bring I wonder if I've ever brought it up on
Speaker 1: this show. I know I've talked about it previously, but
Speaker 1: like I remember as a kid having cyber sex trafficking
Speaker 1: cautionary tales told to me a lot at school, Like
Speaker 1: there was a computer game in like computer class. I
Speaker 1: feel so old, but like this is I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: there's like any other young millennials listening that, Like we
Speaker 1: had computer class and we would play three games in
Speaker 1: the course of class. It would be like a math game,
Speaker 1: a literacy game, and then an anti cyber sex trafficking
Speaker 1: game and the game was called Oh Gosh, I believe
Speaker 1: it was called Stolen. This was before and came out.
Speaker 1: But you are playing as the father of, or like
Speaker 1: an investigator working with the father of a child who
Speaker 1: has been abducted and is being cyber sex trafficked, and
Speaker 1: it is your mission, as a twelve year old computer
Speaker 1: game player to save this child and learn about what
Speaker 1: was at least purported to be the common showings of
Speaker 1: cyber sex trafficking at that time. So, for example, the
Speaker 1: character met a man who lied about his identity on
Speaker 1: a message board and then was flown out to Also,
Speaker 1: California is a big thing with the game, where they're
Speaker 1: like California, the world whatever. It was not a good education,
Speaker 1: but I do remember like this being something that was
Speaker 1: like pushed to me at a public school, of like
Speaker 1: a fear of technology, which makes more Again, you know,
Speaker 1: Americans are just miseducated on this subject wholesale. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that I'm so glad I played this computer game
Speaker 1: and it kept me safe. It was I remember being
Speaker 1: quite afraid of it, but sowing a fear of technology
Speaker 1: at least that holds a little like more consistently than
Speaker 1: I don't know again, taking it just seems so random
Speaker 1: and based in just like the various prejudices and interests
Speaker 1: of the writers. It's not even like like there's a
Speaker 1: million horror movies about AI right now, because that is
Speaker 1: the technological development that people are afraid of, and at
Speaker 1: the time it would have just been the internet conceptually
Speaker 1: would be like what you would say is going to
Speaker 1: kill you or sex traffic you, or do the worst
Speaker 1: thing you can think of. Right, I don't understand why
Speaker 1: this movie was so popular, right.
Speaker 3: I wonder if because the movie Hostile came out a
Speaker 3: few years earlier, and that was the movie about If
Speaker 3: I'm remembering correctly, it's a movie about American tourists going
Speaker 3: to Europe. And I also don't remember exactly where they go,
Speaker 3: but it's a place in Europe that the movie is like, actually,
Speaker 3: this area is really unsafe and if you stay in
Speaker 3: a hostel you'll be murdered. So I wonder if Taikan
Speaker 3: was almost kind of using that playbook of like beware
Speaker 3: of travel to Euroine, beware of Eastern Europeans because they're
Speaker 3: so scary.
Speaker 1: Which in some ways is like hearkening back to the
Speaker 1: Red Scare, which has also never really left us, and like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I would be curious if Alicitor has
Speaker 1: a clear concise reason why the two thousands were littered
Speaker 1: with this particular kind of story. I mean, and I
Speaker 1: also think we were you know, came up in the
Speaker 1: age of like the Elizabeth Smart abduction. And another thing
Speaker 1: that I think this movie is very guilty of and
Speaker 1: doesn't examine at all is missing white girls syndrome and
Speaker 1: how you know, to expand a little bit on our
Speaker 1: discussion of how sex trafficking and human trafficking in general
Speaker 1: is used as a plot point in this movie, and
Speaker 1: again we are not experts, but that how this movie
Speaker 1: intentionally centers a privileged young American sis white girl, not yeah,
Speaker 1: she's still a child in this story, when it is
Speaker 1: statistically far more likely for young people and particularly young
Speaker 1: women in films of color and indigenous people to fall
Speaker 1: victim to this specific type of crime. But I like,
Speaker 1: as is very often in media, both fictional media like
Speaker 1: this and just who receives attention from local and national
Speaker 1: media when they are taken missing whatever. It is far
Speaker 1: more statistically likely since the beginning of mass media for
Speaker 1: white women to receive priority in terms of who gets
Speaker 1: the attention for during after, And I mean there is
Speaker 1: infinite media to this extent. We've talked about it on
Speaker 1: the show of how many Indigenous women regularly go missing
Speaker 1: or are killed and it never, it rarely, if ever,
Speaker 1: breaks into mass media, whereas if a white woman experiences
Speaker 1: the same horrific event, it is far more likely to
Speaker 1: be discussed. Again, it is horrible when this happens to anybody, Yes,
Speaker 1: but in terms of yeah, where priority is given, in
Speaker 1: terms of even acknowledgment, if not resources to be assisted
Speaker 1: and rescued and preventive measures. I mean, the human trafficking
Speaker 1: world is no exception to that, to the point where
Speaker 1: I mean again not to say that well, I guess
Speaker 1: I can't say that taken would not happen, But it's
Speaker 1: just I don't know. It's like a wealthy white young
Speaker 1: tour like, it's of course someone's going to come looking.
Speaker 1: She's like a millionaire's a billionaire's stepdaughter.
Speaker 3: And yeah, while it's not impossible that a wealthy white
Speaker 3: girl would be targeted for trafficking, it's far more likely
Speaker 3: that a person more marginalized than someone like Kim would
Speaker 3: be targeted.
Speaker 1: Right, And it's not to say that we have no
Speaker 1: empathy for this character. Of course we do, but it
Speaker 1: is Yeah, I mean, given the fact that again this
Speaker 1: is a Lupusson co write, even outside of his personal crimes,
Speaker 1: go back and listen to our lean on the professional episode,
Speaker 1: you know, someone with a notoriously bad track record on
Speaker 1: women and also on the issue of sex work and
Speaker 1: sex trafficking. It's just really hard to take this story
Speaker 1: at face value because it's bringing in a very serious issue,
Speaker 1: completely misunderstanding it and not really acknowledging at all how
Speaker 1: the people who do suffer this are disproportionately marginalized, and
Speaker 1: that is not an interest, Like this story has nothing
Speaker 1: to say about human trafficking, certainly not. Furthermore, the protagonist
Speaker 1: doesn't really care about the issue outside of how it
Speaker 1: affects his daughter.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that was one of my big things.
Speaker 1: He literally says repeatedly, I don't care, I will not
Speaker 1: report you, just give me my daughter back.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's confounding. I kept having this question, like, by
Speaker 3: the end of the movie, does he make any effort
Speaker 3: to save all of the women who have been trafficked or.
Speaker 2: Just his daughter?
Speaker 3: And the answer is his daughter plus that one other
Speaker 3: woman who he only saves in order to get information
Speaker 3: about his daughter.
Speaker 1: But I think that we're supposed to Yeah, we'll get
Speaker 1: into Liam Neeson in a second. The other thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to say, as it pertains to human trafficking again,
Speaker 1: I feel icky. I hope that we're not completely missing
Speaker 1: the mark here, but the fact that they're is an
Speaker 1: emphasis put on Kim's virginity in terms of what makes
Speaker 1: her valuable that is based in some truth. I did
Speaker 1: some background research we can link to it that of
Speaker 1: course it is. This is all immoral and very fucked up,
Speaker 1: but virginity is brought up as a plus in this
Speaker 1: very twisted world. So it's like it's reflecting something what
Speaker 1: bothers me besides everything in the movie. But it's like,
Speaker 1: I feel like the writing rises to agree with the
Speaker 1: sex traffickers in this where there is a morality attached
Speaker 1: to virginity and a slut shaming between the characters, specifically
Speaker 1: of Kim and Amanda, the two friends that go to
Speaker 1: Europe together. Amanda is presented as hornier basically where for sure,
Speaker 1: yeah she's more rebellious. She says like, oh should I
Speaker 1: hook up with this guy and Kim when they first arrive,
Speaker 1: it's like, but you don't even know him, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, which is like whatever teenage girls, you
Speaker 1: can feel whatever way you want, but there is by
Speaker 1: the writers a moral application because Amanda we are sort
Speaker 1: of indicated she she is not a virgin, and so
Speaker 1: she dies and Liam Neeson does he call her parent?
Speaker 1: Like what happens? Does anyone get in touch with this
Speaker 1: girl's family?
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it's referenced and taken to, but like there
Speaker 1: is almost say like it is again like her death
Speaker 1: is a plot thing where Liam Neeson's like, Okay, Kim
Speaker 1: was here, but now she's not because here's Amanda and
Speaker 1: she's dead, and Amanda seems like she died because she
Speaker 1: was not a virgin. Essentially, like that I think is
Speaker 1: the internal plot logic, and that it's the morality that
Speaker 1: is attached to Kim's virginity that keeps her alive long
Speaker 1: enough to be resky. It's just so fucking dark. So
Speaker 1: even though it's like, even if that is based in
Speaker 1: a reference point that does take place in the real world,
Speaker 1: it's written to I think like reinforce, it in this
Speaker 1: weird way where it's like horror movie logic of like
Speaker 1: a girl who has sex is going to die and
Speaker 1: deserves it.
Speaker 3: There are other implications that we'll get into, because this
Speaker 3: is a whole separate conversation about the racism and xenophobia
Speaker 3: in this movie. Yeah, the implications revolving around a very
Speaker 3: reductive view of Islam, but we'll get to that in
Speaker 3: a second. The other thing I wanted to say about
Speaker 3: this movie misrepresenting sex trafficking is that, and again this
Speaker 3: is according to that piece from the Polarist Project saying, quote,
Speaker 3: people in sex trafficking situations almost always know and to
Speaker 3: even trust or love their traffickers. Traffickers target vulnerable people
Speaker 3: who have needs that the traffickers can fill. Sometimes they
Speaker 3: offer material support, a place to live, clothing, a chance
Speaker 3: to get rich quick. Other times they offer love, emotional support,
Speaker 3: or a sense of belonging. Kidnapping victims and forcing them
Speaker 3: into the sex trade through violence is rare, unquote. So
Speaker 3: this movie presents it is like, Oh, these scary boogeymen
Speaker 3: from Albania who just target people kind of at random.
Speaker 3: That's who sex traffickers are. So this is just another
Speaker 3: way in which this movie doesn't really understand sex trafficking.
Speaker 3: And as you already alluded to, it's media like this
Speaker 3: that conflates sex trafficking with like consensual sex work, and
Speaker 3: it's movies like this it position sex work as something
Speaker 3: that people are doing against their will and it only
Speaker 3: happens because they have been trafficked, and things like that
Speaker 3: and just the things that contribute to the stigma and
Speaker 3: negative perception of sex work. And of course there's a
Speaker 3: huge difference between people who are coerced and sex trafficked
Speaker 3: and adults who are doing the legitimate work that is
Speaker 3: sex work, and they're doing so consensually, by their own
Speaker 3: accord and on their own terms. All this to say,
Speaker 3: the movie kind of it doesn't directly conflate these two
Speaker 3: things necessarily, but it does, I think, contribute to this
Speaker 3: larger stigma of a just kind of misunderstanding of sex
Speaker 3: work being separate from being the victim or the survivor
Speaker 3: of sex trafficking.
Speaker 1: Just having seen this movie when I was a teenager,
Speaker 1: I would say it does directly conflate the two because
Speaker 1: I can tell you seeing this movie as a like
Speaker 1: fifteen year olds, I did not understand the difference. As
Speaker 1: a naive kid that did not understand what human trafficking
Speaker 1: nor sex work really was outside of the scope of movies,
Speaker 1: I think that this movie actually kind of does dangerously
Speaker 1: conflate the two because even in the scene where Liam
Speaker 1: Neeson is approaching who I thought was a sex worker,
Speaker 1: she is reacting with the same amount of fear and
Speaker 1: coercion as we see people we know to be human
Speaker 1: trafficking victims are.
Speaker 2: And so I can.
Speaker 1: Say for sure, like if you're cause I mean, this
Speaker 1: is I mean, I wouldn't even say that majority teenagers
Speaker 1: are going to see movies like this, but this is
Speaker 1: a genre that does touch from teenagers to old heads.
Speaker 1: And I can say for sure that like when I
Speaker 1: first saw this movie, I did not understand the difference,
Speaker 1: and the movie did nothing. Not that it is the
Speaker 1: job of any movie to like educate you on the nuances,
Speaker 1: but it is the job of the movie to be clear.
Speaker 1: And I just don't think that this movie really was
Speaker 1: at all because otherwise, like this movie takes place in
Speaker 1: a vacuum where sex work does not exist, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it is like tacitly saying that all sex
Speaker 1: work is human trafficking, which is like a very dangerous
Speaker 1: and wrong thing to imply.
Speaker 3: I feel like I had a similar perception of it
Speaker 3: for at least some amount of time in my youth.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm talking about when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: Like I was, I had no fucking clue about right.
Speaker 3: And it's because of media depictions like this that don't
Speaker 3: understand the distinction absolutely and just again contribute to this
Speaker 3: horrible stigma and assume that people who engage in sex
Speaker 3: work consensually are not actually doing so consentially, they are
Speaker 3: being forced and coerced into it. And that also comes
Speaker 3: with a lot of like victim blaming and shaming of
Speaker 3: people struggling with addiction issues, and you know, a whole
Speaker 3: slew of things. But yeah, this this movie is very
Speaker 3: guilty of just painting things in a very broad way
Speaker 3: and ignoring all of the nuance when it comes to
Speaker 3: this topic.
Speaker 1: And again, it's not a shocker from a co writer
Speaker 1: who's an accused sex just absolutely horrific woman although he
Speaker 1: was not formally.
Speaker 3: Convicted, that doesn't mean shit.
Speaker 1: That's something that we can take up with France.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, France is also fucking harboring Roman plan Ski
Speaker 3: and shit like that.
Speaker 1: So that's what I mean. Yeah, France is famously bad
Speaker 1: of this issue, not that America is any better anyways, right, Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that was all I had
Speaker 1: to say on the sex trafficking versus sex where conflation front.
Speaker 3: The one last thing I have is just to go
Speaker 3: full circle on the does Liam Neeson attempt to save
Speaker 3: any of the other people who have been targeted for
Speaker 3: sex trafficking? And the answers pretty much know no, which
Speaker 3: is a version of that patriarchal value when a man
Speaker 3: says I love and respect women, but that only extends
Speaker 3: to the man's wife, his wife, or his daughter or
Speaker 3: maybe his mother. Basically only women that they know personally,
Speaker 3: and usually women that they feel some type of ownership over. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: because men like this like never care about women's issues.
Speaker 3: They never care about like the devastating effects of rape
Speaker 3: culture or anything like that. They just care about women
Speaker 3: who they feel belong to them. And this movie is
Speaker 3: very much giving those nasty vibes.
Speaker 1: So and it seems like the entire franchise does, because yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it wouldn't have improved the movie meaningfully, But
Speaker 1: like even a cliffhanger if you're trying to make this
Speaker 1: into a franchise of like, Okay, I have liberated my daughter,
Speaker 1: and now I'm gonna go back and liberate the rest
Speaker 1: of the victims of this human trafficking ring. Something some
Speaker 1: indication that he has an interest in anyone who is
Speaker 1: not married or blood related to him, but there isn't
Speaker 1: and it doesn't seem like that ever really changes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: From there, should we get into the racism and xenophobia
Speaker 1: of this movie, because this was something that while I
Speaker 1: did not have the education to understand the completely incorrect
Speaker 1: messaging around human trafficking and sex work that this movie provides,
Speaker 1: I was able at fifteen to understand that this movie
Speaker 1: is extremely racist.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, All the good guys are white Americans and
Speaker 3: all the bad guys are non American and or not white.
Speaker 1: Which is wild because this is like a half French movie,
Speaker 1: and even the French guys are generally bad people. The
Speaker 1: white French guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's an exception, which is Patrise Saint Clair, who
Speaker 3: is a white American man, or at least he speaks
Speaker 3: English with an American accent. We don't know his nationality necessarily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the guy, it's like it's just business. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: you're like all right, but.
Speaker 3: By and large we have a group of Albanian characters,
Speaker 3: and then later on in the movie there are Arab characters,
Speaker 3: and both of them, in some overlapping in some different ways,
Speaker 3: are portrayed in just awful ways where they're criminals, they're
Speaker 3: the human traffickers, they're violent, they're barbaric. There's a whole
Speaker 3: town in Albania that is characterized as being a breeding
Speaker 3: ground for like the scum of the earth that would
Speaker 3: become human traffickers, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It is just like a like comical lack of nuance
Speaker 1: to anything anything at all. Yeah, it is like deeply xenophobic,
Speaker 1: where the second they meet someone who is an American,
Speaker 1: within moments of arriving, they haven't even walked in the
Speaker 1: door and they're already being targeted by Like it's just
Speaker 1: it's absurd. Even the first interaction in this movie as
Speaker 1: Leam Neeson like interacting with a I don't know what
Speaker 1: his nationality is, but it's like a very stereotyped character
Speaker 1: who's working at the karaoke machine business.
Speaker 3: The electronics store.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where where at very least there are a few
Speaker 1: lines in this movie that it doesn't make it worth
Speaker 1: the journey, but it is fun to hear Liam Neeson
Speaker 1: say the line, who is Beyonce just kidding? Just kidding
Speaker 1: because you're like two thousand.
Speaker 2: And eight, I don't know.
Speaker 1: No, she's been really famous since the nineties, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like, JK JK, really why put that in there?
Speaker 1: There are there are a few lines, I mean, and
Speaker 1: then at the point where it's like they're following you
Speaker 1: two around the country, the script has already given up
Speaker 1: on interacting with youth culture in any way, shape or form,
Speaker 1: because a seventeen year old girls acting ten years old
Speaker 1: and man, yet she also wants to follow you too,
Speaker 1: like nonsense. I feel like Beyonce was added by a
Speaker 1: punch up writer. I don't think that either credited writer
Speaker 1: would have known to include Beyonce as a then actually
Speaker 1: successful artist among young women.
Speaker 3: Well, also, whoever wrote that line of dialogue because they're
Speaker 3: talking about a karaoke machine and the electronic salesman is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is the karaoke machine that all the professionals use,
Speaker 3: examples Beyonce, and then he.
Speaker 1: Listens like to you others karaoke machine yep.
Speaker 3: Pop stars aren't using karaoke, like they just don't understand
Speaker 3: what pop music is. And I have a whole shpiel,
Speaker 3: which I'll say for later, just about the way the
Speaker 3: buddies talk about the pop star who's not Lady Raven
Speaker 3: though she should be. But anyway, Yeah, the way non
Speaker 3: white and non American characters in general are portrayed in
Speaker 3: this movie is heinous, to the point where in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: the Albanian Tourism Board produced an advertisement in order to
Speaker 3: kind of counter the negative perception of Albanians that this
Speaker 3: movie like directly caused.
Speaker 2: So they created this.
Speaker 3: Kind of movement. You can sign a petition. It's called
Speaker 3: be Taken by Albania where they are challenging.
Speaker 1: I would maybe change the name, but sure, I get
Speaker 1: I get that, I appreciate the message, but I.
Speaker 3: Guess they were like it's a pun. But anyway they're asking.
Speaker 3: They're inviting Liam Neeson to visit Albania and explore the
Speaker 3: beauty and the culture and the food and the tourist hotspots.
Speaker 3: There's a video that I watched that the actor who
Speaker 3: plays Marcos is in briefly at the end, Oh wow,
Speaker 3: But it's mostly like people in Albania being like, see,
Speaker 3: we're a really nice country and we have all these
Speaker 3: beautiful things and we're really nice people.
Speaker 1: Which is like absurd that they even have to do that.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of our conversation around Kazakhstun's reception of Borat,
Speaker 1: where it was like, wow, it did not irreparable, but
Speaker 1: significant harm to the global perception of the country because
Speaker 1: of this like dullbass movie that was successful, Like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: anyone who's like it's just a movie, You're like.
Speaker 3: Well, wow, why do we have so many examples of
Speaker 3: movies influencing perceptions of things on a global scale. Then
Speaker 3: if it's quote unquote just a movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then again, the way the Arab characters are portrayed
Speaker 3: in this movie is the way they often are in
Speaker 3: Western media, which is being violent and hostile and corrupt
Speaker 3: and uber wealthy. They covet women who are virgins, which
Speaker 3: again is just a very incredibly reductive portrayal of Muslim
Speaker 3: characters and Arab characters, and again has real world consequences
Speaker 3: and contributes to like anti immigration rhetoric and policy that
Speaker 3: is still affecting so many countries around the world.
Speaker 1: The line I wanted to draw attention to to sort
Speaker 1: of illustrate what the internal politics of this movie appear
Speaker 1: to be. It's said by leam Nisid and the scene
Speaker 1: where he's like, oh, you're the guy from the phone,
Speaker 1: and you're like, first of all, you don't recognize a
Speaker 1: guy's like at International I'll call on a razor phone
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, be serious, But he is
Speaker 1: lecturing the group of Albanian men in a country where
Speaker 1: he does not live, but says, you come to this
Speaker 1: country and think because we are tolerant, we are weak
Speaker 1: and helpless. Your arrogance offends me, which just implies all
Speaker 1: of these really ugly narratives around immigration in general, where
Speaker 1: I think the word tolerated is doing a lot of
Speaker 1: heavy lifting there, where it's like you are being permitted
Speaker 1: to live here so long as you do A, B
Speaker 1: and C to basically, I mean, it just feels like
Speaker 1: assimbilation tactics. It feels like anyone who immigrates to a
Speaker 1: country does not actually have a right to live there.
Speaker 1: It's conditional and just I mean all of these really,
Speaker 1: I mean, this movie is a conservative movie, and that line,
Speaker 1: like in particular, which is weird because I think if
Speaker 1: we saw a comparably conservative movie today, that language would
Speaker 1: probably be much harsher. But even so, it's like you
Speaker 1: can read between the lines where it's like, this movie
Speaker 1: is clearly anti immigration and it is clearly deeply xenophobic, which,
Speaker 1: not for nothing is wild because Liam Neeson is from
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, so but he's whatever. I mean, the same
Speaker 1: thing happens with Bondo a lot. I've been working on
Speaker 1: a story for sixteenth Minute about the super Bowl and
Speaker 1: how like you two was the super Bowl act after
Speaker 1: nine to eleven and they were wearing American flag jackets
Speaker 1: and You're like, they're Irish? What anyways? Very weird And
Speaker 1: Liam Neeson, I know we've I think we talked about
Speaker 1: this in our episode on Widows also has had his
Speaker 1: share of controversies around talking about race. So unfortunately, it
Speaker 1: is not shocking to me that he ends up in
Speaker 1: this very conservative action thriller written by sex criminal.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, Liam Neeson's saying that line about you know, we
Speaker 3: tolerate you being here, da da da, that's in response
Speaker 3: to the Albanian characters saying, oh, you think that just
Speaker 3: because we're immigrants, you can exploit us and take advantage
Speaker 3: of us and all this stuff, which fair point that
Speaker 3: does often happen to immigrants, but it's undermined by the
Speaker 3: fact that what they're doing is illegal trafficking. It's like, well, point,
Speaker 3: not well taken because of what. But it's of course
Speaker 3: like these filmmakers writing these Eastern European characters in this way,
Speaker 3: and it's just such a mind fuck.
Speaker 1: It's hard to talk about this movie because there are
Speaker 1: so many major consequential issues being conflated with each other
Speaker 1: that it just feels like an intentional way of like, well,
Speaker 1: the only immigrant characters in this movie are going to
Speaker 1: see are going to be engaged in the most horrific
Speaker 1: crime you can think of, So how can you have
Speaker 1: a common versation around immigration when that is the puzzle
Speaker 1: box that a sex criminal has put in front of you?
Speaker 1: And you're like, well, I guess I don't know. I
Speaker 1: guess I don't know the answer to that question, and
Speaker 1: I resent being asked. Right, Yeah, it's all horseshit, LIKEE
Speaker 1: is horseshit is. The other co writer of this movie
Speaker 1: co wrote movies in the Karate Kid franchise and The
Speaker 1: Fifth Element, and now owns a vineyard in Sonoma, and
Speaker 1: that is all I know about him. His name is
Speaker 1: Robert Mark came in. Anyways, both men who wrote this
Speaker 1: movie were pushing fifty, if not over fifty when writing
Speaker 1: this movie about teenage girls. Which is why they're following
Speaker 1: you two around Western Europe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is why she squeals when she's given a horse,
Speaker 3: and she loves milkshakes with extra cherries. Not to say
Speaker 3: that seventeen year olds can't love horses and can't love milkshakes,
Speaker 3: but the way she's framed in this movie feels like
Speaker 3: writers just like infantalizing this girl slash, having no idea
Speaker 3: how a seventeen year old girl actually behaves.
Speaker 1: Well's skin just talking about Kim and Lenore, because it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the way that Kim has introduced clearly she's very wealthy.
Speaker 1: We have Nisson's character is not as wealthy. He lives
Speaker 1: in an apartment. We don't really know what his financial
Speaker 1: status is. But she, you know, Leonore has remarried a
Speaker 1: very very rich man and Kim lives with them. But
Speaker 1: it's made a point to make Lenore look rude, to say, like,
Speaker 1: why did you get her a karaoke machine? She was
Speaker 1: really into that when she was twelve, as if to say,
Speaker 1: you don't know your daughter very well because you were
Speaker 1: not around for all of her formative years, which becomes
Speaker 1: clearer as the movie goes on, not that it really
Speaker 1: goes anywhere, but it has made clearer that, like Kim
Speaker 1: agrees with this, Kim felt very estrange from her father
Speaker 1: while growing up. But then to say for leonor to
Speaker 1: say that and then have her be like what she
Speaker 1: really wants is a pony, You're like, well, is she an.
Speaker 2: Adult or not?
Speaker 3: Like especially because the movie opens with like video camera
Speaker 3: footage of Kim's like fifth birthday where she's given a
Speaker 3: toy horse and she's like, tie, he look at my.
Speaker 1: Little horse, Like okay, so you're all infantilizing her and
Speaker 1: she's she appears to love it, like poor Kim like
Speaker 1: that or I mean the actor that plays Kim, because
Speaker 1: it's just like so divorced from an existing like she's
Speaker 1: very much like a daddy's girl character. I have, yeah,
Speaker 1: some just some notes again in the like conflating things
Speaker 1: and airtight logic that this movie has a vested interest
Speaker 1: in creating. Is Yeah, the relationship between fathers and das
Speaker 1: and like the like overprotective father trope, which we see
Speaker 1: in movies constantly. Depending on who the movie is centering,
Speaker 1: it can be framed as like a force of oppression,
Speaker 1: and then in other movies it's made to seem very reasonable.
Speaker 1: This movie, it is made to seem almost as reasonable
Speaker 1: as I've ever seen it, to the point of absurdity
Speaker 1: of like and connects to like if you want to
Speaker 1: go back hundreds of years, connects to you know, how
Speaker 1: fathers are trained to see their daughters as their property
Speaker 1: and as a bartering tool. And you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think that they're thinking that hard about it. But there
Speaker 1: is a clear reason why this trope exists. It is
Speaker 1: rooted in something real. But this movie just doesn't want
Speaker 1: to talk about anything. But yeah, it's like he you know,
Speaker 1: she is his property. It's tricky because in some ways
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, he wants to right some wrongs. He's retired,
Speaker 1: he wants to have some sort of connection with his daughter.
Speaker 1: He's relocated to do it. I don't even object to
Speaker 1: that as long as Kim feels okay about it, which
Speaker 1: she appears to, and that they're trying to make it work.
Speaker 1: But like again, it's just his overprotectiveness, which is made
Speaker 1: to seem so wildly correct, and like the idea, like
Speaker 1: any of Lenore's boundaries are made to seem cruel or
Speaker 1: ridiculous as it folds out. Well, the first time we
Speaker 1: meet Lenora, she's setting a boundary with him, saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is we agreed that this was going to be
Speaker 1: the way this was gonna go. And he's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I don't care. And then Kim shows up and she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't care either, and then Lenor looks mean for
Speaker 1: having set the boundary. And then the next time we
Speaker 1: see her, she is encouraging Liam Neeson to let Kim
Speaker 1: go on this trip to Paris and like, give her
Speaker 1: a little bit of freedom. She's you know, she's a teenager.
Speaker 1: She's going to push you away if she feels hyper
Speaker 1: surveilled by you, and he says okay. And the one
Speaker 1: time he gives in to something she recommends, she who
Speaker 1: it appears, has in entirely raised her daughter, she is
Speaker 1: dead wrong and is not able to participate in the movie. Further,
Speaker 1: she doesn't I don't.
Speaker 3: Think she she doesn't have a particular set of skills
Speaker 3: Jamie has she to do.
Speaker 1: Her skills are wife, but we also don't know that
Speaker 1: did she ever have a career, We don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess the most I can say for that is
Speaker 1: that at least they bothered to explain why the marriage
Speaker 1: fell apart and why his relationship to them is so tenuous.
Speaker 1: But even so, it is just made to seem like
Speaker 1: there's no point where leam Neisum is not correct, and
Speaker 1: that the world revolves around his feelings about people and
Speaker 1: boundaries and relationships to be correct, like the world will
Speaker 1: shift on its access to meet his logic, and that's
Speaker 1: at the expense of the two women.
Speaker 2: In the story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this reminds me of a trope that we
Speaker 3: talk about from time to time, where in any story
Speaker 3: where there's a woman who ends up as a damsel
Speaker 3: in distress and the man protagonist saves her, by the
Speaker 3: movie's logic, that entitles him to that woman because he's
Speaker 3: saved her, this is the prize he gets in return
Speaker 3: for saving her, and she's obligated to be with him
Speaker 3: and to kiss him because he saved her. I feel
Speaker 3: like a similar logic applies here, where because he's saved.
Speaker 2: His daughter, his daughter.
Speaker 3: He has redeemed himself as a father, and now he's
Speaker 3: gonna be allowed to be an active participant in her
Speaker 3: life and he's entitled to her time and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. And that is not necessarily true. Just
Speaker 3: because a person does one good thing does not redeem
Speaker 3: them for a lifetime of wickedness. And yes, that is
Speaker 3: a quote from the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
Speaker 1: But I wow, I'm problematic king. Yeah, no, it's true.
Speaker 1: And it again, it's like the way that these issues
Speaker 1: and dynamics are proposed makes it hard to talk about
Speaker 1: in an analytical way because you know, like if I'm
Speaker 1: putting myself in a parent character's head, like both of
Speaker 1: the parents to me are acting weird, where it's like
Speaker 1: Lenore has no concerns about this whatsoever. That also feels weird.
Speaker 1: Like I of course, like if my kid was like
Speaker 1: I want to go to Europe alone with people you
Speaker 1: basically don't know, I would I would be worried. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's unreasonable to express concern and express like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here is where you know, like, here is how we're
Speaker 1: going to approach safety. Here's how we're going to approach
Speaker 1: communication and blah blah blah, like in a way that
Speaker 1: feels pretty healthy, but like neither of them are proposing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're both on opposite ends of the spectrum, like, well,
Speaker 3: she's too aloof and he's too overprotective.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So if that's the case, whose logic does the
Speaker 1: story favor and it's leam Neeson, it makes Leonora look
Speaker 1: negligent and foolish for feeling any other way. This is
Speaker 1: why I find action movies like kind of eye rolly
Speaker 1: in general, where it's just like it's just creating, you know,
Speaker 1: a structure in which one guy is the coolest guy
Speaker 1: on the planet, and so of course it's not gonna
Speaker 1: make any sense. It sounds like the stepdad is at
Speaker 1: least you know, I don't know what he's like as
Speaker 1: a father, but he's certainly you know, he's like an
Speaker 1: oil he deals with shell. I was like, I here's
Speaker 1: something where in my brain wasn't working where leam Neeson
Speaker 1: was talking so fast, like, well, you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of deals with shell corporations, as like shell corporations or
Speaker 1: the shell corporation.
Speaker 2: Good question, what is his job?
Speaker 1: What is he doing? It doesn't sound good. It definitely
Speaker 1: does sound good. You don't get a house like that
Speaker 1: doing good things generally, but like certainly not. But it
Speaker 1: feels like that character is there and behaving like that,
Speaker 1: just again in service of making leam Neeson the cooler
Speaker 1: of like this, like you know, suit fucking sucks and
Speaker 1: like he doesn't know what he's talking about, and she
Speaker 1: should have stayed with me. I'm awesome even though I
Speaker 1: was negligent and a horrible husband and a horrible father,
Speaker 1: which actually is at least acknowledged by the story. And
Speaker 1: then we have how Jean Claude's what his wife is treated,
Speaker 1: which is goodness, so absurd.
Speaker 3: Leem Neeson shoots her for no reason other than to
Speaker 3: send the message.
Speaker 1: Also, her job is dinner. Yes, her job is dinner.
Speaker 1: She lets a strange like you would think someone who
Speaker 1: is his wife of someone this high profile would know
Speaker 1: maybe to not let a random stranger into the house,
Speaker 1: but that is like literally not the case.
Speaker 3: Here knows him because they go way back, so that
Speaker 3: I can kind of buy it like that he's a
Speaker 3: family friend. It seems like they already know each other,
Speaker 3: but that doesn't excuse any of the other ways she's portrayed,
Speaker 3: which is like, yeah, she's like here, have dinner, and
Speaker 3: then again he shoots her. She is not involved at
Speaker 3: all in this situation, but he needs to send a
Speaker 3: message to his new enemy, Jean Claude, and he does
Speaker 3: that by shooting her in the arm, threatening to shoot
Speaker 3: her in the ess wounds.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, oh shot her king.
Speaker 3: Then after he gets what he wants from Jean Claude,
Speaker 3: which is like the information on that Patrice guy. The
Speaker 3: scene ends with Brian saying, please.
Speaker 2: Apologize to your wife for me.
Speaker 3: Then the exits and then we never know what happened
Speaker 3: beens to the wife Isabelle.
Speaker 1: And also Jean Claude treats his wife like garbage, you know,
Speaker 1: like and Jean Claude also a bad guy. It's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's he's being presented as like the peak
Speaker 1: of morality. That's leam Neeson. And he shoots her, but
Speaker 1: like you know, he tells, you know, his wife, he
Speaker 1: tells her to shut up. He's like, you know, he's
Speaker 1: being very rude to her when she understandably has no
Speaker 1: fucking clue what they're talking about, and he's like shut off.
Speaker 1: And then she shot and you're like, Wow, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I expected from a Luke Basard screenplay, but
Speaker 1: here I am watching it. It's just like it's like comical,
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. And also, yeah, this movie was produced by
Speaker 1: Luke Basson. The director Pierre Morrell was Bison's go to cinematographer.
Speaker 1: So this is very much the predatory racist boys Club movie.
Speaker 1: And it made a quarter of a billion dollars. It
Speaker 1: made almost it made its budget back almost times. It
Speaker 1: was wildly successful. Again, had these two shitty sequels, and
Speaker 1: I guess also a TV show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which I missed. It's a not Liam Neeson. It's
Speaker 3: the same character but played by a different actor. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like a re envisioning.
Speaker 1: Guy named Clive stand In. Wow, what a wild last
Speaker 1: name for an actor. Stand In sort of feels like
Speaker 1: a death sentence. Anyways, Yeah, this movie has I mean
Speaker 1: and speaking to like the campaign run in Albania to
Speaker 1: reverse the misinformation of this movie. I feel like, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's weird because I feel like a lot of times
Speaker 1: on this show we cover like, well, it's unclear what
Speaker 1: if any net harm resulted from this. It's rare to
Speaker 1: talk about a movie where there is demonstrable net harm
Speaker 1: done by the movie's success, but this is one of
Speaker 1: those movies. Absolutely no question in my mind, this movie
Speaker 1: did bad things for people's understanding of extremely important issues,
Speaker 1: for sure, and written by again like truly the last
Speaker 1: person you want weighing in on issues around human trafficking,
Speaker 1: the last person you want, who's creative work you want
Speaker 1: to see? Really period, end of sentence. And granted, at
Speaker 1: this time, this you know, in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: this conversation around Luke Pasan was not happening yet. That
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen for almost ten years afterwards. But looking back
Speaker 1: on it now, but.
Speaker 3: All you had to do was watch Leon the Professional and.
Speaker 1: Feeling I mean what, but a lot of people like
Speaker 1: it took a long time for the conversation around that
Speaker 1: movie to come all the way around. It took a
Speaker 1: really really long time. I mean not that not to
Speaker 1: discount anyone who was having the conversation when it started,
Speaker 1: but just in the like majority public sense, that was
Speaker 1: a beloved movie when it came out. Is I just yeah,
Speaker 1: lukeas On, I really wish him the worst.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the same, may he rot in hell?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: The last thing I have.
Speaker 3: Is the way the buddies talk about the pop star Shira,
Speaker 3: where the guy his name is Sam I think, calls
Speaker 3: her a pop diva and then he's like, I don't
Speaker 3: know if you'd call her a singer, more like a
Speaker 3: cash cow. And it's just like demonstrating the way that
Speaker 3: men often are disparaging about performers or media that is
Speaker 3: targeted toward women because they.
Speaker 1: Was pulled from personal conversations that the people who make
Speaker 1: this movie have probably right exactly.
Speaker 3: So it's just like, oh, these men hate art buy
Speaker 3: and for women because they think, oh, if it's not
Speaker 3: for me, then it must be bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also in that scene the one other I
Speaker 1: forgot to say this earlier, but the way that his
Speaker 1: friends it's just something that we talk about on the
Speaker 1: show all the time. But how the fact that Liam
Speaker 1: Neeson has taken it upon himself to be an actor
Speaker 1: presence in his daughter's life on her seventeenth birthday is
Speaker 1: presented as like this heroic feat and just how low
Speaker 1: the bar is for father participation in a child's life.
Speaker 1: And they're like they literally like has she thanked you?
Speaker 1: You're like like it really seems like he sees her
Speaker 1: one day a year, like why would she think him?
Speaker 1: But also the way she's written, she might, you know,
Speaker 1: like she's like daddy, Yeah, because she's.
Speaker 3: My milkshake and my horses.
Speaker 1: Where's my milk? And my horsey? Classic seventeen year old behavior,
Speaker 1: Like this movie can it can go? It can go?
Speaker 1: Like I again, love the movies you love, but this
Speaker 1: movie I feel like is best enjoyed ironically, and it did.
Speaker 2: It did.
Speaker 1: Just I will not be revisiting it after this. I
Speaker 1: just I don't know rare that my fifteen year old
Speaker 1: self was right, but she was. She was really cooking
Speaker 1: on and having no further interest in this movie, franchise, genre, etc.
Speaker 2: I love that for young Jamie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't pass the Bechel desk. I don't care
Speaker 1: if it does. It doesn't.
Speaker 2: It doesn't.
Speaker 3: It spiritually doesn't. And this movie on our nipple scale,
Speaker 3: where we rate zero to five nipples based on examining
Speaker 3: the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I give it
Speaker 3: zero nipples.
Speaker 1: I give it zero. I have nothing to give.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we haven't talked about the concept of fridging in
Speaker 3: a while, or at least not defining it by that.
Speaker 3: But like I just also want to point out, like
Speaker 3: this is fridging the movie for any listeners who are
Speaker 3: not familiar, we're talking about a common trope in the
Speaker 3: action genre, but it also you can see it in
Speaker 3: any genre. But it was a term coined by comic
Speaker 3: writer Gail Simone in nineteen ninety nine. It describes a
Speaker 3: trend in storytelling where characters who are women will face
Speaker 3: disproportionate harm. They'll be killed, maime, dessaulted, abducted, anything like that,
Speaker 3: in order to serve as plot devices to motivate the
Speaker 3: men in the story. Usually it's a smaller plot point
Speaker 3: of a larger story, but like in the Taken movies,
Speaker 3: it's the whole story fridging the movie, the whole plot
Speaker 3: hinges on.
Speaker 1: There's no movie if it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: active person in this movie besides sex traffickers and Liam Neeson.
Speaker 1: Outside of that, there's not even a you know, I
Speaker 1: think what is more common now in sexist movies where
Speaker 1: it's like the women will maybe kick once or twice. No,
Speaker 1: we're not even rising to that. There is nothing. It's
Speaker 1: just shaking, sobbing, crying, and all the information that's been
Speaker 1: conveyed is not thought about. I mean, this movie is
Speaker 1: just like saying it's it's weird. This movie isn't saying nothing.
Speaker 1: It is just saying a lot of wrong things in
Speaker 1: a way that sticks with you harder than you might expect,
Speaker 1: because there are so few movies, especially like widely released movies,
Speaker 1: that address issues like this, and so the ones that do,
Speaker 1: if they get it wrong, that makes a big difference exactly,
Speaker 1: And the legacy of this movie says that. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: zero nipples, it sucks. You know the monologue, sure, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: but watch it on YouTube and fuck the rest.
Speaker 3: And it's a monologue that could be said by many
Speaker 3: characters in many different movies, so it's not even though
Speaker 3: it's specific to him.
Speaker 1: I think that the nice thing is most people who
Speaker 1: know that monologue forget the plot of Taken, and that
Speaker 1: is the best case scenario there. So with that, we're
Speaker 1: back at lax. I guess we don't care that our
Speaker 1: friend died and let's just go home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I'm ready for my singing lessons.
Speaker 1: By this diva, Kim is also implied to be trauma free.
Speaker 1: The second shot, You're just like, okay, anyways, we can't
Speaker 1: we can't talk about this movie a second longer. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to our back to School episode which
Speaker 1: was taken wow. Thank you again for listening. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode, you can follow us online follow us
Speaker 1: or mainly on Instagram at Bechdelcast. We're still on Twitter occasionally,
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Speaker 1: and myself, you can go to our Patreon aka Matreon,
Speaker 1: where for five dollars a month we cover two bonus episodes.
Speaker 1: You also get access to our over one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty episodes of back catalog. We've been doing the Matreon
Speaker 1: forever and every month we choose a special silly theme
Speaker 1: and cover some of your popular requests. This month it
Speaker 1: is John Hughes Bumber, and we're covering John Hughes movies
Speaker 1: that we get a lot of requests for that we
Speaker 1: haven't covered yet, so head on over there. It's a
Speaker 1: great way to support.
Speaker 3: The show, indeed, and you can grab our merch at
Speaker 3: teapublic dot com slash the Bechdel Cast. You can, Hey,
Speaker 3: why not rate and review us? Give us five nipples
Speaker 3: on whatever podcast platform.
Speaker 2: You use, and uh with.
Speaker 3: That, Jamie, let's use our particular set of skills as Friends,
Speaker 3: uh huh and go hang Out.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, Bye bye.
Speaker 3: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Speaker 3: Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
Speaker 3: by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Speaker 3: Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Vosskrosenski. Our logo and merch
Speaker 3: is designed by Jamie Loftis into special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo.
Speaker 3: For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash
Speaker 3: Bechtelcast