Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast.
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have.
Speaker 3: Women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 3: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn bast
Speaker 3: start changing with the Bechdelcast.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the podcast that feels like a podcast where
Speaker 4: we discuss movies that feel like movies.
Speaker 5: Because they are movies and sometimes it's not that complicated. No,
Speaker 5: my name is Caitlindante, my name is Jamie Loftus, and
Speaker 5: we are the podcasters who feel like podcasters because we
Speaker 5: are podcasters. Yes, this is the Bechdel Cast podcast where
Speaker 5: we take a look at your favorite movies or just movies.
Speaker 1: Uh, using it like using an intersectional feminist lens, using
Speaker 1: the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion.
Speaker 1: But Caitlyn, what the hell is that? I don't remember
Speaker 1: because I'm being trapped by an incell.
Speaker 4: Oh no, well, it's a media metric created by our
Speaker 4: best friend Alison Bechdel, first appearing in her comic Dikes
Speaker 4: to Watch Out For in the eighties. It has since
Speaker 4: become a media metric that is used to determine do
Speaker 4: women interact in a movie? And if so, do they
Speaker 4: talk to each other about something other than a man?
Speaker 4: Our version is, do two characters of a marginalized gender
Speaker 4: have names speak to each other? And is the conversation
Speaker 4: about something other than a man? Ideally it is narratively
Speaker 4: meaningful dialogue and not just throw away nonsense. This movie
Speaker 4: doesn't really have a problem with the Bechdel test.
Speaker 1: It just has a problem with a.
Speaker 4: Lot of other stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to talk about this movie. Yes, this
Speaker 1: was a movie that when it came out, it's don't worry, darling,
Speaker 1: We're not trying to withhold this information.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's no big twist at the end.
Speaker 1: End, no big twist that the director. Upon revisiting the
Speaker 1: press cycle, the director spoilers the movie in almost every interview,
Speaker 1: which is wild. She's like, yeah, ye, so I based
Speaker 1: Chris Pine's character on Jordan Peterson. Like you really should
Speaker 1: not have said that. That's like that ruins it. Anyways.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember what I was saying, because it
Speaker 1: just this movie is so silly. Oh oh, this is
Speaker 1: a movie that we got a ton of requests for
Speaker 1: when it came out, and we've been trying to for
Speaker 1: the most part not cover movies right when they come out,
Speaker 1: because it's hard to have any sort of objectivity, especially
Speaker 1: when a movie was as discussed to death as this
Speaker 1: one was. Oh yes, but it feels like it's been
Speaker 1: enough time. And also we have an incredible guest, so
Speaker 1: let's get them in here.
Speaker 4: They are an author, programmer, and film critic and their
Speaker 4: new book That Very Witch, Fear, Feminism and the American
Speaker 4: Witch Film is something that you should get and read.
Speaker 1: I'm halfway through it. It's terrific.
Speaker 4: It's Peyton McCarty, Semas welcome, Hi.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to talk
Speaker 2: about this real go to the theater movie.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh. We come to this place for movies
Speaker 4: that feel like movies, come to.
Speaker 1: This place for discourse.
Speaker 4: So first of all, tell us about your book.
Speaker 2: Yes, please, absolutely so. Basically, this book traces the evolution
Speaker 2: of the witch in horror films as a vector for
Speaker 2: the state of feminism at any given point in time
Speaker 2: in history in America specifically. So as I go through,
Speaker 2: basically what I do is I give you a little
Speaker 2: bit of a history and the politics of the moment,
Speaker 2: a little bit of the history of the feminism of
Speaker 2: the moment, the history of the cinema of the period,
Speaker 2: and then I tile of that together through the witch
Speaker 2: films of that particular era. And what I figured out
Speaker 2: was that, well, you know, witches have always been a
Speaker 2: symbol of feminism, but at peak feminist activism in America
Speaker 2: at these moments like the sixties and the twenty tens,
Speaker 2: whiches in the horror film are depicted as super powerful,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, intuitive in a certain sense, but
Speaker 2: how they're depicted as powerful changes and can tell you
Speaker 2: a lot about what's going on, and in moments of
Speaker 2: something else very interesting occurs.
Speaker 6: So I researched this book for a little over half
Speaker 6: a decade and it was basically my therapy for where
Speaker 6: we are when the election happened.
Speaker 2: I didn't really have to change anything. I emailed my
Speaker 2: editor and was like, I'm going to add two sentences
Speaker 2: and then we're ready to go. So it definitely helped
Speaker 2: me figure out how we got here. But it's also
Speaker 2: I hope it's a fun time, you know, so gosh, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can confirm it absolutely rocks. Thank you for writing it,
Speaker 1: And it looks also just like I don't know. I
Speaker 1: was like, that must have been such a fun book
Speaker 1: to research.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it was such a blast because you
Speaker 2: get to you know, it's like the arc of American history, right,
Speaker 2: So I got to spend a lot of time like
Speaker 2: rocking out in the sixties and learning about acid and
Speaker 2: the CIA, and then you know, you go to the
Speaker 2: eighties and you're thinking about like punk subcultures and yuppies
Speaker 2: and the nineties. You've got right, girl. It was. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a complete blast. That rocks amazing.
Speaker 1: Thanks, we come to this place to discuss the movie.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, darling, So follow up question, different question. What
Speaker 1: is your history with this movie? I know it's pretty recent,
Speaker 1: but no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when we were talking about what films to discuss today,
Speaker 2: I saw that was an option, and I was so
Speaker 2: excited because this movie made me so just flamingly livid
Speaker 2: when it came out, Like I was all there, I
Speaker 2: was all in right, like I love I just wrote
Speaker 2: a piece. This is gonna I promise this will make sense.
Speaker 2: But I just wrote a piece for Remorgue this year
Speaker 2: called wah It's all connected, about a fake genre that
Speaker 2: I made up of, like particularly conspiratorial kind of New
Speaker 2: agey movies typically about men right, and like, whenever I
Speaker 2: see a woman making like a seventies inspired parallax view
Speaker 2: type movie, I'm there. I'm like, let let us do Grolboa,
Speaker 2: you know. But then watching it, it's so failed in
Speaker 2: its politics, it so boggles the mind, and it has
Speaker 2: so many script problems, like it's it's failed top to bottom.
Speaker 2: So I was so pissed and I was excited to
Speaker 2: just take it down. But rewatching it from twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: it really felt like more in sorrow than an anger,
Speaker 2: Like there's so much here that speaks to the moment
Speaker 2: that had the potential to be really salient. And I
Speaker 2: think even some of the angles that frustrated me the
Speaker 2: first time, I actually found like some potential poignancy in,
Speaker 2: particularly in the wake of the Charlie Kirk things. So
Speaker 2: I think there's so much to unpack here. I'm still pissed.
Speaker 2: I am still pissed, but it's like it's like pissed
Speaker 2: because I'm disappointed, you know, I'm angry and disappointed.
Speaker 4: Fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's it is so funny for a movie
Speaker 1: that is like, ultimately I also am like, let women
Speaker 1: make b movies like, but I feel like it was
Speaker 1: hard to not have a very particular relationship with this movie.
Speaker 1: If you were remotely plugged into pop culture at the time,
Speaker 1: you could not escape it. And it was interesting even
Speaker 1: just three years later because of the rate that society
Speaker 1: is deteriorating. I guess that you're like, the criticisms I
Speaker 1: had three years ago are some, some remain consistent, but
Speaker 1: there's also yeah, like you're saying peyton things I feel
Speaker 1: a little gentler on now, and then things that I'm
Speaker 1: even madder about then when I saw it the first time.
Speaker 4: It's interesting, Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie?
Speaker 1: I saw it. I saw it in theaters and I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I did not like that at all.
Speaker 1: But but I mean I do think, like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think that the more recent example of this that
Speaker 1: is far darker is this is a movie who, I
Speaker 1: think for most people who are like keeping eyes on
Speaker 1: it at the time, like has a more famous press
Speaker 1: cycle than a plot. The press cycle for this movie
Speaker 1: was absolutely inescapable in a way that it seems like
Speaker 1: only helped the movie's box office a little bit. I
Speaker 1: think the darker version of that was last year, two
Speaker 1: years ago, with the the like Blake Lively justin Baldonia
Speaker 1: of it all with it ends with us. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you have pre cycles like Wicked where nothing went wrong,
Speaker 1: but you're like, what the fuck happened? And that's just fun.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I think I was gonna see
Speaker 1: this movie either way because I enjoyed BookSmart. It was
Speaker 1: a fun little movie. It was nice to have a
Speaker 1: whatever rising comedy director who is a woman, which is
Speaker 1: something that still is pretty rare. And yeah, this movie
Speaker 1: really just like does not come together in ways that
Speaker 1: are infuriating sometimes and like funny. It's just like this
Speaker 1: movie's like very naive in a lot of ways, like
Speaker 1: if someone explained white feminism to an alien, which could
Speaker 1: have been what happened? Who knows? Yeah, Yeah, I've basically
Speaker 1: my definitive statement here is that the second, like there's
Speaker 1: a one of many profiles of Olivia Wilde around the
Speaker 1: time this movie came out was her saying explicitly the
Speaker 1: inspiration for this movie is the feminine mystique, which makes
Speaker 1: so much sense because the feminine mystique is a valuable,
Speaker 1: famous text that only concerns itself with the white middle class,
Speaker 1: which is very much what this movie is, and it
Speaker 1: feels kind of like a semi like not really a
Speaker 1: coherent criticism that also feels both early and late. It's weird.
Speaker 1: This movie's a weird one. That's what my That's what
Speaker 1: I have to say. Caitlin, what's your history with this movie?
Speaker 1: I didn't see it in theaters. I saw it maybe
Speaker 1: like six months after it had come and gone from
Speaker 1: its theatrical release, and by that point I had heard
Speaker 1: all of the all the reviews that were not favorable
Speaker 1: of this movie and all the people just being.
Speaker 4: Like that sucked so bad, that was trash and blah
Speaker 4: blah blah. So I went in thinking it was going
Speaker 4: to be like incoherent drivel, which I don't think that's
Speaker 4: the case obviously. I think that it has a lot
Speaker 4: of problems and it falls short in the commentary it's
Speaker 4: trying to make. But I was expecting some like really
Speaker 4: incompetent filmmaking, and I was like, oh, it's you know,
Speaker 4: it's basically the plot of the Stepford Wives, but you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's not horrendous. But I also wasn't watching it
Speaker 4: specifically through a Bechdel cast lens that first time, and
Speaker 4: now rewatching it which I was like, oh god, do
Speaker 4: I have to for this episode? I noticed many many
Speaker 4: more of the problems and I'm excited to discuss. So
Speaker 4: let's take a quick break and then we'll come back
Speaker 4: for the recap.
Speaker 1: And we are back, shall we shall We get into
Speaker 1: the plot and Peyton feel free to jump in whenever
Speaker 1: if you have a pressing thought, which this movie is
Speaker 1: so many. I have so many intrusive thoughts about this movie.
Speaker 1: And I was like re remembering the Harry styles memes
Speaker 1: of his acting, which isn't as bad as people said,
Speaker 1: but it's not good.
Speaker 4: Okay that too. Everyone was like he did gives the
Speaker 4: worst performance ever. And I was just like, it was.
Speaker 1: Fine, he gives he gives up performance.
Speaker 2: Okay, he's trying his best.
Speaker 1: It feels like he's I know. I was like, am
Speaker 1: I coddling him?
Speaker 2: Yes, which, like you know, girl Boss Sleigh, you can
Speaker 2: anyone can put their younger attractive bow in the movie,
Speaker 2: you know, like the ingenoeu of it all was really good.
Speaker 1: I was. It was kind of funny where I was like,
Speaker 1: okay for Olivia Wild to some extent, she's like girl
Speaker 1: bossing Osha violations. She's like women should violate HR contracts
Speaker 1: and you're like, yeah, yeah, exactly. I also forgot about
Speaker 1: do you guys remember the spit thing. I just was like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, having all of these like things that I
Speaker 1: thought I would never have to think about again, And
Speaker 1: here we are talking about Spitgate in the year twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five.
Speaker 2: Here we are just I'm so convinced that, like that
Speaker 2: was a glitch in the matrix, like we're all living in.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, darling, because that was the media simulacrum that broke,
Speaker 2: and like that's just every day in this universe now,
Speaker 2: Like you can just ai that actually having happened if
Speaker 2: you want to.
Speaker 1: But like, oh man, there's so many funny parts. Harry
Speaker 1: Styles looking ugly is hilarious. Like it's just it's it's great.
Speaker 1: It's great that wig. It's camp This movie is I
Speaker 1: feel like we will We just covered a movie neither
Speaker 1: of us had seen before yesterday, The Devil's Advocate, which
Speaker 1: I feel like has a lot of similarities plot wise
Speaker 1: and also how campy it is because it's so deeply
Speaker 1: sincere in what it's trying to do. This movie is
Speaker 1: really trying to define feminist thriller and it doesn't, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of why I feel a little like, oh
Speaker 1: I don't hate it.
Speaker 2: This could have been a cult classic if it were
Speaker 2: any better or worse, Like I kept thinking about Zaradas,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like, if it weren't mostly
Speaker 2: medium close ups, and if the mcguffins were either a
Speaker 2: little bit weirder or a little bit better explained, we
Speaker 2: could all like cherish, don't worried? Are they?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Like really go for it, like we need girl
Speaker 1: ed Wood?
Speaker 2: Come on, yes, yes.
Speaker 4: Okay, here's the story. It is the nineteen fifties or
Speaker 4: easy Tavy we think it is at first, and we
Speaker 4: meet a young married couple Alice and Jack played by
Speaker 4: Florence Pugh and Harry Styles as well as they're friends
Speaker 4: and neighbors who are other married couples Bunny and Dean.
Speaker 4: That's Olivia Wilde and Nick Kroll. And then there's Peter
Speaker 4: and Peg played by comedian pals of ours Asif Ali
Speaker 4: and Cap Perland. And they all live in a cul
Speaker 4: de sac. I was calling them the cul de Sac
Speaker 4: Crew to borrow a cougar Town reference.
Speaker 1: Really, wow, I got to watch Cougartown.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I watched it. I would say against my will,
Speaker 4: but kind of like it's almost like I was put
Speaker 4: in a simulation against my will to watch Cougar Town.
Speaker 4: So true anyway, So they live in what appears to
Speaker 4: be a typical American suburb at first, but then we
Speaker 4: realize it's this small isolated community called Victory in the
Speaker 4: middle of a desert, and all of the husbands work
Speaker 4: for something called the Victory Project, which is some company
Speaker 4: or entity doing vague classified work.
Speaker 2: Which not for nothing do we ever fear what they're doing.
Speaker 4: They call it the development of progressive materials.
Speaker 2: It's like, but like, what are they Well of the
Speaker 2: biggest problems with the movie is that it's just a
Speaker 2: red herring. Like it literally is just a red herring.
Speaker 2: They go do normal jobs in real worlds, right, and
Speaker 2: they set it up like what's the Victory Project? And
Speaker 2: I guess theoretically the Victory Project is is the spoiler
Speaker 2: of the movie, like in the real world, But ultimately
Speaker 2: it's so dissatisfying because they don't do anything with that.
Speaker 2: And it also felt like the development of progressive Materials
Speaker 2: was supposed to be like a real deep commentary, like
Speaker 2: the women are the progressive materials, but like.
Speaker 1: You're like, yeah, they're so Like I kept writing down
Speaker 1: like Florence goes to touch the plot stone so that
Speaker 1: the plot can continue. Yeah, it was under one one
Speaker 1: of the many kind of that was like one of
Speaker 1: my least. There are some red herrings that are so
Speaker 1: funny to me, like the Gema Chan fake out. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean?
Speaker 4: Oh, I get there, doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: Sorry, we'll get there.
Speaker 2: I like seized. I've been wanting to talk about that
Speaker 2: since the movie came out.
Speaker 1: I'm ready, it's her try now sure.
Speaker 4: To me, it felt like the work they were doing
Speaker 4: was like nuclear weapons manufacturing coated.
Speaker 1: I think that's like what we're supposed to think.
Speaker 4: But again, it's just a red herring. Who knows. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so that's what the men do. The women, meanwhile, live
Speaker 4: very typical nineteen fifties white American housewife lives. We see
Speaker 4: Alice cooking and cleaning with a smile and a dress
Speaker 4: and her hair done perfectly, and she and Jack are
Speaker 4: also very horny for each other and they're constantly having sex. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but soon Alice starts noticing some weird things.
Speaker 1: Iconically, the eggs aren't eggs like so many of the
Speaker 1: like thriller imagery is just so like it cracks me
Speaker 1: up because it's so vague, like you're just pulling on
Speaker 1: like things you're supposed to be but don't.
Speaker 2: You get it? Her life and the eggs are hollow.
Speaker 1: But then she cooks the eggs and she's like, the
Speaker 1: eggs aren't eggs. Minutes later they were, in fact eggs.
Speaker 4: They're different eggs.
Speaker 1: I guess, Oh, man, I love I love when the
Speaker 1: eggs aren't eggs. I watched I kept rewinding it and
Speaker 1: making Grant watch it with me. I was like, one
Speaker 1: day we're gonna wake up and the eggs aren't gonna
Speaker 1: be eggs anymore, and what are you gonna do?
Speaker 4: And wow? Makes you think?
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: The sound design on the egg cracking scene was also
Speaker 4: un like, you did too much here? Whoever did that?
Speaker 4: But anyway, how.
Speaker 1: Old are you gonna know? That the eggs are? The
Speaker 1: eggs are and eggs? And Florence's is acting the hell
Speaker 1: out of that scene.
Speaker 2: Oh, Florence is trying so hard and all of the
Speaker 2: dialogue is so bad, and she's holding this thing together
Speaker 2: with her little oven mits.
Speaker 1: I swear she really is. I think like her performance
Speaker 1: is genuinely good, Like she's selling me on this, Like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm also confused, Florence, what is going on here?
Speaker 1: I wish we knew?
Speaker 4: Hmmm, So yeah, we get the We get some weird things,
Speaker 4: such as the eggs aren't eggs. She's seeing some quick
Speaker 4: flashes of things that she doesn't know what they are.
Speaker 4: She's constantly humming a song that's stuck in her head,
Speaker 4: but she doesn't know what the song is, and something
Speaker 4: is going on with her neighbor Margaret played by Kiki Lane.
Speaker 4: Alice sees her behaving weirdly. Then everyone goes to a
Speaker 4: party hosted by Frank played by Chris Pine and his
Speaker 4: wife Shelley played by Jemma Chan and Frank is the
Speaker 4: founder of the Victory Project and he's giving a speech
Speaker 4: about how awesome it is, but Alice's neighbor, Margaret, interrupts
Speaker 4: to be like, why are we here? What is going on?
Speaker 4: And she's pulled out of the party and Frank brushes
Speaker 4: it off, And then some of the women gossip about
Speaker 4: Margaret and we learn that they used to be friends
Speaker 4: with her until she quote unquote lost her mind and
Speaker 4: took her young son out into the desert where he
Speaker 4: apparently disappeared. Then one day, Alice is feeling restless.
Speaker 1: She has less.
Speaker 4: Pep in her step as she's doing her household chores,
Speaker 4: So she goes out and takes a ride on the
Speaker 4: local trolley and she witnesses a plane crash in the
Speaker 4: distance by the Victory Project headquarters.
Speaker 1: Would you like to know what that means? Well, you're
Speaker 1: never gonna find out. We don't know. Well, you're never
Speaker 1: gonna get it.
Speaker 4: But the driver won't go out there to the crash
Speaker 4: site to help, because there's this whole thing in Victory
Speaker 4: where everyone has to stay in town. Leaving isn't safe.
Speaker 1: Right, because the the simulatres the simulation. There's also like
Speaker 1: another one of the thriller things we were like is
Speaker 1: there's occasionally like small earthquakes that are very normal for
Speaker 1: the community. You don't really know what that was.
Speaker 4: I think that was part of the like are they
Speaker 4: testing nuclear weapons or whatever the fair Like project is.
Speaker 1: But it's her brain like, right, it's the simulation, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, if we go back to like screenwriting one
Speaker 2: oh one, Like we're sitting down with notebooks and it's
Speaker 2: a college class, right, Like one of the main questions
Speaker 2: that you have to ask in a script is why today,
Speaker 2: Like what is the inciting event? Why is this happening
Speaker 2: to her today? And like why is she unhappy today?
Speaker 2: There is simply no reason. There's no reason this started happening.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the major problems with the movie
Speaker 2: is that there's no like real escalation, and there's no
Speaker 2: motivation for her. She's just suddenly confused and discontented and
Speaker 2: you know, like the feminine well, I have a whole
Speaker 2: like there's so many problems, but like she's not actually
Speaker 2: cause you were saying Kaitlin earlier, like they normal fifties
Speaker 2: housewife lives, but they don't like they live in a
Speaker 2: racially integrated, very happy, very sexually fulfilling community, which is nonsense,
Speaker 2: and she loves it and that's part of the politics
Speaker 2: thing that I'm sure we'll return to. But like, she
Speaker 2: has no problem with her life and thus the fact
Speaker 2: that she suddenly does doesn't make any sense. Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: she's realizing that she's in the Stepford Wives, but it's
Speaker 2: not because she doesn't actually enjoy drinking martiniz and playing
Speaker 2: tennis like which you need to have that right, Like
Speaker 2: in the Stepford Wives. The main character is a photographer
Speaker 2: and she's like, you're not letting me do my art
Speaker 2: or my work and I hate it. But here she's like,
Speaker 2: I love getting hat on my kitchen table. And also
Speaker 2: I think something's wrong.
Speaker 1: Like one of the many things with this where I
Speaker 1: was like, why because we whatever. If you haven't watched,
Speaker 1: don't worry darling, then do or don't whatever? When people,
Speaker 1: our listeners don't complain about spoilers, but when people, I
Speaker 1: was like, you clicked on it, it's not. But anyways,
Speaker 1: when it's later revealed that Florence Pugh's character is a doctor,
Speaker 1: You're like, why could that not become plot relevant?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Why could there not be? Because theoretically, with Margaret, there's
Speaker 1: a medical emergency. Why isn't there a part in the
Speaker 1: back of her head that is like I know what
Speaker 1: to do? But the past version of herself has absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing in common with Like there's no like part of
Speaker 1: herself rattling in the back of her head, which I
Speaker 1: feel like could have at least given you a why
Speaker 1: right of like, right, oh, I know how to help?
Speaker 1: Like why and I don't know. There's just so many
Speaker 1: things this movie could have done that, it doesn't for
Speaker 1: sure whatever.
Speaker 4: So there's so she's on the trolley, she sees the
Speaker 4: plane crash, and she ventures out into the desert on
Speaker 4: foot and ends up at HQ of the Victory Project
Speaker 4: and has some weird dream vision thing at the plot
Speaker 4: stone at the plot building, and the next thing she knows,
Speaker 4: she wakes up at home and she asks Jack how
Speaker 4: she got there, and he's like, I don't know anything
Speaker 4: about that or about this supposed plane crash, you silly goose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he does what Keanu Reeves also does
Speaker 1: in The Devil's Advocate, where well it's not I think
Speaker 1: it's like the beat after this, but he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be extra nice to you so you don't
Speaker 1: notice something terrible is happening, or let me get you pregnant.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that's what you want, even though she says
Speaker 1: she just doesn't.
Speaker 4: Right anyways, men always be trying to distract women with
Speaker 4: a pregnancy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like, please have a kid that I will
Speaker 1: see occasionally neglect y.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, So then more weird stuff happens. For example,
Speaker 4: the walls of her house seem like they are closing
Speaker 4: in on her for a brief moment something compels Alice
Speaker 4: to put saran rap around her head and nearly suffocate herself.
Speaker 2: I kind of dug that image as like a visual metaphor.
Speaker 2: I think in a better movie, I would have been
Speaker 2: like that that cooks, But.
Speaker 4: Right here it just kind of feels like it's coming
Speaker 4: out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: The esthetic, I mean, this movie looks good. It looks good.
Speaker 4: Production design is solid. Yeah, okay, so those weird things
Speaker 4: are happening. There are a couple more things with Margaret,
Speaker 4: including Alice seeing Margaret take her own life, and Alice
Speaker 4: tries to run and help her, but two men in
Speaker 4: red jumpsuits come out of nowhere and drag Alice away.
Speaker 1: Which every single time reminds me of Monsters Inc. I
Speaker 1: can't see men and haz matts suits and not be
Speaker 1: like which obviously Monsters Inc. Didn't invent that, but to me,
Speaker 1: it did, and I'm not interested in further context.
Speaker 2: Okay, they look just like the orderlies in her hospital,
Speaker 2: which made me think about that one episode of the
Speaker 2: Twilight Zone with the woman who thinks that she's already
Speaker 2: dead and she ends up in the Morgan her dreams,
Speaker 2: but again, because she doesn't seem to have any relation
Speaker 2: to her normal life self. That image I don't think
Speaker 2: read well.
Speaker 1: And my least favorite, my biggest plot hole on the
Speaker 1: first viewing, which is this like talented doctor disappeared question
Speaker 1: mark and no one is looking for her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, does she have a family that wonders.
Speaker 1: Where she is? She's probably five hundred hours a week
Speaker 1: and people are like, well, I don't know, Like what
Speaker 1: do you mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our top surgeon is gone, but they're the schedule,
Speaker 2: like the shifts are fine, someone else will take it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, did Jack have to like fake her death
Speaker 4: so that no one would question where she is? There's
Speaker 4: a lot of world building that goes unexplored.
Speaker 1: But like I don't know. At this point, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm laughing, Yeah, sure, sure, why not?
Speaker 4: Why not?
Speaker 1: It's feminism for this movie to suck. I yes.
Speaker 4: So Alice witnesses this traumatic event with Margaret, and she
Speaker 4: starts asking Jack a bunch of questions about his job
Speaker 4: and what the Victory Project is actually doing, and he
Speaker 4: gets furious and also does some very textbook gaslighting. And
Speaker 4: then the town physician, doctor Collins played by Timothy.
Speaker 1: Simmons Jonah from Veep, He comes.
Speaker 4: By to examine Alice, and she's like, hey, doc, what
Speaker 4: the fuck is going on? What happened with Margaret? But
Speaker 4: doctor Collins insists that Margaret is alive and she just
Speaker 4: needs some psychiatric help, so she and her husband left Victory,
Speaker 4: but Alice gets a sneak peek inside the doctor's briefcase
Speaker 4: and sees a file on Margaret which is like mostly
Speaker 4: blacked out.
Speaker 2: That made me cackle, Like when she opens it and
Speaker 2: it's literally all redacted, like why are you carrying that?
Speaker 2: That's not helping you as a doctor.
Speaker 4: Right, And then she burns it for some reason, like
Speaker 4: wouldn't that be evidence that something is going on, that
Speaker 4: they're hiding something and trying to cover things up? Why
Speaker 4: wouldn't she like hang.
Speaker 1: On to that. Don't worry, darling.
Speaker 4: We don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't exactly.
Speaker 4: If you have questions about this movie, just don't you worry, darling.
Speaker 1: Just remember what the title is, Yes, just the movie.
Speaker 1: The movie feels like a movie. Harry was trying to
Speaker 1: get ahead of these criticisms.
Speaker 2: It feels like a movie. But is it?
Speaker 1: But is it?
Speaker 4: Then there's a big Victory Project event where Frank gives
Speaker 4: Jack a promotion but Alice still feels very distraught about
Speaker 4: everything that's been going on, and she tries to confide
Speaker 4: in Bunny, the Olivia Wilde character, who turns on her
Speaker 4: and acts as though Alice has lost her mind. The
Speaker 4: next night, there's a dinner party at Alice and Jack's
Speaker 4: house to celebrate his promotion, and Frank shows up and
Speaker 4: approaches Alice privately to be like, I know that you're
Speaker 4: on to me and I don't even care. Keep trying
Speaker 4: and good luck with that.
Speaker 1: Another dynamic that is not paid off on in any way.
Speaker 2: Nope, no, on this rewatch. I actually really noticed that,
Speaker 2: in terms of the beat for beat of this movie,
Speaker 2: there's supposed to be sexual tension between Alice and mister
Speaker 2: chris Pine Jordan Peterson, and there simply isn't. Oh Like,
Speaker 2: there's that earlier scene where she and Harry Styles are
Speaker 2: having sex and he walks in and watches, and then
Speaker 2: in all of the rest of the scenes, I think
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be like, not only is he the
Speaker 2: moriarty to her homes with this totally out of pocket
Speaker 2: villain monologue, but also they're supposed to be having chemistry
Speaker 2: and chris Pine theoretically good casting choice absolutely failed. He's
Speaker 2: so flat, it's just not working.
Speaker 4: I didn't notice that at all. I didn't realize that that.
Speaker 2: Was dude, I think when you look through it, because
Speaker 2: then at dinner he basically implies that he and Alice
Speaker 2: have been having sex this whole time, and Harry Styles
Speaker 2: is like, guess we won't address that one. But I
Speaker 2: think that would have helped the story a lot, because
Speaker 2: if the metaphor is that this way of life is
Speaker 2: seductive for women, which is what I think is actually
Speaker 2: most salient to the present, Like let's talk about tradwives
Speaker 2: and the appeal. Let's unpack that, right. But if that's
Speaker 2: the idea, then the erotic tension between those two is
Speaker 2: essential because for me, my biggest issue with this movie
Speaker 2: is that it's having its cake and eating it too,
Speaker 2: where this is a movie where Olivia Wilde was both like,
Speaker 2: we're supposed to be exploring what it's like for women
Speaker 2: who are living in a system that actually works really
Speaker 2: well for them without actually unpacking how that system works,
Speaker 2: like all of the paternalism is really benevolent, and all
Speaker 2: of these women are getting so much head Like none
Speaker 2: of these women, like she said on a podcast when
Speaker 2: she was like, no man comes in this movie, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, Okay, you're right, yeah, like that that is
Speaker 2: how that works. Like nineteen fifty's Integrated non racist America
Speaker 2: where the women are having orgasms, Like the height report
Speaker 2: was not released until the late sixties, Like the idea
Speaker 2: that women had orgasms generally speaking, like sodomy laws were
Speaker 2: still a thing, like this was not like.
Speaker 1: Like you know, it wasn't socially acceptable for women to
Speaker 1: come like I in our lifetimes, like it has it
Speaker 1: Like it's just I don't know, I I agree with you,
Speaker 1: like she I appreciate what she's trying to do. It's
Speaker 1: kind of I mean in a different way because obviously
Speaker 1: Olivia Wilde Shonda rhymes different people. But it reminds me
Speaker 1: of a lot of the criticism that you often see
Speaker 1: around Bridgerton, where it's like very nostalgic and like weirdly
Speaker 1: celebrating a very regressive time in the visuals and like
Speaker 1: all this stuff and like quote unquote corrects the past
Speaker 1: to make it more comfortable when it's like well but
Speaker 1: theoretically less so in Bridgerton, which is like really just
Speaker 1: turn your brain way down, which is fine, I watch it,
Speaker 1: but like this movie is trying to be smart and
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, then well we'll talk about keek Elen's
Speaker 1: character Margaret too, because it's like, yes, I would be
Speaker 1: so curious what because Keekulane was pubblicly like when this
Speaker 1: movie came out, because every every actor, I think once
Speaker 1: Florence Pugh went nuclear and showed up at wherever with
Speaker 1: the apparol sprits. Everyone was like, oh, we're allowed to
Speaker 1: talk shit about the movie. Great, and Kiki Lane was like,
Speaker 1: all our scenes were cut, we had a storyline where
Speaker 1: to go. I'd be very curious what that was. I'm
Speaker 1: not confident that it would have been markedly better, but
Speaker 1: like this movie's refusal to engage with race in any
Speaker 1: way is so glaring.
Speaker 2: Well, this her character is so racist, Like she's just
Speaker 2: the wise black foil to Florence Pew. Like there's that
Speaker 2: scene in the dance studio where it's literally Kiki Laane
Speaker 2: looking sad and knowledgeable and Florence Peugh staring at her
Speaker 2: in a way it's like this basically like reductive, like
Speaker 2: the help levels of reductive for this character here.
Speaker 1: Right, and like her really wild body, really like her
Speaker 1: dead body being like really harped upon in spite of
Speaker 1: the fact that we like we don't even have time
Speaker 1: to become endeared this character, Like we don't know her
Speaker 1: at all. She is being used to, Like you're saying
Speaker 1: this very racist plot device. I would be curious what
Speaker 1: those scenes were. I don't feel confident that they that
Speaker 1: it would approve what we're talking about very much. But
Speaker 1: it just like, in a movie that is trying to
Speaker 1: say something about feminism, you cannot refuse to engage with race.
Speaker 1: That is like been at the absolute core that and
Speaker 1: homophobia and tresphobia have been at the core of the
Speaker 1: problems with every feminist movement ever, like you have to
Speaker 1: engage with it. It makes me feel nuts. That's literally
Speaker 1: the problem with the feminine mystique. Did no one tell
Speaker 1: her that?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 4: And we can get into this later too, But the
Speaker 4: Margaret character was originally supposed to be played by Dakota Johnson,
Speaker 4: so it was originally supposed to be a white woman,
Speaker 4: and then I didn't they cast Keiki Laane instead, but
Speaker 4: like didn't do anything to adjust the story to accommodate
Speaker 4: that character now being a black woman. So like it's
Speaker 4: a it's a mess.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if if either of you have
Speaker 1: seen I just saw After the Hunt over the weekend.
Speaker 2: Oh, not yet.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it. Whatever it's but like, I feel
Speaker 1: like it has like kind of a similar issue where
Speaker 1: Iowa Debois is playing a college student who is allegedly
Speaker 1: that's the whole point of the movie, assaulted by a
Speaker 1: white professor, but it does not engage with race in
Speaker 1: any way to the point where it's like distracting. This
Speaker 1: movie has a similar problem for sure. All right, where
Speaker 1: are we in the story? Oh, we're in the middle
Speaker 1: of this dinner party. Alice confronts Frank at the dinner
Speaker 1: table in front of everyone, being like, you're lying to us.
Speaker 1: We don't even know what the victory project is? What
Speaker 1: even is this place? Where does our food come from?
Speaker 1: The eggs? Aren't eggs, Chris Pine, Why aren't the eggs eggs?
Speaker 4: And he's like, no comment, And she's like, you disappear
Speaker 4: people who ask any questions and he he's just like you,
Speaker 4: silly little girl. And everyone does not like Alice's behavior,
Speaker 4: so they all leave, and Alice, realizing that she's in danger,
Speaker 4: begs Jack for them to leave. Victory for good that night,
Speaker 4: and he agrees, or at least he seems to, because
Speaker 4: as they're about to drive off, the men in the
Speaker 4: red jumpsuits show up and abduct her, and it's clear
Speaker 4: that Jack is complicit in this, and Alice is taken
Speaker 4: to a medical facility, put in restraints, and given electroshock therapy,
Speaker 4: which prompts a flashback of Jack and Alice. Although it's
Speaker 4: not the nineteen fifties in Victory, California, it's modern day
Speaker 4: and she's a modern woman with a job even she's
Speaker 4: a surgeon. Jack on the other hand, is unemployed and
Speaker 4: resentful of her, and he spends his time listening to
Speaker 4: this like Men's rights podcast hosted by Frank and it's
Speaker 4: giving Jack some ideas. We then cut back to Victory.
Speaker 4: Alice returns home from the medical facility and she seems
Speaker 4: to be doing much better, aka she is once again
Speaker 4: blissfully ignorant of what's actually going on, and they go
Speaker 4: back into the routine of Jack going to work and
Speaker 4: Alice being a quote unquote perfect housewife. But then Jack
Speaker 4: puts on a record and plays the same song that
Speaker 4: Alice has been humming the whole movie, and that triggers
Speaker 4: another flashback slash memory, where we learn that the Victory
Speaker 4: Project is actually a fucked up black market computer simulation
Speaker 4: where people are hooked up and put into this world
Speaker 4: that we've been seeing this like idyllic nineteen fifties community,
Speaker 4: and Jack has put Alice into this simulation against her will.
Speaker 4: We cut back to the simulation and again this song
Speaker 4: is triggering all of these memories of Alice in the
Speaker 4: real world, and now she fully realizes what's going on,
Speaker 4: and she's like, what the fuck, Jack, You took my
Speaker 4: life away from me. You've trapped me here along with
Speaker 4: all of these other women who are trapped.
Speaker 1: This is the scene where I think that the very
Speaker 1: funny Harry Styles acting meme comes from where oh, you
Speaker 1: can't like I can't. It's not a visual medium, but
Speaker 1: where he's sort of like the whole time, he's like,
Speaker 1: the vocal performance is there, but his face is sort
Speaker 1: of doing like the angry emoji. It's cute.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny because he and Florence Q can both
Speaker 2: make that same cartoon front of you, Yes, and they're
Speaker 2: making it at each other in the scene. It's awesome.
Speaker 1: You're like, I don't like it. I don't think Harry
Speaker 1: Styles is that bad.
Speaker 4: I don't think so either.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, And then Jack becomes violent, so she strikes him
Speaker 4: over the head and kills him, which means he dies
Speaker 4: in the real world too, which will cause her no
Speaker 4: problems in the future, No, none, whatsoever.
Speaker 2: She'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't worry. The movie's about to just end abruptly,
Speaker 1: so it's all good, right, But first, it's my turn now, right.
Speaker 4: Well, then Bunny shows up and reveals that she has
Speaker 4: known all along that this is a simulation, and she
Speaker 4: actually chose this life because her children, who she lost
Speaker 4: in the real world are with her in Victory. But
Speaker 4: now Bunny wants to help Alice leave and to save herself.
Speaker 4: I don't know why this switch suddenly happened, but Bunny
Speaker 4: is helpful now. So Alice gets in Jack's car and
Speaker 4: drives toward the head quarters, which actually is the like
Speaker 4: the plot stone exit portal.
Speaker 1: Yea, it's the plot stone. She has to touch the
Speaker 1: plot stone, and literally, when she touches the plot stone,
Speaker 1: the movie ends.
Speaker 4: You're like so abrupt. So she's driving out to this location.
Speaker 4: The men in the red jumpsuits are chasing her, Frank
Speaker 4: is freaking out because if Alice escapes back to the
Speaker 4: real world, theoretically she would be able to expose the
Speaker 4: Victory Project. But he doesn't actually like explicitly express that
Speaker 4: as a concern, and that was just like my head cannon.
Speaker 4: But Frank's wife, Shelley stabs him for reasons.
Speaker 1: It's her turn now, it's her turn before you have
Speaker 1: a time fighting for her life in that scene, because
Speaker 1: it's like you can sort of see in her eyes somewhere.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm saying either, right.
Speaker 2: I just can't believe that Erica Kirk did that to
Speaker 2: Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1: That's what happened. It was just her. It just happened
Speaker 1: to be her turn. Now, Like can we just talk?
Speaker 2: Can we please? Because how does that mean? Does that
Speaker 2: imply she's gonna take over simulation Land? Does that mean
Speaker 2: that she wants a career? Does that mean we needed
Speaker 2: her to say something?
Speaker 4: Does that mean she finally found out that the Victory
Speaker 4: Project is what it is? And she's also.
Speaker 1: Feels like she's very much in on it. The whole
Speaker 1: ride you get from her is that she knows, like
Speaker 1: she's introduced visually as if she knows everything, right, but
Speaker 1: we actually don't ever really learn about anything about it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, which is agonizing because like the in
Speaker 2: terms of going back to Olivia Wilde's character and the
Speaker 2: fact that this is ostensibly about the reasons that women
Speaker 2: become tridwives or participate in conservative misogyny, right, Like, each
Speaker 2: character should have some element or thing that teaches you something.
Speaker 2: That's how scripts work, that's what characters are for. And
Speaker 2: so Olivia Wilde's character theoretically is like the load star
Speaker 2: of the film because she knows and she chose this,
Speaker 2: and it's such a cowardly cop out to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's because of my tragic backstory and not because I
Speaker 2: like Martiniz and hanging out with my husband, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. She's not actually fully leaning into it.
Speaker 2: And then if you don't tell us why Erica Kirk
Speaker 2: is like this either, then we get nothing, which is
Speaker 2: why this movie is not good.
Speaker 4: Right, Yes, it's true. So Frank gets stabbed. Meanwhile, Alice
Speaker 4: is still trying to make her way to the exit.
Speaker 4: She's being chased by all of the men in the community,
Speaker 4: but she finally makes it to the exit portal and
Speaker 4: then off screen wakes up in the real world, and
Speaker 4: that's the end of the movie.
Speaker 2: So there's that little apple ad at the end though,
Speaker 2: where she's dancing on her own it slashes of her.
Speaker 2: She's fine, she's not sad.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh. I apparently stopped watching the movie immediately
Speaker 4: after it like fades to black because I was like,
Speaker 4: I can't handle another second of this.
Speaker 1: There is that little don't worry. It's not anything that clarifies, No.
Speaker 2: It's just a don't worry darling moment. Like she doesn't
Speaker 2: have PTSD, she can walk even though she's been bedridden,
Speaker 2: and there are no legal consequences for the murder of
Speaker 2: her intel husband.
Speaker 1: She's good, She's good, right, And also like, this is
Speaker 1: a world in which Jordan Peterson just died under mysterious circumstances.
Speaker 4: Too, Yeah, because we learned that if you die in
Speaker 4: the simulation, you die in the real world. So Frank
Speaker 4: Chris Pine's dead in the real world. Well, let's ponder
Speaker 4: these questions and more after this break, and we're back,
Speaker 4: and don't worry, don't worry, darling, We're back.
Speaker 2: I'm honestly, I'm worrying, Darling.
Speaker 1: I'm worrying I'm stressed, Darling, Darling, I don't feel good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's okay, let's start with because we already sort
Speaker 1: of started talking about Kihi Laine's character. I feel like
Speaker 1: that's a good place to start because it's also, like
Speaker 1: we've been hinting at, is like such a central issue
Speaker 1: with the movie of like this movie's and I think, like, again,
Speaker 1: this gets to this movie, I feel like is pretty
Speaker 1: clearly written in conversation with the me Too movement. It's
Speaker 1: also why I'm thinking about it with After the Hunt,
Speaker 1: even though After the Hunt, like I'm like, why is
Speaker 1: it coming out now? It's been alost ten years whatever.
Speaker 1: But like again, I think what we've talked about pretty
Speaker 1: thoroughly on this show at this point is the failures
Speaker 1: of that moment are sort of the failures of every
Speaker 1: feminist movement, which is that it is very myopically focused
Speaker 1: on how misogyny affects privileged CIS white women, which it does,
Speaker 1: but like when it like I don't know, yeah, like
Speaker 1: Olivia Wilds says that she's made this movie about complicity,
Speaker 1: but that's not true, Like the movie has no oh
Speaker 1: criticism of Florence Pugh's character, like she is our final girl.
Speaker 1: From moment one, we are not really We're just fully
Speaker 1: on her side the whole time. I feel like a
Speaker 1: better movie would ask the questions you were saying, Peyton
Speaker 1: of Like, I don't know, it would be interesting to
Speaker 1: see a thriller movie interrogate, like a lot of why
Speaker 1: these women are engaging with this world is because it's comfortable,
Speaker 1: and even when they're seeing other people be subjugated, they
Speaker 1: would rather ignore other people's subjugation than sacrifice their own comfort.
Speaker 1: Like that's an interesting thing to bring up, but it
Speaker 1: was just very dissonant, like looking back at the press
Speaker 1: junker for this outside of all of the personal drama,
Speaker 1: because it's like it just feels like the team keeps
Speaker 1: saying that they made a movie that like they didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think part of the problem here
Speaker 2: in terms of the nuts and bolts, which I think
Speaker 2: we have to always start with with this movie, for
Speaker 2: like why it's not working? It's like why is my
Speaker 2: car broken? Like why am I worrying? Darling? I think
Speaker 2: part of the problem I kept thinking about, did you
Speaker 2: guys actually watch Suicide Squad when it came out way
Speaker 2: back when.
Speaker 4: Which one first one or the second one, yeah, the
Speaker 4: first one, no, yes, I've seen it, Okay.
Speaker 2: Suicide Squad is a nightmare mess for one reason above
Speaker 2: all others, and that's the editing of the movie. The
Speaker 2: first scene starts, the soundtrack starts, and every scene is
Speaker 2: cut like a trailer, and the soundtrack never stops, and
Speaker 2: you get no access to any characters, and the pacing
Speaker 2: is brutal, and I think that don't worry Darling should
Speaker 2: have probably been two and a half hours long to
Speaker 2: get what they actually wanted from it, And the soundtrack
Speaker 2: never stops, and so you never get any like actual
Speaker 2: interiority or subjectivity from Florence Pugh because eighty percent of
Speaker 2: the movie is a montage. So there's not even space
Speaker 2: to criticize her character because she doesn't have a character,
Speaker 2: because she is a beautiful piece of window dressing, cleaning
Speaker 2: beautiful things and having a really good time except when
Speaker 2: she's not. So that's really hard to make a nuanced
Speaker 2: critique out of. And like that's not just say. You
Speaker 2: can have a montage that's very effective and tells you
Speaker 2: a lot, that's actually what they're for, but when you
Speaker 2: do it like this, it just simply doesn't work, And
Speaker 2: there's also the element of like, you know, the elephant
Speaker 2: of misogyny in the room and the fact that they're
Speaker 2: too scared to actually show people being misogynistic, Like yeah, right,
Speaker 2: where there's that scene with Dita Bantes. It's the one
Speaker 2: scene where they're like, we're gonna we're gonna do some
Speaker 2: locker room talk, like we're gonna actually show women being
Speaker 2: objectified and not just as housewives who also get to
Speaker 2: have sex. And even then it's like so clean and
Speaker 2: nice and stylistic and like objectifying of Dita Buntes that
Speaker 2: you're still not it's still too slick to let you
Speaker 2: be like, oh, the men are right right, it's about boobs,
Speaker 2: like right, So so that's a big problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 4: There's so much dissonance in Frank being the creator of
Speaker 4: the Victory project, him being like mister misogyny. He has
Speaker 4: created this whole simulation that's akin to like make America
Speaker 4: great again ideals like the good old days when men
Speaker 4: worked in women stayed home and cooked and cleaned. But
Speaker 4: it doesn't examine like MAGA ideals any like beyond that
Speaker 4: at all, as far as like as far as racism,
Speaker 4: as far as homophobia and transphobia, anything like that. And
Speaker 4: so we just see this world in which like the
Speaker 4: men are really nice to their wives and there is
Speaker 4: like racial integration into this community that if this was
Speaker 4: the real like nineteen fifties America, black families would have
Speaker 4: been breadlined out of a community like this.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean it doesn't even have to be the fifties.
Speaker 2: Like Christian nationalists, they're trying to create that kind of community.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Yeah, Yeah, It is interesting watching this movie
Speaker 1: when with the not benefit but knowing that things can
Speaker 1: you need to get worse. This movie did not in
Speaker 1: fact solve society like we hoped, which is the job
Speaker 1: of every single movie ever, and if it.
Speaker 2: Doesn't, especially if it's made by women, yes then they
Speaker 2: have to.
Speaker 1: I do feel kind of bad that Olivia Wild appears
Speaker 1: to be in director jail over this, but which I
Speaker 1: do think, as we've talked about on the show, this
Speaker 1: is a very flawed movie, but happens to women way
Speaker 1: more than otherwise. Women cannot direct b movie. It's literally
Speaker 1: not allowed, except for Emerald Finnell for some reason. But
Speaker 1: good for.
Speaker 2: Her because she makes bank every time. She knows what
Speaker 2: the girlies want and they want period sex, she puts.
Speaker 1: Butts in seats. Yeah, this is like a very common
Speaker 1: criticism of this movie, but feels worth mentioning just because
Speaker 1: it echoes everything we've been talking about, which is like
Speaker 1: the dissonance of what Olivia wild. And again, also the
Speaker 1: writer of the movie, I always forget she did not
Speaker 1: write this movie, Katie Silberman, who also wrote BookSmart and
Speaker 1: a Netflix movie called Set It Up.
Speaker 2: Did you know it was a spec script by the
Speaker 2: by Dick Van Dyke's kids.
Speaker 4: First, okay, what, sorry, I have to take a detour
Speaker 4: about this. Yes, uh so Katie Silberman wrote the screenplay,
Speaker 4: but it was originally a spec script that I think
Speaker 4: was circulating on the Blacklist, which was written by Carrie
Speaker 4: Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke, who are brothers and
Speaker 4: who are grandsons of Dick Van Dyke and Shane Van
Speaker 4: Dyke wrote and directed Titanic two stop. So oh, if
Speaker 4: that's any indication of the quality of the storytelling.
Speaker 1: Oh my, well, it's always I mean with that as
Speaker 1: very clarifying, because you're like, of course two guys came
Speaker 1: up with this story, it doesn't make any sense. I
Speaker 1: love that I also learned through just going back and
Speaker 1: back clicking all the blue links on Olivia Wilds Wikipedia page.
Speaker 1: She's like I would she has like famous parents, but
Speaker 1: it's like not direct nepo. Her parents are like famous journalists. Also,
Speaker 1: her name is Olivia Cockburn. She changed it for maybe reasons,
Speaker 1: you could guess, but her parents are Andrew and Leslie Cockburn,
Speaker 1: who in the nineties like wrote this very famous book
Speaker 1: about that basically that is deeply critical of Israel, and
Speaker 1: like did a lot of original reporting about the military
Speaker 1: relationship between the US and Israel. Going back to the Neckbob.
Speaker 1: So I was just like, well, that's interesting about Olivia
Speaker 1: Wild's heritage and her grandfather was like a famous socialist leader,
Speaker 1: and you're just sort of like hm. So it made
Speaker 1: me more sympathetic to her to be like, she's I
Speaker 1: do think she's trying to get it, but she's maybe
Speaker 1: just been famous for too long and she's very white.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes me less sympathetic. Where she's like like
Speaker 2: you had the tools, Yeah, you had the Master's tools
Speaker 2: and the Master's house at your disposal at all times.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the quote that actually I think sums up the
Speaker 2: whole problem with the movie was she was doing a
Speaker 2: Q and A and she said that it was a
Speaker 2: really seductive lifestyle in the fifties end quote, though I
Speaker 2: could kind of judge the lack of autonomy at the time,
Speaker 2: i e. The fifties, it also said like a really
Speaker 2: fabulous life. I mean Martini's for breakfast, Like why not?
Speaker 1: So she just like is saying shit. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: thing I was going to bring up is that, like
Speaker 1: in the press tour where she's kind of like shooting
Speaker 1: herself on the foot quite a bit, she is talking
Speaker 1: about how like men don't come in this movie, women come.
Speaker 1: But then if you watch the movie, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: there's no consent being given, so why are there these
Speaker 1: sort of like long languishing scenes on Like isn't it
Speaker 1: cool say Harry's styles go down on a woman? And
Speaker 1: you're like, well, sure, in theory, I guess the song
Speaker 1: Watermelon Sugar is in fact about her, but the plot
Speaker 1: is that all of this is happening against the women's will,
Speaker 1: so like, and they don't interface with that at all,
Speaker 1: Like the movie refuses to engage with that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it just was very bizarre seeing this, as you know,
Speaker 1: making it out to be this movie of sexual liberation
Speaker 1: when the plot does not allow that. Florence Pew appeared
Speaker 1: to kind of like push back on this framing. Also,
Speaker 1: she just hates Olivia Wild So maybe she's being petty here,
Speaker 1: but I think it's a useful quote, she said in
Speaker 1: an interview. When it's reduced to your sex scenes or
Speaker 1: to watch the most famous man in the world go
Speaker 1: down on someone, that's not why we do it. It's not
Speaker 1: why I'm in this industry. Obviously, the nature of hiring
Speaker 1: the most famous pops are in the world. You're going
Speaker 1: to have conversations like that, but I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be discussing it because this is bigger and better than that.
Speaker 1: So again, it does feel like not pushing back against
Speaker 1: norms by harping on non consensual sex in your pressed horror, right,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't quite make sense. Like women coming, sure,
Speaker 1: but not in this movie. Well, if you women don't
Speaker 1: come in this movie, we cannot rectly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you come in the simulation, do you come
Speaker 2: in real life?
Speaker 1: Oh it's true, if you die? Yeah, do you Harry
Speaker 1: Stylls coming in his pants in their dirty little bed,
Speaker 1: in their literal like insul Den Because also, she like
Speaker 1: she's a surgeon. Why do the their apartment suck?
Speaker 2: Anyway, That's what I noticed was rewatched the most. Actually, like, no, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that the thing that I found most compelling
Speaker 2: in the wake of the Charlie Kirk, thing that made
Speaker 2: me find more use potential and failed use of from
Speaker 2: this movie was the whole like because you know, conservative
Speaker 2: like trad cats and conservative guys who follow Charlie Kirk, Like,
Speaker 2: one of the things that comes up all the time
Speaker 2: is a sense of economic decline and instability. It's like
Speaker 2: you know, the all on a single income memes that
Speaker 2: circulate in those bases, right, it's the sense that the
Speaker 2: economy is getting worse, the world is stratifying, and in
Speaker 2: order to fix that, we need to go back to
Speaker 2: a time and emulated time when a man could take
Speaker 2: care of his family on a single income and provide
Speaker 2: for his family. Because that's what masculinity is, it's being
Speaker 2: a provider, right, And this movie, I actually thought because
Speaker 2: the first time I saw it, I saw the stringy
Speaker 2: wig and I just cackled really hard and couldn't see
Speaker 2: past it or at all. It's really hard where he's
Speaker 2: like make me a sandwich, like baby girl put the
Speaker 2: wig in the Smithsonian Institution that the wiggest camp the Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Academy Museum needs to buy that right now. But however,
Speaker 2: I think the angle here that he felt that he
Speaker 2: couldn't provide for his wife and he felt insecure in
Speaker 2: his masculinity and literally bankrupts himself to provide this fantasy
Speaker 2: in the most perverse, like serial killer way, to ostensibly
Speaker 2: provide for his wife, like speaks to something that's going
Speaker 2: around in the culture, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 2: there's something kind of poignant in a perverse and tragic
Speaker 2: way about the fact that he moves from their nice
Speaker 2: apartment to a literal like den of an you know, iniquity.
Speaker 1: So to do this, yeah, yeah, like rather than be
Speaker 1: comfortable with his wife making more money than him, like
Speaker 1: that is it is wild to me how much we
Speaker 1: are still dealing. I mean, it's not surprising, but it's
Speaker 1: just infuriating in the day to day sense. But just
Speaker 1: how like again, it's like there's interesting ideas presented in
Speaker 1: a very silly and weirdly and curious way, for sure.
Speaker 4: I mean, it reminds me of you know, the conversation
Speaker 4: we had surrounding a recent episode and movie that we
Speaker 4: covered Companion, which has similar themes and vibes as far
Speaker 4: as like, it's a man who he feels as though
Speaker 4: his masculinity is being threatened either by like modern feminism
Speaker 4: or specifically his partner, and then he like does something
Speaker 4: very drastic to try to like make himself feel better.
Speaker 4: And both Companion and Don't Worry Our call attention to
Speaker 4: and start to examine this misogyny and male fragility, which
Speaker 4: is important. But both movies focus on the plight of beautiful,
Speaker 4: thin cis white women and the like individual liberation of
Speaker 4: one of them. Right, Alice saves herself, but the movie
Speaker 4: ends before we get any sense of whether or not
Speaker 4: she would go back and try to like liberate the
Speaker 4: other women.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the post credits scenes indicates absolutely
Speaker 1: it's not right.
Speaker 4: The one that I did not watch at all. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Like the movie doesn't care at all about collective liberation.
Speaker 4: It just cares about the liberation of this one woman.
Speaker 1: Which is like another classic like misstep of feminism is
Speaker 1: like a hyper focus on individuality or like your specific group,
Speaker 1: although Flow doesn't even care about her group. It's just
Speaker 1: a mess.
Speaker 4: I just had a thought and it's gone well to
Speaker 4: go back to the Margaret character who's played by Kiki Lane.
Speaker 4: I wanted to pull from a piece in Refinery twenty
Speaker 4: nine entitled Don't Worry Darling is peak white feminism as
Speaker 4: expected by writer Honia Angus says, quote victory is a
Speaker 4: simulation created by Frank to keep women locked away in captivity,
Speaker 4: and the severity of that idea is never fully explored.
Speaker 4: Frank's continuous chanting about regaining control of your life and
Speaker 4: wanting men to return to a time when everything seemed
Speaker 4: right is clearly tied to white supremacy and its relation
Speaker 4: to protecting white femininity. The in cells Wild is attempting
Speaker 4: to discredit are not just hurt men who need wives
Speaker 4: or women to have sex with. They are raging racists
Speaker 4: and bigots. And then the piece goes on to say
Speaker 4: having Margaret die off to kickstart Alice's journey feels disgusting
Speaker 4: in hindsight, especially when you realize Lane has been snubbed
Speaker 4: from most of the film's press run, cut from a
Speaker 4: lot of the film itself, and barely even mentioned amongst
Speaker 4: the drama circling the movie. The film cuts back and
Speaker 4: forth from shots of her dead body in some poor
Speaker 4: sense of building up suspense and grief. But it just
Speaker 4: feels like it's taunting its viewers with how little it
Speaker 4: respects its singular black character who is pivotal to the
Speaker 4: story yet had little to no screen time unquote. Because
Speaker 4: it's true, like Margaret is like part of the catalyst
Speaker 4: that gets things going for Alice, but she ends.
Speaker 1: Up being basically like a glorified prop as far as
Speaker 1: the movie is concerned.
Speaker 4: For sure, we know nothing about her. Most of the
Speaker 4: time we see her, it's either like from another character's
Speaker 4: point of view, like she's off in the distance, or
Speaker 4: it's like the white women in the community gossiping about her.
Speaker 4: It's just like a really bleak characterization of the only
Speaker 4: black woman in the movie who gets any sort of dialogue,
Speaker 4: which is like two lines maybe like next to nothing.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's something's not right and that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But they're both doing that and like refusing to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that the women in this story are racist, Like
Speaker 1: it totally skirts that criticism entirely, Like it's done. It
Speaker 1: just is like, Okay, so the movie is racist because
Speaker 1: it is doing this racist thing and its characters are
Speaker 1: not even reacting and especially Margaret. Yeah, it's just unbelievably frustrating.
Speaker 2: The knowing that it was supposed to be to Cota
Speaker 2: Johnson is really instructive, I think, because it just seems
Speaker 2: like they were gonna just cast white people and let
Speaker 2: that be part of the thing. It's like, it's very
Speaker 2: clear to me that this was written to be about
Speaker 2: all white people, right, because it's the fifties. I mean,
Speaker 2: the fact that they didn't have the fantasy, the inceel
Speaker 2: fantasy of the fact that all of these women don't
Speaker 2: have maids, sure, even though they're existing in this very
Speaker 2: upper middle class context, feels like they just didn't want
Speaker 2: to touch it because that would have been hard and uncomfortable. Right,
Speaker 2: but see these women, like, if we actually want to,
Speaker 2: let's let's talk about the feminine mystique, right, like the
Speaker 2: fun lifestyle they're describing. I'm trying to find a quote.
Speaker 2: I read a piece about this at the time. But
Speaker 2: the idea that, like, our lives are empty, all we
Speaker 2: have time to do every day. Yes, here's a quote
Speaker 2: from the feminine mystiq. My days are all busy and dull.
Speaker 2: I get up at eight, I make breakfast, so I
Speaker 2: do the dishes, have lunch, do some more dishes, and
Speaker 2: do some laundry and cleaning in the afternoon. Than it's
Speaker 2: supper dishes. The children have to be sent to bed.
Speaker 2: That's all there is to my day. It's just like
Speaker 2: any other wife's day, right, But like they have time
Speaker 2: to do that and have parties and go swimming, you know,
Speaker 2: like they just spend time.
Speaker 1: At the pool, and it's it's racist rights. It's literally
Speaker 1: a racing people. I like, going off of your point,
Speaker 1: Peyton Aram also sort of feels reminiscent of, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: what was that.
Speaker 4: Sophia Coppola movie The Beguiled?
Speaker 1: The Beguiled where she is remaking a movie that does
Speaker 1: have a black character that was racist at the time,
Speaker 1: and she's remaking this movie and she doesn't know what
Speaker 1: to do with a black character, so she just removes them.
Speaker 1: And you're just like, that is like the worst possible
Speaker 1: thing you could do is to just refuse to engage
Speaker 1: and literally erase people, which feels like a similar thing
Speaker 1: to do because she's not whatever the writers who I
Speaker 1: don't even know who I'm yelling at. Sometimes, am I
Speaker 1: yelling at Olivia Wild? Am I yelling at Katie Silverman.
Speaker 1: Am I yelling at the Van Dykes?
Speaker 4: Shane Van Dyke?
Speaker 1: I have no idea if I'm yelling at she Maybe
Speaker 1: Titanic two, maybe I'm yelling at Shane Van Dyke. But like,
Speaker 1: the movie is not comfortable committing to having characters like
Speaker 1: Bunny be villains and having Jemma Chan's character be a villain,
Speaker 1: because there's just these random girl Boss solidarity moments added
Speaker 1: in in the end that I think, like gelled with
Speaker 1: what a good feminist does, but these people are not
Speaker 1: good feminists, So like what it's so bizarre also feels
Speaker 1: worth mentioning, even though this is more behind the scenes drama.
Speaker 1: I also totally forgot about this. The Harry Styles character
Speaker 1: was originally played by Shila Buff.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Yes, and first I had to talk about Shila Buff
Speaker 1: a lot on this show. But Shila Buff was publicly
Speaker 1: credibly accused of abuse by FKA Twigs at the beginning
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one when this movie was in production.
Speaker 4: Right, I believe we talk more about this in the
Speaker 4: episode on Holes, But yeah, Shila Buff left. Don't worry Darling.
Speaker 4: Seems like August of twenty twenty there are conflicting accounts
Speaker 4: of what happened. Olivia Wilde says that she fired him
Speaker 4: because he brought a combative energy to the set, that
Speaker 4: his work style clashed with the cast and crew. She
Speaker 4: was trying to cultivate a safe space for everyone and
Speaker 4: felt like he was putting that in Jeopardy. Shila buff
Speaker 4: denies that he was fired, saying that he quit because
Speaker 4: he and the other actors were not given adequate time
Speaker 4: to rehearse, and that Olivia Wilde wanted him to come
Speaker 4: back to the project but he refused.
Speaker 1: We weren't there.
Speaker 4: We don't know exactly what happened. What I do know
Speaker 4: is that I'm glad I didn't have to watch him
Speaker 4: in this movie, and I would rather watch Harry Styles
Speaker 4: any day.
Speaker 2: I'm also thinking I was thinking about another movie in
Speaker 2: the Me Too Women Trying to Talk about Me to
Speaker 2: School Blink Twice, which actually does have, you know, another
Speaker 2: messy movie. But like I do think women should be
Speaker 2: allowed to make these movies about this subject until someone
Speaker 2: gets it right. But you know, with the Harry Styles
Speaker 2: connection of Zoe Kravitz being trail behind the helm of
Speaker 2: that one, that movie has a better, more nuanced depiction
Speaker 2: of like women who are complicit in the Geena Davis character, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they do kind of un do that because women don't
Speaker 2: seem capable of accepting that sometimes other women are villains.
Speaker 2: And that movie, I think is just it's my turn now,
Speaker 2: like the crazy girl Boss ending of Blink Twice where
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, in feminist America, like Enslave you like.
Speaker 1: I'm Jeff Bezos now and you're like, yeah, I still watch,
Speaker 1: and then it's like brought to you by Amazon Movies.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's that and Poor Things has the
Speaker 2: same kind of ending.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it can be cathartic.
Speaker 2: It can totally be cathartic to flip the script and
Speaker 2: be like, and now the women are, you know, using
Speaker 2: men's buddies for their own amusement. But in movies that
Speaker 2: are ostensibly about feminist politics, like that doesn't fly so much.
Speaker 1: Right right, It's just like, I don't know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it was fun at first. I will say, like I'm
Speaker 1: not above a good for her ending. Yeah, if if
Speaker 1: it feels earned. I don't know, if it feels earned,
Speaker 1: why not. But this movie is just like it just
Speaker 1: doesn't feel earned.
Speaker 4: No, it does not. Does anyone have anything else they'd
Speaker 4: like to discuss?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I was just worried, darling.
Speaker 4: So I was, we were we were feeling darling.
Speaker 2: I think my final thought on it is that we
Speaker 2: the fact that Olivia Wilde is trying to be sympathetic
Speaker 2: to what you can kind of reductively describe as the
Speaker 2: media and Trump voter, the conservative person who's feeling economic
Speaker 2: and cultural anxieties about their insecure position in a world
Speaker 2: that is objectively getting worse on every level, particularly in
Speaker 2: a class conscious way, I think is commendable. I think
Speaker 2: presenting like trying to give some sympathy, you know, however
Speaker 2: perverse that may sound to the what's now being referred
Speaker 2: to as the male loneliness epidemic of it all. With
Speaker 2: Harry Styles's character is interesting and I found that way
Speaker 2: more engaging on this round in this current political coal
Speaker 2: I meant that she does so at the complete loss
Speaker 2: of nuance or coherence, and I think that we should, really,
Speaker 2: we should all be worrying Darling, and we should all
Speaker 2: be trying to make a better version of this movie
Speaker 2: that includes people, and lets people be complicated and lets
Speaker 2: Florence Pew want to have her martinis at noon, and
Speaker 2: lets Harry styles be misogynistic, like textually as well as structurally,
Speaker 2: you know, right, And we can do it. We can
Speaker 2: do we can do better. We should make hard art,
Speaker 2: we should make complicated art, we should make icky art.
Speaker 2: And women should do all of that. And I'm waiting
Speaker 2: and worrying, darling.
Speaker 1: And if you and and and if you fail, you
Speaker 1: should it should not do me your entire career.
Speaker 4: Yeah, does it count as a character being complicated? If
Speaker 4: Olivia Wilde's character Bunny when she reveals that she is
Speaker 4: voluntarily in victory because in this universe she still has
Speaker 4: her kids. But the entire movie we see her not
Speaker 4: interacting with her children at all. We see her yelling
Speaker 4: at them, not being affectionate with them. Instead, she's day
Speaker 4: drinking all the time and completely neglecting her children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with no babysitters.
Speaker 4: Is that complex? Is that a complex character?
Speaker 1: It sort of makes you wonder what happened to her
Speaker 1: kids and was it a result of her?
Speaker 4: Was her fault?
Speaker 1: They're not real kids. I can say that. I yeah, no,
Speaker 1: And again it's like that is another little chicken nugget
Speaker 1: of like, oh, what an interesting potential thing to explore.
Speaker 1: That's just like at the very end of the movie,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it's just it's a mess. But
Speaker 1: I agree with you, Peyton, I think that this movie
Speaker 1: should someone's gonna get it, Someone's gonna figure it out
Speaker 1: one of these days. And it feels like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: definitely a moment. It is weird that this movie has
Speaker 1: both become more and less timely into three years since
Speaker 1: it came out.
Speaker 4: Right As far as the Bechdel test, it does pass.
Speaker 4: There are many scenes in which women are talking to
Speaker 4: each other about other women because they're gossiping, or they're
Speaker 4: or at least one of them is questioning what's really
Speaker 4: going on with the Victory Project and da da da.
Speaker 4: So you know, the movie passes the Bechdel test, but
Speaker 4: we always what costs exactly exactly. But to move on
Speaker 4: to the perfect metric by which we examine movies, the
Speaker 4: Bechdel cast nipple scale, in which we write a movie
Speaker 4: on a scale of zero to five nipples, examining it
Speaker 4: through an intersectional feminist lens. I think I'm gonna go
Speaker 4: to nipples. It is attempting to start to say something.
Speaker 4: The movie does have an agenda. It just feels like
Speaker 4: something that maybe would have come out in like twenty
Speaker 4: twelve instead of twenty twenty two. It just it feels
Speaker 4: quite behind in its intersectionality and its ability to really
Speaker 4: thoughtfully examine.
Speaker 1: See I kind of disagree. I feel like this is
Speaker 1: very twenty twenty two and it's well in its white feminism.
Speaker 4: Well especially in Hollywood certainly, where you know, this is
Speaker 4: a mainstream studio movie made by privileged, rich white people.
Speaker 4: So yeah, this is not going to be the radical leftist,
Speaker 4: intersectional takedown of patriarchy and white supremacy that we'd love
Speaker 4: to see because Hollywood isn't really in the business of
Speaker 4: doing that, at least not at this time.
Speaker 2: So I guess what you're saying is that it feels
Speaker 2: like a real Hollywood movie, like a film movie. It's
Speaker 2: like a movie.
Speaker 1: Wait what hold on? There is a bit someone says
Speaker 1: something like this once.
Speaker 4: Is it is it that it's it's a it's a
Speaker 4: movie that feels like a movie.
Speaker 1: Very underrated. Element of that clip is Chris Pine just
Speaker 1: shark eyed dead eyes in the background. He was so
Speaker 1: checked out on this press tour.
Speaker 2: It's funny though, because that quote actually has become a
Speaker 2: staple since this movie came out of when I'm watching
Speaker 2: movies with my husband, Like, we will be watching a
Speaker 2: movie and he'll be going, it feels like a movie.
Speaker 2: And he actually did this forgetting that it came from
Speaker 2: this movie. When we started watching this movie. For this episode,
Speaker 2: he was like, it looks like a look, so it
Speaker 2: all circles back around.
Speaker 1: Wow, beautiful look. I was not I was not a directioner,
Speaker 1: but the Harry styles appeal, I get it. I get
Speaker 1: it because he's just saying shit. He's saying shit, He's
Speaker 1: minding his own business. He just ran a he's like
Speaker 1: an incog mode right now except for fucking Zoe Kravitz,
Speaker 1: which he wants everybody to know. And sure, but he
Speaker 1: is like living incognito mode right now. And ran a
Speaker 1: marathon under a fake name. Whoa Caitlin. Did we talk
Speaker 1: about this? I we didn't. Just a fun not passing
Speaker 1: the Bectels test thing. Yeah, he just like ran the
Speaker 1: Berlin marathon under the name stead Surrandos.
Speaker 4: Okay, good for him, and he.
Speaker 1: Got a great time. So you know, he's he's just chilling.
Speaker 1: He's doing what more absurdly rich people do, which is
Speaker 1: just being quiet and yes, so you're going to, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: two nipples for all the reasons we've previously discussed on
Speaker 1: this episode, and you know that I'm gonna give my
Speaker 1: nipples to Shane Van Dyke, writer and director of Titanic two,
Speaker 1: my favorite movie of all time.
Speaker 4: We got it covered JKJK. But yeah, we really, oh
Speaker 4: we you know, we haven't done a Titanic episode this year, and.
Speaker 1: It's it's not too late, but it's not too late, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: something to consider.
Speaker 4: Yeah, two nipples to Shane Van Dyke to two nipples
Speaker 4: to Titanic two, sure is more accurate.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go one and a half, which is maybe
Speaker 1: a little like, I agree this movie is trying to
Speaker 1: do stuff. I feel like, I don't know, I feel
Speaker 1: like I've been very inconsistent in this episode of like,
Speaker 1: it's just it's a hard one because I feel like,
Speaker 1: in general, we are culturally still very hard on feminist
Speaker 1: art that does not completely like work. And I know
Speaker 1: I've been guilty of being overly critical of a movie
Speaker 1: that feels like a movie. But because this movie was
Speaker 1: really aggressively marketing itself as something that had something to
Speaker 1: say about feminism and having it sort of be this
Speaker 1: kind of cowardly white feminist. It's basically, you know, there's
Speaker 1: no egg inside the egg. When I see that's the
Speaker 1: central image of the movie. I was promised an egg
Speaker 1: and I was given a shell. And so I don't
Speaker 1: really know, Like maybe that's a little too hard on
Speaker 1: a movie that does seem to be doing its best,
Speaker 1: but its best isn't great. But I agree with I'm
Speaker 1: going to be thinking about it, like we should keep trying,
Speaker 1: we should keep trying to make this movie, and we
Speaker 1: should give someone who is not already a wealthy white
Speaker 1: woman a crack at it. Perhaps, So with that, I'm
Speaker 1: going to give it one and a half nipples, And
Speaker 1: I'm going to give half a nipple to the egg
Speaker 1: that wasn't an egg, and I'm going to give my
Speaker 1: other nipple to the plot.
Speaker 4: Rock nice Peyton, how about you.
Speaker 2: I think one and a half is right because this
Speaker 2: movie raised my blood pressure in such a specific way
Speaker 2: watching it fail. I think it's so compelling, and so
Speaker 2: in a certain sense, I give it like three nipples
Speaker 2: for like incurring my feminist rage and making me more
Speaker 2: cont just as a feminist in that moment, but I'm
Speaker 2: gonna give a whole nipple to it's my turn now,
Speaker 2: and then half a nipple to the wig.
Speaker 4: The hairstyle stream wig.
Speaker 1: You really have to love the wig. They thought they
Speaker 1: were doing something with the wig.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say the one thing we haven't mentioned,
Speaker 2: you're because you're so worried about the egg. As metaphor,
Speaker 2: I was thinking, like the title don't worry Darling comes
Speaker 2: from an ad from the nineteen fifties where there's a
Speaker 2: woman in front of a stove and everything's burning behind
Speaker 2: her and she has a handkerchief and she's crying on
Speaker 2: her husband's shoulder and her husband says, don't worry, darling,
Speaker 2: you didn't burn the beer, And like, that's how I
Speaker 2: feel about Olivia Wilds making this movie, being like I
Speaker 2: love Martini's like, well, don't worry, darling, you didn't burn
Speaker 2: the beer. You know.
Speaker 1: Wow, It's just you know, we'll get them. We'll get
Speaker 1: them next time, question mark, we'll get them next time.
Speaker 1: We worried Darling and Peyton, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: worrying with us.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh my gosh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Of course, come back anytime. I would love to talk
Speaker 1: which movies with you? Hell yeah, where can we find
Speaker 1: your work?
Speaker 2: You can find me on Instagram at pay place p
Speaker 2: a y T place. You can pick up my book
Speaker 2: or the previous one, which is about national treasure and
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory. Uh wherever books are sold. And the national treasure,
Speaker 2: the national treasure.
Speaker 1: I'm going to steal it.
Speaker 4: I'm going to steal the Declaration of Independence national treasure.
Speaker 2: Oh why yes, okay, there's so much. It started as
Speaker 2: a joke and then it turns out the conspiracy theorists.
Speaker 7: Love national treasure and you would not believe the things
Speaker 7: I found. God really, okay, I will be purchasing, but yeah, amazing,
Speaker 7: I'm around.
Speaker 1: Thank you so thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: And you can find us all the regular places, mostly Instagram,
Speaker 1: and you can follow our or join our Matreon, which
Speaker 1: is our patreon where for five dollars a month you
Speaker 1: can get two bonus episodes on a topic, on a
Speaker 1: very obscure topic of our choosing over yours.
Speaker 4: Don't worry, it's not a simulation.
Speaker 2: It's wink.
Speaker 1: This is now. Caitlin does actually have me strapped in
Speaker 1: a room somewhere. The reason that we have to like
Speaker 1: have heart outs during our recording is so Kaitlyn can
Speaker 1: dribble something in my eyeball, so so I don't turn
Speaker 1: into a husk. Oh God, imagine if if I was
Speaker 1: a podcaster in the simulation, I would be so pissed off.
Speaker 1: Like if I'm in the simulation, I'd better have a
Speaker 1: martini and just be day drinking all the time. Truly,
Speaker 1: But yes, you can find us there. Five dollars a
Speaker 1: month gets you access to two new episodes a month
Speaker 1: and access two hundreds of back episodes.
Speaker 4: Indeed, and with that we can finally stop worrying darling, Oh,
Speaker 4: thank God, and have a martini.
Speaker 2: Bye bye.
Speaker 1: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and
Speaker 1: produced by Me, Jamie Loftus and.
Speaker 4: Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie
Speaker 4: Lichtermann and.
Speaker 1: Edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever Heard of Them? That's Me?
Speaker 4: And our logo and merch and all of our artwork
Speaker 4: in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus, Ever heard of Her?
Speaker 1: Oh my God? And our theme song, by the way,
Speaker 1: was composed by Mike Kaplan.
Speaker 4: With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.
Speaker 1: Iconic and especial thanks to the one and only Aristotle Ascevedo.
Speaker 4: For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree, slash
Speaker 4: Spectelcast