Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions ask if movies have women
Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
Speaker 1: best start changing it.
Speaker 2: With the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3: Hey, Jamie, Hi, Caitlin, would you draw me like one
Speaker 3: of your freeda girls self portraits?
Speaker 2: Question Mark. Well, no, that's not how that works at all.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that doesn't make sense. That's not how that works.
Speaker 4: I appreciate the ask, but really, you really need to
Speaker 4: look within, look.
Speaker 2: To your darkest parts.
Speaker 3: What I should have said is, hey, Caitlin, would you
Speaker 3: draw me like one of your selves?
Speaker 2: You know, we'll get there, We'll continue to navigate.
Speaker 3: It's a work in progress.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this joke will kind of coagulate throughout the episode.
Speaker 4: In the meantime, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name
Speaker 4: is Jamie Loftus, my name is Caitlin Derante. This is
Speaker 4: our podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens,
Speaker 4: using the Bechdel Test simply as a jumping off point.
Speaker 4: And what is that though? I wonder well. The Bechdel
Speaker 4: test is a media metric originally created by queer cartoonist
Speaker 4: Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel Wallace Test because it
Speaker 4: was co created with her friend Liz Wallace. Originally made
Speaker 4: as a bit as will become actually relevant in today's episode,
Speaker 4: but it was originally created as a bit for her
Speaker 4: comic collection Dykes to watch out for, and was originally
Speaker 4: sort of this conversation about how not just women or
Speaker 4: people of marginalized genders never talk to each other in movies,
Speaker 4: but how.
Speaker 2: Queer women specifically never get to talk to each other
Speaker 2: in movies.
Speaker 4: A lot of versions of this test, the one we
Speaker 4: use requires that two characters of a marginalized gender with
Speaker 4: names speak to each other about something other than a
Speaker 4: man for more than two lines of dialogue, and it
Speaker 4: should be you know, a plot relevant exchange that would
Speaker 4: be nice, and we're we're going to get into it today.
Speaker 4: So let's get our guest in here, a long time
Speaker 4: movie request, and it's happening, baby, It's finally here.
Speaker 3: Our guest is an art historian and is currently in
Speaker 3: a PhD program in art and education. So I am
Speaker 3: not the person with the highest degree.
Speaker 2: Hey, don't be humble. You used to teach paint night you.
Speaker 3: Art, Yeah, but I only have a master's. I don't
Speaker 3: have a PhD.
Speaker 2: That's true. And you do need a master's to do
Speaker 2: paint night.
Speaker 3: You need a PhD to teach paint night class. Sorry,
Speaker 3: I have completely derailed your introduction. But yes, art historian
Speaker 3: and in a PhD program in art and education. It's
Speaker 3: an hala campos. Welcome, helone, welcome. Bye.
Speaker 5: I'm very happy to be here, so excited.
Speaker 3: So happy to have you.
Speaker 5: I still only have a master's degree.
Speaker 3: Too, So okay, well that makes me feel better.
Speaker 5: I'm currently in the PhD program. So yeah, it's fine, mate,
Speaker 5: It's it's okay. Don't worry. We're in the same.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will not be upscaled on my own podcast. No,
Speaker 3: So we're talking about Freda, the two thousand and two
Speaker 3: biopic directed by Julie Taymoor starring Salma Hayek, and.
Speaker 2: Well, come on, and Alfred Molina.
Speaker 3: And sorry, Alfred, of course, Alfred Molina.
Speaker 2: Now hold the damn phone. We can't. Let's not bury
Speaker 2: the wee.
Speaker 4: Alfred Molina is in this.
Speaker 3: Movie, sorry to erase a male presence.
Speaker 4: Well, as we've said many times on this show, and
Speaker 4: it will be complicated in this movie. If Alfred Molina
Speaker 4: is speaking, it passes the factel test automatically rules be damned.
Speaker 3: That is yes, yes, Well, we haven't brought up Alfred
Speaker 3: Molina quite some time.
Speaker 2: It's because you got married, so I'm moving on.
Speaker 3: He's off the market for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyways, sorry, So we're talking about Freda and we're curious, Angela,
Speaker 3: what is your relationship with the movie with Frieda Callo
Speaker 3: as an artist and historical figure. Tell us everything.
Speaker 5: Well, first, I remember watching the movie when I was
Speaker 5: way too young to be able to watch it. I
Speaker 5: remember that it was I don't know if my mom
Speaker 5: had it on DVD or something, but I remember watching
Speaker 5: it because especially the scene. I don't want any spoilers yet,
Speaker 5: but the scene with the sister traumatized me horribly. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: So I remember tiny parts of the film in my
Speaker 5: unconscious mind, and I never rewatched it until I started
Speaker 5: studying artists at eighteen nineteen years old. So, when you're
Speaker 5: an art historian, especially in Mexico, you're kind of tired
Speaker 5: of Frida Calo. Well, even if you're a Mexican person,
Speaker 5: you're kind of tired of of Frida because she has
Speaker 5: been exploited by the capitalist system in a way that
Speaker 5: she would have hated being a communist.
Speaker 3: No exactly.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, but she's constantly, constantly in our media, in
Speaker 5: our international propaganda to come to Mexico and the idea
Speaker 5: people have of Mexico so as a Mexican is it's
Speaker 5: kind of annoying. So people tend to put her away,
Speaker 5: no and say, ah, Frida Calo, I don't like her.
Speaker 5: No so, And the taboo in art history, I believe
Speaker 5: is to like her. So when I had my twentieth
Speaker 5: century art class, because you have other artists from twentieth
Speaker 5: century that are important, like Marie Squiero, not Tina Modotti,
Speaker 5: who is in a movie of course, Remeliosa or Leonora Carlington.
Speaker 5: All of these women that surrounded the same a time
Speaker 5: and space as Prida Galo tend to be more popular
Speaker 5: within the art history crowd. But then you realize, when
Speaker 5: I had my art history class for the twentieth century,
Speaker 5: I really found out the true sense and the true
Speaker 5: the importance of fridacal No. Her paintings are not only
Speaker 5: this thing of oh I'm so sad, I'm so sick.
Speaker 5: I have a horrible life, which we all complain about constantly.
Speaker 5: But it's a thing of how she pioneered something in
Speaker 5: art that is so common nowadays, and maybe that's why
Speaker 5: we don't notice it or consider it as important because
Speaker 5: we have normalized it. But she did it first, and
Speaker 5: it's not about her technique, her esthetic. It's about that
Speaker 5: innovation that she brought to art history. And I found
Speaker 5: that out until I studied the twentieth century in the
Speaker 5: last symesters of my degree, and it was extramely shocking
Speaker 5: because I realized my internalized missa genia against Rida Callo,
Speaker 5: my prejudices against her, and how stereotypes of her had
Speaker 5: shaped the image I had of her, instead of just
Speaker 5: letting go and going with the flow and realize myself
Speaker 5: if I liked her or not, which is something that
Speaker 5: I also think. S al Mahaik said about her that
Speaker 5: she didn't like her at first, and then she explored
Speaker 5: her and she realized that she was amazing. That's what
Speaker 5: happened to me too. So that's my journey with Ridakalo
Speaker 5: and now I of course love her and yeah, what
Speaker 5: about you so interesting?
Speaker 3: I mean that, Yeah, I feel like that happens a
Speaker 3: lot where something gets mainstream afied.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like over it's like saying you like Coldplay.
Speaker 3: You're like, exactly, sure you do, but everybody does.
Speaker 5: Everybody does, and everybody when they come to Mexico. I
Speaker 5: have cousins in Spain and they're like, I want to
Speaker 5: see Frida. I want to see Frida, And I was like,
Speaker 5: they behave, like Frida and Diego are the Sistine Chapel
Speaker 5: or something, And then I realize they are for people
Speaker 5: that aren't from here. And we have normalized going to
Speaker 5: be Yes artists and se Diego's murals, we have normalized
Speaker 5: being close to Lacasa Soul. We have normalized those things
Speaker 5: about these great artists because we have them at least
Speaker 5: in Mexico City, and being very centralist here unfortunately, but
Speaker 5: at least in Mexico City, we have them very close
Speaker 5: to us. So it's also a thing of re cherishing
Speaker 5: what we have in our own art history and realizing
Speaker 5: it's it's not just anything that we should skip and
Speaker 5: and consider. Oh again, no, it's examly that we should
Speaker 5: maybe explore from other perspectives.
Speaker 3: Sometimes things are very well known because they are good, yeah,
Speaker 3: and it so rarely happens, but in the case of
Speaker 3: Free to Callow, It's true. Yes, Jimmy, how about you?
Speaker 3: What's your history?
Speaker 4: I had not seen this movie before for a silly
Speaker 4: reason that I will get to.
Speaker 2: But I was introduced to.
Speaker 4: Frieda Callo's work through what we're going to talk about today,
Speaker 4: this very sort of sanitized image of who she was.
Speaker 4: I probably was introduced to Free to Callo in high school,
Speaker 4: like on a pair of socks or something. I like,
Speaker 4: she's a very frequently and like you were saying on
Speaker 4: there's like the fact that her politics mean that she
Speaker 4: would fucking hate that.
Speaker 2: But she felt like, Yeah.
Speaker 4: This pantheon of frequently reproduced figures that I actually didn't
Speaker 4: know much about. You would see her next to like
Speaker 4: Einstein and like all of these sort of iconic innovative
Speaker 4: people just presented without context for monetary gain.
Speaker 2: That's how I learned who she was. And then I.
Speaker 4: Did read the book this movie is based on in
Speaker 4: high school, a biography of Free to Callo by Hated Herrera.
Speaker 4: I read that in high school and like completely fell
Speaker 4: in love with her just out of sight. I have
Speaker 4: a framed print of the two Fridas. Yeah, the more
Speaker 4: I learned about her I mean she's still to this day.
Speaker 4: I mean it's like a travesty that she's presented, so,
Speaker 4: you know, simply, and I feel like in this way
Speaker 4: that is very white feminism driven, completely lacking context, lacking
Speaker 4: her politics, lacking her identity, and lacking her queerness as well,
Speaker 4: like which was something I had to learn from a book.
Speaker 4: It wasn't something that was readily being printed about her
Speaker 4: when I was in high school.
Speaker 2: So I've always been fascinated by her.
Speaker 4: I avoided this movie for years because a college professor
Speaker 4: who was really mean to me is one of the
Speaker 4: credited screenwriters. So for one of so, Diane Lake, I'm
Speaker 4: calling your ass out. You were such an asshole to
Speaker 4: me in twenty fourteen, and so, I like kind of
Speaker 4: vowed to never watch this movie due to the.
Speaker 2: Transgressions of one Diane Lake.
Speaker 4: However, I am very glad that I finally have cause
Speaker 4: to watch it because there's so much to talk about.
Speaker 2: I'm so curious, but I don't know.
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm going to figure out how I
Speaker 4: feel about it in real time. I like Julie Taymoor
Speaker 4: in general. I think she's a very creative director.
Speaker 2: I was one of the cringe fans of across the
Speaker 2: universe me too, good, good, Yeah, I love her.
Speaker 5: I still played for my students when we see the
Speaker 5: Vietnam War and stuff. I still play something because it's amazing.
Speaker 5: I don't care.
Speaker 2: I was like, you had to be there, and if
Speaker 2: you were there.
Speaker 5: You understand exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll talk about her a little bit.
Speaker 4: I've also wanted to shout out her funniest credit, which
Speaker 4: is the Bad Spider Man music.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Killing All the Spider.
Speaker 5: Man, the musical that she'll not be named. Yes.
Speaker 4: So anyways, I hadn't seen it, and I am very
Speaker 4: glad that I did, because it gave me like reason
Speaker 4: to revisit her life, which I hadn't in a while. Kaitline,
Speaker 4: what is your history with this film and this political figure.
Speaker 3: I had seen the movie before, probably about twenty years ago,
Speaker 3: and I didn't revisit it, although I remember liking it
Speaker 3: at the time, but enough time had passed that I
Speaker 3: forgot almost everything you learn in the movie, and then
Speaker 3: I relearned much of it by visiting the Free to
Speaker 3: Callo Museum in Mexico City. I went to La Casasoul
Speaker 3: and I went with friend of the cast Adriana Ortega,
Speaker 3: who was on our Youtumama dambiena episode Loved and who
Speaker 3: coincidentally connected us with you Anhela.
Speaker 2: She's just the best.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she's Yeah.
Speaker 3: She took me to the museum and obviously much of
Speaker 3: her art is in the museum, as well as like
Speaker 3: different dresses she wore, different outfits she wore throughout her life,
Speaker 3: different kind of medical apparatus that she wore, and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, right, she's dealt with chronic pain throughout
Speaker 3: her life. I also relearned that she was a communist.
Speaker 3: I relearned that she was bisexual, all this stuff, and
Speaker 3: I was like, oh yeah. And then so remembering that
Speaker 3: this was about a year ago that I went to
Speaker 3: the museum and relearned all this information, So I was like,
Speaker 3: I wonder how much of that is in this biopic,
Speaker 3: because I was like, I bet Hollywood is gonna like
Speaker 3: wash a lot of that out.
Speaker 2: I thought that.
Speaker 4: Her bisexuality would have been sanitized big time.
Speaker 3: But I mean, there are a lot of aspects of
Speaker 3: Freda's life, as far as I can tell, that are
Speaker 3: somewhat erased or scaled back on in this biopic, But
Speaker 3: it does show more about her than what I would
Speaker 3: have expected, because I was like, oh, I bet this
Speaker 3: movie like Capitalism washes her political ideology. I bet it
Speaker 3: straight washes her queerness, you know, but it it doesn't.
Speaker 3: It doesn't. And we'll talk about that a lot. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed going to the museum and learning about it,
Speaker 3: and then rewatching this movie. I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: setting aside things that the movie might again scale back
Speaker 3: on or kind of a RaSE about Frida's life, it's
Speaker 3: a really enjoyable movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I find it very fun and entertaining, and I enjoy
Speaker 3: it just as a piece of cinema. And then I
Speaker 3: also I didn't finish it. I have about twenty minutes left.
Speaker 3: But there's a documentary called Freeda that came out recently, yeah,
Speaker 3: on Prime that takes excerpts from her diary, from letters
Speaker 3: she wrote, correspondences from other figures in her life, including
Speaker 3: Diego Rivera and other friends and lovers of hers and
Speaker 3: their diaries, and it just has all this sort of
Speaker 3: like voice over photographs of her, video of her, I
Speaker 3: guess film film footage of her, obviously her works of art,
Speaker 3: and so that provides a little bit more context. So
Speaker 3: I learned some more stuff from that, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I really appreciate free to call it as an artist
Speaker 3: and historical figure. And I like the movie a lot,
Speaker 3: but there's lots to talk about. Yes, so let's take
Speaker 3: a quick break and then we'll come back and get
Speaker 3: into the recap.
Speaker 2: And we're back. We're back. Shall we get into the
Speaker 2: flim the movie.
Speaker 4: I just was like, I'm kind of panicking about but
Speaker 4: you know what, I just I need Diane like to
Speaker 4: know how I feel.
Speaker 2: Let's leave it in. Let's leave it in.
Speaker 3: I could bleep out the name if you wanted to.
Speaker 4: I guess that there are four credited writers on this movie,
Speaker 4: and I guess an uncredited scriptwrite from Edward Norton, which
Speaker 4: I don't even know if I want to talk about.
Speaker 4: I was like, when you learn a fact and you're like,
Speaker 4: h I don't know if I can engage with that
Speaker 4: fact right anyways, No.
Speaker 3: Leave it in, Okay, We'll leave it in. Okay. So
Speaker 3: the movie opens on Frida Callo as an older adult
Speaker 3: near the end of her life. She's in bed which
Speaker 3: is being loaded onto a truck. We will find out
Speaker 3: why because this pays off later in the movie. Then
Speaker 3: we flash back to nineteen twenty two in Mexico City.
Speaker 3: Frida is a teenager. I think she would have been
Speaker 3: around fifteen years old at the time renowned artist Diego
Speaker 3: Rivera played by A one Alfred Molina.
Speaker 4: Oh Fort Molina. I will say, I love Salamahayak so much.
Speaker 4: It was so distracting watching her be fifteen years old.
Speaker 5: Truly.
Speaker 4: She was doing this like I don't know, like taking
Speaker 4: this childlike stance. Yeah, just get a different actor. It's
Speaker 4: just a couple scenes.
Speaker 5: I mean, was in her thirties when she recorded a film,
Speaker 5: So it's like, yeah, that's strich.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very very movie like it happens all the time.
Speaker 4: But the cut too, is severe. It was like whoa, okay, cool.
Speaker 4: It reminded me of an episode of like Penn fifteen
Speaker 4: kind of it was giving Penn fifteen.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyways, so Diego Rivera is at her school painting a
Speaker 3: nude portrait of a woman with whom he's also having
Speaker 3: an affair, and Frida and her friends sneak in too
Speaker 3: watch him work. One of these friends is her boyfriend
Speaker 3: Alejandro aka Alex.
Speaker 2: Played by baby Diego Luna.
Speaker 3: Oh love to see him. So, Jamie, You're lifelong crush
Speaker 3: is in the movie, and my more recent crush, Diego
Speaker 3: Luna is in the movie. So the boys are there.
Speaker 5: He's Mexico's crush too. Yeah, human guy. Oh my god,
Speaker 5: Mexico's proudest moment.
Speaker 4: That's another there being Caitlin crush.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're my boys. Okay, So they are together, Frida
Speaker 3: and Alex. Then we see Frida's childhood home. We meet
Speaker 3: her mother, her father who is a painter and photographer,
Speaker 3: her sister Christina played by Mia Maestro, and she's about
Speaker 3: to get married. So they're gearing up for the wedding.
Speaker 3: One day, Frida and Alex are on a bus. This
Speaker 3: is when she was eighteen years old, discussing politics and Marxism.
Speaker 3: The bus crashes, leaving Frida with several serious injuries broken bones,
Speaker 3: her pelvis was impaled by the handrail of the bus,
Speaker 3: and she has several operations in this Really I think
Speaker 3: cool stop motion animation sequence.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for a time, you see like a biopic about
Speaker 4: an artist and it doesn't even attempt to like bring
Speaker 4: in their craft into the filmmaking.
Speaker 2: I was so glad they did that. It looked really cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it was very Julie de Marco that too, Like, yes,
Speaker 5: the whole esthetic of that of that scene because in
Speaker 5: a crossing universe, for example, she does similar things. And
Speaker 5: I also love that they use the skulls the calacas
Speaker 5: because of the relationship with Rita's idea of that, but
Speaker 5: also Mexican typical art very cool.
Speaker 3: So she's in recovery for a long time after the accident.
Speaker 3: Doctors are uncertain if she'll ever walk again. One day,
Speaker 3: Alex comes in and tells Frida that he's moving to Europe,
Speaker 3: so they effectively break up and Frida is devastated. And
Speaker 3: then while she's recuperating, her parents gift her painting supplies
Speaker 3: and they install a mirror on the ceiling of her
Speaker 3: four poster bed so that she can paint self portraits.
Speaker 3: So she starts painting a lot, and eventually she starts
Speaker 3: walking again, and one day she approaches Diego Rivera and
Speaker 3: shows her paintings to him and wants his professional opinion
Speaker 3: because she's hoping to make a career out of painting
Speaker 3: to make money and help support her family. They have
Speaker 3: substantial medical bills that have piled up from all of
Speaker 3: these operations, and Diego Rivera is like, wowie wow a wooga,
Speaker 3: you're a great painter and your work is very original
Speaker 3: and it's terrific. And so he becomes a mentor to
Speaker 3: her and kind of takes her under his wing. He
Speaker 3: brings her to a party full of artists and political activists.
Speaker 3: They're talking about you know, socialism and communism and drinking
Speaker 3: and you know stuff that you do at a party.
Speaker 3: One of those parties, right, Antonio Benders is there as
Speaker 3: the Videlfarro Cicios. He and Diego are like frenemies.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I never thought i'd see the day where Alfred Blina
Speaker 4: and Antonio bender has got into a physical altercation.
Speaker 2: But today was that day.
Speaker 5: By the way, a very big favor by casting Antonio
Speaker 5: and they just let.
Speaker 3: Me say that, oh is because is he not?
Speaker 5: Yeah, he didn't look like that. No, no, no, all.
Speaker 3: I mean Alfred Blina is casting of Diego Rivera like
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 5: Also a favor for yes.
Speaker 4: The biopic treatment in the biop at least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we're at this party. Ashley Judd is also
Speaker 3: there playing Tina Medotti, who was an Italian American photographer, model, actor,
Speaker 3: political activist, she and Freda do a sexy dance and
Speaker 3: have a little kiss together. Meanwhile, Diego is trying to
Speaker 3: sleep with Freda. He is a known womanizer, and she's like,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna sleep with you, dude, and he's like, okay, fair,
Speaker 3: We'll just be comrades, colleagues and friends, but we'll never
Speaker 3: sleep with each other.
Speaker 2: And that gets her horny, and then.
Speaker 3: They immediately they immediately start making out and having sex.
Speaker 4: I do love that Freda from the very beginning of
Speaker 4: this movie is canonically horny, because that also seems to
Speaker 4: be historically true.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, very horny person who had many affairs.
Speaker 4: Truly a murderer's row list of lovers, extramarital affairs like
Speaker 4: she had Paul.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, goals, you know, incredible, Yeah, my goals. At least,
Speaker 3: so time passes, Freda and Diego fall in love. They
Speaker 3: get married, though her mother disapproves of the marriage because
Speaker 3: Diego Rivera is an atheist and a communist. Frida also
Speaker 3: has doubts about her relationship with Diego. We see at
Speaker 3: the wedding Diego's ex wife, Lupe Marine played by Valeria Golino,
Speaker 3: causes a scene she insults Frieda. Frida gets upset that
Speaker 3: Diego doesn't defend her. It's day one of them being
Speaker 3: married and already not off to a great start.
Speaker 2: Or at all. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Then Frida finds out that Lupe lives right above Diego's
Speaker 3: apartment with the children they have together, which infuriates Frida
Speaker 3: at first, but then she and Loupe start like hanging
Speaker 3: out out and Lupe teaches Frida how to make her
Speaker 3: molay recipe, and she tells Frida about Diego Afferre's various infidelities,
Speaker 3: and this pattern of behavior does not change with Freida.
Speaker 2: No imagine that a man that changing impossible? Yeah, wun't you?
Speaker 3: So Frida finds out about his many affairs, often with
Speaker 3: the models he paints portraits of. There's also a political
Speaker 3: undercurrent to the film, as previously kind of hinted at.
Speaker 3: But Diego has painted a socialist portrait in a government
Speaker 3: building in Mexico City, but his party thinks he's a
Speaker 3: trader because he's like making art for a bourgeois government.
Speaker 3: So there's like this push and pull there.
Speaker 4: He's making art for Edward Norton Rockefeller, which was yes,
Speaker 4: the most interesting jump scare in this movie for me
Speaker 4: where you're like, what.
Speaker 2: The hell are you doing here?
Speaker 3: I had a similar jump scare with Ashley Judd. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I was like, uh yeah, what is she doing here?
Speaker 5: I was expecting an Italian actress or something, and they
Speaker 5: actually judge showed up right right.
Speaker 3: Well, isn't Valeria Galino an Italian actress?
Speaker 5: Wouldn't she is the one who plays Slooper Marino.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, she probably would have made more sense in that
Speaker 3: role anyway. So that's about to happen where Frida and
Speaker 3: Diego go to New York for a solo exhibition of
Speaker 3: Diego's Diego then paints a mural in the Rockefeller Building.
Speaker 3: Edward Norton is playing like Rockefeller Junior. Frida's voiceover is
Speaker 3: talking about the class disparity and poverty she sees in
Speaker 3: New York. This is also highlighted in that documentary. I
Speaker 3: was referencing the way she talks about New York, the
Speaker 3: way she talks about like rich Americans especially, She's like,
Speaker 3: these motherfuckers are the most boring losers I've ever met.
Speaker 3: She talks about like having visited Harlem and how it
Speaker 3: was such a beautiful, vibrant neighborhood that reminded her of
Speaker 3: neighborhoods in Mexico City, like the way she describes New
Speaker 3: York I found very funny. Anyway. Diego continues to be
Speaker 3: unfaithful to Freda on this trip, but Frida is also
Speaker 3: having affairs. We see her with a woman who Diego
Speaker 3: head also slept with. Then Frida reveals to Diego that
Speaker 3: she's gregnant, although he expresses concern about her body being
Speaker 3: able to handle a pregnancy because of the injury she sustained,
Speaker 3: and sure enough, she has a miscarriage and is rushed
Speaker 3: to the hospital. Her miscarriage inspires some of her paintings.
Speaker 3: It's obviously very devastating to her also, and around this
Speaker 3: time that Frieda's mother falls ill and passes away. Diego
Speaker 3: is still in New York doing this Rockefeller Building painting,
Speaker 3: and he has put Vladimir Lenin into the mural, and
Speaker 3: some people are like woo hoo, hero, and then all
Speaker 3: the capitalists are like, boo, take that out of there,
Speaker 3: but Diego refuses to compromise his vision, so he's fired
Speaker 3: from this commission and the painting is destroyed, which enrages Diego.
Speaker 3: They return home to Mexico, where he feels like restless
Speaker 3: and creatively unfulfilled, and he resents being back in Mexico
Speaker 3: he was having a great time in New York. And
Speaker 3: it's kind of throughout the movie, but it's especially around
Speaker 3: this point where I'm like, what about Frieda's art, Like
Speaker 3: we see more of that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, because he was also very resentful against her because
Speaker 5: they returned Mexico because she was homesick. That was his
Speaker 5: idm oh so, so he's like, Nah, this is your
Speaker 5: fault that we're here. Yeah, and yeah, she says something
Speaker 5: along the lines of I want to return to that
Speaker 5: artist that you were painting, Maggie, Yes, and not being
Speaker 5: a pompos guy in brockefit.
Speaker 3: Corporate chill, yeah, capitalist stooge.
Speaker 2: Right. I that just not as well, Kaitlyn.
Speaker 4: I was curious what others thought about it, were like,
Speaker 4: I feel like we see a lot of Frida's paintings,
Speaker 4: you know, brought to life through these stop motion animations
Speaker 4: that Samahayak is very frequently in, and they're presented, but
Speaker 4: like it's not fully contextualized what is motivating them? And
Speaker 4: I wish that there was a little more, especially in
Speaker 4: a biopic about an artist, to like have a fuller
Speaker 4: idea of what was inspiring these pieces, because I loved
Speaker 4: the visuals of it, but it felt like a little
Speaker 4: less focused on her art than I would have liked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we'll talk more about it. But that was
Speaker 3: something I definitely noticed throughout the movie.
Speaker 4: But I also know that, like in her lifetime, her
Speaker 4: art career was not sufficiently like Diego Rivera's art career
Speaker 4: always got precedence over hers too.
Speaker 2: I don't know, yeah, right, and.
Speaker 5: This was a systemic issue in Mexican and art ya exactly.
Speaker 3: My thing is, well, if that was like where his
Speaker 3: art was always like overshadowing hers, like, shouldn't the movie
Speaker 3: like call more attention to that and like address that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: examine the systemic patriarchal, sexist context for that, anyway, we'll
Speaker 3: talk more about it. So then Freda hires her sister, Christina,
Speaker 3: who had recently left her abusive husband, to help out
Speaker 3: in Diego's studio. Diego and Christina promptly have sex, which
Speaker 3: is like the ultimate betrayal to Frida. She I don't
Speaker 3: know if tolerated was the right word, but she put
Speaker 3: up with his infidelities, but this was like the last
Speaker 3: straw him sleeping with her sister, So she leaves Diego
Speaker 3: and she stops talking to her sister for a while.
Speaker 3: Frieda moves back into the house she grew up in.
Speaker 3: She cuts off all her hair, making her the baldest
Speaker 3: woman in charge. She starts dressing androgynously some of the time,
Speaker 3: which is something we've seen her do already different times
Speaker 3: throughout the film. It's also clear that she's having trouble
Speaker 3: supporting herself. She considers selling some of her paintings, but
Speaker 3: comments are made about how they don't have enough commercial
Speaker 3: appeal sort of thing. Then Diego approaches Frieda asking if
Speaker 3: she'll house Leon Trotsky played by Jeffrey Rush and his
Speaker 3: wife Natalia, who have been granted asylum in Mexico after
Speaker 3: being exiled from the Soviet Union and then from Norway.
Speaker 3: I think, and Frida agrees. So Trotsky moves in and
Speaker 3: he takes to Frida. Immediately, he marvels her paintings. He
Speaker 3: really likes her, and they start having an affair. They
Speaker 3: also visit some pyramids, yes where I also went on
Speaker 3: that same trip to Mexico City, and they're stunning, but
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, I recognize these places. I went
Speaker 3: there and so this affair is ongoing between Frida and Trotsky.
Speaker 3: Natalia finds out about it, so she and Trotsky move out,
Speaker 3: which is dangerous for them, and an assassination attempt is made,
Speaker 3: although Trotsky survives it this one at least.
Speaker 5: Just a quick note that I found out earlier that
Speaker 5: the actress who plays Natalia Trotzky's wife, and Salamahayek had
Speaker 5: worked together Indlos Milos, Mexican Away from nineteen ninety five previously.
Speaker 5: Oh well, yeah, yeah, so in this film their enemies
Speaker 5: of course, because she ends up hating Frida Calo for
Speaker 5: sleeping with her husband, but they had previously worked together
Speaker 5: in a very good Mexican film. Yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll have to check that one out. So then
Speaker 3: Frida goes to Paris for an exhibition of hers.
Speaker 4: And the only people she hates more than Americans are
Speaker 4: French fields, which is that seems.
Speaker 2: To be you know, the order of operations there.
Speaker 3: And she's writing letters to Diego saying that she misses
Speaker 3: him and she does want to be with him after all,
Speaker 3: but the next time they see each other, he asks
Speaker 3: for a divorce. Trotsky is then eventually murdered and the
Speaker 3: Mexican government thinks that Diego had something to do with it,
Speaker 3: and so they interrogate Frida, asking where Diego is, but
Speaker 3: she won't cooperate, so she's arrested and put in jail.
Speaker 3: I think is what happens here. Her sister Christina bails
Speaker 3: her out and then they make up. Frida's health has
Speaker 3: started to decline around this point. Some of her toes
Speaker 3: are amputated after they're discovered to be gangrenous, And the
Speaker 3: movie doesn't make this super clear, but I think she's
Speaker 3: had additional operations and again is suffering from chronic pain.
Speaker 3: Diego comes back and wants to get married again, and
Speaker 3: at first Frida's like, I don't need your pity. I
Speaker 3: don't need you to save me, and he's like, I'm
Speaker 3: the one who needs saving. So they get married again,
Speaker 3: and by now it's I think nineteen fifty three, she
Speaker 3: finally has her first solo exhibition of her paintings in
Speaker 3: her own country, something that she's been waiting for her
Speaker 3: whole life. But she's too ill to leave her.
Speaker 5: Bed because she had her leg amputated. Two in nineteen
Speaker 5: fifty three.
Speaker 3: Right, which is like somewhat clear in the movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because she takes the leg now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, She's like, give me my leg back.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Diego goes to this exhibition on her behalf. He
Speaker 3: gives a monologue about her work as an artist.
Speaker 2: Big movie moment that also happened.
Speaker 3: Happened in real life where Frida shows up. She has
Speaker 3: had people carry her in in bed so that she
Speaker 3: can enjoy the event, but you know, obeyed the doctor's
Speaker 3: orders of like not leaving her bed. And then shortly
Speaker 3: after this she passes away on July thirteenth, nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 3: So that's the movie. Let's take another quick break and
Speaker 3: then we'll come back to discuss and we're back. One
Speaker 3: of the main things that I I am curious about
Speaker 3: Angela is as far as what we know about Frida Carlos'
Speaker 3: life and art and political positions and all of that,
Speaker 3: how does it compare to what is shown in the movie.
Speaker 3: And are there important things about Frida that were left
Speaker 3: out or glossed over in this biopic.
Speaker 5: I believe generally she was depicted very accurately because Almachayk
Speaker 5: was very passionate about this. She even contacted Dolores Olmelo,
Speaker 5: who was the last lover and the person who, aside
Speaker 5: from his kids, held Diego Riveda's inheritance and Frida Carlos artwork.
Speaker 5: So she was a very rich woman and there was
Speaker 5: a museum that recently closed in the south of Mexico
Speaker 5: City that had all her collections and stuff. But Salmachayik
Speaker 5: contacted this woman and asked her for permission to put
Speaker 5: Frida's paintings in the film, and sal Machaik, I think,
Speaker 5: was very passionate about this project, so she didn't want
Speaker 5: to depict Rida Calo in a way that wasn't truthful.
Speaker 5: But again, it has some things that are immediately not true,
Speaker 5: like the fact that all the dialogue is in English
Speaker 5: and they try to include some Spanish in a sometimes
Speaker 5: in a forced way, and like stereotypical Mexican way, I think.
Speaker 5: But I think that the spirit of Rida Calo is
Speaker 5: very well represented in the terms of her being a rebel.
Speaker 5: Every time they say she cannot do something, she finds
Speaker 5: a way or a loophole to do it. The horny
Speaker 5: aspect that you were mentioning, no or I think what
Speaker 5: is very washed down is how violent Diego was towards
Speaker 5: Frida in his relationship with her, because it's still very romantic.
Speaker 5: I understand that it's from Frida's perspective, which was very romanticized,
Speaker 5: and her idea of him. Never she never realized how
Speaker 5: violent it was what he did to her, But it
Speaker 5: could have been more critical in that way because it
Speaker 5: was terrible. He was a very very bad man, and
Speaker 5: not only towards Frida. Earlier on, I mentioned other Mexican
Speaker 5: female artists from this time, including Marie Squeredo, who was
Speaker 5: If we use intersectionality as a tool for this, we
Speaker 5: can see that she has a higher level of dissidence
Speaker 5: and because she was a brown woman, for example, she
Speaker 5: was racialist. And Marie Quero wanted to paint murals and
Speaker 5: she was extremely targeted, but she could only paint canvas
Speaker 5: paintings because Cicos and Rivera never let women have public
Speaker 5: spaces for muralism, which is very interesting because there is
Speaker 5: a book called Lipse la Tlunas by Dina co Misenko,
Speaker 5: a researcher that basically discovered female muralists in Mexico who
Speaker 5: did paint, but they granted them small spaces. Now instead
Speaker 5: of the big lace where the president holds his and
Speaker 5: now hers because we will not have female president speeches.
Speaker 5: They gave them the little building in the little part
Speaker 5: of town that nobody actually saw. No, And this was
Speaker 5: because of a monopoly that these guys had, these men
Speaker 5: had in muralism in Mexico. And also it has to
Speaker 5: do with the rivetas incoherence with his political discourse and
Speaker 5: his political beliefs, because Fridaclo was much more coherent than him.
Speaker 5: She never sold out, let's say, and the Oribta was
Speaker 5: coherent only when he could be kind of dramatic about it,
Speaker 5: like with the Rockefeller thing. There he decided, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: I have to follow my ideology and I will never
Speaker 5: back down. But then why did you go there in
Speaker 5: the first place if you're such a communist, right.
Speaker 2: It always felt like a pr thing.
Speaker 4: From his Yeah, yeah, like deciding halfway through painting something
Speaker 4: for Elon Musk, like, actually I don't like this guy.
Speaker 2: You're like, well, we are.
Speaker 3: Here and he already paid you.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So he was kicked out of the Communist Party
Speaker 5: from Mexico three times because of these incoherences. And Freda
Speaker 5: was much more strong in this sense too. And I
Speaker 5: think that all of those little nuances I mean, it's
Speaker 5: a film. It's a two hour film. You can really
Speaker 5: depict them exactly, but there are little details that I
Speaker 5: think would enrich this general idea we have a freedom
Speaker 5: and make her even more of an admirable character like
Speaker 5: we see her when we find out all of these nuances.
Speaker 4: Thank you for contextualizing that better, because I think that
Speaker 4: that also speaks to Kaitlyn what you were saying a
Speaker 4: little earlier about While we see a lot of her work,
Speaker 4: the context of how welcome women were or were not
Speaker 4: into art in Mexico and the US at the time
Speaker 4: isn't fully explore in a way that I feel like
Speaker 4: would make sense to do in this movie.
Speaker 2: And I also, I mean, I found.
Speaker 4: A quote from Diego Rivera because I remember from reading
Speaker 4: this book all these years ago that the abuse that
Speaker 4: he subjected to her and others was horrific, And I
Speaker 4: was like, one of the disappointing elements of the movie,
Speaker 4: or I think the most disappointing element of the movie
Speaker 4: to me was kind of making the Hollywood choice to
Speaker 4: have the action of the movie we're following Frida's life,
Speaker 4: but the most important thing we're following, according to the movie,
Speaker 4: as her relationship with Diego, which obviously that's complicated because
Speaker 4: it was one of the most deeply important relationships of
Speaker 4: her life. Anyways, here's this quote I found from Rivera
Speaker 4: that sort of bears this out. He said, if I
Speaker 4: ever loved a woman, the more I loved her, the
Speaker 4: more I wanted to hurt her. Frida was only the
Speaker 4: most obvious victim of this disgusting trait.
Speaker 2: So he also stated himself.
Speaker 5: Like, don't do it right right.
Speaker 4: Well, one of the things that I thought was interesting
Speaker 4: because I went back and fact checked this because I
Speaker 4: was like, what a weird line of dialogue if this
Speaker 4: was made up. But he says early in the movie
Speaker 4: essentially when he says like, if we get married, it
Speaker 4: will have to be an open marriage because I can't
Speaker 4: do anything else. And he says like, oh yeah, I
Speaker 4: talked to this doctor and he said I'm like, I
Speaker 4: can't do monogaby, which is like the most scumbag thing
Speaker 4: he could possibly say, And it turns out that actually happened.
Speaker 4: He yeah, the real if Diego Rivera talked to some
Speaker 4: doctor at a party and he was like, yeah, you're
Speaker 4: diagnosed as always going to cheat.
Speaker 3: Well, coming at it from a polyamorous standpoint, like, he's
Speaker 3: clearly someone who was inclined toward polyamory, and it seems
Speaker 3: as though despite Friedo's affairs, seems like she was only
Speaker 3: having those because she knew that Diego was in response
Speaker 3: to Yeah, exactly. So that's what tends to happen when
Speaker 3: a polyamorous person and a monogamous person get together, is
Speaker 3: that it doesn't quite work.
Speaker 4: But well, I'm not trying to like make any sort
Speaker 4: of disparaging statement towards polyamory, for sure, like Diego Rivera
Speaker 4: was an abuser like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to be clear, being polyamorous and being an abuser
Speaker 3: and a liar and not honoring the type of relationship
Speaker 3: your partner wants are two very separate things. And I
Speaker 3: don't want to conflate ethical non monogamy with any kind
Speaker 3: of partner abuse because there was nothing ethical about what
Speaker 3: Diego Rivera was doing in his relationship.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and most relationships at that time in art in
Speaker 5: Mexico had that for that. That's why she's so amazing
Speaker 5: because she portrayed these personal, very personal pain and suffering
Speaker 5: and process. But it was a political statement too, because
Speaker 5: she understood power relations and she understood disparity in gender,
Speaker 5: and she understood how hurtful a binary system was because
Speaker 5: she was also, like you said, very androgenous in some
Speaker 5: points of her life. And she understood these things and
Speaker 5: she depicts them in her art. And this is amazing,
Speaker 5: at least for me, because it's a very weird thing
Speaker 5: when the hegemony at the time was these male artists
Speaker 5: who painted these murals that represented the official version of
Speaker 5: Mexico's history, and they should be doing things that serve
Speaker 5: our country, not which was Vasconcelos's this course, the guy
Speaker 5: that proposed muralism as our national art, and muralism is
Speaker 5: it's like derivera in an art movement, I would say,
Speaker 5: like big in the terms of a big figure also
Speaker 5: towering over you all the time, also telling you a
Speaker 5: version of how you should be, also showcasing everything that
Speaker 5: is wrong with the system. And he even included freedom
Speaker 5: in one of the paintings. Now it's always her painting
Speaker 5: in a private space in a studio on canvas, and
Speaker 5: him painting in a public space with the government and everything.
Speaker 5: Creating a national basically nationalism, not creating our idea of
Speaker 5: what it is to be Mexican. So It's very interesting
Speaker 5: for me to see that now the idea of what
Speaker 5: it is to be Mexican has more to do with
Speaker 5: Freida than with Diego. But it isn't surprising because Flida
Speaker 5: showcases a lot of experiences that unfortunately Mexican women have,
Speaker 5: and Carlos Moncivice even said that she was kind of
Speaker 5: a new version of the Virgin of Galla lupetuous. So
Speaker 5: she represents Mexican going both the good than bad things,
Speaker 5: better than the Rivera, who was paid to represent Mexico.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, right, right, so he was always beholden to
Speaker 4: somebody else. I'm curious what you both think about this,
Speaker 4: because going back and sort of reviewing, how I think
Speaker 4: this movie is more political than I was expecting it
Speaker 4: to be. Communism was more explicitly addressed than I would
Speaker 4: have expected in a mainstream.
Speaker 3: Movie, especially because Hollywood is so afraid of communism historically.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean whatever, It's very like one oh any
Speaker 4: kind of stuff. But I felt like the movie kind
Speaker 4: of implies that Freda comes by her political beliefs via
Speaker 4: Diego Rivera, and that rubbed me the wrong way because
Speaker 4: she joined the Communist Party.
Speaker 2: When she was a teenager, like she was really.
Speaker 4: Politically active far before she was like romantically attached to Rivera.
Speaker 4: And I felt like the movie kind of suggested that
Speaker 4: when she started seeing him after she had gone through
Speaker 4: this first recovery, that that was how she arrived at
Speaker 4: her political beliefs, and I just it's not true.
Speaker 3: I didn't feel that quite so much, especially because we
Speaker 3: see that scene with her on the bus with Diego
Speaker 3: Luna's character, that's true, where they're talking about He's like,
Speaker 3: you always read things in the wrong order. You have
Speaker 3: to read this one guy before you read Mark.
Speaker 5: You have to read Hale before Mark. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I guess I just met like her explicit
Speaker 4: connection to the party.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah. And also, there were twenty five hundred students
Speaker 5: in the SCA, which was at the time the only
Speaker 5: high school in Mexico, and she was like one of
Speaker 5: thirty five women out of those twenty five hundred students,
Speaker 5: and she joined the Kachucas, which was a group that
Speaker 5: was highly political and Candro, her boyfriend, was one of
Speaker 5: the leaders for student autonomy and student movements, which will
Speaker 5: eventually have a very dark history in Mexico. So it's
Speaker 5: very interesting because she was always involved that she always
Speaker 5: was going to end up being a communist. No, right,
Speaker 5: So it isn't related to Viego Rivera, I think, and
Speaker 5: we shouldn't attribute it to him because also, like I said,
Speaker 5: he's not a coherent communist at all.
Speaker 4: He's really bad at being a communist.
Speaker 3: I do think the movie after that scene where she
Speaker 3: is discussing like Marxism with Alex, it's almost always us
Speaker 3: seeing Diego Rivera talk about his communist ideology, and Frida
Speaker 3: we don't see discussed it that much, except for that
Speaker 3: one scene where she's they've arrived in New York. She
Speaker 3: keeps calling it Gringo Landia, which is very funny. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and she's talking about like income disparity and poverty. Aside
Speaker 3: from that, her political ideology isn't super clear, and if
Speaker 3: it comes up in the movie, it's usually in the
Speaker 3: context of what Digo Rivera is doing or what he's
Speaker 3: painting or what he's saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And also for that when she was buried, well
Speaker 5: not she was, she wasn't buried when it was she
Speaker 5: was cremated and the ashes are in the Akasa sut
Speaker 5: but when she was in her service, for when she died,
Speaker 5: they carried the communist flag to a Yasatats, which is
Speaker 5: like the palace of fine arts in Mexico City, and
Speaker 5: in her service, the communist flag was carried with her.
Speaker 5: So she really really really believed and cared about communism.
Speaker 5: And that's what I also find very interesting about how
Speaker 5: she has been made into a token for feminism. I
Speaker 5: personally I am a feminist and I have been in the
Speaker 5: feminist intersectional field in Mexico for more than ten years.
Speaker 5: But I always is kind of cringed when they said, ah, yes,
Speaker 5: Frida a feminist icon, because when they do that, they
Speaker 5: expect then for Freda to be super coherent with feminism.
Speaker 5: And then they find out about her relationship with Diriba
Speaker 5: and they cancel her and they're like, oh no, But
Speaker 5: she allowed herself to be in that relationship and she
Speaker 5: helped a man like that exists, and it's like, you
Speaker 5: can expect her to be a communist. She understood feminist ideas,
Speaker 5: but she never called herself a feminist because that wasn't
Speaker 5: even chronologically coherent. And I have seen when I went
Speaker 5: to the States one time, at Barnes and Noble, I
Speaker 5: saw these set of cards that had like feminist icons
Speaker 5: and like Ruthbetter Ginsburg, Frida Calo, Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 4: And I was like, what, right, like the people you
Speaker 4: see printed on socks gentrified.
Speaker 3: Areas and you're like, oh, no, she was not.
Speaker 5: She would die if you put her next to Heary Clinton.
Speaker 5: Oh my god. Yeah, that's what the America that she
Speaker 5: was referring to in her diary, right, So it's no.
Speaker 5: And I think that's very interesting how they decided to
Speaker 5: pick and choose which part of her rebellion to take,
Speaker 5: and they chose those feminist traits and whitewash them, of course,
Speaker 5: and this white feminism that you were mentioning, but they
Speaker 5: completely left out not in the movie I'm saying, but
Speaker 5: in the in how readily is treated by the culture
Speaker 5: in Mexico and the United States and other countries mainstream
Speaker 5: feminist movement, right. And I think that's interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's like one of the I feel like many
Speaker 4: offshoots of like corporatized feminist discourse that is just like
Speaker 4: so aggravating, where it's like, oh, the idea of being
Speaker 4: a feminist means that you're a woman who did something successfully, yeah,
Speaker 4: and like not even connecting it to any like you're saying,
Speaker 4: like a coherent political ideology, like putting those three women
Speaker 4: next to each.
Speaker 2: Other, what do they politically have in common?
Speaker 3: So disparate.
Speaker 2: It's really all over the place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I will say, like, I do appreciate that
Speaker 4: this movie does. I don't know if I'm like grading
Speaker 4: it on like a two thousand and two sliding scale
Speaker 4: of like it was doing more than I expected it
Speaker 4: to politically, although it does feel like politically I think
Speaker 4: it did.
Speaker 2: Caitlin, I think like you're saying, make.
Speaker 4: It clear that Diego's communist ideals could be showy versus productive.
Speaker 4: I don't think he's held fully to task for that,
Speaker 4: but at least it's not presented like they were both,
Speaker 4: you know, like incredible and politically flawless.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: The other element of Freda's life that I was, well,
Speaker 4: I feel like it's complicated by a lot of the
Speaker 4: production stories around this movie, which we'll get to because
Speaker 4: Samahayak later discusses how Yeah just bullied and harassed she
Speaker 4: was by Harvey Weinstein before and throughout the production of
Speaker 4: this movie. She spoke about that during the Me Too
Speaker 4: movement and has more sense. So this it sucks because
Speaker 4: I feel like this particular element of the story is
Speaker 4: kind of tainted.
Speaker 2: By those stories.
Speaker 4: But Freda's queerness and a willingness to not just reference
Speaker 4: it in passing, which I was kind of wondering at
Speaker 4: the beginning, where there is one like affair she's had
Speaker 4: with a woman who I guess has also hooked up
Speaker 4: with Diego, and it's discussed and there's like a little
Speaker 4: handsiness under the table, and I was like, I wonder
Speaker 4: if that's all the movie is gonna do in terms
Speaker 4: of like referencing that she was famously bisexual or I mean,
Speaker 4: it sounds like her sexual identity was like very complicated,
Speaker 4: and you know, I doubt she would want to be
Speaker 4: put in one particular category.
Speaker 3: That could possibly be true for her gender as well,
Speaker 3: especially because I mean, sure I'm speculating here, but you know,
Speaker 3: the way she would dress sometimes in men's clothes, possible
Speaker 3: that she was gender queer before that was ever an expression,
Speaker 3: or perhaps she'd just like to wear men's clothes sometimes
Speaker 3: hard to say, but she definitely didn't shy away from
Speaker 3: engaging with androgyny totally with her sexuality her queerness.
Speaker 4: Which is like why it's kind of like, I mean,
Speaker 4: going back to like the mainstream discourse around her, It's
Speaker 4: kind of like, as I was reading through, there's been
Speaker 4: so much written about her, obviously, but sort of like
Speaker 4: very modern attempts to like retroactively put her in a
Speaker 4: box and claim her where It's like, first of all,
Speaker 4: you'll never know, and second of all, like that just
Speaker 4: seems antithetical to what like how she lived her life
Speaker 4: in general.
Speaker 2: Anyways, all I.
Speaker 4: Had to say, I appreciated that they reference that this
Speaker 4: fluidity with her sexuality existed throughout her life, and we
Speaker 4: see a sex scene with Josephine Baker, and a complicated
Speaker 4: part of that is that Harvey Weinstein, I guess, insisted
Speaker 4: on that because he wanted Samahayak to appear full frontal
Speaker 4: nude in the movie because he was angry throughout the
Speaker 4: production that she looked quote unquote too ugly. So that
Speaker 4: was like because at first I was like, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: it's so rare to see queer sex scenes in a
Speaker 4: mainstream movie at all, and then you find out the
Speaker 4: reason it's there, and so there's that it's.
Speaker 5: Very sad, Yeah, to find out afterwards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'll share some of the piece that she
Speaker 3: wrote in the New York Times.
Speaker 2: Oh Yes, her op.
Speaker 3: Ed yes entitled Harvey Weinstein is My Monster Too, because
Speaker 3: this also informs another thing about the movie that I
Speaker 3: want to talk about, which is representation of disability. So
Speaker 3: first I'll start by sharing a quote from this piece
Speaker 3: where she talks about her passion for this project and
Speaker 3: her love of Free to Callo. She says, quote, one
Speaker 3: of the forces that gave me the determination to pursue
Speaker 3: my career was the story of Free to Callo, who,
Speaker 3: in the golden age of the Mexican muralists would do small,
Speaker 3: intimate paintings that everybody looked down on. She had the
Speaker 3: courage to express herself while disregarding skepticism. My greatest ambition
Speaker 3: was to tell her story. It became my mission to
Speaker 3: portray the life of this extraordinary artist and to show
Speaker 3: my native Mexico in a way that combated stereotypes unquote.
Speaker 3: So again to showing her appreciation for the subject matter,
Speaker 3: her passion for the project. It was like one of
Speaker 3: the main things she wanted to do in her career
Speaker 3: as an actor, and so with this project she was
Speaker 3: passionate about. She took the concept to Harvey Weinstein, who
Speaker 3: at the time, she heard good things about as a
Speaker 3: film producer. His name came with a level of prestige.
Speaker 3: You know, he was known to have made excellent films.
Speaker 3: So she went to him, approached him with the project,
Speaker 3: and he then started sexually harassing her incessantly. She kept
Speaker 3: telling him no, I won't do this, No I won't
Speaker 3: do that. No, no, no, and him being told no
Speaker 3: enraged him and they entered a legal battle over the movie,
Speaker 3: where he named all these stipulations that the only way
Speaker 3: that he would proceed with, you know, producing and financing
Speaker 3: the movie is if she met these kind of unrealistic
Speaker 3: criteria on a really short deadline. But she managed to deliver,
Speaker 3: so the movie went forward into production. And then this
Speaker 3: is where I'll start quoting from the piece, she says. Quote.
Speaker 3: Halfway through shooting, Harvey turned up on the set and
Speaker 3: complained about Frieda's unibrow. He insisted that I eliminate the
Speaker 3: limp and berated my performance. He then asked everyone in
Speaker 3: the room to step out except for me. He told
Speaker 3: me that the only thing I had going for me
Speaker 3: was my sex appeal and that there was none of
Speaker 3: that in this movie. He told me he was going
Speaker 3: to shut down the film because no one would want
Speaker 3: to see me in that role. It was soul crushing
Speaker 3: because I confessed lost in the fog of a sort
Speaker 3: of Stockholm syndrome. I wanted him to see me as
Speaker 3: an artist, not only as a capable actress, but also
Speaker 3: as somebody who could identify a compelling story and had
Speaker 3: the vision to tell in an original way, which I
Speaker 3: feel like speaks to something that so many women. And
Speaker 3: this is me speaking now, I've stopped quoting for a
Speaker 3: moment to be clear, but you know it speaks to
Speaker 3: something that so many women and people of marginalized genders
Speaker 3: deal with as far as imposter syndrome, and goes on
Speaker 3: to say quote I was hoping he would acknowledge me
Speaker 3: as a producer who, on top of delivering his list
Speaker 3: of demands, shepherded the script and obtain the permits to
Speaker 3: use the paintings. I had negotiated with the Mexican government
Speaker 3: and with whomever I had to to get locations that
Speaker 3: had never been given to anyone in the past, including
Speaker 3: Freda Collos houses and the mural of Collo's husband Diogoro Vera,
Speaker 3: among others. So again, she as a producer did like
Speaker 3: all these incredible feats to get this movie made, she says,
Speaker 3: but all of this seemed to have no value. The
Speaker 3: only thing he noticed was that I was not sexy
Speaker 3: in the movie. He made me doubt if I was
Speaker 3: any good as an actress, but he never succeeded in
Speaker 3: making me think that the film was not worth making.
Speaker 3: He offered me one option to continue. He would let
Speaker 3: me finish the film if I agreed to do a
Speaker 3: sex scene with another woman, and he demanded full frontal nudity.
Speaker 3: She goes on to describe the pressure he put on
Speaker 3: her and director Julie Taymoor to include this full frontal
Speaker 3: nudity sex scene. They felt they had to concede.
Speaker 4: He also, like I think, threatened to fire Julie Taymor
Speaker 4: if Samahayak didn't comply with including this scene. Like it
Speaker 4: just was like threats to basically sabotage this entire production.
Speaker 4: She had spent the better part of ten years trying
Speaker 4: to make right happen. And I mean, I feel like
Speaker 4: you can attribute so much of how authentic this feels
Speaker 4: as opposed to other biopics to the willpower of Samahayak,
Speaker 4: and also the fact that she, like you're saying, Caitlin
Speaker 4: is a really talented producer.
Speaker 2: Which I feel like is such.
Speaker 4: A double standard in Hollywood in general, where when a male.
Speaker 2: Actor produces his own work, it's.
Speaker 4: Really drawn attention to, but with women it's almost always minimized.
Speaker 5: And the things she got PERMASI for are truly impossible
Speaker 5: in Mexico because Frieda and Diego are considered patrimonial artists
Speaker 5: and getting permitt for anything related to them is impossible.
Speaker 5: So what she did is truly a big fit. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Before I read this piece, I assumed that they had
Speaker 3: just built doubles of those sets, not realizing that they
Speaker 3: actually like shot on location and yeah, like la asuol
Speaker 3: and stuff. Yeah, and then she describes the day that
Speaker 3: they shot that sex scene, she had a nervous breakdown.
Speaker 3: She was throwing up, she was shaking uncontrollably because she
Speaker 3: knew she was conceding to the will of this predator
Speaker 3: and that's what made her feel so sick.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He then tried to sabotage the release of the movie
Speaker 3: after it was completed. He like didn't want it to
Speaker 3: be in theaters really, and.
Speaker 4: He sabotaged her Oscar campaign almost wholesale yep.
Speaker 3: So, and then the piece concludes with Somemahaik talking about
Speaker 3: women being devalued and undervalued as artists and filmmakers and she,
Speaker 3: you know, longs for gender equity in Hollywood. So a
Speaker 3: piece worth reading if any listeners want to learn more,
Speaker 3: but truly sickening to be reminded of all the horrors
Speaker 3: that Harvey Weinstein puts so many people through.
Speaker 5: I think it's very sad and kind of meta that
Speaker 5: they're making a film about free that but also about
Speaker 5: her abuser and this horrible person that controlled the art
Speaker 5: world in Mexico. And I find a lot of parallel
Speaker 5: lines between Harvey Weinstein's figure and the Rivera's figure in
Speaker 5: the making of the movie and in the story that
Speaker 5: they're telling. So it's so sad that it's so contradictory,
Speaker 5: know that they're telling this story and it happens on set, yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, all while scaling back the abusive nature of the
Speaker 4: other person. Like I just wanted to add as a
Speaker 4: I guess like punctuation on that that. Alfred Melina also
Speaker 4: did interviews around this time, and also before hating Harvey Weinstein, before.
Speaker 2: It was cool.
Speaker 4: He's a real one he is, Yeah, but they he
Speaker 4: sort of expanded on how Weinstein, when he was not
Speaker 4: successful in getting Samahayak to creatively compromise, started talking to
Speaker 4: other actors to see if he could turn them against her,
Speaker 4: including going over like trying to basically get Alfred Malina
Speaker 4: on his side and being like, she's one of the
Speaker 4: best actors in the world, and what do I see
Speaker 4: on screen? Nothing but Freeda. Molina expressed disbelief. Well, that's
Speaker 4: the whole fucking point, isn't it. He's me like, which
Speaker 4: like yeah, And then sort of subsequently for the amount
Speaker 4: of time Weinstein had power after that was Black Belt
Speaker 4: by Miramax.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I.
Speaker 4: Mean it's just it's so I mean, it's like a
Speaker 4: story we're very familiar with now, but just hearing how
Speaker 4: how hard Salmahayak had to work to even get this
Speaker 4: in production because looking at the Freedom movies that almost
Speaker 4: happened and thankfully didn't one with Jailo with Jelo, but
Speaker 4: also the biography by Hayden Herrera was first optioned in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty eight, and they wanted to have either Meryl
Speaker 4: Streep or Jessica Lang played Frieda or you Madonna almost
Speaker 4: played Frieda with Robert de Niro starring as Diego Rivera,
Speaker 4: and you're like, no offense for Robert Nio, but like,
Speaker 4: there's a whole there's so many reasons for him not
Speaker 4: to play Diego Rivera.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the fact that this movie that Samahiak's production is
Speaker 4: the one that prevailed is amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, with a Mexican woman as a lead from Quatsa
Speaker 5: qual Cosbera Cruz who came up through a telenovela SI
Speaker 5: stem in Mexico and ended up in Hollywood. No, So
Speaker 5: that's also something that I found very valuable about. I
Speaker 5: love Salama Kayak, of course, and I think that that's
Speaker 5: why she's so aware of the fact that what Harvey
Speaker 5: Weinstein did to her, because it's very colmon here in
Speaker 5: Mexico in the telenovela system too. So I don't think
Speaker 5: unfortunately it was the first time she encountered these predators
Speaker 5: in her job. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I read an interview she did in twenty twenty one
Speaker 4: that sort of followed up on the op ed you
Speaker 4: read us Passages from Caitlin, where Yeah, she basically confirms
Speaker 4: that she's like, I don't mean to minimize my experiences
Speaker 4: with Weinstein. They were very traumatic, but that had already
Speaker 4: happened to me so frequently that I almost like tried
Speaker 4: to take it in stride at the time, because it
Speaker 4: was just how I was conditioned to believe things were
Speaker 4: going to work, no matter where I was working or
Speaker 4: at what level, which is miserable.
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed, I wanted to touch on the other thing that
Speaker 3: the piece alludes to, as far as like compromises that
Speaker 3: she felt she had to make in order to appease
Speaker 3: this monster of a person, as far as is the
Speaker 3: representation of disability where Frida Collo dealt with chronic pain.
Speaker 3: She had many surgeries throughout her life, she had a miscarriage,
Speaker 3: and the movie You Know examines how this inspires some
Speaker 3: of her artwork. But it seems like the movie attributes
Speaker 3: all of this to the bus accident that we see
Speaker 3: happening on screen, which he sent through.
Speaker 5: Ye right.
Speaker 3: The movie does not mention that she had polio as
Speaker 3: a child, I believe when she was six years old,
Speaker 3: which caused leg pain and for her to have a
Speaker 3: limp when she walked even before the bus accident. And
Speaker 3: I saw criticism that the movie tends to downplay and
Speaker 3: erase Freda's physical disability. This could be because Freda is
Speaker 3: played by an able bodied actor, but I read a
Speaker 3: piece from a writer who is disabled named Marta Russell,
Speaker 3: who took issue with the disability rature, particularly the scene
Speaker 3: where Frida is doing that seductive dance with Ashley Judd's character.
Speaker 3: The movie depicts her in you know, high heels dancing.
Speaker 3: There's no visible limp, but the real life Frieda wore
Speaker 3: several layers of socks on her right shoe that was
Speaker 3: also like build up to compensate for her smaller limb.
Speaker 3: Her right leg was was it her right le? One
Speaker 3: of her legs was considerably smaller and weaker because of
Speaker 3: the polio, I believe, or maybe it was a combination
Speaker 3: of the polio and the bus accident.
Speaker 5: There was another thing, m There are historians who believe
Speaker 5: that the polio diagnosis was kind of invented by her
Speaker 5: family because it was a how do you see in
Speaker 5: English congenital disease. Congenital congenital disease called spina bifida spleet
Speaker 5: spine that her and her siblings all had, and it's
Speaker 5: proven she had a little brother that was born and
Speaker 5: died as a little baby named Guillermo, and they all
Speaker 5: had disability. And what is interesting is that like historians
Speaker 5: that have worked with Freda in their careers have discussed
Speaker 5: about this topic and so why would the family decide
Speaker 5: to say it's polio? And it also has to do
Speaker 5: with the fact that all the siblings had this diagnosis
Speaker 5: of spineappifida. And what is interesting about this is that
Speaker 5: they also proposed the idea that Frida didn't only have
Speaker 5: a miscarriage, she had two abortions. No, and many believed
Speaker 5: that she did because she was scared of passing down
Speaker 5: that condition to her children. So it's that's why they
Speaker 5: tend to believe that there's like weird thing there that
Speaker 5: we don't know about with the where the family said
Speaker 5: something and then Frida behaved towards it. But also Frida
Speaker 5: had a very internalized ablest attitude against herself. They say
Speaker 5: that the way she dressed, even the one a skirts
Speaker 5: that she wore and the outfits that she were, especially
Speaker 5: later running her life when she encountered the biggest tissues
Speaker 5: and complications, they hit her disability with her legs. So
Speaker 5: it's very interesting to notice how everything that we know
Speaker 5: about her disability is kind of contradicting each other's versions
Speaker 5: of the facts. And I found that very interesting because
Speaker 5: it tells you how it's invisibilized, not like the movie does.
Speaker 5: And it's also something that hasn't been researched as other
Speaker 5: aspects of her life. And we don't know an official
Speaker 5: version of the facts. So why do I suddenly find
Speaker 5: out that all of her siblings had this same disease
Speaker 5: and so on and so forth.
Speaker 3: No, Right, So, even though we might not know exactly
Speaker 3: what the specifics were of her source of pain and disability,
Speaker 3: we do know that she did deal with chronic pain
Speaker 3: and again walked with a limp. And the movie more
Speaker 3: or less erases that it's very inconsistent. But then you
Speaker 3: find out why, Yeah, because apparently Harvey Weinstein insisted that
Speaker 3: was the case, or to be.
Speaker 5: Sixy Yeah, and just the fact from what I was
Speaker 5: saying that I forgot to say. They say that she
Speaker 5: couldn't walk at three years old, for example. Oh, so
Speaker 5: that's why they believe it second genital disease and not
Speaker 5: so much something she contracted later.
Speaker 4: I see, Yeah, it's so I'm willing to find this
Speaker 4: wholesale on Harvey Weinstein.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but maybe that's just the easiest answer.
Speaker 4: I do think that this also like connecting with what
Speaker 4: you're both saying, there is such a resistance to depicting
Speaker 4: and especially responsibly depicting disability.
Speaker 2: And then the further.
Speaker 4: Back you go, especially if you're doing a historical piece,
Speaker 4: the harder it is to sort of parse out how
Speaker 4: disability was spoken about or not spoken about then versus now.
Speaker 4: So it's like a very I mean, as disability advocates know,
Speaker 4: it's a very very difficult needle to thread, and it
Speaker 4: just seems like the only thing that is certain is that,
Speaker 4: because of how this production was being controlled, this was
Speaker 4: not a production that was going to handle the issue
Speaker 4: of disability responsibly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's very sad. It is because also Frida didn't.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a whole conversation about why would disability
Speaker 5: make someone vulnerable on this ableist world, how it's built
Speaker 5: in enablest manner and everything. But Frida also didn't want
Speaker 5: to look vulnerable against the world. No, and that's why
Speaker 5: she herself didn't want to accepting her paintings, of course,
Speaker 5: but in her because when you see pictures of her
Speaker 5: in everyday life. She was performing all the time, her outfits,
Speaker 5: her whole esthetic, how she dressed. It was like performance art.
Speaker 4: It reminded me of I feel like again, just like
Speaker 4: how at least how my art education was, because I
Speaker 4: was not an art major or anything like that. But
Speaker 4: I feel like it's often presented in contemporary classes, like
Speaker 4: Cindy Sherman was the first artist to ever do that,
Speaker 4: And you're like, but that's so clearly what Frida is doing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: she's presenting herself in all these different ways and in characters,
Speaker 4: and like, it's just it's amazing.
Speaker 5: And Cindy Sherman does it in her pictures, but Villa
Speaker 5: Cala didn't her everyday life. No, And it's very very
Speaker 5: interesting because she had a whole persona that she embodied
Speaker 5: every time that she was out in public, or she
Speaker 5: was having a party in her house, or and it
Speaker 5: had to do with a very particular set of tools
Speaker 5: that she had developed because of her queerness, because of
Speaker 5: her disability, because of the chata just she had encountered
Speaker 5: throughout her life. And I think it's nowadays it's one
Speaker 5: of the most appropriated parts of Frida Carlo that the
Speaker 5: braids and the rebon in her hair and the Mexican attire,
Speaker 5: like stereotypically Mexican and all of that, and it's part
Speaker 5: of what she did to both conceal her insecurities and
Speaker 5: also showcase herself as whatever she wanted to do, and
Speaker 5: that was shown in her attire.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, this movie does adequately show that Freda
Speaker 4: color is really cool, but never enough. It feels like
Speaker 4: I wanted to acknowledge something that I don't know how
Speaker 4: to address. I was going back in because I've seen
Speaker 4: it referenced over the years of casting for this movie.
Speaker 4: Because Alfred Molina is a white guy, he is of
Speaker 4: Spanish and Italian descent, and so there has been a
Speaker 4: fair amount of criticism around his casting. The complicating factor
Speaker 4: there is that Selma Jyak directly asked him to play
Speaker 4: the part, and like went to his play and was like,
Speaker 4: you're the guy, and I guess, like, you don't say
Speaker 4: no to Selma Jyak, And I don't know, because I
Speaker 4: was looking into Dico Rivera's background and he is also
Speaker 4: very multicultural but also very Mexican.
Speaker 2: So it's just yeah, I mean, it doesn't.
Speaker 4: Seem like if this movie was being made today that
Speaker 4: Alfred Molina would be the right choice for this part.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I just saw a lot of conversation around
Speaker 4: it then and now I saw a red carpet interview
Speaker 4: with him at the premiere of this movie, and him
Speaker 4: addressing the criticism and being like, there's no doubt, like
Speaker 4: I am of Spanish Italian descent, and there are a
Speaker 4: lot of people in Mexico who were upset that I
Speaker 4: had been cast, and I understand why, which then leads
Speaker 4: to the question.
Speaker 2: Well, then why did you do it?
Speaker 4: But I just wanted to acknowledge that as well, because
Speaker 4: it feels like something that's frequently cited in this movie,
Speaker 4: and also just throughout Alfred Molina's career, he's been cast.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think of his role in Indiana Jones
Speaker 4: as kind of another example of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, He's definitely played characters of ethnic backgrounds that are
Speaker 3: certainly not his own.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and I'm the last person to want
Speaker 4: to bring down the hammer on our boy, but I
Speaker 4: still acknowledge that. I want to seem like I was
Speaker 4: not willing to engage with that discussion just because it
Speaker 4: was Alfred Polina.
Speaker 5: I relate that also to some recent criticism I have
Speaker 5: seen against Rida Calo herself, no, that she really portrayed
Speaker 5: herself as these indigenous Mexican women, especially towards her adult years.
Speaker 5: And lasos Fridas, of course has the European Frieda and
Speaker 5: the Mexican Frieda depicted there. But her dad was German, No,
Speaker 5: and her mom was well, her grandfather from her mom's
Speaker 5: side was an indigenous man, but her grandmother from her
Speaker 5: mom's side was a Spanish descent also, and almost all
Speaker 5: Mexicans we have this complex mixture of ethnicities and races
Speaker 5: and backgrounds. So it would be very hard to cast
Speaker 5: someone that is perfect for the egorrita because our history
Speaker 5: in Mexico comes from and I'm not saying that's something
Speaker 5: good that happened. It's the invasion of Mexican by the
Speaker 5: Spanish was basically and the creation of the Mestizo race,
Speaker 5: which is the mixture of indigenous and white Spanish people,
Speaker 5: is basically the rape of thousands of Mexican original community women.
Speaker 5: But this is something that Frila Calo has also been
Speaker 5: accused of doing, of appropriating cultures that are not her
Speaker 5: and stuff like that, and I think that's a very
Speaker 5: complex discussion. Now. The other day, I was teaching cultural
Speaker 5: appropriation with my students and they were like, but when
Speaker 5: when is it appreciation and when is it appropriation? And
Speaker 5: they were telling me examples, and I was like, it's
Speaker 5: very hard. We have to contextualize every single example to
Speaker 5: understand what happens there. Not because some may say I
Speaker 5: freely doesn't have any right to portray indigenous experiences in
Speaker 5: her art, but also her grandfather was from indigenous assent,
Speaker 5: and you know, Alfred Molina, I think has the same thing.
Speaker 5: He comes from a Spanish Italian background. He's not Mexican.
Speaker 5: Diria was. But Mexican is not a race or an ethnicity,
Speaker 5: it's a nationality.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and that was why I felt naive when
Speaker 4: I was looking into this, because I feel like i'd
Speaker 4: seen it presented like you're talking about the same way
Speaker 4: that I saw a lot of I feel like it
Speaker 4: was like ten years ago or so. There was just
Speaker 4: like this wave of criticism that's exactly what you're.
Speaker 2: Describing about free to callow.
Speaker 4: And then a piece that I we can link it
Speaker 4: in the description of this, but I read a piece
Speaker 4: by Tanya Nunez who wrote a whole essay basically saying
Speaker 4: what you just said, Angela, whereas like.
Speaker 2: Well it's not that simple.
Speaker 4: And you know, even if there were contemporary criticisms, if
Speaker 4: free to Callo was working today, she wasn't. Those weren't
Speaker 4: the conversations going on then, and during her lifetime, she
Speaker 4: was largely not trying to profit off of this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she only sold one painting, which was the two
Speaker 5: Freedas for two hundred and fifty dollars ry. No, she
Speaker 5: only had one solo exhibition, which was the one that
Speaker 5: picked her in the movie. The other exhibitions were with
Speaker 5: other artists, so she didn't really profit. She was Diego's
Speaker 5: wife most of the time for the public, right, unfortunately.
Speaker 4: And it's like a conversation she's mostly having with herself
Speaker 4: throughout her life and like trying to understand her identity
Speaker 4: and then looking into Diego's background. Yeah, it says on
Speaker 4: scholarly journal Wikipedia it says Diego was of Spanish, Americandian, African, Italian, Jewish, Russian,
Speaker 4: and Portuguese descent.
Speaker 2: So it's just like, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what happens with the American continent.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, yeah, and I think that's the I mean,
Speaker 3: this is something I have spent a lot of time
Speaker 3: and effort learning slash unlearning as far as because I
Speaker 3: think a lot of white Americans do view being Mexican
Speaker 3: as a racial identity. Yeah, and I've heard people be like, oh, no,
Speaker 3: he's not white, he's Mexican. It's like, well, that does
Speaker 3: not preclude him, Like he could still be a white Mexican.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I'm white as folk, and I'm Mexican because my
Speaker 5: daddy's from Spain and my mom's sambili is from Spain too,
Speaker 5: and I have a Mexican nationality. It doesn't mean anything, no.
Speaker 3: Right, right. So there's a lot of I think still
Speaker 3: to this day, misunderstanding about the difference between like the
Speaker 3: ethnic and national and racial background of everyone in Latin America.
Speaker 3: And there's so much erasure also of Afro Latin X people.
Speaker 3: Of course, there's so much erasure of indigenous people who
Speaker 3: were the original inhabitants of what would become known as
Speaker 3: Latin America. And it's such a fraud history with colonization
Speaker 3: and the Transatlantic slave trade. It has created a lot
Speaker 3: of confusion for a lot of people. And so it's
Speaker 3: something that I think we've gotten wrong on the podcast
Speaker 3: before and.
Speaker 5: For sure, and it has to do with what Riverta did.
Speaker 5: He created this Mexican nationalism that makes you believe that
Speaker 5: we are a race they said, the say the Bronze race,
Speaker 5: that it comes from that glorious indigenous past, from the
Speaker 5: Mechicas and all of these pre Hispanic civilizations that emulates
Speaker 5: how Europe treated the Greeks and the Romans. That's what
Speaker 5: Basco Clos and the muralist projected here in Mexico. But
Speaker 5: at the same time, governments mistreat alive indigenous people who
Speaker 5: are living in our world today, you know. So it's
Speaker 5: a it's an issue, and Dio Riverta was a very
Speaker 5: big participant in that. And this idea, the stereotype of
Speaker 5: what it is to be Mexican is also created by
Speaker 5: our own nationalism and how we portray ourselves to the world.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Tangled Web, I mean, I've spoken to Mexican
Speaker 3: American people who are racially white who have said I'm
Speaker 3: not white, I'm Mexican.
Speaker 5: No. And we even have a term in Mexico called
Speaker 5: white Secans, which are the white Mexicans that are middle
Speaker 5: high class people that behave like assholes to towards everyone,
Speaker 5: and they believe that they're superior and this systemic and
Speaker 5: super super rooted racism we have in Mexico and classism
Speaker 5: and everything, and there's the white secun label. And once
Speaker 5: I had a student that's me, future are white secut
Speaker 5: and I was like, well, yeah, I'm white and I'm Mexican.
Speaker 5: I hope I don't behave like a serty people white secun.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, yeah, for people in the US especially,
Speaker 3: it's it is, we're just like severely under educated about it,
Speaker 3: Like it's embarrassing. Yeah.
Speaker 4: With regard to just like closing the loop on the
Speaker 4: Alpha Molina thing, it was tricky because it involved digging
Speaker 4: up two thousand and two media, which is either hard
Speaker 4: to find or kind of inscrutable when you read it.
Speaker 4: It just seemed like they're two separate strains of criticism
Speaker 4: going on, one being that Alpha Blina is white and
Speaker 4: the other just that he had no connection to Mexican culture,
Speaker 4: and that because Diego Rivera was such a prominent Mexican
Speaker 4: figure that they were like, well, why this, why do we.
Speaker 2: Have this British like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is I think a fair criticism, And I
Speaker 4: also think he gives a great performance because it's South
Speaker 4: for Bolina is a star.
Speaker 5: He's amazing. I have something to say about this because
Speaker 5: there is a part of the film where they a
Speaker 5: trotsky and Frida paints it to Frida's there is a
Speaker 5: woman singing do you remember like yourna? Yes, yes, that
Speaker 5: woman who appears in the movie. She is created as
Speaker 5: Lapelona and Death. No, she plays death which we call
Speaker 5: lapelona sometimes. That woman is famous for singing that song.
Speaker 5: Her name is Celle la Varagas, and cevel la Vargas
Speaker 5: is from Costa Rica. But she said that famous quote
Speaker 5: that says los Mexicano that means Mexicans are born wherever
Speaker 5: they fucking want. This is because she is considered Mexican
Speaker 5: and an icon for Mexican culture, but she wasn't born
Speaker 5: in Mexico. And Chaveel la Vargas is also related to
Speaker 5: the queerness of in the film. This is a very
Speaker 5: like nice detail in my opinion, because tavel la Baga
Speaker 5: is that old lady that you see in the movie,
Speaker 5: is actually someone who had a relationship with Frida. Oh oh,
Speaker 5: they had a very passionate affair. And Chavelas appears in
Speaker 5: Frida's movie Singing too, San Maachayek portraying Frida No, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's it's incredible because if you don't know this nice story,
Speaker 5: you wouldn't know. That's another way that they introduced free
Speaker 5: theat Aquaerness by bringing one of her, the actual person
Speaker 5: that she had an affair with, into the film. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: so cool.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, that's just like such a w to make
Speaker 4: a cameo in your lover's biopic, Like really good stuff.
Speaker 4: That's I didn't know that. That's really cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I think an extension of the conversation of cast
Speaker 3: in this movie can extend to the crew as far
Speaker 3: as like, why did a white woman from the US
Speaker 3: who is not Mexican or Latina? Why was she the
Speaker 3: one hired to direct this movie? Right?
Speaker 2: Why was it a majority white writers? Including Diane Lake?
Speaker 2: By the way, what was she doing here?
Speaker 3: Sworn enemy of Jamie She's my new enemy. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: I saw that and like IMDb and I read it
Speaker 3: really quickly, and I thought it said Diane Lane. I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, wow, is Diane Lane a screenwriter? But
Speaker 3: then it's a slightly different is it?
Speaker 4: Fred Callos super fan, No I wish instead it's my
Speaker 4: sworn enemy who gave you a C because I was
Speaker 4: late to class too many times.
Speaker 2: Grow up?
Speaker 3: You know what? Lateness is just a construct invented by
Speaker 3: capitalism exactly.
Speaker 4: Lateness is on timeness leaving the body. And I don't
Speaker 4: I don't care for this. There was one writer, one
Speaker 4: credited writer because also it is said that Edward Norton
Speaker 4: worked on the screenplay but was not credited as a
Speaker 4: writer for like WGA reasons. But there was one writer
Speaker 4: of Mexican descent who worked on the screenplay, Gregory Nava,
Speaker 4: who had worked on a number of movies prior. He
Speaker 4: also directed Selena, the Jlo Celena movie. Oh yes, anyways,
Speaker 4: from what we can tell. And also it's always so
Speaker 4: inscrutable because the ways that movie writing credits happen, who knows.
Speaker 4: But yes, it seems like there was only one Mexican
Speaker 4: writer involved in the writing of this movie, although there
Speaker 4: was one famous communist writer involved, which maybe is attributable
Speaker 4: to how political this movie did get. In the script
Speaker 4: where clans I recog it is his name, and I
Speaker 4: was like why because I went into a big blacklist
Speaker 4: research hole and I wonder why. But Anyways, he was
Speaker 4: a screenwriter who was called in and subpoenaed by the
Speaker 4: House Committee of on American Activity. Is he was a
Speaker 4: card carrier communist and it seems like just generally a
Speaker 4: real one from what I can tell.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and then Diane Link Boom, and then.
Speaker 4: She's she worked on it as well, and it's her
Speaker 4: only screenwriting credit, her other credit disrespecting me.
Speaker 3: I call that a discredit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. What I was telling Kaitling during the break is
Speaker 5: that the DP the cinematographer uses who is Yeah, he's
Speaker 5: an amazing and amazing cinematographer who is Mexican. So and
Speaker 5: I also when I saw the credits, I really saw
Speaker 5: a bad lance between male and female crew, which I enjoyed.
Speaker 5: I don't know their backgrounds, but I don't see that
Speaker 5: very often, so I was happy about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, especially at the top. It is largely
Speaker 3: a woman driven movie as far as the director, half
Speaker 3: of the writers, Selma Hayek producing, and.
Speaker 4: I do feel like when women are producing their own projects,
Speaker 4: you tend to see more gender parody in the cruise,
Speaker 4: which is just another way of saying you have to
Speaker 4: have representation at every level.
Speaker 2: Of production of course.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we were talking about Rodriguo Prieto, I think quite
Speaker 4: a bit earlier this year, because he just had like
Speaker 4: the wildest last year where he was the cinematographer for
Speaker 4: both Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon, which is
Speaker 4: just like the range, the range this man has. I mean,
Speaker 4: his resume is wild. The same year he did Frida,
Speaker 4: he also did eight Mile. He's got range with I mean,
Speaker 4: he loves to do a totally different movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah. He also, like I told Caitlin, I'm a swiftly
Speaker 5: so I love him because she he directed all of
Speaker 5: my favorite videos recently. Really yeah, I didn't he was
Speaker 5: sweet Taylor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, oh my god, wait, so many twists in turns.
Speaker 4: I knew that, like because he's like Martin Scorsese and
Speaker 4: Julie Taymore and I think Inatu's go to guy.
Speaker 3: Like oh right, we were talking about it because he
Speaker 3: shot Wolf of wall Street in Robbie's first major role,
Speaker 3: and then shot her whatever ten years later as Barbie.
Speaker 2: As a sorry for shooting you that way and wolf
Speaker 2: of yeah gesture.
Speaker 4: Now he literally directed the Cardigan there, wow.
Speaker 5: Cardian Fortnight. Yeah. She also works with another Cinemata refer
Speaker 5: who's a woman. Yeah, I think he's her Nay, but
Speaker 5: she also works with Rodrio Prito, so I am very proud.
Speaker 2: Of them every time.
Speaker 4: Wow, this is a fun recur He's a fun recurring
Speaker 4: Bachtel cast character because every time I learned something new
Speaker 4: about him, it is completely unexpected and fascinating.
Speaker 3: And he did a great job with this movie. It
Speaker 3: looks so cool.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's so pretty, the colors.
Speaker 4: And I just love the idea of him going back
Speaker 4: to his hotel room at the end of the day
Speaker 4: of shooting on Frida and answering an email about eight
Speaker 4: miles like, yeah, yeah, he opened up his hotmail dot
Speaker 4: com two thousand and two web book or palm pilot
Speaker 4: or whatever the fuck you were using then, So, does.
Speaker 3: Anyone have anything else to discuss?
Speaker 5: Oh, I have my notes with Osama we say in Spanish,
Speaker 5: and I take notes of everything when I get excited.
Speaker 3: But oh, I have pages of notes.
Speaker 2: You're in good comfort.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah. Just what I think is very nice about
Speaker 5: the movie is also they don't portray the art as
Speaker 5: much as we wanted them to do. No, as Jamie
Speaker 5: think was mentioning earlier on but what I like is
Speaker 5: that they really create these life paintings and free the
Speaker 5: an aesthetic at the end of her life that came
Speaker 5: from what we call in Mexico exbotos. Exbotos are little
Speaker 5: paintings made in rural Mexico, in outside of Mexico City.
Speaker 5: People are very Catholic, especially in those places, and when
Speaker 5: something happens to them, they pray for it to get better. Know,
Speaker 5: something bad happens, they pray for it to get better.
Speaker 5: So what they do is that they go to the
Speaker 5: town's painter, and the painter ask them what the event was,
Speaker 5: who are they praying to, what saint and who is
Speaker 5: this being dedicated to? Know, So it has a format
Speaker 5: and it's text an image of the event. And then
Speaker 5: what they do with those little paintings is that they
Speaker 5: hang them at the church. And after they leave the church,
Speaker 5: and after they have asked for help from this saint,
Speaker 5: they have to move on and carry on with their lives. Know.
Speaker 5: And Frida, I think, and this was said by Marta Samora,
Speaker 5: who was a biographer of Frida, how Frida took this
Speaker 5: idea of expotos and put it in her painting. And
Speaker 5: I think that's very nice because it's something very niche
Speaker 5: of Mexico and that most people from other countries don't know.
Speaker 5: But if they look at afrida color of painting and
Speaker 5: they look at an expoto, they will see the similarities.
Speaker 5: And Frida did this to survive. Basically, she wanted to
Speaker 5: create these paintings that looked like exbotos and she carried
Speaker 5: out that in her life. She painted with all her
Speaker 5: pain and her suffering in the canvas and this personal
Speaker 5: and political intersection that she was so good at the
Speaker 5: and she was the only one at the time that
Speaker 5: did it as well as that, and then she carried
Speaker 5: on with her life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So it's amazing because we see her in the movie
Speaker 5: having fun. I mean, of course this in the civilization
Speaker 5: of the disability is not good, but she has fun.
Speaker 5: We also see her in other aspects now, her alcoholism,
Speaker 5: her addiction to paint bills. But Frida tried to carry
Speaker 5: on despite all of the things that went on. And
Speaker 5: I don't think it has to do with this saving
Speaker 5: race or trying to get rid of the idea of
Speaker 5: suffering and pain. But because she was a rebel at
Speaker 5: the end of the.
Speaker 3: Day, yeh, I do appreciate the movie contextualizing where some
Speaker 3: of her inspiration comes from and her paintings like something
Speaker 3: will happen and then you see it inspire one or
Speaker 3: several of her works of art. My main thing is like,
Speaker 3: I just feel like the relationship between her and Diego
Speaker 3: Rivera takes up too much narrative real estate.
Speaker 4: Which seems to be the through line with how most
Speaker 4: of the adaptations of her life in fiction like She's
Speaker 4: I feel like still too frequently presented as equally built.
Speaker 2: With because I feel like this movie is called.
Speaker 4: Frieda, but it could easily be called Frieda and Diego
Speaker 4: and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: Exactly right. And they wanted to be separated at the
Speaker 5: end of their when in their second marriage they had
Speaker 5: the house created by Juana Gorman in Sananjel that were
Speaker 5: two houses again goals, yeah, goals, And she didn't even
Speaker 5: live there for that long because her dad got sick
Speaker 5: and she went to La Casasoul and they lived separate
Speaker 5: lives at the end. So I don't think they wanted
Speaker 5: to be seen as an item, and they were seen
Speaker 5: as an item all throughout their relationship, so at least
Speaker 5: Frida as an art historian, of course I'm biased, but
Speaker 5: I would have liked to see her creative process a
Speaker 5: bit more same. Yeah, how did she know which colors
Speaker 5: to use? How did she decide the size of the painting?
Speaker 5: How did she come up with a little girl with
Speaker 5: the skull face, the watermelons, not all of those things?
Speaker 5: How did she decide to do that? I would have
Speaker 5: liked to see the creative process come to life instead
Speaker 5: of just being the end result of the painting exactly.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 4: I feel like this is something I've noticed in biopics
Speaker 4: about women again, specifically where it's just like there's always
Speaker 4: less focus on process when the story is about a woman.
Speaker 4: I think because I think about like biopics of the
Speaker 4: last couple of years, Oppenheimer immediately comes to mind, where
Speaker 4: there are very sort of like magical, you know, sort
Speaker 4: of the sequences about and then he's scienced or whatever,
Speaker 4: but there is also sequences where you're explained like this
Speaker 4: is the process, this is how he gets there.
Speaker 2: And I feel like even with movies about.
Speaker 4: Male artist, there is just inherently more of a focus
Speaker 4: on process. And I'm not upset that there's a focus
Speaker 4: on process, but that should be something that is like
Speaker 4: across the board available to any exceptional person exactly, like
Speaker 4: why would you not want to know how the sausage
Speaker 4: is made?
Speaker 5: And it's not very obvious if you don't know, for example,
Speaker 5: that Frida had this obsession with mirrors or with death,
Speaker 5: it's not very obvious. I mean it's in the film
Speaker 5: language now that at the beginning she starts looking at
Speaker 5: herself in the mirror and that's how the movie begins.
Speaker 5: But she truly had an obsession with looking at herself
Speaker 5: and with time passing because she spends so much time
Speaker 5: in bed with death. She wanted to die at the
Speaker 5: end of her life so bad, and when she did,
Speaker 5: she was very happy. Her last drawing said that, No,
Speaker 5: so everything that I think I would have liked to see,
Speaker 5: how do you become Frida Calo as an artist? Because
Speaker 5: as a person, I think it's clear some things missing,
Speaker 5: like with this ghost. But as an artist, how did
Speaker 5: she find that particular esthetic that is so divisive because
Speaker 5: people either love her or hate her, but it causes
Speaker 5: an impact, And how did she find that? I would
Speaker 5: have loved to see that in the movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I also in the like mainstream feminist.
Speaker 2: Capitalistic way. I literally it was really annoying.
Speaker 4: I saw like a modern defection of free to call it,
Speaker 4: where it's like free to caller, queen of the selfie.
Speaker 2: And you're like, no, we're like it's.
Speaker 4: Like patronizing, right, Like we're I don't know. All of
Speaker 4: her work is like you have to be having three
Speaker 4: or four conversations that wants to really talk about it
Speaker 4: and seeing people sort of cherry pick the part of
Speaker 4: her work that they resonate with and then ignoring the
Speaker 4: political aspect, ignoring the identity aspect, because so much of
Speaker 4: Freda's work was connected to her connections to my Mexico
Speaker 4: and like understanding what her identity was across time, and
Speaker 4: like it's just irritating.
Speaker 5: Only Frida could have done that, like putting such universal
Speaker 5: feelings like pain, the fear of abandonment, the fear of
Speaker 5: a miscarriage, all of those things she had depicted, but
Speaker 5: intersecting it with politics. She was a genius for that.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's awesome, and I mean the fact that so
Speaker 4: many people can miss it maybe is just like speaks
Speaker 4: to how complicated the work is. But it's also like,
Speaker 4: just read a little bit.
Speaker 3: I want to share a quote from her. I think
Speaker 3: this is something she said later in her life, but
Speaker 3: just kind of tying it back to the things that
Speaker 3: inspired her art, and the movie skimming over her political ideology,
Speaker 3: not ignoring it or erasing it, but like again, focusing
Speaker 3: way more on Diego Rivera's politics than Frida's. But she said, quote,
Speaker 3: I have a great restlessness about my paintings, mainly because
Speaker 3: I want to make it useful to the revolutionary communist movement.
Speaker 3: Until now I have managed simply an honest expression of
Speaker 3: my own self. I must struggle with all my strength
Speaker 3: to ensure that the little positive my health allows me
Speaker 3: to do also benefits the revolution, the only real reason
Speaker 3: to live unquote obviously translated from Spanish. So she was like,
Speaker 3: my work means nothing unless I'm moving the communist movement forward,
Speaker 3: is how she felt. I think later in life, and
Speaker 3: maybe also earlier, but yeah, yeah, I feel like I'm like,
Speaker 3: can we get a little more sense of that in
Speaker 3: the movie, please.
Speaker 4: I think the last thing I had that I just
Speaker 4: wanted to say, like I was glad was reflected in
Speaker 4: the movie was that even though the movie, as we've
Speaker 4: all said, is sort of unduly focused on Diego as well,
Speaker 4: I did like that we see that friendship between Frida
Speaker 4: and Lupe develop and that you get real moments, because
Speaker 4: I feel like, again I was like a little bit
Speaker 4: like oh no, Weinstein production when Lupe makes the scene
Speaker 4: at their wedding and You're just like, okay, is she
Speaker 4: just gonna be presented as irrational?
Speaker 2: And but I thought that the.
Speaker 4: Way that played out for you know, big Hollywood movie
Speaker 4: was more nuanced and thoughtful than I thought it would be,
Speaker 4: and seems to be at least the friendship is like
Speaker 4: reflective of their actual experience. And then a relationship I
Speaker 4: wish I had seen more of was between Frieda and Christina,
Speaker 4: because it seems like her relationship with Christina was very
Speaker 4: dominant in her life, and it is true that Diego
Speaker 4: had an affair with her sister. But again, I feel
Speaker 4: like the movie defers to how does Freeda feel about
Speaker 4: that in relation to Diego and doesn't really like it
Speaker 4: seems like most of the progress in the relationship with
Speaker 4: her and her sister takes place offic screen, which I
Speaker 4: don't know, I'm nipicking at this point, but it would
Speaker 4: have been nice to see the relationships that we know
Speaker 4: were very significant to free to, you know, proportionally reflected
Speaker 4: in the movie instead of just going back to Diego
Speaker 4: all the time.
Speaker 5: Heard that too, Yes, because she learned how to position
Speaker 5: people in a painting from her dad being a photographer,
Speaker 5: and her dad was a very successful photographer during the Porfiliato,
Speaker 5: which was a dictatorship regime we had before the Mexican
Speaker 5: Revolution and after her dad had a lot of problems
Speaker 5: because of the revolution, and the Mexican Revolution was based
Speaker 5: on the freedom at least one part, on the freedom
Speaker 5: of indigenous people and their land being returned to them,
Speaker 5: and well that was happening. The gorilla was in Paris
Speaker 5: learning how to paint. So it's so, it's how I
Speaker 5: would have also liked to see the context because Mexico
Speaker 5: at that time was chaotics, like very chaotic. We had
Speaker 5: just gone through a civil war, and I would have
Speaker 5: liked to see how that context affected freedom. Her family,
Speaker 5: being a bourgeois, very high class European who profited from
Speaker 5: the regime before the revolution, what that did to her life,
Speaker 5: and why that radicalizes her into communism too, So I
Speaker 5: would have liked to see that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she you know, would frequently kind of fudge the
Speaker 4: year she was born to line up with the year
Speaker 4: that the revolution started nineteen ten. Yeah, like connect her
Speaker 4: identity to like I am a born revolutionary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that she would kind of erase her background
Speaker 3: coming from a like well to do family.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which Diego Rivera was also from a pretty yeah
Speaker 4: wealthy family as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's why he could study art no and not.
Speaker 2: Right fuck after France for a couple of years.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and didn't become a soldier is one of the
Speaker 5: factions of the revolution.
Speaker 3: Yeahm hmmm. All this to say, I feel like Frida's
Speaker 3: life deserves a whole series rather than just a two
Speaker 3: hour film. So if we ever see any more like
Speaker 3: kind of biographical stories about her on the screen, it
Speaker 3: should be a long TV series because there's just so
Speaker 3: much well speaking to her relationships with the women in
Speaker 3: her life that the movie kind of touches on but
Speaker 3: could have examined more the Bechdel test. The movie does pass,
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: Not as much as you would like it too for
Speaker 4: a biopic about women that had a lot of women
Speaker 4: who were important in her life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it does.
Speaker 3: But then she does talk to Alfred Molina a lot
Speaker 3: and to the Bye Laws of the Bechdel cast.
Speaker 2: I forgot my own role.
Speaker 3: You know, people of marginalized genders. Speaking to Alred Molina
Speaker 3: about Alfred Bina is an automatic.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so in that way, it's actually kind of unprecedented.
Speaker 5: You have converted me to Alfred Morina fans.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, you you've joined an elite group because Alfred
Speaker 4: Molina is a past guest.
Speaker 2: Of this show. Yeah. Oh my. We still don't know
Speaker 2: how we pulled it off.
Speaker 3: We don't have to know, but we talked about Aaron Brockovich.
Speaker 5: Oh I love that movie.
Speaker 4: He's wow, that's amazing. You're amazing, King, He's amazing. I
Speaker 4: love to praise this man on our phone show. But yes,
Speaker 4: it does pass the actual test, but I do feel
Speaker 4: like I wish.
Speaker 2: It did more more. Yeah.
Speaker 3: As far as our metric, the Nipple scale scale, where
Speaker 3: we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on
Speaker 3: examining it through an intersectional Felm and this lens, I'm
Speaker 3: inclined to give it maybe like a three point five.
Speaker 3: I do wish that, you know, for a movie called
Speaker 3: freeda that is allegedly about her life, and the main
Speaker 3: thing we know about her life is that she was
Speaker 3: an artist, like you know, as a public figure. If
Speaker 3: someone's like, who's Free to Callo, You're like, oh, an
Speaker 3: artist And for us to not see as much as
Speaker 3: you would think we would about her artistic process, more
Speaker 3: about her inspirations, so much narrative real estate going to
Speaker 3: her relationship with Diego Rivera, And yes, that was an
Speaker 3: important relationship in her life. But I feel like we
Speaker 3: end up learning more about Diego Rivera than we do
Speaker 3: about Free to Callo and her backstory and her political
Speaker 3: ideologies and her identity and all this stuff. So wish
Speaker 3: the movie had focused a bit more on Freeda.
Speaker 2: Doesn't feel like too much to ask.
Speaker 3: It doesn't, but I do. I do appreciate that. Again,
Speaker 3: for a movie from two thousand and two, which was, like,
Speaker 3: you know, a Hollywood produced movie, I assumed that so
Speaker 3: much of her, especially her queerness and her communist ideology,
Speaker 3: would have been erased or really really downplayed, maybe only
Speaker 3: mentioned in passing but never shown on screen. But like,
Speaker 3: you have three different romantic or sexual moments between her
Speaker 3: and another woman in the movie. One of them carries
Speaker 3: a lot of baggage because it was basically forced to
Speaker 3: exist by Harvey Weinstein, but the benefit of it is
Speaker 3: that you do see this like steamy, perhaps exploitative, but
Speaker 3: I know it.
Speaker 4: It's like knowing that Salma Hayek felt ill the day
Speaker 4: that has happened.
Speaker 2: I just it.
Speaker 4: I Ugh, Yeah, Harvey Weinstein can't suffer enough.
Speaker 2: As far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 3: No rot in hell, but the fact that there is,
Speaker 3: because in two thousand and two it was very hard
Speaker 3: to find even if there were queer characters, we wouldn't
Speaker 3: see any type of like kissing between two women or
Speaker 3: kissing betraying men or anything like that. It is a
Speaker 3: relief to see that.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 4: And also with Josephine Baker, which I didn't know. I
Speaker 4: was like, she also had an affair with Georgia O'Keefe,
Speaker 4: but I guess that they were like, we've hit the
Speaker 4: upper limit of affairs we can show in this movie.
Speaker 4: But I was like, if they gave Trotsky a steamy
Speaker 4: kiss and we don't see a queer love scene, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna I'm gonna like explore not that, but like, just
Speaker 4: it was very weird seeing Trotsky in a horny count Yeah.
Speaker 5: I hated so hard, so weird.
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Rush get away from her.
Speaker 4: I don't want to see that ever, Horny Trotsky, No,
Speaker 4: thank you whatever, good for them.
Speaker 2: I'm happy for them, but I don't want to I
Speaker 2: don't want to look at.
Speaker 3: It nor anyway of the day. I mean, this is
Speaker 3: a movie about a queer, disabled communist Latina artist, and
Speaker 3: the movie is like, yes, that's all here. We're used
Speaker 3: to crumbs and this movie gives you more than crumbs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the movie is not criticizing her for because
Speaker 4: I feel like often when we see marginalized characters, it's like,
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's just led to their downfall or
Speaker 4: whatever exactly, or like the movie is encouraging you to
Speaker 4: not be on their side.
Speaker 5: And what led to her downfall we know by what
Speaker 5: the movie says is in big part a man, which
Speaker 5: I think is very accurate.
Speaker 2: So true, that certainly seems that way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they also portrayed the alcoholism part, which I
Speaker 5: think is very important. They don't say that a lot
Speaker 5: about free them. She was an alcoholic, so it's important
Speaker 5: to talk about it. So yeah, I think it portrays
Speaker 5: the nuances of her life very well, but I think
Speaker 5: it could do it more. Of course, what I am satisfied,
Speaker 5: I think it's I watched it as a little girl,
Speaker 5: I shouldn't have. I got scarred for life by seeing
Speaker 5: Freda's sister betray her in that way. But now as
Speaker 5: an adult, I think that this is a very good movie.
Speaker 5: At least two understand how we can start to think
Speaker 5: about biopics in a way that they actually portray the
Speaker 5: character in an integral manner and not just pick and
Speaker 5: choose whatever we want to make them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3: So you're going three and a half, kid, Yes, I'm
Speaker 3: going three and a half. I will distribute them between Samahayek.
Speaker 3: I want to give at least one nipple to the
Speaker 3: wedding toast that actually judges character. Yes, I love that
Speaker 3: so much. If anyone ever asks me to give a
Speaker 3: toast at their wedding, I'm just going to cite that
Speaker 3: exact speech noted because it's basically she's just like, I
Speaker 3: don't believe in marriage. I think it's either delusional or
Speaker 3: a way to trap women. But if people recognize that
Speaker 3: and they decide to get married anyway, then good for you.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool, and that's how I feel about marriage.
Speaker 3: So one nipple, two the representation of free to call
Speaker 3: having underarm hair very good. That is something you don't
Speaker 3: see in movies, where like there will be a movie
Speaker 3: either at a time or a place where women would
Speaker 3: not have removed their body hair, but because it's a movie,
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, all these characters in Cold Mountain don't
Speaker 3: have any body hair, and it's just like what right?
Speaker 4: Or when you see like I'm trying to think of
Speaker 4: what there.
Speaker 2: I saw a historical movie.
Speaker 4: Recently with nudity and every woman had a wax, and
Speaker 4: You're like, what is this?
Speaker 2: Like what are we doing here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it feels like such a tiny thing, but it
Speaker 4: is wild how historically recently, just like any sort of
Speaker 4: body hair was just sober boten. There was like that
Speaker 4: red Carpet moment with Julia Roberts, like less than twenty
Speaker 4: years ago where she had armpit hair and it was.
Speaker 2: Like a global news story. You're like, grow up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyways, and then whatever I have left, I'm not
Speaker 3: really keeping track, but I would certainly want to give
Speaker 3: some of my nippleage to free to call oh herself, Yeah,
Speaker 3: feminist icon.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna do three and a half as well. I
Speaker 4: think that because you could just as easily call this
Speaker 4: movie Free to in Diego sort of takes away a
Speaker 4: little bit of like the focus where you want the
Speaker 4: movie to be, and I do agree that it seems
Speaker 4: to be at least as far as biopics go, and
Speaker 4: like how wildly inaccurate biopics tend to.
Speaker 2: Be or gloss over entire areas.
Speaker 6: Of the subject's identity because of what is considered acceptable
Speaker 6: to a mainstream audience at the time of production. I
Speaker 6: think this movie does so much more than I was
Speaker 6: expecting and does seem to be like a solid sort
Speaker 6: of one on one to what Frida's life was sort
Speaker 6: of in the in the major beats, but there's no Yeah.
Speaker 4: I wish that there was more focus on her artwork,
Speaker 4: her process, and what motivated her art, versus this hyper
Speaker 4: fixation on the relationship with Diego, because that can be
Speaker 4: important in her life and not be the thrust of
Speaker 4: her life, which it seems like towards the end of
Speaker 4: her life how she felt as well, also huge question
Speaker 4: of like would she want her life story be commodified
Speaker 4: into a movie?
Speaker 5: Maybe not but by Hollywood no, definitely not.
Speaker 3: Yes, made by a sex criminal multi millionaire no.
Speaker 4: Right, So it's also dogging, I mean, just the darkness
Speaker 4: in this production. I hate how it's like such a
Speaker 4: horrible example of how even making art that is, you know,
Speaker 4: more subversive than you're used to seeing required on Selma
Speaker 4: Hyak's part, the like cooperation with an absolute monster to
Speaker 4: even make it possible, and subsequently erasing all of her
Speaker 4: amazing production work and all of this stuff, and having
Speaker 4: the release and the awards campaign for this movie to
Speaker 4: be completely sabotaged basically. But anyways, I like the movie
Speaker 4: quite a bit, and so I'm going to give one
Speaker 4: nipple to free to callow one nipple to Salma Hayek.
Speaker 2: I'm going to give hm Well one nipple.
Speaker 4: To olt from Malina Well of course, and I'll give
Speaker 4: my final half in a showing of waving the little
Speaker 4: white flag.
Speaker 2: I'll give the last half to Diane Lake.
Speaker 3: Whoa see, I thought you were going to be like
Speaker 3: and I'm going to give a pile of shaite to
Speaker 3: die and like.
Speaker 2: I'm growing up. We'll let bygone speak up by gones.
Speaker 5: Yeah, two hours ago you were a different person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she was so wrong to give me a sea.
Speaker 4: Come on, maybe your class was less boring.
Speaker 2: I want to showed up on time.
Speaker 4: Who maybe if all you did, if she did Okay,
Speaker 4: now I'm being meeting again. All she ever did was
Speaker 4: talk about how she was a credited writer on Freda.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, they came out fifteen years ago, lady,
Speaker 4: what's new anyways?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: Sorry, anyway, Anela, how about you? What say you?
Speaker 5: I agree with you. I think three and a half
Speaker 5: is a good rating. My first nipple goes to Saramahayak
Speaker 5: two because she did this amazing production and I think
Speaker 5: I'm very proud that she's my my Paisana.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 5: Then my second one would go to the scene the
Speaker 5: sequence that has Treats giving assassinated Anthea painting the two
Speaker 5: that's at the same time. I found such a good
Speaker 5: sequence that was my favorite part of the movie. And
Speaker 5: the third one I would like to give to Frida
Speaker 5: as an artist, but also particularly her showing up to
Speaker 5: the exhibition for the last in her bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a good moment. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And some doctors think that that probably was the
Speaker 5: thing that ended up killing her going out like that,
Speaker 5: but I mean it was worth it, I think for her,
Speaker 5: and I think it was such a good moment both
Speaker 5: in the movie and in her life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like the part where she's like, burn this judas
Speaker 3: of a body because it betrays me. She was in
Speaker 3: so much pain. Yeah, she was absolutely suffering.
Speaker 5: And there are some historians that believe that she committed
Speaker 5: suicide by taking eleven instead of the seven pills she
Speaker 5: had prescribed to her, because her nurse said that. But
Speaker 5: we don't know. She died on her own terms, and
Speaker 5: she didd everything on her own terms, and I think
Speaker 5: that's amazing. My half of a star would go to
Speaker 5: Rodrigo Prieto because yes, yes, he's also my Paisano. And
Speaker 5: the cinematography is amazing, and he gave us a lot
Speaker 5: of different movies to talk about in the span of
Speaker 5: two minutes, so it was great.
Speaker 4: Yes we should, Kaitlin now would be a good idea
Speaker 4: for the Matreon. Just choose two random movies. He was
Speaker 4: a cinematographer for you could pick almost any genre of movie.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. Let's do that for December, yeah, in November.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much Angle for joining us and for
Speaker 3: lending your expertise. Is there anything you'd like to plug
Speaker 3: or anything like that.
Speaker 5: I would like people to look at Tina Modotti's pictures,
Speaker 5: her photographs. I would like to plug her even though
Speaker 5: she's been dead for a few years now, because she's
Speaker 5: portraying the movie and her pictures are portrayed for a
Speaker 5: quick sequence. But I think that it's amazing how she
Speaker 5: depicted everything communism and the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican
Speaker 5: working class through her pictures. So look at in them
Speaker 5: out these pictures. My Instagram account is Angela CMPs. It's
Speaker 5: private for now, but I'll make it public for a
Speaker 5: couple of days if anyone wants to follow act now
Speaker 5: because if not, my students will find it and I
Speaker 5: don't want them following me because teenagers in social media
Speaker 5: are not my favorite thing. So that's about it. Thank
Speaker 5: you so much for having me. I could talk to
Speaker 5: two amazing women for two hours about my favorite topic.
Speaker 5: So I don't know why I cannot do this every
Speaker 5: day of my life, but I wish I could.
Speaker 2: We'll have you back for another movie. Yeah, come back anytime.
Speaker 5: Whenever you want to have me. I'll come back because
Speaker 5: I had so much fun. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, thank you. I had a class truly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And as far as where you can find us, it's
Speaker 3: on the same old places Instagram. It's on the Patreon
Speaker 3: aka Matreon five bucks a month, two bonus episodes every month,
Speaker 3: plus the back catalog.
Speaker 4: Right now, because it's ok tuba. We are doing two
Speaker 4: scary movies that center women, we did and we just
Speaker 4: an episode on the Exorcist and we're covering Pearl later
Speaker 4: in the month. So yeah, head over there, check that out.
Speaker 4: You can get our merch at teapublic dot com. Slash
Speaker 4: the Bechdel Cast And.
Speaker 3: With that, I'm gonna get in bed and then make
Speaker 3: a bunch of men carry me around in bed.
Speaker 5: As you should.
Speaker 4: Yes go, everyone deserves that moment.
Speaker 5: Yep, bye bye.
Speaker 3: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, host by
Speaker 3: Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
Speaker 3: by Moe laboord our theme song was composed by Mike
Speaker 3: Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskressensky. Our logo and merch
Speaker 3: is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
Speaker 3: Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit
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