Speaker 1: On the Bechde Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy.
Speaker 2: Eph and Beast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3: Hey, Jamie, Hey Caitlin, let's be sisters and best friends.
Speaker 1: Okay for now? That is wow.
Speaker 3: Oh you don't want to be my friend? Well, let's
Speaker 3: see how you fair is my enemy?
Speaker 1: And then the best fight scene I've ever seen. It
Speaker 1: was so fun. Well, I think that that actually is
Speaker 1: a full recap of the movie in a way. There's
Speaker 1: also two guys.
Speaker 3: Yea sometimes, but they're not very important.
Speaker 1: There's two guys, there's a kiss. Oh and and then
Speaker 1: Jade Fox.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think my favorite character Jade Fox rock. Well, anyways,
Speaker 1: we gotta start the show. We gotta start the show.
Speaker 1: It's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Day on the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 1: My name is Shamie Loftis.
Speaker 3: My name is Caitlin Deronte, and this is our show
Speaker 3: where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using
Speaker 3: the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. Jamie,
Speaker 3: could you indulge us and tell us what even is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so indulgent of me to do. Living deliciously here, okay.
Speaker 1: The Bechtel Test is a media metric created by queer
Speaker 1: cartoonist Alison Bechdel, originally created as a sort of one
Speaker 1: off joke in her comic collection Likes to Watch Out For.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different versions of the test. The
Speaker 1: one that we discussed in this show requires that there
Speaker 1: be two characters of a marginalized gender with names that
Speaker 1: talk to each other about something other than a man
Speaker 1: for more than two lines of dialogue. But we talk
Speaker 1: about a lot of other stuff too, because that would
Speaker 1: be a very short show. Even though to this day
Speaker 1: it is the easiest way to find out if someone
Speaker 1: is lying to me. When they say they've listened to
Speaker 1: this show, they're like, yeah, that's the one where you
Speaker 1: for two hours. I was like, do you think we
Speaker 1: go through the script, like, what do you think happens?
Speaker 3: I we don't know.
Speaker 1: It's baffling to me, but I appreciate the lie, and
Speaker 1: I think I mean that. Oh yeah, I love being
Speaker 1: lying too, and that is a big problem in my life.
Speaker 1: But enough about that.
Speaker 3: I would never lie to you, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Unless but see, that's what a liar would say, Oh
Speaker 1: my cerience. Liars love to call attention to the fact
Speaker 1: that they would definitely never lie in this essay. I will.
Speaker 1: Let's get our guests in.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's she is a podcaster host of It could
Speaker 3: Happen here on Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: It's me a Wong Welcome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think you all asked for me,
Speaker 2: so now now you're getting me along.
Speaker 1: It's true that our our listeners in fact demanded it.
Speaker 1: You've been a popularly requested guest on the show, and
Speaker 1: we're so happy to have you here. How are you.
Speaker 2: I'm hanging in there. I'm excited to be here. I'm
Speaker 2: hoping that the absolute chaos of the last year is
Speaker 2: somewhat lifting. Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna go from there
Speaker 2: and proceed on the assumption that I'm gonna be fine
Speaker 2: and not start dying. Halfway into this recording.
Speaker 3: Everything is let us hope not.
Speaker 1: Everything's coming up me. I can just feel it.
Speaker 3: So we're talking Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Miya. What is
Speaker 3: your relationship with this movie?
Speaker 2: So, my mom loves kung fu movies. She also she
Speaker 2: reads unfathomable numbers of kung fu books. She's watched indescribable
Speaker 2: numbers of kung fu movies, and so I grew up
Speaker 2: on I guess kind of weirdly early two thousands kung
Speaker 2: fu movies. So things like House, The Flying Dagger, A Hero,
Speaker 2: and then this movie, which okay, So I I was
Speaker 2: home to go to the doctor and I was like, hey,
Speaker 2: do you want to watch? As I talked to my parents,
Speaker 2: like do you want to watch watch this movie with me?
Speaker 2: And they were like sure, and my dad goes, I
Speaker 2: remember not liking.
Speaker 4: This movie, and I was like huh, and then my
Speaker 4: mom was like, oh no, what she she okay, So
Speaker 4: like she she has watched so many of these movies
Speaker 4: that like, when this movie.
Speaker 2: Starts, she is doing like power level rankings based on
Speaker 2: like their cheekong and like like the their their their
Speaker 2: ability to do the thing where everyone has like a
Speaker 2: floaty jump and they can sort of like soar around
Speaker 2: in midair. She's like, ah, this character she is weaker
Speaker 2: for the other.
Speaker 1: I was like, God, your mom sounds great, and that
Speaker 1: also sounds like a very stressful way to watch a movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fun too, because She's like, she also did
Speaker 2: martial arts, so she was like a blackie and Kashi
Speaker 2: kempow and so it's a it is a time watching
Speaker 2: watch movies.
Speaker 1: That's so.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: How how did she feel revisiting it?
Speaker 2: It was kind of unhappy because it has I guess
Speaker 2: spoiler alert for you. So there's there's a trope in
Speaker 2: kung fu movies, particularly the Chinese ones, somewhat less so
Speaker 2: the like Hong Kong kung fu movies. But at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the movie, she said, Okay, so every every
Speaker 2: kung fu movie has one plot, which is someone's either
Speaker 2: mother or their teacher dies and then someone gains a
Speaker 2: great power to go avenge them, and then everyone dies
Speaker 2: at the end. And that is also this movie's plot
Speaker 2: more or less. She's like, everyone dies at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just kind of like a doubled up version
Speaker 1: of that plot. Yeah, everyone's teacher dies.
Speaker 3: Yeah damn. But so you you watched this movie with
Speaker 3: your mom? Is that right?
Speaker 2: As a yeah? Yeah, as a kid. I think Actually,
Speaker 2: if I'm remembering right, I think we actually watched this
Speaker 2: movie in a hotel in Beijing in like a It
Speaker 2: was a very weird situation. It's like we had this
Speaker 2: hotel and there's it's almost like a bunk floor. So
Speaker 2: there's like this one giant window, and then there's like
Speaker 2: these beds on the top of on like the top floor,
Speaker 2: and then there's like a ladder and you go down.
Speaker 2: And so my mom and my dad were watching the
Speaker 2: movie on the TV. My sister and I were like
Speaker 2: supposed to be going to sleep. We were watching the
Speaker 2: movie in the window.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh, I love sneak watching a movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ah, my dad used to watch I think I've brought
Speaker 1: this up on the show before. My dad used to
Speaker 1: watch IFC movies at night after we went to bed,
Speaker 1: and that was the only way I could see boobs
Speaker 1: on TV. Even though it's just like I just should
Speaker 1: have learned how to, Like, I don't know why. I
Speaker 1: was like, I could have just googled it. I was afraid.
Speaker 1: I lived in fear of everything. So I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I have c boobs are the only boobs
Speaker 1: in this house.
Speaker 2: You know, that's probably a reasonable, pretty reasonable way to
Speaker 2: engage with the Internet. I feel like we should be
Speaker 2: more afraid.
Speaker 1: Of it, honestly, yeah, conditioned to be afraid of it.
Speaker 1: I went through a phase where when I was in
Speaker 1: college where I was like I was raised to fear
Speaker 1: this great tool, and then you're like, no, hold on,
Speaker 1: it is trying to kill everybody.
Speaker 3: It's like the ocean, very scary, Jamie, what is your
Speaker 3: relationship with this movie?
Speaker 1: I had? I saw this movie again. I feel like
Speaker 1: this is my story for every movie that came out
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands. I saw it on TNT
Speaker 1: at one point, and I don't think that this movie
Speaker 1: would have gotten as heavy an edit as some of
Speaker 1: my TNT faves. It's not a cussing movie and there
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that there is there is some sex.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I saw it when I was probably in
Speaker 1: junior higher high school. I remember enjoying it, and then
Speaker 1: I saw it again when it was just re released
Speaker 1: in theaters. I think it was just like a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago. So I saw the re release and
Speaker 1: that was really fun. I mean, this movie is so
Speaker 1: cool and a gigantic theater. It was very, very exciting.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so it's not a particularly interesting history, but
Speaker 1: it is somewhat long, and I also I'm just like
Speaker 1: interested in Angley's career trajectory is like very fascinating to me.
Speaker 3: He's got range.
Speaker 1: The man's got range. And also I was just reading
Speaker 1: about I was just you know, perusing scholarly journal, Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: and he and Spike Lee were classmates at NYU, and
Speaker 1: Angley like worked as a crew member on Spike Lee's thesis.
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, cool, you know everything I hear
Speaker 1: about n YU. I'm like, good for them. Caitlin, what's
Speaker 1: your history with this movie.
Speaker 3: It's a very short one because I didn't see it
Speaker 3: until the re release in theaters of February of this year.
Speaker 3: I intended to see it sooner. I bought it on
Speaker 3: DVD many years ago, thinking Oh, if I have it
Speaker 3: on DVD, I'll definitely watch it because there's so many
Speaker 3: things on my watch list, but they often to quote
Speaker 3: a star was born, Okay, they fall by the wayside.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, But I was like, Oh, if I have
Speaker 3: it on DVD, I'll definitely watch it. But I also
Speaker 3: bought it on DVD long after the medium of DVD
Speaker 3: was popular, so I still didn't get around to it.
Speaker 3: But when I heard it was coming out in theaters again,
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, this is a perfect opportunity anyway,
Speaker 3: just to see it on the big screen, because this
Speaker 3: is one of those movies that feels like a movie,
Speaker 3: you know, like.
Speaker 1: I really go to the theater type film.
Speaker 3: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So I saw it a couple months
Speaker 3: ago for the first time and thought it was awesome.
Speaker 3: I loved the fighting and the story and the characters
Speaker 3: and in general it rocks. I love it.
Speaker 1: Pretty sad though it is right pre fucking depressing towards
Speaker 1: the end, which I knew it was a trope, but
Speaker 1: I was like, I mean that's not a criticism, it's
Speaker 1: just a fact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, to be fair, To be fair, this
Speaker 2: movie's survival rate is actually pretty high for a kung
Speaker 2: fu movie.
Speaker 3: Because I mean, Michelle Yeo's character she survives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think both of both of the Jen lives, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't seem like Jen dies.
Speaker 3: I don't understand exactly what happens at the end, and
Speaker 3: I need help interpreting it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have. I have a thesis about this, but
Speaker 2: we can I guess, wait for it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay. I was just like, my thesis is based
Speaker 1: on nothing except I just like, I was like, she's fine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she survived worse than this, She's fine.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, shall I do the recap and we'll go
Speaker 3: from there.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So we meet a warrior named Schulin that's Michelle Yo.
Speaker 3: She is visited by Lee Mubai that is Chow Young Fat.
Speaker 3: They are friends, but also there's a bit of romantic
Speaker 3: chemistry between them.
Speaker 1: God, there's so much. Yeah, there's a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of people holding tension in their shoulders and their eyeballs, yes.
Speaker 3: Great, and their beautiful faces. And Mubai is also a warrior,
Speaker 3: a Wudan fighter, And just some context that I hope
Speaker 3: I'm getting this correct, but Wudan refers to a class
Speaker 3: of Chinese martial arts as well as a fictional martial
Speaker 3: arts school that appears in several works of Wusha fiction,
Speaker 3: and it's named after the place where it's based, which
Speaker 3: is the Wu Dang Mountains. So there's a lot of
Speaker 3: references in the movie to Wudan as a place of
Speaker 3: study and also as a specific martial arts style. So anyway,
Speaker 3: Mubai is a legendary fighter who studied at Wudan and
Speaker 3: he's been there practicing meditation, but he recently decided to
Speaker 3: break his meditation and leave. It seems like something is
Speaker 3: weighing on him.
Speaker 1: I know it's oversimplification to say that he got so
Speaker 1: horny he had to drop out of school, but.
Speaker 2: This is effectively what happened.
Speaker 1: But that is kind of that's how it that's how
Speaker 1: it exists. In my notes, like too horny had had
Speaker 1: to drop out.
Speaker 2: There's this great thing where he's like describing he like
Speaker 2: he's meditating. He's like, is he this place beyond space
Speaker 2: and time? And Michelle Yone's like, oh, did you reach enlightenment?
Speaker 2: And he's like, no, I got horny. Really sad because
Speaker 2: it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although I almost like good for him, because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people would often misconstrue horniness with enlightenment.
Speaker 3: True.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so at least he was able to recognize the difference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And he's like, fuck this, I'm out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's like, regardless, I am too horny to be here.
Speaker 1: I need to get out of here.
Speaker 3: And so he goes to Schulan and gives her his
Speaker 3: legendary sword Green Destiny is its name, and he wants
Speaker 3: her to give it to a guy named Surtey for
Speaker 3: safe keeping. He also mentions that his master, who taught
Speaker 3: him to be a wood on fighter, was murdered by
Speaker 3: someone named Jade Fox.
Speaker 1: Yes, where we get a good, a great classic twist
Speaker 1: in the near future where it's like Jade Fox is
Speaker 1: a whoa whoa classic cinematic twist. I just want to
Speaker 1: add because he doesn't appear in the movie very much.
Speaker 1: But there's als. I don't know what their role is. Really,
Speaker 1: it seems to be like he's like an old servant
Speaker 1: or works with Michelle Yeoh's character, but it felt like
Speaker 1: he was really shipping Mubai and Schuman, where he's like,
Speaker 1: come on, why don't you just just kiss allready?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's like surtey, that's curte Okay, yeah, he.
Speaker 1: Wants them to kiss.
Speaker 3: I liked, Yeah, he's like, why don't you just like
Speaker 3: stop being so silly and admit your feelings for each other?
Speaker 3: And Michelle was like, I don't know what you're even
Speaker 3: talking about, Tea, it's so good.
Speaker 1: It's Angley does that. I mean like that's like Angley's
Speaker 1: whole movie can and basically is like just forbidden love.
Speaker 1: It's like because that's like sense and sensibility that's broke
Speaker 1: Back Mountain. Like it's like he just loves to keep
Speaker 1: the lovers away from each other. Why listen.
Speaker 2: There's is kind of this thing in this like every
Speaker 2: old character who knows both of the two main characters,
Speaker 2: like every old person who's immediately trying to thrust them together.
Speaker 2: Like there's this scene later on where like Michelle Yo's
Speaker 2: at like her hideout and she she tells one of
Speaker 2: her servants who's like an old lady, that like he's
Speaker 2: coming over, and she's like old bedroom. She's so excited.
Speaker 2: This is like he's been waiting for this for like
Speaker 2: forty years. So good.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that because I feel like, very often,
Speaker 1: can you hear that? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can.
Speaker 1: I don't. There's not much I can do about it,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to acknowledge that it's happening. I
Speaker 1: feel like it is more tropy for the elder generation
Speaker 1: to be like no, you must stay apart. So I
Speaker 1: found it very fun and refreshing for all all the
Speaker 1: older characters to be like no kiss.
Speaker 3: Life is short, right, So anyway, So we meet Mubai
Speaker 3: and he's like Jade Fox murdered my master and he
Speaker 3: wants to avenge his master's death. Shuln travels to Picking
Speaker 3: and delivers the sword to Sir Tay. There she meets
Speaker 3: a young woman named Jen played by Jean Zi.
Speaker 2: Okay, can I can I interject a bit about the
Speaker 2: subtitles in this movie? Here?
Speaker 3: Yes, please see.
Speaker 2: This is the first time. This is important. Something very
Speaker 2: very strange happened with the subtitles in this movie.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: I think it has to do with the fact that, okay,
Speaker 2: so this movie is in Mandarin. Most of the actors
Speaker 2: do not speak Mandarin. They are Cantonese speakers, and so
Speaker 2: they are doing the Mandarin lines like completely phonetically. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I okay, so I can't tell if like that's
Speaker 2: the thing that screwed up the subtitle people, or if
Speaker 2: there was like a weird direction thing. But there's a
Speaker 2: few things in the subtitles that are very very weird.
Speaker 2: One of them is there there's like two characters like
Speaker 2: Jen is one of them, and then there's another character
Speaker 2: will be later whose names they just randomly change. And
Speaker 2: this is kind of important. This young lady's name in
Speaker 2: Chinese is it's like you jowlong, and so her name
Speaker 2: is Dragon, like beautiful dragon. And this is the thing
Speaker 2: that is capital f foreshadowing in Chinese. But for some
Speaker 2: reason they named her Jen in the in the in
Speaker 2: the subtitles, and so it's completely incomprehensible. I don't know
Speaker 2: why they did this.
Speaker 3: Well, Ang Lee, I think, is the one who subtitled
Speaker 3: the movie from Mandarin into English, so it is his choice.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's very He made a lot of he made
Speaker 2: a lot of stunningly incomprehensible decisions.
Speaker 1: I don't know your own lead like that.
Speaker 2: It's just like, I'll just leave this one and it
Speaker 2: is a treat for the Mandarin speaking audience but no
Speaker 2: one else. It's very weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I read. I'm excited to talk about that later
Speaker 1: because I knew that Michelle Yeo had to learn her
Speaker 1: lines phonetically for this movie for the most part. But
Speaker 1: a which is like I don't have the knowledge to
Speaker 1: understand that this is happening. But yeah, apparently the entire
Speaker 1: Beijing crew of this movie was incredibly frustrated by the
Speaker 1: number of accents that appear within this movie that are
Speaker 1: I guess not authentic to the story. Although that is
Speaker 1: like sort of a bizarre thing. We'll get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Schulan meets Jen, who is the daughter of the
Speaker 3: wealthy and powerful governor. You Jen admires the sword. She
Speaker 3: also admires Shoul's lifestyle as a warrior because she's free,
Speaker 3: she can roam around, she doesn't have to get married.
Speaker 3: Jen is to be married soon, and she doesn't seem
Speaker 3: happy about it. That evening. Jen's governess, played by Cheng Peipei,
Speaker 3: is like, you should not be hanging around with Shulin,
Speaker 3: and Jen is like, I'm gonna hang around with whoever
Speaker 3: I want, actually, And then later that night, a thief
Speaker 3: steals the Green Destiny's sword. We soon learn that the
Speaker 3: thief is Jen.
Speaker 1: So obvious it's Jen.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also appreciated that the movie doesn't make you sit
Speaker 1: in that mystery very long, No, and also like doesn't
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like it would have been
Speaker 1: an undercutting of Shulin's abilities for her to not realize
Speaker 1: that basically right away. It's like, you just spent an
Speaker 1: hour with this girl today, right.
Speaker 3: But there's this like gar I think, a guard named
Speaker 3: Bo who is trying to stop her, and he thinks
Speaker 3: that the thief is a man because like, her face
Speaker 3: is somewhat concealed, but not enough that you wouldn't still
Speaker 3: recognize her anyway.
Speaker 1: Especially if she's like locally famous, right, everyone would know her.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: I think it's an he's kind of like like the
Speaker 2: way he's depicted is it's just as being really incompetent.
Speaker 2: Like he he's fighting with this like staff. It's I
Speaker 2: get that's making It's like a staff with like a
Speaker 2: uh with like nunchruck thing at the end of it,
Speaker 2: and he's like hitting himself in the head with it.
Speaker 2: She's like this man, this man has weak kung fu.
Speaker 2: Kung fu is not strong getting clowned on.
Speaker 3: And she is a far more skilled fighter than him,
Speaker 3: and like everyone in the movie, and she seems to
Speaker 3: be able to fly around and do all these like
Speaker 3: special gravity defying moves.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's is that what your mom was ranking?
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's like this. It's called the Weightless It's
Speaker 2: it's the thing that's like you you can basically become weightless,
Speaker 2: is how it works, and then you're just a power
Speaker 2: in it lets you float more and yeah, walk up
Speaker 2: walls and do stuff like.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. I read that Michelle Yo tore her
Speaker 1: acl in the second week of production on this movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then just kept making the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of those people, all of the actors, everyone
Speaker 2: who came out of like the eighties era, like seventies
Speaker 2: and eighties era of like Hong Kong action movies. Those
Speaker 2: people are so unbelievably tough, Like they don't they don't
Speaker 2: have stunt doubles. I mean, people have seen small never dies.
Speaker 2: I think it was the Bond movie she's in where
Speaker 2: she's hanging off the side of a car and she
Speaker 2: is actually physically hanging off the side of that car.
Speaker 2: That car takes a wrong turn and she goes flying
Speaker 2: and she she is just doing it right. Like all
Speaker 2: these a lot of these people get really, really badly
Speaker 2: hurt because I mean everything that is there is just
Speaker 2: them actually physically doing the thing. So hey, they are
Speaker 2: unbelievably impressive people.
Speaker 3: I read or heard maybe in an interview with Angley
Speaker 3: that later into filming Michelle, you'll broke her back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also read that, and that in the final
Speaker 1: scene where they're won't spoil it, I get for ten
Speaker 1: more minutes, but where the lovers are together, they had
Speaker 1: to angle that shot very carefully because Michelle's very obviously
Speaker 1: broken leg was just like flopped over to the side.
Speaker 1: It's like or like a cast or something. They were
Speaker 1: just like she was in the trenches by the end.
Speaker 1: They're like, we have to frame this shot so you
Speaker 1: can't tell that we almost killed her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just I think this is partially a thing
Speaker 2: that was possible in Hong Kong and probably wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been possible in other places. Is because the labor standards
Speaker 2: are really weak because everyone is really heavily invested in
Speaker 2: like union busting, but the labor conditions on these sets
Speaker 2: are up and it's horrible.
Speaker 1: Damn god. Yeah, that's I mean, which is like true
Speaker 1: across entertainment, but this I was like that you broke
Speaker 1: her back and she still had to go to work,
Speaker 1: like oh yeah there, Oh I had another thought, but
Speaker 1: it's gone. It'll come back, we'll see anyway.
Speaker 3: Well, so this fight is happening post this sword being stolen,
Speaker 3: and Schulin hears the commotion and goes after the thief.
Speaker 3: There's this amazing fight sequence between them, and then Shulin
Speaker 3: realizes whoever this is has trained at Wudan, hence these
Speaker 3: special moves.
Speaker 1: Anytime Shulin and Jenner fighting, it's just like it's a
Speaker 1: good day. It's a good day for us, and.
Speaker 3: There's so many great fight sequences, so eventually the thief
Speaker 3: aka Jen, manages to escape with the sword. The next day,
Speaker 3: everyone is upset and trying to figure out who the
Speaker 3: thief was. Many suspect that it is Jade Fox, who
Speaker 3: is thought to be hiding somewhere in Governor U's household.
Speaker 3: Shulan pays a visit to Jen. It's not super clear
Speaker 3: if she knows that Jen is a thief at this point,
Speaker 3: but it seems like she but she is suspicious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she does this thing. I think it's just the
Speaker 2: scene where she intentionally knocks a teacup off the table
Speaker 2: to get to catch it.
Speaker 3: I think there's a later scene.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm getting I'm getting no, no, no, so good.
Speaker 1: Though, And I did, like I fell for the when
Speaker 1: I saw it in theaters recently because I didn't remember
Speaker 1: very much. I did fall for the fake out of
Speaker 1: Jade Fox. Like originally you think like, oh, she's of
Speaker 1: a different generation, she thinks that women shouldn't be sword fighting,
Speaker 1: But then it's like no, she's she's the ultimate sword fighter,
Speaker 1: and she thinks you should only be fighting for me, right, yes,
Speaker 1: other fun fake mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so Shulin pays a visit to Jen, and Jen
Speaker 3: is like, let's be best friends. You're my sister now,
Speaker 3: and Schulin's like okay, And then Mubai shows up and
Speaker 3: we learn that Shulin was engaged to a friend of
Speaker 3: his who died, and she and Mubi grew close after that,
Speaker 3: but they didn't want to disrespect the other man's memory,
Speaker 3: so they never got together. Mubi's clearly trying to tell
Speaker 3: Shulin his feelings, that he has feelings for her, but
Speaker 3: they're interrupted and it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: And I loved Jen's reaction there, where she, at least
Speaker 1: as it's translated, she's like, well, that sucks for the
Speaker 1: guy who died, but like, what does that have to
Speaker 1: do with you having sex today? It's like, yeah, yo,
Speaker 1: good point, Jen.
Speaker 3: Honestly, great point. Meanwhile, there's this police inspector and his
Speaker 3: daughter who are trying to catch Jade Fox because Jade
Speaker 3: Fox killed his wife. His wife, and Jade Fox sends
Speaker 3: them a note saying we will settle this at midnight.
Speaker 3: So they meet up at midnight and battle, and we
Speaker 3: get that reveal that you were just talking about, Jamie,
Speaker 3: that Jade Fox is a woman, specifically Jen's governess.
Speaker 1: A really fun Bechtel test pass in this scene, let
Speaker 1: me avenge my mother's death, You'll soon be like her,
Speaker 1: you little whore, and you're like, well, imperfect metric, but
Speaker 1: it has passed. Yeah, sure, nuts.
Speaker 3: So we get the reveal of Jade Fox's true identity
Speaker 3: and we come to realize that Jen is her disciple.
Speaker 3: They've basically been like working and training together in secret
Speaker 3: for I think ten years.
Speaker 1: Yeh.
Speaker 3: Mubai shows up to help with this fight and he
Speaker 3: battle Jade Fox. We learn here that Jade Fox had
Speaker 3: infiltrated Wudan, stole the secret manual, and poisoned Mubai's master,
Speaker 3: and then she spent the last ten years teaching herself
Speaker 3: to be a Budan fighter, but she's still no match
Speaker 3: for Mubai. And then Jen shows up in her disguise
Speaker 3: and fights him.
Speaker 1: Well wait, there's that moment though, where it's like you
Speaker 1: get a lot of important context for Jade Fox because
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, Jade Fox, Yeah, she's she's done crimes,
Speaker 1: but I'm a lot of the time, I'm like, she
Speaker 1: did what she had to.
Speaker 3: Do, right. I was gonna save that for the discussion
Speaker 3: because it's so steeped in gender.
Speaker 1: She's like, oh, he was fine sleeping with me, but
Speaker 1: he wouldn't teach me shit, so unfortunately he had to.
Speaker 3: Go, so she had to kill him. Yes, so Jen
Speaker 3: shows up and she's fighting Mubai and she is more
Speaker 3: of a match for him, but then she and Jade
Speaker 3: Fox escape after Jade Fox kills the police inspector. Shortly
Speaker 3: after that, Mubai crosses paths with Jen again. Also, by now,
Speaker 3: Schulan definitely knows that Jen is the thief slash Jade
Speaker 3: Fox's disciple, and Mubi is like, Jen, you should be
Speaker 3: my student. I will train you because you have so
Speaker 3: much potential, but also you're messy, and she's like pass
Speaker 3: and she runs away and meets up with Jade Fox,
Speaker 3: but they argue because Jen isn't sure what to do
Speaker 3: about her future, but she doesn't really want to pal
Speaker 3: around with Jade Fox anymore, which upsets her, and like
Speaker 3: Jade Fox is upset that Jen is more skilled than
Speaker 3: her and that she kept some details and secrets of
Speaker 3: the Wudan Manual from Jade Fox.
Speaker 1: Ah, which is like A really, I don't know. Their
Speaker 1: relationship is so interesting, I'm excited to talk about it.
Speaker 3: Same. Yeah, then A man named Low played by Chang
Speaker 3: Chen shows up in Jen's room and we cut to
Speaker 3: a flashback where when Jen's family was traveling through the desert.
Speaker 1: This flashback is so long.
Speaker 2: Yes, I want I want to interject a little bit
Speaker 2: to do the the second piece of very very important
Speaker 2: subtitle thing that's going on here. Yes, So, okay. One
Speaker 2: of the things that happens this would be a lot
Speaker 2: is people will say something is happening in the West,
Speaker 2: but the actual word they are saying is shing John. Now,
Speaker 2: mark that down. That is going to be a very
Speaker 2: important sort of ideology thing. You you you may you may,
Speaker 2: you may know what Shan John is from the news
Speaker 2: now about the the autonomous region of China where Muslims
Speaker 2: are being put in camps, and you know, the sort
Speaker 2: of general like people's war on terror stuff is going
Speaker 2: on that that I think is important to what's going
Speaker 2: on in this movie. We'll talk about that later. It
Speaker 2: isn't It is interesting that on the chooses to say
Speaker 2: what like capital W West right and not tell you
Speaker 2: quite what's going on. Yeah, there's there's stuff going on
Speaker 2: there that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay. I'm excited because I was, I mean and we'll
Speaker 1: get back to this too, because I was trying to
Speaker 1: do I mean, in the effort to research this movie historically,
Speaker 1: only kind of makes it intentionally difficult because it could
Speaker 1: happen at any point in a range of four hundred years.
Speaker 2: And yeah, also, I think he's actually made it easier
Speaker 2: to figure out that he thinks he does because of
Speaker 2: some of the historical stuff.
Speaker 1: Then really, Okay, Oh, I'm excited to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Same. So we're in this flashback now where Jen's family
Speaker 3: was traveling through the desert and attacked by bandits led
Speaker 3: by Dark Cloud, whose real name is Low, who we
Speaker 3: just saw.
Speaker 2: He's the other character who has an actual Chinese name,
Speaker 2: but they just translated as Low for some reason. I
Speaker 2: don't know what they're doing with that. This one's less important,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: So his gang pillages Governor use like convoy I guess,
Speaker 3: and he steals Jen's comb, so she runs after him,
Speaker 3: and after a lot of fighting and chasing, they end
Speaker 3: up in his cave hide out where he has taken
Speaker 3: her to like feed her and nurse her back to health,
Speaker 3: but also taken her as a prisoner, and then they
Speaker 3: end up kissing and having sex and now they're in love.
Speaker 3: So there's that.
Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, that's that.
Speaker 1: We'll circle back to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. One other thing I want to say is
Speaker 2: that so Low thinks that Jen is Han Chinese and
Speaker 2: she's not. She is Manchurian. Right, well, she's she's manchuw
Speaker 2: that's a that that That's another interesting thing I think
Speaker 2: is kind of important that we'll get into later. But
Speaker 2: I guess the the mediate context for this is that,
Speaker 2: so this is such an the Ching dynasty. The Ching
Speaker 2: dynasty is not a Han dynasty, which is sort of
Speaker 2: a kind of unusual. It's a there was the history
Speaker 2: has been complicated. The very very cliff notes version of
Speaker 2: it is that the previous Han dynasty's falling apart, and
Speaker 2: they kind of like negotiate a handover to this Manchu
Speaker 2: dynasty that's coming out of Manchuria in order to sort
Speaker 2: of stop a peasant revolt from toppling both of them. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's that's why everyone has like that haircut. That's
Speaker 2: the like all the guys of the haircut. It's like
Speaker 2: the shaved bald head and then the long like punnytail
Speaker 2: things like. That's like a specific Ching Dynasty thing imposed
Speaker 2: by like the man choose on other people, got it?
Speaker 1: Okay, So that actually does narrow down the period of
Speaker 1: time this movie takes place in.
Speaker 2: Very Yes, it's yeah, well we'll narrow down some more
Speaker 2: in the next.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's so excited you're here.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay. So then we cut back to the present.
Speaker 3: Lowe has come to Picking to stop Jen from getting married,
Speaker 3: but she's like, our relation is over. Sorry. But the
Speaker 3: next day, during a like procession slash ceremony I think
Speaker 3: for the upcoming wedding. Yeah, Low like wedding crashes it basically,
Speaker 3: I mean that's one way to describe what happens. And
Speaker 3: a big ruckus is caused, and Shulan and Mubai are
Speaker 3: like they like pull Low aside and they're like, what
Speaker 3: are you doing, Like if you actually love her, get
Speaker 3: out of here and go to Wu Dan and wait there. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Jen has run away and she goes to this tavern
Speaker 3: disguised as a man named Master Long. A bunch of
Speaker 3: men try to mess with her, but she just like
Speaker 3: kicks all of their asses, like dozens of men. Incredible sequence.
Speaker 2: They're all like really sort of incredibly funny, like stereotyped different,
Speaker 2: like like a different kung fu guys, Like there's the
Speaker 2: guy who has a giant club, There's a guy who's
Speaker 2: a monk. There's the guy the first guy is like,
Speaker 2: this guy is like I am iron arms long, and
Speaker 2: then like yeah, she she like goes his sleeve and
Speaker 2: there's just like literally an iron like brace on his arm.
Speaker 2: So that's why his arms so smart. It's so good.
Speaker 3: It was so enjoyable, and she's just like not only
Speaker 3: like physically dominating them, but like hurling these incredible insults
Speaker 3: at them along the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so quippy. That scene is like the funniest scene.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like not a super funny movie, but there.
Speaker 1: But every time Jen is fighting, she just like her
Speaker 1: inner stand up comedian comes out, like something comes alive.
Speaker 3: There's a scene equipping I think it's the first scene
Speaker 3: when she and move By fight and he's like, how
Speaker 3: did you learn that move? And she's like, I'm just
Speaker 3: playing around. Okay. So Jen has bested these dozens of.
Speaker 1: Them, all five hundred.
Speaker 2: Well, like so they're they're in this like tea house,
Speaker 2: and this tea house is when I say destroyed at
Speaker 2: the end of this. It's not like, oh they broke
Speaker 2: it to like giant sections of like it's like a
Speaker 2: multi story thing and hold in the center, Like giant
Speaker 2: sections of the building have collapsed from how hard she's
Speaker 2: broken people through them. It's amazing and it makes well.
Speaker 3: It makes me feel bad for whoever owns that tea house.
Speaker 3: And it's just like, yeah, but I's gonna pay for that, you.
Speaker 2: Know, but it's you own a Kung Fu tea house, right,
Speaker 2: Like this is good. This has to be like factored
Speaker 2: into the budget.
Speaker 1: Like they're well insured. They're definitely really well inshured.
Speaker 2: Oh I want, I want to There's one more really
Speaker 2: funny scene right after this. There's this scene that has
Speaker 2: like every all like like the the hundred people she's
Speaker 2: defeated are all like standing around in this crowd, and
Speaker 2: all of them are like wearing casts and like split breed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so funny, right, because Shulin and Mubai are like
Speaker 3: kind of questioning people around to find out where Jen is.
Speaker 3: But then Jen finds Shulin and they get into an
Speaker 3: argument because Jen has caused so much trouble for like
Speaker 3: everyone around. So the two of them have this huge
Speaker 3: incredible sword fight.
Speaker 1: Jen for for all of her like ability and power
Speaker 1: is still such a teenager in a lot of scenes
Speaker 1: where anytime she's confronted about like, so, what about those
Speaker 1: five hundred guys you just killed, she's like what, They're
Speaker 1: just like.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, fair, I don't think she killed any of them.
Speaker 2: I think I think they're all fine because they're all
Speaker 2: kung fu people and therefore they have incredible ability to
Speaker 2: just get tossed around, right.
Speaker 1: They also have good insurance. They're good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this amazing sword fight is happening. Eventually Mubai
Speaker 3: shows up. Then he and Jen are flying through and
Speaker 3: fighting in the trees. Eventually, Jen is saved by Jade Fox,
Speaker 3: who takes her into a cave. Shulin and Mubai follow
Speaker 3: her there, only to find out Jade Fox has drugged
Speaker 3: Jen and intends to kill her because she feels betrayed
Speaker 3: by Jen. Jade Fox shows back up, Mubai and her
Speaker 3: attack each other. Jade Fox is killed, Mubai is poisoned.
Speaker 1: Jade Fox gives a Shakesaurian send off, ooh great, can't
Speaker 1: wait to talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he's been poisoned and they think maybe there's
Speaker 3: no antidote, but Jen is like, no, there is and
Speaker 3: I know it. She wants to help them to redeem herself,
Speaker 3: so she leaves to get the ingredients and prepare the antidote.
Speaker 3: But by the time she gets back, it's too late.
Speaker 3: Mubai dies in Shulin's arms after they have perfer fest
Speaker 3: their love for each other.
Speaker 2: There's those of those kind of free things, like he
Speaker 2: like dies and well he knows the thing where he
Speaker 2: was like, ah, this is like my final breath. And
Speaker 2: then he like dies, but then she like kisses him,
Speaker 2: and then he's like alive for a few more seconds.
Speaker 1: Don't underestimate Lubaye's horniness. Horniness sustains him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it gives you just a few extra seconds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has a brief snow white moment. He's back, baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Jen has returned. It seems like Shulin might
Speaker 3: kill her, but she spares her life and says, promise
Speaker 3: me one thing and never let go of that promise.
Speaker 3: Whatever path you take, be true to yourself. And Jen
Speaker 3: is like, I'll never let go of that promise, and
Speaker 3: then she goes to the Wu Dang Mountains to reunite
Speaker 3: with Low and then the movie ends. And like I said,
Speaker 3: I might I think the ending is maybe too metaphorical
Speaker 3: for me to understand. But she jumps off the mountain
Speaker 3: in reference to a legend that Lowe had told her earlier.
Speaker 3: It has been interpreted in different ways, but the movie
Speaker 3: ends with her jumping off the mountain the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then low is like, why did I tell
Speaker 1: my girlfriend this story about jumping off the bridge?
Speaker 3: Damn well, you do this.
Speaker 1: I have regrets the one thing you never do.
Speaker 3: So that's the movie. Let's take a quick break and
Speaker 3: we will come back to discuss. Okay, we are back.
Speaker 1: I'd love to just jump right into the historical context,
Speaker 1: if that's cool with you, Miya, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So a lot of what's happening in this movie,
Speaker 2: so okay. So one of the you can't even really
Speaker 2: call it a sublime it's like a third of the
Speaker 2: movie is sort of about the West. So the U family,
Speaker 2: who were like Gen's like father is a governor and
Speaker 2: he his thing is that he made his bones like
Speaker 2: in the West, right, and what this is is that. Okay.
Speaker 2: So in the seventeen seventies, the Qing dynasty does this
Speaker 2: push into Shing John. They do like basically around the
Speaker 2: time the US is being formed, they do this invasion
Speaker 2: of the state that had been in Qing John and
Speaker 2: they do a genocide so that the people who had
Speaker 2: been ruling the state were like a sort of like
Speaker 2: a Mongol speaking people, they are basically all dead. The
Speaker 2: Qing dynasty exterminates them. They do a genocide, and then
Speaker 2: after that they bring in sort of like Han and
Speaker 2: weaker settlers to sort of recolonize the land of these
Speaker 2: people who they've killed. And that's sort of the backdrop
Speaker 2: of this whole thing, which is that the Qing dynasty,
Speaker 2: So the Ching dynasty is the last dynasty of China, right,
Speaker 2: they're the people who are eventually going to be not
Speaker 2: off by I guess the nineteen eleven revolution, but there's
Speaker 2: people who lose, like the Opium warst the British that
Speaker 2: the people yeah, so, and that that's usually the part
Speaker 2: of the Ching Chines see everyone remembers, is the part
Speaker 2: where they're just sort of like getting kicked around by
Speaker 2: a bunch of other imperial powers. But before the eighteen
Speaker 2: like really like the eighteen forties, the Qing dynasty is
Speaker 2: a a really really brutal and expansionist empire. They're they're
Speaker 2: the people who are they're like they're really the first
Speaker 2: people to like establish Chinese control over Taiwan. They try
Speaker 2: to push into Tibet. They're pushing basically like they're they're
Speaker 2: pushing westward away from the sort of like traditional quote unquote, well,
Speaker 2: I mean, okay, it's hard to say traditional here because
Speaker 2: the Chinese dynasties controlled just complete, almost completely random territories
Speaker 2: at different times. But they're pushing into places that are
Speaker 2: like not han like very distinctly like they're pushing into
Speaker 2: places that are usually Muslim, and this creates the situation
Speaker 2: and where you you know, you have Shing Jan or
Speaker 2: sort of the west that they're talking about, which is
Speaker 2: it's this is this is China sort of frontier, right,
Speaker 2: it's kind of unruly. Their control over it isn't great
Speaker 2: because it's you know, it's it's really hard to do
Speaker 2: force projection like that far away it's deserts, it's planes.
Speaker 2: But you know, but there's some very interesting things like
Speaker 2: part a lot of some of them, like the roof
Speaker 2: shots you get in this movie are like shot in
Speaker 2: a room Chi which is this the sort of capital
Speaker 2: city of u Shing John and you know, and so
Speaker 2: I mean, this is also question, like this helps date
Speaker 2: the movie, right, Like, it's pretty clearly like after the
Speaker 2: Conquest but before well, I mean, okay, so there's another
Speaker 2: interesting thing here. Sorry, I'm sort of like going.
Speaker 3: On no, this is all very helpful to context.
Speaker 2: So on Lee, when he is discussing this movie, is
Speaker 2: talking about how this is his like dream of what
Speaker 2: China is, right because and this is another thing. Okay,
Speaker 2: So another thing I think is important about this is
Speaker 2: that on Lie is from a very very specific generation
Speaker 2: of Taiwanese people, which is actually like the generation that
Speaker 2: like my like my family comes from. His family's way
Speaker 2: closer like is so okay, So there's there's a Chinese
Speaker 2: civil war from nineteen forty five nineteen forty nine, right.
Speaker 1: Right, which his parents escape from where they survived.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, But so they're on the side of the KMT,
Speaker 2: which is the Nationalist Party, which is this like I
Speaker 2: don't know that that's a civil war where there are
Speaker 2: no good guys. Really like the KMT is this right
Speaker 2: wing like Narco death squad party. Basically they've allied with Hitler.
Speaker 2: They suck, Yeah, I mean, they're awful. They are going
Speaker 2: to do a lot of there, They're kind of like
Speaker 2: the first prototype of like a new model of like
Speaker 2: right wing narco anti communists like death squad state. You're
Speaker 2: gonna see in like Guatemala and Al Salvador and they're
Speaker 2: like deliberately exporting this stuff. And so like only grows
Speaker 2: up in this so the but you know, the people
Speaker 2: who are aligned with the KMT like flee like flee
Speaker 2: the civil war tr Taiwan. My family does this too. Now.
Speaker 2: The different there is that my my grandpa was a
Speaker 2: paper boys. He was not like that. He was not
Speaker 2: like a KFD guy on leave, like grows up in
Speaker 2: like a village for like military dependence, like the children
Speaker 2: of people in the army. So he has a very
Speaker 2: so he's part of this generation in Taiwan that like
Speaker 2: I'd call him like the gloomy Dong brats because they're
Speaker 2: the kids of the people. But yeah, and it's it's
Speaker 2: they have a very very weird relationship with China. Because
Speaker 2: like if you're a kid in the generation, like my
Speaker 2: mom was like under this too, like you know, you'll
Speaker 2: be like a seven year old, right and you'll be
Speaker 2: like in school, you will be singing songs about how
Speaker 2: one day you're going to reclaim the motherland because again
Speaker 2: this is like a horrified military edctatorship. Yeah, and and
Speaker 2: so they have this, they have this very weird conception
Speaker 2: of what China is, right, and like a lot of
Speaker 2: this movie is also it's based on like specifically like
Speaker 2: mandarin language kung fu movie from Hong Kong, which is
Speaker 2: another kind of export that happens because there's all of
Speaker 2: these So most of the Canton people flee to Taiwan,
Speaker 2: but some of them flee to Hong Kong. But those
Speaker 2: people are Mandarin speakers and not Cantonese speakers like most
Speaker 2: of the people in Hong Kong. And so there's this
Speaker 2: sort of like mark like this is sort of like
Speaker 2: very specific kind of kung fu movie that emerges that's
Speaker 2: like Mandarin speaking that's mostly designed for like the the
Speaker 2: manage speaking people in Hong Kong and like the Taiwanese audience.
Speaker 2: And so he has this weird kind of i don't know,
Speaker 2: like a very weird understanding of like his image of
Speaker 2: China is interesting and kind of bizarre.
Speaker 1: I mean that's an extremely specific lens to be bringing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's interesting too because it's like like this
Speaker 2: is something that like I'm like one generation removed from this, right,
Speaker 2: So like I kind of like like I look at that,
Speaker 2: I look at like ugly, and I'm like, oh okay,
Speaker 2: like I get where he usually get what's going on here?
Speaker 2: You're you're you're you have weird dasp right angst about
Speaker 2: China because you're Chinese but you didn't grow up there
Speaker 2: and your family is sort of it's Taiwanese, but you
Speaker 2: have this complicated relationship this you know. And he also
Speaker 2: ends up going to the US, And so I was
Speaker 2: thinking this last like, ah, yes, I see, he has
Speaker 2: the direct he has the diaspora anxiety.
Speaker 3: Well, that context is also interesting when you consider that
Speaker 3: this movie is a multinational co production between companies in China, Taiwan,
Speaker 3: Hong Kong, and the US. So companies from several different
Speaker 3: regions are coming together to make a movie that's also
Speaker 3: going to be widely released in these different regions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I kind of wonder, I mean, and anytime Mia
Speaker 1: to you, does that feel like a conflict or I
Speaker 1: guess I just like always wonder what the conversations between
Speaker 1: those production companies have to be in order for this
Speaker 1: movie to come out.
Speaker 2: Well, so for me, the thing that's really interesting about
Speaker 2: this is if you look at the sort of arc
Speaker 2: of I can't play I'm talking about Chinese developmental politics
Speaker 2: on the film podcast, but okay, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 2: barrel through this, which is a little bit of Okay.
Speaker 2: So China is very very isolated from international capital from
Speaker 2: about the like mid nineteen fifties until really the eighties,
Speaker 2: and even then not really until the nineties. But when
Speaker 2: China opens back up to capital markets, they tap into
Speaker 2: this thing called a Bamboo network, which is this network
Speaker 2: of sort of like Chinese capital based on sort of
Speaker 2: family lines that has been like sort of spread out
Speaker 2: across East Asia in the US. And so the way
Speaker 2: this process works is you get a bunch of money
Speaker 2: from like, you know, people like people who were rich
Speaker 2: who fled China who end up either in the US
Speaker 2: or they ended up in Taiwan, and that money flows
Speaker 2: through Hong Kong and then it goes through this sort
Speaker 2: of like currency control capital gate thing, and then that
Speaker 2: money gets injected back into the Chinese economy. And this
Speaker 2: is how a bunch of the sort of like Chinese
Speaker 2: economic miraical stuff happens. It's funded by this capital that
Speaker 2: had been sort of taken overseas by people fleeing the
Speaker 2: civil war. And if you look, if you look at
Speaker 2: the companies who are involved in this, right, these are
Speaker 2: all companies from the places that are directly along the
Speaker 2: paths of sort of the bamboom network. Right. You have
Speaker 2: an American company, which is sort of one end of
Speaker 2: the sort of capital spigot. Right, you have Taiwanese company,
Speaker 2: you have a Hong Kong company, and you have the
Speaker 2: Chinese state down industry. And this is you are directly
Speaker 2: tracing the path of capital that is the thing that
Speaker 2: sort of reindustrializes China after this period, and we sort
Speaker 2: of like turns China like capitalists again after this sort
Speaker 2: of period where it hadn't been. And I think that's
Speaker 2: because there's a lot of debate about how authentically Chinese
Speaker 2: this movie is, and I think that's a lot less
Speaker 2: interesting than the sort of economic configurations that are what
Speaker 2: brings China. Because this movie is also released like a
Speaker 2: year before China gets admitted into WTO again, I think
Speaker 2: it's either on let me let me check my dates
Speaker 2: on that. Sorry, the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the movie comes out in two thousand.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's one. Yeah, so it's like it's like
Speaker 2: a year before or China like really like completely fully
Speaker 2: reinterest the economy, and I don't know, I think I
Speaker 2: think there's okay. So this is also my explanation of
Speaker 2: the ending of the movie. Is this capital stuff, which
Speaker 2: is okay. So I think what's going on at the
Speaker 2: end of the movie is that Angle knows that he
Speaker 2: has to sell this movie both to a bunch of
Speaker 2: like American conservatives, American liberals, and then also Chinese reactionaries
Speaker 2: and also Chinese liberals and the sort of holdouts of
Speaker 2: whatever communists are left, because that there are actual, like
Speaker 2: in two thousand, there are still like communists in China, right,
Speaker 2: like there aren't many of them, but they're still around.
Speaker 2: And in order to do that, he has an ending
Speaker 2: that deliberately can be read in feminist or anti feminist ways.
Speaker 1: Interesting, okay, And this is like this.
Speaker 2: Is my sort of crank theory about it. But like,
Speaker 2: you know, you can read Jen jumping off the cliff
Speaker 2: as like, oh, she's realized that she's strayed from like
Speaker 2: her like duties and obligations and she can't bear it anymore.
Speaker 2: In so she like kills herself. You can also read
Speaker 2: it as like, well, she's fulfilling the thing of the
Speaker 2: myth the man jumping off the cliff. You know, so
Speaker 2: this is how she fulfills her dream. But outside of
Speaker 2: patriarch expectations, there's a reading of it where she's just
Speaker 2: running away because she can use cheekong and like falling,
Speaker 2: you can't if you can change your weight to zero
Speaker 2: or like negative weight, how are you going to die
Speaker 2: from falling?
Speaker 1: Right? So she's unkillable?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And so I think I think Onley deliberately
Speaker 2: makes the ending like this so that it can be
Speaker 2: sold so many different markets, different markets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I buy it. I that that is
Speaker 1: first of all, thank you for all that extremely helpful context,
Speaker 1: because it is like Only is a fascinating figure to me.
Speaker 1: I mean I I like his movies, except for his
Speaker 1: Hulk movie, which I feel like, yeah, you know that
Speaker 1: was Look, everyone's allowed to flop, it's fine. I remember
Speaker 1: I saw that movie in theaters and I was like Edward,
Speaker 1: even as even as like a nine year old, I
Speaker 1: was like Edward Norton, I don't buy it. In any case, yeah,
Speaker 1: Only has a fascinating career. I didn't understand the context
Speaker 1: of how he grew up and what his relationship to
Speaker 1: China would be. And this goes back to Mia. Have
Speaker 1: you read Red Carpet. It's like a book that came
Speaker 1: out last year, but it basically traces the relationship between
Speaker 1: the Chinese movie industry and the American movie industry throughout
Speaker 1: the nineties and two thousands, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Speaker 1: comes up in a section of it. Because this was
Speaker 1: I mean, this movie was a huge hit in the West.
Speaker 1: It was not a hit in China at all. True
Speaker 1: Lies was the big American that's funny.
Speaker 3: James Cameron.
Speaker 1: James Cameron, he doesn't flop even when he should. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen True Lives, so I can't speak to it.
Speaker 3: It's pretty fun.
Speaker 1: But this movie was intended to because there was like
Speaker 1: this whole period throughout the nineties and the two thousands
Speaker 1: where there was like this sort of like pie in
Speaker 1: the sky dream between international movie industries. So it's like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna find a movie that everyone likes. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do it, and I think, I mean, for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons, including to oversimplify Americans are racist and hate
Speaker 1: to read. There are very few international movies that cross
Speaker 1: over into the US. This was one of them, but
Speaker 1: it was not a hit in China at all. It
Speaker 1: was mostly reviewed as either boring, derivative, confusing, offensive, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also also everyone everyone's really bad that again he
Speaker 2: forced a bunch of actors who don't speak Bandarin to
Speaker 2: do an entire movie in Mandarin, a language they don't speak,
Speaker 2: which is like this, this happens multiple times to Michelle Yo,
Speaker 2: and she deserves better than this shit. Like, I just
Speaker 2: it's so infuriating.
Speaker 1: It's not the actor's fault at all. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: it's I mean, especially because Michelle Yo is just a
Speaker 1: treasure to all the fact that she had, she broke
Speaker 1: her back, and like they didn't even set her up
Speaker 1: for success in the lines like what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think this is like I think this
Speaker 2: is a diaspora brain thing too, right, because he has this,
Speaker 2: you know, he has this whole sort of like she's
Speaker 2: trying to like create this sort of like one China,
Speaker 2: one tin of out right, but he's trying to create
Speaker 2: this sort of like this like mythical China that on
Speaker 2: the one hand never existed, but on the other hand
Speaker 2: is sort of like excessible or comprehensible to everyone, you know.
Speaker 2: But he, but he runs into the classic trap of
Speaker 2: thinking that China is a real thing, which is that
Speaker 2: like China, Okay, this is this is gonna be, this
Speaker 2: is gonna be the argument that I make that gets
Speaker 2: everyone really mad, but I.
Speaker 1: Go for it.
Speaker 2: Okay, there is there is a there was a very
Speaker 2: very good argument that like China as like a single
Speaker 2: unified thing is is basically a European economic category and
Speaker 2: has nothing to you know, there's a lot of accounts.
Speaker 2: You can read accounts in like sixty hundreds right of Portuguese.
Speaker 2: Like merchants will go we'll go into parts of China
Speaker 2: and they will ask people about China, and no one
Speaker 2: has any idea what they're talking about, right, because you know,
Speaker 2: if you're living in China, what you're living under is
Speaker 2: like a series of sort of like okay, well you
Speaker 2: have like a king, right and your king prajuice leagues
Speaker 2: to like another guy who pledges the legion to the emperor, right,
Speaker 2: Like you're not sort of like that. That conception of
Speaker 2: China as like like a unified a single unified entity,
Speaker 2: that that's a very Western concept because this is this
Speaker 2: is how sort of like Western traders understand it because
Speaker 2: they don't really get that it's not like a single
Speaker 2: unified entity, and so they project that onto what China is.
Speaker 2: But then you get this this sort of rebound thing
Speaker 2: where China gets taken over by like rivaling clicks of nationalists. Right.
Speaker 2: But the problem is, like you know, both the CCP
Speaker 2: communists and the k MT are both like Western their
Speaker 2: Western educated intellectuals, and so their conception of nationalism and
Speaker 2: what China is like is the Western version of it.
Speaker 2: And so they they come back and now like everyone
Speaker 2: thinks that this is sort of like naturally what China is,
Speaker 2: and that like you know, people people are projecting back like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's this continuous state that goes for five thousand years,
Speaker 2: and it's like like it's a state that's in it's
Speaker 2: in different places with different ethnic groups, run by different people.
Speaker 2: It splinters into multiple states many times. People have this
Speaker 2: sort of like this this sort of nationalist mythos like
Speaker 2: takes over and I think this is actually this isn't
Speaker 2: I think importance to the fact that like what hin
Speaker 2: Jon is doing in this movie and what the sort
Speaker 2: of like the the quote unquote like ethnic other is
Speaker 2: doing here where like on these using these people who
Speaker 2: are not Han, who come from sort of like the hinterlands,
Speaker 2: who gen like Jen literally called Lowa barbarian like the
Speaker 2: first time they be right, And that is a very
Speaker 2: that that is a very classic Chinese thing, and I
Speaker 2: guess to be fair isn't the right word. I also
Speaker 2: think that Europeans are barbarians, which I think is more
Speaker 2: accurate than everyone else I think is a barbarian. But
Speaker 2: you know, she's using them as this sort of like
Speaker 2: other against which Hanness is defined and where you know,
Speaker 2: because like because Lowe is the guy who's like, oh,
Speaker 2: well you should like, you know, we should get buried together.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't be bound by the sort of like restrictions
Speaker 2: of patriarchal like Han society or whatever. You should run
Speaker 2: off with me.
Speaker 3: But then but then he like claims her as his property,
Speaker 3: saying multiple times like she's mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah there, And there's that I felt like weirdly like
Speaker 1: flirtally presented line of like well, if I was going
Speaker 1: to rape you, I would have done it by now.
Speaker 1: And you're just like yeah, it's like this, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is truly because I have very little of this context,
Speaker 1: and so now understanding more of of the historical context,
Speaker 1: I think it's like I'm curious what your opinion is
Speaker 1: because in interviews about this movie, Onley was very very
Speaker 1: vague about when it took place. He like, when asked,
Speaker 1: could you be more specific of when it is? And
Speaker 1: he's like no. And it feels like this movie, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like not surprising to me that it wasn't very
Speaker 1: popular outside of the West, because it feels like in
Speaker 1: some ways obviously not all, but that like it it's
Speaker 1: made with a Western lens or it fits in very
Speaker 1: cleanly with like the West's like just under education on
Speaker 1: Chinese history and what like. I mean, I think your
Speaker 1: average like American would watch this movie and have no
Speaker 1: idea when it takes place, and have no idea, you know,
Speaker 1: what any of the context would be for it, and
Speaker 1: so take.
Speaker 3: It and just like assume like, oh, this is so
Speaker 3: historically accurate like this, because it seems it seems flying well.
Speaker 2: I mean, the thing I would say about that is
Speaker 2: it's not like it's not I mean, like okay, so
Speaker 2: like obviously like there's there's there's depiction problems going on here.
Speaker 2: But it's also not not true that like the Ching
Speaker 2: have this whole sort of frontier esque thing going on
Speaker 2: in the West where they're sort of fighting these kind
Speaker 2: of insurgencies and there's this sort of I think it
Speaker 2: becomes clearer what's happening historically now than it was in
Speaker 2: two thousands, because in like in two thousands, this movie
Speaker 2: is a pre nine to eleven movie, right, And I
Speaker 2: think that's actually really important in the way that Shing
Speaker 2: John is portrayed, because I mean, things don't get like
Speaker 2: as bad as they are now in Chijon until like
Speaker 2: the Race riots, and that's like two nine eleven when
Speaker 2: theyse get like really really bad. But also like this
Speaker 2: is this is a period like right before the world,
Speaker 2: like right before the War on Terror like gets taken
Speaker 2: up by everyone, and it gets taken up by by
Speaker 2: China like as much as it does by the US, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, the state of the state of emergency in
Speaker 2: in Shing John is called the People's War on Terror,
Speaker 2: And you know, like there were like people from who
Speaker 2: are like nominally at least supposed to be from East
Speaker 2: Turkmenistine separatist groups who the US tortures in Guantanamo for
Speaker 2: the CCP, and I think I think it becomes more
Speaker 2: clear what really and only I think is also deliberately doing.
Speaker 2: He's he's deliberately drawing parallels between this sort of and
Speaker 2: you know, Shan John also it literally means new frontier,
Speaker 2: right like that, That's what like the word means. And
Speaker 2: he's he's deliberately drawing parallels through the cinematic language to
Speaker 2: the sort of like American frontier, right like that when
Speaker 2: when when Lowe's band is attacked, they do they do
Speaker 2: the thing where all the horses are like circling around
Speaker 2: the caravan, right Yeah. And he's actually like more right
Speaker 2: about that than I think people give him credit for,
Speaker 2: because that that is, like it is a very similar
Speaker 2: set of the colonial process that goes on when the
Speaker 2: ching marched through Shing John as what happens when you know,
Speaker 2: like when when the US is basically doing the same
Speaker 2: sort of like death march kind of insertaincy thing that
Speaker 2: they're that they're fighting. So I don't know, I think
Speaker 2: I think I think he he accidentally discovered something that
Speaker 2: was going to be very important to sort of like
Speaker 2: Chinese nationalism, which is that a lot of modern Chinese
Speaker 2: nationalism is about this resentment that the Qing Empire like
Speaker 2: wasn't allowed to be an empire and that it was
Speaker 2: sort of dismantled by Western imperialists because you know, there
Speaker 2: was you know, an as part of like inter imperialist
Speaker 2: rivalry stuff, right right, And whether he knew it or not,
Speaker 2: and I don't know, there's something that he sort of
Speaker 2: yets maybe accidentally maybe not about how this nationalism functions,
Speaker 2: about how Hanness is going to be sort of like
Speaker 2: constructed against this sort of like uncivilized barbarian way that
Speaker 2: they see, like specifically Muslim people who live in this
Speaker 2: region that he's gotten before everyone else.
Speaker 1: Kind of Yeah, he's good there. I'm so I am
Speaker 1: fascinated by him. And also, I mean, if you look
Speaker 1: at the screenwriting credits and the source you know, the
Speaker 1: source material, it's also a blend of it's the same
Speaker 1: as the production companies. You have a Taiwanese screenwriter who
Speaker 1: did a draft, you have an American screenwriter who did
Speaker 1: a draft. And it's based on a Chinese usha romance.
Speaker 2: Novel, which which that's another thing I want to talk
Speaker 2: about a little bit because that book a it's weirdly
Speaker 2: more trans than this one. Oh, like do tell Gen
Speaker 2: spends a lot more time as like kind of a
Speaker 2: guy or like kind of someone in between gender when
Speaker 2: Gen's off being a kung fu wandering nomad who beats
Speaker 2: up people in tea houses. But there's another kind of
Speaker 2: interesting aspect of this, which is that like, okay, so
Speaker 2: the author of the books that this is based off of,
Speaker 2: he gets declared like an old intellectual or like an
Speaker 2: old literati guy, and so he gets basically like sent
Speaker 2: to a camp by the CCP. And there's this I
Speaker 2: think of a kind of interest arc of like I
Speaker 2: don't know, the CCP going from throwing this guy in
Speaker 2: prison for being a kung fu writer to and he's
Speaker 2: like like hated basically by the Chinese left for like
Speaker 2: a very long time, just sort of like left academics. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for being like a reactionary.
Speaker 1: I real that he was like forbidden from releasing new books,
Speaker 1: like he was sent off to be a school teacher
Speaker 1: instead of like occupying the any sort of like lipspace.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, but then you know, but there's this interesting
Speaker 2: thing where like he gets he gets sort of rehabilitated.
Speaker 2: Actually I don't I don't know if he's specifically rehabilitated
Speaker 2: in the eighties like that. There are some people who
Speaker 2: are like, like the party is like, oh, hey, we
Speaker 2: did this person wrong. And okay, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: say that part. There's a hidden take that you may
Speaker 2: unlock at some point later. Yeah, but then you know,
Speaker 2: but by the time you get the ninety two thousands,
Speaker 2: like this guy is this is the person that you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of like state media thing is like, oh,
Speaker 2: we can sell this interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it is, I mean, because it does seem
Speaker 1: that he from what I can tell, he you know,
Speaker 1: dies in relative obscurity. And then it's like most of
Speaker 1: this is posthumous. And I saw that his widow met
Speaker 1: with Onley during the production of the movie. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess what do you what do you make of that
Speaker 1: of this work kind of being like reclaimed and uplifted
Speaker 1: twenty five years later.
Speaker 2: I don't know. This is he has a really weird
Speaker 2: relationship with like this isn't really classic Chinese leadership, but
Speaker 2: there has a weird relationship with classic Chinese literature where
Speaker 2: there's this thing at the very beginning, like right after
Speaker 2: the revolution, where the party makes a bunch of they
Speaker 2: turn a bunch of like classic Chinese books into like
Speaker 2: basically like comic books so that like regular people can
Speaker 2: read them, but they'll have like annotations in like like
Speaker 2: water Bargain with the story about these like bandits who
Speaker 2: are like stealing from the rich. They have this thing
Speaker 2: of like, well, these people, these people failed because they
Speaker 2: didn't like they didn't have the like the central guidance
Speaker 2: of the party to follow stuff. So there's all this
Speaker 2: weird stuff going on, but they have this like complicated
Speaker 2: relationship with this kind of I don't know if national
Speaker 2: is even the right term, but this kind of like
Speaker 2: I don't know, I mean. One of the things that
Speaker 2: happens during reform and opening is that like so at
Speaker 2: least rhetorically, the CCP had been very very very anti Confucianism,
Speaker 2: which is like one of their few sort of like no,
Speaker 2: you're right about that. One's like you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: like one of the one of the first things they
Speaker 2: do when they come to power is it had been
Speaker 2: legal to like sell your wife.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 2: Was like no, like this sucks that you cannot sell
Speaker 2: your wife, like you know, right, So like like this
Speaker 2: is the kind of like like this is the kind
Speaker 2: of patriarchal society that like you're dealing with here, and
Speaker 2: you know, the CCP ultimately fails for a lot of
Speaker 2: reasons to really fundamentally undo all of the genders like
Speaker 2: patriarchy that had been embedded in Chinese study that they
Speaker 2: where at least nominally trying to get rid of. But
Speaker 2: one of the consequences of that is that there's this
Speaker 2: way in which gender egalitarianism becomes sort of like conflated
Speaker 2: with the Maoist project. And so when reform and opening happens,
Speaker 2: there's this rejection of sort of really forward and like
Speaker 2: the cultural revolution, there's this like revival of like it
Speaker 2: takes a little bit. There's like a revival of Confucianism.
Speaker 2: There's like a revival of like traditional gender norms. You
Speaker 2: get you get the one child policy, which is this
Speaker 2: very sort of like militant to draconian sort of like
Speaker 2: intervention of the state into like reproductive politics. And I
Speaker 2: don't know, I think I think part of them, like
Speaker 2: ZCP being willing to make movies like this has to
Speaker 2: do with them them like sort of being willing to
Speaker 2: go back and sort of like older mythologies that aren't
Speaker 2: really communists, but are nationalists?
Speaker 1: M okay. Interesting, that's I'm trying to think of, like
Speaker 1: of another another example of that of something that was
Speaker 1: oppressed in its time and then is later sort of.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's plenty of them, but I don't I
Speaker 1: have a functioning brain at this time.
Speaker 3: Who does?
Speaker 1: Okay? Is there any other historical context that you wanted
Speaker 1: to discuss me? Is there anything you wanted to discuss Caitlin.
Speaker 3: Yes, but first let's take a break and come back
Speaker 3: for more discussion. And we're back. And so I wanted
Speaker 3: to Since we talked a little bit about the kind
Speaker 3: of like production of this movie and how it was
Speaker 3: a collaborative effort I think meant to appeal to a
Speaker 3: bunch of different markets, and that mostly only appealed to
Speaker 3: a Western market, I wanted to talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about how the movie was marketed in the US. So
Speaker 3: I'm basing this off of the official trailer from Sony
Speaker 3: Pictures Classics, which was the company that distributed the movie
Speaker 3: in North America. And so basically the trailer frames the
Speaker 3: male characters as the more prominent and important characters who
Speaker 3: are driving the narrative, which, as we will discuss shortly,
Speaker 3: is not how the movie plays out. So for example,
Speaker 3: like the voiceover is like the story of a hero,
Speaker 3: and we see images of Mubai.
Speaker 2: He's in like eight total scenes. I know.
Speaker 3: This movie it gets worse. So it's the story of
Speaker 3: a hero, and we see images of Mubai the woman
Speaker 3: he loved, than we see images of Shulin, a daring outlaw,
Speaker 3: images of Low, who's in the movie even less. And
Speaker 3: then a princess destined to become a warrior. And that's
Speaker 3: when we see Jen. Mubai is framed as the protagonist
Speaker 3: of the movie. Shulin is reduced to his love interest,
Speaker 3: ignores so much of what her character is, and then
Speaker 3: Jen is like defined as a princess destined to become
Speaker 3: a warrior, which is I guess what that story is
Speaker 3: kind of yeah, I got a princess. And then Low
Speaker 3: is framed as a much more prominent character than he
Speaker 3: actually is. Similarly, the poster places Chew Young Fat in
Speaker 3: the front. His image is the largest. Jen is in
Speaker 3: the back most because it's sort of like layered images
Speaker 3: of those four characters. Jen is in the back. Low
Speaker 3: is on the poster for some reason. Also, why is
Speaker 3: he in the trailer, Like it's it's all this stuff,
Speaker 3: so I think that will like transition into the conversation
Speaker 3: about and.
Speaker 1: Also how that I mean, how the I guess the
Speaker 1: last contextual thing I wanted to talk about was how
Speaker 1: this movie was. This movie was, like we already said,
Speaker 1: received extremely well in the West. It was nominated for
Speaker 1: ten Academy Awards, none for acting, which is interesting. And
Speaker 1: also I saw a there's a YouTuber I really love
Speaker 1: be kind Rewind who did a cool retrospective of Michelle
Speaker 1: Yeo's career and mentions multiple times in the video something
Speaker 1: I never thought about, which is that there should be
Speaker 1: an oscar for best stunt work. Why is there not
Speaker 1: an oscar for best stuntwork?
Speaker 2: Because they don't want to pay stunt for people.
Speaker 1: Then they would have to pay them. But just the
Speaker 1: way that Crouching Tiger Hiden Dragon was received by Western
Speaker 1: movie critics, so in the year two thousand, majority white men,
Speaker 1: the way that they write about this movie is very
Speaker 1: particular in a way that I've seen argued seems telling
Speaker 1: to how this movie works well with Western audiences, where
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, this is actually the greatest, you know,
Speaker 1: martial arts movie I've ever seen. It's like well kind
Speaker 1: of because it's like partially for you. But you know,
Speaker 1: Stephen Holden at The New York Times said that this
Speaker 1: movie plucks Hong Kong style action adventure out of its
Speaker 1: generic niche and lifts it into elegant, lyrical, cinematic poetry.
Speaker 1: And you're just like, okay, just say what you're trying
Speaker 1: to say the first truly high brow martial arts film.
Speaker 1: So it's just obnoxious. And I love to talk about
Speaker 1: New York Times film critics as some of the most
Speaker 1: I mean all of the New York Times really, but
Speaker 1: their film section historically has just been people pretty dire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, anyways, let's talk about the movie.
Speaker 3: So despite what the marketing of this movie in the US,
Speaker 3: what have you think? Women are driving the narrative. They
Speaker 3: are the most active characters, Schulann Jen and Jade Fox
Speaker 3: in particular. The men are the more secondary characters.
Speaker 1: Jade Fox makes more sense on the poster than Low
Speaker 1: for sure. Also with the Western movie sorry, I just
Speaker 1: like but in an additional point, just to sort of
Speaker 1: hit home, how even like, you know, Western movie critics
Speaker 1: working at the highest level still know nothing about movies
Speaker 1: that are outside of the West. Repeatedly. Jen's character is
Speaker 1: like a Mulan type, a warrior princess because Mulan came
Speaker 1: out recently, and they're.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, but you know, I saw academics writing about
Speaker 2: this who were like, oh, well, it's kind of rare
Speaker 2: for there to be like shows like this is like
Speaker 2: a male dominated like hero genre, and it's rare for
Speaker 2: there to be like a female like protagonist. And I
Speaker 2: was like, have you watched any of these movies, like,
Speaker 2: you know, say, say what you want about like the
Speaker 2: politics of like the average kung fu movie. And I
Speaker 2: think the politics the average kung fu movie are terrible.
Speaker 2: I think this movie actually has above average politics for
Speaker 2: a kung fo movie. But the one thing you can
Speaker 2: say about that is every single per regardless of their gender,
Speaker 2: knows how to fight. It does kung fu.
Speaker 5: Like that's that's like, that's like the one thing you
Speaker 5: could say is that there are always like female protagonists
Speaker 5: who just absolutely beat the crap out of people. It's
Speaker 5: like it's like, have you people, like you're both the
Speaker 5: academics and the journalists, like, have you.
Speaker 2: Guys like ever have you guys watched like Picking Up
Speaker 2: or Blues? Like literally a single other kung fu movie.
Speaker 1: Like reading shit like that in the New Yorker, You're like, oh, like,
Speaker 1: they're my god, there's don't care And it was like,
Speaker 1: didn't do any research. And they're like, oh, yes, the
Speaker 1: idea of a woman who fights was invented two years
Speaker 1: ago in an American children's cartoon.
Speaker 2: You're like, no, China is an egg rolls Like it's
Speaker 2: just like, oh, yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker 1: But anyways, the the Yeah, the movie is absolutely driven
Speaker 1: by women. Don't believe the poster.
Speaker 3: Don't yeah seriously, And then there are some interesting things
Speaker 3: happening as it relates to gender and gender roles and
Speaker 3: expectations in the movie. And I personally know very little
Speaker 3: about gender politics in China during this dynasty, so I
Speaker 3: don't know how accurately the movie represents the gender roles
Speaker 3: of this again sort of unspecified era. But there there
Speaker 3: are some interesting things happening, such as women are allowed
Speaker 3: to be warriors as we see with Shulin, but they
Speaker 3: are not allowed to train at Wu Dan, which I
Speaker 3: don't know if that means that women are prevented from
Speaker 3: becoming the greatest warriors. I don't know if the implication
Speaker 3: is like to be the greatest warrior you have to
Speaker 3: study at this institution.
Speaker 1: I think that that's implied.
Speaker 3: That seems to be implied, right, because.
Speaker 2: They yeah, like that they have sort of secret techniques
Speaker 2: that no one else knows that like.
Speaker 3: And Jade Fox is like very enthusiastic about wanting to
Speaker 3: train there and earn these fighting techniques, and she was
Speaker 3: not allowed hence her whole like character trajectory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it's I have okay question about this
Speaker 1: because I was like, oh, it's I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: how she's feeling here, because Shulin is such a composed
Speaker 1: character that sometimes I'm like, oh, how does she actually
Speaker 1: feel about that? Where the moment where Mubai decides I
Speaker 1: think Jen should train and I will take her on
Speaker 1: as my student on all all this stuff, I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell if Shulin was chafing at that idea because she's.
Speaker 3: Like, well, you never asked me, you never wanted me
Speaker 3: to do it.
Speaker 1: That was sort of I was like, that's how I
Speaker 1: would feel, but I don't but I'm not her, but
Speaker 1: it was It was kind of a difficult because I
Speaker 1: feel like there were certain moments where Shulin was not
Speaker 1: like upholding patriarchy but like, you know, it's not pushing
Speaker 1: super hard art and and like right, so I don't
Speaker 1: know that was an interesting scene because I'm like, how
Speaker 1: is she? I feel like she has to be a
Speaker 1: little pissed that he's like I want this person who
Speaker 1: comes from a ridiculous amount of privilege. I just meant
Speaker 1: to train. But you who've known my entire life and
Speaker 1: I'm deeply in love with it never occurred to me.
Speaker 3: Kind of I did wonder about that. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of interesting things happening about how certain characters feel about
Speaker 3: certain gender roles and expectations too. Where so because you
Speaker 3: have like women are allowed to be warriors, this is
Speaker 3: like a normal thing in society. I think you learn.
Speaker 3: You don't learn much about Shulin's backstory except that she
Speaker 3: was engaged to a man and that she I think
Speaker 3: took over her father's line of work in some kind of.
Speaker 1: Like they say it's a security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, security, he's like a security guy, right.
Speaker 3: So hence her becoming like a skilled fighter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean there's also like I think was interesting
Speaker 2: about one of them when she's like walking into Beijing,
Speaker 2: like I don't know, I can't remember who exactly he
Speaker 2: is like a guy who's involved with the thing tells
Speaker 2: her that, like she's like she's doing a really good
Speaker 2: job and like her thing is safer than when her
Speaker 2: dad was doing it.
Speaker 3: Right, she's even better than her dad. I so good
Speaker 3: for her.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that because it's like, not only was
Speaker 1: that like, oh, you know, this is like very you know,
Speaker 1: hyper competent character, but just like how satisfying would that
Speaker 1: be if someone was just like, hey, I know your
Speaker 1: dad did this too, but like you're you're you're killing
Speaker 1: it by comparison, he fucking sucked. I'm like like hello,
Speaker 1: like it's implied like he's maybe not alive anymore. So
Speaker 1: I loved that. It's like your dead dad, he's he sucked.
Speaker 3: So we learned this about Shulin and her backstory and
Speaker 3: just like this is her job and it is accepted
Speaker 3: by everyone. Then there are other women, such as Jen,
Speaker 3: who are expected to uphold more like traditional gender roles
Speaker 3: of like getting married and marrying a particular person who
Speaker 3: comes from a quote unquote good family, and the way
Speaker 3: that various characters kind of view these different expectations based
Speaker 3: on like kind of like what your position is in life,
Speaker 3: where again, Jen is from this upper class family and
Speaker 3: is therefore more bound by traditional values of like polite society.
Speaker 3: But she thinks that marriage is a prison, and she
Speaker 3: wants to be able to like roam freely and go
Speaker 3: wherever she wants and do whatever she wants. She wants
Speaker 3: to be a warrior, and she's been training to do
Speaker 3: that in secret for a decade. Then you have Schulin,
Speaker 3: who is in this position where she is more free,
Speaker 3: she is not bound by these limitations and expectations, but
Speaker 3: she still holds onto these more traditional values, where she
Speaker 3: says things like marriages the most important step in a
Speaker 3: woman's life, and later on she says something like to Jen,
Speaker 3: I'm not an aristocrat as you are, but I must
Speaker 3: still respect a woman's duty. And she also like seems
Speaker 3: too long for romantic love and companionship in the way
Speaker 3: that Jen does not. So they kind of have these
Speaker 3: like they like conflicting.
Speaker 1: I really I mean, I really love how those sort
Speaker 1: of kind of chafe with each other. And that always
Speaker 1: that Jen is constantly wanting to have a blunt conversation
Speaker 1: that chu Lynn is not willing to have. But it's
Speaker 1: like that there's so much going on and I feel
Speaker 1: like very often in movies that are maybe technically feminist
Speaker 1: but not fun to watch necessarily, it's because it's like
Speaker 1: all women are allies to each other and that is feminism,
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, no, these are two very different
Speaker 1: people there, you know, like Michelle Yeo's character is like
Speaker 1: fifteen years old than Jen. There are basically different generations
Speaker 1: and different classes, so it makes sense that and totally
Speaker 1: different life experiences, so it makes sense that these are
Speaker 1: the things they're going to chave fun. And it also
Speaker 1: I think like the way that Jen's youth and privilege
Speaker 1: is commented on, but in a way that doesn't negate
Speaker 1: her as a person. I feel like it's always really
Speaker 1: clear why she's doing what she's doing, even when it
Speaker 1: is like reckless and intense, but it's I don't know,
Speaker 1: I really liked that scene where Jen I feel like being,
Speaker 1: you know, an eighteen year old doesn't understand why, you know,
Speaker 1: Shulin is not completely thrilled with the life that she
Speaker 1: has becuse she's free, she can do whatever she wants.
Speaker 1: But Julan can't do whatever she wants and is explaining that.
Speaker 1: But it makes sense that that's difficult for an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old to understand when you're being forced down kind
Speaker 1: of the straight and narrow expected life. Yeah, their scenes
Speaker 1: together are a great Definitely.
Speaker 2: The other part of this that I'm wondering about now
Speaker 2: that was I didn't really think about when I was
Speaker 2: watching it is the extent to which Schulin's also of
Speaker 2: the O I guess rolling back to the beginning, one
Speaker 2: of the sort of interesting things about this movie is
Speaker 2: it starts with Rubai is trying to like he's trying
Speaker 2: to give his sword away because he's like haunted by
Speaker 2: how many people he's killed, and he like is trying
Speaker 2: to get away from the violence of the sort of
Speaker 2: like underground like kung fu world that he's in, and
Speaker 2: he kind of can't do it. But I'm also wondering
Speaker 2: now how much of the sort of like you know,
Speaker 2: because I when when when Jen and Shulen are are
Speaker 2: talking about like are you free right, Sulin has this
Speaker 2: thing about like she starts talking about how like, well, no,
Speaker 2: there's still rules in the martial arts world. You have
Speaker 2: to have these rules so that people can survive. But
Speaker 2: I wonder how much of that is also just based
Speaker 2: on her thing that Jed doesn't really understand like the
Speaker 2: extent to which the world can be a terrible place,
Speaker 2: and that like this world is also just like a
Speaker 2: blood bath.
Speaker 3: And Sheeln says something to the effect of like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, no, I'm not married and I could go
Speaker 3: anywhere I wanted, But it's not as glamorous as you
Speaker 3: think this lifestyle. Yeah, the you know, the writers who
Speaker 3: you know write these legendary stories about warriors, are leaving
Speaker 3: out the less glorious parts of it, like how we
Speaker 3: like don't bathe for weeks on end and we sleep
Speaker 3: in flea ridden beds and yeah.
Speaker 1: She Len's like, we smell like shit. It's actually it's
Speaker 1: actually not that fun. So I tell people who are
Speaker 1: like I'm thinking about starting stand up, I'm like, look,
Speaker 1: we don't bathe. It's disgusting.
Speaker 3: Your life is going to be miserable. Yeah, And then
Speaker 3: she also says like, well, yeah, you perceive me to
Speaker 3: have all this glorious freedom, but like, I haven't lived
Speaker 3: the life I've wanted to have. Parentheses, I'm in love
Speaker 3: with Mubai and we have never gotten together because we're
Speaker 3: both too scared to admit it. So like, it's not
Speaker 3: all fun in games when you're a Warrior and Jen
Speaker 3: because she's so young and naive and like arrogance is
Speaker 3: another component of her character which is fun to watch
Speaker 3: because she's like so cocky with her insults and stuff.
Speaker 3: But she's a young person who like doesn't understand and.
Speaker 1: Understandably doesn't want to get you be forced into an
Speaker 1: arranged marriage, like for sure, and so it's totally understandable
Speaker 1: why she sees Shulan and is like, how could you
Speaker 1: not be happy with that?
Speaker 3: Like, oh, here's here's a fun not the grass is
Speaker 3: always greener, but the sword is always greener because it's
Speaker 3: the green destiny.
Speaker 1: Wow, wish they did it? They did it? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I and I it's like neither of them are
Speaker 1: free because neither of them are able to access the
Speaker 1: life that they want and deserve. That wouldn't be fucking
Speaker 1: hurting anybody, Like it's that's not freedom for either of them.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that is that theme is explored
Speaker 1: in a different way with Jade Fox. I I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is controversial to be a
Speaker 1: Jade Fox apologist, but I I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1: It's even more generational between Jade Fox and Jen. But
Speaker 1: Jade Fox is. I mean, it's almost like looking at
Speaker 1: like different generations of feminists, and Jade Fox is to
Speaker 1: some extent resentful of Jen for having access both in
Speaker 1: class and freedom to do things that she can't. Also
Speaker 1: the issue of the and I want to make sure
Speaker 1: I'm getting this right, Like Jen is able to read
Speaker 1: and write and is very educated, and so she's able
Speaker 1: to withhold information from Jade Fox to advantage herself. And
Speaker 1: that is like what Joker Fizz Jane Fox at the
Speaker 1: end of the movie where she's just like, how could
Speaker 1: you I put my you know, I put ten years
Speaker 1: of my life into training you. Although you could certainly
Speaker 1: argue that she was taking advantage of Jen's station in
Speaker 1: life and in order to I don't know. Jade Fox
Speaker 1: is fascinating to me because all she wanted was to
Speaker 1: go to NYU and they said, no, you cannot go.
Speaker 1: Like she couldn't go, she couldn't get educated the way
Speaker 1: that she wanted to and deserve to be, and then
Speaker 1: on top of that was like sexualized and treated like
Speaker 1: shit by Mudbye's mentor. So it's like, how is she
Speaker 1: supposed to access this education? Like how like and I
Speaker 1: feel like her whole life story is an attempt to
Speaker 1: remedy that the fact that she was denied an education.
Speaker 3: Right, I'm very much with you as far as like
Speaker 3: I was watching this On one of my watches of
Speaker 3: this movie, I was watching it through j Fox's perspective.
Speaker 3: Who by the way, just quick side note. Jade Fox
Speaker 3: is played by Chang Pei Pei, who is considered cinema's
Speaker 3: first female action hero. So cool, I think based on
Speaker 3: a movie that she starred in in the mid sixties.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But Jade Fox is a character who's like been
Speaker 3: abused by the men around her. She wanted access to
Speaker 3: something that she could not have access to because of
Speaker 3: her gender. She is often underestimated by people around her.
Speaker 3: Where Like that guard Bo is like once he finds
Speaker 3: out that Jade Fox is a woman, because again she's
Speaker 3: presumed to be a man, because a lot of people
Speaker 3: are making assumptions about gender as well throughout this movie.
Speaker 3: But when Bo is like, oh, Jade Fox is a woman, well,
Speaker 3: no problem, let me handle her. And then the police
Speaker 3: inspector is like, actually, you can't. She is so good
Speaker 3: at fighting, and she killed my wife, who was also
Speaker 3: really good at fighting and.
Speaker 2: My kung fu wife kung.
Speaker 3: Fu wife, right, So, but like Jade Fox is someone
Speaker 3: who even though is framed as the villain of this story,
Speaker 3: and I think there's also something I mean, we touched
Speaker 3: on this already, but the way that like people of
Speaker 3: a lower class are framed in this movie, particularly Jade
Speaker 3: Fox and Low are made out to seem either uncivilized
Speaker 3: or villainous or both.
Speaker 1: And it also feels like, I mean, with Jade Fox,
Speaker 1: like her weapon of choice is poison, which feels like
Speaker 1: a very one to one of like she's very bitter
Speaker 1: and she tries to poison gen she tries to poison
Speaker 1: everyone because she's so full of this like it's it's
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think it can be read a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, and I appreciated that it felt like
Speaker 1: you could read it a lot of ways where you
Speaker 1: are given the exact because I feel like often when
Speaker 1: we're shown older women and they're framed as bitter and angry,
Speaker 1: you're given no context as to why that might be.
Speaker 1: And it's just like inherent to being an older woman
Speaker 1: or an older fem specifically, it's like you're bitter and
Speaker 1: mean and horrible and it's like, you know, crone logic basically,
Speaker 1: but with Jade Fox, it's like you know exactly why
Speaker 1: she's angry, and you can sort of, you know, decide
Speaker 1: how you feel about how she weaponizes that anger against
Speaker 1: other people. But I appreciate. I just feel like it's
Speaker 1: more than you usually get right to know exactly why
Speaker 1: she's so angry. But I was, I don't know, like,
Speaker 1: I just wasn't very invested in Mubai as a character,
Speaker 1: so when she got them at the end, I was
Speaker 1: like sad for Shulin, but I was more interested in
Speaker 1: how Jen felt about her death. But instead Jen was
Speaker 1: immediately like, oh, Shuelin and Muba my new mom and dad.
Speaker 1: She switches parents so many times in this movie. She's like,
Speaker 1: I have to go help my new my new dad,
Speaker 1: instead of I just I wish that I knew how
Speaker 1: she felt more about that relationship, because the way that
Speaker 1: Jade Fox goes out is oh my god, like.
Speaker 3: She impaled by sword shards.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I mean her dying words Oh sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that too are really really intense, where she's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the real poison is the deceit of an eight year
Speaker 1: old girl, and you're like Oh, there's so much. There's
Speaker 1: so much going on there, and so it's so dramatic.
Speaker 2: I think there's like an interesting kind of if you
Speaker 2: look at like the three women main characters, right, there's
Speaker 2: this kind of gradient of like, Okay, there are three
Speaker 2: things that you like want to have, right, You want
Speaker 2: to be you want to have like like a high
Speaker 2: class position, you want to have the ability to do
Speaker 2: kung fu, and you want to be free, right, And
Speaker 2: no one has all three of them really, But Jade
Speaker 2: Fox is the person who has none of them, like
Speaker 2: she is she is low class. The high class kid
Speaker 2: that she's like I'm gonna try to like learn kung
Speaker 2: fu with this person and go be free with them,
Speaker 2: is like does this really? You know? The way it's
Speaker 2: framed in the movie is that jen is like a
Speaker 2: superior martial artist and thus knows that like there's no
Speaker 2: way that that Jade Fox could possibly learn like the
Speaker 2: secrets of this thing. But like how does she know that?
Speaker 2: Like it really just seems like it she's Jesus right,
Speaker 2: She's just being like a terrible aristocrat and it's just
Speaker 2: writing off yeah Jade Fox.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so frustrating to see and to see that
Speaker 1: that sort of bear out in the internal logic of
Speaker 1: the movie where it's like, well, I guess she thought
Speaker 1: that because it was it was true, and there's no that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and it also applies there's only one way to
Speaker 1: become a good martial artist, and it's by going to
Speaker 1: this one school. Like there's it's not suggested that there's
Speaker 1: any possible alternative. Yeah, I'm always a little leery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when it's like, oh the I don't know. It's almost
Speaker 1: like the latest Star Wars trilogy logic where it's like,
Speaker 1: you can't just be a person. You have to somehow
Speaker 1: be connected to aristocracy and power and legacy in order
Speaker 1: to justify being good at something or being like the
Speaker 1: best at something you like. And I feel like between
Speaker 1: Jen and Jade Fox, we see the same thing where
Speaker 1: Jen has access to more which isn't really called attention
Speaker 1: to too much, but the fact that Jade Fox doesn't
Speaker 1: have them is her downfall.
Speaker 2: Well, and also like the way that Jade Fox is
Speaker 2: like her governess when they're hiding together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that power dynamic too is like Jade
Speaker 1: Fox deserve better, and it's like deserve better from Jen. Also,
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, it's like difficult because she's a kid,
Speaker 1: and you.
Speaker 3: Know, I don't know, it's complicated.
Speaker 1: I love her. She did she she did nothing wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she is a true hero.
Speaker 1: Why isn't she on the poster consulting she kills the
Speaker 1: great hero?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because kong Fu was not strong enough to block
Speaker 2: all of the dark. She defeated him. Right, Yeah, she
Speaker 2: doesn't get any credit for this either, right.
Speaker 1: Right, the fact that she ugh and I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like I get that it's supposed to be like poetic
Speaker 1: that in the end they kill each other, but Jade
Speaker 1: Fox is totally like it. We're led to believe that
Speaker 1: one of Mubai's driving forces in his life is to
Speaker 1: kill her. But it's it's very.
Speaker 3: Like he says early on, like I have yet to
Speaker 3: avenge my master, and I have to do that by
Speaker 3: killing Jade Fox, who again is only the villain. She
Speaker 3: doesn't deserve to be framed as the villain of the movie.
Speaker 3: If anyone's the villain, it seems to be the mentor
Speaker 3: guy who we never see on screen because he died
Speaker 3: before the movie starts.
Speaker 1: But thank you, thank you for that, Jade Box.
Speaker 3: Right, But I was reading that because I haven't seen
Speaker 3: that many WUSHA movies or I'm not really familiar with
Speaker 3: that form of fiction, but I was reading that poison
Speaker 3: as a weapon is framed in those narratives as always
Speaker 3: being like very cowardly. So anyone who uses poison is like, oh,
Speaker 3: that person's not a real warrior. They're a coward. And
Speaker 3: of course Jade Fox's weapon of choice is poison. That's
Speaker 3: how she bests her enemies.
Speaker 2: And it also like it gets used by women a lot,
Speaker 2: which sucks.
Speaker 3: Just across yeah, like across fiction in general, from all regions.
Speaker 3: So that is a bummer. Yeah, I don't appreciate the
Speaker 3: way that the movie frames her with all of these
Speaker 3: villainous qualities, even though she was, you know, just oppressed
Speaker 3: by by this system that Otherwise, the movie seems to
Speaker 3: be challenging, like these patriarchal standards of women being expected
Speaker 3: to be married off and their worth as a human
Speaker 3: hinges on them being a wife, and you have this
Speaker 3: young woman Jen who's pushing against that and pushing against
Speaker 3: all these oppressive expectations that are foisted upon women. And
Speaker 3: because of that, this movie could easily be interpreted as
Speaker 3: a feminist text. But then the movie turns around and
Speaker 3: frames this like scorned woman of Jade Fox as a villain,
Speaker 3: even though she's doing the same thing as Jen, like
Speaker 3: she's also speaking out against these oppressive gender based expectations,
Speaker 3: but for some reason, when Jade Fox does it, it's
Speaker 3: bad and she's a villain.
Speaker 2: I will say, I think it's interesting that her existence
Speaker 2: winds up getting like institutional change starts happening, because everyone
Speaker 2: kind of looks like, you know, like one of the
Speaker 2: one of the important things without this movie is that
Speaker 2: Jen has this conversation with Mubai about going toodan and
Speaker 2: Jen is like, well, they don't train women, and Mubai
Speaker 2: is like, well, I'll go talk to it.
Speaker 3: Well they might make an exception.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you can see things like very slowly starting
Speaker 2: to change. But like, I think part of what's going
Speaker 2: on in this movie is that the sort of like okay,
Speaker 2: like I guess you call it like the Heavenly Kingdom,
Speaker 2: which the air which is you know, the sort of
Speaker 2: aristocracy is you know, incredibly corrupt, right in that like
Speaker 2: the aristocracy is based on the system of political marriages
Speaker 2: that like forces women to essentially be servants and like
Speaker 2: do sex work for the powerful male members of the family.
Speaker 2: So like that's obviously sort of like a corrupt system
Speaker 2: and everyone's trying to get out of it. But then
Speaker 2: also the sort of like the martial arts Underworld is also,
Speaker 2: you know, just a corrupt system because it's also based
Speaker 2: on the same sort of logic of patriarch exclusion, logic
Speaker 2: of like using women for sex and then it's just
Speaker 2: getting rid of them and never like teaching them, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And I think part of what the movie
Speaker 2: is about is the characters slowly coming to realize that,
Speaker 2: like all of this stuff is messed up and why
Speaker 2: have we been Like, Like one of the things over
Speaker 2: the course of the series is that Sulin realizes, like,
Speaker 2: why have I been wasting my entire life like not yeah,
Speaker 2: not being the right person I love because she.
Speaker 3: And Mubai have the same kind of journey where and
Speaker 3: I thought that was especially interesting for Mubai because you know,
Speaker 3: he lives his life as this you know, legendary warrior.
Speaker 3: He gives that up because he wants to be with Hulett.
Speaker 3: He's so horny that he quits grad school and he
Speaker 3: finally like works out the courage. It almost happened to me. Now,
Speaker 3: he finally like works up the courage to hell shulen
Speaker 3: his feelings. But before anything can really happen between them,
Speaker 3: Jade Fox kills him, and in his dying breath, he's like,
Speaker 3: I've always loved you. I've wasted my whole life, meaning
Speaker 3: like I've wasted my life not being with you. Aka,
Speaker 3: I've wasted my life denying my feelings and being afraid
Speaker 3: to express my feelings, which is like not a typical
Speaker 3: arc or journey for a male character period, and particularly
Speaker 3: not in like an action movie or for like an
Speaker 3: action combat warrior type of character. So I thought that
Speaker 3: was very interesting.
Speaker 1: I appreciated the high drama of it. Yes, as far
Speaker 1: as relationships between women, I feel like we yeah, like
Speaker 1: you're saying, we get like a pretty strong gradient of
Speaker 1: women of different ages, class backgrounds, life experiences, and just
Speaker 1: like desires of what they want out of life. I
Speaker 1: feel like, And as I was watching this, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're very often and even in ways that
Speaker 1: scan progressive. Sometimes we're told like all women want the
Speaker 1: same thing now, and it's to work eighty hours a week,
Speaker 1: and it's like well that's not you know, that's simply
Speaker 1: not what everybody wants. And I like that there is
Speaker 1: just like at a base level, the three main women
Speaker 1: who are driving this story all want something different, and
Speaker 1: they're like their definition of personal fulfillment is different, and
Speaker 1: I always appreciate seeing a flexible definition of what that is.
Speaker 3: Definitely, can we talk a little bit about the relationship
Speaker 3: between Gen and Low.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean it's like Mubai and Shulann, You're, like,
Speaker 1: you know what, they love each other so much. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say no, good for them.
Speaker 3: I'm not opposed to their relationship. I'm sad it didn't
Speaker 3: get to happen.
Speaker 1: But and it seems like Mubai like had no issue,
Speaker 1: Like part of why he loves so much was because
Speaker 1: she was hyper competent and great at what she did,
Speaker 1: and like, it didn't seem like that relationship happen he
Speaker 1: would have interfered with that. It was just all the feelings.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the genuine Low relationship, well that's that's different.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I'll just kind of break down some of the
Speaker 3: key beats, okay, which is Low and his bandits Raid.
Speaker 3: The group of travelers among them is Jen and her mother.
Speaker 3: He says, leave the women alone, so feminist icon Low, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Although I interpreted that as keep them alive. So I
Speaker 2: don't know which way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 3: I interpreted, I guess is like, yeah, we're bandits, but
Speaker 3: we have a code of ethics and we don't We
Speaker 3: might pillage, but we will not rape. Like I don't.
Speaker 1: Well, although based on what you just said and based
Speaker 1: on how afraid Jen is, I don't think it's inconceivable
Speaker 1: that she thought that that might happen, and that's why
Speaker 1: she was kept all right, because when she she afraid
Speaker 1: of him and he's like, don't worry, I'm not and
Speaker 1: then you're like, wow, what a hero.
Speaker 3: Right, And then when she returns to the group of
Speaker 3: like bandits, they seem like they're about to descend on her.
Speaker 3: And then Low shows back up also and he's like,
Speaker 3: leave her for me, like she's mine, Yeah, to kind
Speaker 3: of save her. But I mean, again, there we're about
Speaker 3: to talk about how messed up their relationship is.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's something else you need to talk about
Speaker 2: with this briefly, which is that, Okay, so there is
Speaker 2: a whole thing about gender race relations between like Weiger
Speaker 2: men and like Han women, Like this is the thing
Speaker 2: that starts the race riot that like when things go
Speaker 2: start to go really really bad in Change On, it's
Speaker 2: because a bunch of Chinese factory workers like beat a
Speaker 2: bunch of weaker workers to death, and they do it
Speaker 2: because the rumors starts spreading that like a weaker worker
Speaker 2: has like raped a hon woman. And so that is
Speaker 2: a thing that is the sort of sexual politics interesting,
Speaker 2: like the sort of racial sexual politics. The thing that's
Speaker 2: like hanging over the edge of this in a way
Speaker 2: that like for me, was really weird. I don't know
Speaker 2: what Ong Lee was trying to do with this, if
Speaker 2: he understood really what he was doing getting into here, right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, because that's like and we see that in Hollywood
Speaker 1: movies all the time with different I feel like in
Speaker 1: old Hollywood in particular, anytime you see a black man
Speaker 1: with a white woman, it seems like, are you talking
Speaker 1: about a similar dynamic of like here coded as predatory
Speaker 1: and then Jen's character would be more like virginal and
Speaker 1: this is a life worth protecting sort of coding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't know to what extent only understands
Speaker 2: this because like I mean so clearly he's done some
Speaker 2: research about what's going on, sort of like the ching
Speaker 2: Kana sees like borders, right, but that is a political
Speaker 2: thing that I don't think even most people in China
Speaker 2: didn't really get because until like the late two thousands,
Speaker 2: Like the average Chinese person, I mean, it is racist,
Speaker 2: like yeah, the other Chinese person's conception of like what
Speaker 2: Changchani is like, oh, it's those people who would like dance, right,
Speaker 2: which is racist in its own way, but they just
Speaker 2: don't think about it very often. But it reads the fact.
Speaker 2: For example, like that Lowe is the only character and
Speaker 2: I think the only character in the movie he talks
Speaker 2: about rape like at all. I think I could be
Speaker 2: wrong about that, but it scans weird.
Speaker 3: If you read Jade Fox's like, oh, sure he would
Speaker 3: sleep with me, but he wouldn't teach me. It's not
Speaker 3: clear in what capacity she was there, Like was she
Speaker 3: there as a sex worker who was like knowingly providing
Speaker 3: a service for these warriors or was it a more sinister.
Speaker 1: Or is it even like yeah, or I think you
Speaker 1: could argue like I mean, I don't know, but like
Speaker 1: almost casting couchy behavior of like dangling the charactive like oh,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll teach you if you have sex with me, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that could go a lot of ways, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I still think it's very it rings alarm
Speaker 2: bells to me that he has, like I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess it's partially just the way that like the characters written,
Speaker 2: just the incredibly weird kidnappy situation that's going on, but
Speaker 2: the fact that he's the one, like not Han character
Speaker 2: who well, not the only but like the one plot
Speaker 2: relevant non Han character is the one. Yeah, well okay,
Speaker 2: not Han or not Manchu because at this point they're
Speaker 2: both the ruling classes sort of like unified.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, for him to be framed as again like
Speaker 3: presented as quote unquote barbaric and uncivilized and being the thief.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then and then he does he does do
Speaker 2: the weird thing where they're like wrestling and then they
Speaker 2: start kissing, and it's.
Speaker 3: Like, okay, this is where the worst thing the consent
Speaker 3: nightmare scene, yes, where like basically she's trying to get
Speaker 3: her comb back. They've had a weird rapport up until
Speaker 3: this point where like.
Speaker 1: So weird she keeps it like I feel like it's
Speaker 1: implied by the movie that she's escaping his clutches flirtatiously.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's yeah, like I can't exactly pinpoint what is
Speaker 3: happening to make me think that, but I think like
Speaker 3: that that's how I'm reading it. Right. So there's like
Speaker 3: this weird flirtation going on, almost like a nagging situation
Speaker 3: that they're both doing, and they're like fighting, and then
Speaker 3: at one point they're wrestling and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: you know, trigger warning for assault, but he has his
Speaker 3: hand down her pants and then they're kissing and it's
Speaker 3: not clear if she's consenting to this or not. There
Speaker 3: was no like him checking in and being like, is
Speaker 3: this the vibe? And then all of a sudden and.
Speaker 1: Then people said all the time back then, right, is.
Speaker 3: It was of the time and the and the consent
Speaker 3: is so murky, and consent is something that should never
Speaker 3: be murky gray area thing obviously.
Speaker 1: Which it's like, but tell that to a movie in
Speaker 1: two thousand and see how they do.
Speaker 3: Right, and then post that they are in love with
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 1: So then she's riding on his horse, right, You're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty bleak, right, hated it, And again it's
Speaker 1: like but it's also like not the first time we
Speaker 1: have seen that where it's like this captivity is this
Speaker 1: is this big draw to a relationship, just a different
Speaker 1: kind of captivity. And then the way that their relationship
Speaker 1: ends is she has no say like it's it sucks
Speaker 1: at the end where she's like, I really please don't
Speaker 1: send me back to my family. I want to be
Speaker 1: here with you, and he's like, no, if we oh
Speaker 1: he's doing he's doing like some d chest in this
Speaker 1: moment where he's like, well, if we had a kid,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want her to stay here. So I'm telling
Speaker 1: you that you have to go back. And I was
Speaker 1: like what, and she's like, I guess. So I was like, no,
Speaker 1: you could kill him. They're like, why are you agreeing
Speaker 1: to this?
Speaker 3: Plus, like her whole thing has been I don't want
Speaker 3: to be trapped, not that every relationship is a prison.
Speaker 3: Caitlin try to remember that I'm talking to myself, But
Speaker 3: like it seems like not only does she want to
Speaker 3: be out of the confines of this arranged marriage, but
Speaker 3: she doesn't seem particularly interested in kind of long term companionship.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm just kind of filling in the blanks, but
Speaker 3: I don't quite understand.
Speaker 1: I think it's like kind of open to interpretation. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I do have to go soon.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think that was everything I had.
Speaker 1: So yeah, me, is there anything else that we haven't
Speaker 1: touched on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're good.
Speaker 1: All right, cool, then, uh, we've we've already discussed one
Speaker 1: pretty incredible pass of the Bechdel test. I want to
Speaker 1: shout it out one more time. Let me avenge my
Speaker 1: mother's death response, You'll soon be like her, you little whore.
Speaker 1: And that's going into the pantheon of my favorite my
Speaker 1: favorite passes that you can't say it's not plot relevant,
Speaker 1: and they certainly both have names. Uh yeah that I laughed.
Speaker 1: I l O l' when that one came out. I
Speaker 1: was like, wooo. I mean but the movie, the movie
Speaker 1: passes constantly because you have so many scenes between our
Speaker 1: two main characters. You also have a ton of scenes
Speaker 1: between Shen and Jade Fox, and yeah, there's there's plenty
Speaker 1: of discussion about all sorts of shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. And uh that brings us to our nipple scale,
Speaker 3: our scale where we rate the movie famous perfect Scott
Speaker 3: zero two five nipples based on examining the movie through
Speaker 3: an intersectional feminist lens, I would still give this like
Speaker 3: maybe like a three and a half or four nipples.
Speaker 3: I think there's a lot to like and appreciate about
Speaker 3: this movie. I love that it's driven by women, that
Speaker 3: it is exploring like gender politics and gender expectations. You know,
Speaker 3: could have maybe gone further with that. I would have
Speaker 3: liked to have seen more, like more backstory for Schulin.
Speaker 3: I wanted to just kind of know more about her
Speaker 3: character in general, because she is sort of The movie
Speaker 3: doesn't reduce her to Mubai's love interest the way the
Speaker 3: trailer does, but a big component of her character is like,
Speaker 3: you know, revolving around her.
Speaker 1: The only counterparint I have to that is that I
Speaker 1: don't know anytime a kind of a relationship, even when
Speaker 1: it's with a man more boring than you, is connected
Speaker 1: to what your definition of personal fulfillment and freedom is.
Speaker 1: I'm like a little more lenient about it because we
Speaker 1: see so we see that it's like it's not like
Speaker 1: she wants to ditch everything else in her life. It's
Speaker 1: just she wants a relationship and the life she has
Speaker 1: that is yeah, fair, I'm getting defensive.
Speaker 3: No, I agree, and I and I Yeah, Like we've
Speaker 3: talked about this before, but it's hard for like modern
Speaker 3: feminists to particularly like women who are attracted to men
Speaker 3: and might want to be in relationships with them. It's
Speaker 3: a difficult thing to reconcile that sometimes, at least for me.
Speaker 3: I don't want to speak for everyone, but like, I've
Speaker 3: found that to be just a difficult thing to balance,
Speaker 3: but it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I feel like that's but that's like part
Speaker 1: of Schulen's.
Speaker 3: Journey, which is maybe more interesting than I'm giving it
Speaker 3: credit for. So just forget I said anything about it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think there are a lot of interesting
Speaker 3: female characters and interesting relationship dynamics between women. I always
Speaker 3: love to see that in movies. Also, I read a
Speaker 3: lot of pieces from Asian American writers who were saying
Speaker 3: how much they appreciated that they were able to see
Speaker 3: characters who look like them in this big action movie
Speaker 3: at a time where Asian representation was super low. I
Speaker 3: mean it's historically and still quite low in mainstream Hollywood,
Speaker 3: so you know, they appreciated the representation of strong, powerful
Speaker 3: Asian women. And then the fight scenes, like just every
Speaker 3: fight scene in this movie. And this is like me
Speaker 3: speaking extremely like surface level movie analysis here, but they
Speaker 3: I think all involve Jen and they're all so fucking incredible,
Speaker 3: Like it's just awesome. I'd love to just see women
Speaker 3: fighting on screen in an action movie. I like to
Speaker 3: see women participating in the action. It's you know, simple
Speaker 3: brain thing, but I like it. I don't appreciate how
Speaker 3: Jade Fox is framed as a villainous character. Her like
Speaker 3: contempt and resentment is super valid, like she has been
Speaker 3: deceived and undervalued and underestimated by different people like throughout
Speaker 3: her life, and she's potentially been abused by that mentor guy.
Speaker 3: But the movie still treats her as this like bitter
Speaker 3: old woman, villainous woman.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And also because she is an older woman who is
Speaker 3: resentful of a younger woman, which is something you see
Speaker 3: a lot in media. It is often uncontextualized. It's just like, well,
Speaker 3: this is just how older women feel, duh. At least
Speaker 3: it's contextualized in this case.
Speaker 1: But but then it still does the thing anyways, still
Speaker 1: does a thing anyway.
Speaker 3: So I don't know a lot of the host, the
Speaker 3: historical and cultural context I was not super familiar with.
Speaker 3: So thank you again, Mia for all of your insight.
Speaker 3: I'll give the movie for nipples. I'll give one to Schulin,
Speaker 3: two to Jade Fox Justice for Jade, and I'll give
Speaker 3: the fourth nipple to the daughter of the police inspector
Speaker 3: Ye who's in that few scenes and who I think
Speaker 3: is also like dating Bo, but I'm not really sure anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna give mine, and then I have to
Speaker 1: jump off. I'm really sorry. Okay, no worries. I will
Speaker 1: meet you at four. Yeah. I think the historical context
Speaker 1: of this movie and then how that sort of contrasts
Speaker 1: with the way it was marketed in the West and
Speaker 1: how it was discussed in the West is like a
Speaker 1: very particular moment in history, and I just I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be thinking about for days how this movie can be
Speaker 1: identified to a pretty specific time period. But most Western
Speaker 1: viewers just didn't have the knowledge or on the part
Speaker 1: of the reviewers, the interest in figuring out what you
Speaker 1: figured out very easily.
Speaker 2: The academics didn't do it either. I'm so baffled.
Speaker 1: Okayard to this day, the Wikipedia page says it could
Speaker 1: have happened anywhere in these four hundred years. We don't
Speaker 1: really tell like, okay, so the historical context, and I
Speaker 1: think also the like you're just talking about the framing
Speaker 1: of both older women and and the character of Low
Speaker 1: and the way that he's framed and called a barbarian.
Speaker 1: And then it does act without consent. It just it
Speaker 1: feels like it's reinforcing a lot of negative stereotypes on
Speaker 1: top of making assault seem romantic. So just really some
Speaker 1: of the some of the the worst things you can do.
Speaker 1: And then I'm like that said four nipples. Unfortunately, this
Speaker 1: movie just fucking rocks, Like it's really really good. And
Speaker 1: the movie is absolutely driven by women, which in a
Speaker 1: movie that's successful in the West in two thousand is
Speaker 1: pretty unheard of, especially women that are not constantly sexualized.
Speaker 1: Because this is also the same year Charlie's Angels comes out,
Speaker 1: which is an action movie driven by women, but at
Speaker 1: what cost? And so I think this movie is doing
Speaker 1: a lot of really unique things, and it also has
Speaker 1: plenty of issues. And I'm glad we got to talk
Speaker 1: about It's that I've I would feel so lucky I
Speaker 1: get to see this in a theater. It was so
Speaker 1: fun fun. I'm going to give all my nipples to
Speaker 1: the legend Jade Fox because I really think that she
Speaker 1: she did zero crimes. When you think about it, you
Speaker 1: should honor that.
Speaker 3: We should respect her for sure. Yes, uh miyah, how
Speaker 3: about you?
Speaker 2: Okay. So I'm holding a grudge against this movie for
Speaker 2: the fact that the most easy interpretation of the ending
Speaker 2: is so Jen gets told by Chulian be true to yourself, right,
Speaker 2: go like live the life you want to do, and
Speaker 2: then she immediately jumps off a cliff, right, I I'm
Speaker 2: mad about that. That pisses and like, yeah, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's in feminist interpretations, but like the most obvious interpretation
Speaker 2: is that she was like, oh my god, I can't
Speaker 2: live with being free, and then she jumped off a cliff,
Speaker 2: which is like an INCREDI an unbelievably reactionary like like
Speaker 2: and that being the most easy surface level reading to
Speaker 2: have pisces me off a.
Speaker 5: Lot, right, Like I was very angry when that movie
Speaker 5: ended because that's just like really.
Speaker 2: Like I know, it jokes off a cliff.
Speaker 3: Like really, yeah, It's like that could have ended so
Speaker 3: many like why doesn't Shoolin start training Jen, Like if
Speaker 3: the whole thing was like she needs more training or
Speaker 3: like there's so many way, you know she if Jen
Speaker 3: was like yeah, I thought about it, and like I
Speaker 3: said before, this relationship is over low so see you later.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go do other stuff like it could have.
Speaker 3: But then and again, I know there's a lot of
Speaker 3: like metaphorical and spiritual ways to interpret how the ending goes,
Speaker 3: but just kind of taking it at face value is
Speaker 3: like what but yeah, I agree, Yeah, So what do
Speaker 3: you what's your nipple rating.
Speaker 2: I'm giving I don't know. I'm gonna grudgingly give it
Speaker 2: three fair because I think there's a lot going on
Speaker 2: here that's good. There's a lot going on here that's weird. Sure,
Speaker 2: try to figure out how to no. I feel like
Speaker 2: Jade Fox is the most wronged character in this whole series.
Speaker 2: I'm for sure, I'm gonna I'm gonna follow giving them
Speaker 2: all to her because like she she deserved so much
Speaker 2: better than every single person from like every single person
Speaker 2: she encounters screws her over from a different subject position,
Speaker 2: which is like a really sort of yeah, incredible way
Speaker 2: to get screwed.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, like why at no point is Mubai like
Speaker 3: you started the training, I'll help you finish it. Jade Fox,
Speaker 3: like he doesn't bother. He's only concerned about training. Like
Speaker 3: a younger woman. It's everyone wrongs her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean's she's just he's just utterly And this
Speaker 2: is the other thing, Like the only time he really
Speaker 2: shows emotion in the entire thing is when he's killing
Speaker 2: Jade Fox, and he is like pissed, and it's like
Speaker 2: like yeah, okay, like I get, I get it's the
Speaker 2: kung fu, like you killed my master, but this this
Speaker 2: is one of those like this is one of those
Speaker 2: things where you look at that and you go, there's
Speaker 2: extenuating circumstances. I don't know it.
Speaker 3: It's frustrating for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sucked. Glad she killed him in the end.
Speaker 2: That was great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so three nipples all to Jade Fox. So thank
Speaker 3: you so much for joining us for this discussion. It
Speaker 3: was such a treat. Come back anytime. And what would
Speaker 3: you like to plug? Where can people follow you online? Etc?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So my day job is I'm one of the
Speaker 2: hosts of the podcast that could happen here. Okay, my
Speaker 2: specific episode plug is if you don't know what this
Speaker 2: is and you want to listen to something. We did
Speaker 2: a series called The War on trans People last year
Speaker 2: and I think it's still really important because all of
Speaker 2: that stuff is still going on and it sucks. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: You can find me on Twitter at BCHR three. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I guess the closing thing I want to plug is
Speaker 2: that kung fu movie I briefly mentioned earlier, Packing Opera Blues,
Speaker 2: because Picking Up a Blues is a movie about three
Speaker 2: lesbians overthrowing a bill dictatorship and then house having sleepovers
Speaker 2: and it rips. Movie is so good. I love it.
Speaker 2: It's also released like fourteen years before this one, No.
Speaker 3: Kidding, because this movie, like, despite its flaws, like feels
Speaker 3: ahead of its time for the year two thousand, so
Speaker 3: that one feels even more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's a it's a trip. It's also
Speaker 2: about a period of Chinese history that nobody other than
Speaker 2: me has spent significate. Well that's not true. Me, a
Speaker 2: bunch of weird war gramiers and four academics has spent
Speaker 2: a bunch of time studying, which is like like the
Speaker 2: war lord people. Well, I guess the pre warlord periods
Speaker 2: of there's a period right after the Chinese Revolution but
Speaker 2: before this guy dies, where China is ruled by this
Speaker 2: guy named Yunxikai, who's just like this. She's the guy
Speaker 2: who gets put in charge of China because he has
Speaker 2: the largest army at the end of the revolution, and
Speaker 2: he sucks and everyone hates him, and this is a
Speaker 2: movie about people trying to overthrow him, and it rips
Speaker 2: into the time period that gets no attention ever. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's cool.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, well yeah, thanks again for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: Check out that movie, check out it could happen here.
Speaker 3: You can follow the Bechdel Cast on Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 3: at Bechdel Cast. You can also subscribe to our Patreon
Speaker 3: aka Matreon. You get two bonus episodes a month, plus
Speaker 3: access to the back catalog that can all be found
Speaker 3: at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast, as well as
Speaker 3: our merch at teapublic dot com slash the Bechdel Cast
Speaker 3: for all of your merchandising needs. And with that, let's
Speaker 3: go not jump off a mountain.
Speaker 1: Bye.