Speaker 1: On the Dog Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women in um, are all their discussions just boyfriends and
Speaker 1: husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef and
Speaker 1: best start changing it with the bec Del Cast. Caitlin, Yes, Jamie,
Speaker 1: I've got a problem and it needs solving. Okay, I
Speaker 1: only have ninety minutes to record a podcast. Okay, see
Speaker 1: mine was going to be. Whoever hears this, I suppose
Speaker 1: you'll think it's a confession. I recorded this podcast me,
Speaker 1: Caitlyn Durante. I did it for the money and a woman,
Speaker 1: and I didn't get the money and I didn't get
Speaker 1: the woman. Okay, I like that way better. I like
Speaker 1: that way better. Because what is Walter Nev doing at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this movie and throughout besides recording a
Speaker 1: true crime podcast? He literally, yes, I wrote that the
Speaker 1: same thing. I was like, Wow, what's her name? I
Speaker 1: wrote down, Um, who's the whatever? The serial person? I'm
Speaker 1: blowing it. I'm blowing it this morning. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I don't remember either. Why we I feel like everyone
Speaker 1: I can hear her voice, I can hear her cadence.
Speaker 1: It's iconic, like I oh my god, I was very
Speaker 1: into it when it came out. What it? What was it?
Speaker 1: Sarah Kanig, Sarah Cadi, Yes, yes, he's Sarah kaneging out
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the show. Well, we well, that
Speaker 1: was one of our best intros. Perfect. See this is
Speaker 1: and if people are listening right now, this is why
Speaker 1: we don't record this early in the morning, because this
Speaker 1: is gonna be that you're gonna feel a sort of
Speaker 1: waking up as the podcast proceeds. We're not like Walter
Speaker 1: nep recording in the dead of night with a with
Speaker 1: an injury the gunshot wound. Yeah, this is It's ten.
Speaker 1: I am I've been up since seven because I needed
Speaker 1: to rewatch this movie sa morning. Same. So I think
Speaker 1: that we're doing a really good job so far. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Bechtel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus, my
Speaker 1: name is Caitlin Durante, and this is our show where
Speaker 1: we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Speaker 1: Bechdel Tests simply as a jumping off point, an inspiration
Speaker 1: for us to get a conversation going. Jamie, tell me
Speaker 1: what the Bechdel test is? Please? No, okay, the Bechtel
Speaker 1: test has many permutations. That's sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace test,
Speaker 1: originally created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel. We require that
Speaker 1: two pass. You have to have two characters of a
Speaker 1: marginalized gender with names speaking to each other about something
Speaker 1: other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue.
Speaker 1: I think this movie passes, which is funny, um, because
Speaker 1: I went in thinking there's no way there's even a
Speaker 1: second woman in the movie. Well, guess what, there is
Speaker 1: exactly one second. So egg on my face. There's two
Speaker 1: women in the movie and they talk about checkers. Um.
Speaker 1: So if that's why you listen to the podcast, I
Speaker 1: guess you could turn it off down because but stick
Speaker 1: around because we've got a lot of exciting stuff to
Speaker 1: talk about, recovering a film noir today from nineteen four
Speaker 1: called Double Indemnity, And we have an amazing returning guest.
Speaker 1: Let's get her in the mix. We certainly do. She
Speaker 1: is a media critic. You remember her from our episode
Speaker 1: on Point Break. It's Anita Sarcasian. Okay, just so everyone knows,
Speaker 1: I try to get them to do another surf movie
Speaker 1: with me, so that I only do surf movies on
Speaker 1: the back pelcast and they were not going for it.
Speaker 1: Caitlyn like just looked at me, being like, nobody requests
Speaker 1: surf movies. We should I don't think that's true, so
Speaker 1: please right in and let them know that I'm right.
Speaker 1: I didn't know about this conversation, and I would have
Speaker 1: made a strong argument for Blue Crush. That made really
Speaker 1: gave me some body problems. So, yeah, I forgot about
Speaker 1: Blue Crush. How good you forget about Blue Crush. I've
Speaker 1: never seen Blue Crash, so I like this would be
Speaker 1: a great opportunity because I'm like, I want to watch
Speaker 1: all of them now, so I will. I'll come back.
Speaker 1: And apparently it was formative for a lot of young
Speaker 1: queers too. There's a whole I need to need to
Speaker 1: get in on this. I remember there was such a
Speaker 1: frothing culture around Blue Crush because all the girls that
Speaker 1: I would watch it with were like, isn't it amazing
Speaker 1: that Kate Bosworth has one blue eye and one brown eye?
Speaker 1: We were just like all lusting after her, like, wow,
Speaker 1: her bikini is so low cut. Yeah, there's a whole
Speaker 1: there's a whole thing exactly. But we're talking about double
Speaker 1: indemnity eight. We're talking about a different kind of um
Speaker 1: interestingly exploited female character. Today it's fatal Day on the
Speaker 1: factel cast It's sure, is so Anita? What is your
Speaker 1: relationship history, etcetera with this movie with film no war
Speaker 1: in general, Um nothing. I have no history at all.
Speaker 1: I chose it, or like, I, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: agreed to do it because I've been curious about going
Speaker 1: back and watching older films, so I was like, why
Speaker 1: not have an excuse to do it. I sort of
Speaker 1: regret that choice. So this is gonna be a great episode. Um,
Speaker 1: but I don't um, I don't know. I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about this movie going into it. I loosely knew
Speaker 1: that it was like kind of quintessential in terms of
Speaker 1: establishing the film fatale or film noir ish kind of vibes.
Speaker 1: So I was curious about that. But I don't have
Speaker 1: a long history of like, you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: I've watched a bunch of noirs. I kind of get
Speaker 1: the sense of them. I find current or more modern
Speaker 1: films that pull noir themes really interesting. But but that
Speaker 1: makes it like every time I watch a movie that's
Speaker 1: like this was the thing that changed everything, I always
Speaker 1: feel a little bit of We will never be able
Speaker 1: to know what that feels like because I've seen every
Speaker 1: iteration since then, or I've seen every like derivative. I've
Speaker 1: seen everything that is like derivative from the original source.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that in a disparaging way. It's
Speaker 1: just it's so hard sometimes to put yourself in the
Speaker 1: mind of the viewer at the time and the creation
Speaker 1: process at the time. Right. I'm sure that if I
Speaker 1: had seen Citizen Kane in whatever nineteen forty one when
Speaker 1: it came out, I'd be like, Wow, this movie is
Speaker 1: so cool. Look at how groundbreaking it is, look at
Speaker 1: how it changed cinema. But I didn't see it in
Speaker 1: ninety one. I saw it in the mid two thousand's
Speaker 1: and I hate it. Well, that was your first mistake,
Speaker 1: not being alive in one. I do want to cover
Speaker 1: Citizen Cane someday so I can just talk about how
Speaker 1: it's a turd. But that's edge Lord Caitlin peeking her
Speaker 1: little head out. But I do think kind of before
Speaker 1: we get into this a little bit um So, I
Speaker 1: just watched Liquorice Pizza, which has of extremely racist a
Speaker 1: couple of moments of like deep racism, right, And I
Speaker 1: was thinking about I don't have anything really insightful to
Speaker 1: say about this, but that it can be very hard
Speaker 1: for modern progressive viewers to go back and watch older films, right,
Speaker 1: because you do have to kind of in order to
Speaker 1: do that and to appreciate the craft of the time,
Speaker 1: we have to acknowledge, sit through, deal with, ignore, like
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you do when you watch older movies.
Speaker 1: It's just there, right, and you can't unsee what you know.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about what that means in contemporary films,
Speaker 1: especially contemporary films that are of a time, so like
Speaker 1: including pieces that are super racist or sexist in a
Speaker 1: movie that comes out to contextualize the moment that it
Speaker 1: takes place, Like, I have a lot of thoughts about that,
Speaker 1: And I think that there's something interesting about like kind
Speaker 1: of me ping ponging back and forth in right now
Speaker 1: and what I'm watching and seeing, like cool, I gotta
Speaker 1: like deal with, you know, you've got to deal with
Speaker 1: the like all the sexist representations and the like light
Speaker 1: misogyny that's just like a part of the environment. And
Speaker 1: then also we still have to you know, like it's
Speaker 1: still being justified as relevant or a part of the
Speaker 1: craft or a part of the art or whatever. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: because it's like a period piece, right, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: not the only you know, I'm not like specifically calling
Speaker 1: out Pta, but just the you know, like Tarantino and
Speaker 1: like they all fucking do that, right, right. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I think sometimes like period pieces are used as an
Speaker 1: excuse to like bring that back in a way of
Speaker 1: like isn't this funny, and you're like, it's really not.
Speaker 1: But I think film fatal is like such an interesting thing,
Speaker 1: and I totally agree with what you guys are saying
Speaker 1: of it's so difficult to watch a movie and put
Speaker 1: yourself in the mindset of an audience member at the time.
Speaker 1: It's like almost impossible unless you're like really really really
Speaker 1: trying to. And that's like part of what's hard about
Speaker 1: this show sometimes. But that's the thing is like what
Speaker 1: audience is watching it as well. I think it's another
Speaker 1: used to that absolutely, Jamie, what's your relationship to Double Indemnity?
Speaker 1: I saw this movie in college. I think that like
Speaker 1: any person that went through a bad film program, like
Speaker 1: there was a unit on Noir, I saw a bunch
Speaker 1: of them. I generally do like I I like Noir,
Speaker 1: and I really like noir, like parody and like comedy.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm like into the vibe of Noir and the
Speaker 1: because the like the characters are so clear, and so
Speaker 1: I enjoy watching Noir. Also, my friend friend of the
Speaker 1: show guest on our Glie episode, Josh fatum Um just
Speaker 1: observed Noirvember, which is something he does every year for nobody,
Speaker 1: but this year I was paying attention and um, so
Speaker 1: I had Noir in the brain anyways, So I was
Speaker 1: excited to revisit this movie because I feel like this
Speaker 1: movie is often kind of presented as like the blueprint
Speaker 1: for a lot of Nora tropes, and particularly like the
Speaker 1: fum Fatale character. And it was kind of interesting to
Speaker 1: come back to because by coincidence, I was working on
Speaker 1: the The Capy podcast this year and so was going
Speaker 1: through the history of like American women's rights, and so
Speaker 1: it's like interesting to have a few things click about,
Speaker 1: like why why the fum Fatale trope tends to pop
Speaker 1: at certain moments. It makes total sense that it would
Speaker 1: pop during World War Two because it's a time where
Speaker 1: women are taking on men's jobs quote unquote and are
Speaker 1: presenting a more act to threat to the status quo,
Speaker 1: and so some fetals like popping in the forties and
Speaker 1: fifties makes total sense. Any time that there's like a
Speaker 1: period of time where uh, there's a backlash to a
Speaker 1: popular feminist movement, you get these characters that are like
Speaker 1: variations on witches and like evil women luring people with sex.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I had I had a and
Speaker 1: I genuinely like moviewise. I hear like Walter nev is
Speaker 1: such a dufus, like he got a boner one time
Speaker 1: and it was ready to just throw his entire life away,
Speaker 1: which is kind of funny. But I'm excited to talk
Speaker 1: about this movie. I I genuinely enjoyed watching it. And
Speaker 1: Barbara Stanwick is such a such an icon, and she's
Speaker 1: wearing such a such a bizarre wig is very distracting.
Speaker 1: The bangs on her bangs are out of control. They're
Speaker 1: like a hard they look like you could like knock
Speaker 1: on them. They're like a perfect cylinder just resting a
Speaker 1: top her forehead. I don't understand how you accomplish that. Unbelievable,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I I I generally, I mean, there's misogynist
Speaker 1: tropes abound in this genre, but I think it's like
Speaker 1: in context, it's it's pretty interesting and the movies are
Speaker 1: fun to watch. Yeah, I too saw this movie in
Speaker 1: college at least a couple of times, and then also
Speaker 1: in grad school where I did get a master's degree
Speaker 1: in screen running from Boston University. I hate to mention it,
Speaker 1: but they made you watch it again. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: because I took like enough like film theory or film
Speaker 1: history classes that touched on film noir, and this is
Speaker 1: kind of like one of those like quintessential film noir movies.
Speaker 1: It's cited as having set the standard for film noir,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's kind of one of the ones
Speaker 1: to study if you're developing the curriculum for a very standard,
Speaker 1: boring film class because they always show the same damn
Speaker 1: movies over and over again. I've seen it several times
Speaker 1: in school, and this is like, I feel like the
Speaker 1: one that they show in school. Yes, which is also
Speaker 1: why I've seen Citizen Kane eight hundred times. I hate
Speaker 1: it more and more every time I see it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: else I'll stop bringing up the Citizen Kane maybe, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so I've seen this movie a number of times usually
Speaker 1: and that probably like maybe I I saw it once
Speaker 1: just of my own volition before I saw it for
Speaker 1: a class, because I was like, oh, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: one of those like famous movies that's in all the textbooks.
Speaker 1: I have to see it so I can, you know,
Speaker 1: be smart and understand references so you could go to party.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I just watch things so I can comfortably attend
Speaker 1: a party. Same same, Um, I get it, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't hate the movie. I like the snappy dialogue.
Speaker 1: You know, the aesthetic is fun. Yeah, I like. I
Speaker 1: generally like film noir. I like neo noir especially, But
Speaker 1: who framed Roger Rabbit Baby? I mean, come on, the
Speaker 1: noir golden standard. I think I'm serious too. I think
Speaker 1: I'm serious. I don't think you're wrong. We covered that
Speaker 1: movie a while back on the Matreon, so if you
Speaker 1: haven't heard it listeners, go check it out. But anyway,
Speaker 1: should I do the recap and then we'll discuss let's
Speaker 1: do it. Okay, Actually, let's take a quick break first,
Speaker 1: and then we will be right back. And we're back,
Speaker 1: so Double Indemnity. We meet Walter Neff played by Fred McMurray.
Speaker 1: He is an insurance salesman who stumbles into his office
Speaker 1: and starts recording a podcast. Basically, he starts recording a
Speaker 1: confession to Mr Keys, who we will later learn is
Speaker 1: a colleague of Walter Nefts. He confesses that he murdered
Speaker 1: someone named Dietrichson. He did it for the money and
Speaker 1: a woman, but he didn't get either. He mentions a
Speaker 1: double indemnity, and we're like, wow, that's the name of
Speaker 1: the movie. I was like, I hope he defines that
Speaker 1: in dialogue at some point, and then he does, which
Speaker 1: is genuinely needed, so thank you. Yes, and then he
Speaker 1: starts to tell the story about how all of this transpired,
Speaker 1: and then we flashback to Walter paying Mr Dietrichson a
Speaker 1: visit at his Los Angeles home to talk about his
Speaker 1: expired car insurance policy. Mr. Dietrichson is not home, but
Speaker 1: his wife. His wife, his wife, Mrs Dietrichson A. K.
Speaker 1: Phillis played by Barbara Stanwick, is home. She comes out
Speaker 1: all sexy and not fully closed. She's got like a
Speaker 1: towel draped on her. Yeah. They they really need to
Speaker 1: signal to you what's going on right away. I did
Speaker 1: like that. They like just like old tiny ways of
Speaker 1: objectifying a woman are funny, where he kept being like
Speaker 1: her anklet, You're like, you're a pervert. Stop talking about
Speaker 1: her anklet. In that moment too, when he first meets
Speaker 1: her and she was sunbathing, he says, I hope there
Speaker 1: aren't any pigeons like lines that. I was like, what
Speaker 1: the fuck is this comedy? Like, yeah, it's like this.
Speaker 1: I would almost rather someone. I mean, I would rather
Speaker 1: Walter never speak to me. But if he had to have,
Speaker 1: I does that roundabout it's just creepy. He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I hope there's all pigeons, just like I hope birds
Speaker 1: aren't shipping on you. Is that what I guess? So,
Speaker 1: and then right right after the housekeeper says like, the
Speaker 1: living room is where they keep the liquor sucked up,
Speaker 1: which is also a weird thing, and he says, that's
Speaker 1: all right, I always carry my own keys. Like some
Speaker 1: of the dialogue in this, I kept being like, what
Speaker 1: the fuck. I don't understand it. It's another I'm adjusting
Speaker 1: the name of this test. I need to figure it out.
Speaker 1: But it is an example of if the person if
Speaker 1: the actor saying that line wasn't extremely conventionally hot. You'd
Speaker 1: be like, this guy is weird. Why is he acting
Speaker 1: like this? Yes? Yes, I think part of it is
Speaker 1: like the writer's attempt to have like really quippy, clever
Speaker 1: dialogue in a way that might have made more sense
Speaker 1: to like audiences, but you know, many decades later we're like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? I think it's a combination
Speaker 1: of that, and a lot of the dialogue has to
Speaker 1: be euphemism to skirt the restrictions of the production code.
Speaker 1: So I like it. I like it. I think it's
Speaker 1: it's just so bizarre to hear characters talk like that
Speaker 1: to each other and um, feel like it's just another day,
Speaker 1: another day talking like a weirdo. Uh yeah, So Phillis
Speaker 1: Dietrichson agrees to chat with Walter Nef and uh he
Speaker 1: spends that entire conversation hitting on her in a very
Speaker 1: nies way, and then she asks if he handles accident insurance,
Speaker 1: which he does, and she tells him to come back
Speaker 1: at a different time when her husband will be home.
Speaker 1: Then we see Walter at his office. We meet Keys,
Speaker 1: who is Walter F's colleague. His whole thing is that
Speaker 1: he's a skeptic and he can always sniff out a
Speaker 1: fraudulent insurance claim because he feels it right here, and
Speaker 1: he like basically like points to his like tour. So
Speaker 1: it was I was like, what are you doing? It's
Speaker 1: is this the weird dick thing? Like? It was very
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, your heart, like your heart and
Speaker 1: your heart it was so it's like, okay, buddy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he keeps referring to the little man who lives inside him. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was the thing. You're like, is this like is
Speaker 1: this a euphemism? What's happening here? I don't understand. He's like,
Speaker 1: I always know when someone's lying to me. I can
Speaker 1: feel it in my dick. Well, my dick starts to
Speaker 1: the thrub. That's when you know someone's not telling the truth.
Speaker 1: I really liked that moment with him. I mean that
Speaker 1: that who is that character? I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: seen that character actor before. Um Edward g Robinson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently he was quite famous back in the day, but
Speaker 1: I don't really know him. Oh no, oh. He he
Speaker 1: named people during the Red Scare little as he named
Speaker 1: Dalton Trumbo. Wow. Okay, this bitch, okay, So all right,
Speaker 1: you and your little band and this Wikipedia page. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go fuck yourself. Oh your digs throbbing and out good
Speaker 1: hearted communists jesus um okay Keys the character. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed that scene where kind of like apropa of nothing,
Speaker 1: he just is like, yeah, I almost got married once.
Speaker 1: Didn't work out though, Like he just starts going off
Speaker 1: about how he's never been loved in his life and
Speaker 1: that's why he's so good at an insurance I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. Also, the reasons he lists for like
Speaker 1: not going through with that marriage are so wild. And again,
Speaker 1: you know, the standards of the time were very different.
Speaker 1: But he's like, she I found out that she used
Speaker 1: to dye her hair or that she's been dyeing her
Speaker 1: hair since she was sixteen, and also she was married
Speaker 1: once before. And then he also like makes a reference
Speaker 1: to how there's like mental illness in her family. So
Speaker 1: he's like and then and then Walter's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: get it. She was a tramp. Everyone in her family
Speaker 1: is a tramp. Blah blah blah, and it's just like, yikes,
Speaker 1: your standards are very mean. This guy was so dirty
Speaker 1: at the House of Un American Activities Committee. What a
Speaker 1: what a piece of ship, What an asshole? He thought,
Speaker 1: and again of the time, I'm sure he's like, this
Speaker 1: is we don't have time to talk about this today.
Speaker 1: I'm disappointed Edward also r I P. He died like
Speaker 1: years ago. Fun fact, at sometime next year, I'll be
Speaker 1: releasing a video series and one of the episodes is
Speaker 1: about the Hollywood Blacklist, So tune into that whenever the
Speaker 1: funk that appears, keep your keep your eyes peeled, listeners,
Speaker 1: please filet a fish our boy Edward because he fucked up.
Speaker 1: He fucked up big time. All right, so we we've
Speaker 1: met keys. Then Walter nef goes back to Phillis Dietrichson,
Speaker 1: who tells him that she wants to take out an
Speaker 1: accident insurance policy on her husband, who works a dangerous
Speaker 1: job in the oil fields, but she doesn't want her
Speaker 1: husband to know about it, and Walter automatically assumes that
Speaker 1: it's because she's trying to find a way to get
Speaker 1: her husband killed so that she can collect on the
Speaker 1: insurance money. But she's like, no, I decay what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. But even so he storms out, but then
Speaker 1: he's like, oh wait a minute. Though she's so hot,
Speaker 1: I mean she wears an anklets a I mean, he
Speaker 1: brings it up like four or five times. It's like
Speaker 1: really weird. It's like, yeah, the way the anklet was
Speaker 1: cutting into your leg, Like okay, So he comes back
Speaker 1: and like, I'm just using this as a cue to
Speaker 1: talk about the like the dialogue e banter. Right, that's
Speaker 1: very not the way that people talk. And I haven't
Speaker 1: watched a lot of movies from the forties, but it
Speaker 1: is very much the sort of stereotype that I think
Speaker 1: we think of when we think about like older films. Sure,
Speaker 1: I found it really hard to watch, you know, and
Speaker 1: you both expressed that, like you enjoyed it and like
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of a fun thing and for me,
Speaker 1: like it it got really exhausting after a while. Oh definitely,
Speaker 1: you know, like it was just too I was like,
Speaker 1: can you all just fucking like and again, film history
Speaker 1: like has changed so much in terms of what we
Speaker 1: expect of actors and storytelling and all of that. But
Speaker 1: I was just getting really like okay enough already with
Speaker 1: the performativeness in this conversation. Right. It definitely gave me
Speaker 1: whiplash after a while, because there's that scene where he's like,
Speaker 1: suppose I am speeding and she's like, well, suppose I
Speaker 1: give you a ticket and suppose you leave me off
Speaker 1: with a warning, And I'm just like, see that just
Speaker 1: makes me laugh. Where they're like flirting and you're like
Speaker 1: this is this is I barely recognize this as the
Speaker 1: English language, Like what are you guys talking about? And
Speaker 1: then at the end they're like, we have a crush
Speaker 1: on each other? Like from basically that interesting. Okay, So
Speaker 1: it also reminds me and like, okay, Josh Weeden's a
Speaker 1: piece of ship, so acknowledging that before I go into this,
Speaker 1: but it reminds me of how like Buffy and some
Speaker 1: of the work that he did in the nineties and
Speaker 1: two thousands sort of popularized that kind of like and
Speaker 1: and I'd say, you're more girls to kind of popularize that,
Speaker 1: Like it feels like a remnant of that time, but
Speaker 1: but kind of normal like that I didn't have a
Speaker 1: problem with, like I liked, I didn't like more girls,
Speaker 1: but so it feels a little bit like that. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, it's not like we don't do that anymore,
Speaker 1: but it but it's it's modernized in a way that's
Speaker 1: like our jokes and our communication and our you know,
Speaker 1: like sort of hyper communication of of the moment. But man,
Speaker 1: I just I was really by the end of it.
Speaker 1: I was like, can you just stop talking? I'm a
Speaker 1: sucker for people talking real fast, and so other times
Speaker 1: I was talking real fast, I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: what uh? But that's also YouTube life, right, Like the
Speaker 1: joke about YouTubers is that they all talked super fast
Speaker 1: because we used to have time constraints, so we're trying
Speaker 1: to like shove everything in. So I don't I think
Speaker 1: it's just interesting how like that kind of maybe like
Speaker 1: Ebbed and Float a little bit in terms of the
Speaker 1: way that what we accept as like witty dialogue and
Speaker 1: speed of of talking um changes or our perception of
Speaker 1: it in the past changes to right, and it's all
Speaker 1: like the mid Atlantic kind of fake fucking accents and
Speaker 1: ship where you're like, I mean, there's also like there's
Speaker 1: like movie dialogue that you like, read it on the
Speaker 1: page or you hear it, and you're like, this is
Speaker 1: dialogue versus something that feels more realistic and organic and conversational,
Speaker 1: which like also can be very well written. But I
Speaker 1: don't know, I I'm kind of a sucker for dialogue
Speaker 1: that no one would actually say in real life because
Speaker 1: it's like very clearly written. It's like too clever and
Speaker 1: too quickly, like the West Wing kind of I know,
Speaker 1: I know that's the flavor. I don't, but I'm saying
Speaker 1: it's that kind of thing where you're like, this isn't real,
Speaker 1: but also like you kind of like a lot of
Speaker 1: people really vibe with it, right sure, Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like, yeah, there's there's probably like a fast talking
Speaker 1: genre or like piece of work for every like generation
Speaker 1: that it's like either you're into it or you're not,
Speaker 1: or I don't know. I do also want to add
Speaker 1: that if I literally in my notes, I wrote, if
Speaker 1: he says baby one more time, oh my gosh, Like
Speaker 1: I here's the thing is Walter Neff Fred McMurray, Like
Speaker 1: it's just so unlikable in every conceivable way. There's nothing
Speaker 1: about you feel that way because I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: not interested in this man at all. He's yeah, not
Speaker 1: for me. I think I would have liked the movie
Speaker 1: more if I gave any fox at all about this guy.
Speaker 1: But he just seemed so unlikable and so uninteresting in
Speaker 1: such a piece of ship in every way that like
Speaker 1: I don't feel bad that he's being manipulated. I don't
Speaker 1: feel bad that he is like he like, he's like
Speaker 1: I want you to fail and I want you to
Speaker 1: get like, you know whatever. And so I think that that.
Speaker 1: I don't think as an audience member, we're supposed to
Speaker 1: feel that way about him. No, I think the movie
Speaker 1: because he was prior to this, like a rom com star,
Speaker 1: and he almost turned down the role because he's like,
Speaker 1: this role is going to tarnish my reputation as a
Speaker 1: like an America's sweetheart, you know, like rom com guy.
Speaker 1: But then he went for it anyway. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he he as an actor, people liked him, and
Speaker 1: we are meant to be endeared to him. But yeah, again,
Speaker 1: by like my standards today, I'm just like, oh, quick
Speaker 1: calling her baby eight hundred times. Yeah, I I didn't really,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was. And I'm like, maybe
Speaker 1: this is just me being annoying. But I'm like if maybe,
Speaker 1: if there was a different actor in that role. But
Speaker 1: but the other thing is with noir characters in general,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't understand from a writing perspective why
Speaker 1: you wouldn't give the audience more information about who waltern
Speaker 1: f is or like what because it just seems like
Speaker 1: he's living this like steak less life. Like he's a
Speaker 1: single guy. We don't know anything about his family. He
Speaker 1: seems like he's financially comfortable enough, but we don't really
Speaker 1: know anything about him, and so it's hard to like,
Speaker 1: like if you just if they just added one or
Speaker 1: two details of like and he has a sick cat
Speaker 1: or like just something to like endear you to him
Speaker 1: or just to give information, but he's just like a guy.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I was like, well, I don't really
Speaker 1: care what happens to this guy. He's just some guy.
Speaker 1: When in the history of film noir did it become
Speaker 1: kind of attached to the sort of hard boiled detective,
Speaker 1: because that so this movie is this like fem fatale
Speaker 1: manipulating this guy, right, is kind of the vibes that
Speaker 1: are happening. But in my mind, being very uneducated in
Speaker 1: this space, I'm like, well, shouldn't he be a little
Speaker 1: more hard boiled and a little more like gruff? Right?
Speaker 1: I think that ordinarily that is the case of like
Speaker 1: there's more gruffness, you'll have a little bit more information
Speaker 1: about the character, which kind of just like, well, there's
Speaker 1: a whole character kind of strikes me as a little
Speaker 1: bizarre because I'm just like, I feel like I don't
Speaker 1: know who this person is, so I can't even like
Speaker 1: from a like oh, I feel bad for this guy,
Speaker 1: Like I don't really feel bad for him because he
Speaker 1: seems to know exactly what's going on outside of the
Speaker 1: fact that she is manipulated, like that's the only thing
Speaker 1: he doesn't know. But everything else, there's so many plot
Speaker 1: developments in this murder plot that are like his idea,
Speaker 1: So I'm like, yeah, he's gonna get what's coming to him.
Speaker 1: Like it's not like she's like, oh, we should do
Speaker 1: this or we should do this, which she does sometimes
Speaker 1: she's obviously an active participant in this plot, but his
Speaker 1: whole thing where they're like, oh no, we actually have
Speaker 1: to throw your husband off a train and then we'll
Speaker 1: get twice the money, and I was like, okay, So
Speaker 1: he's just like a full on which collusion, like goof us,
Speaker 1: and I don't care what happens to him. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that they and you already said this, Jamie,
Speaker 1: but they don't do a good enough job of showing
Speaker 1: that they fucking care. About each other, and I know
Speaker 1: that there's the bit, there's the bit at the end. Well,
Speaker 1: we're not there yet. We'll deal with it when whatever.
Speaker 1: But but like we're not supposed to think that she
Speaker 1: really cares that much about him, right, We're supposed to
Speaker 1: like she's she's manipulating him, and she's like going along
Speaker 1: with it, and he's in love with her, but like
Speaker 1: they don't do anything to really build that relationship or
Speaker 1: the emotional stakes of it in any way. And so
Speaker 1: he calls her baby. So that's how we know that
Speaker 1: her question mark. There's those long montages. Yeah, there's all
Speaker 1: these opportunities, and I get, like story logic. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. But also I wouldn't have been bothered
Speaker 1: as an audience member. But there's just like they'll have
Speaker 1: one conversation and then they'll be a montage where he's
Speaker 1: like and then I didn't see her for two weeks,
Speaker 1: and I kind of just went back to what I
Speaker 1: was doing and I was like, well, that's boring, that
Speaker 1: doesn't right, I don't really care. Yeah, there's a whole
Speaker 1: conversation we had about like his motive or lack thereof,
Speaker 1: it's wild. His I think his motive is that he's horny,
Speaker 1: Like here's a bit, yeah, which I mean, I've had
Speaker 1: a horny motive in my day, but not sure, you know,
Speaker 1: not to this extent doesn't drive you to murder. And
Speaker 1: I've got a personality unlike Walter, So it's interesting when
Speaker 1: I have a horny motive. Yeah right, um okay, So
Speaker 1: where did we leave off? Um? I like when he
Speaker 1: goes bowling on the way home, I was like, that
Speaker 1: is that is again like just a creepy, bizarre thing
Speaker 1: to do, Like I think I gotta blow some steam out. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's character development, Yeah, he likes. I also wondered if
Speaker 1: that was a euphemism for something like if that was
Speaker 1: understood that if you know, if you go bowling after work.
Speaker 1: It's really like, did he go to a bar and
Speaker 1: get king, I don't know, you have a beer and
Speaker 1: and uh and go bowling alone? Yeah that's you get
Speaker 1: drunk at your house and jerk off right. Um okay.
Speaker 1: So he's kind of having conflicting thoughts because he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't wanna, you know, be involved with her, but
Speaker 1: she's so hot, so I don't know. And then she
Speaker 1: pays him a visit and basically confirms that his suspicions
Speaker 1: were correct about her wanting to have her husband killed,
Speaker 1: and she reveals that it's because her husband is abusive
Speaker 1: toward her. Walter and Phyllis kiss. Then Walter is like,
Speaker 1: you know, you probably won't get away with this, but
Speaker 1: with my help and know how as an insurance guy,
Speaker 1: maybe you will get away with it. So then they
Speaker 1: start to scheme. First, they need to trick Mr Dietrichson
Speaker 1: into signing the policy, and they need a witness, which
Speaker 1: ends up being Dietrichson's daughter from his first marriage, Lola,
Speaker 1: So he signs the policy. Then Walter's like, oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, if we do a double indemnity, which is
Speaker 1: when and then we go the title, which is when
Speaker 1: the insurance pays out double on certain accidents. For example,
Speaker 1: if someone is killed on a train, in which case
Speaker 1: for this policy, they would stand to make one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in the event of Mr Dietrichson's death. So they're like,
Speaker 1: let's cash in on that, which is like a bajillion
Speaker 1: dollars in money, right, yes, So they arrange for Mr
Speaker 1: Dietrichson to take a train on his upcoming trip to
Speaker 1: Palo Alto. But before that happens, Mr Dietrichson falls and
Speaker 1: breaks his leg and calls off the trip. So Phillis
Speaker 1: is freaking out, but Walter's like, it's cool, we just
Speaker 1: got to be patient. And then also Walter and Phillis
Speaker 1: are having an affair throughout this whole thing, and he
Speaker 1: keeps calling her baby in its growth. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: you know that they're in love because they kissed two
Speaker 1: times and he calls her baby one million times, And
Speaker 1: that's that's love. That's how love works. Yes, So Walter
Speaker 1: tries to take his mind off the whole thing. A
Speaker 1: week or so passes, and then one day he gets
Speaker 1: a call from Phillis saying that her husband is taking
Speaker 1: the train that night. So this is their chance. Another
Speaker 1: thing that I just I thought was like bizarre and
Speaker 1: finding when I was reading about the just the way
Speaker 1: that this movie was written, because Raymond Chandler was a
Speaker 1: co writer on this, was that he, like I guess,
Speaker 1: he spent a lot of time in l A trying
Speaker 1: to like get a feel for like this this movie,
Speaker 1: a lot of the moments feel like that as an
Speaker 1: l sketch where they can't stop talking about traffic and intersections,
Speaker 1: because there's so many times where the characters are so
Speaker 1: specific about like what street in l A they're going
Speaker 1: to to, like go roller skating, or it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to Formosa and Santa Monica that blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah and her houses on those fields boulevard. I
Speaker 1: was like, this is not That's not what that looks like.
Speaker 1: It's like I was like, did it look like that?
Speaker 1: But yeah, it is very like this is l A,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't like I wouldn't put it in an
Speaker 1: l A category of like if you want to watch
Speaker 1: movies about l A, because it didn't feel like l
Speaker 1: A in any way other than the names of streets.
Speaker 1: I just thought it was funny that they like felt
Speaker 1: that it als like a self conscious reflects to be like,
Speaker 1: we're definitely here and we know the names of the
Speaker 1: streets too. Okay, So that night, Walter does a bunch
Speaker 1: of things to establish his alibi. Then Walter kills Mr
Speaker 1: Dietrichson as Phillis drives him to the train station, and
Speaker 1: then Walter gets on the train pretending to be Mr
Speaker 1: Dietrichson and jumps off the train and fakes the accident,
Speaker 1: and then they put Mr Dietrichson's dead body on the tracks,
Speaker 1: and it seems like everything went according to plan, but
Speaker 1: Walter can't help but feel something's wrong or they like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's going to be found out or something.
Speaker 1: In the days that follow, the police find Mr Dietrichson's body.
Speaker 1: They rule it an accidental death. But then Walter's boss,
Speaker 1: whose name is Edward Norton by the way, um I
Speaker 1: also was like he's pissed that the company is going
Speaker 1: to have to pay out all the money on Dietrichson's policy,
Speaker 1: and he's certain the death was not an accident. He
Speaker 1: thinks it was a suicide. So he calls in Phyllis,
Speaker 1: who says like, that's ridiculous. My husband didn't die by suicide.
Speaker 1: And Keys, who again is a skeptic, believes that the
Speaker 1: death was an accident at first, so it looks like
Speaker 1: Walter and Phyllis are going to get the one thousand
Speaker 1: dollar pay out. But then Keys is like, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: If Mr Dietrichson knew he had accident insurance, why didn't
Speaker 1: he do anything when he broke his leg? So then
Speaker 1: Keys gets to thinking the whole thing was a set up. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Phillis and Walter are freaking out. The whole situation is
Speaker 1: tearing their relationship apart. Then the daughter Lola pays Walter
Speaker 1: visit and tells him that she suspects Phillis murdered her
Speaker 1: mother several years back. I like Lola. She's a smart cookie.
Speaker 1: People gotta take Lola more seriously. Oh my god, the
Speaker 1: amount that she gets gas lit by Walter in this movie,
Speaker 1: and then he starts dating her basically to distract her.
Speaker 1: I know, is it ever stated how old she is?
Speaker 1: I feel it's heavily applied that she is a teenager,
Speaker 1: Like she's in school, so she's going roller skating, she
Speaker 1: needs permission from her dad to go places. I was
Speaker 1: really curious about this, so I found the screenplay that
Speaker 1: was written in the forties to see if it's said.
Speaker 1: And it does say how old she is. She is
Speaker 1: nineteen according to the screenplay. That's convenient. I guess that is.
Speaker 1: I loving creepy movies where they're like, Hi, I'm eighteen,
Speaker 1: so this creepy thing that's about to happen is totally legal.
Speaker 1: And then she turns to the camera she's like, I'm eighteen.
Speaker 1: Recently and like you're just like, oh my god, um,
Speaker 1: that is interesting that that they felt the need to specify.
Speaker 1: And by interesting, I mean we aired right. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: either way, he I meat, whatever there's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: still creepy because they start dating and he's thirty five
Speaker 1: and she's nineteen, and and it's under false pretenses, like
Speaker 1: there's so much about it, and there's this whole other
Speaker 1: boyfriend to Zaketty right is in the is in the
Speaker 1: works here, who's not looking particularly in nineteen years to me.
Speaker 1: And also speaking of like male toxic behaviors. When we
Speaker 1: meet Zaketty, he is just like, who's this guy? You
Speaker 1: can't when you're with me. You can't be with this guy.
Speaker 1: He can't know about me, I like. And it was
Speaker 1: just like really aggressive and she's like no, no, baby,
Speaker 1: I love you, and you're like I know, like you
Speaker 1: just worry for this poor girl and she's been through
Speaker 1: so much and like the it did make me laugh
Speaker 1: when the Zaketty guy was like, I don't have friends
Speaker 1: and like, well we can see why. Y. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: you're a little abrasive, right, Yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean that when he starts dating her. I was like,
Speaker 1: this can't be happening, and like we've had age gap
Speaker 1: conversations on the show before. I don't think we need
Speaker 1: to get into it today, but like this one, there's
Speaker 1: a pretty obvious uh no, thank you. Right, So Lola
Speaker 1: thinks that Phillis killed her father now too, so Walter
Speaker 1: is like gaslighting her and distracting her so that she
Speaker 1: doesn't tell anyone else about it. Keys, meanwhile, is piecing
Speaker 1: things together more and more. Basically, he has the whole
Speaker 1: crime figured out, except for who pulled it off. He
Speaker 1: doesn't yet know that it was Walter, and because Keys
Speaker 1: is like getting so close to the truth, Walter wants
Speaker 1: to distance himself from Phillis, especially because he also continues
Speaker 1: to see Lola, and especially because he finds out that
Speaker 1: Phillis has been having an affair with Lola's former boyfriend,
Speaker 1: Nino's a Ketty, so he does have a friend he right,
Speaker 1: So then Walter goes to confront phil this. She shoots him,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't die right away, and he gets the
Speaker 1: gun and shoots her and kills her, and then he
Speaker 1: goes to his office and starts the confession that we
Speaker 1: saw him recording at the beginning, except Keys comes in
Speaker 1: and overhears so Walter tries to leave. He wants to
Speaker 1: escape across the border, but he dies from his gunshot
Speaker 1: wound before he can even get out of the building.
Speaker 1: And that's how the movie ends. So let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then we will come back to discuss
Speaker 1: and we're back, Okay, Can we talk about the Fatales
Speaker 1: just for a minute? Oh yeah, yes please. So I
Speaker 1: dragged Caitlin out to watch Batman Returns, the best movie
Speaker 1: that's ever been made recently, And when I left the movie,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about how my feminist analysis has become
Speaker 1: much more nuanced and more open to things like Catwoman. Um,
Speaker 1: whereas I, like ten years ago, I would have been
Speaker 1: like this sexist piece of ship Da da da da da. Right,
Speaker 1: So I was thinking about this with fem fay twels
Speaker 1: because like on the surface, and maybe not the surface,
Speaker 1: but this is kind of what I wanted to chat
Speaker 1: with you about, is like they seem incredibly sexist representations, right,
Speaker 1: And Jamie, you started us talking about like films and
Speaker 1: and like narrative media often bring out these anxieties that
Speaker 1: are coming around at the times that they're they're being created,
Speaker 1: and so you know, like it's exhausting to be like
Speaker 1: this manipulative woman who's just trying to get money and
Speaker 1: kill her husband and like a lot of fem fay twels,
Speaker 1: is that kind of like women are sneaky and duplicitous
Speaker 1: and they use their sexual whiles to like get men
Speaker 1: to do things for them. Right, Is there like in
Speaker 1: your minds, is there any nuance to this? Is there
Speaker 1: any way in which that is like salvageable as not
Speaker 1: fucked up? I think that it's like it depends. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't have like I don't know how
Speaker 1: you feel it, but I don't have like a hard
Speaker 1: answer to that. I think that the more context I
Speaker 1: had for why these characters were so popular when they
Speaker 1: were so popular, um kind of clarified how I felt
Speaker 1: about it, because I do think it's like, ultimately it
Speaker 1: is a I think it's like the kind of misogynist
Speaker 1: trope that is easily reclaimable, but it was not intended
Speaker 1: to be reclaimable. It's like very much a clear like
Speaker 1: the most heterosexual white dudes in the world are writing
Speaker 1: this at a time where women were, I guess, unusually
Speaker 1: able to access money and capital and power during World
Speaker 1: War two, and so I feel like it's it's just
Speaker 1: like calcifying that anxiety and selling it back to men
Speaker 1: who are feeling the same way. I do think that
Speaker 1: there is an angle to reclaim the fim fatale that
Speaker 1: has been kind of reclaimed in some neo noir movies
Speaker 1: because and I think, like, I didn't remember this particular
Speaker 1: detail about this movie, but the fact that Phillis, you know,
Speaker 1: they include the detail that Phillis is being abused by
Speaker 1: her husband, and so I feel like there's an in
Speaker 1: right there for like that, well, we got to get revenge,
Speaker 1: Like but that's the thing is she's so manipulative that
Speaker 1: why would you believe that I had that? I thought
Speaker 1: too where I was like, is that part of Because
Speaker 1: so in addition to like using her sexual wiles and
Speaker 1: you know, her feminine wiles and her sexuality and exploiting
Speaker 1: that to deceive and seduce men, the fem fatale archetype
Speaker 1: also is just like flat out lying and using deceit
Speaker 1: to get what she wants. And I it did occur
Speaker 1: to me, like is that the case, Like when she
Speaker 1: reveals that her husband is abusive, is that actually true,
Speaker 1: which very well could be the case. But because we
Speaker 1: don't see it on screen, we don't see the abuse.
Speaker 1: It does make you wonder like is that part of
Speaker 1: her deceit? We don't really know for sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that I believed it. Maybe I'm a Walter too,
Speaker 1: but I believed it because you saw all of the
Speaker 1: other behaviors that she was describing in that conversation. You
Speaker 1: did see him like he was drinking a lot during
Speaker 1: the day, He was dismissive of her, he was belligerent
Speaker 1: towards her, he was dismissive of his daughter. And so
Speaker 1: because that was sort of where I was going where
Speaker 1: I was like, well, you it seems like you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like she was like, he's this awful piece
Speaker 1: of ship. And then you met this very sweet husband
Speaker 1: who was very in love with her, Like it did
Speaker 1: seem like he was I mean, didn't deserve to be
Speaker 1: thrown off a train, maybe, but but I don't know.
Speaker 1: That was where I saw the end for this was
Speaker 1: buying into the story of this woman who is unhappy
Speaker 1: with her wife getting revenge, which of course like changes
Speaker 1: when you find out that she also killed his wife,
Speaker 1: which is. So that's where for me, it's like it
Speaker 1: kind of falls apart where it's like this witchy stereotype
Speaker 1: where you have no what like why why why does
Speaker 1: she start killing people? What is the motivation? What does
Speaker 1: she get out of it? Who is she like? What
Speaker 1: is her background? And all of these things I feel
Speaker 1: like would make her a much more accessible character, but
Speaker 1: it feels like that information is withheld from you by
Speaker 1: the writers intentionally, So you're just like, this woman is
Speaker 1: evil in a in a vacuum. We don't trust her,
Speaker 1: and she's using sexuality to get what she wants. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm very conflicted about it. Um same, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's I do I do understand why them fatale
Speaker 1: trope has been reclaimed and why it hasn't like disappeared,
Speaker 1: because it's also like I feel like in in the nineties,
Speaker 1: this is like a kind of an unusual role where
Speaker 1: it's an active female character right that she is involved,
Speaker 1: like so deeply involved in the plot, and she moved
Speaker 1: things forward. Everything is her idea for the most part,
Speaker 1: and it's not like there were a lot of movies
Speaker 1: at this time where you could just you could see
Speaker 1: a woman do anything except be mommy or wife. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fim fatale character, by nature of the narrative that's
Speaker 1: being told, usually means that that character has way more
Speaker 1: agency than a lot of female characters that we've seen
Speaker 1: in like cinema or literature before or since, like, and
Speaker 1: then you can make the argument that it's representation on
Speaker 1: screen of like a sexually liberated woman and a woman
Speaker 1: that has sexual autonomy over her own evil to be
Speaker 1: sexually And that's that's always where I diverged from a
Speaker 1: lot of the feminist analysis of this stuff, because I
Speaker 1: was like, but is it, like if she's evil and
Speaker 1: manipulative and we're supposed to think of her like as
Speaker 1: a bad you know, like as a bad person and
Speaker 1: because women are evil, just because she has like is
Speaker 1: in tune with her sexuality. I don't think that that's
Speaker 1: a pro for us as a movement, right as like
Speaker 1: feminisms you know, in general. But I think that there
Speaker 1: has been a push in feminist film theory specifically to
Speaker 1: try and kind of wedge in this like sort of
Speaker 1: positive angle on some of these films that I just
Speaker 1: don't think works. Like, I don't think that analysis really
Speaker 1: right because when things that we are hoping to see
Speaker 1: such as like women having autonomy over their own sexuality
Speaker 1: when that is being vilified. Obviously that's not it's not
Speaker 1: a plus for us. And I definitely don't think it's
Speaker 1: like a movement pushing trope at all. I just understand
Speaker 1: why people I feel like it almost maybe I'm off here,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it kind of the impulse to
Speaker 1: reclaim a sexually liberated woman who's clearly enjoying being evil,
Speaker 1: It like almost scratches the same edge of reclaiming queer
Speaker 1: coded Disney villains where you're like, Okay, this was done
Speaker 1: with like not a kind intention to the community, Like
Speaker 1: this is like it's clearly vilifying this care but they're
Speaker 1: having so much fun and it's like they're so active
Speaker 1: that and and also like I feel like it's very
Speaker 1: important that it's like and this was the most you
Speaker 1: could get at this time. I think that that has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with it as well. Yeah, where
Speaker 1: like there just weren't options. Yeah, I want to just
Speaker 1: reiterate and agree with you on that of like, marginalized
Speaker 1: folks have been desperate for representation at all, and we
Speaker 1: take the scraps we can get right, and we and
Speaker 1: we left read, and we queer code, and we do
Speaker 1: all kinds of things to feel seen and and recognized
Speaker 1: in a medium in entertainment in general. Um, so yes,
Speaker 1: but also like, but also it's a problem. Um related
Speaker 1: to this is I think there's also the other piece
Speaker 1: of this is around complexity and allowing marginalized characters to
Speaker 1: be evil or to be messy, or to be complicated,
Speaker 1: because historically we don't we don't really have that right
Speaker 1: that you like, queer folks are always villainized and black
Speaker 1: folks always die, and you know, like we have all
Speaker 1: these tropes that don't come out of nothing. That there
Speaker 1: is something to be said about the fact that, like, yes,
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool to be able to see to
Speaker 1: see women in a character that is more complex than
Speaker 1: the housewife or the love interest, but it's still detrimental, right,
Speaker 1: And so holding those two truths in some way, I
Speaker 1: think is what makes these conversations so rich and and interesting, right,
Speaker 1: I totally agree, because this character could have been made
Speaker 1: to be more complicated in a way that we as
Speaker 1: the audience could have conflicting feelings about, Like, yes, I
Speaker 1: understand her motive for wanting to get rid of her husband,
Speaker 1: and I see where she's coming from, Like I would
Speaker 1: identify with that also, But you know, murder also isn't good.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. But the movie and and many
Speaker 1: of these movies just paint the fum fatal character in
Speaker 1: these very broad strokes of like, well, no, her her
Speaker 1: motivations aren't complicated, her backstory isn't complicated. She wants to steal,
Speaker 1: she wants to cheat, she wants to She's evil for
Speaker 1: the sake of being evil. And to me, it comes
Speaker 1: back to intent as far as like the people who
Speaker 1: were writing these characters, because you know, the fem fatale
Speaker 1: character in film noir specifically, because this archetype has existed
Speaker 1: in literature for centuries, right, right, but for film no
Speaker 1: war specifically, Like you said, Jamie, it was in response
Speaker 1: to like men's anxieties over you know, empowered women and
Speaker 1: sexually liberated women like the Flappers of the twenties, and
Speaker 1: how men felt threatened by that voting now right, And
Speaker 1: because in a patriarchal structure that is designed to disempower
Speaker 1: women in all capacities of their life, including their sexuality,
Speaker 1: a sexually empowered woman with agency and autonomy is going
Speaker 1: to be a threat to a lot of individual men
Speaker 1: and a threat to the larger structure. So because because
Speaker 1: that's the reason that film fatales were written that way,
Speaker 1: and these like broad strokes of like they're evil because
Speaker 1: women are scary and I'm I feel threatened by them.
Speaker 1: And also contextually to remember the early like the turn
Speaker 1: of the century was like there was a he like one.
Speaker 1: There was the fight for women's right to vote, which
Speaker 1: obviously complicated and I don't want to erase the racism
Speaker 1: and everything around that um, but also there was a
Speaker 1: huge like huge battle for birth control and like reproductive
Speaker 1: rights was happening at the time, and there was a
Speaker 1: huge attempt to squash it. It's I mean, it's so
Speaker 1: exactly what's happening right now. It's like nothing has changed.
Speaker 1: But you had around that time, well the postman ster guy,
Speaker 1: the guy that is really famous guy in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds who decided to make it illegal to mail
Speaker 1: any anything in the mail that is like sexual in nature,
Speaker 1: so like not even sex toys or birth control, but
Speaker 1: also like love letters and photos and all of that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. I didn't know that, Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: there is a whole like through legal means, a pushback
Speaker 1: against the rising tide of women's sexuality and sexual ownership
Speaker 1: and you know, rights to birth control and all of
Speaker 1: that that's happening. So that is also informing some of
Speaker 1: what I think we're seeing in the film Fatale as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. That's really interesting. I didn't. I wasn't.
Speaker 1: That is such a fuck up thing to do. Holy
Speaker 1: sh it, it isn't. Another one of the episodes coming
Speaker 1: into and I'm like, what is this guy's fucking name.
Speaker 1: I'm totally like, yeah, I don't know. Um, Jamie, you
Speaker 1: started to touch on something as far as like Walter's
Speaker 1: character goes and how his motive is so flimsy, and
Speaker 1: to me, like he's saying that that was like written intentionally,
Speaker 1: which I also find confusing, maybe in an effort to
Speaker 1: like just lean into the idea that, oh, women are
Speaker 1: so scary and be aware of any woman who is
Speaker 1: sexually liberated because she's going to get you and she's
Speaker 1: gonna kill you. I wonder if Walter's character was written
Speaker 1: the way that it was to just further emphasize that,
Speaker 1: because again, he doesn't seem to have much of a
Speaker 1: motive to commit murder. It just seems that he's kind
Speaker 1: of like under the spell of this woman and her
Speaker 1: quote Feminine Wiles, where you know, it's just like this
Speaker 1: idea that don't be a weak man. Weak men are
Speaker 1: tempted by these temptresses and you'll succumb to the temptation,
Speaker 1: which like, yeah, Further is the argument that she's literally
Speaker 1: like a variation on a witch right and like has
Speaker 1: her anklet has him like wouldn't normally do. I was
Speaker 1: also reading that they, I don't know, just a few
Speaker 1: things were done in this movie intentionally that I guess
Speaker 1: I just assumed we're not done intentionally, including her bad wig.
Speaker 1: They're like, we chose a bad Billy Wilder said that
Speaker 1: they chose a bad wig on purpose to underscore what
Speaker 1: a sleazy phony she was, and like, I know, it's
Speaker 1: like measures were taken to really make you hate Phyllis,
Speaker 1: which I think is fun because I watch it and
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't hate her, And I wonder how
Speaker 1: if there were women in the audience at this movie,
Speaker 1: because women have always been the majority movie goers throughout history,
Speaker 1: and I wonder if there were women in the audience
Speaker 1: at this movie that we're like good for her, you know, right, right,
Speaker 1: you know, but yeah, Walter, I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: it is kind of inherent to the noir genre in
Speaker 1: a way that's kind of frustrating, And I feel like
Speaker 1: some neo noir's have course corrected this because it doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be this way. But like all of the
Speaker 1: characters are kind of mysterious, or that's what you're told.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, everyone's kind of mysterious. You don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on with anybody, you can't trust anybody. But
Speaker 1: then what you lose there is like you don't know
Speaker 1: anything about anybody. So it's really hard to get attached
Speaker 1: to any particular character because you're like, well, I guess
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens, but I don't know, like what
Speaker 1: this person's deal is. I would have loved to understand
Speaker 1: what drove Phyllis to kill his wife. I like that
Speaker 1: is like such an important piece of context that would
Speaker 1: have drawn me into that character's story so much more.
Speaker 1: But they're just like, well, she's evil, so of course
Speaker 1: she would do this. Yeah, I'm interested in So, like,
Speaker 1: what we've been saying is that neither of them have
Speaker 1: very good character development at least to the standards that
Speaker 1: we would expect of today. And I think that there
Speaker 1: is such a reliance on stereotypes of the time. So,
Speaker 1: like this guy nef Right, the actor who plays him,
Speaker 1: Fred McMurray, like we're like, oh, you're fucking awful and
Speaker 1: terrible and I hate you. But he's probably coming in
Speaker 1: with all of this like goodwill from the audience that
Speaker 1: makes them like him more than we have any context for, right. So,
Speaker 1: and I know we've covered this, but I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: about the fact that, like there's no character development in
Speaker 1: this whole fucking movie at all for anybody, right, Like,
Speaker 1: nobody really you know, you don't really get their motivations.
Speaker 1: You only get them because of the plot, right, like
Speaker 1: the like moment to moment plot of it all, and
Speaker 1: and and so what are we bringing as the audience
Speaker 1: to attach to that? Also, I say this as someone
Speaker 1: who's like obsessed with character development, and if you don't
Speaker 1: fucking have it in your movie, I'm just like, get
Speaker 1: the funk out of here, because like, and I do
Speaker 1: this all the time, and important I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: understand why these people love each other. I have no
Speaker 1: you did not give me a reason for it, right,
Speaker 1: And so in the same way in this I feel
Speaker 1: like it didn't matter because like what an interesting concept,
Speaker 1: this is? What a why like what interesting lighting choice
Speaker 1: is were made? And what you know, all of that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that would suck at audience in at
Speaker 1: the time. But why do we still hold onto this
Speaker 1: as the quintessential epic? You know, like you both talked
Speaker 1: about how you watched it several times in film school,
Speaker 1: how it's like the movie and like this is the
Speaker 1: thing that we're teaching young filmmakers is really really important, right?
Speaker 1: You know it also and this is something we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the podcast too, But it's a matter of
Speaker 1: like who is designing these curriculums in film schools. Who
Speaker 1: is curating the lists, like you know, like the best
Speaker 1: movies of all time lists that this movie is on,
Speaker 1: like every fucking one of Like who are it's like
Speaker 1: members of the academy, like all of that. Who are
Speaker 1: the critics historically? Who have you know, hailed movies like this?
Speaker 1: It's again historically been siss white men with like curriculum too.
Speaker 1: I feel like there is such a like copy paste
Speaker 1: effect where it's like if if and this varies, but
Speaker 1: like if professors were paid, you know, more for their
Speaker 1: labor and had time to put together their own curriculum
Speaker 1: and actually like watch ship and and like build their
Speaker 1: own stuff, I feel like you wouldn't. You wouldn't have
Speaker 1: every single college freshman in a film program watching Double Indemnity.
Speaker 1: But it's just like, oh, yeah, I guess this is
Speaker 1: a movie you watched during the noir section, and so
Speaker 1: every kid being extorted for money by this big e. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I wish I couldn't gone to college waste of time.
Speaker 1: It's also self fulfilling, right, because you were taught that
Speaker 1: this was really important. Therefore you're going to teach that
Speaker 1: it's really important, right. And I also was thinking about
Speaker 1: how we often look at film, um and media in general,
Speaker 1: music whatever, from time periods as representative of the time,
Speaker 1: but they're really not, Like this is such a good
Speaker 1: example of that where not sorry, I'm gonna temper that
Speaker 1: a little bit. Whereas like film up until very recently
Speaker 1: was not something you could just fucking go do, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's not something that you could us like film
Speaker 1: on your phone and make movies and be like I
Speaker 1: have a story to tell and I want to tell it,
Speaker 1: so we're not getting we don't have the alternative perspectives
Speaker 1: of in film media, specifically of that time period, of
Speaker 1: all the women who are like fuck yeah, we're like
Speaker 1: taking over and like doing all of this stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: We're only getting the impressions of the dominant powerful in
Speaker 1: the moment, right, right. And I think that I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking about this now as we're talking, But like how
Speaker 1: that makes us think that this is what the past was, right?
Speaker 1: We erase all of the histories of everything else and
Speaker 1: every other culture and every other like subculture and like
Speaker 1: groups and that aren't represented in what they were doing.
Speaker 1: And it makes us in a lot of ways not
Speaker 1: understand the history of activism, not understand the history of uprising,
Speaker 1: how change actually happens, because we only have these movies
Speaker 1: to tell us what it was like. But not only
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean, Like right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's like movies like this that like are the
Speaker 1: status quo, they maintain the status quo, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: everything else just gets pushed to the side and a
Speaker 1: race and then we don't learn about them unless we're
Speaker 1: like we take it upon ourselves to like dig and
Speaker 1: find this stuff. I think that that's that's a that's
Speaker 1: an excellent transition into the case that this that Double
Speaker 1: Indemnity the book was based on, which I did a
Speaker 1: little bit of light googling on and found it to
Speaker 1: be pretty interesting. I feel like we actually had like
Speaker 1: a recent ish conversation about this when we did Chicago.
Speaker 1: It's kind of dealing with the same era, so and
Speaker 1: and just kind of like how the adapt like when
Speaker 1: men are adapting the ideas of men are adapting the
Speaker 1: ideas of men. It's just this like funked up game
Speaker 1: of telephone that ends up with like I have to
Speaker 1: kill someone because she's got a sexy little anklet. And
Speaker 1: then it's like, well, let's trace this back to the
Speaker 1: source of what was actually happening. Um. So this is
Speaker 1: a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler. There's a
Speaker 1: bunch of interesting drama that's not relevant to this show
Speaker 1: that I just enjoyed reading about. So it's a screenplay
Speaker 1: by them based on a novel called Double Indemnity by
Speaker 1: an author named James mc kane who wrote that book
Speaker 1: when he was a reporter writing about a double indemnity
Speaker 1: case that he attended as a reporter, and and so
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, well what was that crime? And
Speaker 1: was James Caine. My my little hunch was that James
Speaker 1: Caine made it sexy for no reason, and that there
Speaker 1: was probably something going on. Jimmie, did you have a hunch?
Speaker 1: Did you have a do you have a little man
Speaker 1: living inside you? That tells I have a little man?
Speaker 1: And I took up a little magnifying glass and said,
Speaker 1: let's go to Wikipedia dot org and see what's going
Speaker 1: on here. And so that's what I did. Um. So
Speaker 1: it's a case of a woman named Ruth Snyder from
Speaker 1: the late twenties who did do the double indemnity thing
Speaker 1: and and killed her husband, Albert Snyder, and went to jail.
Speaker 1: It's also a case of how brutalizing marginalized people is
Speaker 1: always going to get a lot of press attention and
Speaker 1: really exploitative press attention, because she was eventually killed in
Speaker 1: the electric chair, and they published the photo of her
Speaker 1: being executed on the front page of the newspaper and
Speaker 1: it was one of the most famous pictures of the
Speaker 1: nine twenties. So it was absolutely horrific. The reason she
Speaker 1: committed the crime was not because she was a witch
Speaker 1: or uh sexy little anglet have her um it was
Speaker 1: because of and this actually, I guess I I feel
Speaker 1: darkly vindicated, even though I don't know what you know,
Speaker 1: what the writers of the movie thought. But her husband
Speaker 1: was very physically abusive and emotionally abusive, and he abused
Speaker 1: her because she had a daughter instead of a son, which, um,
Speaker 1: gender is a construct and no one has fucking control
Speaker 1: over that. He had like pictures of his ex fiance
Speaker 1: hanging up around their house and refused to take them down.
Speaker 1: Like it just sounded like an extremely emotionally and physically volatile,
Speaker 1: abusive relationship. And so eventually she she doubled indemnity did
Speaker 1: and she and she killed the motherfucker. And and I
Speaker 1: just thought that that was such a It's it's frustrating,
Speaker 1: and I think it's interesting that you can take a
Speaker 1: story that tragic and upsetting and turned it into well,
Speaker 1: of course she was evil, and we can't even take
Speaker 1: her at her word that her husband was being abusive
Speaker 1: because she can't be trusted and she's you know, like,
Speaker 1: you know what if it is based on that, I
Speaker 1: bet you the her husband abusing her is actually real
Speaker 1: in the movie. But they didn't do any due diligence
Speaker 1: of making that established. Right, Yeah, you you sort of
Speaker 1: like brushed upon this. But this idea of sensationalizing marginalized
Speaker 1: as grief and bodies and um. And I think that
Speaker 1: that's a really critical piece of all of this is
Speaker 1: that like, well, women are dainty and non violent and
Speaker 1: don't do these things, and therefore, holy shit, they did
Speaker 1: this thing. Isn't that like sensational and cool and interesting
Speaker 1: and newsworthy? Right? And that is also gender essentialism, right,
Speaker 1: we're talking about um, you know, like all humans are
Speaker 1: capable of all things, right, we all have the same
Speaker 1: I mean not all, you know what I mean generally speaking,
Speaker 1: But because patriarchy says that women aren't these things, it's
Speaker 1: really interesting if we imagine women to be all of
Speaker 1: these you know things in terms of violent and murderous
Speaker 1: and whatever what have you, not not to erase the
Speaker 1: fact that there is already patriarchy dictating that women are
Speaker 1: manipulative and conniving and all of that. But you know
Speaker 1: that it's just another piece of how why I think
Speaker 1: these these stories get sensational and they still do. They
Speaker 1: still do, Like we love women as victims, we love
Speaker 1: like rutalized, like true crime. You know, we're not even
Speaker 1: going to get into the nightmare that is true crime currently,
Speaker 1: and we love a female villain because it seems it
Speaker 1: still seems like something outside of the norm, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think writers justify continuing to like use the tropes
Speaker 1: because it's like, well, it's interesting, it's it's cinematic, it's
Speaker 1: these are interesting characters. It also makes you, it makes
Speaker 1: me wonder, at least how much more sexualized and sinister
Speaker 1: fem fake tale characters in film noir would have been
Speaker 1: during this era if it weren't for the restrictions of
Speaker 1: the production, Like, how much like how much worse could
Speaker 1: it be? Right? Yeah, I mean, but the answer is
Speaker 1: the women in the nineties like action heroes, female nineties
Speaker 1: action heroes. Right. I've been rewatching all the Terminator movies
Speaker 1: because we're doing an episode on the Terminator franchise at
Speaker 1: Feminist Frequency Radio you can check out on my podcast.
Speaker 1: And you know, Terminator three had a female terminator and
Speaker 1: like there's a scene where she sees a billboard with
Speaker 1: a woman with larger breasts, so then they like pant
Speaker 1: to her boobs and she makes them bigger, so she
Speaker 1: can like get so she can manipulate the cop into
Speaker 1: letting her go when she was speeding, and you're just like, one,
Speaker 1: this is such a product of its time. But that's
Speaker 1: what this would have been. It would have been some
Speaker 1: kind of equivalent to the sexy, you know, hyper sexualized
Speaker 1: using feminine wiles to get what you want, right, that's true,
Speaker 1: or like basic instinct. Yeah, where like Sharon Stone's just
Speaker 1: like here's my vagina. Now You'll never you won't even
Speaker 1: notice that I'm a murderer yea. And again it's like
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me historically that the trope makes that
Speaker 1: big comeback in the nineties because it's like a similar
Speaker 1: era of feminist backlash. And so it's like that is
Speaker 1: when this trope pop, says, when women's rights are being
Speaker 1: actively set back, So you know, look out for that.
Speaker 1: If a FM fatale starts to pop, guess what, we're
Speaker 1: about to lose some rights, which we're doing anyways, that
Speaker 1: whole like mid nineties to time period was all the
Speaker 1: like ironic sexism and ironic racism time period. So it
Speaker 1: was part of the backlash of like coming off of
Speaker 1: the eighties the conservative family values messaging that was being
Speaker 1: pushed by the conservative establishment, and then you had all
Speaker 1: of this like but we're beyond all, We're beyond sexism.
Speaker 1: So now you get those Carl's Jr. Commercials where women
Speaker 1: are like eating the burgers and like come is running
Speaker 1: down their faces and all that ship it all that
Speaker 1: all comes out of that moment, and that's funny. Remember this,
Speaker 1: You're like, I don't remember that. Like, so I made
Speaker 1: a really really early Phonus frequency video. I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: embarrassing as fun now about ironic sexism and how like
Speaker 1: South Park is this and so it all that was
Speaker 1: when we got all of those female act heroes that like,
Speaker 1: you know, the reboot of Charlie's Angels and um, you know,
Speaker 1: like all of that stuff where you're it's they're so
Speaker 1: cringe e and hard to watch. But it was women's empowerment,
Speaker 1: the Spice Girls and all that ship you know, Oh yeah, feism, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is I'm so glad. I was really hoping that
Speaker 1: this would be the way that this episode would go.
Speaker 1: When we would just get into it, I'm very excited.
Speaker 1: I just feel like this movie has more for us
Speaker 1: to talk about in terms of the relevance of what
Speaker 1: this movie means to us today than the like actual
Speaker 1: content of this movie and versus what's happening. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally agree, and I just want to the last
Speaker 1: thing I had about them fatals. I just like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just such interesting timing. But like how
Speaker 1: this trope of just like an empowered woman as a
Speaker 1: dangerous woman, We've had so many conversations about that, and
Speaker 1: how it easily translates to like so many which characters,
Speaker 1: even like recent Witch characters. It's just like coding a
Speaker 1: woman as competent and therefore evil and therefore unlovable and
Speaker 1: therefore like not the protagonist under any circumstances, which I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean with the fen fatal, I mean
Speaker 1: I would argue that I don't. I guess like Walter
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like the protagonist of this movie to me
Speaker 1: because I don't care about him. But maybe that's just personal.
Speaker 1: But anyways, as far as the fetal trope went to
Speaker 1: citly new references earlier, but it goes back to ancient times,
Speaker 1: like we are addicted to uh mothering any marginalized person,
Speaker 1: but in in this trope, specifically women and the only
Speaker 1: like growth in the trope in this era of Hollywood
Speaker 1: is that the fem faetales are more active now they're
Speaker 1: used to be. Like the earliest examples of the fan
Speaker 1: faytal trope are like women who are just being told
Speaker 1: they're evil just because so like you have like your
Speaker 1: Helen of Troyes where they're like, she's so hot that
Speaker 1: we had to have a war about it. Like they're
Speaker 1: completely passive on top of it. So I'm like, I
Speaker 1: guess I prefer an active and fatale. But even so,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just especially with the context of like
Speaker 1: the case that trickles down to this movie, it's just like, well, clearly,
Speaker 1: it just couldn't be more obvious that there should not
Speaker 1: be exclusively men telling this story because if you go
Speaker 1: back to the source, it's so much more complicated and
Speaker 1: and and like having those two or three bits of
Speaker 1: context completely changes the way you would view that character
Speaker 1: or that person Ruth Snyder, who was abused and exploited
Speaker 1: on on the other end of of being abused to
Speaker 1: the point where her corpse was in the fucking newspaper.
Speaker 1: Like that stuff makes me so mad just to call out,
Speaker 1: like women will women women who have who have murdered
Speaker 1: their partners, mostly male partners in self defense or because
Speaker 1: of abusive relationships or what have you, like, are rotting
Speaker 1: in jail like that. It's still not and it's disproportionately
Speaker 1: black and brown women who are incarcerated for it. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's but no, but no. Phyllis was anklet.
Speaker 1: She was evil. She's bad. She just kills everybody for reasons.
Speaker 1: But I love watching Barbara Stanwix, So it's hard. Anyways,
Speaker 1: Can we talk a little bit about Lola? Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about Lola. I don't really know what to make
Speaker 1: of her because we only really, we only get to
Speaker 1: see her in a few brief scenes. We learned that
Speaker 1: she's dating this guy, Nino's a ketty who does a
Speaker 1: piece of work. It's a good character name. I have
Speaker 1: no friend. He's an asshole. She's in love with him.
Speaker 1: We don't learned her age in the movie, but again,
Speaker 1: according to the screenplay, she's nineteen okay. Uh. Then basically
Speaker 1: Walter gaslights her and coerces her into a brief relationship,
Speaker 1: which seems to work because she kind of like magically
Speaker 1: forgets all about her suspicions that her stepmother probably killed
Speaker 1: her father, which she is right about, but because she's
Speaker 1: being manipulated by Walter, the story has her forget about that.
Speaker 1: So I mean that to me, just this just feels
Speaker 1: like another just female character in the movie who's not
Speaker 1: a fem fatale, but who is wildly underwritten and who
Speaker 1: the story has her make some confusing choices, And again, like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to I'm not blaming her for being
Speaker 1: manipulated and coerced by Walter, but a lot of her
Speaker 1: choices and just kind of the way she was characterized
Speaker 1: didn't track for me. And also because we don't learn
Speaker 1: anything about her, I think I kind of like have
Speaker 1: stopped paying attention around this point in the movie, not essentially,
Speaker 1: just in the way that that happens when you're sitting
Speaker 1: at home. And I totally like, I don't think you're wrong,
Speaker 1: but I did not read it as him manipulating Lola.
Speaker 1: I just read it as like creepy, like getting away
Speaker 1: from Phyllis, and like, because all that stuff was revealed
Speaker 1: about Nino, that like he was just moving in that way.
Speaker 1: But now I'm like, oh, that makes so much more
Speaker 1: sense that he was. He literally says and his voice over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like, I couldn't let her tell anyone else
Speaker 1: about suspicions, so I took her to the beach and
Speaker 1: I took her for some French frien. He's like basically saying,
Speaker 1: like I hung out with her to distract her, and
Speaker 1: then it seems like she might have developed a crush.
Speaker 1: It's like like it seems like she develops a crush
Speaker 1: on him, or at very least he is presenting himself
Speaker 1: in a position of authority, and I like he's like
Speaker 1: not just leveraging his age and his gender, he's also
Speaker 1: leveraging his job over her. He's like, well, I'm an
Speaker 1: insurance guy, so that's like he's gas lighting her in
Speaker 1: the grounds of like well I know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: You're just a kid, Like what do you? What do
Speaker 1: you know? Okay? Then, was Nino sleeping with Phyllis or
Speaker 1: was she manipulating him to like to to sort of
Speaker 1: put a button on this whole murder thing. My read
Speaker 1: was that that relationship might have been a bit more
Speaker 1: like mutually consensual, but because Phillis is characterized as this
Speaker 1: like very textbook from Fatale, that she was manipulating him
Speaker 1: and maybe just she was maybe just like setting up
Speaker 1: a few different fall guys so that she wasn't so culpable.
Speaker 1: But that didn't make sense to me, Like her relationship
Speaker 1: with him. I didn't understand why that was happening. Maybe
Speaker 1: we missed something and maybe like listeners are like frothing
Speaker 1: right now, they're like it's so hot, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I sort of was like I just I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess by the end of a noir you just
Speaker 1: have to find out that everybody secretly knew each other
Speaker 1: the whole time or something like. It just felt very
Speaker 1: like genre e I wasn't totally clear in that either.
Speaker 1: But also, if this is the blueprint, Like if this
Speaker 1: movie is the blueprint, then this movie created some funked
Speaker 1: up blueprints. You're like, it's kind of a confusing blueprint.
Speaker 1: But I do I mean, Lola, I feel like there's
Speaker 1: she's definitely underwritten, and it sucks because I feel like
Speaker 1: the early scenes with Lola I was kind of like
Speaker 1: gently encouraged by because, as I said, at the beginning,
Speaker 1: I didn't think there was going to be a second
Speaker 1: woman in the movie. So I was like thrilled and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, There's a also that cutting thing
Speaker 1: where Phillis was like, yeah, and he just loves his
Speaker 1: daughter so much. I was like, Phillis, give it a rest.
Speaker 1: I assumed that they were talking about a child and so,
Speaker 1: but they were talking about a nineteen year old whatever.
Speaker 1: But I do like that Lola. Like when Lola is introduced.
Speaker 1: I liked how her character was introduced. She like pushed
Speaker 1: back and like her dad was like, who are you
Speaker 1: going to see? What are you doing? Blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: like doing kind of the stereotypical controlling father thing, and
Speaker 1: she like lies to his face very calmly. She's like,
Speaker 1: I'm this is what I'm doing. I'm going to this
Speaker 1: intersection and like goodbye. And I was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: like this character. She's fun. Like she's it's I feel
Speaker 1: like it's unusual, especially in for the first interaction you
Speaker 1: see with a female character, for them to stand up
Speaker 1: for themselves in some way. But then it's like that slowly.
Speaker 1: And I also like that she is the person that
Speaker 1: sees through everything that's going on, which makes it more
Speaker 1: disappointing and shitty to see her talked out of what
Speaker 1: she knows is the truth. For the rest of the
Speaker 1: movie and then she disappears. Right, I was rooting for her,
Speaker 1: same justice for Lola, and now she's lost all of
Speaker 1: her parents and now she's a nineteen year old orphan.
Speaker 1: Like but I guess in a way, she's also presented
Speaker 1: as an obstacle for Walter because she starts having suspicions
Speaker 1: and he's got to deal with it. So she's under
Speaker 1: characterized and she's presented as an obstacle the way that
Speaker 1: many women are in movies. Right, wouldn't be so cool
Speaker 1: if she like was the one that solved it, right,
Speaker 1: I was like that, you know, like if they just
Speaker 1: did this like spin at the end where she came
Speaker 1: around and was like, let me tell you, I figured
Speaker 1: it all out, and now I'm going to extore you
Speaker 1: all for something, you know, I would have loved that.
Speaker 1: Or I wish that she had showed up and killed
Speaker 1: Phillis because it's like she and Phillis had such a
Speaker 1: terrible relationship. Phillis literally killed her mother. They didn't want
Speaker 1: to play Chinese checkers together. Like it would have been
Speaker 1: cool if Lola came back at the end and like
Speaker 1: killed them both and then was like all right, Zacchetti
Speaker 1: let's go make you a friend or like whatever. But
Speaker 1: instead the only like you know, bow you're sort of
Speaker 1: given on her thing is like, oh and she'll probably
Speaker 1: get to date this asshole again, because Walter tells Zaketti like, hey,
Speaker 1: call Lola back. She likes you. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh great, what a what a win? I get to
Speaker 1: date a man with no friends again. Also that whole scene,
Speaker 1: I was like, he's gonna know that you did it.
Speaker 1: Like the whole scene. I was like, he pops out
Speaker 1: of the bushes and it's like, go hang out with
Speaker 1: Lola and you're like, Wow, you just outed yourself big time.
Speaker 1: They're so bad at planning. I also don't understand how
Speaker 1: what Nef does to kill Mr Dietrichson. I think he
Speaker 1: strangles him, but like, wouldn't the autopsy show that he
Speaker 1: was strangled and not fell off of a train. So
Speaker 1: like their their plan is just like very I don't know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any sense. Also, Walter's plan to communicate
Speaker 1: with Phyllis, as they're like creating their scheme, is for
Speaker 1: her to go to a shop every day and quote
Speaker 1: be buying things every day at eleven am. And if
Speaker 1: he needs to talk to her that day. He'll just
Speaker 1: like show up when it's convenient for him, because women
Speaker 1: be shopping. She's to go be shopping all the time
Speaker 1: every day, and then he'll be like and he might
Speaker 1: not even show up. Yeah, And also part of this
Speaker 1: is that he's like, we have to go to this
Speaker 1: shop because we can't be seen talking to each other.
Speaker 1: So his idea is to meet in public where people
Speaker 1: can see them talking to each other, but they're like shopping,
Speaker 1: so they're not really talking to each other, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really funny. And also I like those are really
Speaker 1: interesting scenes too, in terms of the sterileness of it
Speaker 1: and like the brightness of those shots and like, you know,
Speaker 1: like we didn't really talk about any of the visuals
Speaker 1: in the movie, but they're you know anyways whatever, right,
Speaker 1: right right. I mean that I feel like that is
Speaker 1: like a large portion of why these movies are still
Speaker 1: well regarded as because they look really fucking cool, like
Speaker 1: they're they're the shadow play and this, and yeah, my
Speaker 1: favorite line in the movie was when Keys said Papa
Speaker 1: has it all figured out. I jumped in my seat.
Speaker 1: I was like, this guy is weird. I like, speaking
Speaker 1: of Keys, the one part of the movie that I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, this isn't the worst thing I've ever
Speaker 1: seen is where uh, I think once, maybe even twice,
Speaker 1: Walter tells Keys, which is a colleague of his, but
Speaker 1: they're also like close friends. Walter tells Keys that he
Speaker 1: loves him, and just like a very like we have
Speaker 1: a close relationship, and it's we're not led to believe
Speaker 1: that it's anything more than platonic, but like, I just
Speaker 1: really enjoyed seeing like a man tell another man that
Speaker 1: he loves him, because that's not something you see very often,
Speaker 1: and certainly not in this era, where you know, men
Speaker 1: are conditioned to think that like even a platonic affection
Speaker 1: towards another man is gross or something. Who knows, But
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, they were friends and they loved
Speaker 1: each other. Too bad that Walter's the most boring man
Speaker 1: alive and Keys participated in the Red Scare, but you
Speaker 1: know they were friends. They were friends. Um. The last
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to mention is something that's very typical
Speaker 1: of this era, which is the representation of people of
Speaker 1: color in the movie, which is that they are only
Speaker 1: seen very fleetingly and always in like service roles like
Speaker 1: train porters and you know, wait staff and and things
Speaker 1: like that. Um, well, there was one character I wrote
Speaker 1: a note being like, there's a character from Inglewood that
Speaker 1: kind of looked like he was in brown face, and
Speaker 1: I was like, what the fund is this? I did
Speaker 1: wonder about that glapis or something in that early scene. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was. I was like, oh, this is not good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hard to say, but representation of people of color is scarce.
Speaker 1: There's always been bad, and then in this era especially.
Speaker 1: I would like to take that on in a in
Speaker 1: a future episode as well. We should continue to pursue
Speaker 1: this conversation for sure. Absolutely. Does anyone have anything else
Speaker 1: they want to talk about regarding double indemnity? No, when
Speaker 1: are we going to do it? Let's do a double
Speaker 1: indemnity heist crew and kill someone's shitty husband, good money's
Speaker 1: what are they gonna do? Put us in the electric
Speaker 1: chair and then put it in the newspaper. It wouldn't happen. Yes,
Speaker 1: that will be our claim to fame. Feminist podcasters do
Speaker 1: the ultimate feminist podcasters get the electric chair for thought
Speaker 1: crime feminist more like fem fatal in this nice I
Speaker 1: think I think we're going to get the electric chair
Speaker 1: just for that, not that we should be joking about
Speaker 1: how awful sucking? Um, what's it called when the state
Speaker 1: murders you? State murder? Capital coupital punishment, capital punish. This
Speaker 1: movie does pass the PacTel tests, though, yes it does.
Speaker 1: When Lola and Phillis are talking about how they don't
Speaker 1: want to play Chinese checkers with each other, Lola says,
Speaker 1: do you mind if we don't finish this game? It
Speaker 1: bores me stiff? And then Phillis says, you've got something
Speaker 1: better to do? And I think those are those are
Speaker 1: the only two. That's the only example of an exchange
Speaker 1: between two women. And don't worry they hate each other.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it does. That conversation is there
Speaker 1: to establish that they don't like each other, but the
Speaker 1: text itself is like not narratively meaningful. So to me,
Speaker 1: it's like a barely pass. It's a barely pass. But
Speaker 1: I think it's a funny. It's a funny barely pass
Speaker 1: because it's just a hostile exchange between the only two
Speaker 1: women in the movie. As far as our nipple scale,
Speaker 1: though on a scale of zero to five nipples based
Speaker 1: on how well the movie fairs when examining it through
Speaker 1: an intersectional feminist lens. I'll give it a half nipple
Speaker 1: for the following reasons that we see a woman have
Speaker 1: more agency than a lot of women have been able
Speaker 1: to have in movies. Of course, that agency is vilified,
Speaker 1: and we are not meant to empathize with this character
Speaker 1: at all, and when instead we are meant to see
Speaker 1: her as an evil temptress, which is how unless you know,
Speaker 1: there are a few examples of like a subversion of
Speaker 1: the fim fatale trope that you know have happened in
Speaker 1: more recent films, but especially of this era, there was
Speaker 1: no nuance. There was no complexity in general to the
Speaker 1: fim fatale archetype. And um, even though, like we discussed,
Speaker 1: there have been maybe some attempts to reclaim the archetype,
Speaker 1: I don't It's not in the text of this movie though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work for me, especially with the intent
Speaker 1: of the storytellers and villainizing and empowered and sexually liberated
Speaker 1: woman don't like it. I'll give the movie one half nipple,
Speaker 1: and I'll give it to Lola, who deserved more justice.
Speaker 1: For Lola, I guess I'll give it one question mark.
Speaker 1: I do think that this is like the most active
Speaker 1: female character that you could find in movies at this time.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I am, I am a little more pro reclaiming,
Speaker 1: and I think that it has been semi successfully reclaimed
Speaker 1: in more recent neo noir efforts simply by giving uh
Speaker 1: woman who does something bad context and motivation, which is like,
Speaker 1: I feel like, what is really really missing here, especially
Speaker 1: with the context of knowing what the source material is
Speaker 1: and how it's like Anita was saying, like this, this
Speaker 1: movie is presenting a reality that we are told existed
Speaker 1: but never did, like no one was ever acting and
Speaker 1: avoid like this, which is are not a thing. But
Speaker 1: I do appreciate how active the villainous woman is throughout.
Speaker 1: And also I Lola. I mean, she has a strong
Speaker 1: start and then I feel like she's kind of like
Speaker 1: neutered by this story, which I found frustrating and unnecessary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like because of the era it is extremely
Speaker 1: white and straight and and and we didn't really talk
Speaker 1: about this, but the the whole idea of like you're
Speaker 1: kind of told the end at the end that the
Speaker 1: great tragedy of this story is that it turns out
Speaker 1: that Phillis could love after all, and you're like, who
Speaker 1: gives a ship? Like and there's like this last minute
Speaker 1: production code style like the redemptive power of a love
Speaker 1: between a man and a woman and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Like it's just I guess I'm bumping it down to
Speaker 1: a half nipple, and I'm giving that half nipple to
Speaker 1: the line. Papa has it all figured out, beautiful, Anita,
Speaker 1: how about you. I don't think I can add anything
Speaker 1: to what y'all said, So I'm just gonna piggyback on that.
Speaker 1: But I just, um, I'm going to give my If
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give my rating to somebody, my non existent rating,
Speaker 1: it's going to be to the line. I hope there
Speaker 1: aren't any pigeons shooting on you while your son bathing,
Speaker 1: because I can't go out for that. Oh it, zero
Speaker 1: nipples is that way you're giving it? No, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna I think the half nipple is a good one. Okay.
Speaker 1: I agree with what both of you said. Nice, well, Anita,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us and having me.
Speaker 1: Thank you come back any time. Tell us where people
Speaker 1: can follow you on social media? Plug anything you would
Speaker 1: like to plug. Yeah, so you can follow me on
Speaker 1: the social media's at Anita Sarkisian. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I do is I run a emotional sport outline
Speaker 1: for people who make or play games. It's called the
Speaker 1: Games and Online Harassment Hotline. So if you need a
Speaker 1: little emotional sport and you live in the US, you
Speaker 1: can text us. You can learn more at games hotline
Speaker 1: dot org. Our agents are trained in understanding like internet
Speaker 1: culture and gaming culture and online harassment as well. So
Speaker 1: if you're you know, even if you don't play games
Speaker 1: and you need a little bit of help around some
Speaker 1: of this stuff, we're here for you. So games hotline
Speaker 1: dot org. We're also in the middle of our end
Speaker 1: of your fundraising campaign for the hotline and everything else
Speaker 1: that feminist frequency does to try to end abuse in
Speaker 1: the video game industry. So if you want to pitch
Speaker 1: in a couple of bucks to that, feel free in
Speaker 1: addition to your Patreon support of the Bechtel Cast. Right,
Speaker 1: because we all we just share. We we've got to share.
Speaker 1: There's no scarcity here, so um or it's all scarce
Speaker 1: you don't one or the other, right, um So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can learn more at games outline dot org. You
Speaker 1: can check me out at Nicha Sarkis and on all
Speaker 1: the things. Oh also my podcast radio. If you like this,
Speaker 1: you'll like what you do. Yeah, give that a listen, everybody,
Speaker 1: and you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Bechtel Cast and speaking of that, Patreon ak Matreon you
Speaker 1: can find that at patreon dot com slash becktel Cast.
Speaker 1: You get to bonus episodes every month, plus access to
Speaker 1: all of the previously released bonus episodes, of which there
Speaker 1: are over one hundred. So check it out. Look at them.
Speaker 1: Go really putting in the time. You better join and
Speaker 1: if you desire any if you have any merch related needs,
Speaker 1: we've got you there too. You can go to t
Speaker 1: public dot com slash the Bechtel Cast and get all
Speaker 1: of your oh it's it's guess within season right now,
Speaker 1: baby grad there you go get your baby Grinch t
Speaker 1: shirts and I guess now is the time where we
Speaker 1: shoot each other. Let's shoot each other and kiss. No, no,
Speaker 1: you you put you push us off a train? Oh
Speaker 1: so right? Sorry, sorry, we definitely but not really. We're
Speaker 1: going to just pretend. Yeah, I mean it's a pretty
Speaker 1: good mystery, right, I mean, I know we're done talking
Speaker 1: about it. But I'm like, that's a pretty good scheme.
Speaker 1: I was like, cool, I'm on board with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except that they executed badly the execution. The idea was good.
Speaker 1: I maintained the idea was good. The execution they clearly
Speaker 1: were ill equipped. Yeah for sure. All right, Well, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for having me. It's a pleasure talking with
Speaker 1: both of you. The pleasures all ours. Bye bye, bye bye.