Speaker 1: On the beck Del Cast, the questions asked if movies
Speaker 1: have women in um, are all their discussions just boyfriends
Speaker 1: and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef
Speaker 1: invest start changing it with the Bechdel Cast. Hello, Becktel
Speaker 1: Cast listeners, It's me Kitlin Toronto and me Jamie Loftus
Speaker 1: and we're back for yet another episode of the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 1: But wait, it's a little different today. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: we're unlocking one of our Patreon a k a. Matreon episodes. Gasp.
Speaker 1: I know we do it every so often, and this
Speaker 1: week we're doing it for a special little occasion. Tell
Speaker 1: me more, Okay, I will um So. I have a
Speaker 1: new solo series coming out. It's one of my one
Speaker 1: of Jamie's a Little investigations. It does not have a
Speaker 1: ton to do with the subject matter of today's movie,
Speaker 1: which is the Da Vinci Code, which spoiler alert is Apple.
Speaker 1: But in any case, uh no, we're we're unlocking an
Speaker 1: episode today because it's an episode about kind of religious
Speaker 1: conspiracies and esoteric bizarre ship and uh that is what
Speaker 1: my new show is about. It it's out starting now.
Speaker 1: It will be releasing episodes every single Monday. It's called
Speaker 1: Ghost Church, and what it is is, UM, it's kind
Speaker 1: of half investigation, half history of a fringe religion in UM.
Speaker 1: That's it's across the West called Spiritualism. And so what
Speaker 1: the show is about is it's kind of two tracks.
Speaker 1: The first is the history of Spiritualism, which is really
Speaker 1: really fascinating. It's it kind of came up in the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds, beginning with two young girls. Wow, girl,
Speaker 1: us go off just like us, Well if we were
Speaker 1: eleven and fourteen, Um, they're y are we are? We
Speaker 1: have to get permission slips to record this today. UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it kind of UM on windside tracks their story.
Speaker 1: Their names are Maggie and Kate Fox, and they kind
Speaker 1: of um accidentally started a religion that is built around
Speaker 1: the concept of being able to communicate with spirit or
Speaker 1: ghosts and communicating with the dead. Um, which is just
Speaker 1: like a very roller coastery kind of story that I
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly summarize for you here and I won't because
Speaker 1: you gotta go listen to that damn show. And then
Speaker 1: on the other end, because the religion is UM still
Speaker 1: very much around, mostly in h small camps throughout the country,
Speaker 1: too in particular, and I spent a week at one
Speaker 1: of them, uh in Florida, in the Orlando area. I
Speaker 1: hung out with a bunch of mediums all week to
Speaker 1: learn more about what the religion looks like now, UM
Speaker 1: kind of how a how a fringe religion develops over time, UM,
Speaker 1: what brings people to it? And uh watching people communicate
Speaker 1: with the dead in real time? It was. It was
Speaker 1: a weird one. It was an adventure. Um. And so
Speaker 1: I won't I won't spoil anything else from there. If
Speaker 1: you're into spiritual stuff, I would recommend you check it out.
Speaker 1: If you're not into spiritual stuff, I would also recommend
Speaker 1: you check it out because I'm not trying to really
Speaker 1: sway anyone one way or another. It's it's more just
Speaker 1: a very bizarrow journey. And I had a lot of
Speaker 1: fun putting it together. It's a show for everyone. It's
Speaker 1: for everyone. You think we can talk to ghosts, well
Speaker 1: you better check it out. You don't think we can
Speaker 1: talk to ghosts, Well, there's plenty of people on the
Speaker 1: show who feel exactly that way. Me. I don't fucking know.
Speaker 1: It's in. The more I talk to people, the less
Speaker 1: I know. Wow, I'm sure, there's a folk song about that,
Speaker 1: so where, but that is true. I it's such a
Speaker 1: it's such a fascinating topic. Everyone feels strongly one way
Speaker 1: or another. Um, and I'm just kind of floating in
Speaker 1: the goo in the middle, uh, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: trying to not get yelled at by mediums in Florida,
Speaker 1: which isn't too hard. But you'll have to listen to
Speaker 1: the show in any case. That is what we are
Speaker 1: celebrating on the show today. We'll have another episode coming
Speaker 1: up that will also sort of be addressing this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. The Da Vinci code today. This is a
Speaker 1: little more of like on the like weird religion side
Speaker 1: of stuff. And what I will say for spiritualism is
Speaker 1: it is nowhere near as fucked up as Christianity. So
Speaker 1: blockl in because yeah, we recorded this. When did this
Speaker 1: come out? This came out I believe sometime on the
Speaker 1: Matreon last year, Yes, March twenty one. I believe in
Speaker 1: that ballpark and so this If you're not a Matreon subscriber,
Speaker 1: this is also a reminder that if you are running
Speaker 1: thinn On episodes on our main free feed, we do
Speaker 1: to bonus episodes a month with just Caitlin and myself
Speaker 1: most of the time. Over on our patreon aka Matreon,
Speaker 1: there's over a hundred episodes there. This is just one
Speaker 1: of them. We keep it loose, do a lot of
Speaker 1: do a lot of bits. I'm sure I shout the
Speaker 1: Da Vinci code as Apple no less than seven thousand
Speaker 1: times in this episode conservatively. Yeah. So yeah, enjoy it
Speaker 1: and we will be linking to the patreon ak matreon
Speaker 1: if you're interested in joining that community. It's such a blast.
Speaker 1: D But first, before we get into it, we over
Speaker 1: in the Matreon, we assume that everyone knows what the
Speaker 1: Battel Test is and what the show is, because you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're there, you're you're part, you're in the Inn crew,
Speaker 1: you know. So we don't waste time being like, well,
Speaker 1: here's who we are, here's what the Bechdel Test is.
Speaker 1: I love we're making fun of what we're about to do.
Speaker 1: Oh like, but but that's said, even though Caitlin thinks
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous, apparently we are going to do it right now.
Speaker 1: We are going to tell you that this is our show,
Speaker 1: The Bechtel Cast, in which we examine movies through an
Speaker 1: intersectional feminist lens. Using the Bechtel test simply is a
Speaker 1: jumping off point. Now. The Bechdel Test, of course, is
Speaker 1: a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel, sometimes
Speaker 1: called the Bechtel Wallace Test, where by our version because
Speaker 1: there are many renditions of the test, but the one
Speaker 1: that we currently use requires that two characters of a
Speaker 1: marginalized gender have names, speak to each other about something
Speaker 1: other than a may on, and ideally that conversation is
Speaker 1: narratively meaningful. Yes, so, if you've seen the Da Vinci Code,
Speaker 1: don't hold your breath. But you know, if you're a
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks fan, also, don't hold your breath. It's not
Speaker 1: his best and with with no further ado, without further
Speaker 1: with no without without without much further ado. Hello, oh
Speaker 1: my god, without further ado, please enjoy the unlocked Da
Speaker 1: Vinci Code. It's Apple Cast. Welcome back, matrons. Wow. Is
Speaker 1: this the main event? This is what this entire podcast
Speaker 1: has been leading up to. He I am really excited
Speaker 1: in a way. This movie is all my feeavorite parts
Speaker 1: of I Frankenstein mixed with all my favorite parts from
Speaker 1: National Treasure. But when all of the fun just sucked
Speaker 1: out through a straw. It's shocking. Uh huh. This is
Speaker 1: a very similar premise, but none of my favorite parts.
Speaker 1: It's it's wild that a movie is toxic as Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones and The Last Crusade is a far more enjoyable
Speaker 1: movie to watch for me, at least than this suck fest.
Speaker 1: You didn't have fun watching The Da Vinci Cup The
Speaker 1: Da Vinci I honestly, it was like such a journey.
Speaker 1: It was such a right because it was like I
Speaker 1: started out being like, oh, yeah, this movie is just
Speaker 1: people saying words. This could be fun, right, because there's
Speaker 1: that whole oh my god, the moment where I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, what if this movie fucking rocks? Is
Speaker 1: when Tom Hanks is staring at the Mona Lisa and
Speaker 1: then he just goes moons, sermons, charms, demons, sermons, monks, ranks, rocks,
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, this movie is nonsense. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna love it. But then it gets but then it
Speaker 1: gets really boring for like an hour and a half,
Speaker 1: and then it gets funny again at the end. Like
Speaker 1: it starts funny and then it's boring for a long time,
Speaker 1: and then it gets funny again at the very end
Speaker 1: where he's like, Okay, first of all, Matrons, if you
Speaker 1: were wondering if you went into the da Vinci Code
Speaker 1: thinking I don't know, I was like, did not in
Speaker 1: spite of the fact that I definitely like interacted with
Speaker 1: this property at it in its heyday, I did not
Speaker 1: remember what the da Vinci code was, and I was
Speaker 1: knocked on my do you know have you been watching
Speaker 1: one division? I have not at this time. Here's a
Speaker 1: scene where a character is sent through like fort walls
Speaker 1: in a row, and that's how I felt when I
Speaker 1: found out that the da Vinci code is Apple, and
Speaker 1: I have I have a whole theory to go with. Okay, Caitlin,
Speaker 1: this episode is going to be chaos, by the way,
Speaker 1: of course, So the da Vinci code is Apple. That's
Speaker 1: I didn't. I'm the fact that that's the funniest thing
Speaker 1: I've ever heard in my entire life is you've been
Speaker 1: watching this movie for six hours and then they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: the da Vinci code was literally Apple, not Apple in Latin,
Speaker 1: not Apple in and just Apple. So if you were
Speaker 1: reading the book, which I definitely I read it when
Speaker 1: I was like eleven maybe, and I was like, whoa
Speaker 1: I really understand this. I did it, but you have
Speaker 1: to imagine once by the time you it's just kind
Speaker 1: of like aggressively mean towards the reader because you you
Speaker 1: have to probably find out that the da Vinci code
Speaker 1: is Apple on page like five hundred, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I went all this way for this. The da Vinci
Speaker 1: code is Apple. Here's my theory. Yes, please, and keep
Speaker 1: in mind neither of us have reread the book and
Speaker 1: we're not going to. I thought about it, but guess what,
Speaker 1: for some reason on the library app every copy is
Speaker 1: checked out. WHOA, it's still I genuinely was thinking about, like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll get like the audio book and like funk
Speaker 1: around a little. It could be fun. It's it's a
Speaker 1: waiting list around the corner to get. Even in the year,
Speaker 1: people are still reading the da Vinci Code. It's shocking.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I'm sure stuff is different in
Speaker 1: the book. If you're yelling at someone about what happens
Speaker 1: in the Da Vinci Code book versus the movie, you
Speaker 1: have to move on, right. But my theory is because
Speaker 1: in the movie, it's one of the funniest scenes in
Speaker 1: the movie because it's Ian McKellen is literally like the spy,
Speaker 1: like it's full Star Wars. He's the spy, Audrey. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna call her Omily the whole episode, Sorry, Omily.
Speaker 1: It doesn't know what the da Vinci code is because
Speaker 1: she doesn't know anything the whole movie. And then Tom
Speaker 1: Hanks is like, I know what the da Vinci code is,
Speaker 1: and you're like, huh, what how? And then he's like
Speaker 1: standing and he all of a sudden sees the solar system.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of that meme where a bunch of
Speaker 1: math problems happened in front of that lady's face. Um,
Speaker 1: it's that, but it's supposed to be really serious. And
Speaker 1: then he smashes the cryptex he's he figures out. So
Speaker 1: here's my theory. The da Vinci code was not Apple.
Speaker 1: We never found he we never saw him put the
Speaker 1: code into the crypt He broke it and he smashed it,
Speaker 1: and then he the da Vinci code was not Apple,
Speaker 1: it was something else. It was I like how he
Speaker 1: just said it so matter of factly, and were so
Speaker 1: conditioned to trust, like you know, men with bad haircuts,
Speaker 1: and also like you know professors, right, But there's there
Speaker 1: was no proof that the DaVinci code was Apple, and
Speaker 1: that's and honestly I don't think that da Vinci was,
Speaker 1: which is weird that what DaVinci my theory is Tom
Speaker 1: Haks was dead wrong and we'll never know. Well never
Speaker 1: know because the movie too much. I would argue, cuts
Speaker 1: in two flashbacks that look like absolute hell. They look
Speaker 1: like should they look like it's like a really but
Speaker 1: you can tell it's expensive too, But it looks like
Speaker 1: it was edited in like Windows movie maker. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: put some weird filter over the flashbacks to like let
Speaker 1: the audience know, don't like, don't be confused, this didn't happen. Now,
Speaker 1: this happened before, but like they look like ship but
Speaker 1: we didn't. There's just so many scenes. There will be
Speaker 1: a fly back to like to clue the audience in, oh,
Speaker 1: you weren't sure how this came to be. Here's a
Speaker 1: flashback to fill in the gaps, but it doesn't do that.
Speaker 1: With Robert Langdon putting in Apple into the cryptex, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he just sees the solar system and he's like, it's Apple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I maybe in the book, it's like definitively he puts
Speaker 1: it into the cryptex. The cryptex goes it opens in
Speaker 1: the movie. I'm going to say, canonically, there's no way
Speaker 1: it was Apple. That is a ridiculous answer. Everything else
Speaker 1: happened in this movie and fucking Latin and anagrams that
Speaker 1: the Da Vinci code was not Apple. A fourth grader
Speaker 1: could figure that out. But that's kind of part of
Speaker 1: the point. That's part of the appeal of the Da
Speaker 1: Vinci Code is it just like makes you feel really smart,
Speaker 1: but then you're like, wait a second, I didn't understand
Speaker 1: a word of that, and I'm pretty sure that it's
Speaker 1: all made up. But it's good. I kind of like
Speaker 1: this was a kind of an interesting case study for like,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not an easy thing to do, and
Speaker 1: I would argue this movie fails it doing it by
Speaker 1: trying to like take something super complex that requires this
Speaker 1: vast knowledge base and make it easy to understand for
Speaker 1: like the widest audience possible. Like I can't think of
Speaker 1: an example of it of that going well, because when
Speaker 1: the people they it's like this movie stops every two
Speaker 1: seconds to explain to you something that happened three thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, and then you're like huh, and then they're like,
Speaker 1: it's fine, the da Vinci Code is Apple. Like they
Speaker 1: they make it sound really hard, but the solutions are
Speaker 1: like not that hard and they kind of and they
Speaker 1: like make basically no sense. But those feels smart because
Speaker 1: you like Ian McKellan read forty five Wikipedia articles at
Speaker 1: you about how he's a male feminist. This movie is
Speaker 1: I was cracking up. I was this the beginning and
Speaker 1: end of this movie. It just really puts you in
Speaker 1: a really specific time and plays because we really were
Speaker 1: just like sitting in our seats in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: it's the fucking Bush administration and we're like, the da
Speaker 1: Vinci Code is Apple? That like I would, you couldn't
Speaker 1: pay me to go back there. What's going on? What
Speaker 1: is your relationship with the da Vinci Code, The book,
Speaker 1: the movie, Dan Brown's Ubra in general, Robert Langdon, first
Speaker 1: of all, Sunny loves Robert lancoln. Of course, Sonny the
Speaker 1: Dog loves Robert Lee like Robert Langdon, literal genius. Robert
Speaker 1: Langdon should be in the m c U. That's his
Speaker 1: whole thing. Um. He thinks that Robert Langdon could really
Speaker 1: make a killing in the NCU. My my history with
Speaker 1: the da Vinci Code is that I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean I think that I was like just old enough
Speaker 1: to participate, and I was really excited because the book
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand three, so I was like young,
Speaker 1: but like I could read. I could read, so I
Speaker 1: thought I could understand everything, so I was really excited.
Speaker 1: I remember that there was like a raggedy copy of
Speaker 1: the Da Vinci Code that made its way across my
Speaker 1: entire family throughout probably two thousand four, two thousand five
Speaker 1: or something. I remember I read the whole thing really fast.
Speaker 1: I read most of it in like a bathtub over
Speaker 1: the course of eight hours, and then I got sick
Speaker 1: because I don't sit in a bath for eight hours.
Speaker 1: That's gross. But I did, and I just remember feeling
Speaker 1: really cool that I read the book, and I remember
Speaker 1: low keeping like I didn't catch a word of it,
Speaker 1: but I read every word and that's what counts. And
Speaker 1: then I did see the movie. But by that point,
Speaker 1: I think, even like for because I was like twelve
Speaker 1: or thirteen when the movie came out, and even by then,
Speaker 1: I think I was like I already did it know.
Speaker 1: I was like that, that's so whatever, like sixth grade
Speaker 1: or what. Um. But then I I don't know, and
Speaker 1: I also I learned because I haven't revisited it since that,
Speaker 1: I retained like nothing. All I remembered going in was
Speaker 1: Fibonacci numbers. I just remember the phrase. I don't remember
Speaker 1: what it meant, but I remember Fibonacci numbers. But but
Speaker 1: it was interesting watching the movie because it was like
Speaker 1: plot points were slowly coming back to me, like it
Speaker 1: was just a long forgotten dream, like as I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: because like when Ian McKellan came on screen, I'm like,
Speaker 1: there's something going on with this guy, but I don't
Speaker 1: remember what. And then he's like, I'm the spy, and
Speaker 1: You're like, right, he was a spy. I forget. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's that's my history. What about yours? Well, I
Speaker 1: too read the book in probably two thousand three. I
Speaker 1: was nearing the end of high school at that point,
Speaker 1: and I did you understand it? Yes, I was old
Speaker 1: enough to Yeah, I understood the duvincicode. And I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: you know this is this is a property that is
Speaker 1: very easy and popular to dunk on now. But if
Speaker 1: I'm being perfectly honest with myself and others, I fucking
Speaker 1: loved this book. When I first read it as a
Speaker 1: sighting at the time, I remember like the trajectory of
Speaker 1: it too, so basically like it got published, word caught
Speaker 1: on that it was really fun and really good. So
Speaker 1: I I read it. All my high school friends read it.
Speaker 1: We were like, this is the best book I've ever read.
Speaker 1: Then I read Angels and Demons and I and I
Speaker 1: was like, because it's like, this type of story is
Speaker 1: like very up my alley in terms of just like
Speaker 1: an adventure quest, like let's follow clue news and it
Speaker 1: was like again reminiscent of Indiana Jones. And I was like, cool, fun, fun.
Speaker 1: And then I also just appreciate as a lifelong devout atheist,
Speaker 1: I appreciate anything that like criticizes and comments on Christianity.
Speaker 1: So I just felt very cool and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is like anyway, it was exciting, So I read
Speaker 1: the book rather those two books. I have not read Inferno,
Speaker 1: but there's apparently a fourth one also Origin I did.
Speaker 1: I remember reading Angels and Demons and then being like, wow,
Speaker 1: it's so cool to know what Robert Langdon was doing
Speaker 1: before the Da Vinci Code. Didn't they make that into
Speaker 1: a movie too, Yes, And So Inferno is also a
Speaker 1: movie that came out in You're lying, I am telling
Speaker 1: the Tom Tom Hanks is in it, Yes, as is
Speaker 1: I think it's Zoe Deschanelle. But I truly only looked
Speaker 1: at one still image of the movie and I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's who it is or not. That's so
Speaker 1: bold because it's like who was who cares? So anyway,
Speaker 1: So I had read those books, and by the time
Speaker 1: the movie came out, I was in college and I
Speaker 1: went to go see it in theaters. I remember, like
Speaker 1: my enthusiasm for the books had definitely waned by that point,
Speaker 1: but I was excited enough that I still like went
Speaker 1: to go see the movie opening night, and then the
Speaker 1: movie was such a turd that I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you hated it. Yeah, I was like, this is bad,
Speaker 1: like I could like, I still probably enjoyed myself, and
Speaker 1: like because I was. I went with friends and we
Speaker 1: were like we a night out on the town. But um,
Speaker 1: I knew then that the like the dialogue especially was
Speaker 1: just like clunky. I hated Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon.
Speaker 1: I don't know who I thought Robert Langdon should have
Speaker 1: been played by, but definitely not Tom Hanks. I was
Speaker 1: picturing someone a little more young. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: just didn't I forget how old Robert Linkedon was. But
Speaker 1: I like the book. I don't know if the book
Speaker 1: wants you to kind of have a crush on him,
Speaker 1: but like, as an eleven year old, I'm like, Wow,
Speaker 1: he's so cool and so smart. Like you picture kind
Speaker 1: of like a movie. Maybe Tom Hanks ten years before
Speaker 1: this movie came up, maybe with a different haircut, with
Speaker 1: a different His haircut is so distracting that I like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what the movie is about. I
Speaker 1: just was looking at this terrible haircut the entire time.
Speaker 1: Do you remember, um, do you remember if in the
Speaker 1: book the Da Vinci Could is there a romance in
Speaker 1: the book or is it also scaled back? Because I
Speaker 1: was like, are they scaling it back in the movie
Speaker 1: because the age gap is so icky? Or like, what's
Speaker 1: going on? If I'm remembering correctly, and this is again
Speaker 1: strictly from my memory bank, so I might be wrong
Speaker 1: about this, but there is no romance in the book
Speaker 1: between Sophie and Robert Langdon in the Da Vinci Code. However,
Speaker 1: in the movie, I feel like they want you to
Speaker 1: want it, but they don't want it. But I think
Speaker 1: there is a like romance and like I think even
Speaker 1: Robert Langdon has sex with like the female lead of
Speaker 1: the Book of Angels and Demons. I've not seen the
Speaker 1: movie Angels and Demons. I don't know if they include
Speaker 1: that or not, or if even I'm remembering this correctly,
Speaker 1: but I remember being like, oh, wow, Robert Langdon Fox
Speaker 1: because he like Fox the Lady. Maybe that's why I
Speaker 1: was thrown by it being like Woody, because that would
Speaker 1: have been like, I'm like, why is Woody playing like
Speaker 1: this character I was told was like this kind of
Speaker 1: like low key intellectual sex god, Like that's not what
Speaker 1: he's serving me in this movie. And I feel like, okay,
Speaker 1: of the I think that you are, like you are
Speaker 1: supposed to think that you want them to kiss at
Speaker 1: the end, and then they don't write like that seemed
Speaker 1: was so it was so icky because it was like
Speaker 1: even in two thousand six, nobody wants that, Like nobody
Speaker 1: wanted Woody to kiss Emily, Like no, no, no, that's gross.
Speaker 1: But there's like there's that like there's like a few
Speaker 1: moments where I'm like, I think they want me to
Speaker 1: want this to happen, where like when Robert Langton goes,
Speaker 1: I never knew a girl who knew that much, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, gross, get away from her. And then
Speaker 1: that part at the end where they like hug for
Speaker 1: a weird amount of time and then he kisses her
Speaker 1: forehead and you're like, creepy uncle, energy don't like it? Uh,
Speaker 1: well should we? I guess we should just get into it.
Speaker 1: Also happy Alfred Molina Month on the Matreon Alfred March,
Speaker 1: Lena and Melina March Welcome he's playing? Is his character Italian? What?
Speaker 1: What is his character? I think his character is from Spain,
Speaker 1: but I oh, I am not certain. Wow, that would
Speaker 1: actually be Alpha Molena canon, because yeah, he he is
Speaker 1: speaking well, speaking Latin a lot of the time. But
Speaker 1: he's also I believe, speaking in Spanish to Silas on
Speaker 1: different occasions. Yes, oh yes he is. But I also
Speaker 1: I cannot detect a Spanish accent from an Italian accent
Speaker 1: as um an uncultured American. So I don't really know.
Speaker 1: Here's how here's how simple my my understanding of the
Speaker 1: Catholic churches. I was like, oh, well, the pope lives
Speaker 1: in Italy, so he's Italian. I mean that that I
Speaker 1: see your logic. I'm probably wrong, but yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he's from Spain. Question Mark, Wait, what is your like? Okay,
Speaker 1: I know that you're an atheist now, but where you
Speaker 1: raised cass Flick know, I was, I was raised in atheists.
Speaker 1: You were rased, okay, because I was like baptized Catholic,
Speaker 1: but then we immediately went to like a different flavor
Speaker 1: of Christianity. And then when I was eleven, my mom
Speaker 1: was like, Land, this is boring and toxic. So my
Speaker 1: like most of my family is Catholic because they're from
Speaker 1: Massachusetts and it's like the law, and but I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I only I only understand. I don't understand the ins
Speaker 1: and outs of Catholicism like canonically, I just understand the
Speaker 1: negative traits it brings out in New England families. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know very little about the mythology, if you will,
Speaker 1: of Christianity, Like I know the main Bible stories that
Speaker 1: most people know, but beyond that, I know very little.
Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of appreciate that this movie does,
Speaker 1: like you're you don't need to know that much to
Speaker 1: watch this movie. They're going to tell you everything. They're
Speaker 1: like this is Jesus and you're like, thank I'm with you.
Speaker 1: And then then literally the most iconic movie speech. I
Speaker 1: don't know why it's not on an an FHI list,
Speaker 1: Moon Sermons, Charms, Damon Sermons, Monks, Rank Rocks, Madonna of
Speaker 1: the Rocks, Vinci And that's how this like, this is genius.
Speaker 1: This is genius dialogue. The dialogue sucks so bad and
Speaker 1: it's delivery is terrible. If what a mess. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is like because Ron Howard has made
Speaker 1: very I like Ron Howard. I yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't think he's a bad but this
Speaker 1: is like, oh boy, the way people are talking to
Speaker 1: each other, it's like so it just sounds like they're
Speaker 1: not even in the same room. Like the conversations feel
Speaker 1: so like this and I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: I've never in my life seen such expository dialogue. In
Speaker 1: every single line of dialogue, it's just like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I am very pro like, don't talk down to
Speaker 1: your audience, but if you want this to be like,
Speaker 1: this is just like a really difficult it's a it's
Speaker 1: too dense too. I feel like fit into like a
Speaker 1: fun movie like it's there's just too much you have
Speaker 1: to you have to stop and explain things every two seconds,
Speaker 1: and then that's just most of the movie, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they tried. The da Vinci code was literally Apple, so
Speaker 1: it turns out none of it mattered. I can't get
Speaker 1: over it. I feel interesting that you're you're like isolating
Speaker 1: the da Vinci code into that one particular code that
Speaker 1: you punched into the cryptext. To me, the da Vinci
Speaker 1: code is like it's a feeling, it's a sensation, it's
Speaker 1: the whole experience. It's the roller coaster ride that is
Speaker 1: the whole movie. Oh I thought it was silly me.
Speaker 1: I thought it was the code you put into the
Speaker 1: Da Vinci thing. You fool there. I don't know what
Speaker 1: or the da Vinci code. The da Vinci code was
Speaker 1: either Apple or women unclear to me. What I can't
Speaker 1: wait to talk about this movie is so male feminist.
Speaker 1: Like it's like we were talking about this in our
Speaker 1: last episode of Just Like the Most Like it's like
Speaker 1: when a guy's like, oh, I'm I'm such a male
Speaker 1: feminist and then they just explained what feminism is to
Speaker 1: you for two and a half hours, and then you're
Speaker 1: like wait, I haven't talked yet, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I respect you so much. I don't even want to
Speaker 1: know a thing about you. Like I just it's so
Speaker 1: exhausting the fact that there are so many opportunities to
Speaker 1: bring Sophie into the narrative and bring her expertise into
Speaker 1: the narrative constantly, and she's literally a cryptologist, not that
Speaker 1: you'd know based on how many could she solves, like,
Speaker 1: and then just Ian McKellan shows up. He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: actually I know everything that it would be way more
Speaker 1: interesting if the if the only woman in the story knew.
Speaker 1: But let's just tell her. Let's just tell her what's
Speaker 1: going on. And then she goes, wait, that can't be,
Speaker 1: Like that's everything. She says, wait, that can't be, and
Speaker 1: it's like you're Jesus's niece. Get used to it, lady there.
Speaker 1: And then she's like, well, I don't know any of
Speaker 1: this stuff because I hate history. And then Tom Hanks,
Speaker 1: you hate history? What do you mean? No one hates history.
Speaker 1: They hate their own histories. And it's just like Robert Lincton,
Speaker 1: what shut up? That's a really annoying thing for Robert
Speaker 1: Lindon to say, But also I would argue, that's a
Speaker 1: really like bizarre thing for so, like, who's like I
Speaker 1: hate history? Like that is such a broad concept to hate,
Speaker 1: like you've hated everything that's ever happened. Ever, Like what
Speaker 1: do you mean? What do you mean when you say
Speaker 1: that it's like I hate history, I hate everything that's
Speaker 1: ever happened? Is I just hate it? Like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know what to tell you. Oh my god, I'm
Speaker 1: just laughing, laughing, laughing this whole movie. It makes no sense. Also,
Speaker 1: the character names are so silly teeming a ringa Rosa.
Speaker 1: You're just like, I'm sure it's all I'm like, maybe
Speaker 1: it means, oh, here's something fun. Uh there? This was okay.
Speaker 1: So when I was like younger, like probably more like
Speaker 1: high school, I used to love when like famous writers
Speaker 1: would give information on like this is my writing routine
Speaker 1: and like this is how I write. And I used
Speaker 1: to like look up whatever. I would love stories like that.
Speaker 1: And Dan Brown has done this several times. I guess
Speaker 1: he most recently did it a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of something from like fifteen years ago. But
Speaker 1: he like discussed his writing routine and it's like so
Speaker 1: fucked up. Like he wakes up. It sounds like do
Speaker 1: you remember when like Mark, what's his name, the evil
Speaker 1: one from Ted Mark Wahlberg Wallberg, Mark Wallberg released his
Speaker 1: like workout routine. He's like, I wake up at three
Speaker 1: am and scream, like it's like scary. Dan Brown is
Speaker 1: like that, but for writing shitty books about Robert Langton.
Speaker 1: Like he's he wakes up at four am and drinks
Speaker 1: like a spinach milkshake and then he writes for like
Speaker 1: fifteen hours, and then he's like then I whatever, like
Speaker 1: give my son a encouraging pat on the back and
Speaker 1: go right to bed. And I was like, he sounds
Speaker 1: he sounds like the worst. He just sounds like he's horrible.
Speaker 1: Oh well, he has a masterclass. We should watch it.
Speaker 1: We should. He just seems like such a like snobby jerk.
Speaker 1: I think he thinks I mean, he probably thinks he's
Speaker 1: Robert langdon I bet? Yeah? Well shall we? I need
Speaker 1: to get some wine. Yeah, go get someone fills um
Speaker 1: fill your chelice and by that I mean your womb
Speaker 1: like wine and drink your womb wine out of your vagina,
Speaker 1: because that's what this movie is about. Because woman is mother. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm here, all right, welcome back. I'm gonna do the recap.
Speaker 1: I am going to skip over a lot of details
Speaker 1: because there are just too many things, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: flash back and say exactly what happened. And he's like,
Speaker 1: it has to do with Constantine. Actually Constantine was a pagan,
Speaker 1: and I'm just shut up, shut up, I very. It's like,
Speaker 1: I feel like it speaks to this movie's exhausting nature
Speaker 1: that I never want Ian McKellen to shut up, but
Speaker 1: in this movie, I really wanted him to shut up constantly.
Speaker 1: It's like, stop talking, but not as much as I
Speaker 1: wanted Tom Hanks to shut up. I know. It's really
Speaker 1: taking like the icons that are pretty like culturally untouchable
Speaker 1: at the time of this recording and makes you just
Speaker 1: like absolutely despise hearing their voice. It's remarkable. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I skip over a lot of things in the recap,
Speaker 1: so it might not make any sense, but I did
Speaker 1: my best. So the movie opens in the Louvery. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. The closing shot of this movie at the
Speaker 1: loube speak. Okay, this movie much like Ralph Freaks the Internet,
Speaker 1: except this movie is horrible and it's I would say
Speaker 1: that this movie is like almost camp. It's so bad,
Speaker 1: Like this movie ends forty five different times, but the
Speaker 1: final ending is the funniest one where Robert Liked runs
Speaker 1: back to the louver and like she feels on the
Speaker 1: louver like it's oh boy, it's remarkable. Perfect. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we're in the louver and there's a monk named Silas
Speaker 1: played by Paul Bettany, and he is trying to get
Speaker 1: some information from uh, this man who I don't know
Speaker 1: if he's a curator there, I don't know. He's in
Speaker 1: the louver and the link gets the information and then
Speaker 1: shoots sonya. Let me cut to Robert Langdon played by
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks, of course, and he is a professor of
Speaker 1: religious symbology giving a presentation in Paris, and then he
Speaker 1: is approached by the French FBI and they want to
Speaker 1: talk to Langdon French b I, if you will um,
Speaker 1: the French Bureau of Investigations. They want to talk to
Speaker 1: Langdon about the murder that we just saw take place.
Speaker 1: Then we cut back to Silas, the monk. He is
Speaker 1: talking on the phone with someone who he calls teacher,
Speaker 1: and guess who else is talking on the phone in
Speaker 1: a different scene with the teacher is Alfred Molina, and
Speaker 1: he's doing an accent, and we don't know what the
Speaker 1: accent is. I love to see him in his Catholic hat.
Speaker 1: It's what I mean. He feels like he's playing a
Speaker 1: very similar character to me. I mean, we know him
Speaker 1: as a great villain. He plays the hell out of
Speaker 1: a villain. He's playing a very similar villain to me
Speaker 1: as a character he plays in Chakola I I totally agree,
Speaker 1: except with none of the like lovable. I'm like, what
Speaker 1: if there just floating some ideas for our reboot of
Speaker 1: the Da Vinci Code. Uh, what if there were a
Speaker 1: a cake scene? Where is the cake scene in the
Speaker 1: Vinci Where is the scene where this Bishop of Opus
Speaker 1: day is refusing to indulge in any sort of sweets
Speaker 1: or chocolates until he hits a breaking point in which
Speaker 1: he just goes balls to the wall, eating every bit
Speaker 1: of chocolate in sight to the point where he's basically
Speaker 1: having sex with chocolate. Why isn't that scene in the
Speaker 1: Da Vinci Code? What's going on? There are a few
Speaker 1: like really iconically good shots of Alfred Bolina. The first
Speaker 1: was like Paul Betny wakes up and Alfred Bolina is
Speaker 1: just like standing over him, and I was like, this
Speaker 1: is for me ideal, Like I wish I were Paul
Speaker 1: Bettany in the scene. Um I. Then there's the clip
Speaker 1: that you sent me of like launching out of a car,
Speaker 1: Like it's so good, it's really that is the literally
Speaker 1: the best part of the movie because there's this really
Speaker 1: like epic music playing and it's like one of the
Speaker 1: few times in the movie where like interesting camera work
Speaker 1: is actually happening. And like I'm not normally a big
Speaker 1: snob about like the mechanics of filmmaking in terms of
Speaker 1: like cinematography and editing and stuff like that, but like
Speaker 1: this movie does everything so poorly that you can't help
Speaker 1: but notice it. But like there is one moment where
Speaker 1: I'm like, look at this camera work where the camera's
Speaker 1: kind of like it's tracking with one person and then
Speaker 1: it kind of shifts over to focus on Alt from
Speaker 1: Lena getting out of a car and then he like
Speaker 1: sees something and then starts sprinting out of frame and
Speaker 1: it's just like this beautiful fluid movement and h it's
Speaker 1: a scene from a better movie. I was like, that
Speaker 1: was a singular gorgeous shot. Indeed, I wish I knew.
Speaker 1: I wish I didn't know what movie it was in.
Speaker 1: Uh okay. So Alfred Molina plays Bishop Aaron Garossa, who
Speaker 1: is a religious figure of Opus Day, a sect of
Speaker 1: Catholicism that seems, according to this movie, pretty scary, and
Speaker 1: he is like Silas's mentor. So meanwhile, Langdon is taken
Speaker 1: to the Louver and Captain Fash a k genre no,
Speaker 1: you're literally like Fash And then I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, and then I just kept watching because that's
Speaker 1: how you that's the only way you can watch the
Speaker 1: Da Vincico this to be like hmmm, maybe that's something,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, well, I don't know. Okay, something
Speaker 1: else is happening now. Now we're talking about Constantine and
Speaker 1: the Holy Wars. Yeah, so Captain Fash is Genrino and
Speaker 1: he is. He's there as well as Sophie. It's very French,
Speaker 1: and it's they literally cast Emily, so we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: she is for French. So it's yeah, Audrey Tattoo or
Speaker 1: however you say any name in French. And I love her.
Speaker 1: I wish she had been given a single thing to
Speaker 1: do in this entire movie. Truly, I hope she made
Speaker 1: so much money. That's it would give me peace to
Speaker 1: know that Audrey Tattoo made a lot of money. But
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that she probably made much less
Speaker 1: money than literally every man on screen. That's probably true,
Speaker 1: and that's upsetting. Her character is a cryptologist for the
Speaker 1: French police, and she's like, hey, Robert, they think the
Speaker 1: police think that you killed sna Also, by the way,
Speaker 1: he was my grandfather and as he was dying, he
Speaker 1: left all of these clues, so you and I have
Speaker 1: to work together to solve them. Because basically Sania had
Speaker 1: put himself in the position of the Vitruvian man. And
Speaker 1: then he also wrote a bunch of words on the
Speaker 1: floor an invisible ink, which read how long was this
Speaker 1: man dying? Like this? I had a funny because I
Speaker 1: forgot what the because I remember, like as a kid,
Speaker 1: being like whoa the like long ass codes where he's
Speaker 1: just stumbling around the loop like writing poems and ship
Speaker 1: and but I was I couldn't remember, and so I
Speaker 1: was like, what if it was what if he just
Speaker 1: smeared some pig out in bluff like that would be
Speaker 1: a more interesting choice to be than whatever the funk
Speaker 1: he did, thoughts something to consider for our reboot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like could be a fun iconic message relieve. Also, I
Speaker 1: forget who someone it might have been a friend of
Speaker 1: the show, Matt Rogers, but like someone recently tweeted like
Speaker 1: what what a like weak endorsement that was on the
Speaker 1: part of Charlotte and her web, like like, who's this guy?
Speaker 1: I don't know, some pig. He is some pig And
Speaker 1: everyone was like, wow, he must be really special and
Speaker 1: you're like, well, that's not what she said. Oh goodness,
Speaker 1: listen to women and what they weave in their web. Okay,
Speaker 1: So um Sonia had written O draconian devil, oh lame
Speaker 1: st and Langdon figures out that these words are an
Speaker 1: anagram and shout out to anagrams and my very anagrammable name,
Speaker 1: please and thank you. Um that anagrams to Leonardo da
Speaker 1: Vinci the Mona Lisa, and then we're like, wow, Da
Speaker 1: Vinci code alert it's starting. So they go over to
Speaker 1: the Mona Lisa and there's another clue there, and that
Speaker 1: leads to another clue and then another and it's like
Speaker 1: National Treasure all over again. It's yeah, National Treasure. If
Speaker 1: fept way longer and worse, way less fun and there's
Speaker 1: no where is my Bartinary Bartha insight, I feel like
Speaker 1: this movie really would benefit from a Bartha type chater,
Speaker 1: like because you have the similar set, because whatever in
Speaker 1: the National in the Da Vinci National Treasure Frankenstein Code,
Speaker 1: it's like you have it's kind of like a sacred,
Speaker 1: sacred triptych right, Like you have your like agro hero
Speaker 1: in Nicolas Cage. You have a woman who will not
Speaker 1: be allowed to do anything but is there in the
Speaker 1: form of Abigail. And then you have a little cartoon
Speaker 1: squirrel guy in the form of Justin Bartha. And I
Speaker 1: feel like the da Vinci Code could really have used
Speaker 1: the Justin Bartha character to keep us, to keep us
Speaker 1: having some fun in a movie that is really not
Speaker 1: that fun to watch. Right, Yeah, we need some kind
Speaker 1: of comic relief for squirrel relief, for Bartha relief. It's
Speaker 1: not like Justin Bartha wasn't available, you know, was his
Speaker 1: availability is open? Okay? So then they pick up the
Speaker 1: flur de Leys, which is this like key like object
Speaker 1: as they're going around the louver discovering clues. But then
Speaker 1: Langdon and Sophie have to run because the cops are
Speaker 1: chasing them, and while they're on the run, Langdon tells
Speaker 1: Sophie about the Priory of Ssion, which is a secret
Speaker 1: society that protects a secret treasure, the Holy Grail. Um. So,
Speaker 1: now I guess the story is about finding the Holy Grail, right,
Speaker 1: which I was like, I think, oh right, that was
Speaker 1: another thing. I was like, oh right, that's what the
Speaker 1: Da Vinci code was looking for. Question mark. Yes. So meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Silas has followed the clue that Son had given him,
Speaker 1: but it turns out to be a decoy and he
Speaker 1: is so mad that he murders a nun about it.
Speaker 1: He really is on a mission from God, and that
Speaker 1: mission is to kill as many nuns as he possibly can,
Speaker 1: because he kills a lot of one. Yeah. So then
Speaker 1: we cut back to Langdon and Sophie. They take the
Speaker 1: flur dey key thing to this like very fancy bank,
Speaker 1: I guess where in a safety deposit box there is
Speaker 1: a smaller wooden box with a rose on it, and
Speaker 1: inside that box is the DaVinci. That's the only thing
Speaker 1: that Sophie knows in the entire movie is like, how
Speaker 1: the Da Vinci could works, but she doesn't know how
Speaker 1: to unlock it, and she doesn't try. And yes, she
Speaker 1: knows what a cryptics is, which is the thing that's
Speaker 1: in this little box, and it's this device that you
Speaker 1: have to spell out a five letter word to unlock
Speaker 1: it and retrieve like a little piece of papyrus inside.
Speaker 1: But if you break it, then the vinegar also inside
Speaker 1: the cryptics will dissolve the papyrus and then the secrets
Speaker 1: lost forever. So that's a lot of exposition that she
Speaker 1: very clunk Lee delivers to us. Mess I liked it
Speaker 1: better when it was just squirting like lemon juice on
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence. That was a little more my speed.
Speaker 1: But whatever, they made a choice, sure, sure, sure, But
Speaker 1: now they've hit a dead end because Langdon doesn't know
Speaker 1: enough stuff about the Grail legend. So they go to
Speaker 1: Lee Teping aka Ian McKellen, who is a Grail historian
Speaker 1: who is also a billionaire, and it is not clear
Speaker 1: how he has any of his money. That was my thing, Like,
Speaker 1: once you find out he's the spy, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: of course he had to have some grift going on,
Speaker 1: because like Grail historians, that has to pay four dollars
Speaker 1: a year, Like what who is? Like? I feel like
Speaker 1: that's not like a thriving job market where you would
Speaker 1: have like entire zip code to yourself. Maybe he's nepotism,
Speaker 1: we don't know, could be who care that being a
Speaker 1: Grail historian is the type of job that you would
Speaker 1: have if you're like the kid of a very wealthy
Speaker 1: family and you don't have to actually have a real
Speaker 1: job or work or anything. I got so bored at
Speaker 1: this part that I started to do a thought experiment
Speaker 1: of like what if you were on a date with
Speaker 1: someone and you were getting along and then you're like,
Speaker 1: what do you do? And they were like, I'm a
Speaker 1: Grail historian. Would you feel like I need to go?
Speaker 1: Or would you say I'd better stay. I feel like
Speaker 1: I would be kind of turned off by a Grail historian.
Speaker 1: I'm inclined to agree in the same way many people
Speaker 1: are like comedian, I have to go, and it's like
Speaker 1: I get it. Um, that's how I would feel about
Speaker 1: a Grail historian, And actually maybe I would feel a
Speaker 1: little superior. I'm like, oh, you found a job that's
Speaker 1: more embarrassing than nine. Yeah. True. Um. So they go
Speaker 1: to Lee teeping, and Lee explains that the Holy Grail
Speaker 1: is not a cup, which is what it is commonly
Speaker 1: thought to be. It's a woman, but not just any woman.
Speaker 1: It's which one Mary Magdalen. And not only that Mary
Speaker 1: Magdalene was Jesus's his wife what and then but wait,
Speaker 1: there's more. There's more, which is that that she was
Speaker 1: gregnant as hell with Jesus as greg That wasn't in
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ Superstar. My mind was blown once that platfoin
Speaker 1: came up. I'm like, oh, I do remember reading that
Speaker 1: in the book and being like, oh, what how could
Speaker 1: it be? Or like does all this like you know,
Speaker 1: it's like high key bullshit, but it is fun. Like
Speaker 1: maybe it was more fun in the early two thousand's
Speaker 1: when like online conspiracies were not um killing people at
Speaker 1: the same rates they are these days. But at the time,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, there is no cup in
Speaker 1: that painting. It must mean that Emily is Jesus's niece
Speaker 1: like that it's so conspiratorial and weird, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it is, like those kinds of scenes are really
Speaker 1: fun to watch, especially when they end up being correct.
Speaker 1: You're like, wow, you you you made a big swing
Speaker 1: and you were right. Yeah. So basically t Being is
Speaker 1: making the argument here that da Vinci had left all
Speaker 1: these clues in his work that Mary Magdalene was Jesus's
Speaker 1: his wife and that she is the actual Grail and
Speaker 1: that it's not this like Chilice thing anyway. So he's
Speaker 1: like going through this whole power point presentation, and then
Speaker 1: he says that once Jesus was crucified, Mary Magdalen fled
Speaker 1: to France and gave birth to a daughter. So basically,
Speaker 1: the secret that the Priory of Scion has been protecting
Speaker 1: for the past two thousand years is the fact that
Speaker 1: Jesus has a bloodline. And this whole string of airs
Speaker 1: makes you think and the reason that like Silas and
Speaker 1: Alfred Molina's character and like Opus Day exists is that
Speaker 1: they are trying to kill Jesus. Is fair the descendants
Speaker 1: of Jesus family, because the revelation that Jesus was like
Speaker 1: a mortal man who can get people gregnant would kind
Speaker 1: of unravel the church's teachings of like the divinity of
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, we can't be having that. It was Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's so sailing, And this whole scene takes
Speaker 1: like twenty minutes. It takes a lot. They cut away
Speaker 1: to other stuff every once in a while, but I'm like,
Speaker 1: you think I don't notice that Ian McKellan and Tom
Speaker 1: Hanks have been debating for twenty minutes about Mary Magdalen
Speaker 1: because I did Audrey tattoo is barely there. She's like
Speaker 1: it could it can't be what? No, And then like
Speaker 1: Ian McLellan keeps asking her rhetorical questions that she gets wrong,
Speaker 1: Like that's the whole. It's so much. I think that
Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning, just in keeping with our male feminist
Speaker 1: king narrative that Robert Langton he's written a book and
Speaker 1: you know because we see him reading his own book
Speaker 1: at multiple points in the UH and it's called Feminine Saclair,
Speaker 1: The Sacred Feminine, and you're like, god, he's so toxic,
Speaker 1: but he like the whole it's so two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: but it's still kind of like something that doesn't not
Speaker 1: exist now, where it's like sure like siss head men
Speaker 1: who are so invested in proving their respect women that
Speaker 1: they just speak over women for hours on end without
Speaker 1: even noticing, Like at every man who is like good
Speaker 1: quote unquote in this movie, it's just talking over women
Speaker 1: and explaining women to them, and to extend being like, no,
Speaker 1: I am obsessed with him and I respect them, but
Speaker 1: only if they are says reproducing wives. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: And you're just like, okay, the way we're defining womenhood
Speaker 1: is also toxic, Robert langdon oh. Yes. So it's at
Speaker 1: this point in the story where after all this stuff
Speaker 1: has been explained to the only woman in the narrative
Speaker 1: who has no idea what's going on, right, Lee starts
Speaker 1: to decipher the cryptics, which is against supposed to have
Speaker 1: a map inside that's going to lead to the Holy Grail.
Speaker 1: But just then Silas Sneak attacks them, so they have
Speaker 1: to flee in Lee Teebing's plane, which he has a
Speaker 1: of a jet of the plane, and they go to
Speaker 1: London and they take Silas as a hostage, and on
Speaker 1: the plane, Robert finds another clue in the box that
Speaker 1: the cryptics came in, so they go to the tomb
Speaker 1: that this clue speaks of, and they're they're trying to
Speaker 1: get more information or something. This is a whole this
Speaker 1: is another like and then or something happens where I
Speaker 1: don't really know why anyone is doing anything. So they're
Speaker 1: trying to find some information. But te Bing's servant man Remy,
Speaker 1: kind of turns on them and he turns out to
Speaker 1: be the teacher. But oh wait, just kidding, it's Lee.
Speaker 1: Ian McKellen is the teacher. He was the spy. He
Speaker 1: was the spy again, another wide swing that ends up
Speaker 1: working out for Ian McKellan. I'm like, how did you
Speaker 1: get away with that? He's calling from his home phone number,
Speaker 1: like being like, I, oh, yeah, I know, Jesus is niece.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it, like just weird stuff, weird stuff
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, But so he's not he's the
Speaker 1: bad guy. And then so he he in like Langdon
Speaker 1: and Sophie have kind of like gotten away from each other,
Speaker 1: but then they crossed paths again and he's trying to
Speaker 1: get them to like solve the cryptexs and he his
Speaker 1: whole thing is he wants the secret of the Grail
Speaker 1: to be exposed. So that's why he's like obsessed with
Speaker 1: like finding the location of I don't know they're looking
Speaker 1: for like Mary Magdalen's sarcophagus. I don't even know what's happening.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what. And then Robert Langdon it's
Speaker 1: at the right. That also made no sense to me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, so the louve is just why do they
Speaker 1: have it? What? And who put it there? I guess
Speaker 1: the priory of Scion put it there, but how did
Speaker 1: they manage that? I feel like these are questions who
Speaker 1: that weren't intended to be asked. So then we see
Speaker 1: a scene where Silas accidentally shoots Alfred Molina but he survives,
Speaker 1: so it's okay, yes, but Silas guess what he dies?
Speaker 1: He dies? And then um, let's see okay, So this
Speaker 1: is where Lee finds Sophie and Langdon again, and he's
Speaker 1: holding them at gunpoint trying to make them open the
Speaker 1: cryptechs and then Robert breaks it on purpose, knowing that
Speaker 1: it's going to destroy whatever's inside, but he knows what
Speaker 1: the Da Vinci code is K and and right. I
Speaker 1: didn't even I'd like skipped over the whole Apple thing
Speaker 1: in I was like, this is too preposterous. I can't
Speaker 1: even include It's the most important part of the movie.
Speaker 1: When Tom Hanks turns away from where Audrey tattoos in
Speaker 1: the middle of being damseled root of him. Right, he
Speaker 1: turns around, envisions the solar system, figures out the da
Speaker 1: Vinci code was Apple. They smashes the da Vinci code
Speaker 1: just in case it wasn't Apple, and he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to embarrass himself. That was I I think that Audrey
Speaker 1: Tattoo should have been like she seems okay, Like she
Speaker 1: seems just like kind of like not invested enough in
Speaker 1: what's going on, as even though it's like it's theoretically
Speaker 1: she's got the most on the line here, she seems
Speaker 1: kind of indifferent towards a lot of the events of
Speaker 1: the movie. When he smashes the da Vinci code. Later,
Speaker 1: she's just like, why did you smash the da Vinci code?
Speaker 1: I was like, dude, like Jesus's map was in there,
Speaker 1: Like why are why do you care so little? It's
Speaker 1: just like her character is just so underwritten that she's like,
Speaker 1: why why would you smash a da Vinci code. He's like,
Speaker 1: while it was Apple, and she's like, you're so smart,
Speaker 1: like so the da Vinci code is Apple? Question. Also,
Speaker 1: there's just really bad storytelling here where somehow, I mean
Speaker 1: everywhere in this movie, but yeah, here, especially where the
Speaker 1: police come in and arrest Lee because Fash had figured
Speaker 1: out that he's the bad guy. And I don't remember
Speaker 1: exactly how that happens, but they know that Lee is bad,
Speaker 1: so they arrest him. And as he's getting arrested, he
Speaker 1: like somehow realizes that Langdon had figured out the cryptics
Speaker 1: and he's like screaming about He's like, you figured it out,
Speaker 1: that's awesome, good for you. So he's like carrying on
Speaker 1: as he's getting arrested, which spoils what should have been
Speaker 1: a reveal that yes, he did figure it out and
Speaker 1: he had he did know that it was Apple, and
Speaker 1: he had taken the map out like it was a
Speaker 1: lucky guess. I still think it's a really lucky guess,
Speaker 1: because there's no way I just have call me a
Speaker 1: da Vinci truther. But I just think he would have
Speaker 1: thought it out more than Apple in in modern English.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't make sense. Well, I think that is
Speaker 1: like Son was the one who devised that cryptex, because
Speaker 1: they've got to like figure out like as the secret
Speaker 1: gets passed on down the centuries, not not to be
Speaker 1: a defender being Apple. I'm actually fully defending this choice.
Speaker 1: I think it's brilliant. I think the clue of like fleshy,
Speaker 1: red seated womb equals apple. That's a perfect clue. The
Speaker 1: more you think about the da Vinci could being apple,
Speaker 1: the worth a grocer, it gets yes. Anyway, so the
Speaker 1: reveal gets spoiled that in fact, Langdon did solve the
Speaker 1: cryptics and he took the map out, and the map
Speaker 1: is just another clue which leads them to Roslyn Chapel,
Speaker 1: which is this like Church of Many Faiths built by
Speaker 1: the Priory of Scion or something. And then they find
Speaker 1: this secret room with a bunch of documents about the Grail,
Speaker 1: and Langdon discovers that Son was not actually Sophie's grandfather.
Speaker 1: He was just protecting Sophie because she is the Holy Grail.
Speaker 1: She is the heir of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.
Speaker 1: At this point, I'm just like, who cares, not Sophie,
Speaker 1: So why should I care? Sophie literally could not react
Speaker 1: less to being Jesus's niece. It's so she she just
Speaker 1: once again, it's like it can't be. I'm like, you're
Speaker 1: in the National Treasure Basement, like what is what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? She's so just We're getting nothing from her. Nothing.
Speaker 1: What if you if you thought out you were Jesus's
Speaker 1: biological niece, you would react, Yeah, one would. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say nothing. Everyone react a little different, but I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say nothing. And god, God, so frustrating. I'm like, she really,
Speaker 1: she really just said huh okay me but I'm so boring,
Speaker 1: and it's like, you're not wrong there. So then meanwhile,
Speaker 1: all all of the priory of scion has gathered because
Speaker 1: they live a half hour away or something, yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're like, Hi, sophieze, we've known who you were this
Speaker 1: whole time. And then her grandmother is there? Is that
Speaker 1: her biological grandmother? I don't know. I was really unclear
Speaker 1: in that. I'm like, is that Jackson's wife or is
Speaker 1: that her biological because they were like, oh, Sophie is
Speaker 1: the only living person, and I'm like, but wait, what
Speaker 1: about that lady? Yeah, we don't know. She doesn't have
Speaker 1: her womb doesn't work anymore, so she's rendered obsolete. I
Speaker 1: guess who doesn't give a ship either way. Sophie. She
Speaker 1: doesn't ask a single question. She just goes, oh, what
Speaker 1: a day, What a day I'm having? Like, yeah, gosh, okay,
Speaker 1: so then Robert Langdon and Sophie say goodbye. But later
Speaker 1: Langdon's like, hang on, Mary Magdalen's sarcophagus wasn't there? Where
Speaker 1: was it? The mystery still isn't He reads his own
Speaker 1: book again, reads his own book to find the answers,
Speaker 1: and he's like, bloodline Rose, line Rose, what does it
Speaker 1: all mean? And then he realizes sarcophages rocks, ranks socks
Speaker 1: and then I'm just like, I don't think he figured
Speaker 1: anything out. I think he just stumbled around guess an
Speaker 1: old library. And then he's like, I can't believe Mary
Speaker 1: Magdalen's buried at the louver, Like what are a perfect
Speaker 1: ending shot? Though so expensive looking? So yeah, so he
Speaker 1: goes to he realizes somehow that Mary Magdalen's sarcophagus is
Speaker 1: under the louver or like somewhere in the loop. I
Speaker 1: don't know, and then he kneels down and he prays,
Speaker 1: and that's the end of the movie. Questions, No, it
Speaker 1: made total sense to me. I this movie is hilarious,
Speaker 1: Like there's just it's just so expensive it wants you
Speaker 1: to think it's It's like, I don't know. It is
Speaker 1: like fun to watch a movie that really thinks it's
Speaker 1: doing something, you know, and it's like so like sweeping
Speaker 1: and engaging, and you know that people really liked it
Speaker 1: when it came out, and then there was like, I mean,
Speaker 1: there was such a huge controversy around this movie and
Speaker 1: everyone was like, you know, but but then you watch
Speaker 1: it and you're like, this is ridiculous. I wanted to
Speaker 1: start by I want to just kind of uh start
Speaker 1: by talking about how albinism is portrayed in this movie
Speaker 1: and many so that's I think one of the biggest
Speaker 1: missteps in the I mean just the story as a whole,
Speaker 1: because I know that that is I believe Cannon to
Speaker 1: the book as well. Yes, I believe so so um
Speaker 1: so yeah. I mean there is just a very traceable
Speaker 1: history of, um not just prejudice against albino people, but
Speaker 1: prejudice against albinism in movies specifically and using albinism as
Speaker 1: a shorthand for demonizing a character. I have an article
Speaker 1: that came out at the time this movie was released
Speaker 1: in summer two thousand and six. It was in Shadow
Speaker 1: Penn State News. I found that one as well. I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's kind of a cursory or review,
Speaker 1: but kind of gives you a short history of villains
Speaker 1: who are albino in movies. There's also, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's it's worth saying that there is part of
Speaker 1: the reason this shows up in movies a lot is
Speaker 1: because there has been prejudice that has been extremely violent
Speaker 1: towards albino people from all over the world for like
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of years. There were people who were
Speaker 1: sent to prison for hunting albino people as recently as
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. Like it is like a very
Speaker 1: very pervasive prejudice that is really really rarely discussed, and
Speaker 1: it's very present in this movie through the character of Silas,
Speaker 1: who is played by Paul Bettany, who we know is
Speaker 1: not an albino person. So I just wanted to read
Speaker 1: a quote from this piece from the Penn State News
Speaker 1: to kind of open the discussion. It's from Marybeth Oliver,
Speaker 1: who is a Penn State professor and talks about the
Speaker 1: psychological effects of media. Basically breaks down that a lot
Speaker 1: of albino stereotypes are connected to vampires, going back as
Speaker 1: far as nose furraw too, and just associating paleness and
Speaker 1: like really really light pigmentation of the eyes, of the hair,
Speaker 1: and of this skin, with zombies, with vampires, and just
Speaker 1: with inherent badness. So and and uh, the article kind
Speaker 1: of goes down to and Silas in the Da Vinci
Speaker 1: Code is kind of the most recent version of this
Speaker 1: prejudice seeping into a villain because it is in no
Speaker 1: way necessary to Silas's character for him to be an
Speaker 1: albino character. He is a religious extremist with a traumatic
Speaker 1: pass that can be literally anybody. So the choice for
Speaker 1: him to be an albino character an extremely underrepresented population
Speaker 1: in movies is really intentional, you know. And so uh,
Speaker 1: Mary Beth Oliver says, quote to portray any group as
Speaker 1: one dimensional is a problematic thing, even if negative portrayals
Speaker 1: are infrequent. If it's the case that every time albinos
Speaker 1: are depicted it's negatively, then the images become connected. Demonization
Speaker 1: of any group runs the risk of affecting us in
Speaker 1: ways we might not be aware of. Um and then
Speaker 1: kind of notes that Silas is uh symptomatic of this prejudice,
Speaker 1: but is in no way singular. This is like a
Speaker 1: very distinct media trend that is like very rarely discuss Yes, indeed, UM.
Speaker 1: I did a little bit of research on this as
Speaker 1: well and wanted to share something I found from the
Speaker 1: Tri City Herald shout out UM so this was published
Speaker 1: in It talks about a study from the University of
Speaker 1: Texas that examined heroes and villains the top ten heroes
Speaker 1: and villains from the a f i S Greatest Heroes
Speaker 1: and Villains list and found that sixty percent of the
Speaker 1: villains had some form of skin disease and none of
Speaker 1: the hero none of the heroes did. So just like
Speaker 1: extending beyond Albanism, there's like a just a huge We've
Speaker 1: talked about this before in terms of like disability often
Speaker 1: being ascribed to villains absolutely and then therefore demonizing disability
Speaker 1: UM and then quote. The study also mentions the widespread
Speaker 1: trope of the evil albino, in which TV shows, movies,
Speaker 1: and other media treat albino characters as untrustworthy, ill intentioned,
Speaker 1: and villainous. According to the National Organization for Albanism and
Speaker 1: hypo Pigmentation, sixty eight movies released between nineteen sixty and
Speaker 1: two thousand six feature evil albino characters, with a large
Speaker 1: portion of those coming after the year two thousand. UM
Speaker 1: it talks about how this movie was protested by the
Speaker 1: National Organization for Albanism and hypo Pigmentation, but you know,
Speaker 1: the filmmakers still made the choice to include this trope.
Speaker 1: And this is a quote from Michael McGowan, the president
Speaker 1: of NOAH at the time that he did an interview
Speaker 1: with the Associated Press in the earlier mid two thousand's said, quote,
Speaker 1: the problem is that there has been no balance. There
Speaker 1: are no realistic, sympathetic or heroic characters with Albanism that
Speaker 1: you can find in movies or popular culture. So it's
Speaker 1: the same end quote. So it's the same thing that
Speaker 1: we see all the time with villains being mothered in
Speaker 1: some way that ends up being very toxic and harmful
Speaker 1: for people, an extremely marginalized group. And it's I mean,
Speaker 1: and on top of that, I mean, in the in
Speaker 1: the same way that we've been having ongoing conversations about
Speaker 1: how disabled characters and and just are are very rarely
Speaker 1: played by actors who have that disability. And Paul Bettany
Speaker 1: is a wonderful actor, but certainly cannot speak to that experience.
Speaker 1: And it's just it couldn't be more obvious in the
Speaker 1: context of this movie that albinism is used to other
Speaker 1: this character. It is used to make the character look
Speaker 1: different from other people and to some extent like justify, well, oh,
Speaker 1: they look so different from what I'm used to. Of course,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be the good guy in this movie.
Speaker 1: And it's it's it's so it's really I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that this is the first time we've talked about
Speaker 1: it extensively on this show. But it is like such
Speaker 1: uh longstanding issue, and there are still not like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't think of like an extremely successful albino actor,
Speaker 1: even though there are you know, many who are working
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I don't know, I mean this, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just for me. It's like the worst part of
Speaker 1: the movie by a long shot. And what will link
Speaker 1: in the description of the episode some resources where you
Speaker 1: can learn more as well. Yeah, I mean that's where
Speaker 1: it's just there's absolutely no argument to be made by
Speaker 1: perpetuating this stereotype in two thousand and six in a
Speaker 1: way that like it couldn't be less necessary. This is
Speaker 1: a religious extremist character. You don't need to marginalize a
Speaker 1: community to get across that religious extremism is not good. Like,
Speaker 1: it's just so absurd that it's uh, it's it's really
Speaker 1: upsetting to watch. And then similarly, one of the other
Speaker 1: characters who ends up being a major villain the t
Speaker 1: being a k Ian McKellen is a character with a
Speaker 1: physical disability. He uses canes and they like repeatedly refer
Speaker 1: to him jokingly as he, oh, he's a cripple, and
Speaker 1: like everyone is like may being fun of his and
Speaker 1: it's like you can still see it's it's being done
Speaker 1: for this very unnecessary, ablest narrative reason. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we need to make him look, you know, harmless, So
Speaker 1: what will we do. Let's give him a disability And
Speaker 1: it's like that is just I mean it we talked
Speaker 1: about it a lot, but it's just it's so harmful
Speaker 1: and lazy. It's really it's it sucks. And then also
Speaker 1: that you see like him like pushed around while he's
Speaker 1: navigating with canes and just like it's it's so it's
Speaker 1: just so aggressively unnecessary. That is trash. It is simply trash,
Speaker 1: and we do not like it. Um but wait, there's
Speaker 1: more more that we don't like. I mean, we we
Speaker 1: already started to kind of get it that like let's
Speaker 1: just get like we're going to get all the like
Speaker 1: truly harmful evil ship out of the way, and then
Speaker 1: we're just gonna dunk on the Da Vinci code. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the this movie's view of valuing and respecting
Speaker 1: women is so fucking goofy. It's it's for I mean,
Speaker 1: it's extremely siss normative, where it's like, well, the reason
Speaker 1: that Mary Magdalene is important is because of like her womb.
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's just like creepy, turfy language. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, it's like I feel like we're
Speaker 1: supposed to believe that Robert Langdon and like what Lee
Speaker 1: t being are like feminists because they acknowledged a woman's existence,
Speaker 1: Like it's just so bottom of the barrel. And then
Speaker 1: even but even so, it's like, well, of course we
Speaker 1: valued her because she was as a wife and a mother,
Speaker 1: but we acknowledged that she was a real person. And also,
Speaker 1: don't say she's a sex worker because I like that,
Speaker 1: and like that offhand comment of like Ian McKellan being,
Speaker 1: you know, horrified that it was suggested that Mary Magdalen
Speaker 1: was a sex worker, which, as we I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just another extremely marginalized and stereotyped community in film, and
Speaker 1: it's just God, I'm like, this is this the feminism
Speaker 1: you ordered? I guess this is Bush administration. Feminism is
Speaker 1: so a man, a man screaming at you that it's
Speaker 1: okay to be a wife and a mother, Like shut up.
Speaker 1: A huge component of this movie is like the symbology
Speaker 1: surrounding Oh, this symbol equals male, and this symbol equals female,
Speaker 1: and Holy Grail equals woman's womb and is as you said,
Speaker 1: just like reductive, insist normative. And but the characters are
Speaker 1: presenting this information as if they're like, actually, it's awesome
Speaker 1: that the Holy Grail is Mary Magdalen's womb and her bloodline.
Speaker 1: And it's and it's because of the church hated women
Speaker 1: and they and they burned witches at the steak. But
Speaker 1: women are actually cool because of their ability to have
Speaker 1: sex with men and give them children. It's so it's
Speaker 1: it's like just so frustrating that they're like, this is
Speaker 1: what women this mel Gibson thought he knew what women wanted.
Speaker 1: This is what women want to be called God. It's
Speaker 1: obviously we say this all the time too. It's like
Speaker 1: no disrespect to like people who have babies and people
Speaker 1: who give birth like amazing, keep it up if you
Speaker 1: want to write. But yeah, it's just like the most basic, reductive,
Speaker 1: incorrect way to define. It's just so annoying. They don't
Speaker 1: say anything about Mary Magdalene except that she was a wife,
Speaker 1: a mother and moved to France, like and not a
Speaker 1: sex worker. And on top of that, this kind of
Speaker 1: like dovetails into what there is to discuss about Sophie.
Speaker 1: It's like they're just talking at a woman the entire
Speaker 1: movie who is Like again, it's it's kind of I
Speaker 1: don't I guess it's the opposite of a Mary Sue.
Speaker 1: I don't, it's a it's a Susan Marie, where where
Speaker 1: we're presented with a woman who should know how to
Speaker 1: do a lot of things but is not allowed to
Speaker 1: do anything. Like we meet Sophie as like a well
Speaker 1: respected cryptologist. I kind of like how she's introduced. She
Speaker 1: enters very authoritatively, She's like, I am Sophie, I am
Speaker 1: a cryptologist. Everyone takes her very seriously, like it's immediately
Speaker 1: she's in control of the situation. She gets a little
Speaker 1: code across to Langdon and yeah, I thought it was
Speaker 1: generally kind of a strong introduction to that character. But
Speaker 1: then it's just like she proceeds to contribute nothing to
Speaker 1: the story, not seem to really care what's going on
Speaker 1: in this story, even though it very much concerns her,
Speaker 1: like and it's just like she she's she's damseled several times,
Speaker 1: even though usually when she's damseled, she's damseled first, but
Speaker 1: then everyone's damseled and you're just like, okay, what It's
Speaker 1: just there's just like we find out. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess the things I can say about her are I
Speaker 1: love Audrey Tattoo. She's great. We do know more I
Speaker 1: think about, like Sophie's background than we know about Robert Langdon's.
Speaker 1: Like all we really know about Robert Langdon as he
Speaker 1: teaches at Harvard and he fell in a well true,
Speaker 1: but I would argue that a lot of like men
Speaker 1: who are writing a female, like a strong female character, well,
Speaker 1: she's defined by her trauma exactly. It's like a character
Speaker 1: who has a tragic backstory and then it has turned
Speaker 1: them into this kind of like stoic, almost cold, emotionless personality.
Speaker 1: Lists is that even what she's supposed to be coming
Speaker 1: off as like, it's so uncure how we're supposed to
Speaker 1: be receiving her, because there's just nothing. It's just I
Speaker 1: just woke, I just woke flee up with my screaming
Speaker 1: about the Da Vinci code. But yeah, I mean, she
Speaker 1: just like she's devoid of any kind of personality, humor,
Speaker 1: emotion of any kind. Nothing. She's like, I hate history.
Speaker 1: I was like, but what do you like? Like, do
Speaker 1: you even like breaking codes? It sure doesn't seem that way,
Speaker 1: right because you don't have any You don't seem to
Speaker 1: be able to do it, because we don't see you
Speaker 1: do it at any point, except she knows that PS
Speaker 1: equals Princess Sophie I'm which is like, well, if we're
Speaker 1: I guess while we're in the reductive zone, why not
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna I'm gonna try to coin this. She's
Speaker 1: a full on Susan Marie. She should know how to
Speaker 1: solve a number of problems that are going on in
Speaker 1: this story were introduced to her as a person who
Speaker 1: is extremely qualified to solve this, but instead of her
Speaker 1: solving anything, we are just introduced by Robert Langdon to
Speaker 1: other characters who should be able to break a code
Speaker 1: and it's like, but she's right there, like it's it's
Speaker 1: so and it is like doubly frustrating to me that
Speaker 1: she just doesn't even seem interested in codes, And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: if you're not interested in codes, why were we introduced
Speaker 1: to you as a code expert? Like if she was
Speaker 1: just I would I would feel less insulted by this choice. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if she was just like a regular person, she's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I own a I own a plant shop.
Speaker 1: I don't know about this, Like that would make more
Speaker 1: narrative sense, given how little she does, if she had
Speaker 1: no expertise in this, but we're told she has extreme expertise.
Speaker 1: And then she's just like I don't know. Like when
Speaker 1: Ian McKellan has a gun to her head and he's like,
Speaker 1: what the da Vinci code, she's like, I d K,
Speaker 1: I d K my bff gill, I guess he'll just
Speaker 1: have to kill me, and like she doesn't even try.
Speaker 1: She hasn't think for a second about what the da
Speaker 1: Vinci code might be. She doesn't seem to care, like
Speaker 1: it's just so bizarre. And then when they're like looking
Speaker 1: at all the invisible ink scrawled all over the floor,
Speaker 1: and he's like, wait a minute, the Fibonacci sequence, they're
Speaker 1: out of order. Maybe that's a clue that the letters
Speaker 1: are out of order. And she's like, oh, an anagram.
Speaker 1: And then, rather than trying to solve an anagram as
Speaker 1: a fucking cryptologist, she's like, shrug, can you do it? Robert,
Speaker 1: and he's like, you bet you then, and then he
Speaker 1: iconically says moons, sermons, charms, demons, sermons, monks. He's has
Speaker 1: servants twice, also monks, ranks, rocks, like at least Robert
Speaker 1: Langdon for someone who is not a cryptologist. Uh, seems
Speaker 1: drisketed in breaking coach like it's even though he clearly
Speaker 1: sucks at it. And he thought that Da Vinci Coulde
Speaker 1: was Apple, which I am increasingly convinced it was not. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's another thing I'm I'm realizing in real time here,
Speaker 1: so bear with me. But okay, okay, So Sen what's
Speaker 1: is his name? Sennier? I don't I don't know how
Speaker 1: French Jacqueslier I feel. I also think that Dan Brown.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm totally right if we have French matrons. Uh,
Speaker 1: please correct me if I'm wrong, But it does just
Speaker 1: sound like Dan Brown is writing down the most French
Speaker 1: names he can think of. Like he's like, um, Jacques Soldier, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: print it. I'm a billionaire. Now watch my master class.
Speaker 1: I'm going to watch his masterclass and he's going to
Speaker 1: talk have a four am and eat spinach, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna turn it off and then you're going to be
Speaker 1: the most successful writer of all time, Jamie. Um. Okay.
Speaker 1: So Jacques, who we learned through flashbacks, has been training
Speaker 1: Sophie to break codes and follow clues and like he's
Speaker 1: been like prepping her for her entire life for this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But she cares, which she doesn't care.
Speaker 1: And he has so little faith apparently that she will
Speaker 1: be able to solve any of this stuff that he
Speaker 1: explicitly tells her find Robert Langdon, even though he is
Speaker 1: not a cryptologist and is not an expert in deciphering code.
Speaker 1: I was kind of wondering that, like why, because Robert
Speaker 1: Langdon himself says, I don't know why I would be
Speaker 1: the person to go to, right But this the entire
Speaker 1: plot of this movie hinges on the fact that a
Speaker 1: man had so little faith in a woman to be
Speaker 1: able to propel the story forward that he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: woman who I know, find this man over here because
Speaker 1: he'll be able to help you. Okay, But also canonically
Speaker 1: it was he wrong. It wasn't like Sophie could solve
Speaker 1: any of the codes. He solves zero of the codes.
Speaker 1: She just knew that one thing had a code inside
Speaker 1: of it. True, But that is just because the writing
Speaker 1: is such dogshit. Well yeah, like of course it's it's
Speaker 1: because Dan Brown doesn't actually care about women, Like that's obvious.
Speaker 1: But like in the Cannon, it makes total sense to
Speaker 1: me that Chaque Sag would have very little faith in
Speaker 1: Sophie's ability to solve this code because she doesn't solve
Speaker 1: a single code. And the movies four hours long. I'm
Speaker 1: also realizing I have all these notes saying Robert and Sophie,
Speaker 1: Robert and Sophie, Robert and Sophie, and I'm like, literally
Speaker 1: Robert Evans and Sophie was literally our friends. I wrote
Speaker 1: it down five hundred times last night, and I literally
Speaker 1: at one point like, this feels weird. I feel like
Speaker 1: I've written this before. Uh because wait, wait, what if
Speaker 1: that's of my closest friends. Wait a minute, just saying
Speaker 1: what if that's code. What if the movie is trying
Speaker 1: to tell us something about friends Robert and Sophie. I
Speaker 1: hope not. Let's just say, as someone who really detests
Speaker 1: both of these characters, I hope not. I hope. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's so funny, though. They should. They should
Speaker 1: start in our reboot. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Robert and so
Speaker 1: except this time Sophie does know how to do things
Speaker 1: and Robert isn't. He's just carrying guns around. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: just has he doesn't really, Yeah, he just has the
Speaker 1: He's kind of the muscle of the operation. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know who Ian McKellen is in this situation. We'll
Speaker 1: figure it out. Let's think on it. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: to kind of go back to just like a lot
Speaker 1: of this plot is men explaining things to women. This
Speaker 1: happens a lot in a lot of movies across many genres,
Speaker 1: where it's like basically a storytelling device, and I think
Speaker 1: I think it actually um composes like the vast majority
Speaker 1: of human interaction. I've had so many things that I
Speaker 1: already know explained to me by men and it doesn't
Speaker 1: come from nowhere, right, Um, So what happens here with
Speaker 1: this kind of trope even is that there's a story
Speaker 1: that requires a lot of like world building or exposition,
Speaker 1: and the writer needs to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: get this across clearly to the audience. So what they
Speaker 1: usually do is pull in a character, like, you know,
Speaker 1: an audience proxy who the other characters can explain things too,
Speaker 1: so that the audience can get this information. What usually happens,
Speaker 1: or what often happens, is that this character is like
Speaker 1: the only woman or one of only a very few
Speaker 1: number of women in the story. I remember talking about
Speaker 1: this in the Casino Royale episode. This happens in Laura Croft,
Speaker 1: this happens literally. I mean, I think it's like honestly
Speaker 1: part and parcel to every genre, but it's like it's
Speaker 1: prevalent in the action genre, like action sci fi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: world building genres especially, and I think that it has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with I would guess that genres
Speaker 1: that people assumed for a very long time that men
Speaker 1: are the main audience for this genre, that it features
Speaker 1: a lot of men talking at women, right, And it's
Speaker 1: just like it's just a it's a trope that operates
Speaker 1: under and reinforces the assumption that like women don't know things,
Speaker 1: women don't know as much as men. Women aren't smart.
Speaker 1: Men are smart. Men need to explain things to women,
Speaker 1: and like that is just like such a widely held
Speaker 1: belief still, particularly by men. But this one is like
Speaker 1: even it just feels like a very weird mutation of
Speaker 1: that trope because it's men talking at women, not just
Speaker 1: about anything. Of this is how spaceship work, this is
Speaker 1: how computer work, or like extremely binary assumptions of like
Speaker 1: men know about this thing, women know about this thing.
Speaker 1: These are men who are talking about women a woman
Speaker 1: like it's it's like worse than the normal one because
Speaker 1: like it's all bad, but it's especially annoying to hear
Speaker 1: men explain women to them Like that is just like
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Like the room couldn't be less
Speaker 1: read in this scenario. There's at that scene is fucking
Speaker 1: twenty minutes long where they're explaining birth and marriage and
Speaker 1: like just and what aren't they explaining about sis women
Speaker 1: to us this woman who's sitting right there, Like it's
Speaker 1: just so And then it just means that like because
Speaker 1: the two men already know things about this and they
Speaker 1: formed their own theories, they get to like debate and
Speaker 1: like actually have a discussion, whereas Sophie is just talked
Speaker 1: at and explained to. And it's just but again, the
Speaker 1: thing is, like Sophie should be able to engage with
Speaker 1: this discussion to some extent based on what we know
Speaker 1: about her. She just the writer's Dan Brown slash the
Speaker 1: guy who wrote this movie. Don't let her. That's why
Speaker 1: it really bothers me. Is like we have been told
Speaker 1: that she has a level of knowledge that at least,
Speaker 1: even if she doesn't know jack shit about the Bible,
Speaker 1: she is a cryptologist. She's a very critical thinker, Like
Speaker 1: she would be able to engage with this conversation actively,
Speaker 1: even if she wasn't the expert on the subject, she
Speaker 1: would at least be able to intelligently interact with this topic.
Speaker 1: But she just doesn't. She just say they don't just
Speaker 1: make her sit there and like be like, huh what,
Speaker 1: That's not what I heard. And then I cut to
Speaker 1: Audrey Tattoo, who like wakes up from the nap she
Speaker 1: was taking because she hasn't they haven't put a camera
Speaker 1: on her in fourteen hours, and she goes that can't
Speaker 1: be or she goes like but wait, or like Ian mceellan,
Speaker 1: like multiple with that scene asks her questions that he
Speaker 1: knows the answer to that he knows she doesn't know
Speaker 1: the answer to, and then she will answer it wrong,
Speaker 1: and then I'll be like ha ha ha ha, No,
Speaker 1: you fool, it's Mary Magdalene and she's your mom. And
Speaker 1: then you're just like, oh my god, this is exhausting.
Speaker 1: It also makes you wonder why Jacques would not tell
Speaker 1: Sophie anything about her true identity or her history. Like
Speaker 1: it's not like she's too young. She's like in her thirties.
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, I couldn't tell her she was
Speaker 1: only you know, she's ten years old. She couldn't handle
Speaker 1: the truth. Yet it's like, no, she's like she's thirty
Speaker 1: three years And I think the movie tries to like
Speaker 1: explain this, this story of the book whatever, tries to
Speaker 1: explain this away by like saying, oh, no, they lost touch.
Speaker 1: But why would the grand Master of the Priory of
Speaker 1: Scion let that happen, let himself lose touch with the
Speaker 1: last living air of Jesus if his whole thing is
Speaker 1: protecting this air, Like he literally had one job. He
Speaker 1: had one job and then he like, I just it's
Speaker 1: so funny. I would love not the let's scale that down.
Speaker 1: I think it would be really funny, like the amount
Speaker 1: started to go back to the whole, like invisible ink
Speaker 1: in the loop, But how long must it have taken?
Speaker 1: Like and you never see you see? I think I
Speaker 1: mean were to assume all of the invisible ink he
Speaker 1: had on hand when he died at the louver. But
Speaker 1: his his hand never falters. It's all in the same fond.
Speaker 1: It's all in like comics hands b and he just
Speaker 1: is like whoop, whoop, whoop. He's doing like anagrams in
Speaker 1: his head as he's like bleeding out from his stomach
Speaker 1: like god the okay, yes, so ultimately the point So
Speaker 1: and we didn't Caitly and I agreed, we're not going
Speaker 1: to get into the extreme sexism in Catholicism or organized
Speaker 1: religion in any way because it is just too vast
Speaker 1: and we wanted to have fun today. Okay, But I
Speaker 1: do feel like Dan Brown uses extreme misogyny in organized
Speaker 1: religion to make his misogyny look not that bad. I
Speaker 1: feel like he kind of offsets it, like any time
Speaker 1: he is there's like a scene of a woman being
Speaker 1: talked over, ignored, whatever, it's you know, a crime against
Speaker 1: women that is far more violent. Is like invoked almost
Speaker 1: as if to say, like, sure, I'm an asshole to women,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't murder one in the Holy Wars. Like
Speaker 1: it's just kind of this weird equivalent. I wouldn't burn
Speaker 1: a witch at the steak for free like that. It's
Speaker 1: just yeah, I think he again, I just really think
Speaker 1: he thinks he's doing something. Um when it's like a
Speaker 1: tattoo has is technically in the scene, but she hasn't
Speaker 1: had a line of dialogue in minutes. Um, it's just ridiculous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just such a It's it's just like a
Speaker 1: female character who is couldn't be more important to the
Speaker 1: story and couldn't be worse written, less engaged. But I
Speaker 1: feel like it's just like whatever, it's two thousand six
Speaker 1: and having a woman physically present is like we did it,
Speaker 1: you know, Like it's just so have asked and annoying.
Speaker 1: He's just right, She's just there to basically be a
Speaker 1: big reveal, Like her function in the story is to
Speaker 1: like be the twist. She's just he's just carrying around
Speaker 1: Chekhov's womb, right, So, but if that is something you
Speaker 1: want to do in your story. Fine, I guess, but
Speaker 1: also you have to spend the rest of the story
Speaker 1: carefully characterizing her and not just like having her tag along.
Speaker 1: The other thing that really annoys me about it is
Speaker 1: that um they keep referring to once. They like they're like, yes,
Speaker 1: I guess, well, let's agree that the Holy Grail is
Speaker 1: a human as the sun, the heir to the air
Speaker 1: of Jesus. And they keep using he pronouns, you know,
Speaker 1: whoever this living air of Jesus, because because they just assume.
Speaker 1: But it's also I think the air they can take
Speaker 1: seriously that, but it's also I think just done to
Speaker 1: like throw you off the trail of the big twist
Speaker 1: that it's Sophie. So it feels like that thing where
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, the person who was like writing that
Speaker 1: motorcycle and had a helmet on, who you thought was
Speaker 1: a man. Oh, they took the helmet off and it's
Speaker 1: actually a woman. It feels like adjacent to that, right,
Speaker 1: and then it's like end of observation. I've gotta I've
Speaker 1: got to I've got a quote. I've got a quote. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is classic backdel cast citation process. This is the
Speaker 1: abstract of a paper I would have had to pay
Speaker 1: forty dollars to read, So I'm gonna go into the abstract.
Speaker 1: I would like to find this paper for not forty dollars.
Speaker 1: No disrespect to its author um. This was published in
Speaker 1: two eight. It is by a professor at the University
Speaker 1: of Robert UH feminist King UH by Professor Christie Maddox,
Speaker 1: and it is called the da Vinci Code and the
Speaker 1: regressive gender politics of Celebrate Wating Women. And I really
Speaker 1: uh should read this paper because it's the abstract I
Speaker 1: feel like really concisely boils down the kind of like
Speaker 1: both nous of like them thinking they're being feminist while
Speaker 1: ignoring all female characters. So here's what Christian Maddox says. Quote.
Speaker 1: The public outcry prompted by the Da Vinci Code accused
Speaker 1: the novel of being a radical feminist text with potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous implications for Christianity. The novel celebrates women, the quote
Speaker 1: unquote sacred feminism and quote unquote goddess worship, which on
Speaker 1: one level gives it ideological kinship with the important tradition
Speaker 1: of difference or cultural feminism. This analysis, however, argues that
Speaker 1: the novel undercuts its feminist moves through its persistent recourse
Speaker 1: to the private sphere and it's unremitting celebration of the biological.
Speaker 1: The narrative falls victim to the problem that commonly inheres
Speaker 1: in different slash cultural feminism. It redefines the binary system
Speaker 1: of gender as well as resulting heterosexuality. Through these anti
Speaker 1: feminist impulses, the da Vinci Code makes plain that celebrating
Speaker 1: women does not always make for feminist progress. Instead, the
Speaker 1: da Vinci Code highlights the dangerous inherent in cultural slash
Speaker 1: difference feminism. Finally situated with its religious context, the da
Speaker 1: Vinci Code demonstrates the possibility for feminisms co optation by
Speaker 1: moral reform politics, which I think is just kind of
Speaker 1: an academic way of saying like sort of what we've
Speaker 1: been circling around this whole time, which is that, you know,
Speaker 1: Dan Brown, this movie in general seems to be saying
Speaker 1: that by you know, celebrating women in any narrow, extremely
Speaker 1: sis binary way is enough of a win to call
Speaker 1: itself a feminist text, which wasn't helped by how this
Speaker 1: movie was received because it was, you know, like denounced
Speaker 1: by the Catholic Church. And I mean it's like I
Speaker 1: feel like we both kind of remember and like ever
Speaker 1: helps a movie ever like, But part of the ground
Speaker 1: that was banned on was like, well, they're deifying women
Speaker 1: and we don't do that in Catholicism, which is you know, true, right,
Speaker 1: but it resulted in this property being cast in this
Speaker 1: like radical feminist lens, in a property where there's only
Speaker 1: one female character who has nothing going on like at
Speaker 1: any point, and so um yeah, I wanted to shout
Speaker 1: out Christie Maddox. I feel like she very intelligently said
Speaker 1: something that I felt strongly watching this movie, but couldn't
Speaker 1: like get into those words. It's like, it's just it
Speaker 1: just speaks to I think this bar on the floor
Speaker 1: at this time. Well, it's it's kind of operating under
Speaker 1: the same logic that like conservative like the way that
Speaker 1: the patriarchy values women, because you'll find plenty of like
Speaker 1: misogynists people out there who are like, no, I love women,
Speaker 1: their sacred. We have to protect them because there are
Speaker 1: mothers and our wives like it's and our daughters and
Speaker 1: our daughters. And it's literally like Ted Crustyle, like I
Speaker 1: have a daughter, I cannot possibly be a bad person,
Speaker 1: Like you're just like sir, right, and it's just like
Speaker 1: operating under the same logic almost like of well, women
Speaker 1: are so special to the world because they're the ones
Speaker 1: who give life and who are wombs walking wombs, which
Speaker 1: is like no disrespect to people with whoobs that you
Speaker 1: don't want to have babies with the whoops. It's just
Speaker 1: the reductive ism of of the thing that it just
Speaker 1: excludes so many people. And it's a god I mean,
Speaker 1: just like sciss men are never reduced to a biological function.
Speaker 1: And in this way ever, like to the point where
Speaker 1: as Robert Langdon is explaining male and female symbology to Sophie,
Speaker 1: he's like, the the the triangle that whatever, I don't
Speaker 1: even know what that symbol is, but like an upside
Speaker 1: down V. That's the symbol for man. It's a rudimentary
Speaker 1: fallast known as the blade represents aggression and manhood. And
Speaker 1: then he's like, as you might imagine, the exact opposite
Speaker 1: of that is the female symbol, as if male and
Speaker 1: female are opposite things like that, I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: I guess, not in defense of him, but like I
Speaker 1: I do understand, like that is like a historical like
Speaker 1: that is like a symbolic thing that's existed for a
Speaker 1: long time, but he just presents it as kind of
Speaker 1: like this is a fact, right, I mean, which I
Speaker 1: think is is extremely of the time. It's like in
Speaker 1: two thousand six, there I don't think they're I mean,
Speaker 1: there really wasn't much conversation in depth in the mainstream
Speaker 1: about challenging gender roles and like the sis binary gender
Speaker 1: dynamic in in really any way. And I feel like
Speaker 1: that scenes like that, really it takes like an ancient
Speaker 1: symbol and obviously the further you go back, the worst
Speaker 1: gender politics grow, like, but it's still presenting it in
Speaker 1: a very matter of fact way of like, well, of
Speaker 1: course this is boy and this is the it resembles
Speaker 1: the shape of a woman's womb, and it's like, why,
Speaker 1: why is this the way you're presenting this information. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like it's it isn't surprising and like I didn't
Speaker 1: expect better of this movie, but it's yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: just like it's an extremely of its time movie that
Speaker 1: like the fact that that is like a very matter
Speaker 1: of fact line dialogue delivered in a movie that is
Speaker 1: supposedly progressive on gender politics is like, well, that's all
Speaker 1: you need to know, right, I wanted to go. We
Speaker 1: touched on this also a little bit about like the
Speaker 1: lack of romantic subplot in the story that like it
Speaker 1: almost seems like, well, maybe it was going to be there,
Speaker 1: but then and then it's just not. I think they
Speaker 1: wanted us to do a will there, won't they? But
Speaker 1: but I can't. I cannot think of a single were
Speaker 1: we really was anyone in the audience like kids, like right,
Speaker 1: I wasn't feeling that. I appreciate that they didn't force
Speaker 1: any kind of like romantic subplot. Although there's this one moment.
Speaker 1: It's the scene where Lee he's like holding them at
Speaker 1: gunpoint and he's threatening to kill Robert Langdon, and he's
Speaker 1: talking to Sophie and he's like, oh, by the way
Speaker 1: that you've been looking at your hero, you wouldn't let
Speaker 1: him die, would you? And I'm like, is the aplication
Speaker 1: there that like she is romantically interested in him and
Speaker 1: he's sort of like using Langdon as leverage to get
Speaker 1: what he wants, because he thinks that Sophie's in love
Speaker 1: with him. Huh. And I was like, what is what?
Speaker 1: Why is that there? I It's just like I don't
Speaker 1: I don't want to think about it. I don't. I
Speaker 1: you you you, and the fact that we are like
Speaker 1: to I mean, yeah, it's again, it's just maybe so tired,
Speaker 1: Kaitlin that you can think about like, first of all,
Speaker 1: impossible to root for it because it's like even large
Speaker 1: age gap aside, which is another like trophy tropy trophy
Speaker 1: element of this genre, specifically action genre loves an enormous
Speaker 1: age gap. And that is not too I want to
Speaker 1: be a little clearer on that, because I feel like
Speaker 1: there is just kind of like a general feeling that
Speaker 1: any age gap is not okay, that is not you
Speaker 1: know that that's that's not true. I mean, there's many
Speaker 1: relationships in which an age gap is present and the
Speaker 1: relationship is perfectly healthy and it's fine. And like, I
Speaker 1: don't mean to like cast that net so widely as
Speaker 1: I think we have in the past. I just I
Speaker 1: just think that it is in this case, I think
Speaker 1: pretty clearly done because of the value that a woman's
Speaker 1: youth has on screen and how that is not as
Speaker 1: much of an issue when it comes to assist male actor,
Speaker 1: and that is I think, you know, a huge reason
Speaker 1: why we see those age gaps present is because even
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, it was only acceptable to see
Speaker 1: a female lead in an action movie. You know, you
Speaker 1: cannot crust the age of forty or all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you need to be an Oscar winner or extremely famous,
Speaker 1: or we have a problem, and like there's just kind
Speaker 1: of this unspoken set of rules. And then on top
Speaker 1: of that, if you're Tom Hanks and Audrey Tattoo and
Speaker 1: you have no chemistry, and part of the reason I
Speaker 1: don't I don't even want to put that on them
Speaker 1: too much because it's because they didn't write Audrey a
Speaker 1: character like maybe there would have been some chemistry between
Speaker 1: them if she had had anything to do or say
Speaker 1: or think. Like I feel like that whole thing speaks
Speaker 1: to like a series of small issues that it's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we've talked about this recently, is
Speaker 1: like we're not like completely against a romance in a movie.
Speaker 1: The romance just has to like be healthy and makes sense.
Speaker 1: Like it's really like, I mean, it is kind of
Speaker 1: a high bar. Declare just speaking from experience, but like
Speaker 1: it is not an impossible thing to be rooting for
Speaker 1: a romance in a movie, even ahead or a rim romance,
Speaker 1: like it can be done. We've done it, maybe we'll
Speaker 1: do it again and we don't know. But but it's
Speaker 1: just the way that this is set up is like God,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's impossible to root for because we're just
Speaker 1: given nothing. We're given Tom Hanks and the expectation that
Speaker 1: we want Tom Hanks to fuck and it's like I'm
Speaker 1: just not really there, like he you know, he can
Speaker 1: mind his business, and but it's yeah, okay, that was
Speaker 1: my Jamie's a little ran no please. And to just
Speaker 1: add to that the age gap thing. Another component of
Speaker 1: how it can become problematic is when there's like a
Speaker 1: series where we see the same male star aging James
Speaker 1: Bond syndrome, yeah, and then the female lead cast alongside
Speaker 1: him is usually different. In every movie, it's literally McConaughey ship,
Speaker 1: like they stay the same age and he stops getting
Speaker 1: over there like exactly. Yeah. We've talked about that before
Speaker 1: on different episodes. But and it's I mean, with let
Speaker 1: me look up, what the hell is this movie called.
Speaker 1: It's Felicity. It's Felicity Jones, who is younger. So it's
Speaker 1: not Zoe Deschanel got it similar haircut. I think you
Speaker 1: were you were tricked by the haircut, because she does
Speaker 1: have bangs in this movie. But it's Felicity Jones, who
Speaker 1: is I think almost ten years younger than Audrey Tattoo.
Speaker 1: Um because the movie came out ten years later, so
Speaker 1: they legally need to be thirty five. No matter what,
Speaker 1: even if there isn't a actual romantic subplot in a
Speaker 1: movie like this, it's still framed as like, look at
Speaker 1: these two people doing action scenes together, and they're spending
Speaker 1: a lot of time together, and they're both attractive, especially
Speaker 1: the woman that it's presented as if it is from,
Speaker 1: because if you look at the I mean even on
Speaker 1: the Da Vinci code poster on Wikipedia, I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty unambiguously like Audrey Tattoo is like afraid impressed against
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks's chest, like you are supposed to be thinking
Speaker 1: of this as a potential for romance, Like it's pretty
Speaker 1: unambiguously like that's what you're supposed to think. And even
Speaker 1: if they don't even actually like kiss or have sex
Speaker 1: or anything like that in the story, and thank god
Speaker 1: they don't. Just like the quest the adventure, the like
Speaker 1: close proximity they're in is just like yes, like presented,
Speaker 1: is this like sexy thing, the fact that she heals
Speaker 1: him with her christ like power, hears him of his
Speaker 1: fear of falling in a well again with her christ
Speaker 1: like hands, and you're like, I mean whatever, it's just
Speaker 1: it's just annoying. I just I wanted to bring up
Speaker 1: that age gap thing because I I was thinking about
Speaker 1: how Florence Pew took a ton of ship and even
Speaker 1: like I was like on the wrong side of that
Speaker 1: issue originally, where like Florence Pew is dating Zac Breath,
Speaker 1: they seem to be very happy together and people were,
Speaker 1: you know, giving them a ton of ship for their
Speaker 1: being and not in faking age gap, I guess in
Speaker 1: that relationship. And she was like, I am an adult.
Speaker 1: I'm like twenty six years old. Shut the funk up,
Speaker 1: like stay out of my life. And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: point take it, like live your life like it's it's
Speaker 1: just it's But in terms of like this kind of universe,
Speaker 1: I think it has I don't know, it's I feel
Speaker 1: like it's slightly it's kind of a different discussion between
Speaker 1: like people that exist in the world and are in
Speaker 1: love in the world versus a forced movie couple with
Speaker 1: absolutely no chemistry, like it's two different discussions, and we're
Speaker 1: having the movie discussion here. And because like, at least
Speaker 1: where I usually come from is like, because a woman's
Speaker 1: youth is usually valued far beyond other qualities about them.
Speaker 1: It's just something that always pings me. And we see
Speaker 1: these trends in media of age gaps that usually have
Speaker 1: the implication of demonizing a woman aging. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's the this idea that men are allowed to age,
Speaker 1: but people only want to see women on screen who
Speaker 1: were young. But again, it's worthwhile to examine this on
Speaker 1: a case by case basis rather than making any kind
Speaker 1: of sweeping generalizations about it. It's a fair I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a really complicated issue, and I will fully admit
Speaker 1: that I have like had kind of an unfair take
Speaker 1: uh in the past in some cases, in cases like this,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's kind of unambiguously like what the fuck? Uh.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's the da Vinci code. I don't
Speaker 1: know what we expected. The da Vinci code is Apple,
Speaker 1: So any question none. Um. There were a few scenes
Speaker 1: where I was like, where Sophie participates in the action
Speaker 1: that I was kind of surprised. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: she like bashes Silas's head against the ground after he
Speaker 1: attacks them at the chateau, and then later she like
Speaker 1: picks up Lee's gun after he's been disarmed. And then
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, she does that because she's
Speaker 1: a cop, Like I forgot that. She was, like what
Speaker 1: her even background in training is because the movie cares
Speaker 1: so little about letting you know anything about her that
Speaker 1: she would like have some like combat skills and she
Speaker 1: would know how to handle a gun. But it was
Speaker 1: just like, oh, Okay, she's allowed to. She's not like
Speaker 1: fully sidelined every time. She actually does participate in some
Speaker 1: of the action. And then I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: she knows how to do that because she's like a
Speaker 1: trained police officer anyway. So I was like, well, I
Speaker 1: guess points and then points taken back away. The other
Speaker 1: thing is that like, and this is just this is
Speaker 1: probably neither here nor there, but she is wearing high
Speaker 1: heels and a pencil skirt throughout the entire movie. And
Speaker 1: if it were me and I found myself in the
Speaker 1: middle of a Grail quest, the first thing I would
Speaker 1: do is be like, hey, can we go to a
Speaker 1: store or like to my apartment so I can change
Speaker 1: into like pants and well it's comfortable cloth. I also
Speaker 1: like going back to the romance platform a second. The
Speaker 1: fact that we're supposed to like they have spent a
Speaker 1: maximum of thirty six hours together, Like I understand that
Speaker 1: a good old fashioned trauma bond, but it's not been
Speaker 1: that long. Yeah, I do. And I think that that
Speaker 1: is the problem you're describing is a Howard specific problem
Speaker 1: because was that not the exact same thing that came
Speaker 1: up with Bryce Dallas Howard when she was in those
Speaker 1: damn Jurassic Park movies. I didn't watch. Yes, that is
Speaker 1: exactly it. It was like she was wearing high heels,
Speaker 1: but she was a genius scientist running from the Jurassic Park. Yeah, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is kind of a similar thing where it's like
Speaker 1: again it's it's it's frustrating to me because it's like
Speaker 1: we we know as lovers of cinema. Then Audrey Tattoo
Speaker 1: is an incredibly dynamic like character actress. She can pull
Speaker 1: off a lot of looks, she can pull off a
Speaker 1: lot of different energies. Like she's really talented and we're
Speaker 1: just thrown into like I feel bad for her watching
Speaker 1: this movie because it's just like she's just thrown into
Speaker 1: this generic ass role where it's like she's dressed generically,
Speaker 1: her character is written barely, and when it is, it's generically,
Speaker 1: and it's like, God, you were like you've been given
Speaker 1: this incredible I mean to invoke another French actress who
Speaker 1: people try to like inject into like aggro male American movies.
Speaker 1: It's like Marianne Courtyard and Inception, where you're like, here's
Speaker 1: this enormously talented actor who is like being given just
Speaker 1: wife shit to do. It's just yeah, it's just annoying, man.
Speaker 1: It's it's like, if you want to I I resent that,
Speaker 1: Like these really talented female actors are hired because they're talented,
Speaker 1: and then they're not given anything to do that would
Speaker 1: showcase that talent in any way. It ends up making
Speaker 1: them look bad. And that's like just not fair, Like
Speaker 1: that's such an unfair exchange to have to make. But
Speaker 1: it does feel like very often with like and this
Speaker 1: is again, this is changing over time, and it is
Speaker 1: more significant in marginalized communities. And but this exchange of
Speaker 1: like to go from like being an indie darling to
Speaker 1: being a mainstream star means that you need to kind
Speaker 1: of like sacrifice everything about yourself that was interesting and
Speaker 1: showed like that you were like this, you know, dynamic actor.
Speaker 1: Like it's just when that isn't true for for most
Speaker 1: sis male actors. They're allowed to, you know, take the
Speaker 1: charisma that made them successful and carry it into the
Speaker 1: mainstream because that fucking makes sense. Like why would you
Speaker 1: hire a really interesting, talented actor and then give them
Speaker 1: I just don't get it. It's like, in that case,
Speaker 1: then hire fucking anybody, Hire someone who sucks it acting.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't even know the difference, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: just weird. Hire me, I suck at acting, and yeah,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't. You would never know because I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to say anything. But can you wear a shoe?
Speaker 1: Like that's all used that to be able to like
Speaker 1: talk at Tom Hanks and just be like, what, No,
Speaker 1: that can't be. It couldn't be. Like it's any any
Speaker 1: you know, human person who could say it couldn't be
Speaker 1: could have played that role. So it's it's extra shitty
Speaker 1: that it took a very talented actor who deserved a
Speaker 1: meteor mainstream role and was given nothing well but anything else.
Speaker 1: I think I've said everything that the Vinci code was ultimately,
Speaker 1: did this movie pass the excelsas I honestly, I'm going
Speaker 1: to guess no. I don't think so. I didn't forget
Speaker 1: to pay because the only other female characters who we
Speaker 1: see are like the occasional none or are there any?
Speaker 1: I really don't the fact that we're talking about women
Speaker 1: this entire movie, barely any appear. Yeah. I do not
Speaker 1: believe that this passes the Bectel test. It's what a
Speaker 1: what a stinker? Wait, I just I just googled that
Speaker 1: this is funny. Okay, So there is this website that
Speaker 1: I don't think we've ever directly cited, even though it's
Speaker 1: hilariously perfect thing for us to talk about. It's Bectel
Speaker 1: test dot com. Uh, and it's it's a pretty I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of an old website. It looks kind
Speaker 1: of html E and then it just you can just
Speaker 1: look up the name of a movie and then people
Speaker 1: will comment whether you think it passed the Back to
Speaker 1: Tis by our Magic. I do not think it passes.
Speaker 1: But here are the three comments. Dr space Goat said this.
Speaker 1: Dr space Goat said it passes. Sophie and Sister San
Speaker 1: Dreen the letter of which is killed off in the
Speaker 1: third of the first third of the movie, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know whose sister Sandrin is, so that's a no.
Speaker 1: And maybe she was credited on IMDb. I didn't hear
Speaker 1: that name spoken. But I don't think she and Sophie
Speaker 1: even do they talk to each other. She's I think
Speaker 1: she's the nun who gets killed by Silas. Uh. See
Speaker 1: the fact that we even have this question is I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe it's another nun. Does she talk to a different nun?
Speaker 1: Sophie does talk to her grandma, who is maybe not
Speaker 1: actually her grandma, and she's like, I'm your grandma, So
Speaker 1: does I don't know? Okay, So Larissa five six five
Speaker 1: six had something to say about that. Larissa says the
Speaker 1: grandmother doesn't count as a named character. While book readers
Speaker 1: will recognize her as Marie Chauvel, she doesn't say this
Speaker 1: in the movie, and it's credited only as elegant woman
Speaker 1: at ross Lynn in the film's credits, So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say that doesn't count. Wow. So you know, there's a
Speaker 1: little and then there's a guy named Greg who threw
Speaker 1: his hat into the ring and said it did pass.
Speaker 1: But Okay, this is fun. Greg says Sophie and her
Speaker 1: grandmother have a conversation. In the end, it is about
Speaker 1: giving her up to Jacques Sonyer, I don't think that
Speaker 1: is really about a man. And it's like, Greg, do
Speaker 1: you hear yourself when you talk? Um? So, I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: based on Bechtel test dot com, I can't think of
Speaker 1: about a resource. Uh doesn't pass. I guess that's Sophie
Speaker 1: does talk to someone who identifies as her grandmother, but
Speaker 1: we only know as elegant woman at ross Lynn. Well,
Speaker 1: if we're going by my new caveat that I'm going
Speaker 1: to add into the mix from now on, which is
Speaker 1: does the interaction between women is it meaningful to the story?
Speaker 1: Could it be taken out and the story would be
Speaker 1: or feel no different? And in this case, you could
Speaker 1: take Sophie. You could take Sophia. She could be The
Speaker 1: thing is like, ultimately Sophie could exist in the narrative
Speaker 1: and be off screen the entire movie period, and that
Speaker 1: does not bode well. Like they could be like, there's
Speaker 1: this woman named Sophie, she's Jesus's niece. I've never met her,
Speaker 1: and the movie could basically play out the same way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: more or less outside of one or two buks on
Speaker 1: the head. So uh, this for me is a no
Speaker 1: as far as passing the test um. It's also a
Speaker 1: painfully white movie. Absolutely yes. So um, this movie sucks
Speaker 1: and I would give it. I guess, like I don't
Speaker 1: half nipples, zero nipples. I don't know, does it deserve anything.
Speaker 1: I'm giving a zero. I'm giving a zero for Hubris
Speaker 1: because it really thinks it's doing a lot and it's
Speaker 1: it's just not I'll say I love the first at
Speaker 1: last twenty minutes of this movie are just hilarious. They're
Speaker 1: so funny. There's so much going on. You have no
Speaker 1: idea what's going on, and it's just like happening at
Speaker 1: you and you're like, like, it's it's very it's a
Speaker 1: very engaging experience because you're just like, why are they
Speaker 1: yelling at me? And they're they're like, I've got it,
Speaker 1: Moon Sun Star Isaac Newton, Like it's just it's really
Speaker 1: funny on that like it's it's hilarious, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's not doing anything for anybody. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: a bunch of bullshit, you know whatever. Some guy that
Speaker 1: has like a christ complex made a million dollars off
Speaker 1: of it, and now we can watch his masterclass. But
Speaker 1: it's just it's no nipple. What it what? What? It's
Speaker 1: like the most reductive interpretation of women period that excludes
Speaker 1: a great many women. It's it's like defining womanhood in
Speaker 1: a very disingenuous way, which is having a womb and
Speaker 1: being married to Jesus. Well, guess what that's that's a
Speaker 1: really weird bar to clear. Well, as someone who identifies
Speaker 1: as a womb first and second as Jesus is his wife,
Speaker 1: I take offense to that. Jamie, Well, honestly, you are
Speaker 1: the target demo. It's just a disaster. Like it's It's
Speaker 1: just it's reductive in so many ways. It's ablest. It's
Speaker 1: all white people. Really. I mean, if if I had
Speaker 1: a nipple, I would give it to that hilarious Tom Hanks,
Speaker 1: Moon Sermons, Charmed, Demon Sermons, Muggs, Rank Rocks, Madonna of
Speaker 1: the Rocks, Da Vinci. That should be on the A
Speaker 1: five Best movie lines list. But outside of that, I
Speaker 1: just I just even if this movie is attempting to
Speaker 1: and I think it is attempting to with some success,
Speaker 1: in a very narrow amount of time attempting to include
Speaker 1: women at a fundamental level in Christianity, which is not
Speaker 1: an insignificant attempt, right, Like that is that's not the
Speaker 1: worst thing I've ever heard of. Sure, let's get women
Speaker 1: in there, let's throw a girl boss into Christianity, see
Speaker 1: what happens. But but ultimately, I just I'm just kind
Speaker 1: of like rolling my eyes at like how much this
Speaker 1: movie thinks it's doing versus what it's actually doing, which
Speaker 1: is being really long and boring. Zero nipples. Yes, but
Speaker 1: shout out to Alfred Molina, a character who I also
Speaker 1: I think could be taken out of the movie and
Speaker 1: the movie would really be not that much different. But
Speaker 1: we're so glad that he's there. We're thrilled he's there.
Speaker 1: He's really um he's I mean, he's great in the
Speaker 1: scenes he's in I don't know what he's sucking talking about.
Speaker 1: Like every time they brought up the name of his cult,
Speaker 1: they're like opus day and I was like, what is that?
Speaker 1: Is that like a computer but it's a group? Uh.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what he's talking about at any point,
Speaker 1: but I did love to see him, So this is weird.
Speaker 1: This is like, I mean, speaking to life of a
Speaker 1: character actor, much like Alfred Mallina is an iconic character actor.
Speaker 1: But he's in both movies we've covered this week. Uh
Speaker 1: really not that much at all, very minimally in pretty
Speaker 1: like kind of villainous, antagonistic roles. Let Alfred Molina play
Speaker 1: the lead? Why didn't he play the lead? More? Come on?
Speaker 1: And Dad thinks he's nice? Well? Um tuned back in
Speaker 1: at some point down the road for March Fred Molina
Speaker 1: Part two, in which will cover an education as well
Speaker 1: as species. I insist I want to see Alfred willing
Speaker 1: to have sex with an alien. So no pushback here.
Speaker 1: It's on. It's on Hulu. It's it's quite excited it's
Speaker 1: on Hulu. Are there no? Oh yeah, Oh. I thought
Speaker 1: you're like, oh yeah, there's a ton of vestors. There's nothing,
Speaker 1: but okay, I'll watch it. I'm excited, but I think
Speaker 1: as it stands, Um, first of all, to everyone, for
Speaker 1: to all over four hundred of you who voted for
Speaker 1: the Da Vinci code, I hope you're happy. I don't
Speaker 1: know what you wanted or what you expected. We basically
Speaker 1: included the Da Vinci choked, the Da Vinci chode Okay,
Speaker 1: I've had two glasses of wine and I'm the division.
Speaker 1: That's what our reboot is called. It's called The Boy.
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, I don't know what you
Speaker 1: what what this little joke was that you were playing.
Speaker 1: But us, it feels like the Matrons are pranking us
Speaker 1: by voting for I think I think that the Matron's
Speaker 1: historically like a movie that it seems like we'll have
Speaker 1: nothing to say about, and then we always have two
Speaker 1: hours worth of more hours worth of things to say.
Speaker 1: My little theorious people don't come to the Matreon for
Speaker 1: productive discussion. Sound off of the comments if you agree
Speaker 1: that this is where we drink wine and get confused.
Speaker 1: Uh this yeah, this movie is trash. What I think
Speaker 1: is going to be really fun is that guaranteed? Like
Speaker 1: maybe if the if the world doesn't burnt to a
Speaker 1: crisp in ten years, um, I will watch the Da
Speaker 1: Vinci Code again in ten years and have no recollection
Speaker 1: of anything. And this is just kind of like a
Speaker 1: once a decade they weekend experience, UM, where we're like, wait,
Speaker 1: the Da Vinci Code is Apple, That's what the fuck?
Speaker 1: And we can just have this. I think in that
Speaker 1: way it was all worth it because we just get
Speaker 1: to have this gorgeous experience of realizing that that we've
Speaker 1: been watching this long ass movie for the worst twist
Speaker 1: of all time. I'm tempted to because even though I've
Speaker 1: read the book Angels and Demons, I simply don't remember
Speaker 1: anything about it. So now I'm tempted to watch that
Speaker 1: movie and just have a similar experience Angels and Demons, April.
Speaker 1: They don't want it. They don't want to. You know,
Speaker 1: what what if we what if we punish the if
Speaker 1: we punish the Matreon by being like, oh, you wanted
Speaker 1: the Da Vinci code, Well, now we're doing an I
Speaker 1: hope you thought that little joke was funny everybody, because
Speaker 1: we're never going to stop talking about the Robert Langdon universe.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Robert Langdon is the most basic name
Speaker 1: for a man. There. Robert Langdon study was like just
Speaker 1: absolutely going off. Um, well, thanks for tuning in Matrons
Speaker 1: to Alfred marsh Lena. We love you. We resent you
Speaker 1: for this one, but we love you. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: guess what I'm about to do, Jamie read every word
Speaker 1: of Angels and Demons without pea breaks. I'm gonna sit
Speaker 1: in the bathtub for eight hours. I literally got sick.
Speaker 1: My mom was so mad at me, It's like, why
Speaker 1: are you sneezing? Was like, I didn't leave the baths
Speaker 1: up until I finished the Da Vinci. It was like
Speaker 1: the most two thousand four interaction I've ever had. That's
Speaker 1: impressive that you read in eight hours. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I read like I finished it. I probably
Speaker 1: came in with it like whatever, a percentage the way
Speaker 1: and then refuse to leave until I had full on pneumonia,
Speaker 1: like well, I'm gonna I'm about to suffer the same fate.
Speaker 1: So but I want what I'm going to read it
Speaker 1: I was going to say is that I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: eat an apple. It's better feel really symbolic. I want
Speaker 1: you to think of my womb when you you're rosy,
Speaker 1: fleshy womb, my rosy fleshy, fertile Jesus womb full of seeds.
Speaker 1: And then I want you to run. I want you
Speaker 1: to sprint. I don't want you to take a bus
Speaker 1: or an uber or I don't want you to drive.
Speaker 1: I want you to run to the louver and neil
Speaker 1: at the loom and think of my fertile womb, because
Speaker 1: that is what it's all about. That is the real apple,
Speaker 1: the sacred feminine. Honestly, I feel like, ultimately you can
Speaker 1: get all the same story beats out of I Frankenstein
Speaker 1: and it's more fun to watch, Like the Holy Wars are.
Speaker 1: Literally it's just like the battle between demons and gargoyles.
Speaker 1: It's the same. It's all the same, and I Frankenstein
Speaker 1: is a more fun movie to watch. Justice for I
Speaker 1: Frankenstein fingers crossed for this year's Oscars, Oh gosh, Well,
Speaker 1: all right, I if I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: laid down, lie down. I don't know. Okay, thanks everyone,
Speaker 1: Bye bye,