Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Captain Marvel with Carolyn Cocca
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: On the Bell Cast, the questions asked if movies have
- 0:04Speaker 1: women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
- 0:07Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef and best
- 0:12Speaker 1: start changing it with the beck Del Cast. Hello, and
- 0:16Speaker 1: welcome to the Beachdel Cast. My name is Caitlin Arante
- 0:18Speaker 1: and my name is Jamie Loftus, and our podcast is
- 0:21Speaker 1: about the representation of women in movies. Women. Ever heard
- 0:25Speaker 1: of them? Movies? Ever heard of them? No? Neither. My
- 0:29Speaker 1: new playing intro thought of all the way here, I
- 0:33Speaker 1: have two degrees in film, but somehow I've never heard
- 0:36Speaker 1: of movies. Listen, I know I've I also went through
- 0:40Speaker 1: the school, and they just don't tell you about it.
- 0:43Speaker 1: If they don't, I'm excited for today's episode. It's another
- 0:46Speaker 1: hashtag current movie, not our normal fair but this seemed
- 0:52Speaker 1: very warranted. Yes, this is important important. The show is
- 0:57Speaker 1: Oh yeah, derived from hard to Know? Really the part
- 1:01Speaker 1: who are we point? Oh wait, no, she's not the
- 1:04Speaker 1: next Man. I don't know how superhero movies work. It's
- 1:08Speaker 1: almost like she's a mutant. That's not this franchise. No, no, no,
- 1:12Speaker 1: you know, I'm just gonna go bury myself a lot
- 1:16Speaker 1: any who, So we use the Bactel test as a
- 1:20Speaker 1: jumping off point, and the Bactel test for us our version,
- 1:24Speaker 1: there must be two female identifying characters with names. They
- 1:30Speaker 1: must speak to each other, and their conversation cannot be
- 1:34Speaker 1: about men. And this is just a two line exchange
- 1:37Speaker 1: for us. It's all it takes. All it takes. But
- 1:40Speaker 1: a lot of movies managed to fuck it up, and
- 1:42Speaker 1: a lot of movies in the universe were addressing today
- 1:46Speaker 1: managed to suck it up. So it'll be interesting to
- 1:49Speaker 1: dive in. And the movie, of course, if you've clicked,
- 1:53Speaker 1: if you've dared to click, you already know the movie
- 1:56Speaker 1: is Captain Marvel. Yes, if you are listening to this
- 1:59Speaker 1: and you have not yet seen the movie, we are
- 2:02Speaker 1: going to do a lot of spoilers, so um, just
- 2:05Speaker 1: be aware of that and also see the movie. The movie,
- 2:10Speaker 1: Come on, seriously, I mean the box off. If the
- 2:13Speaker 1: box office is to be judged, they don't necessarily need you,
- 2:18Speaker 1: but you should see it. This movie made so much money.
- 2:20Speaker 1: That's great, already made dollars? Wow? Well yeah, well with
- 2:25Speaker 1: how much further ado? Let's introduce our guest today. Yes, um,
- 2:28Speaker 1: she is the author of Superwomen, gender power, and representation.
- 2:33Speaker 1: She also wrote the forward for the Captain Marvel issue
- 2:37Speaker 1: of Entertainment Weekly, which is on shelves right now. It's
- 2:40Speaker 1: Caroline Cocao. Hi, thanks for being here. Oh, thanks so
- 2:45Speaker 1: much for having me. It's crazy to be here. Time.
- 2:48Speaker 1: We're so we're so psyched to have a true expert
- 2:52Speaker 1: on the cast. So I guess before we get into it,
- 2:57Speaker 1: all of our experiences with this movie, we are relatively recent.
- 3:02Speaker 1: Um in general, Caroline, how do you? How do you
- 3:05Speaker 1: like the movie? Oh? I was going to tell you
- 3:07Speaker 1: my long five day history with the movie. Please let's
- 3:11Speaker 1: unpack it. No, no, no, I'm kidding. Uh No. I
- 3:14Speaker 1: I did like it, and I think it's kind of
- 3:16Speaker 1: like when I went to go see A Wonder Woman.
- 3:19Speaker 1: I was more worried than anything else going in and
- 3:23Speaker 1: kind of relieved even though neither is perfect coming out.
- 3:28Speaker 1: So I'll just leave it at that for now. What's
- 3:31Speaker 1: your history with the property? Um? In terms of the
- 3:34Speaker 1: comics and stuff? Are you super familiar? Have you read
- 3:37Speaker 1: a lot of them? I didn't until I guess about
- 3:41Speaker 1: five years ago. So I didn't read Captain Marvel growing up.
- 3:46Speaker 1: I mean I did read some comics when I was
- 3:48Speaker 1: a kid, they were mostly d C comics like Superman, Batman,
- 3:51Speaker 1: Wonder Woman. My history with Captain Marvel is pretty recent
- 3:55Speaker 1: from writing my book, and it was while I was
- 3:59Speaker 1: writing it that the character was sort of relaunched as
- 4:03Speaker 1: Captain Marvel. She had formerly been Miss Marvel from you know,
- 4:07Speaker 1: for like forty years before that and at this and
- 4:12Speaker 1: you know, at the time they thought, well, okay, it's
- 4:15Speaker 1: a longer story. But at the time, it was everybody
- 4:18Speaker 1: working in comics except for like one woman at Marvel
- 4:20Speaker 1: and one woman at TC. They were all guys. And
- 4:23Speaker 1: these guys, I think, genuinely thought that they were creating
- 4:26Speaker 1: a feminist character and that's why they they purposely used
- 4:29Speaker 1: the moniker miss Um And you know, they had her
- 4:34Speaker 1: first she was a security chief at NASA. That's how
- 4:37Speaker 1: she's introduced, and then later she's the editor of Woman magazine.
- 4:42Speaker 1: That is the vaguest vagary I've ever heard. She's a feminist.
- 4:47Speaker 1: She's magazine, that's right. I mean the first issue of
- 4:52Speaker 1: Miss Marvel, she's fighting um, you know, mean spider Man.
- 4:56Speaker 1: Editor j Jonah Jamison owns Women magazine. She's she's fighting
- 5:00Speaker 1: on the Bay and he wants to underpay her, and
- 5:03Speaker 1: she's like, no, you want me, You're gonna pay me
- 5:05Speaker 1: this much. And he's like, okay, grumble, grumble, cigar jump,
- 5:09Speaker 1: I want to read that issue. And then he's like,
- 5:14Speaker 1: so you're gonna do uh some recipes and some fashion
- 5:18Speaker 1: none of that, like women should be astronauts stuff, right,
- 5:21Speaker 1: women should be in the kitchen and she's like, uh,
- 5:25Speaker 1: feminist icon. J Jonah Jamison really an ally to all that.
- 5:30Speaker 1: J Jonah Jamison, Um wow, okay, I'm like, yeah, I'm
- 5:35Speaker 1: really excited to hear more about the character as well,
- 5:38Speaker 1: because I am not super familiar with the mcu as
- 5:44Speaker 1: by the fact that I called one of the X
- 5:48Speaker 1: Men but you, but you inadvertently said something accurate because
- 5:52Speaker 1: there was a point at which she almost joined the
- 5:54Speaker 1: X Men in the eighties. So we'll just pretend you
- 5:56Speaker 1: knew that. Actually I have a really deep knowledge and
- 5:59Speaker 1: so alas that is a cut, that's me. I want
- 6:03Speaker 1: to hear about that too. I um my history aside
- 6:07Speaker 1: from seeing the movie twice now, bragg is, I admittedly
- 6:12Speaker 1: did not know that Captain Marvel was a character or
- 6:17Speaker 1: a comic book until I saw the trailer for this movie,
- 6:21Speaker 1: which we can kind of later on unpack how you know,
- 6:25Speaker 1: a lot of the superheroes who are women don't really
- 6:29Speaker 1: make it to the mainstream or like the most popular properties.
- 6:34Speaker 1: But yeah, we can we can talk about that a
- 6:36Speaker 1: little for sure later. Um I gen'er. I mean, I
- 6:40Speaker 1: enjoyed the movie. It was there's definitely stuff that I
- 6:43Speaker 1: think is worth discussing. I wasn't my favorite movie ever, No,
- 6:48Speaker 1: but it was one of those movies that, like, for
- 6:51Speaker 1: the little things I was jotting down in the screening,
- 6:54Speaker 1: I was sitting two seats away from like kids, and
- 6:57Speaker 1: they were so excited, Oh, that's great, So like in
- 7:00Speaker 1: that way, you're just I'm like, almost crimes, just like
- 7:03Speaker 1: in that way, I think that that it's great. And
- 7:05Speaker 1: there was like a lot of young boys and girls
- 7:08Speaker 1: at movie and they were all site and it's like, yes,
- 7:11Speaker 1: I have my critiques, but in general, I think it
- 7:15Speaker 1: is a good movie to have in the world. And
- 7:17Speaker 1: I have kids seeing agree. Yes. I also I'm like,
- 7:22Speaker 1: I thought it was good. It was fine. It wasn't great.
- 7:26Speaker 1: Now that I've seen Spider Man into the Spider Verse
- 7:29Speaker 1: six times, I just feel a little underwhelmed by every
- 7:34Speaker 1: other superhero metric good but no, there's there's a lot
- 7:39Speaker 1: of talk to compare women to men as much as possible.
- 7:44Speaker 1: That um anyway, shall we do the recap? Sure? Okay,
- 7:50Speaker 1: so we meet Veers. That's Bree Larson's character. I stand
- 7:55Speaker 1: Bree Larson. Yes, I love Bree Larson. Big fan, big stand.
- 7:58Speaker 1: She lives on planet Halla with the Cree people. Sure
- 8:04Speaker 1: she has a power, she like energy comes out of
- 8:06Speaker 1: her fists. She fights Ju Law and she's stronger than him.
- 8:12Speaker 1: And she doesn't have any memory of her past from
- 8:15Speaker 1: before she arrived on Cree and Caroline. Does this line up?
- 8:19Speaker 1: I guess before we super get into it. Does this
- 8:22Speaker 1: line up pretty closely with what her origin story is
- 8:25Speaker 1: in the comic books as well? Or was where liberties taken?
- 8:29Speaker 1: This is one of the times when liberties are taken
- 8:32Speaker 1: in a way that actually makes the story a little better.
- 8:36Speaker 1: So I'm not sure where to start, because, like her
- 8:40Speaker 1: origin in comics is kind of what you don't get
- 8:43Speaker 1: till about three quarters of the way through the movie.
- 8:46Speaker 1: So do you want me to say it now or
- 8:47Speaker 1: when you get there? I guess we could say it
- 8:49Speaker 1: when we get there. I just wasn't sure if if
- 8:51Speaker 1: this was like a complete deviation or pretty she did.
- 8:54Speaker 1: She did not live on Cree. She just grew up human.
- 8:59Speaker 1: And when she was that NASA security chief, one of
- 9:03Speaker 1: the people who was working there was a man named
- 9:06Speaker 1: Walter Lawson who was Marvel. In other words, Marvel was
- 9:11Speaker 1: a dude, and Marvel was the first Captain Marvel, and
- 9:15Speaker 1: he was Cree and he did kind of turn against
- 9:18Speaker 1: the Cree when he was on Earth, and uh, he
- 9:22Speaker 1: was fighting yon Rog. Jon Rog took Carol hostage. And
- 9:27Speaker 1: in this struggle where Marvel is trying to rescue Carol
- 9:30Speaker 1: from yon Rog, this machine blows up and this machine
- 9:33Speaker 1: abuse Carol with her powers and with Marvel's Cree DNA. Okay,
- 9:40Speaker 1: I like, I was, like, it's ridiculous. So much more
- 9:44Speaker 1: I know, but so you can see that what they
- 9:45Speaker 1: did in the movie is an improvement on that. Totally agree. Yes, okay, yes,
- 9:49Speaker 1: indeed cool? Um Okay. So she's hanging out on Cree.
- 9:54Speaker 1: There's this supreme intelligence that she goes to see for therapy.
- 10:00Speaker 1: I don't know what they do, it's like so I
- 10:04Speaker 1: was just like, okay, So there's a green screen in
- 10:06Speaker 1: play every time that scene would come. It's like Brie
- 10:09Speaker 1: Larsen on a green screen. And for Viers, this supreme
- 10:14Speaker 1: intelligence takes the form of a Net Benning. But Viers
- 10:19Speaker 1: doesn't know who this woman is to her. She doesn't
- 10:21Speaker 1: know her significance in her life because she can't remember
- 10:24Speaker 1: her past. So Viers accompany's Yon Rog that's Jude Law's
- 10:28Speaker 1: character and some other creased soldiers on a rescue mission
- 10:33Speaker 1: on a different planet and they're trying to rescue someone
- 10:36Speaker 1: from these bad guys called Scrolls, who are shape shifters,
- 10:41Speaker 1: and the Scrolls capture Veers and they are trying to
- 10:46Speaker 1: access her memories, and we see all these flashbacks of
- 10:49Speaker 1: Viers training in the Air Force and hanging out with
- 10:52Speaker 1: a net Benning, and they're trying to figure out who
- 10:55Speaker 1: a net Benning's character is because they're trying to find
- 10:59Speaker 1: her and get their hands on light speed technology that
- 11:03Speaker 1: she was developing. Right, turns out her name is when
- 11:06Speaker 1: Wendy Lawson right, So Veers gets away from the Scrolls
- 11:10Speaker 1: and crash lands on c. Fifty three. A k ever
- 11:16Speaker 1: heard of it so much? I mean, some studio executive
- 11:20Speaker 1: took the nostalgia note to heart and they're like, she
- 11:24Speaker 1: lands in a blockbuster. She's holding up a VHS day
- 11:31Speaker 1: You're just like, alright, I guess we'll get through this.
- 11:34Speaker 1: It's when she and a few of the Scrolls follow
- 11:43Speaker 1: her to Earth and then the Agents of Shields show up,
- 11:46Speaker 1: including Coulson, who we all know and love, and Nick Fiery,
- 11:51Speaker 1: who we all know and love. I thought it was
- 11:53Speaker 1: going to be so distracting to see young of fied
- 11:56Speaker 1: Samuel L. Jackson, but they did a great job. I
- 12:00Speaker 1: was just like, wow, he looks great. And then it
- 12:02Speaker 1: was like, no, that was that was technology. I was like, oh, okay.
- 12:08Speaker 1: So Viers is like, hey, Fury, here's what's going on.
- 12:13Speaker 1: There's these scrull bad guys, their shape shifters, and then
- 12:17Speaker 1: they don't believe her. She makes no effort to blend
- 12:21Speaker 1: in with her surroundings. There's moments where Captain Marvel is
- 12:25Speaker 1: great at her job and other times and I'm like,
- 12:26Speaker 1: I don't know what you think you're doing, but you
- 12:29Speaker 1: should probably anyways, I'm not who am I to tell
- 12:33Speaker 1: her how to do her job? Yeah? Who are you?
- 12:35Speaker 1: I don't know. Okay. So then there's this chase scene
- 12:40Speaker 1: and Fury sees this shape shifting happening, and he's like, oh,
- 12:45Speaker 1: now I believe her. So then she and Fury team
- 12:50Speaker 1: up and they try to find Wendy Lawson and then
- 12:53Speaker 1: go to Pegasus, which I believe is like a secret
- 12:57Speaker 1: military facility. Um, and they're in the records room and
- 13:02Speaker 1: they discover that Wendy Lawson is dead, that she died
- 13:05Speaker 1: in a plane crash that killed another pilot as well.
- 13:08Speaker 1: I wonder who that might be. She's in the background
- 13:12Speaker 1: of a lot of pictures. They discovered the Wendy Lawson
- 13:18Speaker 1: was Cree and then Yeah, sees a photo of herself
- 13:22Speaker 1: with Lawson from I think like nine and she's like,
- 13:27Speaker 1: oh my god. There's more to this story than I realize.
- 13:31Speaker 1: Also very important to note there is what appears to
- 13:34Speaker 1: be a cat named Goose. Yes, how many nipples does
- 13:41Speaker 1: the cat have? Okay, well, as we know cats have
- 13:43Speaker 1: eight nipples, that's cat facts with Caitlin obviously, Um, but Goose,
- 13:48Speaker 1: there's more to Goose than meets the eye. Goose is
- 13:52Speaker 1: not a cat. Goose is a flirkin. Flirkins have five
- 13:59Speaker 1: D and third seven nipples. That's flirkin facts. Is that
- 14:04Speaker 1: true with Caitlin? No, I just made that is that,
- 14:07Speaker 1: but it's cannon now okay. I was like, WHOA, Well,
- 14:13Speaker 1: let me google right now, how many doesn't how florins
- 14:17Speaker 1: does the nipple have? Does that mean we get to
- 14:21Speaker 1: give out five thirty seven at the end? Yeah? Oh yeah,
- 14:24Speaker 1: the scale has been adjusted for the sake of the
- 14:26Speaker 1: flirkin nipples? Okay, So how many nipples does a I
- 14:32Speaker 1: don't quite know how to spell flirkin f l E
- 14:36Speaker 1: r k E n okay E n okay I have
- 14:38Speaker 1: k I n okay So florkin welp. It says eight nipples,
- 14:44Speaker 1: but it's this is giving me facts about cats and
- 14:47Speaker 1: not flirkins, so unbelievable, so I can't trust this. Um yeah,
- 14:52Speaker 1: so let's go with what I said, eight hundred and
- 14:55Speaker 1: thirty seven or whatever I said. Seven okay is the
- 15:00Speaker 1: new scale that will be using on the show from
- 15:02Speaker 1: here on out. It sounds okay. So then um Furies
- 15:07Speaker 1: boss shows up at Pegasus, but it's actually a scroll
- 15:12Speaker 1: who's in disguise. So Fury and Veers make a run
- 15:16Speaker 1: for it and they go to Maria Rambo because they're like, oh,
- 15:20Speaker 1: there's here's this woman who had given this testimony about
- 15:23Speaker 1: this plane crash, so like she can. Maybe. It turns
- 15:27Speaker 1: out they were BFFs in the Air Force together, and
- 15:31Speaker 1: Veers is actually named Carol Danvers. Oh my god, one
- 15:37Speaker 1: thing I knew going into the movie. I didn't I
- 15:40Speaker 1: didn't even know that. And Carol learns that she had
- 15:44Speaker 1: this whole life on Earth pre pree times. She has
- 15:49Speaker 1: a child that falls into one of the most annoying
- 15:54Speaker 1: tropes in the world, to be child who is wise
- 15:57Speaker 1: beyond their years, really precocious child, the wise be their
- 16:01Speaker 1: years child, so cute. She's very cute, and her name
- 16:05Speaker 1: is Monica. So Taylos, the main scroll guy, shows up
- 16:12Speaker 1: at Marie, Yes, got it, shows up at Marie's house
- 16:15Speaker 1: and he's like, hey, fun fact um Scrolls aren't the
- 16:19Speaker 1: bad guys. It's the cree who are the bad guys.
- 16:21Speaker 1: And everyone's like what. So we see a flashback of
- 16:25Speaker 1: the plane crash and we see Carol Denver's and Lawson.
- 16:29Speaker 1: They're in the plane together. There's a spaceship that's shooting
- 16:32Speaker 1: at them. It's Creed. There's the Creed. They're the bad guys.
- 16:35Speaker 1: They're shooting the career after them because they also want
- 16:39Speaker 1: Lawson's light speed technology. Uh. And we learned here that
- 16:43Speaker 1: Lawson is actually named Marvel. Then we learned that it
- 16:48Speaker 1: was Jude laws character whose name I always forget, Jon
- 16:54Speaker 1: rog Um who killed Lawson. So in this flashback, Carol
- 17:00Speaker 1: Invers needs to destroy the plane's engine before the Crea
- 17:03Speaker 1: can get to it. So when she does that, it
- 17:06Speaker 1: explodes and she absorbs all of its powers, which is
- 17:10Speaker 1: how she has like energy fists um. And it turns
- 17:15Speaker 1: out that Marvel a k. Lawson was trying to help
- 17:19Speaker 1: the Scrolls who are refugees and they're on the run
- 17:21Speaker 1: from the cree and there they wanted the light speed
- 17:24Speaker 1: technology to be able to escape and like get out
- 17:27Speaker 1: of the reaches of like cre rule. So now Carol
- 17:30Speaker 1: Danver's fury and Maria and Taylo's need to go to
- 17:35Speaker 1: Lawson's laboratory somewhere in space to get the energy core
- 17:39Speaker 1: for the Scrolls. And then they get there and they
- 17:41Speaker 1: find it and they're like, oh, by the way, it's
- 17:43Speaker 1: called a test irect. I learned that in geometry. I
- 17:48Speaker 1: was so excited. I was like, Mrs Foley, you'd be
- 17:51Speaker 1: so proud. Which which Marvel movie do we first learn
- 17:56Speaker 1: about the test direct? Yeah? Yeah, Okay, Yeah, it's a
- 18:01Speaker 1: running thing through the Marvel movies. Yeah, I just couldn't
- 18:04Speaker 1: remember which. I guess it's a bigger plot point in
- 18:07Speaker 1: the first Avengers movie, right, Okay, okay, that's what I
- 18:10Speaker 1: thought it. And they keep it in a in a
- 18:13Speaker 1: retro lunchbox, the funds of reference, the property, sure, and
- 18:20Speaker 1: then this space laboratory, Taylos's family is there and there's
- 18:25Speaker 1: like this nice little reunion and then Yon rog and
- 18:29Speaker 1: the other Creed show up rock Jude Law Jude Law, Yes,
- 18:34Speaker 1: and there's a big fight and Carol Danver's fully realizes
- 18:38Speaker 1: her powers because she takes off her inhibitor chip, basically
- 18:44Speaker 1: a metaphor for something. Now, I know this is all
- 18:48Speaker 1: very subtle stuff going on, and I was like, wait,
- 18:50Speaker 1: when she removes the chip, what is that exactly implying?
- 18:54Speaker 1: I will say I did tear up during that very
- 18:57Speaker 1: heavy handed montage of fall Down, Get Up, fall Down,
- 18:59Speaker 1: and get Me. I was like, I was like, I
- 19:01Speaker 1: don't want to be crying, but here we are crying,
- 19:05Speaker 1: and so was everyone else. Well, remember who else has
- 19:07Speaker 1: an inhibitor chip. Jamie go On is doc where where
- 19:17Speaker 1: was where was his montage? Alfred his montage. I would
- 19:24Speaker 1: just like to say at this point that as much
- 19:25Speaker 1: as I thought Ben Mendelssohn was excellent, I couldn't help
- 19:28Speaker 1: thinking to myself, Alfred Moleena would have made a great Taylor.
- 19:32Speaker 1: So that was my VICTI I totally agree he would have.
- 19:36Speaker 1: He would have been terrific. They gotta welcome him back
- 19:39Speaker 1: into the m c U. Yeah, whereas he's if he's
- 19:43Speaker 1: hanging out with us, he should be back in the
- 19:47Speaker 1: m c you agree. During the fight, you know, Carol
- 19:51Speaker 1: is getting more powerful, and then she defeats the Cree
- 19:56Speaker 1: and at the end she gives fury a you an
- 20:00Speaker 1: improved beeper which we see in Avengers Infinity War, and
- 20:06Speaker 1: then she goes off with the scrolls. And that is
- 20:11Speaker 1: pretty much the story, except for the after credits scenes,
- 20:17Speaker 1: which I didn't understand. Oh sure, I don't watch the movie.
- 20:21Speaker 1: So the after credit scene for all the Chrisms are back,
- 20:25Speaker 1: chris Is are there. It's too much to explain, But fine,
- 20:30Speaker 1: we're going to do an Avengers episode. I, against all odds,
- 20:35Speaker 1: I will end up knowing what these movies mean at
- 20:38Speaker 1: some point. I can't wait for you to do that. Sure, yeah,
- 20:43Speaker 1: it'll be great. Um, well, let's take a quick break
- 20:46Speaker 1: and then we will come right back to discuss the movie.
- 20:54Speaker 1: So Caroline initial thoughts as an expert on this topic
- 21:01Speaker 1: of superheroes who are women? How did this movie strike you?
- 21:07Speaker 1: What are your feelings about it? Well, in my research,
- 21:11Speaker 1: I do like what my book basically is is like
- 21:13Speaker 1: a history of female superheroes over the last seventy five
- 21:17Speaker 1: years in comics and novels and TV and movies, and
- 21:21Speaker 1: when you look across that big sweep, you basically find
- 21:24Speaker 1: that they're underrepresented stereo. I know, it's hard to believe,
- 21:29Speaker 1: hold on to your hat. Sways, they're wildly underrepresented. They're stereotyped,
- 21:35Speaker 1: and they're sexualized, and they're generally like side characters. Yes,
- 21:40Speaker 1: there are exceptions to that, but I'm talking like literally
- 21:43Speaker 1: of the time, that is what they are. So the
- 21:48Speaker 1: way that Captain Marvel Carol Davers is portrayed in this
- 21:51Speaker 1: movie is women are none of these things. So that's
- 21:55Speaker 1: like a big win right there. Yeah, for sure. So
- 22:00Speaker 1: umber one, it centers a woman. Number two, she's wearing
- 22:02Speaker 1: actual clothes and so are the other women, including flat shoes.
- 22:09Speaker 1: She's got women around her who are inspiring her. There's
- 22:14Speaker 1: no heatero romance happening, know that like side tracks her plot,
- 22:21Speaker 1: and it's about a woman who has grown up a
- 22:24Speaker 1: woman and has had experiences that women have coming into
- 22:28Speaker 1: her own powers. So I think all of those things
- 22:32Speaker 1: make it unfortunately, very very different from most Hollywood movies.
- 22:36Speaker 1: I mean, just the previews that were before this movie
- 22:39Speaker 1: was like pinful there. One of them was, um, Charlie's
- 22:44Speaker 1: there owne is running for president or something. Oh and
- 22:47Speaker 1: like starts dating Seth Rogan. God, what sort of cosmic
- 22:51Speaker 1: punishment landed Charlie's there on in this movie. I just
- 22:56Speaker 1: my heart goes out to whatever sinister tea all. But
- 23:01Speaker 1: that was just the perfect example of it's like they're
- 23:04Speaker 1: ostensibly making her this strong character, but really the whole
- 23:07Speaker 1: movie is about her and she loveby Seth Rogan taking
- 23:11Speaker 1: her to a bar and doing shots, and you know,
- 23:13Speaker 1: it's just why, why any times is that going to
- 23:16Speaker 1: happen in a movie where a perfectly good female character
- 23:20Speaker 1: is just as her life absolutely ruined and derailed by
- 23:24Speaker 1: a Seth Rogan character by Seth specifically, it's practically a
- 23:30Speaker 1: sub genre. It's like anyways, Yes, so this movie, unlike
- 23:37Speaker 1: nearly every single superhero movie to date does mostly the
- 23:44Speaker 1: opposite of everything that those movies do. Yeah, I mean,
- 23:47Speaker 1: and the and the lack of a romantic subplot is
- 23:51Speaker 1: huge that never happens, right, are very usually romantic subplots
- 23:57Speaker 1: in male driven movies as well with underwritten female characters.
- 24:03Speaker 1: I mean, if they're going to rescue them, yes, right, right,
- 24:06Speaker 1: and and you truly don't miss it, like there's no
- 24:10Speaker 1: there's no room for it. There's a lot going on
- 24:13Speaker 1: in this movie. She's she's busy. Yeah. In more recent comics,
- 24:18Speaker 1: she has kind of an on and off relationship with Rhadi,
- 24:21Speaker 1: who you saw in the post credit sequence. Okay, right,
- 24:26Speaker 1: right right? You know, maybe they'll give a glance to
- 24:28Speaker 1: each other in the Avengers movie or something. I don't know.
- 24:31Speaker 1: That's a rather glaring age difference, but they couldn't have known.
- 24:36Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm pretty sure Don Cheeta could be Bree
- 24:38Speaker 1: Larson's father, But who am? I just touching on that
- 24:43Speaker 1: a little bit more from what I remember of because
- 24:47Speaker 1: I think I've seen, not to brag, I believe I've
- 24:50Speaker 1: seen every single m c U movie to date. I
- 24:55Speaker 1: wouldn't call myself an expert I'm not super because I've
- 24:58Speaker 1: only seen each of them probably once, maybe twice at
- 25:00Speaker 1: the most. Um, with the exception of Spider Man into
- 25:04Speaker 1: the Spider Verse, which I did see five times in
- 25:06Speaker 1: theata's um. But it doesn't feel like it's not a
- 25:09Speaker 1: part of the m C you like, I don't. I mean,
- 25:11Speaker 1: maybe they'll bring animated Miles Morales into Avengers end Game,
- 25:16Speaker 1: but I don't think so. But they should. But yeah,
- 25:19Speaker 1: I think most of them, because they're all they've all
- 25:23Speaker 1: centered around male superheroes until Captain Marvel, I would say
- 25:28Speaker 1: most of them do have a romantic subplot. Yeah, but
- 25:32Speaker 1: that just means that there's like a woman in the story,
- 25:35Speaker 1: but she's only there to further characterize them in and
- 25:38Speaker 1: to be the romantic interests. So right, yeah, I mean
- 25:42Speaker 1: it's just to contextualize the movie a little bit. I
- 25:45Speaker 1: think it's like worth discussing a little bit what the
- 25:48Speaker 1: climate in case you're listening to this episode many years
- 25:52Speaker 1: from now, which people will do, which this is just
- 25:55Speaker 1: gonna go on forever. But um, the reception, I feel
- 26:00Speaker 1: like it's almost standard fair for uh, woman being introduced
- 26:04Speaker 1: into a large property or like we can you know,
- 26:08Speaker 1: revisit Wonder Woman, we can revisit the Ghostbusters reboot of
- 26:12Speaker 1: just prior to those movies release. Uh men, absolutely furious
- 26:18Speaker 1: people who are who are fans of comics and and
- 26:21Speaker 1: not everyone because this movie is doing incredibly well. Um,
- 26:25Speaker 1: but there there is a faction of comic book fans
- 26:28Speaker 1: who like there was a like a concerted campaign to
- 26:33Speaker 1: just ruin this movie's rotten Tomatoes movie before anyone had
- 26:36Speaker 1: seen it. Um. A lot of that I think also
- 26:40Speaker 1: has to do with the casting of Brie Larson, which
- 26:42Speaker 1: I think is almost a statement in itself, because she's
- 26:45Speaker 1: really outspoken on women's issues and intersectionality, and she in
- 26:51Speaker 1: in my book, does generally good job in in giving
- 26:56Speaker 1: care to all of all of those things, and so
- 26:59Speaker 1: they don't like her. Her casting is a statement in itself.
- 27:02Speaker 1: And there's just a lot of, I guess, unsurprising controversy
- 27:07Speaker 1: before this movie came out at all. I guess it's
- 27:12Speaker 1: it's hard to know where to start here, because I mean,
- 27:15Speaker 1: it does mostly everything mostly right. I would say, like
- 27:19Speaker 1: there wasn't anything hugely glaring to me. There are a
- 27:23Speaker 1: few kind of nitpicky things I want to talk about,
- 27:26Speaker 1: but there is the reading of this movie that is
- 27:30Speaker 1: like the kids I was sitting next to, We're thrilled.
- 27:33Speaker 1: And if I saw this movie when I was, you know,
- 27:35Speaker 1: seven or eight years old, I would be over the
- 27:37Speaker 1: moon obsessed. I think it's great overall, doing the like
- 27:43Speaker 1: you know, beckdel Into. There were parts of it that
- 27:46Speaker 1: felt like a Dove soap commercial. Is something that writer
- 27:51Speaker 1: just Jojo said in a Mashable piece that I think
- 27:54Speaker 1: it's worth reading. I don't agree with everything it's saying,
- 27:56Speaker 1: but um, she's very smart and there there are some
- 28:00Speaker 1: clear plays made in this movie, down to the choice
- 28:04Speaker 1: of like no doubts, I'm just a girl playing in
- 28:07Speaker 1: the climactic scene, which did make me roll my eyes
- 28:11Speaker 1: directly back into my head. Uh, there are some things
- 28:15Speaker 1: that feel like okay, like this was this was an
- 28:18Speaker 1: easy choice to make some of those more broad choices.
- 28:21Speaker 1: I was like, I mean, I didn't defend it a
- 28:25Speaker 1: little bit like hashtag feminism versus actual but I see
- 28:33Speaker 1: what you're saying. The climactic site sequence with that specific
- 28:37Speaker 1: song pretty much worked for me because I was like, yeah,
- 28:40Speaker 1: it's fun and she's kicking ass and stuff, but yes,
- 28:44Speaker 1: I do right, but it's still like it feels a
- 28:47Speaker 1: little I don't know, just like we're drawing, we're still
- 28:48Speaker 1: drawing attention to the fact that it's like she's what
- 28:51Speaker 1: the boys can do, um, which is another thing that
- 28:55Speaker 1: I mean, I guess this is just like a general
- 28:58Speaker 1: critique of like she's we're always has shown like how
- 29:00Speaker 1: strong she is next to men, and she's like fighting men,
- 29:05Speaker 1: and it's still like men are the yardstick that she's
- 29:07Speaker 1: measured against, which is true to life, but it's just
- 29:10Speaker 1: in terms of like moving things forward that I'm just like,
- 29:16Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess it's like we need to
- 29:18Speaker 1: crawl before we can walk kind of thing. So like,
- 29:21Speaker 1: hopefully in the years to come, we see the much
- 29:25Speaker 1: needed better representation of I mean women in general in
- 29:29Speaker 1: all media, but then also specifically in superhero movies, where
- 29:34Speaker 1: like a woman kicking ass and fighting and being strong
- 29:37Speaker 1: is just has just been so normalized that we we
- 29:39Speaker 1: don't need to draw attention to the fact that she's
- 29:41Speaker 1: a woman and she's fighting like the boys and she
- 29:44Speaker 1: can fight men and we're not. And I like that
- 29:47Speaker 1: that is done not very frequently, but I think that
- 29:50Speaker 1: that is done in movies sometimes without being like girl
- 29:54Speaker 1: doing thing. Look, but I don't know. I mean, I
- 29:58Speaker 1: guess that that's sort of what this this movie's narrative
- 30:01Speaker 1: is hinged around. But there were there were there were
- 30:03Speaker 1: a few moments where I was like, it just felt
- 30:07Speaker 1: more like a strategic corporate play versus a genuine thing. Sure,
- 30:13Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it's I think it can
- 30:15Speaker 1: be both. I mean, I think what the three of
- 30:17Speaker 1: us are seeing as crawling other people see as running right,
- 30:22Speaker 1: like we think this is for instance, a number of
- 30:25Speaker 1: times where she's told where Carol is told, you know,
- 30:29Speaker 1: control your emotions. Nothing is more dangerous than emotion. You
- 30:33Speaker 1: have to have the strength to get right. So it's
- 30:36Speaker 1: maybe five or six times to me, that's a lot.
- 30:39Speaker 1: But to other people in the audience, maybe they didn't
- 30:42Speaker 1: even hear it till the fifth time. Sure, so I'm
- 30:45Speaker 1: willing to I'm willing to let that go. And certainly
- 30:49Speaker 1: that I'm just a girl. I was like, Wow, that
- 30:52Speaker 1: is super duper on the nose. Okay, barry on the nose.
- 30:55Speaker 1: But my twelve year old would think that that is
- 30:58Speaker 1: the most awesome thing ever, Right, so I have the
- 31:00Speaker 1: brain of a twelve year old guy. No, I'm saying
- 31:06Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying there. Yeah, I mean it's I
- 31:08Speaker 1: think it did this just like they're they're reading, will
- 31:10Speaker 1: depend on the audience, because you're totally right, Caroline. If
- 31:14Speaker 1: there's you know, a very subtle, you know, feminist undertone,
- 31:18Speaker 1: then maybe a lot of people wouldn't have picked up
- 31:20Speaker 1: on it. And it's also, I mean, these kinds of
- 31:23Speaker 1: things even in the sixties and seventies, she did have
- 31:26Speaker 1: these kinds of moments in the comics that again I
- 31:29Speaker 1: think we're they were written by men, drawn by men,
- 31:31Speaker 1: and I think they they were trying, um, they looked
- 31:35Speaker 1: totally like cardboard to us now, you know, like they're
- 31:38Speaker 1: like they're setting up this straw man and knocking it down.
- 31:41Speaker 1: But like there's a thing about how she joins the
- 31:44Speaker 1: Air Force because her father tells her that he'll only
- 31:49Speaker 1: pay for her brother to go to college and not
- 31:51Speaker 1: her because women don't shouldn't go to college, and that
- 31:53Speaker 1: was not an unusual thing. And you know, my team
- 31:57Speaker 1: seventy seven or whatever or where she's introduced as this
- 32:03Speaker 1: is my security chief, Carol Danvers, man or woman. She's
- 32:06Speaker 1: the best there is and it's like to us now
- 32:09Speaker 1: it's like, why do you have to draw attention to that?
- 32:11Speaker 1: But then in nineteen that was sixty seven, that was
- 32:15Speaker 1: a big deal. Yes, so there's I I feel, I
- 32:19Speaker 1: guess just to wrap up that that area of critique
- 32:25Speaker 1: would also lumping a few of the lines that men
- 32:28Speaker 1: say to her that are just like okay, like the
- 32:31Speaker 1: it's not called a cockpit for nothing. Okay, we get
- 32:35Speaker 1: it because only get it in a cockpit. The yeah,
- 32:43Speaker 1: but it's fun when or when he's like, why did
- 32:46Speaker 1: you smile? Like there's some there's a real general some
- 32:51Speaker 1: just some very generalized misogny um employed, but it's again,
- 32:56Speaker 1: it's like for a family film, which this is. I
- 32:59Speaker 1: think that works. Um. And it is cool that she
- 33:02Speaker 1: steals his motorcycle. Yes, And do you remember when the
- 33:08Speaker 1: first trailer came out, all those trolls that you were
- 33:11Speaker 1: talking about, we're writing, why doesn't Free Larson smile? In
- 33:14Speaker 1: the trailer? She's just so cold? Yeah? I hope they
- 33:19Speaker 1: added it after that. I don't know if you're not.
- 33:22Speaker 1: I just love so much. Can we talk more about
- 33:28Speaker 1: Carol dan versus emotions? Because okay, so, as we hinted at,
- 33:35Speaker 1: it's mostly Jude Law's character tells her that she's emotional
- 33:40Speaker 1: and she needs to control her emotions and emotions are
- 33:44Speaker 1: so dangerous to a soldier and all this stuff, right,
- 33:48Speaker 1: I think, I don't know if this is just sort
- 33:50Speaker 1: of like badly done storytelling, but there's really nothing about
- 33:54Speaker 1: that character that actually indicates that she's very it's too emotional.
- 34:00Speaker 1: Were told that a lot, but I didn't really see that.
- 34:03Speaker 1: I kind of felt the same way, like we never
- 34:06Speaker 1: see I wonder how like specific a decision that was,
- 34:10Speaker 1: or if it was just an oversight, but it feels
- 34:11Speaker 1: like an intentional decision because that's like one of the
- 34:14Speaker 1: moments where they're saying all the right things. But it's
- 34:16Speaker 1: like in the story, we don't really see her react
- 34:21Speaker 1: emotionally unless you count those small moments when she's fighting
- 34:24Speaker 1: Jude Law and she's piste off at him and then
- 34:27Speaker 1: he's like, control your emotion. But that's like such, that's
- 34:29Speaker 1: so small, right, And that's like happening in like a
- 34:32Speaker 1: controlled environment, Like there's no like big battle scenes where
- 34:36Speaker 1: she like quote loses control of her emotions and then
- 34:39Speaker 1: pays the penalty for it. So like the care and
- 34:42Speaker 1: it's also yeah, I mean Carol in general, like it
- 34:46Speaker 1: takes her so long into the movie to be interested
- 34:49Speaker 1: in who she is. Well, I don't know, there's there's
- 34:52Speaker 1: some strange things. The emotionality thing confused me. I would
- 34:55Speaker 1: have liked to see that character get emotional about something
- 35:01Speaker 1: that's something that superheroes don't do, especially if they could
- 35:04Speaker 1: handle it in narrative of like, this is not a
- 35:07Speaker 1: weakness um expressing your emotions. You can come at that
- 35:11Speaker 1: from the soldier perspective two of like repressed emotions equals
- 35:15Speaker 1: PTSD for life, you know. But yeah, I didn't really
- 35:19Speaker 1: touch him. Yeah, I think before I saw the movie,
- 35:22Speaker 1: I had at least seen like the title of an
- 35:25Speaker 1: article that was that was talking about her emotions and
- 35:29Speaker 1: how like the movie is painting her as this emotional character.
- 35:34Speaker 1: So I was worried that that was going to be
- 35:35Speaker 1: her arc, where like she's too emotional because she is
- 35:40Speaker 1: a woman and women be emotional, and that her arc
- 35:44Speaker 1: would have to be her learning to control those emotions
- 35:48Speaker 1: and that's what like enables her to win. I think
- 35:51Speaker 1: the opposite happens, where she isn't very emotional at all
- 35:56Speaker 1: in the beginning of the movie, and then when she
- 35:58Speaker 1: starts to learn about her past and her former identity
- 36:02Speaker 1: and the fact that she had been betrayed by Jude
- 36:05Speaker 1: Law's character and all of that, and that she's reunited
- 36:09Speaker 1: with like her best friend and her bestmand's daughter like
- 36:14Speaker 1: in those scenes. Yeah, and then those things kind of
- 36:16Speaker 1: like humanize her, because up until that point, she had
- 36:19Speaker 1: been kind of like a like a stiff, you know,
- 36:22Speaker 1: like stoic hero type, and then she becomes more humanized
- 36:27Speaker 1: and more emotional, and that's what kind of leads her
- 36:32Speaker 1: to realize, oh, I've been stunted this whole time. There's
- 36:35Speaker 1: this fucking inhibitor chip that I need to break off.
- 36:39Speaker 1: And then right, yeah, yeah, So I'm glad that that's
- 36:43Speaker 1: how the story panned out, because I was, like I said,
- 36:46Speaker 1: I was worried that it was going to be, like,
- 36:48Speaker 1: you're so emotional and you're gonna need to learn to
- 36:51Speaker 1: control your emotions if you want to harness your power.
- 36:53Speaker 1: But that's just what Jude Law tells her over and
- 36:55Speaker 1: over again. And he's the villain because he's got resting
- 36:58Speaker 1: villain faith, he's got like yellow contexts, and so therefore
- 37:02Speaker 1: he's said, yeah, he's got jaundice, he can't be attracted
- 37:08Speaker 1: the first time I saw it twice. Also, the first
- 37:11Speaker 1: time I saw it, I had that issue as well.
- 37:14Speaker 1: I felt like in a number of places she seemed
- 37:18Speaker 1: very flat and controlled to me. And I am also
- 37:22Speaker 1: coming from a different perspective, which is, I've read all
- 37:25Speaker 1: these comics where from really when she's introduced all the
- 37:29Speaker 1: way up through today, she is emotional, she has a temper,
- 37:34Speaker 1: she punches first and asked questions later. She goes with
- 37:38Speaker 1: her gut all the time. She's very loving, but she's
- 37:41Speaker 1: also self righteous and funny, and you know, I mean,
- 37:45Speaker 1: she just doesn't take any crap anybody. So I was
- 37:49Speaker 1: assuming I was going to see that immediately, and I
- 37:52Speaker 1: was disappointed at first because I felt like what you said,
- 37:55Speaker 1: where you just kind of see it a little more
- 37:56Speaker 1: and a little more and a little more as it
- 37:57Speaker 1: goes along. And then I thought about it more before
- 38:00Speaker 1: I saw it the second time. In the second time,
- 38:03Speaker 1: I felt more like I could see what I think
- 38:06Speaker 1: they were trying to do, which is that, you know,
- 38:08Speaker 1: one of the first things she says is like she
- 38:10Speaker 1: makes a joke to Jude Law and he's like, humor
- 38:13Speaker 1: as a distraction, control yourself, and then she they're going
- 38:17Speaker 1: on a mission and she is joking and he comes
- 38:20Speaker 1: on and says, you know, stop that right now. So,
- 38:21Speaker 1: like she's always leaking out these little things and being
- 38:24Speaker 1: told to stop. And then when she gets to Earth,
- 38:27Speaker 1: it's different because like she can joke with Nick Fury
- 38:29Speaker 1: and whatever, and she can be emotional with So I
- 38:33Speaker 1: think that what they were trying to do is say,
- 38:35Speaker 1: you know this, this is who she is, but she's
- 38:38Speaker 1: been kept down in the beginning. Then whenever she's around Cree,
- 38:43Speaker 1: she can't show that, and she's been trained for six
- 38:45Speaker 1: years not to show it, but she can't help it
- 38:48Speaker 1: because this is who she is. She's human shaped by experience. Yeah,
- 38:53Speaker 1: so I think that's what they were going for, but
- 38:55Speaker 1: I agree with you that it's not always effective. It
- 38:59Speaker 1: will hold you away from her from grabbing onto her
- 39:03Speaker 1: um in the beginning, especially totally because well, so I
- 39:07Speaker 1: found myself expecting to have a much stronger emotional connection
- 39:12Speaker 1: to this movie, because at least when I saw like
- 39:15Speaker 1: Wonder Woman, I was like, oh my god, it's a
- 39:18Speaker 1: woman and she's kicking ass and she's walking through no
- 39:21Speaker 1: man's land and there's epic music and I'm just crying
- 39:24Speaker 1: and all this stuff. I didn't have any such emotional
- 39:27Speaker 1: connection to this movie I had Again, I had a
- 39:32Speaker 1: much stronger emotional connection to Spider Verse because I was
- 39:35Speaker 1: like crying at four different parts. I'm like laughing the
- 39:38Speaker 1: whole time. It's just like and then with with Captain Marvel,
- 39:41Speaker 1: I'm just like, Okay, it's cool that I'm seeing on
- 39:43Speaker 1: screen this like strong woman kicking ass. But I mean, yeah,
- 39:48Speaker 1: I guess my only counter argument to that would be,
- 39:50Speaker 1: like I felt, I felt more connected to her than
- 39:53Speaker 1: I ever have to like any male superhero. Maybe I
- 39:58Speaker 1: just need to see Spider Verse. But there, uh yeah,
- 40:01Speaker 1: it's it's weird. She I feel like she's almost as
- 40:04Speaker 1: emotionally detached as a male superhero can be, you know,
- 40:10Speaker 1: like it's I don't know, the bar is set so
- 40:13Speaker 1: high for the way this character is treated in this
- 40:16Speaker 1: movie because there are so few movies like it. I
- 40:19Speaker 1: guess there, it's it's weird. Now. I was listening back
- 40:22Speaker 1: to part of our Wonder Woman episode that we did,
- 40:24Speaker 1: and we were so excited and that movie came out.
- 40:27Speaker 1: But I rewatched Wonder Women, and as much as I
- 40:31Speaker 1: still enjoy that movie, there's like a lot of stuff
- 40:34Speaker 1: that that movie, you know, and everyone's going to compare
- 40:37Speaker 1: these two movies, which is unfair and just you know,
- 40:40Speaker 1: demonstrates a lack of probable. But you know, it's like
- 40:46Speaker 1: Wonder Woman, you got you, you have a makeover sequence,
- 40:48Speaker 1: you have a love story that resolves the plot, You've
- 40:52Speaker 1: got you know, there's a lot of it's weird. I
- 40:55Speaker 1: don't know, it's some it's some woman's When I was disappointed,
- 40:57Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, but I'm setting the atation so high
- 41:01Speaker 1: for this movie because there's just nothing I'll like it.
- 41:04Speaker 1: I don't know. There I wanted to be more emotionally
- 41:06Speaker 1: connected to her, but also I'm just like, but maybe
- 41:10Speaker 1: I don't know if that's asking more than I would
- 41:13Speaker 1: have a male superhero. I think the structure is a
- 41:15Speaker 1: big part of it, though, because normally, and on the
- 41:18Speaker 1: one hand, it's great that they took a chance with
- 41:20Speaker 1: a different kind of structure, like a flashback structure, and
- 41:24Speaker 1: she was trying to figure out who she is, I think,
- 41:26Speaker 1: but usually the structure for an origin story is you're
- 41:28Speaker 1: meeting this person as a regular person, and you're being
- 41:31Speaker 1: grounded in their everyday life and you're seeing well in
- 41:35Speaker 1: some cases that they're a good person and in other
- 41:37Speaker 1: cases they're you know, an arrogant millionaire and they have
- 41:39Speaker 1: to be brought down by something that's all the men
- 41:43Speaker 1: obviously there, or they're frozen in ice and they need
- 41:47Speaker 1: to be unfrozen. But you get the idea. So you
- 41:49Speaker 1: you kind of follow them in their everyday life and
- 41:51Speaker 1: you see that there's something heroic in them. And then
- 41:54Speaker 1: by the time they quote unquote get their powers or
- 41:56Speaker 1: they come into their heroism, you've been rooting for them
- 41:59Speaker 1: for an and a half, right, yeah, and you've been
- 42:02Speaker 1: you've been like invested in watching them grow and this
- 42:05Speaker 1: doesn't have that. It's not it's not linear totally, so
- 42:08Speaker 1: it can't within you kind of build and build and
- 42:11Speaker 1: build and build that you get more and more attached
- 42:13Speaker 1: to her, Right, Yeah, I think you're Yeah, you're really
- 42:15Speaker 1: touching on one of the main reasons I didn't find
- 42:18Speaker 1: myself really connecting with Carol Danver's the way again I
- 42:24Speaker 1: connected with Miles Morales and Spider Verse. But I'll stop
- 42:28Speaker 1: bringing him up. But it is the greatest movie of
- 42:31Speaker 1: all time. Um, I just love it so much. Um
- 42:35Speaker 1: we have to take another quick break, but we will
- 42:37Speaker 1: come back to discuss more We're bad. I Every time
- 42:46Speaker 1: I hit on a criticism like that, I'm like, but
- 42:49Speaker 1: if I saw this movie when I was seven, I
- 42:52Speaker 1: would be obsessed with her, absolutely obsessed with her. Caroline
- 42:56Speaker 1: you were pointing out earlier. The way that she's dressed
- 42:59Speaker 1: for the first time him makes sense things, aren't. She
- 43:05Speaker 1: wears layers at times, it's crazy. I was like, she's
- 43:09Speaker 1: got three layers on. She's wearing a flannel, a jacket
- 43:13Speaker 1: and a shirt and nails and a nine inch nails
- 43:16Speaker 1: shirt like all with but it was it was that
- 43:21Speaker 1: was like one thing. That's like, Okay, you did the
- 43:23Speaker 1: easiest possible thing you could do to make this story
- 43:26Speaker 1: makes sense. Thank you, thank you, and thank you for
- 43:29Speaker 1: not giving us uh makeover montage, a nineties inspired makeover montage,
- 43:34Speaker 1: because they could have done that. They did that in
- 43:37Speaker 1: World War two Wonder Woman, and that wasn't necessary and
- 43:41Speaker 1: they and they that's avoided here. I guess there's some
- 43:44Speaker 1: of what I like about this movie is not really
- 43:47Speaker 1: what it does, but don't Yeah, well, you know there
- 43:51Speaker 1: are five credited writers on this movie, and four of
- 43:54Speaker 1: them are women, and that is the first time of
- 43:58Speaker 1: all the DCM Marvel movies, right, the female co director
- 44:01Speaker 1: as well, um, which is like incredible, So it's we
- 44:06Speaker 1: sort of touched on this a little bit earlier. Something
- 44:08Speaker 1: it really did work for me in this movie was
- 44:11Speaker 1: the gas lighting narrative. I thought that was really done.
- 44:15Speaker 1: I didn't see that narrative coming of of you know,
- 44:19Speaker 1: I mean you can tell they're getting to some something
- 44:21Speaker 1: gas lighting adjacent when we keep seeing a net Benning
- 44:25Speaker 1: and we don't know who she is, and they're like, okay,
- 44:27Speaker 1: you know, she's not sure of her identity or history,
- 44:30Speaker 1: but the twist that she's been emotionally manipulated figures it
- 44:35Speaker 1: out and then is fucking furious. I don't know, I
- 44:39Speaker 1: just like that really hit with me, where she recognizes
- 44:42Speaker 1: that she has been misled and manipulated for so long,
- 44:47Speaker 1: she does not blame herself for it, which is huge
- 44:52Speaker 1: in a narrative like that because that's like where a
- 44:56Speaker 1: lot of people go in real life and seeing the
- 44:58Speaker 1: example set of like she's like, no, this isn't my fault,
- 45:01Speaker 1: but I need to make things right with the people
- 45:05Speaker 1: I have inadvertently wronged. And then she does that with
- 45:08Speaker 1: the scroll and and like, you know, it's like Okay,
- 45:12Speaker 1: this happened. I don't blame myself, but how can we
- 45:14Speaker 1: make things right? And she does. I don't know. I
- 45:17Speaker 1: just thought that that was like a very well handled
- 45:20Speaker 1: portion of this story. Yeah, and I liked that there
- 45:24Speaker 1: was a little nagging along with the gas lighting because
- 45:27Speaker 1: she says things like without us, you're weak and you're flawed,
- 45:30Speaker 1: and we made you strong, you know, right, which is
- 45:34Speaker 1: like more and more of the on the nosiness. But
- 45:36Speaker 1: I don't know, it worked for me, and that was, like,
- 45:40Speaker 1: I think maybe my one of my favorite storylines in
- 45:44Speaker 1: the movie was her navigating a gas lighting narrative and
- 45:49Speaker 1: coming out on top on her own terms. It was
- 45:52Speaker 1: really cool to watch. It was also cool to watch
- 45:55Speaker 1: the relationships between women in this movie. I almost wish
- 46:00Speaker 1: there was a little more of that because the other
- 46:03Speaker 1: female characters outside of Captain Marvel uh seems very much
- 46:06Speaker 1: relegated to the B or C characters where we've got,
- 46:11Speaker 1: you know, like her bff in this movie, besides um, sorry,
- 46:16Speaker 1: what's her name? The Maria Maria but like but her
- 46:20Speaker 1: like implied right hand man in this movie is Nick Fury.
- 46:24Speaker 1: The villain is Jude Law, the guy we think is
- 46:29Speaker 1: a villain, but that isn't a villain is also a man,
- 46:31Speaker 1: and I would argue those are the three, you know,
- 46:34Speaker 1: main characters beneath Captain Marvel and then underneath that isn't
- 46:37Speaker 1: net Benning. I'm Maria Rambo, and I wish I wish
- 46:42Speaker 1: that they had a little more prominence in the story.
- 46:45Speaker 1: And again it's like you only have so much space.
- 46:47Speaker 1: But I like her in Maria's relationship. I wish that
- 46:51Speaker 1: there were more purpose for Maria than to just you know,
- 46:56Speaker 1: give context for Captain Marvel. Yeah, she does, I suppose
- 47:00Speaker 1: have a little bit of a narrative significance toward the
- 47:04Speaker 1: end whenever she is like helping to pilot the aircraft
- 47:09Speaker 1: and then and then it's like in the battle, although
- 47:12Speaker 1: I feel like we don't really get to see much
- 47:14Speaker 1: of her like fighting or kicking ass. I hope. I mean,
- 47:17Speaker 1: I'm assuming we'll see her in the next movie as well.
- 47:20Speaker 1: Oh maybe, um um, I don't know. Well, do you
- 47:23Speaker 1: mean if there's a Captain Marvel too? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 47:27Speaker 1: I think that's possible. I agree with you in terms
- 47:30Speaker 1: of what you're saying about the tears of characters. But
- 47:33Speaker 1: there was a moment I was struck by where um,
- 47:37Speaker 1: they're flying to the floating lab and and who is
- 47:42Speaker 1: in that plane is Carol and Maria and Fury and Taylos.
- 47:47Speaker 1: And I just thought to myself, oh my god, half
- 47:49Speaker 1: of them are women and half of them are people
- 47:51Speaker 1: of color. Oh my god, that's true. This is shocking.
- 47:55Speaker 1: And the women are driving, one's piloting, um and I
- 48:00Speaker 1: loved the sidebar. I ran into a friend of the cast, EDGARL. Mompa,
- 48:05Speaker 1: was here at the screening of this movie, and he
- 48:09Speaker 1: was like Maria's kid, or Monica, Monica's I think she's
- 48:14Speaker 1: going to be a big part of Avengers four, like
- 48:17Speaker 1: he was just you. They do draw attention to Monica
- 48:20Speaker 1: in a way where it's like that she's like, I'm
- 48:22Speaker 1: going to be like you someday, and it's like, Okay,
- 48:24Speaker 1: she's gonna come back, right. But because because this takes
- 48:27Speaker 1: place in by the time she's wearing like present day
- 48:30Speaker 1: Avengers time, she's an adult. She's a millennial. Honey, what
- 48:36Speaker 1: what do you know about the character of Monica Rambo
- 48:39Speaker 1: in the comics? Do you know anything about her? I
- 48:41Speaker 1: read as much as I could of the chapter of
- 48:44Speaker 1: your book Caroline on of course on Captain Marvel, and
- 48:49Speaker 1: I saw a reference to Monica Rambo eventually becoming Captain
- 48:55Speaker 1: Marvel in some of the later comic books. So, so,
- 49:00Speaker 1: first Captain Marvel is Marvel, who is, you know, a
- 49:04Speaker 1: Net Benning, except in the comics he's a guy. But
- 49:06Speaker 1: he still had that kind of semi short gray hair.
- 49:09Speaker 1: So when they showed a Nette bending with the gray hair,
- 49:10Speaker 1: I was like, all right. But but then he dies
- 49:15Speaker 1: of cancer and he doesn't come back, which is unusual
- 49:18Speaker 1: in comics because everybody comes back from the dead. And
- 49:21Speaker 1: then in two Monica Rambo becomes the second Captain Marvel.
- 49:26Speaker 1: And it's not because she has anything to do with
- 49:28Speaker 1: the create. It actually doesn't really make a lot of sense,
- 49:31Speaker 1: but like she's a harbor Patrol lieutenant and blah blah blah,
- 49:35Speaker 1: explosion blah blah blah, and she basically has those kinds
- 49:38Speaker 1: of powers, and the media labels her Captain Marvel. And
- 49:42Speaker 1: then she meets the Avengers and they're like, why are
- 49:44Speaker 1: you calling yourself Captain Marvel And she's like, I don't
- 49:46Speaker 1: know they called me that, and they're like, well, you know,
- 49:48Speaker 1: our buddy Captain Marvel just died and She's like, no,
- 49:50Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Sorry. So so she's here. She's
- 49:57Speaker 1: the second Captain Marvel. Her outfit is white and black,
- 50:00Speaker 1: but it's this got that same star in the middle. Yeah.
- 50:03Speaker 1: Oh cool. She's got like natural hair, which is also nice.
- 50:08Speaker 1: That's for back then, and um. She leads the Avengers
- 50:13Speaker 1: like through into the nine into the like the late
- 50:16Speaker 1: eighties and whatever, and then in the nineties, suddenly Marvel's
- 50:20Speaker 1: son shows up and declares that he's Captain Marvel, and
- 50:23Speaker 1: Monica's like, Okay, I guess I'll call myself Photon instead
- 50:29Speaker 1: a man. I'm like, I'm Photon. But if Jamie Kennedy
- 50:37Speaker 1: comes along and he's like, my name has been Jamie
- 50:40Speaker 1: loft As this whole time, Like, fine, I'm Photon. So
- 50:46Speaker 1: that's why Maria Rambo on her plane, it said Maria
- 50:50Speaker 1: Photon Rambo. I think so probably what they're setting up
- 50:54Speaker 1: is that twenty years into the future, when the Avengers
- 50:58Speaker 1: movie is taking place, Monica would be the right age
- 51:00Speaker 1: to be Photona cool cool, okay, and to be glowing
- 51:04Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And so so she's Photon and
- 51:08Speaker 1: she works with other Avengers and all that kind of stuff,
- 51:13Speaker 1: and uh, at that time, Carol is still Miss Marvel,
- 51:17Speaker 1: and then there's all kinds of stuff that happens, and
- 51:20Speaker 1: she's an alcoholic and they made her an alcoholic, so
- 51:22Speaker 1: Tony Stark iron Man could be her a a sponsor.
- 51:27Speaker 1: Are so weird. There's drama and so it goes on
- 51:33Speaker 1: like that until two thousand twelve when they Relauncher as
- 51:36Speaker 1: Captain Marvel. So she's really the fourth Captain Marvel. Carol
- 51:39Speaker 1: and when they really started, I mean, it's the character
- 51:43Speaker 1: really took off very quickly, but there were definitely, and
- 51:46Speaker 1: understandably so Monica Rambo fans who were like, Carol Danvers
- 51:51Speaker 1: is not the first female Captain Marvel, Why aren't you
- 51:54Speaker 1: promoting Monica? Why are all your heroes white? You know?
- 51:57Speaker 1: So um So, when the mis Kelly Sue Deconic, who
- 52:01Speaker 1: really kind of launched this version of Captain Marvel that
- 52:03Speaker 1: you see in the movie, and she was a consultant
- 52:05Speaker 1: on the movie and had a cameo and stuff, she
- 52:08Speaker 1: made sure to kind of bring Monica Rambo into the
- 52:11Speaker 1: Captain Marvel comics. And there's this arc where the two
- 52:13Speaker 1: of them worked together and their buddies and they're on
- 52:15Speaker 1: a team together. Later and stuff, they should work all together, yeah,
- 52:21Speaker 1: Carolyn keep in every episode of Superheroes, this is the
- 52:24Speaker 1: context I crave. Yeah, happy to help with the crazy history,
- 52:29Speaker 1: but it is. I mean, it's very telling that whenever
- 52:31Speaker 1: these movies get adapted, the choices always usually seemed to be,
- 52:37Speaker 1: let's make sure our heroes are male, sis, hetero, white, right,
- 52:43Speaker 1: able bodied. Yeah. And when you look at the number,
- 52:47Speaker 1: I mean I sort of added him up, right. So
- 52:49Speaker 1: if you count all superhero movies from two thousand and
- 52:55Speaker 1: then even count the ones in development, about ten percent
- 52:59Speaker 1: star women. And and last I checked, our world was
- 53:04Speaker 1: not white, cis gender, non queer, non disabled men. Thank god,
- 53:09Speaker 1: no a nightmare. And it's it's actually about the same
- 53:14Speaker 1: for Superhero TV shows, the ones that are out now
- 53:17Speaker 1: and the ones that are coming in the next few years.
- 53:20Speaker 1: That's like star women, say, And it's about the same
- 53:23Speaker 1: number in superhero comics, very very very low. Yeah, still
- 53:28Speaker 1: a lot of under representation happening. And then, as I
- 53:32Speaker 1: kind of hinted at before the fact that I had
- 53:34Speaker 1: not heard of or was familiar with the Captain Marvel
- 53:37Speaker 1: character at all, one of the few women who has
- 53:40Speaker 1: her own comic book series in the Marvel universe at
- 53:44Speaker 1: least is telling of how the heads of the studios
- 53:49Speaker 1: and the creators of the comic books and all and
- 53:52Speaker 1: everything have the priority to like, you know, showcase. Here's
- 53:58Speaker 1: the incredible quote from Hollywood executive from a few years ago.
- 54:02Speaker 1: They can always counter pun uh quote do more lady stuff.
- 54:06Speaker 1: Bitches love lady stuff unquote. So you know, it's so
- 54:11Speaker 1: weird that that and I think that that is I
- 54:14Speaker 1: guess where more where I'm getting at with hashtag feminism
- 54:18Speaker 1: versus actual feminism of like, they're doing the right thing,
- 54:23Speaker 1: but they're like, because bitches love lady stuff and we'll
- 54:26Speaker 1: make five million dollars in three days, which I mean,
- 54:30Speaker 1: that's the game. That's the game. So that's what's gonna happen.
- 54:33Speaker 1: But yeah, the bitches love lady stuff at moments in
- 54:36Speaker 1: this movie has like I say, I see you, I
- 54:39Speaker 1: see you. Um. Yeah, they also did do better. I
- 54:44Speaker 1: just want to point out with with having more women
- 54:47Speaker 1: and men of color in the cast, I counted about
- 54:52Speaker 1: a third of the women or women of color and
- 54:54Speaker 1: about a quarter of the men or men of color
- 54:56Speaker 1: better than you rule, I would say, Yeah, I want
- 54:59Speaker 1: to make sure I'm getting her name right, Gemma chan Is.
- 55:03Speaker 1: She's not in this movie very very much. She's also
- 55:06Speaker 1: the one woman who doesn't like Captain Marvel, which it
- 55:10Speaker 1: did appreciate. Uh. You see, I feel like sometimes in
- 55:16Speaker 1: movies that heavily feature women, especially for like the largest
- 55:20Speaker 1: possible audience, women are sort of all painted with one brush.
- 55:22Speaker 1: They all get along, They're like, oh, we're all on
- 55:25Speaker 1: the same team, like which we are, but we're all
- 55:27Speaker 1: different people, and so it was weirdly refreshing to me too.
- 55:31Speaker 1: So she plays Minerva, she's one of the cree bad guys. Yeah,
- 55:36Speaker 1: she's a cree and she does not like Carol at
- 55:40Speaker 1: any point in the movie, and all other interactions was
- 55:43Speaker 1: the whatever. There's like that very superhero we exchange during
- 55:47Speaker 1: a fight where Carol is like, is this why we
- 55:49Speaker 1: didn't hang out? And then Minerva is like, no, I
- 55:51Speaker 1: just didn't like you, and then they keep fighting, which
- 55:55Speaker 1: is so silly, But it's like, I do appreciate when
- 55:58Speaker 1: care is taken to, you know, show women having different
- 56:03Speaker 1: kinds of relationships. You've got the professional relationship of Marvel
- 56:08Speaker 1: and Carol, You've got the close friendship with her and Maria,
- 56:12Speaker 1: and then you've got like a contentious work place, right,
- 56:16Speaker 1: relationship with Minerva. There's always room for more, but but
- 56:20Speaker 1: it was nice to see kind of different kinds of relationships.
- 56:24Speaker 1: And then also like the kind of like Carol ends
- 56:26Speaker 1: up acting is like sort of like a surrogate co
- 56:30Speaker 1: parent of like Monica. And the fact that, um, most
- 56:36Speaker 1: of the women in this movie, in fact, with the
- 56:39Speaker 1: exception of Monica, who is a child, um, all of
- 56:43Speaker 1: the women in this movie are either military or women
- 56:46Speaker 1: in stem or both. So and we scientific right, Yeah,
- 56:52Speaker 1: so you know, you've got scientists, you've got soldiers, you've
- 56:54Speaker 1: got roles that you don't usually see women occupying in movies.
- 56:59Speaker 1: So that was pretty cool. There's also the line that
- 57:03Speaker 1: Maria says when Carol is like rediscovering her identity as
- 57:07Speaker 1: Carol Danvers. Maria says, the Air Force wasn't letting women
- 57:11Speaker 1: fly combat back then, so testing Lawson's plan was the
- 57:14Speaker 1: only way to fly. So they were like the you know,
- 57:17Speaker 1: the patriarchy was not letting women do things, so they
- 57:21Speaker 1: found ways to get around it. And you know, I
- 57:25Speaker 1: was like, cool, I'm glad that you did that. Yeah,
- 57:29Speaker 1: were there any other big stuff you wanted to discuss?
- 57:33Speaker 1: I wanted to say a word about amnesia. Sure, great, Um,
- 57:38Speaker 1: I think that sometimes that can be kind of a
- 57:41Speaker 1: feminized sort of state to be in, you know, sort
- 57:44Speaker 1: of gets linked with women not knowing their own minds
- 57:47Speaker 1: and stuff in fiction. But it is true that it
- 57:51Speaker 1: is part of her history. She's had amnesia at least
- 57:54Speaker 1: three times in the comics. Oh boy, girl, I know.
- 57:59Speaker 1: I know. When she is first Ms Marvel, she would
- 58:02Speaker 1: like turn into Miss Marvel and do superheroic stuff, and
- 58:05Speaker 1: then when she turned back to Carol and then she
- 58:11Speaker 1: has to reconcile that. Then there's another time. This is
- 58:13Speaker 1: kind of the X Men related time where Rogue. You
- 58:17Speaker 1: know Rogue, right, So if she touches you, she absorbs
- 58:20Speaker 1: your power. So when Rogue first appeared, she wasn't a hero,
- 58:24Speaker 1: she was a villain um with mystique like her her
- 58:28Speaker 1: adopted mother, and uh, Rogue absorbs Carol's power and her memories.
- 58:34Speaker 1: And then Carol is invited to join the X Men,
- 58:37Speaker 1: but she doesn't because they also basically asked Rogue to join,
- 58:40Speaker 1: and she's like, um, she took my life away, why
- 58:43Speaker 1: would I want to stay here with her? And the
- 58:45Speaker 1: guys are jerks, so then she has to build her
- 58:48Speaker 1: memories back up, and then the third time is Um
- 58:52Speaker 1: more recently, where she basically has to lose her memory
- 58:57Speaker 1: to save the Earth. It's a little more convoluted, but
- 59:00Speaker 1: jon Rog seems to come back and she has to
- 59:04Speaker 1: fly up into space and basically have her brain kind
- 59:06Speaker 1: of explode in order to save everybody. She has Ama
- 59:09Speaker 1: after that too. One of the unique challenges with with
- 59:13Speaker 1: adaptations like this is it's like you have this strong
- 59:18Speaker 1: core of female writers directors on the movie, but you're
- 59:21Speaker 1: still adapting a character whose origin story was written and
- 59:26Speaker 1: illustrated by men. So it's I'm glad that there were
- 59:30Speaker 1: deviations from the canonical lore because it's like clearly it's
- 59:36Speaker 1: like however well intentioned, you know, the deep seated ship
- 59:40Speaker 1: gets in there, and it sounds like the the amnesia
- 59:44Speaker 1: might be one of those things, and it's yeah, it's
- 59:48Speaker 1: it's weird having to I mean and even and I
- 59:52Speaker 1: think it's like even more apparent in a character like
- 59:54Speaker 1: Wonder Woman Um that makes it as relevant as those
- 59:58Speaker 1: characters are to our culture. It's there's stuff in the
- 1:00:01Speaker 1: d n A of the character that is is very
- 1:00:04Speaker 1: passive aggressive, perhaps yeah, speaking of um men creating these
- 1:00:10Speaker 1: stories largely, Caroline. I borrowed this quote from your book
- 1:00:14Speaker 1: from Jerry Conway, who his role as it pertains to
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: Captain or Miss Marvel is did he create it or
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: he didn't create the character, but he launched the Miss
- 1:00:27Speaker 1: Marvel comic Ina got it? So he says in response
- 1:00:33Speaker 1: to people being like, hey, why are you a man
- 1:00:38Speaker 1: writing this female character? And he says, at the moment,
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: there are no thoroughly trained and qualified women writers working
- 1:00:46Speaker 1: in the superhero comics field. Reason two is more personal.
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: A man is writing this book because a man wants
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: to write this book. Me Reacon three, why not a man?
- 1:00:57Speaker 1: If the women's liberation movement means anything, it's a battle
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: for equality of the sexes. And it's my contention that
- 1:01:03Speaker 1: a man properly motivated and aware of the pitfalls can
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: write a woman character as well as a woman. So
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: that's what our friend Jerry Conway has to say about that.
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: And you know, he's ignoring a lot of his privilege
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: and stuff when he says something like that, there's a
- 1:01:26Speaker 1: great fun Jerry joke in there. So yeah, and I
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: think I think that, like a lot of the guys
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: working at both Marvel, and I'm not saying all of
- 1:01:38Speaker 1: them by any means, but I do think there were
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: a number of them at the time that saw themselves
- 1:01:42Speaker 1: as liberal, progressive guys. You know, they were, they were
- 1:01:45Speaker 1: like New York City progressive guys. But like many people
- 1:01:49Speaker 1: in the civil rights movements, UM did not necessarily quite
- 1:01:55Speaker 1: understand all the different dimensions of gender inequalities. And what's
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: painful to me is that even today, so it's like
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: forty years after he writes this thing, Um, there are
- 1:02:07Speaker 1: still people in the big comics companies who are like,
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: we want to hire more women and people of color,
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: but you know, they're just not out there, and it's like,
- 1:02:15Speaker 1: how can you keep how can you keep saying this?
- 1:02:19Speaker 1: You know, I mean they just they tend to hire
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: who they know, and they tend to mentor people who
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: look like them, which is very common. People tend to
- 1:02:26Speaker 1: make people who remind them of themselves at a younger age.
- 1:02:28Speaker 1: But it just means they're reproducing that skew in who's
- 1:02:32Speaker 1: behind the scenes, like over and over, it's a little
- 1:02:35Speaker 1: bit better, but you know, a little bit better means
- 1:02:38Speaker 1: that maybe now I don't know, ten percent of Superhero
- 1:02:42Speaker 1: comics are written or drawn by women. And it was
- 1:02:46Speaker 1: five ten years ago, and it was two percent ten
- 1:02:49Speaker 1: years before that. So yeah, their growth is tremendous, but
- 1:02:52Speaker 1: it's growth from a very small number to a small
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: number slow. Okay, I do want to mention just one
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: other thing quickly. As I was concerned about I was
- 1:03:07Speaker 1: concerned how they would handle the military aspect. You know
- 1:03:11Speaker 1: that she's so imbued with being in the Air Force
- 1:03:14Speaker 1: and it's such a part of her identity and everything.
- 1:03:16Speaker 1: I mean, she is always painted as someone who has
- 1:03:19Speaker 1: a strong sense of duty, but who will buck orders
- 1:03:23Speaker 1: if she feels like she should do that. But I
- 1:03:26Speaker 1: was worried that it would wind up being too militaristic
- 1:03:29Speaker 1: or too much a celebration of military solutions, and I
- 1:03:32Speaker 1: think they managed to to not do that so much.
- 1:03:36Speaker 1: I think that they tried to show, you know, these
- 1:03:38Speaker 1: are the costs of war, and this is what happens
- 1:03:41Speaker 1: when you have too much of a military hierarchy where
- 1:03:45Speaker 1: people are just following orders and not questioning them and
- 1:03:47Speaker 1: stuff like that. Did you feel that way, Yeah? I
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: think so. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if anyone was so
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: stupid to give this movie to someone like Michael bay
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: to direct. I think that would not have been handled well.
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: But yeah, I felt nothing about the portrayal of anything
- 1:04:06Speaker 1: about the military struck me as being to glorify, like
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: glorification or anything like that. So no, no, I I
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: liked how it was treated. I don't know, it seemed
- 1:04:18Speaker 1: especially it's like, if this is the story, what is
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: the most responsible way to tackle it? And it felt
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: like that that route was taken. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
- 1:04:27Speaker 1: Yeah I liked this movie. Good damn it? What a
- 1:04:31Speaker 1: what a soundtrack to I mean, as a as a
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: nineties kid, I was like, you fell for it. I
- 1:04:37Speaker 1: felt for it. I can't help it. You know. It
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: was a good sound track. So, hey, does this movie
- 1:04:45Speaker 1: pass the Bechtel test Flying Colors? It does. Yeah, there's
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: a lot of different combinations of characters also, who talked
- 1:04:53Speaker 1: to each other that passed. We've got Carol Danvers and Maria.
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: We've got her and Maria's daughter, Monica. We've got Maria
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: and Monica. We've got Carol Denver's and Wendy Lawson. You know,
- 1:05:06Speaker 1: they're talking about the Air Force, they're talking about their work,
- 1:05:10Speaker 1: their friendships. Um, setting a good example. We didn't really
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: touch about parenting. Yeah, they talk about everything, and there's
- 1:05:19Speaker 1: one like the world. They're almost like how women just
- 1:05:22Speaker 1: talk about stuff other than men all the time. There's
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: even a short exchange where the grandparents arrived to babysit Monica,
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: which they totally didn't have to do, so I appreciated
- 1:05:34Speaker 1: that they did it. And the grandparents arrived and the
- 1:05:36Speaker 1: grandmother is like, what's going on? And Maria is like,
- 1:05:39Speaker 1: thanks to combin mama or whatever. Oh I somehow missed that.
- 1:05:43Speaker 1: I was probably too busy writing notes because I'm such
- 1:05:47Speaker 1: a note head. But there is more. It's more of
- 1:05:52Speaker 1: a monologue. But there's a scene where Maria is telling
- 1:05:56Speaker 1: Carol like how strong she is and how awesome she
- 1:05:59Speaker 1: is eve and before she had you know, fire hands,
- 1:06:03Speaker 1: and we just like so rarely see like women lifting
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: up other women in stories that I was like, that's awesome.
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: I really liked that scene. It's nice. Yeah, yeah, passes
- 1:06:14Speaker 1: uh pretty handily. This movie. Let's rate it on a
- 1:06:19Speaker 1: nipple scale, all right, chelmy, zero to five nipples based
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: on its portrayal and representation of women. I think this
- 1:06:26Speaker 1: is like a solid four point five. It misses a
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: lot of the tropes and stereotypes that we've seen of
- 1:06:34Speaker 1: women thus far in super hero movies, and that's largely
- 1:06:37Speaker 1: because it's a woman driving the narrative, a woman whose
- 1:06:42Speaker 1: emotional journey and whose powers we are learning about and exploring.
- 1:06:47Speaker 1: And yeah, there's no, it doesn't fall into the traps
- 1:06:50Speaker 1: of like a love story has to be there, and
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: it's like, no, it doesn't. There's no makeover scene as
- 1:06:56Speaker 1: we just got stuff like that. So I think it
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: handles a lot of things. Well, I think I'm taking
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: off a slight bit of nippleage for the fact that,
- 1:07:08Speaker 1: as we discussed after Carol Danvers, the three core characters
- 1:07:12Speaker 1: are still men, and while she does interact with women
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: a lot, we don't know those characters as well, and
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: they don't have as much significance narratively as the male characters. Um,
- 1:07:25Speaker 1: so I think some justice could have been made to
- 1:07:28Speaker 1: make more of the female characters a little bit more
- 1:07:30Speaker 1: prominent in the story. But yeah, I think uh, I
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: think it's it's pretty cool. I like that a lot
- 1:07:36Speaker 1: of the main characters who we do get to meet
- 1:07:38Speaker 1: our people of color. I mean, there's no queer representation.
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: But it's also a pretty a sexual movie. So yeah,
- 1:07:45Speaker 1: there's no you know, queer romance, but there's no head
- 1:07:47Speaker 1: of roll romance either, so there's just no romance. So
- 1:07:50Speaker 1: that's all those Some people on the internet are reading
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: Carol and Maria as being oh, they're shipping that relationship. Okay,
- 1:08:00Speaker 1: I'm down for that. I mean they're already basically raising
- 1:08:04Speaker 1: a kid together, so there there and and uh it
- 1:08:09Speaker 1: stated outright that they're her family. I like that. So yeah,
- 1:08:12Speaker 1: four point five nipples and um each and everyone goes
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: to of course goose the flirkin. I'll go for on this.
- 1:08:23Speaker 1: I think I think that this movie is great for
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: the like next generation of movie goers. I'm really excited
- 1:08:32Speaker 1: for kids who get to see this movie, and I'm
- 1:08:34Speaker 1: jealous of them. I wish that there had been more
- 1:08:38Speaker 1: movies like this to to watch when we were when
- 1:08:42Speaker 1: the little youngsters, well we were tykes. I think that
- 1:08:45Speaker 1: general cultural impact is good. I'm really happy about it.
- 1:08:49Speaker 1: I do the nippicky things that sort of frustrated me
- 1:08:54Speaker 1: a little bit. Um was the general approach. I I
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: just it seemed some of the problems of that I
- 1:09:04Speaker 1: have with it are in the d n A of
- 1:09:06Speaker 1: the character that was written by men decades and decades ago,
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: but just the like, look, girl can do what boy do?
- 1:09:14Speaker 1: I kind of wish we were past that, um. And
- 1:09:17Speaker 1: it's a point that's been made handily so many times,
- 1:09:20Speaker 1: and I know that there's still such a large swath
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: of the world that doesn't believe it, um. But I
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: just the I don't love that being at the core
- 1:09:30Speaker 1: of a story I wouldn't like if I you know,
- 1:09:33Speaker 1: I would love for a daughter, niece, whatever of mine
- 1:09:36Speaker 1: to see an empowered female character that doesn't need to
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: constantly proove for skills against a man um but just
- 1:09:45Speaker 1: you know, moved through the world as a skilled, capable person,
- 1:09:50Speaker 1: and so that that was one thing that I didn't love.
- 1:09:54Speaker 1: But I don't I don't know how that could have
- 1:09:55Speaker 1: been avoided given how the character set up. I agree.
- 1:09:58Speaker 1: I think that because this is such a mainstream movie,
- 1:10:02Speaker 1: as all MCU movies are going to be, and a
- 1:10:05Speaker 1: lot of people who were seeing them are like, you know,
- 1:10:06Speaker 1: like in Cell idiot boys who were like, I think
- 1:10:11Speaker 1: they need to be spoon fed. Yeah. I also don't
- 1:10:15Speaker 1: know if any of those insults were mind were changed,
- 1:10:19Speaker 1: probably not by this, but they're they're just from my
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: super nitpicky standpoint that that was something that I was like.
- 1:10:27Speaker 1: Same with the second tier male characters. Yeah, I wish
- 1:10:31Speaker 1: that the secondary female character has had a little more prominence,
- 1:10:34Speaker 1: but the fact that they were there, I mean, I
- 1:10:36Speaker 1: liked its progress. Yeah, a lot of crawling this movie.
- 1:10:41Speaker 1: I love brill Larson. I enjoyed her performance. I love
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: who she is, what she stands for. She's got a
- 1:10:47Speaker 1: goddamn mosk arright now she's in the m c U.
- 1:10:50Speaker 1: She's making she's she's making it. She's great. I also
- 1:10:53Speaker 1: like that there is a lot of female representation behind
- 1:10:56Speaker 1: the camera in this movie. You've got a female co director,
- 1:10:59Speaker 1: you got majority female writers, you have a female composer,
- 1:11:03Speaker 1: a female co editor. So there are women involved at
- 1:11:08Speaker 1: every level in this movie, and I think it shows. Um. Yeah,
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: I'll give four nipples. I gave to to Captain Marvel,
- 1:11:17Speaker 1: and I'll give to to Maria. And I do think
- 1:11:20Speaker 1: Alvin Billina should have been Ben Mendelsohn's character. Well, I
- 1:11:27Speaker 1: agree with everything that you said, so I guess I'll
- 1:11:30Speaker 1: split the difference and say four and a quarter nipples.
- 1:11:34Speaker 1: Right on. I feel like I'd like to give them
- 1:11:37Speaker 1: all to the cat but well he's got five, you know,
- 1:11:41Speaker 1: some odd left. Yeah, I give a full set of
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: eight to the cat, to the clerkin. Excuse me, yes, no,
- 1:11:49Speaker 1: I mean I would. I'll give one to Brie Larson
- 1:11:51Speaker 1: and one to Lashana Lynch, one to Annette Benning, and
- 1:11:55Speaker 1: one too. I can't remember the little girl's name that
- 1:11:57Speaker 1: plays Monica. I feel bad about that, but um so
- 1:12:00Speaker 1: I'm holding back three quarters of a nipple. Why am
- 1:12:03Speaker 1: I doing that? Okay, I'm holding back one quarter because
- 1:12:07Speaker 1: when I went to IMDb and counted up all the
- 1:12:11Speaker 1: characters credited and uncredited, I discovered that there were seventeen
- 1:12:16Speaker 1: women and fifty two men, so that overall overall the
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: cast is women. So points taken off for that better Marvel.
- 1:12:29Speaker 1: But I agree with everything you said about the centralized
- 1:12:32Speaker 1: cast being more diverse and more you know, female centered,
- 1:12:37Speaker 1: and I liked that there was pretty good representation of
- 1:12:41Speaker 1: men and women of color too. I liked the lack
- 1:12:43Speaker 1: of sexualization and the lack of head of romance, and
- 1:12:49Speaker 1: that this was a story that I agree it's more
- 1:12:52Speaker 1: of a crawling than a running, but it maybe isn't
- 1:12:56Speaker 1: necessary first step to kind of bring people along a
- 1:12:58Speaker 1: little bit not the three of us, but others who
- 1:13:01Speaker 1: maybe are wavering a little bit on the idea of
- 1:13:04Speaker 1: women having actual strength. Um, so I'll hold back another
- 1:13:09Speaker 1: quarter of a nipple for what you said about how
- 1:13:12Speaker 1: after Captain Marvel. Really the other two stars are Samuel L.
- 1:13:16Speaker 1: Jackson and Jude law Right and and Taylor's and then
- 1:13:19Speaker 1: I'll hold back my third quarter of a nipple because feminist,
- 1:13:23Speaker 1: I kinda for Molina should have been tables. Yeah, missed opportunity.
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: I mean, that's the real main conversation around this movie
- 1:13:33Speaker 1: is like, where was the Molina offer? Unbelievable? Well yeah,
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: but overall I really thought they did a great job
- 1:13:41Speaker 1: trying to juggle a lot of things and please a
- 1:13:44Speaker 1: number of different audiences. Yeah, and and it's great that.
- 1:13:48Speaker 1: I mean as of this recording. We're recording this Tuesday
- 1:13:50Speaker 1: after it came out, and it just hit five million dollars.
- 1:13:53Speaker 1: It's doing you super well. These movies always do super well. Yes, Meg,
- 1:13:58Speaker 1: more of them. This is the biggest worldwide opening of
- 1:14:01Speaker 1: all time for a female starring film. Amazing. The number
- 1:14:06Speaker 1: one domestic female starring film is still Beauty and the Beast. Okay,
- 1:14:13Speaker 1: crawling action. It was Beauty and the Beast worldwide too,
- 1:14:18Speaker 1: but Captain Marble made more worldwide, and it's also the
- 1:14:21Speaker 1: second largest worldwide opening among superhero movies. The first was
- 1:14:25Speaker 1: Avengers Infinity War. That's great. Yeah, that's I mean, that's
- 1:14:29Speaker 1: very encouraging, and I hope that studios will take this
- 1:14:33Speaker 1: to heart and realize that they need to make more
- 1:14:37Speaker 1: movies about superheroes who are women and then also just
- 1:14:42Speaker 1: diversify that as well and include women of color and
- 1:14:46Speaker 1: queer women and other marginalized groups. I really hope that
- 1:14:50Speaker 1: we get a movie with Monica. Now, it was like, yay,
- 1:14:55Speaker 1: that would be great. That was fun. I was glad
- 1:14:57Speaker 1: that I want that. Now I'm like, oh cool. They
- 1:15:00Speaker 1: they went out of the way to set it up.
- 1:15:01Speaker 1: I want them to like reboot Avengers, like but hear
- 1:15:07Speaker 1: me out, so you don't. I'm exhausted. The Avengers will
- 1:15:10Speaker 1: be Monica Rambo sure from Black Panther, fucking Tessa Thompson's
- 1:15:16Speaker 1: character and Thor Ragnarok like all those awesome women who
- 1:15:21Speaker 1: and Miles Morales and Miles Morales. Yes, so like let's
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: get that cast out there and uh see that movie
- 1:15:29Speaker 1: and the new Miss Marvel um oh, who's I think
- 1:15:32Speaker 1: a Pakistani woman is Kamala Khan. And with within the comics,
- 1:15:38Speaker 1: she is like a regular girl who looks up to
- 1:15:41Speaker 1: Captain Marvel within the universe, and that's why she takes
- 1:15:44Speaker 1: the name Miss Marvel. She's inspired like her. That's been
- 1:15:48Speaker 1: been like a worldwide hit. It was, at least for
- 1:15:51Speaker 1: a while it was Marvel's number one international digital seller,
- 1:15:56Speaker 1: and it sort of did all these ideas like you
- 1:15:59Speaker 1: can't introduce a new character. You can introduce a female character,
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: you can introduce a character of color, You certainly can
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: introduce a character who's not Christian. But the Newman's Marvel
- 1:16:08Speaker 1: is all of that and selling like crazy awesome. I
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: love it. Can't wait for the movie it's going to
- 1:16:13Speaker 1: happen because it's like it's like Hollywood. You know, Hollywood
- 1:16:16Speaker 1: really changed his tune. It used to say, hey, women
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: need to be in subservient rules, and now look at them.
- 1:16:21Speaker 1: They're saying bitches love lady stuff. Progress. Look at that
- 1:16:26Speaker 1: progressive statement or ladies love bitches stuff. Yeah, oh yeah,
- 1:16:31Speaker 1: I love stuff. Give it a few years that too, well. Caroline,
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the pod and
- 1:16:39Speaker 1: chatting with us, sharing your expertise. Thanks so much for
- 1:16:43Speaker 1: having me. I love this show, of course. What would
- 1:16:46Speaker 1: you like to plug? And where can people find you online? Oh?
- 1:16:50Speaker 1: Geez um, I do have a Twitter account which is
- 1:16:54Speaker 1: at Caroline Coca, which I honestly never used, so someone,
- 1:16:57Speaker 1: if someone wanted to get hold of me, you should
- 1:16:59Speaker 1: really email on me. So it's Coca Cee my last
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: name and first initial at Old Westbury dot E d U.
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: Stuff that I'm working on now isn't really out yet
- 1:17:09Speaker 1: to be seen, so I guess I would just mention
- 1:17:12Speaker 1: again that I wrote this book called Superwomen, Gender Power
- 1:17:16Speaker 1: and Representation, and that it is a history of seventy
- 1:17:20Speaker 1: five years of female superheroes with some really deep dive
- 1:17:24Speaker 1: focus on wonder Woman, bat Girl, Captain Marvel, the women
- 1:17:30Speaker 1: of Star Wars, the women of the X Men, and
- 1:17:32Speaker 1: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, by that book, it is incredible.
- 1:17:37Speaker 1: And yeah, thanks again for coming on, and thank the
- 1:17:42Speaker 1: to our listeners out there. Thanks for listening. Uh. You
- 1:17:45Speaker 1: can follow us on social media at all the usual
- 1:17:48Speaker 1: places at bectel Cast. You can buy our merch at
- 1:17:53Speaker 1: t public dot com, slash the bectol Cast, and we
- 1:17:56Speaker 1: have a promotion going on in which we are fundraising
- 1:18:01Speaker 1: for an organization called Black Girls Code. Um So, if
- 1:18:06Speaker 1: you buy our Rise of the Matriarchy shirt that can
- 1:18:10Speaker 1: be found at t public dot com, slash stores, slash Bechtel,
- 1:18:16Speaker 1: dash Cast, dash cares. I know that's a lot, but
- 1:18:20Speaker 1: it's on our like Twitter, and we'll make sure it's
- 1:18:22Speaker 1: very accessible for people to find. Um So, yeah, by
- 1:18:26Speaker 1: that Rise of the Matriarchy design and proceeds go to
- 1:18:31Speaker 1: Black Girl's Code. You can also sign up for our
- 1:18:34Speaker 1: Matreon a k Patreon by going to patreon dot com,
- 1:18:37Speaker 1: slash Bechtel Cast and it's five dollars a month and
- 1:18:40Speaker 1: you get to bonus episodes every month. So yeah, thank
- 1:18:44Speaker 1: you a getting Carolin, we really appreciate. Thank you, and
- 1:18:46Speaker 1: make sure just to pet your family florkin today, but
- 1:18:52Speaker 1: don't hold them up near your eye. Yes, no, don't
- 1:18:54Speaker 1: do that. But yeah, we'll see you next week. Bye
- 1:18:58Speaker 1: bye