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SMNTY Classics: Sexism in Survival Situation (Movies) · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. Welcome to stuff. I've
0:07
Speaker 1: never told you a production of iheartrat You, and today
0:19
Speaker 1: we are bringing back a classic a bit earlier than
0:22
Speaker 1: we normally would. And this is also one that sadly
0:24
Speaker 1: does not have Samantha in it because you had COVID.
0:28
Speaker 1: Oh no, yes, so this is when I was doing
0:31
Speaker 1: some solo work. We should come back and revisit this though,
0:35
Speaker 1: because I think you would have a lot to say
0:36
Speaker 1: about it. This is the one I did about women
0:38
Speaker 1: in disaster movies, and I wanted to bring it back
0:41
Speaker 1: because Twister as a sequel that's coming out Twisters right now.
0:46
Speaker 1: And I have watched a lot of disaster movies recently
0:49
Speaker 1: that it have had a bit of a different take
0:54
Speaker 1: on the woman's scientists specifically in disaster movies that is better,
1:02
Speaker 1: but also there's something else interesting that's going on where
1:05
Speaker 1: it's like there's still some other woman that is the
1:11
Speaker 1: person we're rolling our eyes at, you know what I mean.
1:14
Speaker 1: This has just been my experience. I have been watching
1:17
Speaker 1: several disaster movies, but I would love to come back
1:22
Speaker 1: and talk about this. We recently had a classic come
1:25
Speaker 1: out about the Mummy, also having a twenty fifth anniversary,
1:30
Speaker 1: and I've seen a lot of posts about that. So
1:32
Speaker 1: it's just been a lot of memories coming back to
1:35
Speaker 1: me from when I was a kid and watching these
1:37
Speaker 1: movies and the characters that stood out to me, and
1:42
Speaker 1: some of the characters that were really mistreated in some
1:46
Speaker 1: of these movies. But yeah, in that spirit, we thought
1:50
Speaker 1: we would bring back this classic episode, so please enjoy. Hey,
1:59
Speaker 1: this is Annie, and welcome to stuff on ever told
2:01
Speaker 1: your production of iHeartRadio And yes, unfortunately I am still
2:14
Speaker 1: by myself. Don't worry, Samantha will be back, but right now,
2:20
Speaker 1: due to scheduling and illness, you just get me, which
2:24
Speaker 1: means I feel like I can run rampant, which is
2:27
Speaker 1: fitting for the topic we're talking about today. I originally
2:31
Speaker 1: mentioned this a few episodes back, where I wanted to
2:35
Speaker 1: talk about this idea of who deserves to die, and
2:42
Speaker 1: it was based on I've had I mean, I've had
2:45
Speaker 1: this in the back of my head for a while,
2:47
Speaker 1: but it was based on a recent headline i'd seen
2:50
Speaker 1: about the very bad movie Deep Lucy that I still
2:54
Speaker 1: enjoy but is quite bad, and the original ending for it.
2:58
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that more at the end. When
3:02
Speaker 1: I was researching this, perhaps it won't surprise you, but
3:06
Speaker 1: not too many people are writing about the feminism of
3:10
Speaker 1: Deep Blue Sea. But I did find some other examples
3:15
Speaker 1: and it kind of became a bit a bit bigger
3:18
Speaker 1: than deserves to die, almost more like deserves redemption. And
3:24
Speaker 1: that's a whole other trope of the you get redeemed
3:28
Speaker 1: and then you die, but you don't do anything to
3:30
Speaker 1: fix all of the harm that you did. Star Wars
3:33
Speaker 1: is pretty bad about that one. But I wanted to
3:36
Speaker 1: talk about this, and I have been on a bit
3:39
Speaker 1: of a disaster movie. I've been watching a lot of them,
3:43
Speaker 1: binging a lot of them. They were big parts of
3:46
Speaker 1: my childhood. That being said, we have discussed horror movie
3:54
Speaker 1: tropes that would fall under I would say the sort
3:59
Speaker 1: of quotes deserves to die, like who is the audience like,
4:02
Speaker 1: oh yeah, they deserve to go in horror movies as
4:07
Speaker 1: often the slutty woman, the best friend of the final girl,
4:14
Speaker 1: or the person of color, all of which is pretty problematic,
4:17
Speaker 1: but that's not really what we're talking about today. We
4:19
Speaker 1: have talked about that in several episodes, So if you
4:22
Speaker 1: want to go check those out, you can. I wanted
4:26
Speaker 1: to talk about more specifically in the disaster film Arena,
4:35
Speaker 1: which because I'm by myself today, this one's going to
4:39
Speaker 1: be a bit shorter and also not as researched as
4:43
Speaker 1: we would normally do. I would love to come back
4:45
Speaker 1: to it and get Samantha's thoughts on this, but I
4:48
Speaker 1: do have a lot of thoughts about it, and I
4:51
Speaker 1: have two, maybe three main examples of what I'm talking about,
4:56
Speaker 1: one of them being Deep Lucy, which we will get.
4:59
Speaker 1: We'll come back to, don't you worry. But one of
5:03
Speaker 1: the big ones I always think of is from Jurassic World.
5:06
Speaker 1: And I know I've brought this up before, I am
5:09
Speaker 1: gonna have some criticisms of how women are portrayed in
5:13
Speaker 1: that movie. If you like that movie, like I enjoyed
5:16
Speaker 1: it well enough. But yeah, just just to say, I
5:20
Speaker 1: did have a really funny, rousing conversation with me and
5:23
Speaker 1: a bunch of friends about they're critiques of the movie,
5:28
Speaker 1: and especially how much of the dinosaurs are going for
5:30
Speaker 1: like cost wise. They tell me that was nowhere near enough,
5:35
Speaker 1: and I trust them. But yeah, when I saw that movie,
5:40
Speaker 1: because I've said I was a huge fan of Drastic
5:42
Speaker 1: Park and still am the first one, and then we
5:47
Speaker 1: have an episode coming out about doctor Ellie Sadler and
5:50
Speaker 1: I have a really funny update about those cards I
5:53
Speaker 1: was bragging about. But when I saw this movie, it
5:57
Speaker 1: was I think I had been working on the show,
6:01
Speaker 1: and I would have I was a feminist for sure,
6:05
Speaker 1: but immediately I was like, I don't. I feel like
6:08
Speaker 1: these are some tropes that are pretty sexists that are
6:11
Speaker 1: happening here. But one of the big things that really
6:15
Speaker 1: when I was watching, I was like, this is unnecessary,
6:17
Speaker 1: and I really don't like it is when I'm assuming
6:20
Speaker 1: I don't have to break down the pot for all
6:23
Speaker 1: of you. But yeah, it's a park the dinosaurs. The
6:27
Speaker 1: dinosaurs genetically altered, and then they escape and recavoc and
6:32
Speaker 1: there's just not a lot of good infrastructure to get
6:36
Speaker 1: people out. But it focuses largely on Claire played by
6:42
Speaker 1: Bryce Dallas Howard, who we're talking about in a second,
6:45
Speaker 1: who is running the park, and then Owen who's played
6:49
Speaker 1: by Chris Pratt, who is like the dinosaur whisper dinosaur trainer,
6:56
Speaker 1: and the fact that Claire is looked down on because
7:00
Speaker 1: she's a businesswoman that doesn't want kids. Again, more on
7:05
Speaker 1: that in a second, but things go wrong. Dinahsaurs get out.
7:10
Speaker 1: This character named Zara, who is the assistant of Claire,
7:17
Speaker 1: is tasked with watching Claire's nephews when they visit, and
7:24
Speaker 1: it was sort of an unexpected visit Claire's sisters getting
7:28
Speaker 1: a divorce and it's just like not good timing, but
7:31
Speaker 1: Claire a great to do it and then was really
7:33
Speaker 1: busy and then pass them off to Zara, who is
7:38
Speaker 1: played by Katie McGrath, And Katie McGrath's character is definitely
7:46
Speaker 1: in the same vein that Claire's character is seen as
7:51
Speaker 1: like not a good person because she's always on her phone,
7:55
Speaker 1: she's always busy, she's not really paying attention to these kids,
7:59
Speaker 1: which again we're passed off on to her, and eventually
8:04
Speaker 1: the kids like give her the slip and escape, And
8:09
Speaker 1: there is a scene where once the dinosaurs break out,
8:15
Speaker 1: she is brutally killed for like a long time, and
8:20
Speaker 1: when I was watching the movie, I was like, oh
8:22
Speaker 1: my gosh, it's still going. Oh my gosh, it's still going.
8:25
Speaker 1: I've read she's the first woman to die on screen
8:29
Speaker 1: in Jurassic Park. I don't know if that's true, but
8:31
Speaker 1: that's what I read. And it was such a long
8:34
Speaker 1: drawn out death and it was kind of played as
8:37
Speaker 1: like almost for laughs, or like, see, she should have
8:44
Speaker 1: done better at her job and taken better care of
8:46
Speaker 1: these kids, and now she's gonna get ripped up. So
8:50
Speaker 1: she gets picked up by pterodactyl's terroritive terror something of
8:59
Speaker 1: the flying dinosaurs. It has dropped into the grasp of
9:01
Speaker 1: another dinosaur, like the sea dinosaur, and then so she's
9:06
Speaker 1: like thrown back and forth between them. The flying dinosaurs
9:11
Speaker 1: is screaming, and then it is dropped into the mouth
9:14
Speaker 1: of this sea dinosaur and it just feels odd. It
9:22
Speaker 1: just feels very odd, and it was in the trailer,
9:25
Speaker 1: and in fact, it was a big part of the trailer,
9:28
Speaker 1: and one of the trailers was titled Jurassic World Trailer
9:32
Speaker 1: to starring Katie McGrath. And she's not really in it,
9:38
Speaker 1: like she's barely in it, but her death, I guess
9:43
Speaker 1: was supposed to be some kind of representation of, oh,
9:50
Speaker 1: how gory this could be or and I believe Bryce
9:55
Speaker 1: Dallas Howard says, oh, she gets tortured, and the director,
10:01
Speaker 1: Colin Chevro says that it's quote one of the all
10:04
Speaker 1: time dinosaur deaths in a movie. Wow, Yes, but it
10:11
Speaker 1: just felt unnecessary. It didn't feel a lot of people
10:16
Speaker 1: have compared it to the Lawyer from the first one,
10:21
Speaker 1: the blood sucking Lawyer, but his death, even his death,
10:25
Speaker 1: while it was sort of like drawn out, it wasn't
10:28
Speaker 1: drawn out like that one. But two he had been
10:32
Speaker 1: shown to be not great, Like he abandoned the children,
10:39
Speaker 1: he didn't care about the morality of any anything to
10:42
Speaker 1: do with the park. He was very much like, I'm
10:46
Speaker 1: just going to protect myself. He wasn't sympathetic at all.
10:49
Speaker 1: And the difference here is her death scene is much longer.
10:57
Speaker 1: But also she does feel bad that these children ran
11:03
Speaker 1: away from her when she's doing her work, and she
11:06
Speaker 1: expresses that, but that's not seen as sympathetic. She is
11:10
Speaker 1: not painted as sympathetic. She's painted as someone we're supposed
11:14
Speaker 1: to kind of laugh at when she dies. And her
11:17
Speaker 1: sin is she wasn't caring for these kids, who again
11:21
Speaker 1: were not her kids. She was not planning to take
11:24
Speaker 1: care of who ran away from her, and therefore she
11:28
Speaker 1: must be punished. We will revel in her death as
11:31
Speaker 1: the audience. She isn't like mean to them. I mean,
11:37
Speaker 1: she's not like greatly developed again, she's not in the
11:40
Speaker 1: movie that long, but she's not terrible. But still it's
11:47
Speaker 1: painted as if, well, she deserved this, she deserved this death.
11:53
Speaker 1: That being said, though, I am not the only one
11:56
Speaker 1: who felt very jarred and disturbed by this scene. There
12:00
Speaker 1: were a couple of quotes correlated by culture war reporters
12:06
Speaker 1: from Reddit, because there's a whole thread dedicated to this scene.
12:10
Speaker 1: I guess here a few. Yeah, it was pretty horrifying.
12:15
Speaker 1: The character didn't even deserve it, so there was zero satisfaction.
12:18
Speaker 1: It just left me feeling violated, which I suppose it
12:21
Speaker 1: was meant to. Here's another yeah, I guess it logically works,
12:25
Speaker 1: but cinematically it was just cruel and unnecessary. I thought
12:29
Speaker 1: maybe I was overacting to that scene. It made me
12:32
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable. It was just so extended. Most deaths and
12:37
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park series are quick in adding to the thrill
12:39
Speaker 1: of the scene. This just felt cruel. Glad to see
12:43
Speaker 1: I'm not alone in this opinion. I asked my buddy
12:46
Speaker 1: what did she do to deserve that death? And some
12:50
Speaker 1: people were pointing out, like, you know, the dinosaurs, that's
12:55
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. But going back to that kind
12:59
Speaker 1: of like cinematic, it doesn't make sense, comments of like, well,
13:04
Speaker 1: what message are we to take from the fact that
13:07
Speaker 1: she's the one that gets this, that she's sort of
13:09
Speaker 1: the inexpendable one, that we're supposed to find some kind
13:14
Speaker 1: of joy or satisfaction in her death, And it definitely
13:19
Speaker 1: made me uncomfortable. I remember watching the scene and clearly
13:22
Speaker 1: it stuck with me where I was like, Uh, why
13:28
Speaker 1: are we supposed to rejoice at her death? That's just
13:33
Speaker 1: what it felt like to me. And I am somebody
13:37
Speaker 1: I can admit like, I'm not usually happy when someone dies,
13:40
Speaker 1: even if they are not great. But it's just the
13:43
Speaker 1: way it was so drawn out. And yeah, she really
13:47
Speaker 1: wasn't in the movie that much to really warrant that.
13:55
Speaker 1: That being said, I wasn't originally intending to do this,
13:59
Speaker 1: but through this research I did find a lot of
14:02
Speaker 1: commentary about Claire Rice Dallas Howard's character, who I also
14:07
Speaker 1: when I saw this movie, I was like, wait, wait,
14:12
Speaker 1: because she is such a trope. She is such like
14:16
Speaker 1: an ice queen. She doesn't want kids, which is one
14:20
Speaker 1: of the big points of the movie. And I think
14:23
Speaker 1: it's meant to be a flip of Alan Grant, but
14:25
Speaker 1: it feels super judgy where it didn't feel super judgy
14:29
Speaker 1: with Alan Grant. It's like she's the lost sight of
14:32
Speaker 1: what matters like. Not wanting to be a mother is
14:37
Speaker 1: inherently bad in this movie. From the Mary Sue quote
14:42
Speaker 1: from what we see, this woman with an entire park
14:45
Speaker 1: to run, has multiple responsibilities across multiple divisions and gets
14:50
Speaker 1: very little assistance, but has still agreed to take these
14:53
Speaker 1: children as a favor for her sister during a divorce.
14:56
Speaker 1: I would tend to agree that if you commit to
14:58
Speaker 1: watching your sister's kids, you should put the phone down.
15:01
Speaker 1: But it also seems like the weekend was pushed on
15:03
Speaker 1: her rather than worked out with her schedule, and frankly,
15:06
Speaker 1: Claire is dealing with this forced obligation as best she can. Nonetheless,
15:12
Speaker 1: Claire is presented very early on as a bad person
15:16
Speaker 1: of questionable morality because she has asked her assistant to
15:20
Speaker 1: watch the boys while she goes to work. I certainly
15:23
Speaker 1: didn't share Chris Pratt's look of shock and disgust when
15:26
Speaker 1: she makes the horrific reveal that she doesn't know her
15:29
Speaker 1: own nephew's ages. Yes, I remember that too. I was
15:34
Speaker 1: looking around like Oh no, that that means I'm a
15:37
Speaker 1: terrible person, because it's very clearly portrayed that way. That's
15:42
Speaker 1: the problem. It's like, you can have these storylines of,
15:46
Speaker 1: you know, someone who is too focused on their work
15:51
Speaker 1: and meets someone who kind of shows them like, oh
15:54
Speaker 1: what about this? But if she wants to do her work,
15:57
Speaker 1: then yeah, it doesn't mean she's a horrible person because
16:03
Speaker 1: she doesn't have kidz or doesn't know her nephew's ages.
16:05
Speaker 1: But it is I remember that distinctly watching this, like, wow,
16:10
Speaker 1: she is They really want me to think she's bad
16:14
Speaker 1: for this. And also it's a problem of writing, which
16:19
Speaker 1: we'll talk about a bit more. But she was just
16:22
Speaker 1: such a trope. She was such a superficial especially well
16:26
Speaker 1: I don't want to say that, but in this one,
16:28
Speaker 1: which is the one we're focusing on, she was very
16:32
Speaker 1: like the ice cream. That was her even in her costuming.
16:37
Speaker 1: That was what she was. A quote from the Mary
16:39
Speaker 1: Sue continues beyond that, Claire not having children and claring
16:43
Speaker 1: she doesn't want children also isn't some sort of fatal
16:47
Speaker 1: personality flaw. But Jurassic World clearly sees it this way,
16:51
Speaker 1: believing the natural progression of women has them evolving into mothers,
16:54
Speaker 1: and those who don't have that desire are somehow deficient
16:58
Speaker 1: of humanity. Despite claims to the contrary, Motherhood does not
17:04
Speaker 1: equal inherent goodness, and not wanting to be a mother
17:07
Speaker 1: does not equal an inherent black thereof for women. What
17:11
Speaker 1: about the many women who are unable to have children
17:14
Speaker 1: most importantly to the film, and this is where Jurassic
17:17
Speaker 1: World is really offensive. Women who choose to put their
17:20
Speaker 1: careers first and or foremost are not doing it as
17:24
Speaker 1: a coping mechanism for what is really lacking in their lives.
17:29
Speaker 1: I'm sure some are as are many men, but many
17:32
Speaker 1: have a passion for their work, which they want to
17:35
Speaker 1: put front and center, and that doesn't make them less
17:38
Speaker 1: of a woman or less a part of the world
17:40
Speaker 1: around her. While Ellie and Grant were discussing where their
17:45
Speaker 1: children would be part of their future as an option,
17:47
Speaker 1: Claire's being told she wants kids, that there is something
17:51
Speaker 1: wrong with her for not feeling that way herself. Claire's
17:54
Speaker 1: own sister tells her one day she'll settle down, as
17:58
Speaker 1: if the life she has built is temporary, which might
18:01
Speaker 1: be the clearest piece of evidence that this movie was
18:04
Speaker 1: written by four men. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's just
18:08
Speaker 1: the the pressure throughout that she must want kids. There's
18:13
Speaker 1: a several shots where she's looking at kids with sort
18:17
Speaker 1: of a veiled belonging, which is a fine plot point.
18:20
Speaker 1: But if you're if you're going to do it, where
18:25
Speaker 1: in this like moral grounds of like she's bad because
18:31
Speaker 1: she doesn't want that or might not want that, that's
18:33
Speaker 1: not good. That's that's the issue. And it is very,
18:37
Speaker 1: very very heavy handed. And how it paints that she
18:44
Speaker 1: is just missing, she is lacking something, she's just not
18:50
Speaker 1: complete and doesn't know it. That's one of the most
18:54
Speaker 1: galling parts of it, I think, and I've heard that
18:56
Speaker 1: as a single person too, of like oh you just
18:58
Speaker 1: don't realize, so you just I don't know, and it's
19:01
Speaker 1: annoying and incorrect. Here's another quote from The Mary Sue.
19:08
Speaker 1: As Marlow Stern wrote in his rather accurate review for
19:11
Speaker 1: The Daily Beast, the only character development we get in
19:15
Speaker 1: this movie is quote a woman's evolution from an icy, cold,
19:19
Speaker 1: selfish corporate shill into a considerate wife and mother, as
19:24
Speaker 1: if to say, don't worry, guys, that shrill both lady
19:26
Speaker 1: really just wants to find a sexist guy that will
19:29
Speaker 1: teach her how to behave and awaken that biological clock. Sure,
19:33
Speaker 1: her life's work is destroyed in hundredstead, but she got
19:36
Speaker 1: a man who can give her that baby all women
19:39
Speaker 1: really want. Yeah, it is. When I was researching this,
19:44
Speaker 1: which again wasn't what I really intended when I started
19:48
Speaker 1: this episode, but I did find a lot of articles
19:51
Speaker 1: about that, in particular of in disaster movies, painting women
20:01
Speaker 1: as they are this the cold business woman or the
20:06
Speaker 1: kind woman who wants a baby, which when I was
20:10
Speaker 1: thinking about it was like, yeah, I can think of
20:13
Speaker 1: a lot of examples of that. And then I found
20:16
Speaker 1: a lot of articles about all the dinosaurs are female
20:20
Speaker 1: and men are the only ones who can tame them.
20:23
Speaker 1: I think that's a separate episode, but that's interesting. And
20:38
Speaker 1: then here is a quote from Media Owen, who's Chris
20:43
Speaker 1: Pratt's character, knows no wrong. When a fly is buzzing
20:46
Speaker 1: around Claire, Owen can slap it right out of the air.
20:49
Speaker 1: While Claire gets nervous even being in a helicopter, Owen
20:53
Speaker 1: rides a motorcycle neck and neck with velociraptors. Nothing scares Owen,
20:58
Speaker 1: not even violent man eating dinosaurs because he is a
21:01
Speaker 1: manly man. There's certainly nothing wrong with Claire's fear in
21:04
Speaker 1: the face of a potential death via dinosaur, but her
21:07
Speaker 1: fear is not used to create a sense of realism
21:10
Speaker 1: or to pull the audience in. It's used to show
21:12
Speaker 1: how heroic Owen is. Throughout the film, Claire is mostly
21:17
Speaker 1: Owen's foil, and damn he looks good by comparison. In
21:21
Speaker 1: one moment of the film, Owen is in need of
21:24
Speaker 1: rescuing from a pterodactyl. Claire saves him by shooting said
21:27
Speaker 1: flying reptile. We cheer because Claire reversed the roles and
21:31
Speaker 1: saved him. However, this empowering moment is short lived, and
21:35
Speaker 1: I mean very short lived. After being saved, Owen rises
21:39
Speaker 1: to his feet and immediately kisses Claire as she's preparing
21:42
Speaker 1: to say something. This move allows him to both assert
21:45
Speaker 1: and regain power and control. Claire is reduced to a
21:50
Speaker 1: blushing and embarrassed girl. Within seconds, Owen takes back his
21:53
Speaker 1: gun and retakes his role as the alpha of the group.
21:58
Speaker 1: So I thought that was interesting because in this very
22:04
Speaker 1: same article they point out that again this can be
22:07
Speaker 1: done well like it can be done where you have,
22:14
Speaker 1: in one way or another, kind of the the woman
22:17
Speaker 1: who's never been in the jungle and the guy who
22:19
Speaker 1: knows everything about the jungle. But the key to it
22:22
Speaker 1: is that they're learning from each other, and you're not
22:28
Speaker 1: necessarily making one more the butt of the joke than
22:32
Speaker 1: the other. She's clear, and this is consistently the butt
22:37
Speaker 1: of the joke. We're supposed to mock her, like, oh,
22:41
Speaker 1: she's never gotten dirty before, all of these kinds of things.
22:47
Speaker 1: And again, that can be funny, like that, that can be.
22:50
Speaker 1: But if it's done in sort of this very superficial
22:54
Speaker 1: sexist way and meant to make the male character look
22:59
Speaker 1: way better, then that's the problem. As I thought this
23:04
Speaker 1: was interesting, I hadn't really thought about this, but I
23:07
Speaker 1: found this quote from Refinery twenty nine. The original Jurassic
23:12
Speaker 1: Park stands out among action films largely because its protagonists
23:15
Speaker 1: weren't regular action heroes. They were scientists, cool ones, sure,
23:19
Speaker 1: but not the kind of people you would expect to
23:21
Speaker 1: be running around to juggle fighting off massive and dangerous creatures.
23:25
Speaker 1: And what's more, they didn't so much solve the problem
23:27
Speaker 1: with violence as they deduced a creative solution and implemented it.
23:31
Speaker 1: Jeff Goldbloom may have reached peak Internet icon status in
23:34
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, but can you imagine him holding up an
23:37
Speaker 1: action franchise a la Bruce Willis Sam Neil has kind
23:40
Speaker 1: of a rugged appeal, but he's not rambo. He's not macho.
23:45
Speaker 1: If anything, he's a nerd who's just so excited to
23:48
Speaker 1: be around his long lost monsters, and he and Ellie
23:51
Speaker 1: were equal and professional partners above anything else. Now fast
23:56
Speaker 1: forward to Jurassic World, and our hero looks very different,
24:00
Speaker 1: like one hundred pounds of muscle different. Owen Grady is
24:03
Speaker 1: a former marine turned dinosaur trainer who, as we see
24:06
Speaker 1: in the beginning of Fallen Kingdom, enjoys building himself log
24:09
Speaker 1: cabins and living out of his car. He's the kind
24:12
Speaker 1: of hero who needs a love interest in order to
24:14
Speaker 1: shine to redeem him as a hulky man with a
24:17
Speaker 1: heart of gold. Every shot of him is meant to
24:20
Speaker 1: emphasize how good he looks in his very fitted pants.
24:23
Speaker 1: We're supposed to admire his muscular arms, his ability to
24:26
Speaker 1: ride motorcycles alongside raptors, his rough stuble, not his intellect.
24:32
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point because a lot of
24:37
Speaker 1: the things that have really resonated with me when I
24:39
Speaker 1: look back, it's not the like I do love a
24:41
Speaker 1: superhero movie. You don't get me wrong, you all know that,
24:43
Speaker 1: But when it comes to this, I do like when
24:47
Speaker 1: it's not your super bulky, traditional stereotypical man who is
24:53
Speaker 1: the hero. I like when it's scientists who are thrown
24:57
Speaker 1: in this situation, are or whatever it is. And it
25:01
Speaker 1: did kind of flip it where he's definitely the hero,
25:10
Speaker 1: she is the villain. And when you talk about like
25:13
Speaker 1: we briefly discussed John Hammond in the original Jurassic Park,
25:20
Speaker 1: who we sympathize with, who is humanized, there has been
25:25
Speaker 1: some conversation about whether or not he should have been,
25:27
Speaker 1: but he was. And Claire, who's sort of assuming that
25:32
Speaker 1: role in this one, is very much not very much
25:36
Speaker 1: or not and doesn't have a satisfying redemptive arc. I
25:43
Speaker 1: would say she does do in the in the sequels,
25:48
Speaker 1: she does do some things, but it doesn't feel This
25:53
Speaker 1: could go back to the writing, but it just feels like, well,
25:56
Speaker 1: why did you do that? Then? If now we're having
25:59
Speaker 1: to solve that's a whole different thing. That's a whole
26:03
Speaker 1: different podcasts. But yeah, just the different treatments we got
26:07
Speaker 1: in the first of the Jurassic World series versus the
26:10
Speaker 1: first of the Jurassic Park series of John Hammond versus
26:14
Speaker 1: Claire is quite different. But yes, this brings us to
26:19
Speaker 1: Deep Blue Sea, which I really did not think I
26:26
Speaker 1: was going to find anything written about this, but I
26:29
Speaker 1: did listeners. So, as I discussed recently in a recent classic,
26:36
Speaker 1: I got this headline show up in my feed that
26:42
Speaker 1: there was a petition for the original ending of Deep
26:45
Speaker 1: Blue Sea to come out. If you haven't seen it, yeah,
26:49
Speaker 1: it's not very good, but I enjoy it. It's about
26:54
Speaker 1: a woman named Susan who is trying to cure Alzheimer's
27:04
Speaker 1: and for some movie science reason, that means experimenting on
27:08
Speaker 1: sharks and their brains in particular, and of course it
27:13
Speaker 1: goes wrong, and ultimately it culminates in a lot of
27:19
Speaker 1: people dying in their team, and then her sacrificing herself
27:23
Speaker 1: and dying. And I always thought the ending was sort
27:26
Speaker 1: of off. I was always like, huh, I feels a
27:28
Speaker 1: little out of left field. It turns out I was
27:31
Speaker 1: onto something, because in the original ending, she survives, she
27:36
Speaker 1: has to kill the shark herself, and she does, and
27:38
Speaker 1: it's much more of a redemptive like I realized my mistake.
27:43
Speaker 1: I will take care of it, as opposed to her
27:47
Speaker 1: dying in this way, which was pretty graphic, and she
27:54
Speaker 1: doesn't have like I feel, going back to what I
27:57
Speaker 1: said at the top, when I'm talking about like get
28:00
Speaker 1: redemption and then you die, it's not that because I
28:03
Speaker 1: feel like with the men I'm thinking of when I
28:06
Speaker 1: think of that had a long time to get that redemption,
28:09
Speaker 1: like three movies at least, she did not have that.
28:14
Speaker 1: So it was she just kind of died and very unceremoniously.
28:20
Speaker 1: No one seemed to care. Uh. But the director said
28:25
Speaker 1: the reason they changed the ending was because the audience
28:27
Speaker 1: was like, no, that has to die, and that's the
28:30
Speaker 1: inspiration of this whole episode. So I do have some
28:35
Speaker 1: quotes about this. Here is one from Girl Type. In
28:40
Speaker 1: the film, doctor Susan McAllister, played by white British actress
28:44
Speaker 1: Saffron Burrows, develops a cure for Alzheimer's disease using the
28:47
Speaker 1: chemicals in the brains of genetically altered giant sharks. Burrows
28:51
Speaker 1: possesses fashion model looks and seeing the obvious candidate for
28:54
Speaker 1: romantic subplot with Carter Blake played by white actor Thomas Jane,
28:59
Speaker 1: the shark wrangler with the cowboy attitude and boyish good looks. However,
29:03
Speaker 1: she turns down his friendly offer to share beer, saying primly,
29:07
Speaker 1: it's all worked for me, Carter. Susan's sexual reluctance has
29:11
Speaker 1: been established, and the film goes on to characterize her
29:14
Speaker 1: as frigid, cold, and calculating. Welcome to my parlor, she
29:18
Speaker 1: says coldly when everyone enters her laboratory. Susan is a
29:22
Speaker 1: black widow, a spider woman close to being villainized simply
29:25
Speaker 1: because she is an ambitious scientist and isn't attracted to
29:29
Speaker 1: the leading man. And this essay was really interesting because
29:34
Speaker 1: it broke down a lot of a lot of the
29:36
Speaker 1: pieces of this movie. But one of the other things
29:39
Speaker 1: was the other woman who's in this group, because the
29:43
Speaker 1: main group just had two women, Janis, and Janice. Of
29:49
Speaker 1: course blame Susan. So here's a quote, you stupid, she
29:54
Speaker 1: cries at Susan, setting up their oppositional relationships within the film.
29:59
Speaker 1: These two character represent a dichotomy of femininity, powerful unfeeling
30:04
Speaker 1: an over emotional weak victim, which is something we see
30:07
Speaker 1: a lot. I often think of alien when I think
30:11
Speaker 1: of this psychotomy, but it also goes back to what
30:13
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier, that that seems to be maybe
30:17
Speaker 1: not quite the same. But your business woman ice cream
30:23
Speaker 1: and your loving mother, like those are your two options,
30:28
Speaker 1: which one, so the quote goes on. The next to
30:32
Speaker 1: go is Janice, who by this time is a total
30:35
Speaker 1: basket case. She falls off a ladder and into the water,
30:38
Speaker 1: thinks to weak arm muscles, and splashes around, screaming for
30:41
Speaker 1: Carter to save her. She is suddenly jerked under the
30:44
Speaker 1: water by a shark, and the rest of the gang
30:46
Speaker 1: momentarily mourns her loss. Then she rises up again, arms
30:50
Speaker 1: outstretched in a weirdly graceful pose like a synchronized swimmer.
30:55
Speaker 1: Her legs are wrapped in an equally posed way around
30:58
Speaker 1: the shark's vertical snout, but its jaws are locked over
31:01
Speaker 1: her crotch. Janie screams and bleeds and gouts, but stays
31:05
Speaker 1: carefully positioned like a ballet dancer as the shark attacks
31:08
Speaker 1: her between the legs. Amazingly, the shot of her emerging
31:13
Speaker 1: from the water like this is shown twice, but once
31:16
Speaker 1: from the side so we can see where she has
31:18
Speaker 1: been bitten, and again from above so we can see
31:21
Speaker 1: her anguished face, slow mow bobbing breasts, and the shark's
31:24
Speaker 1: teeth locked over her pelvic area. Needless to say, I
31:28
Speaker 1: was astounded and disturbed by this image. Not only are
31:32
Speaker 1: the women's helplessness, weakness, and hysteria treated as normal feminine characteristics,
31:37
Speaker 1: but she dies as a prettily posed sex object. The
31:41
Speaker 1: shark gruesomely attacks her vagina, her biological difference from men,
31:45
Speaker 1: and the film glories in the image with elaborate camera work,
31:49
Speaker 1: slow motion, and repeated shots. In a later scene, the
31:53
Speaker 1: gang explores janisis quarters, looking for batteries for their flashlight.
31:57
Speaker 1: Jan was a healthy girl. Something in here has to
31:59
Speaker 1: run on batteries, says secondary white male Scoggins, the goofy
32:03
Speaker 1: member of the gang. Where would a girl keep her
32:07
Speaker 1: vibrator noise thing? I was outraged that even in death,
32:12
Speaker 1: Janie got reduced to a dirty joke, reduced to nothing
32:15
Speaker 1: but her vagina yep, yep. And I did want to
32:20
Speaker 1: come one day when Samantha's better, I'd want to come
32:24
Speaker 1: back to this of the history of in disaster, movies,
32:29
Speaker 1: movies and horror movies in general, of women getting consumed
32:35
Speaker 1: by monsters while naked or somehow skimpily cloud or are
32:39
Speaker 1: sexy or something like that, and what that says. But
32:45
Speaker 1: in the meantime, the quote continues, Susan is also degraded sexually.
32:50
Speaker 1: She gets trapped by a shark and has to electrocute
32:52
Speaker 1: it with a nearby clump of wires. She strips to
32:55
Speaker 1: her underwear and stands on her wetsuit to insulate herself
32:58
Speaker 1: from the electrical charge. Shivering and pissed off, she cowers
33:02
Speaker 1: in her tiny white bra and panties as a flailing
33:04
Speaker 1: shark flames and sparks go everywhere. The scene may be
33:09
Speaker 1: an homage to Sigourney Weaver's stripp teas at the end
33:11
Speaker 1: of Alien, but in this case I was especially angered.
33:15
Speaker 1: Susan is forced to strip to survive. It says if
33:18
Speaker 1: the movie is punishing her for her earlier denial of
33:21
Speaker 1: Carter and gloating while she suffers, wet and miserable, and
33:26
Speaker 1: that I will admit, as much as I have had
33:31
Speaker 1: my questions of this movie, which I don't know how
33:35
Speaker 1: to feel about, I always thought, you know, oh they
33:40
Speaker 1: feel like they have to put in this scene, very
33:43
Speaker 1: degraded scene of the woman stripping down, But that is
33:46
Speaker 1: a good point that she turned down and this offer
33:52
Speaker 1: from your hot action hero guy, and now here she
33:57
Speaker 1: is almost punishment and then going to the ending. So
34:15
Speaker 1: at this point we've got three survivors from the main group.
34:19
Speaker 1: We've got ll Cool j the Action hero guy and Susan,
34:26
Speaker 1: and the shark is trying to get free, and they're like,
34:28
Speaker 1: we cannot let this shark free. And Action Hero Guy
34:33
Speaker 1: jumps in the water, but the shark is coming for him.
34:37
Speaker 1: He jumps in the water to like, I don't know
34:39
Speaker 1: stuff the shark, and Susan decides she is going to
34:47
Speaker 1: draw the shark's attention, so she cuts her hand and
34:51
Speaker 1: says come to mama and jumps in the water. And
34:56
Speaker 1: here is our final quote about that. The shark her
35:00
Speaker 1: regards her blankly for a long moment and then gobbles
35:03
Speaker 1: her up in three very separate floody bites. The film
35:06
Speaker 1: pauses deliberately before picking off Susan, and the subsequent destruction
35:10
Speaker 1: of the shark is like an anti climactic afterthought. When
35:14
Speaker 1: Preach Cool Jay's character fires a lethal explosive charge, he whispers,
35:20
Speaker 1: this is for Scoggins. Scoggins, Susan is the one who
35:24
Speaker 1: sacrificed her life to help kill the shark. Scoggins was
35:27
Speaker 1: comic relief for Pete's sake. Yet Susan doesn't even get
35:30
Speaker 1: a hero's memorial. She's nothing but fish food to the
35:32
Speaker 1: sharks and her companions. I felt cheated by Susan's death
35:36
Speaker 1: and saddened by how little the surviving characters cared about her.
35:39
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that speaks to what we've been
35:45
Speaker 1: talking about, is she wasn't very fleshed out. She wasn't
35:53
Speaker 1: given a lot of moments for sympathy or redemption, where
35:58
Speaker 1: as a lot of male characters like John Hammond were are.
36:04
Speaker 1: But it also is a very very fair point that
36:09
Speaker 1: the shark's death is seemingly lesser than her death, Like
36:14
Speaker 1: she deserved to die more than that shark. And you
36:16
Speaker 1: can make your arguments about that because she was, you know,
36:18
Speaker 1: ethically doing these experiments on sharks that that caused this
36:24
Speaker 1: whole thing. But she did want to make amends and
36:29
Speaker 1: she was trying to And the fact that we're more
36:34
Speaker 1: supposed to be more jubilant that she died rather than
36:38
Speaker 1: this shark is not the most it's not the most
36:42
Speaker 1: fun thought I and I do again. I say this
36:48
Speaker 1: as someone who really doesn't get joy out of death
36:52
Speaker 1: in a lot of media, but uh, this is always
36:58
Speaker 1: always stuck out to me. And when I read that headline,
37:02
Speaker 1: like I said in that classic where I first mentioned this,
37:04
Speaker 1: I was like I knew it. I knew it just
37:07
Speaker 1: fell off and I, uh, yeah, I had forgotten that
37:12
Speaker 1: they that they sort of just immediately forget she died,
37:17
Speaker 1: like oh yeah, this is Fris Coggins. So her death
37:21
Speaker 1: felt kind of meaningless. All it was was like, yeah,
37:23
Speaker 1: she deserved to die, Let's move on. And I do
37:27
Speaker 1: think there is a conversation to be had about you know,
37:33
Speaker 1: responsibility and her taking responsibility for what she did. But
37:41
Speaker 1: I just feel very strongly this was punishing an ambitious
37:49
Speaker 1: woman who wasn't into the lead man, and so we
37:53
Speaker 1: were supposed to revel in it as opposed to all
37:56
Speaker 1: the redemptive arcs we grant men and who are more
38:00
Speaker 1: fleshed out in terms of character. But yeah, it's also
38:06
Speaker 1: I know some of you are probably scratching your red
38:07
Speaker 1: and like, why are we talking so much about this
38:09
Speaker 1: bad Shark movie. But it matters. The definitely consume matters,
38:14
Speaker 1: and I was curious, so I was pretty sure I
38:18
Speaker 1: knew why, but I was curious why they changed the ending.
38:21
Speaker 1: When I read it, I was like, oh, yep, that
38:23
Speaker 1: makes total sense that the audience were like, yeah, just
38:25
Speaker 1: kill her. We don't want to have to deal with her,
38:29
Speaker 1: and you ought to like her. I get a lot
38:31
Speaker 1: of parts she wasn't very likable, but that's part of
38:34
Speaker 1: the issue. I don't know, maybe I'm talking to myself
38:37
Speaker 1: in circles. I do have other episodes coming up about
38:45
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park and some other disaster things disaster movies. But
38:50
Speaker 1: in the meantime, please let me know if you have
38:52
Speaker 1: any thoughts on this. I don't know if I'm the
38:54
Speaker 1: only one out there, clearly not. I can't believe I've
38:58
Speaker 1: found some great essays about it, but I would love
39:00
Speaker 1: to hear from all of you. Hopefully, Samantha, we miss you.
39:05
Speaker 1: I don't know if y'all ever listen to this. I
39:06
Speaker 1: feel again, I feel like I'm a child who's gotten
39:09
Speaker 1: free and can do whatever I want. But we hope
39:13
Speaker 1: you feel better soon, and yes, listeners, in the meantime,
39:16
Speaker 1: you can contact us. Our email is Stephanidia Momsteff at
39:19
Speaker 1: iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on Twitter at
39:22
Speaker 1: mom Stuff podcast and on Instagram and TikTok at steffan
39:25
Speaker 1: Never Told You. We have a tea public store. You
39:28
Speaker 1: can get merchandise there. We have a book you can
39:30
Speaker 1: get it at stuff you Should Read Books dot com.
39:33
Speaker 1: Thanks is alois to our super producer Christina, our executive
39:36
Speaker 1: producer Maya, and our contributor Joey, And thanks to you
39:40
Speaker 1: for listening. Stuff I'll Never Told You is production of iHeartRadio.
39:42
Speaker 1: For more podcast from my Heart Radio, you can check
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