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SMNTY Classics: The Female Revengers (Part 2) · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
0:06
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff I've Never Told you production iHeart Radio,
0:18
Speaker 2: and welcome welcome to part two of our look at
0:22
Speaker 2: women and revenge, And especially in this part two, we're
0:26
Speaker 2: looking at more modern takes on women in revenge and
0:33
Speaker 2: in our media. As I mentioned in previous classic part one,
0:38
Speaker 2: some of it is pretty intense, so just be be bare.
0:42
Speaker 2: But it's really interesting, really fascinating stuff, so please enjoy
0:46
Speaker 2: this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and
0:54
Speaker 2: welcome to stuff I'll Never told your production of Iheartradios
0:56
Speaker 2: how stuff works.
1:06
Speaker 1: And we're back and we're back.
1:08
Speaker 3: Sorry about the cliffhanger. We're actually gonna be talking about
1:11
Speaker 3: one of the most famous cliffhangers of all time in
1:14
Speaker 3: this episode. I cannot wait to talk about it. I
1:17
Speaker 3: will leave you in suspense.
1:18
Speaker 1: I'm thinking through our list. I'm like, wait, which one.
1:20
Speaker 3: I will leave you in suspense. If you haven't listened
1:24
Speaker 3: to our part one on revenge all about the science
1:27
Speaker 3: and history, suggest you go do that because in this
1:31
Speaker 3: one we're going to be looking at specific examples of
1:35
Speaker 3: our more modern female revenge right right, and trigger warning
1:40
Speaker 3: before we get into it for sexual assault, violence, and
1:43
Speaker 3: brief mentions of mental health and suicide. Like we said
1:47
Speaker 3: in the previous episode, one aspect of revenge films, they
1:51
Speaker 3: are fantastical, they are heightened, they are usually ultra violent,
1:56
Speaker 3: and I was thinking why this might be why I
1:58
Speaker 3: watched way too many of them, and I think it's
2:02
Speaker 3: because it ups the satisfaction. Nothing will ever erase what
2:07
Speaker 3: was done, and if the feeling of relief or satisfaction
2:10
Speaker 3: is destructive, it will only last in the short term.
2:13
Speaker 3: As we said in the previous episode, might as well
2:17
Speaker 3: exaggerate it and keep doing it to keep getting revenge
2:23
Speaker 3: in your fantasies. You don't hold back, you induled, you'd
2:26
Speaker 3: try to imagine how you can inflict as much pain
2:28
Speaker 3: and damage as was done to you. And also, as
2:32
Speaker 3: we said in the previous episode, science shows were really
2:34
Speaker 3: bad at judging the appropriate amount of payback. So let's
2:41
Speaker 3: talk about some of these examples. But first disclaimer, almost
2:45
Speaker 3: all of them are white women. There's a lot of
2:47
Speaker 3: articles written about why that is. White women are allowed
2:49
Speaker 3: to be angry and vengeful and yet remain sympathetic and
2:53
Speaker 3: deserving of our empathy in a way that women of
2:55
Speaker 3: color still are not. But that is changing very slowly,
3:00
Speaker 3: but it is changing.
3:01
Speaker 4: All right.
3:02
Speaker 3: And another disclaimer, I guess we categorized our examples into
3:06
Speaker 3: some basic recurring tropes. They're kind of arbitrary. They are
3:10
Speaker 3: things that come up a lot, and a lot of
3:12
Speaker 3: them do overlap and could be in multiple categories. But
3:16
Speaker 3: we did our best to organize them in a way
3:18
Speaker 3: that makes sense.
3:19
Speaker 4: Yes, because there's a lot of them, it turns.
3:22
Speaker 5: Out, and again, they do overlap a lot, so you
3:24
Speaker 5: could be talking about one example in one place, but
3:27
Speaker 5: also could attribute to other places.
3:29
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely sure.
3:31
Speaker 3: And one of the biggest genres that we needed to
3:34
Speaker 3: talk about is the genre rape and revenge. Rape and
3:37
Speaker 3: revenge films, as you can imagine, these are very divisive
3:42
Speaker 3: movies that have generated a lot of discussion about exploitation
3:46
Speaker 3: and empowerment. These films typically start with a traditionally beautiful
3:50
Speaker 3: young woman getting raped, often by more than one man,
3:53
Speaker 3: and then often left four dead, not always, then comes
3:57
Speaker 3: the revenge violent frequently a penis gits cut off. The
4:01
Speaker 3: rape is often quite long and brutal. These movies long
4:07
Speaker 3: have been for the most part written and directed by men,
4:09
Speaker 3: which is part of the main criticism of them and
4:11
Speaker 3: the rape scene filmed through the mail gaze and the
4:15
Speaker 3: attackers pov. This puts the audience in position of sympathizing
4:19
Speaker 3: with the rapist. Do sometimes pornographic elements raise the question
4:23
Speaker 3: of rape as a form of entertainment?
4:25
Speaker 5: I think we had that conversation for Game of Thrones
4:28
Speaker 5: that was definitely one of the big criticisms that happened there.
4:31
Speaker 5: So these movies rose to popularity during the seventies in
4:34
Speaker 5: the US, which coincided with discussions around so many issues
4:37
Speaker 5: and anxieties around women, including Roe versus Wade and abortion.
4:41
Speaker 5: But it also was when our society started taking rape
4:44
Speaker 5: seriously and also the loosening of censorship restrictions. So you
4:47
Speaker 5: can see our feminist movie Friday Alien addition that we
4:52
Speaker 5: dearly love for more on the social anxieties around women
4:55
Speaker 5: and how they are reflected in our movies. So in
4:58
Speaker 5: I Spit on Your Grave, main character Jennifer undergoes an
5:01
Speaker 5: unrelenting twenty one minutes of rape in total, and it
5:04
Speaker 5: engages in about forty five minutes of revenge. The actor
5:08
Speaker 5: who played Jennifer kamil Keaton allegedly said of the revenge
5:11
Speaker 5: portion that it made melt in our audience significantly uncomfortable.
5:15
Speaker 4: I'm sure it did, I hope. So.
5:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, and yes, we mentioned that one at the end
5:20
Speaker 3: of our Our part one is being kind of one
5:23
Speaker 3: of the big first examples in the United States. But
5:27
Speaker 3: it wasn't the first one. It wasn't the first rape
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Speaker 3: revenge movie at all. In nineteen sixty one, Igmar Bergmann's
5:32
Speaker 3: The Virgin Spring, a film depicting a medieval poem about
5:35
Speaker 3: a man's revenge against the men who raped his daughter,
5:38
Speaker 3: one Best Foreign Language Film. It went on to inspire
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Speaker 3: Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left in nineteen
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Speaker 3: seventy two, and worth mentioning the woman who is raped
5:49
Speaker 3: is not always the one getting revenge. That's something else
5:51
Speaker 3: we'd sort of talked about in our Part one. From
5:55
Speaker 3: Sarah Priyanski's book Watching Rape, Film and Television and post
5:58
Speaker 3: feminist culture, film in this subgenre, quote depend on rape
6:02
Speaker 3: to motivate and justify a particularly violent version of masculinity,
6:06
Speaker 3: relegating the women to minor props in the narrative. She
6:10
Speaker 3: also wrote of the quote feminist paradox between a desire
6:13
Speaker 3: to end rape and a need to represent and therefore
6:15
Speaker 3: perpetuate discursive rape in order to challenge it.
6:20
Speaker 5: So a few other prominent examples we wanted to mention
6:22
Speaker 5: Miss forty five, a nineteen eighty one film about a
6:25
Speaker 5: mute woman who is raped twice in one day and
6:27
Speaker 5: goes on a killing spree with her forty five, first
6:30
Speaker 5: focusing on men who have wronged women, and then targeting
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Speaker 5: any man.
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Speaker 1: That crosses her path.
6:34
Speaker 5: The Accused of nineteen eighty nine Jonathan Kaplan film starring
6:37
Speaker 5: Jodi Foster as a woman who gets gaining raped at
6:40
Speaker 5: a bar to the cheers of patrons, and this is
6:42
Speaker 5: based on the real life nineteen eighty three case of
6:44
Speaker 5: Cheryl Orajo. This film does not show the rape scene
6:47
Speaker 5: n ttil the very end, when a mel witness recounts
6:49
Speaker 5: the event in court, and perhaps to reflect the unfortunate
6:52
Speaker 5: truth that we as a society trust men's words over
6:55
Speaker 5: women's and just kind of throw it out there. Jody
6:57
Speaker 5: Foster also did another one called The Brain, which was
7:01
Speaker 5: after her at her fiance are brutally attacked, she goes
7:05
Speaker 5: on on a vigilante spree.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so she said in a few of those.
7:09
Speaker 4: That's kind of an interesting flip on it.
7:12
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty four, the British Board of Censors labeled
7:16
Speaker 3: rape and revenge movies quote video nasties, and they were
7:19
Speaker 3: deemed too explicit to be sold in stores. The board
7:23
Speaker 3: said that they quote glorified the act of rape and
7:25
Speaker 3: inspired copycat crimes.
7:27
Speaker 5: Steig Larsen's two thousand and five book Girl with a
7:30
Speaker 5: Dragon Tattoo later made it into a Swedish film and
7:33
Speaker 5: then an American remake, has a side plot of rape
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Speaker 5: and revenge. When the main character, Elizabeth, is coerced and
7:38
Speaker 5: satially assaulted by her state appointed legal guardian, the person
7:42
Speaker 5: who controls her money. Essentially, she ties him down and
7:45
Speaker 5: tattoo's rapist pig across his chest. After securing from him
7:49
Speaker 5: control of her life and finances, he cowers away from
7:52
Speaker 5: her next time they see each other, And there's an
7:54
Speaker 5: argument to be made that the main plot is sort
7:55
Speaker 5: of a rape revenge story. And the original title of
7:58
Speaker 5: the book, by the way, was men who Hate Women, which, yeah,
8:03
Speaker 5: it's an interesting concept because the whole it seems to
8:06
Speaker 5: be an origin story for her, which I think you
8:07
Speaker 5: and I talked a lot about while we were watching
8:09
Speaker 5: First Wives Club. There's always some origin story. And even
8:12
Speaker 5: though this is not necessarily your typical superhero movies obviously,
8:16
Speaker 5: but this is still kind of the hero or anti
8:18
Speaker 5: hero movies.
8:19
Speaker 1: But yeah, I guess you're right, because that's her origin story.
8:22
Speaker 5: But then the plot of what happened in this mystery
8:26
Speaker 5: has a lot to do with what happened to the
8:28
Speaker 5: young girls. Yes, and it definitely rolls with that whole theme.
8:33
Speaker 3: Yes, and I might be mistake. I'm pretty sure there's
8:35
Speaker 3: a new one on Netflix.
8:39
Speaker 1: Yes, in the American version.
8:41
Speaker 4: He is, ok. But there's another new one. Oh, Okay, Yes,
8:46
Speaker 4: I think I think that's Clairefoy in it.
8:50
Speaker 3: Anyway, the category is a bit more diverse, this rape
8:53
Speaker 3: prevenged category than most people might think, especially more modernly.
8:57
Speaker 4: And this is where I come in because I watched.
8:59
Speaker 1: A lot of Yes still wow.
9:01
Speaker 3: Nerrer entries into the genre are changing things up with
9:04
Speaker 3: a spate of female directed rape revenge movies that do
9:07
Speaker 3: not employ the male gaze that focus on the survivor instead.
9:11
Speaker 3: They are also more realistic in that the rape is
9:14
Speaker 3: perpetrayed by someone the woman knows, different from stranger stranger
9:18
Speaker 3: danger perpetrators of earlier films in the genre, and during
9:22
Speaker 3: the rape scene or scenes, the focus is on the
9:24
Speaker 3: experience of the victim rather than the perpetrator and the
9:28
Speaker 3: aftermath of the trauma and PTSD. For example, Corley Farjat's
9:33
Speaker 3: Revenge in twenty seventeen. This is a French rape revenge
9:36
Speaker 3: movie that follows Jen, who is the mistress of a
9:40
Speaker 3: rich married man named Richard. While on vacation on a
9:43
Speaker 3: remote island only accessible via helicopter, one of Richard's friends
9:47
Speaker 3: rapes her while Richard is away. Instead of lashing out
9:51
Speaker 3: at his friend, though when he finds out, he of
9:54
Speaker 3: course pushes her off a cliff, leaves her for dead,
9:58
Speaker 3: and Jin gets her revenge. There's a very fascinating line
10:04
Speaker 3: at the end where he says something like women always
10:06
Speaker 3: have to put.
10:06
Speaker 4: Up a fight.
10:08
Speaker 1: Oh, oh, that same thing.
10:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then MFA I also watched this one. This
10:15
Speaker 3: was a twenty seventeen film directed by Natalia Leita and
10:18
Speaker 3: written by Leah McKendrick, and it follows art student Noel
10:21
Speaker 3: played by Francesca Eastwood. And Noel is an introvert and
10:26
Speaker 3: she's a bit of an outcast in her program. Her
10:29
Speaker 3: art is consistently criticized by her professor, and the students
10:33
Speaker 3: like publicly for being timid. She has a crush on
10:38
Speaker 3: her fellow art student Luke, who also seems to reciprocate
10:41
Speaker 3: her feelings, but then Luke brutally sexually assaults her. The
10:46
Speaker 3: camera stays focused on her during this whole thing. You
10:48
Speaker 3: can see her disassociate. The music drops out and go
10:51
Speaker 3: there's like a droning humming sound, which reminds me of
10:55
Speaker 3: my one of my favorite episodes of television ever and
10:57
Speaker 3: an episode of Buffy where her mom dies. Noel is
11:01
Speaker 3: at first consumed with thoughts of getting justice she does.
11:06
Speaker 3: She tells her roommate right away, and her roommate says,
11:09
Speaker 3: don't report it because I had a friend it the
11:12
Speaker 3: same thing happened to her and nobody believed her and
11:14
Speaker 3: made her feel terrible about herself. But Noel goes and
11:18
Speaker 3: does it anyway, and lo and behold, it's all like
11:21
Speaker 3: did you have something to drink? Did you what? Did
11:23
Speaker 3: anybody see it? How long were you together alone? And
11:27
Speaker 3: like all these questions that made her doubt herself. Did
11:30
Speaker 3: you ever say no?
11:32
Speaker 4: What she did? Yeah?
11:35
Speaker 3: So then she goes to a support group, and the
11:37
Speaker 3: support group is more intent on here's the fingernail polish
11:42
Speaker 3: that you can dip and it'll detect the date rate
11:45
Speaker 3: drug or you know, ways of like dealing with it
11:49
Speaker 3: or finding support.
11:50
Speaker 4: And when Noel is like, well, why don't.
11:52
Speaker 3: We try to stop the people that are doing the raping,
11:57
Speaker 3: and they're kind of like, wow, that's the world we
11:58
Speaker 3: live in. Yeah, So she confronts her attacker, accidentally kills him,
12:06
Speaker 3: kind of gets a taste for it, and starts seeking
12:09
Speaker 3: out rapist and killing them. And as she's doing this,
12:14
Speaker 3: her art is becoming more and more brave as a
12:18
Speaker 3: professor for it, like them, Wow, this is so good enough,
12:21
Speaker 3: so that at the end she's the one they select
12:24
Speaker 3: to give the like speech because she's made such progress.
12:28
Speaker 3: And then she gets arrested after she gets her MFA,
12:32
Speaker 3: she gets arrested.
12:33
Speaker 1: She had a glow up and then arrested. No, it's
12:38
Speaker 1: not always there.
12:50
Speaker 5: So in Jennificant Nightingale from twenty eighteen, set in eighteen
12:53
Speaker 5: twenty five Colonial Australia, after the film's protagonist, Irish convict Claire,
12:59
Speaker 5: is raped and she's determined to get revenge on her attacker,
13:01
Speaker 5: who also murdered her infant child and husband, obviously in tandem.
13:06
Speaker 5: The narrative explores the persecution of Australia's Indigenous people, and
13:10
Speaker 5: the rape scenes unfold entirely from Claire's point of view,
13:13
Speaker 5: and the frame closes in on her face. Kent said
13:16
Speaker 5: in an interview about the reaction to the film, what
13:19
Speaker 5: I've learned is the difficult relationship we have is in
13:21
Speaker 5: separating the act of rape as an act of sex
13:24
Speaker 5: as opposed to an act of violence. I'm in the
13:27
Speaker 5: latter camp. It's using a sexual act attempt to annihilate
13:30
Speaker 5: another human being. That's its aim. I agree with that.
13:34
Speaker 4: That was a really tough one too.
13:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, which is also when I watched revenge films typically
13:40
Speaker 5: stay away from those, so which is why I'm like,
13:42
Speaker 5: I would never told you.
13:46
Speaker 1: Watch I did not know. Should have texted me?
13:51
Speaker 4: They are all heartbreakings. I wouldn't.
13:53
Speaker 5: I wouldn't have watched it with you, but I would
13:54
Speaker 5: have at least supported you through text.
13:56
Speaker 4: Me like are you okay?
13:57
Speaker 1: Are you okay?
13:58
Speaker 4: Now? How are you now? It was they were rough,
14:01
Speaker 4: they were rough.
14:04
Speaker 3: So those are some prominent examples from that that genre
14:07
Speaker 3: of female revenge, which is a pretty big one, and
14:09
Speaker 3: it is it is nice to see that women are
14:13
Speaker 3: making them now. I think that is a good step.
14:17
Speaker 3: But let's turn to another category here, which is kind
14:20
Speaker 3: of broad. But the bride slash mother slash family revenge.
14:25
Speaker 5: Right, And I think I see that in a lot
14:27
Speaker 5: of you. And I've talked about this repeatedly about how
14:29
Speaker 5: ghosts and hauntings have a lot to do with mother's
14:32
Speaker 5: and vengeance.
14:33
Speaker 1: Yes, And I'm like.
14:33
Speaker 5: What, what what? Why is that such a thing?
14:36
Speaker 4: I don't know, but it is. Yeah.
14:39
Speaker 3: So if you think of these sort of stereotypical roles
14:44
Speaker 3: of women as the scorned bride of the scorned lover,
14:47
Speaker 3: the mother whose child has been abused or killed, or
14:49
Speaker 3: the dutiful orconniving daughter, it's kind of what we're talking
14:52
Speaker 3: about here, although cheating and scorn is a whole category
14:55
Speaker 3: on to itself, because it's such a big one that
14:57
Speaker 3: we'll get to in a moment if you could go
14:59
Speaker 3: all the way back. If you look at Shakespeare, he
15:01
Speaker 3: frequently dabbled in tales of betrayal and revenge in this genre,
15:04
Speaker 3: although not too often with women. King Lear is an example,
15:08
Speaker 3: though two of king Lear's daughters, Reagan and Goneril, enraged
15:13
Speaker 3: by his clear favoritism of his youngest daughter, their sister,
15:17
Speaker 3: Cordelia seek to get revenge against the both of them.
15:21
Speaker 3: Cordelia is banished and her father. He does this whole
15:25
Speaker 3: thing at the beginning where he asks the three of them.
15:28
Speaker 1: Who loves me the most, and ills, oh, I know.
15:34
Speaker 3: And the first two sisters go into this whole spiel,
15:38
Speaker 3: and then Cordelia, who does love him the most, is like,
15:42
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. I can't find the words to express
15:45
Speaker 3: how much I love you. They don't exist, and he thinks, oh, well,
15:48
Speaker 3: clearly and banishes her. And this leaves him kind of
15:53
Speaker 3: at the whims of two of her sisters. Yeah, And
15:58
Speaker 3: they enact all these plans for power mostly, but as
16:04
Speaker 3: happens a lot in these, the tension grows between Reagan
16:07
Speaker 3: and Goneril, who are both obsessed with obtaining the most
16:10
Speaker 3: power and both are competing for the love of the
16:13
Speaker 3: same man. Cordelia attempts to rescue her father, but they
16:17
Speaker 3: both end up dying in prison. Reagan and Guneril, meanwhile,
16:21
Speaker 3: both perish, Reagan after Gnerail poisons her and Goneril kills herself,
16:26
Speaker 3: both consumed by vengeance.
16:28
Speaker 4: Leaving many victims in their wake.
16:32
Speaker 3: And then there is a film called The Bridewer Black,
16:35
Speaker 3: which is from a nineteen sixty eight by Francois Chufatt
16:38
Speaker 3: based on the book by William Irish slash Cornell Woolwich
16:42
Speaker 3: went by pseudonym, and this is about a woman systematically
16:45
Speaker 3: seeking revenge on the five men who murdered her husband
16:48
Speaker 3: on their wedding day. One by one she murders them,
16:52
Speaker 3: and as the events lead up to the grooms Day,
16:55
Speaker 3: the grooms Day, the groom's death are revealed via flashback,
17:00
Speaker 3: we as the audience can see sort of what happened,
17:02
Speaker 3: we can piece it together. In one instance, she models
17:05
Speaker 3: that as the huntress Diana. For one of her victims,
17:08
Speaker 3: he's an artist and he's painting her and she has
17:11
Speaker 3: this arrow and.
17:11
Speaker 4: You're like, oh, yeah, it's going down, it's going down. Yeah.
17:15
Speaker 3: She shoots him with the arrow, but she she kind
17:17
Speaker 3: of looks at the mural depicting her, has a moment,
17:21
Speaker 3: doesn't paint over it, doesn't get rid of it, and
17:24
Speaker 3: is arrested and prison She kills her fifth and final victim,
17:29
Speaker 3: who she hadn't been able to get to previously because
17:32
Speaker 3: he had been imprisoned himself.
17:33
Speaker 4: Ah yeah, that point yep, then there's enough.
17:38
Speaker 3: With Jennifer Lopez from two thousand and two, which was
17:40
Speaker 3: based on the nineteen ninety eight novel by Anna Quinnlin
17:43
Speaker 3: Black and Blue. Jennifer Lopez plays Slim, a woman who
17:47
Speaker 3: threatens to leave her abusive husband and father to her
17:51
Speaker 3: daughter after discovering he was having an affair. He beats
17:54
Speaker 3: her in response, informing her that unless she's willing to fight,
17:57
Speaker 3: he's not going to stop having in this affair, and
18:00
Speaker 3: that because he's a man, it's quote no contest. She
18:04
Speaker 3: attempts to leave with her daughter and the help of
18:06
Speaker 3: some friends, but is foiled.
18:07
Speaker 4: She was forced to flee.
18:09
Speaker 3: She asks her rich father for money to help her escape,
18:11
Speaker 3: but he gives her just twelve dollars because he doesn't
18:13
Speaker 3: leave her. He changes this tune, however, when he's threatened
18:17
Speaker 3: by Slim's husband's men, and he helps her buy a house.
18:21
Speaker 3: After a lawyer informs her essentially no one's gonna believe you.
18:25
Speaker 3: Slim takes martial arts classes and methodically plans her revenge.
18:30
Speaker 3: She wins in a fight between them and eventually kills
18:33
Speaker 3: him in self defense.
18:34
Speaker 5: That movie had this big build up to be this
18:37
Speaker 5: epic scene. Did you watch it a.
18:40
Speaker 3: Long time ago? And I saw it on TBS, so
18:42
Speaker 3: I'm sure it was edited.
18:43
Speaker 5: I'm sure, but it really is kind of antichomatic. You're like, Oh,
18:47
Speaker 5: I really, maybe.
18:48
Speaker 1: This is me needing big it in my life.
18:53
Speaker 5: Just like that lasted thirty seconds and half the time
18:55
Speaker 5: was he put her in a corner and she had
18:57
Speaker 5: to fight her way out, and I guess that made
18:58
Speaker 5: her the absolute victim, so she couldn't be disliked at
19:01
Speaker 5: any point in time.
19:02
Speaker 1: But it seemed kind of anti climactic.
19:03
Speaker 5: You're like, why she did all these prepping and you
19:07
Speaker 5: would think that there's an ultimate showdown, but essentially she
19:09
Speaker 5: has to trap them, trick them, and then she ends
19:12
Speaker 5: up being the bigger person, but does end up killing
19:16
Speaker 5: him trying to give him his lee leeway apparently kind
19:19
Speaker 5: of reminds me of us sleeping with the enemy, except
19:21
Speaker 5: in sleeping with the enemy, he comes after her, she
19:24
Speaker 5: tries to leave. Have you seen that movie? That's interesting?
19:27
Speaker 5: So in Quentin Tarantinees killed Bill, which kind of was
19:30
Speaker 5: one of the reasons you and I started talking about
19:32
Speaker 5: more and more about all the revenge films. In Volume
19:35
Speaker 5: one and Volume two, made in two thousand and three.
19:37
Speaker 5: These films followed Beatrix Kiddo played by Uma Thurman, and
19:40
Speaker 5: her violent journey to get revenge after she is shot
19:42
Speaker 5: up all pregnant on her wedding day, and she sometimes
19:45
Speaker 5: referred to as the bride. Actually throughout the whole first
19:48
Speaker 5: it is she's the bride. However, it's also kind of
19:52
Speaker 5: a rape revenge film. While pretending to be comatos, she
19:55
Speaker 5: was sexually assaulted multiple times, and then if you watch
19:58
Speaker 5: the movie, you know the old bloody, bloody ending. Tarantino
20:02
Speaker 5: labeled Kill Bill as a feminist statement, and I know
20:05
Speaker 5: that this was actually written with miss Thurman in mind,
20:09
Speaker 5: and I believe while she was pregnant with her first child,
20:12
Speaker 5: they were kind of coming up with this idea together.
20:14
Speaker 5: From what I understood, this is a long line of
20:17
Speaker 5: movies with badass women working for a dude, which Tarantino
20:20
Speaker 5: has this weird obsession with very strong women. I don't
20:23
Speaker 5: know if it's weird, but he has an obsession with
20:25
Speaker 5: very strong women, which makes you go yayay right. And
20:30
Speaker 5: obviously this was produced by Weinstein, which is part of
20:33
Speaker 5: the reason we didn't want to do an entire episode
20:35
Speaker 5: dedicated to one of these movies, even though to me,
20:39
Speaker 5: I think that's one of the big obviously big shout
20:43
Speaker 5: outs to women protective, being motherly and being strong.
20:46
Speaker 1: And with that.
20:47
Speaker 5: During the middle of the many revelations being finally heard
20:50
Speaker 5: and believed about mister Weinstein, which you know, we're still
20:54
Speaker 5: dealing with him and his walker herself, many people were
20:58
Speaker 5: waiting for Uma Thurman's response because she had such a
21:00
Speaker 5: big relationship with both of them, and she finally did
21:03
Speaker 5: with the statement she said in a tweet. No, she
21:06
Speaker 5: said it in a post. I feel it's important to
21:09
Speaker 5: take your time, be fair, be exact. So dot dot
21:12
Speaker 5: dot happy Thanksgiving everyone except you, Harvey and all your
21:15
Speaker 5: wicked conspirators. I'm glad it's going slowly. You don't deserve
21:18
Speaker 5: a bullet, which is a very kiddo statement to make.
21:21
Speaker 1: And of course she elaborated her story with.
21:25
Speaker 5: I think in an interview I can't remember who the
21:26
Speaker 5: interview was with when she did talk about all of
21:29
Speaker 5: the abuse and all of the trauma that she had
21:31
Speaker 5: to go through while filming these movies. And I think,
21:34
Speaker 5: I know we're going to talk about another movie as
21:37
Speaker 5: it comes down, but it kind of just again, it
21:39
Speaker 5: is kind of what you were saying, it's kind of weird, yeah,
21:42
Speaker 5: that it was created by this man, and obviously there's
21:45
Speaker 5: this double fold reality of what was happening behind the
21:48
Speaker 5: scenes as well as trying to empower women or talk
21:51
Speaker 5: about women being empowered and coming to seek vengeance.
21:54
Speaker 1: This a whole different perspective.
21:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I watched these very late last night for
22:00
Speaker 3: the first time in a long time I've seen them before,
22:03
Speaker 3: and I do love the ending of the second one
22:05
Speaker 3: where the revenge kind of weighs out everything else. Right,
22:12
Speaker 3: it like has to happen. It's just been building up, right,
22:16
Speaker 3: There's a couple.
22:17
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of things within that.
22:18
Speaker 5: When we talk about oshi Orn's character, her origin story
22:23
Speaker 5: was because of vengeance when she watches her which was
22:26
Speaker 5: one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever seen in
22:27
Speaker 5: my life. I think I was so distraught after I
22:30
Speaker 5: saw it in the movies of her witnessing her parents
22:33
Speaker 5: being murdered. So also Vivica A. Fox's character. They kind
22:37
Speaker 5: of kept it open to have her daughter who witnessed
22:40
Speaker 5: the murder, to possibly come back with a vengeance.
22:42
Speaker 4: Story of the cycle. Revenge. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, it never ends.
22:46
Speaker 5: Which, yeah, of course, and it was I think, what
22:49
Speaker 5: an interesting concept.
22:50
Speaker 4: Yeah.
22:52
Speaker 3: And then something else we want to talk about, the
22:54
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight novel True Grit by Charles Portus, later
22:58
Speaker 3: made into a twenty ten Coen Brothers movies ring Hailey Steinfeld,
23:01
Speaker 3: and before that a nineteen sixty nine John Wayne film.
23:04
Speaker 5: Loved that John Wayne film. I've never seen that one.
23:06
Speaker 5: That's what I grew up on.
23:08
Speaker 4: Uh huh.
23:09
Speaker 3: I actually didn't see a John Wayne film until I
23:11
Speaker 3: was in college. But anyway, So this is a western
23:14
Speaker 3: about young girl Mattie Ross and her mission to get
23:17
Speaker 3: revenge on the man who murdered her father with the
23:19
Speaker 3: help of a US marshall and a Texas ranger.
23:22
Speaker 4: Both men, though.
23:23
Speaker 3: They agree, they repeatedly try to ditch her despite her
23:27
Speaker 3: insistence that she accompanied them, but she is more determined
23:30
Speaker 3: than they realize, and eventually they're like, Okay, you can come.
23:34
Speaker 3: She eventually does get her revenge. Her target says something
23:37
Speaker 3: like I didn't think you'd do it after she shoots him,
23:40
Speaker 3: and she also climbs out of a rattlesnake pit using
23:43
Speaker 3: the bones of a skeleton in there with her.
23:46
Speaker 1: Is that the book because in the movie is different.
23:48
Speaker 4: I think it's in the book.
23:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, Yeah, there's a lot of theorizing about the
23:52
Speaker 3: symbolize what that symbolizes in there. Then there's Martin McDonough's
23:58
Speaker 3: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which is a twenty seventeen
24:02
Speaker 3: film that follows Francis mcdorman's character Mildred, who is a
24:05
Speaker 3: mother trying to get revenge for her daughter's rape and
24:08
Speaker 3: murder and taking it out on just about everyone, but
24:11
Speaker 3: mainly the police that pretty much have dismissed on and
24:14
Speaker 3: given up on the case.
24:16
Speaker 4: On fact, I got.
24:17
Speaker 3: Hit by car while crossing the street to go see
24:19
Speaker 3: this movie, and then I went to go and my
24:23
Speaker 3: friends I was seeing it with They were like, what's
24:24
Speaker 3: wrong with your legs? And I said, we'll see. I
24:29
Speaker 3: remember it so well.
24:31
Speaker 5: Did you decide to take vengeance on the do that
24:32
Speaker 5: hit you?
24:33
Speaker 4: All I know is he is a white car from California.
24:36
Speaker 5: That's all I Yeah. That could have been the beginning
24:37
Speaker 5: of a new movie that could.
24:41
Speaker 1: You prevented me?
24:42
Speaker 4: Remember? I remember find you?
24:45
Speaker 1: So?
24:45
Speaker 5: Game of Thrones, as we were talking about earlier, was
24:47
Speaker 5: full of women seeking revenge from Aria's list to Stance's
24:51
Speaker 5: orchestrating the painful death of r abuser Ramsey and Danara's
24:54
Speaker 5: entire quest for the Iron throne and her vengeful ending
24:57
Speaker 5: as well. Also wanted to stick in here the Korean
24:59
Speaker 5: horror film b Deviled, which has several things including the
25:02
Speaker 5: loss of the daughter and I guess in some way
25:05
Speaker 5: a loss of a friendship. It was to me one
25:07
Speaker 5: of the most disturbing movies because it's they're isolated on
25:10
Speaker 5: the small island and she's getting pretty abused by her husband,
25:14
Speaker 5: his brother, her mother, Like it's just a constant, and
25:17
Speaker 5: it of course it's centered around that and with the
25:20
Speaker 5: loss and then causes this woman to quote unquote snap
25:23
Speaker 5: as I've seen in reviews, murdering the entire islands inhabitants.
25:26
Speaker 1: And it's very, very brutal.
25:28
Speaker 5: But yeah, it's definitely one of those up there when
25:31
Speaker 5: it comes to like being a mother, she was okay,
25:33
Speaker 5: she dealt with the abuse, and then she finally was like,
25:35
Speaker 5: oh no.
25:36
Speaker 1: The last straw Well speak.
25:40
Speaker 3: We got another category, a huge one to talk about,
25:42
Speaker 3: and that is cheating. But first we have a quick
25:45
Speaker 3: break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
26:01
Speaker 4: Thank you.
26:01
Speaker 3: Spons here, and we are back with the huge cats.
26:05
Speaker 3: When it comes to female revenge, women getting revenge on
26:09
Speaker 3: men who cheated on them or are who weren't loyal
26:12
Speaker 3: to them.
26:12
Speaker 5: Right So The Women, a nineteen thirty nine film inspired
26:16
Speaker 5: by Claire booth Luce's play, directed by George Kuchar, with
26:19
Speaker 5: a screenplay written by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, and
26:22
Speaker 5: starting only women for all one hundred and thirty speaking roles,
26:26
Speaker 5: including iconic Joan Crawford. Even all the subjects in the
26:30
Speaker 5: super glodsy Manhattan apartments are are almost all of women. However,
26:34
Speaker 5: though men aren't present, they are much discussed. The plot
26:38
Speaker 5: follows Mary, who, after finding out her husband is cheating
26:41
Speaker 5: on her, plans to get revenge on the other woman
26:44
Speaker 5: and a divorce from her husband, largely at the encouragement
26:47
Speaker 5: of her friends. On a train ride on her way
26:49
Speaker 5: to secure her divorce, she meets several other women doing
26:52
Speaker 5: the same thing, gossip, backstabbing, cat fights and winning back husbands.
26:57
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, I watch this too.
26:59
Speaker 1: For this it's a classic.
27:03
Speaker 4: It's a lot happening, you know.
27:04
Speaker 3: For someone who loves the Transatlantic accent, I have trouble
27:07
Speaker 3: understanding it.
27:08
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's like, wait a minute, what are you saying.
27:11
Speaker 1: It's definitely those time.
27:12
Speaker 3: One of the quotes I really loved don't confide in
27:15
Speaker 3: your girlfriends. If you do, they'll see to it in
27:18
Speaker 3: the name of friendship that you lose your husband and
27:20
Speaker 3: your home. And that's from Mary's mom. The movie's tagline
27:25
Speaker 3: was see them with their hair down and their claws out.
27:28
Speaker 3: And apparently during one of the cat fights, when one
27:30
Speaker 3: of the actresses, she gets bitten, like that was real
27:32
Speaker 3: and she has a scarf from it.
27:34
Speaker 5: It was such a big thing that not too long ago,
27:36
Speaker 5: they just did a whole little.
27:37
Speaker 1: Mini series based on their relationship.
27:39
Speaker 4: Whoa Whoa. I was when I was watching.
27:43
Speaker 3: I was thinking that in this world that all these
27:46
Speaker 3: women were growing up and you can't have jobs, or
27:50
Speaker 3: it's harder to have a job, you can't have property,
27:53
Speaker 3: or it's harder to own property, and money can't open
27:56
Speaker 3: lines of credit. Is it really so surprising that all
28:00
Speaker 3: these women are competing with each other and tearing each
28:02
Speaker 3: other down.
28:02
Speaker 4: I don't, I don't know right.
28:04
Speaker 5: Also, of note, this did spawn several remakes, including the
28:07
Speaker 5: musical The Opposite Sucks, which I watched I'm an old
28:11
Speaker 5: person and of course our new fab first Wife's club.
28:14
Speaker 1: Yes you love it so.
28:17
Speaker 5: Nineteen eighty Seven's Fatal Attraction. Michael Douglas's character chief on
28:20
Speaker 5: his wife with Glenn Close, who does not appreciate when
28:23
Speaker 5: he tries to step away.
28:24
Speaker 1: From their relationship.
28:25
Speaker 5: She goes down a path of increasingly intense acts of revenge,
28:28
Speaker 5: including sitting an audio tape listening all the ways he
28:31
Speaker 5: is a selfish piece of garbage, and yeah, broiling his
28:35
Speaker 5: child's pet bunny, which is one of the more iconic
28:37
Speaker 5: scenes that everybody remembers, the bunny scene.
28:40
Speaker 3: The bunny scene, the bunny scene, and this one is
28:42
Speaker 3: a great example of one of the main differences between
28:45
Speaker 3: revenge movies with a male protagonist versus a female protagonist,
28:48
Speaker 3: because you're not meant to root for Glenn Close at all. No,
28:52
Speaker 3: you were meant to see her as over your acting crazy,
28:55
Speaker 3: and to be fair, she does a lot of things
28:57
Speaker 3: that weren't that. But if a male protagonist had done
28:59
Speaker 3: this same thing, I'm not super convinced audiences wouldn't still
29:02
Speaker 3: be on his side.
29:03
Speaker 5: Right, because then you also look at the fact of
29:06
Speaker 5: his wife is barely there, barely present, in the movie,
29:10
Speaker 5: and she's just the aw s film and no one
29:13
Speaker 5: really sees the bottom line that he's an asshole cheated.
29:17
Speaker 3: Right right, And then oh this one the nineteen ninety
29:22
Speaker 3: nine film Cool Intentions, which I also watched. This directed
29:27
Speaker 3: by Roger Gumbole and starring Sarah Michelle Geller.
29:30
Speaker 1: Have you not seen it before?
29:31
Speaker 4: Nope?
29:31
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Yeah, Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Philippi, and Selma Blair.
29:36
Speaker 3: This movie is based on the seventeen eighty two novel
29:39
Speaker 3: Les Liaezus, written by Pierre Chalc Toros de Lachlos. This
29:45
Speaker 3: is set in a in Manhattan at large, but in
29:49
Speaker 3: a prep school specifically, and it's dark, comedic, with an
29:53
Speaker 3: at the time.
29:54
Speaker 4: Rare on screen female kiss.
29:57
Speaker 1: They won an award on the NAMTV.
29:59
Speaker 4: Yes Sexiest that's right, of course.
30:01
Speaker 3: Keller's bro character, Katherine tries to enlist Felipe's character her
30:07
Speaker 3: stepbrother Sebastian help her get revenge on an X by
30:12
Speaker 3: seducing Blair's character Seceal, the girl Katherine's ex boyfriend dumped
30:18
Speaker 3: her for. Okay, it's very convoluted, yes, but basically she
30:23
Speaker 3: wants Sebastian to help her get revenge Sebastian has different plans, though,
30:26
Speaker 3: including instead to seduce the virginal daughter of the Headmaster,
30:31
Speaker 3: a Net, played by Witherspoon.
30:33
Speaker 4: So they make a bet.
30:34
Speaker 3: If Sebastian fails at seducing a Net, Catherine gets his
30:38
Speaker 3: very fancy Jaguar cars a specific model. If he succeeds,
30:43
Speaker 3: he gets to sleep at the only person he's failed
30:45
Speaker 3: to have sex with after he set his eyes on them, Catherine.
30:49
Speaker 3: What follows is a mass of debauchery and vengeance. Sebastian
30:53
Speaker 3: actually falls in love with an Nette. Of course, he
30:56
Speaker 3: wins the bet, but no longer desires to have any
30:58
Speaker 3: sex with Katherine and Katherin, and he's mad at this.
31:01
Speaker 3: She manipulates him into leaving a net. Ultimately he dies
31:05
Speaker 3: and he gets revenged posthumously against Catherine.
31:09
Speaker 4: I was watching this like, wait a.
31:11
Speaker 3: Minute, but I did want to include this quote from
31:16
Speaker 3: Sarah Michelle Geller's character Catherine. And this is when he's
31:20
Speaker 3: kind of like questioning how she behaves. She says, eat me, Sebastian.
31:26
Speaker 3: It's all right for guys like you in court to everyone,
31:28
Speaker 3: but when I do it, I get dumped for innocent
31:30
Speaker 3: little twits like cecial. God forbid, I exude confidence and
31:34
Speaker 3: enjoy sex. Do you think I relish the fact that
31:36
Speaker 3: I have to act like Mary Sunshine twenty four to
31:38
Speaker 3: seven so I can be considered a lady. I'm the
31:40
Speaker 3: marsha fing Brady of the Upper east Side, and sometimes
31:43
Speaker 3: I want to kill myself.
31:45
Speaker 4: What a film.
31:46
Speaker 1: It was very up and coming, rebellious film.
31:49
Speaker 4: For sure.
31:50
Speaker 3: I can see if I had been at the Not
31:53
Speaker 3: that I'm didn't like it or anything.
31:55
Speaker 4: It was enjoyable, but if I'd been at the right age,
31:58
Speaker 4: I would have been WHOA look at this was? I think?
32:01
Speaker 5: Also, just to remind Reese and the sales character Cela
32:06
Speaker 5: Blair get their vengeance.
32:07
Speaker 4: They are rude.
32:08
Speaker 3: The whole thing is like everybody gets revenge and then
32:11
Speaker 3: might get like revenged over, like.
32:13
Speaker 5: Right, Like it's a double women all the things, all
32:17
Speaker 5: the things except Forese drives away with the actual roys.
32:21
Speaker 5: Yeah a jaguar, Yeah, she drives away jaguar. Who knows,
32:25
Speaker 5: but she's you know, loving it with the glasses and all.
32:28
Speaker 4: Yeah.
32:28
Speaker 5: So Chicago, the nineteen twenties musical that has been made
32:31
Speaker 5: in two movies, the two thousand and two Best Picture
32:33
Speaker 5: winner and Broadway Shows, the second longest running show in history,
32:37
Speaker 5: is a story rife with female revenge. Bel m Kelly
32:40
Speaker 5: kills her husband for cheating on her with her sister,
32:42
Speaker 5: and Roxy Heart kills her lover for attempting to break
32:45
Speaker 5: it off between them and lying to her about being
32:47
Speaker 5: able to make her famous. Both are sent to gael
32:50
Speaker 5: where they meet several other women in there for killing
32:52
Speaker 5: women who did them.
32:53
Speaker 3: Wrong, resulting in my favorite song, cell Black Tango, he
32:56
Speaker 3: had it coming.
32:56
Speaker 5: Yeah, my favorite song when You're Good to Mama, which,
32:59
Speaker 5: by the way, the viral video going around with Florence
33:02
Speaker 5: Puge doing a great rendition of that.
33:04
Speaker 3: Somebody saying at our holiday Kirioke party here there were
33:09
Speaker 3: other things happening, but someone's saying, oh really, yes.
33:13
Speaker 1: It wasn't me.
33:14
Speaker 4: It was not either, but I do somebody did.
33:17
Speaker 3: Then there's John Tucker Mess Die, which is a twenty
33:19
Speaker 3: sixteen comedy film directed by Betty Thomas with the tagline
33:22
Speaker 3: don't get mad, Get Everything.
33:24
Speaker 4: The plot revolves.
33:25
Speaker 3: Around three young women who discover their high school basketball
33:28
Speaker 3: star boyfriend, John Tucker, is dating all three of them
33:30
Speaker 3: at once, promising each they are the one, and they
33:34
Speaker 3: work together along with a fourth person to get revenge.
33:37
Speaker 5: Yeah. So in twenty eleven twenty fifteen show Revenge Haha
33:42
Speaker 5: on ABC starring Emily Van Camp possibly being.
33:44
Speaker 1: The reboot this year with the Latin X lead.
33:46
Speaker 5: That could be cool. Inspired by Alexander Dumas's novel The
33:49
Speaker 5: Count of Monte Cristo, which is a fantastic novel.
33:53
Speaker 4: And we finally arrive at the thing I teased at at.
33:56
Speaker 3: The opening, So one of the original cliffhangers. Okay, I'm
34:00
Speaker 3: so happy about this. I finally know who shot j R.
34:05
Speaker 1: I forgot that was You told me that you didn't know.
34:08
Speaker 4: I had no idea.
34:09
Speaker 5: Wait what, and then I have to remember how young
34:11
Speaker 5: you are in comparison to the shows.
34:14
Speaker 3: Okay, So the reason I know about this at all
34:18
Speaker 3: is because when I was in school, we used to
34:20
Speaker 3: do this thing, or you would say who you shot JR?
34:22
Speaker 1: Right the finger game?
34:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, while moving from knuckle to knuckle with each word.
34:26
Speaker 3: I really don't know the point of it, Like, I
34:28
Speaker 3: don't remember how you won or what you learned from that,
34:30
Speaker 3: but I remember doing.
34:31
Speaker 5: It as an Okay, all.
34:34
Speaker 1: Right, that's what it's supposed to do.
34:35
Speaker 3: I don't think that's what happened. We really didn't know.
34:39
Speaker 3: No one knew what we were doing it. I always
34:41
Speaker 3: thought had something to do with JFKA. I don't know why, okay,
34:47
Speaker 3: but I now know. It's from an eighties television show
34:50
Speaker 3: called Dallas And and it was this repugnant fellow named
34:54
Speaker 3: j R. The third season finale ended with him getting
34:58
Speaker 3: shot twice by missus serious assailant. For eight months, people
35:03
Speaker 3: waited and were besieged by an incredibly effective marketing campaign.
35:08
Speaker 3: Since he was such a jerk, everyone had a motive
35:11
Speaker 3: like anyone could have been the killer. There were t
35:13
Speaker 3: shirts that read who shot JR? Or I shot JR.
35:17
Speaker 3: There were contest to guess who it was. During the
35:20
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty US presidential campaign, Republicans handed out buttons that
35:23
Speaker 3: read a Democrat shot JR. Candidate Jimmy Carter even joked
35:28
Speaker 3: that if only he knew who shot JR, he'd have
35:31
Speaker 3: no problem financing his campaign. The actor who played JR
35:36
Speaker 3: received an offer of a one hundred thousand pound vacation
35:40
Speaker 3: pounded in the UK monetary unit if he'd reveal the shooter,
35:43
Speaker 3: but the actor claimed and the actors knew all the
35:45
Speaker 3: principal actors filmed the scene where they killed him to
35:48
Speaker 3: keep the mystery up you could place bets on it,
35:54
Speaker 3: and so finally on the episode Who Done It?
35:56
Speaker 4: It was called Who Done It?
35:57
Speaker 3: Aired in November nineteen eighty, revealing the It was the
36:01
Speaker 3: highest rated television show in history, drawing in eighty three
36:05
Speaker 3: million viewers domestically and more than three hundred and fifty
36:08
Speaker 3: million internationally. Turkish parliament even famously ended a session early
36:13
Speaker 3: so the legislators could go home.
36:15
Speaker 4: And find out who Did It?
36:17
Speaker 5: Well.
36:17
Speaker 3: At the same time, a fundamentalist group in the same
36:19
Speaker 3: country called for the quote elimination of Dallas anyway, Who
36:24
Speaker 3: did It? Kristin Shepherd played by Mary Crosby Jr's sister
36:27
Speaker 3: in law, mistress and alleged mother of his child, So
36:31
Speaker 3: female revenge now. This is one of the first great
36:34
Speaker 3: television cliphangers. It also sometimes gets credit for helping CNN
36:38
Speaker 3: gay momentum because they launched that same year. SNL perioded
36:43
Speaker 3: it on an episode sometimes called Who Shot cr? CR
36:47
Speaker 3: being cast member Charles Rockett, and the episode provided cast
36:50
Speaker 3: members with skits for how they'd kill CR. And at
36:53
Speaker 3: the end of the episode he had lived I'd like to.
36:56
Speaker 4: Know who did it?
36:57
Speaker 3: A line that got him fired, And there was, of
37:01
Speaker 3: course the Simpsons parody who shot mister Burns?
37:03
Speaker 4: Apparently Jr.
37:05
Speaker 3: Was shot again in the twenty twelve sequel or continuation.
37:09
Speaker 3: I don't know, did not recover this time? Okay, actually gone?
37:11
Speaker 1: I forgot that it was revamped.
37:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, like is.
37:14
Speaker 5: It still going?
37:14
Speaker 3: I think it might be really Yeah.
37:17
Speaker 4: Well I learned a lot. I learned a lot.
37:21
Speaker 3: So that's that's a good overview of that category. But
37:25
Speaker 3: we have a couple more categories we wanted to touch on.
37:27
Speaker 3: But first we have one more quick break for a
37:28
Speaker 3: word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor.
37:45
Speaker 3: So another category we wanted to talk about. It's something
37:48
Speaker 3: you kind of see in some of these films, the
37:51
Speaker 3: system getting revenge against the system. So one example of
37:56
Speaker 3: this is Zora Neil Hurston's short story Sweat, in which
38:00
Speaker 3: allows her drunk, abusive, cheating husband, who thoughtlessly spends all
38:03
Speaker 3: of her hard earned money, to walk in a path
38:06
Speaker 3: of a snake that kills him and he had originally
38:09
Speaker 3: planned that snake for her. She passively watches him die
38:12
Speaker 3: as the sun rises, ignoring his cries for help.
38:15
Speaker 5: So another good movie Nine to five, which I was
38:18
Speaker 5: thinking about after we watched First Wives Club, thinking maybe
38:21
Speaker 5: we should have watched it as well.
38:22
Speaker 1: I did watch it not.
38:23
Speaker 4: Too long ago, you did, I did not go.
38:25
Speaker 5: Yes, I did watch it a long time ago, and
38:27
Speaker 5: I was like, my gosh, I don't know if this
38:29
Speaker 5: could be remade. There's so many problematic issues to this.
38:32
Speaker 5: But a nineteen eighty film about three women Lily Tomlin,
38:36
Speaker 5: Dolly Parton, and Jane Fonda, who plot revenge against their
38:39
Speaker 5: male boss who spreads lies about having sex with one
38:42
Speaker 5: of them, Dolly Parton, and beat one of them out
38:44
Speaker 5: for a promotion, Lily Tomlin, who she deserved it obviously,
38:47
Speaker 5: and then also Jane Fonda comes in, who is the
38:50
Speaker 5: new worker, trying to figure out how everything's going on.
38:53
Speaker 1: What's happening there.
38:54
Speaker 5: So while they have him trapped in a dog harness,
38:57
Speaker 5: they put in place all sorts of feminist policy hours, childcare,
39:01
Speaker 5: and equal pay. I believe they bring back one of
39:04
Speaker 5: the receptionists that he fires during that time. So when
39:08
Speaker 5: at the end they release the boss who actually takes
39:12
Speaker 5: claim for doing all of these policies, which yeah, yeah,
39:16
Speaker 5: and so they then he gets a promotion that actually
39:18
Speaker 5: sends him to a completely different place, so they kind
39:21
Speaker 5: of push him out, but he gets a promotion. Yeah,
39:24
Speaker 5: but with that his superior who figures that all out,
39:28
Speaker 5: that everything actually works and it increases productivity. He keeps
39:31
Speaker 5: all of that in place, except for the equal pay bit.
39:34
Speaker 5: But that's kind of the revenge portion or the justice
39:38
Speaker 5: vengeful portion is they got to keep the policies in
39:41
Speaker 5: place while they got rid of him. He still got
39:43
Speaker 5: the glory. But yeah, you know, nineteen eighties has to
39:46
Speaker 5: be that way, right.
39:47
Speaker 4: I guess so.
39:49
Speaker 3: And I actually watched this film for the first time
39:52
Speaker 3: two days ago.
39:54
Speaker 4: Ridley Scott's nineteen ninety one Thelma and Louise.
39:57
Speaker 3: Written by Callie Corey and starring and Srandon and Gena Davis.
40:02
Speaker 3: When this movie first debuted, it was accused of negatively
40:06
Speaker 3: portraying men all.
40:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, which it really doesn't.
40:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, most of the male characters are kind of like,
40:13
Speaker 3: oh yeah, you sympathize with them. In twenty sixteen, this
40:18
Speaker 3: movie was named for Preservation to the National Film Registry
40:20
Speaker 3: by the US Library of Congress for being quote culturally, historically,
40:24
Speaker 3: are esthetically significant. And it's about two best friends who
40:27
Speaker 3: go on a weekend vacation together kind of goes a
40:30
Speaker 3: little awry.
40:31
Speaker 4: After a man.
40:32
Speaker 3: Attempts to rape Thelma, Louise finds them and threatens him
40:36
Speaker 3: with a gun, ultimately shooting him and forcing the pair
40:39
Speaker 3: to flee. After discussing their options, they decide that the
40:43
Speaker 3: authorities won't believe them, and so they decide let's.
40:47
Speaker 4: Go to Mexico.
40:48
Speaker 3: It turns out Louise was raped years earlier in Texas,
40:51
Speaker 3: and she is insistent that they avoid going through that state.
40:54
Speaker 3: The FBI closes in, and after committing a series of
40:57
Speaker 3: crimes that they decide to quote keep going and drive
41:01
Speaker 3: off a cliff rather than go to jail. They can't
41:04
Speaker 3: beat the system, so they take each other's hands and
41:06
Speaker 3: drive over the Grand Canyon. And I when I was
41:11
Speaker 3: watching this, which I really enjoyed it, it made me
41:14
Speaker 3: Movies like that always make me think of The Awakening,
41:15
Speaker 3: which I had to read like three times in high school. Yeah,
41:18
Speaker 3: where you get you get like a taste Kate Japan. Yeah,
41:21
Speaker 3: and you can't go back, like, oh, once you taste freedom, Yeah,
41:25
Speaker 3: it's so overrange.
41:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, you just can't go back.
41:30
Speaker 3: And then kind of in a different track is first
41:34
Speaker 3: Wivestuff Yes, which is the nineteen ninety six movie directed
41:37
Speaker 3: by he willis based on the Olivia Goldsmith novel about
41:40
Speaker 3: women getting revenge on their ex husbands after the men
41:42
Speaker 3: ditch them for the younger models. You can see our
41:45
Speaker 3: whole episode we did on it for more about.
41:47
Speaker 5: That one as well, so you may have also seen
41:49
Speaker 5: our live feed on that one.
41:51
Speaker 4: It was fun. It was fun.
41:53
Speaker 5: Then we have another Tarantino movie which came out in
41:55
Speaker 5: two thousand and seven, death Proof, and I will say
41:57
Speaker 5: it was one of my favorite movies. Submit My Mike,
42:00
Speaker 5: played by Kurt Russell, seems like a totally nice guy,
42:03
Speaker 5: but in reality takes pleasure in tormenting women with this
42:07
Speaker 5: indestructible car. Is told in two parts. In the first
42:10
Speaker 5: part that meant Mike kills four women with his car.
42:13
Speaker 5: By the way, the character of Jungle Julia is played
42:16
Speaker 5: by Sidney Poitier's daughter Sidney Poitier, which the sheriff suspects
42:21
Speaker 5: is because of a sexual nature when he kills these women.
42:25
Speaker 5: The film seemingly restarts with a similar setup. Three women
42:28
Speaker 5: in the film industry, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosario Dawson, and
42:32
Speaker 5: Tracy Toms and they're all followed by step meant Mike
42:35
Speaker 5: as they pick up Zoe real life stunt woman Zoe Bells,
42:39
Speaker 5: whom a Thurman stunt double and kill Bill and has
42:41
Speaker 5: been on several more of Tarantino's movies after the fact
42:45
Speaker 5: as an actress and not just a stunt person. So
42:48
Speaker 5: he convinces them to try out a stunt car, which
42:51
Speaker 5: is a reference to all the old school chase movies.
42:55
Speaker 1: Muscle muscle cars.
42:57
Speaker 5: But as she's performing on Writing on the Hood, Mike
42:59
Speaker 5: slay into them. A skirmish follows with a chase with
43:03
Speaker 5: Mike getting away, but the women decide to kill him
43:05
Speaker 5: and they do.
43:07
Speaker 1: I think it has some.
43:07
Speaker 5: Of the best lines, over the top ridiculous lines. It
43:11
Speaker 5: does also kind of become problem not kind of. It
43:14
Speaker 5: does become problematic as the main driver is a black woman,
43:18
Speaker 5: Tracy Toms, who kind of goes over the top with
43:21
Speaker 5: the whole expectation type of idea of being an angry,
43:24
Speaker 5: violent black woman. So that's problematic in himself, which we
43:27
Speaker 5: can talk about that as an issue in Tarantino and
43:30
Speaker 5: his movies and thinking that he has permission.
43:34
Speaker 1: To elaborate on that as a white man. But whatever.
43:37
Speaker 5: This again was produced by Weinstein's and also just as
43:40
Speaker 5: a reminder, Death Proof was actually a part of a
43:42
Speaker 5: double feature with the Planet Terror done by Michael Rodriguez.
43:46
Speaker 5: Rose mcgallan was in both of those movies, and so
43:49
Speaker 5: you see kind of a culmination of ugh.
43:52
Speaker 4: Well yeah.
43:52
Speaker 3: And I watched this as part of leading up to
43:55
Speaker 3: this as well, and it was weird because Kurt Russell's
43:59
Speaker 3: whole thing his car's death through because as long as
44:01
Speaker 3: he's in the driver's see, as long as his power,
44:03
Speaker 3: he can't be killed, right, And he first person he
44:07
Speaker 3: kills is Rose McGowan, who's just like, Okay, you know,
44:11
Speaker 3: I just need to write home.
44:13
Speaker 4: And it's hard not to see parallels, like real life.
44:16
Speaker 5: Parallel, especially because she is the woman who kind of
44:19
Speaker 5: tells them something's wrong, things are happening, something's wrong. Yeah,
44:22
Speaker 5: And then I will say it took me a couple
44:24
Speaker 5: of watches because of the first half of the movie
44:27
Speaker 5: before I really like I was like, oh, I actually
44:29
Speaker 5: do like this movie, but it's so grotesque that beginning part,
44:33
Speaker 5: and it's so overtly sexist. But then you have that
44:36
Speaker 5: second half with Zoe Bell and her and her bad ass.
44:39
Speaker 1: Ray I mean, she is amazing.
44:41
Speaker 5: If you actually ever watch just like snippets of her
44:45
Speaker 5: doing all these amazing, amazing stunts, it's phenomenal.
44:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.
44:49
Speaker 5: Just oh, but I also appreciate the stark difference in
44:52
Speaker 5: Russell's character in the two halves, the beginning and to
44:55
Speaker 5: the end of what he's begging and crying like a
44:58
Speaker 5: little child because he actually gets injured. Yeah, I mean
45:00
Speaker 5: it is kind of an interesting twist. I will say that.
45:03
Speaker 3: I really appreciate how it's one of the few revenge
45:05
Speaker 3: films for me where it just is like, you know what,
45:07
Speaker 3: we're not really going to try to make sense.
45:09
Speaker 4: We're just going to lean into the fantasy aspect of this.
45:11
Speaker 3: And I love when Zoe's fine they think she might
45:13
Speaker 3: be hurt, she popped up, She's totally fine and she's like,
45:16
Speaker 3: you want to kill that guy and like, okay, I'll
45:18
Speaker 3: kill yeah.
45:21
Speaker 5: And they do have Rosario Dawson as being the mama character,
45:24
Speaker 5: so they definitely have those tropes in there as well.
45:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then okay, this is the last one I watched.
45:31
Speaker 3: Two thousand and five is Hard Candy, starring very young
45:34
Speaker 3: Ellen Page as a young woman who hunts pedophiles so
45:39
Speaker 3: it starts with kind of like a text exchange, like
45:42
Speaker 3: a chattering exchange, and she's playing all like, oh yeah,
45:45
Speaker 3: so sweet, and gets up to this guy's place. Then
45:48
Speaker 3: she rufi's him, tortures him. Oh it's it's a.
45:54
Speaker 1: Lot, it's a lot.
45:55
Speaker 5: I do think that one of the things about this film,
45:57
Speaker 5: and it is purposeful, is you have doubt about who
46:00
Speaker 5: is the good guy versus the bad guy, or the
46:03
Speaker 5: good person versus the bad person, because you have doubts
46:05
Speaker 5: about who's telling the truth right, and going back and
46:07
Speaker 5: forth and back and forth and back and forth, and
46:09
Speaker 5: then you know, it reveals itself slowly. I will say,
46:13
Speaker 5: many of men have told me how awful this movie
46:16
Speaker 5: is and how they would never watch it and never
46:18
Speaker 5: want to see it again nevere and I was like,
46:20
Speaker 5: what happens? I don't understand, why is it so bad?
46:23
Speaker 5: But that one scene where he's on the table is
46:27
Speaker 5: what has gotten all of them, which I find hilarious
46:31
Speaker 5: to a point. I'm like, do you not see all
46:33
Speaker 5: of these awful things that happened to women? That is
46:35
Speaker 5: literally the plot, the beginning, the catalyst, and that was
46:40
Speaker 5: the most I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not great, No,
46:42
Speaker 5: but it's definitely not the worst thing that I've seen
46:44
Speaker 5: in the movie.
46:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was tense. I was very on edge. That's
46:49
Speaker 4: the last thing I watched before.
46:51
Speaker 3: No wonder you looked at me with surprise, and then
46:56
Speaker 3: they're just Vengeance.
46:57
Speaker 5: Yes, Vengeance two thousand and five, Chan Park will This
47:00
Speaker 5: is the third and final entry into the Vengeance trilogy,
47:03
Speaker 5: which is a three obviously three part series trilogy. And
47:07
Speaker 5: if All is a woman wrongly convicted of murdering a
47:10
Speaker 5: child and after she does her time in jail and
47:12
Speaker 5: is released, she finds it real killer and gets her
47:15
Speaker 5: revenge again.
47:16
Speaker 1: This is another Korean thriller.
47:17
Speaker 5: I will say I've not seen this one mainly because
47:20
Speaker 5: I wanted to start with the first one, which I
47:22
Speaker 5: don't think they actually aligned it anyway, but I still
47:25
Speaker 5: wanted to do it that way. But the first one, again,
47:27
Speaker 5: these are really intimate, intense movies, and I'm like, I
47:31
Speaker 5: don't know if I can do this one right now,
47:32
Speaker 5: which again, I cannot believe you watched all of these
47:34
Speaker 5: back to back to back to back.
47:35
Speaker 4: I'm going home and I'm like just gonna.
47:37
Speaker 1: Even watch How to Train a Dragon, aren't you.
47:39
Speaker 4: Or Harry Potter, right, I'll do what I have to do.
47:45
Speaker 3: And then there's CBS is Why Women Kill from creator
47:49
Speaker 3: Mark Cherry, which tracks the revenge of three women played
47:52
Speaker 3: by Jennifer Goodwin, Lucy Lou and Kirby Howell Baptiste from
47:55
Speaker 3: three different decades living in the same house whose husbands
47:58
Speaker 3: I think all of their husbands cheated on them.
48:01
Speaker 4: And then Handmaid's Tale maybe.
48:04
Speaker 5: Maybe I think it's like, yeah, I guess system, Yeah, System,
48:09
Speaker 5: and I would say Foxy Brown. I don't want to
48:11
Speaker 5: put too much attention to it because it's definitely part
48:13
Speaker 5: of the nineteen seventies era of blaxploitation films that occurred,
48:17
Speaker 5: and there was a lot of problematic issues. At one point,
48:19
Speaker 5: you want to celebrate because it's a strong black woman
48:22
Speaker 5: who gets to be the lead and who gets her vengeance,
48:24
Speaker 5: but at the same time, the stereotype of are being
48:27
Speaker 5: angry as well as violent, as well as a prostitute.
48:30
Speaker 5: All of these things kind of have this back and forth.
48:34
Speaker 5: Pam Greer, though, is a force, so you know, people
48:37
Speaker 5: kind of looked up to that as well.
48:39
Speaker 1: So this kind of this fine line.
48:41
Speaker 5: But it is a tale of a girlfriend avenging the
48:43
Speaker 5: death of her cop boyfriend, so I think it is
48:46
Speaker 5: something to know about as well.
48:48
Speaker 3: There are so many There are so many, we can
48:51
Speaker 3: keep going, going and going. We do you want to
48:53
Speaker 3: one more small category? Well, I guess one and a
48:56
Speaker 3: half is supernatural. There are super naw natural kind of
49:01
Speaker 3: vengeance stories. So many of them are about adolescents. My
49:06
Speaker 3: theory again that we're so afraid of female sexuality, especially
49:09
Speaker 3: in young women.
49:11
Speaker 4: Wuthering Heights could be an example of this.
49:13
Speaker 3: I saw it in a lot of things, Heathcliff Revenge
49:16
Speaker 3: on Henley and Catherine, but it's not really I mean,
49:20
Speaker 3: it's been a long time since I've read that book.
49:23
Speaker 3: I don't know a lot of people included it, so
49:25
Speaker 3: I thought i'd throw it in there.
49:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I didn't think about that one.
49:27
Speaker 5: Carrie in nineteen seventy six Brian de Palmer film based
49:31
Speaker 5: on the novel by Stephen Keane classic teenage body adolescents,
49:34
Speaker 5: vengeance horror periods.
49:35
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
49:36
Speaker 5: Carrie uses her abilities to get revenge on her very religious,
49:39
Speaker 5: over the top strict mother and on the classmates who
49:42
Speaker 5: publicly make fun of her by dumping pig's blood on her.
49:44
Speaker 1: Head at prom.
49:46
Speaker 5: Yeah, causing this whole rift of things to happen because
49:49
Speaker 5: she is teased. We're being awkward and over the top strange.
49:53
Speaker 4: Yes, and also can Carrie too, which I have seen.
49:56
Speaker 5: I have not seen that.
49:57
Speaker 2: Well.
49:57
Speaker 4: I don't know what's worth it.
49:58
Speaker 3: But the craft, the craft.
50:02
Speaker 4: This one's kind of tricky.
50:04
Speaker 3: And this is another one we'll probably eventually do a
50:06
Speaker 3: whole oh yeah, oh yeah. But in brief new Girl
50:09
Speaker 3: Sarah Bailey becomes friends with rumored witches and definite outcast. Yeah,
50:13
Speaker 3: it turns out they actually are whiches, and through a
50:15
Speaker 3: series of events, they cast revenge spells and beauty cells,
50:18
Speaker 3: all kinds of spells on people who have done them
50:20
Speaker 3: wrong or on themselves to make themselves prettier. But of
50:25
Speaker 3: course the spells have negative side effects, surprise, surprise, and
50:28
Speaker 3: eventually the women for the most part, turn against each
50:30
Speaker 3: other kind of get revenge on each other.
50:33
Speaker 5: Right, And we will be watching that one for sure.
50:35
Speaker 5: I think it will remain include like hocus Pocus and
50:38
Speaker 5: oh which is of Eastwick? I think those are definitely
50:40
Speaker 5: things that we will have to do well. Shutter A
50:43
Speaker 5: two thousand and eight. Most of YACKI Ogi American remake
50:46
Speaker 5: of Time movie. In the movie, newlyweds Ben and Jane
50:50
Speaker 5: moved to Tokyo, so Ben, played by Joshua Jackson, can
50:54
Speaker 5: pursue a career in photography. Side note, why are all
50:56
Speaker 5: these horror movies in Japan? Well, talk about.
50:59
Speaker 3: The the American remakes are always in Japan. Yeah, kind
51:02
Speaker 3: of funny.
51:03
Speaker 5: Why While out driving, Jane accidentally hits a woman in
51:07
Speaker 5: the middle of the road, but shaker, the body disappears.
51:09
Speaker 1: Photos start to show up with mysterious lights, spirit photography
51:12
Speaker 1: quote unquote.
51:13
Speaker 5: Jane starts to have visions and feels a presence hanging
51:15
Speaker 5: over her. Turns out that Ben had a photograph his
51:18
Speaker 5: friends raping her and doing nothing to stop it, and
51:20
Speaker 5: the ghost was hanging on Ben's shoulder, which actually also
51:23
Speaker 5: it was because he.
51:24
Speaker 1: Was having an affair with her.
51:25
Speaker 5: She wanted to stay with him, and this was his
51:27
Speaker 5: way of getting her away from him.
51:29
Speaker 3: Right, So when she hit the woman in the beginning,
51:32
Speaker 3: it was already the ghost, right right, And then we've
51:35
Speaker 3: discussed Jennifer's body before. This is a two thousand and
51:38
Speaker 3: nine movie directed by Karen Kusama, written by Diabolo Cody
51:41
Speaker 3: and starting Megan Fox as the titular character who was
51:44
Speaker 3: offered up as a verd and sacrifice in a Satanic ritual.
51:47
Speaker 3: Also just watched this for the first time and read
51:49
Speaker 3: so much about it.
51:51
Speaker 5: See, I'm really suy you didn't tell me about that
51:52
Speaker 5: because I wanted to watch this one with you. I
51:54
Speaker 5: remember talking to you about this, as you know, it's
51:57
Speaker 5: supposed to be funny trope and dah da da dah.
51:59
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I'm really sad I missed out.
52:00
Speaker 3: On I learned so much because right now it's going
52:03
Speaker 3: through kind of a like resurgence.
52:04
Speaker 5: Oh is it?
52:05
Speaker 3: Yes, and they're saying because the time is right is
52:07
Speaker 3: before it's time. But also the marketing campaign they tried
52:09
Speaker 3: to convince Megan Fox to like start a porn site.
52:12
Speaker 3: They just marketed it all wrong. Yeah, it's really gross.
52:15
Speaker 1: I don't remember that.
52:16
Speaker 4: I learned a lot.
52:17
Speaker 3: But anyway, she wasn't a virgin Megan Fox's character, so
52:20
Speaker 3: she becomes possessed instead permanently and goes on a killing spree,
52:25
Speaker 3: killing dudes. It doesn't really sound like a revenge fantasy
52:29
Speaker 3: at first, but some have interpreted as Jennifer's body getting
52:33
Speaker 3: revenge on those who abused her that the sacrificing of
52:36
Speaker 3: a young woman being sacrificed by a minute altar is
52:38
Speaker 3: too reminiscent of Harvey Weinstein the system that allowed for
52:41
Speaker 3: it to happen.
52:43
Speaker 4: And also at the.
52:44
Speaker 3: End, her friend gets revenge on the band, right she
52:48
Speaker 3: does Adam Brody.
52:50
Speaker 5: Adam Brody because he's also going to be in the
52:52
Speaker 5: movie we just talked about with Kerry Mulligan.
52:54
Speaker 1: He's one of the nice.
52:55
Speaker 3: Guys that's right then, ready or not where he's kind
53:00
Speaker 3: of like actually a nice guy.
53:02
Speaker 1: Oh really, I didn't see that one.
53:03
Speaker 4: Oh man. And then we're not going to go into
53:06
Speaker 4: this one.
53:07
Speaker 3: But I was thinking about some metaphorical revenge movies we're
53:10
Speaker 3: if you're talking about like female vengeance as seen through
53:13
Speaker 3: climate change or Mother Earth?
53:15
Speaker 4: Right this.
53:15
Speaker 3: I remember when I saw mother exclamation point and everyone
53:19
Speaker 3: was like, what is it a metaphor for?
53:20
Speaker 4: And some people thought it was Mother Earth?
53:21
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, But that's a lot of our That.
53:26
Speaker 4: Is a lot.
53:26
Speaker 1: That's a lot, that's a whole.
53:30
Speaker 3: But that brings us to the end of this episode.
53:33
Speaker 3: If you if we missed any if you want to
53:35
Speaker 3: share any.
53:36
Speaker 5: So many oh yeah we did, so you should tell
53:38
Speaker 5: us your favorite exactly.
53:40
Speaker 3: Send your favorites to our email Stuff Media mom Stuff
53:43
Speaker 3: at iHeartMedia dot com. You can also find us on Twitter, app,
53:45
Speaker 3: mom Stuff podcast, or on Instagram at stuff I've Never
53:48
Speaker 3: Told You.
53:49
Speaker 4: Thanks.
53:49
Speaker 3: It's always to our super producer Andrew Howard, hekay, thanks, and.
53:52
Speaker 4: Thanks to you for listening.
53:53
Speaker 3: Step moom Never Told You his production of iHeart Radios
53:55
Speaker 3: how stuff Works.
53:56
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit.
53:59
Speaker 3: The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
54:00
Speaker 4: Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.