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Twilight with Diannely Antigua · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn Beast. Start changing it
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: with the Bechdel Cast. Hello Bechdel Cast listeners, who Jamie
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: and Caitlin?
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Here a little plug at the top.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: It's all coming together. It's all happening. I am going
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: to be going on a book tour for the paperback
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: release of my book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Hot Dogs. Ever heard of it? It is coming out
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: in soft cover this may. If you're hearing this, it
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: is out right now. If you are the kind of
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: person that doesn't want to spend twenty eight dollars out
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: of book, fair enough, we have a more affordable option.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: And if you haven't purchased the book and you know,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: maybe you're able to now, you know, it's also a
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: great gift. I've sound so desperate. The thing is, it's
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: a soft cover book, and people love us and.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I love a flaccid book.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a floppy little book. And if you do
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: have the hardcover and you're a completionist, there is also
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: a brand new ForWord that I wrote, and also the
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: acknowledgments have been adjusted to acknowledge that my agents were Zionists,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: so I don't really thank them anymore. So there's a
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: thrilling edition there as well. But there is new stuff
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: in the book and it costs less, and we love that.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I will be going on tour throughout the country to
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: promote the new book, and if you're a Bechdel head
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: and you're in the area, this is a really great
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: chance to come and hang out. It's all I'm at bookstores.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: I did kind of bigger shows the first time around,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: but this time we're just chilling. So kitling with your permission,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to rattle off some dates. What if
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: I was like, no, no, click, yeah, the zoom, I'm
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: going to go pee.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: No please, by all means tell us okay.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: May thirteenth, twenty twenty five, almost my birthday. So I
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: know I'm missing your birthday. It's an act of violence.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I will be at North Fig Bookshop in Los Angeles,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: hosted by friend of the cast, Julia Clair, May fourteenth.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: I will be at Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky on
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: May fifteenth, I will be at the Cambridge Public Library
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: in Massachusetts with the Harvard Bookstore, and I will be
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: in conversation with one of my dear friends, PBS's own
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Tory Bedford. On the nineteenth of May, I will be
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: in Portland, Maine at Longfellow Books, hosted by friend of
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: the cast Mayo Williams. I am very very excited. On
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: the twentieth, I will be going down to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: my home state. Know they're going to be begging, They're like,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: where are they? I will be at the Midtown Scholar
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Bookstore and Cafe in conversation with Joe Piazza. Then on
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: May twenty first, I will be at the Fountain Bookstore
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: in Richmond, Virginia. And on May twenty second, I will
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: be at Coppersfield Books in Pedaluma, California. And finally, on
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: May thirty first, I will be at Marin Country Mart,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: which is also with Coppersfield's book in Larkspur, California. So
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: if you live in those areas, please come out. I
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: would love to see you. I'd love to chat. Please
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: recommend your favorite hot dog. Let's talk becktel Cast, Let's
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: do whatever. And there will be dates announced later in
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: the summer. So if you would like a show or
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: a signing to happen in your town, please reach out
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: and I will send it to my publisher and be like, see,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I should go there. Anyways, that's a great it's begging
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: works sometimes, and we'll link this full thing in the description.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: But see you soon. I'm making a little outfit and
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: that's the Jamie Loftus promise.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to see.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: So if you click the link in the description, it
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: will take you to the full page where you can
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: register to go to these events. They are all free events,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: so come and hang out and provided that I get
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: my shit together in time, there will also be speakers
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: from local unions at all of these signings, So come out,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: make some friends, come hang out, and uh, let's eat.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: Some hot dogs.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Beautiful. We'll throw the link to be able to access
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: registration for the events on our link tree as well
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: link tree slash Bechdel Cast, so there's no excuse not
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to come.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: It's free, it's fun. I'll be wearing a little outfit.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Come buy the book, yay, enjoy the episode.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: About three things I was absolutely certain, Oh my god. First,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the Bechdel Cast is a podcast, okay. Second, and there
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: was a part of the podcast and I didn't know
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: how potent that part might be. Yeap that thirsted for
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: knowledge and amazing discourse. And Third, the hosts, Caitlin and
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Jamie were unconditionally and irrevocably in love with each other.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it. Thank you, Wow, thank you Stephanie Meyer.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: She's a Mormon, and they're pretty homophobic. I don't know
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: if she would endoors what.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Was just said. I don't think so.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: But it's what I want. It's what a lot of
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Twilight fans want. Every fan community wants a queer romance.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: But sometimes you just end up with Bella and Edward
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: and you got to project the rest. And that's what
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: we're here to talk about today. Welcome to the Bechtel Cast,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: the podcast where we take your favorite movies and talk
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: about them from an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Test as a jumping off point for discussion. This is
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I think one of a handful of episodes that of
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: where we were covering a movie for a second time.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: We first covered this movie, I did not realize how
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: long ago it was. My brain was not fully developed
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: the last time we covered this movie, were you like
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: how old I was? Twenty four? Whoa as bravely twenty
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: four years old? I was just the last synapses were
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: snapping into place, And so I cannot be held accountable
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: for anything I said in twenty seventeen. You can be
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: held accountable.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: I am repulsed to even think about what might have
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: happened on that episode. I am afraid to go back
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: and listen to it. We may or may not keep
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: it up, we might delete it. Our guest was my
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: best friend JT, and we just it was only like
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: a few months into the US doing the podcast.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: I don't think we need to apologize for something we
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: did in twenty seventeen. The reason we're recovering it is because,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: like a lot of early you know, this was before
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: podcasting was our full time job. We didn't have the
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: time nor the resources to put in as much research
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: as we put into the show now, and most of you,
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: I'm assuming we're not listening back then. So while it
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: was a fun episode, I did not really listen to it.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: I don't care what I had to say in twenty seventeen,
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: nor should you. But I also think that you know,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: like intersectional feminist discourse has evolved, thankfully, quite a bit
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: since twenty seventeen. So we have grown, as has the world.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know whatever, There's been a lot of regression,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: but on a personal level, there's been growth. Yeah, and
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: there's also been just like, this is the series people
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: will never shut the fuck up about. It's really interesting
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: to watch in the last and I say that would
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: love because I've watched all of it. Yeah, Twilight discourse
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: is something that just as it begins to die down,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: there's a new angle, and baby, we're going with it.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Like in the last I would say two to three
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: years Twilight discourse, I think because of like the twenty
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: year popularity cycle of things. Sure, people were getting nostalgic
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: for the Twilight years, and now we're talking about it
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: again and there's new things to talk about.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: We're back in the Twilight zone.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: We're in the Twilight zone today. And so anyways, if
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: you listen to our first episode, we don't know what
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: it said. We hope we did an okay job. But
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: today we're here to do a better job because we're
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: grown ups now and our brains are working better than ever.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't say that necessary.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Well not Caylyn, Mine's better than no, I'm kidding.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Mine is descending into mush.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, so maybe we were working on the same amount
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: of brain power cumulatively that we were in twenty seventeen,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: but the thoughts will be different. Yeah, okay, but we're
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: using the Benal tests and jumping off point. Caitlin, what
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: is that? I forget?
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Well, my amazing memory will tell you. It's a media
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: metric created by cartoonist Alice and Bechdel, sometimes called the
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Bechdel Wallace Test. There's many versions of it. We require that,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: in order to pass, two characters of a marginalized gender
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: must have names, they must speak to each other, and
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: their conversation has to be about something other than a man.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's just a jumping off point. It's
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: not the end all be all. There's much more to discuss,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: and in the case of the Twilight Saga, so much
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: to discuss.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: We talked about it, I'm sure a lot of things
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: in our first episode, but it turns out there's actually
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: fifty more things to talk about than we initially realized,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: and so we have brought in an expert, an enthusiast,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: someone who has spent time in the trenches with the
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: twyhards to come and educate us.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Today, she's a poet an educator. She's the author of
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: two poetry collections, former poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: a host of Bread and Poetry podcast It's Danelli Antigua.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, Hi, Hi, Hi God.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Tell us what is your relationship to Twilight?
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: Oh? Where shall I begin? I think my relationship with
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: Twilight first came from the books. I started reading the
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: books when I was a teenager and fell in love
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: with those first. And I had a really strange upbringing.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: I was raised in a cult, and around the years
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: where I started reading the Twilight books, I was starting
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: to emerge from the kind of like sheltered cocoon that
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: I was in for so many years. So I was
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: about eighteen nineteen years old, and when the movies came out,
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: I was just like first experiencing life in the world,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: in the secular world, and Twilight was my I almost
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: like my rum spring on. It was my like coming
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: out into society. And I remember when I watched Twilight,
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: I went to the midnight premiere because I was one
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: of those like midnight premiere bitches. I was wearing my
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: Team Edward shirt. I was wearing a Tutu leg warmers.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: We saw the pictures. They're incredible.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you. I was wearing fingerless gloves that I
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: got a hot topic, like, I just like went all out,
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: and I remember buying a Noss from like the gas station,
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: and I went to and I went to the midnight
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: premiere and it was like just life changing for me
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: at the time, and many many years have passed since then.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: I definitely have a different relationship to Twilight at this point,
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: but there's still like that little girl, that like nineteen
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: year old girl who is madly in love with Edward
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: and has you know, posters of him in her bedroom
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: and shit, like I was so obsessed. That might be,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: but I'm sure there's more. I'm sure there's more.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Well share whatever comes up.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, truly, don't hesitate. This is a safe space for twyhearts.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you, Jamie.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Remind us what's your relationship?
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I wonder if I said anything defensive in
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: my first when we talked about this movie like eight
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: years ago.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, you were twenty four, so I.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: Can't be accountable for what I did when I was
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: twenty four years old, a full grown adult. So I
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: read the books. I think, maybe not right when they
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: came out, but like they definitely were gathering steam in
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: the middle school contingency as they were coming out. I
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: remember my mom introduced me to them because my mom
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: was both really into Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray,
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: And to this day, I'm positive she has no idea
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: that Fifty Shades is Horny or Twilight for like non
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Mormon Twilight fanfit. Basically yes, but she was really into
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: both series and so she I think that there was
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: like this bizarre shame feedback loop going on between the
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: two of us where she would get She got the
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: boxed set of I think the first three Twilight books
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: that were out at the time, and then read them
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: herself and then gave them to me as if to say, like,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: these are yours. You bought these and then I read them,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: and I don't know. Weirdly, it feels sort of in
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: conversation with Beliswan herself, where I was very invested in
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: I think, as a lot of tweens are in being
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: not like other girls, and part of being not like
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: other girls to me was not liking Twilight. And part
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: of being not like other girls to me was not
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: liking high school musical, even though I very much enjoyed
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: both of these things in total privacy, like I was
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: completely I vividly remember blowing through the first Twilight book
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: in like this gnarl the old hammock we had in
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: our backyard during the summer when I couldn't be seen
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: or be accounted for, and then literally going to school
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: the next year and being like what's that ew? And
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: then like going the same thing with the Jonas brothers.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: I went to a Jonas Brothers concert and I was
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: like what is this? Meanwhile I bought a ticket, like
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know, like it just it's something that young
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: people do.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: And we can talk about that, like the shame that
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: like culture attaches to do you like something like Twilight,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: You're a freaking loser because that's for girls.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: It was a big thing, and I think that it's yeah,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: it's tied up and like how not like other girl
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: stuff is like internalized misogyny to some extent. Yeah, So
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: I was I was writing high on that meanwhile reading
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Twilight books, like my life depended on it. By the
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: time the movies came out, I was I saw the
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: first movie. I remember, like I think seeing the first movie.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: I was in high school by that point, and I
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: was at the tail end of my like so weird
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: that I'm at this movie the day it comes out.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: How could this have happened? But I did see it
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: the day come out. I kind of fell off after that.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: I moved on to whatever the fuck I was doing,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: So I didn't see the other movies. I don't think
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: in theaters, and I'm not even sure to this day
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: if I've seen all of them. I feel like I've
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: only seen one of the because the last one's in
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: two parts. Yes, I don't think i've seen one of them.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I read all the books. I haven't
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: seen all the movies.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: That might be blasphemy, but I do feel like revisiting
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: the first book.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: So also, I really over prepared for this episode. I
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: reread the book.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Wow, I walked fourteen miles yesterday just pacing around listening
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: to the audio book, sweating my ass off, being like
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: I gotta get it all in. And then there's also
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: been so much Twilight discourse that there are so many essays.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: There's one essay I'll be citing a intensively today from
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Capacious journal Wow that is called still not as Gay
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: as Twilight, postmodern affect, nostalgia and queer Twilight renaissance during
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: the COVID nineteen pandemic, And that is where I think
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: it was during the initial lockdown period where you saw
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: this kind of resurgence of Twilight discourse that has I
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: think was going on well into last year because there
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: was a very popular ContraPoints video that came out on
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: that topic. So I think it went on for nearly
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: five years. But I think because so many people became
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: nostalgic for comfortable feelings during Lockdown, that all of a sudden,
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Twilight was back. And I watched and engaged with a
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: lot of that, and I don't know, I just like
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: I'm constantly engaging with Twilight. While I would consider myself
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: a casual fan at best. Anyways, rewatching the first movie,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: it's a good movie. Like I don't know what to say.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: It's like, there's a lot of issues with it. But
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: when it comes to like do I understand why people
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: absolutely love this movie? And do I feel like it
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: captures this very specific not like other Girls Fantasy one
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: hundred percent, and the soundtrack is still great.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, yes, yeah, so rock and roll.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, super massive black hole, baseball scene. I'm like,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: you can't do all that.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: The baseball scene is is so hot cinema, It's so good.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: I love the baseball scene. Everything, Like, the baseball scene's
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: the best part. But I get it. And I also
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: have really enjoyed going through people's you know, reflections on
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: this because there's also a massive queer fan base for
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: this essentially Mormon movie, so we'll get into it. But anyways,
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Caitlin remind us, what is your history with Twilight?
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I'm sure I had a better memory of
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: it on the first episode. But again, I will not
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: be going back to listen to that, and I don't
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: think our listeners should either.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Please don't well and just take it down.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: I mean maybe we will anyway.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what are you edging like Dubella and Edwards?
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, so I the first few books came out,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I don't really know the timeline of like what was
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: published when.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Two thousand and five, six, seven and eight.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, and then thank you so much, and then so
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: the first movie came out in two thousand and eight, right, yeah, okay,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: so it wasn't until probably twenty ten, I would say, again,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: memory is murky, but it was well after the books
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: had come out, and probably the first one or two
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: movies had come out before. And of course I heard
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: people talking about I have a distinct memory of chatting
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: with some people when I moved to New York, which
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: was in two thousand and eight, and I was talking
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: to a friend and her sister, and it was like
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: a sister older than me, so she was she would
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: have been like in her mid twenties at the time,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: and she's like, yeah, Twilight is the best thing I've
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: ever read. I want to date Edward Da da da.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: And I was just like, what are you talking about?
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: What's this Twilight thing? And then the movie started coming out,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: and because I hate books and I love movies, I
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: was like, Okay, fine, I'll check this out. And I
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: think I don't remember if this was the case or not,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: but it might have been jt our guest on the
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: first episode that we did on this movie that kind
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: of got me into it. I don't know if he
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: like showed me the first movie.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Again, massive queer fan base.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, either he showed me the first one
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: or I definitely started watching the other ones with him,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: to the point where I think I saw Eclipse Breaking
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Down Part one and two in theaters with him.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Oh so you saw you were like on the other half,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: you're a late Twilight bloomer. Yeah, what did you think
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: of the mo some of these at the time, I'm
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: so cue because that would have been like well into
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Twilight backlash.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Era too, and I was a part of that. I
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: was like, these movies suck. They're bad, and yet I
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: was going to see them.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're not wrong, but I mean they're not.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Okay. Here's the thing. There's a distinction between I like
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: it and this is good, and both of those All
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: of these things are subjective, right right, that's camp. I
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: was like, this is not good and I don't necessarily
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: like it, but I do. There's some weird like I'm
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: compelled by these, I'm entertained by these. I can't stop
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: watching them. I'm not really enjoying myself or am I
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know, there's like this I cannot explain how
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I experience.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's like Edward himself, Like everything about him
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: draws you in his voice is smell, the way he
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: looks exactly.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: But I know that he's dangerous, yeah, and that there's
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: something to be feared about it.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: What do you think you could outrun him? Do you
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: think you could fight back? Because you couldn't, because you're
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: never gone up.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I couldn't. He's killed people.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: He's like a drug to you. He's like a drug
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: to you.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: He is my own personal brand of heroine, and I him.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: That scene is the most hot topic codd scene that
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: has ever been committed to film.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: It's completely blue.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Like this whole movie is blue, and I support it. Yeah,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: you know you were team Edward?
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: Yes?
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: I was. Yeah. And then Kaitlyn, did you ever choose
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: a team or were you just team Hater?
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: No? I was hardcore team Jacob.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: I was team Jacob as well. Yeah, which is canonically,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: I mean Jacob ends up marrying a baby, yes, yes,
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: which ContraPoints argues is a way of the series having
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: it always of like, hmm, he falls in love with
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: an extent Bella, and this is how they're able to
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: like justify this like polycule that they create.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he like loved her egg, you know, yeah, and
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: you're like.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: That's well, that's disgusting. It got harder and harder to
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: be team Jacob as the books went on. I will
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: say definitely, because I don't remember very much about Breaking
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Down at all, but I vividly remember the scene where
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: he's like, I'm in love with your unborn baby and
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: being like, no, my team is down. My team is
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: my team. We've lost, We've lost, he's in love with
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: the baby. We're cooked.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think I went back and read. I
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: don't know if I finished the first Twilight book or
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: just read a good enough of a chunk of it
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: where I did. Basically, I just wanted to confirm that
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: the writing was as bad as I had heard that
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: it was, and I did confirm that. But I didn't
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: read any of the other books. But I have seen
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: I would say I've seen the first Twilight movie probably
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: a good fifteen times. Whoa yeah, and then it tapers
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: off like I've only seen Breaking Dawn Part two that
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: one time in theaters. I'm pretty sure.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: I was like, I think I've seen it like at
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: least five times, and I don't think I've seen a
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: few of the movies ever.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really it's weird, Like there are movies that I
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: considered to be my favorite, like among my favorite movies,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: that I have seen fewer times, and I've seen Twilight,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: which I would not consider at all to be one
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: of my favorite movies. I cannot explain this phenomenon, and
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: yet it exists. So I have a weird relationship with Twilight.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I think it's trash and yet I know it very well.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: But I think that's like a very common experience.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, don't humans love trash? Though, Like don't we love trash?
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Like reality TV is trash? Sackly, I love McDonald's.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: That's trash, but it's good trash, but it's delicious trash.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, except boycott McDonald's.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: But right, right, right, But yes, but the idea behind yes, Yeah,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know. There's been a lot of I think
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: in this like most recent past five years, discourse around
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Twilight have like moved forward the conversation around this franchise
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: in an interesting way of like almost getting back to
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: the shame and like projection that was beneath some but
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: not all, of the Twilight backlash. That's the thing is,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: like it's just very complicated because there's a billion very
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: valid critiques of this franchise, many of which we'll discuss today. Yes,
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: and we'll just place here we're not discussing the entire
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: franchise today because we would never leave the zoom call
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: if that were the case, right, So we're discussing the
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: first movie, the book, the you know, cultural sensation at
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: the time of the first movie today and then we
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: will cover subsequent movies on the show down the line,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: just because it's just like such a broad topic that, Yeah,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: if there are certain elements of this franchise you would
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: like to hear us talk more about, please let us know,
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: and we will make a point to discuss that in
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: future installments. But there's just there really is just like
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: so so so much to.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Talk about, truly, and let's try to begin. But first
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: we'll take a quick break and then we'll come back
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: for the recap and we're back, all right. I'm really
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: mean during this recap so apology in advance.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Like I like that You're like, I'm a Twilight hater
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: to the grave, Caitlin, You're not like other she theys You're.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Just not I'm not I am an intellectual no, just kidding.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: Didn't you get a film degree somewhere right?
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for bringing something up that I
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: would never mention, which is that I do have a
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's what I thought.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, would never mention it. So I actually
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: don't even know how anybody knows that because I've never
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: said it before.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: I didn't. I just learning.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyway, content warning at the top for abusive relationship dynamics, stalking, gaslighting,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: things of that nature. And here we go. We open
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: on a deer in the woods pray if you will,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: and there's also a predator something or someone is chasing
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: the deer and grabs.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: It, and then it goes me. This court of this
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: movie is a real earworm. Shout out Carter Burwell. There's
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: It's wild how many like really generationally talented people worked
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: on this movie because Carter Burwell is like iconic. He's
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: so good.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: My favorite part is when it starts out being non
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: diegetic and then suddenly it's diagetic because Edward is playing
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: it on the piano the score of the movie, and
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: you're just like, WHOA.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: I like it because I think Carter Burrell is probably
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: the most famous for being like the Coen Brothers go
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: to guy. But also he did Twilight, and I support that.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: It's a good score.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: It's pretty good. Okay, So there's this deer. Then we
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: cut to Bella Swan played by Kristin Stewart, who is
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: moving from Phoenix, Arizona because her mom wants to travel
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: around with her brosif of a husband instead of raise
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: her teenage daughter.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, Renee, Renee's a real piece of work.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah she is.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: So Bella gets shipped off to Forks, Washington to live
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: with her dad, Arlie Swan.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: And while he's hot, a cav includes Charlie Swan, It
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: really does, because he's the chief of police of Forks, Washington.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, so he and Bella have a very awkward relationship,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: but he does buy her a truck off of Billy
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Black played by Gil Birmingham. His son is Jacob Black
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: played by Taylor Lautner, a childhood friend of Bella's. He
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: mentions that he goes to school on the reservation because
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: he is a member of the Quillute nation. Even though,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: and this is one of the very many valid criticisms
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: of this movie, Taylor Latner is not an indigenous actor,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: and the representation of Quillute people lots to discuss there.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Well, we'll talk about that further.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, any case, he lives and goes to school
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: on the will You Reservation, and Bella's like, oh darn,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: you were my only friend here, Like it would have
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: been nice to know someone at school, but she's not
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: even gonna know him.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: And Jacob in Twilight Part one Sweetie Pie.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Also Taylor Lautner bad Wig not even in the top
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: ten problems, but did really strike me in this viewing.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, it's doing a lot of work. It's
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: like a nicole kidman grade wig.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyway, So Bella has this new truck and she
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: loves this busted, rusty gass truck from the nineteen seventies
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: because she's not like the other girls. Then Bella heads
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: to school, a bunch of students are like, oh my god,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: who are you? You're the coolest and most interesting person
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: I've ever seen.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: This is I think, like, in retrospect, one of the
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: most interesting dream fulfillments like aspects of the story that
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: probably made it so appealing, where it's like, what if
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: you were truly the most normal person with no distinct features,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: and yet everyone was obsessed with you.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like who is Bella Swan? Like we don't know
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: anything about her hobbies, We don't know really what she likes. Truly,
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: She's just like blank canvas. But everyone loves that they
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: can just project whatever they want onto this, like very
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: boring Bella Swan blank canvas.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: Which is like not incredibly like yeah, it's like that's
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: very common for protagonists. But it's like glaring with Belli
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: because literally we see her just like sitting in a
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: room staring into the middle distance when she's not like
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: talking to Edward Colin. You're like, all right, there's I
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: know we have. This is a self insert character, but
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: you got to give her an interest, like it is wild.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Sometimes she reads a book.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: Sometimes she does read a book, and they are interestingly
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: the exact books that Stephanie Meyer's love sorry Stephanie Meyer
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: singular myyr yeah one Meyer, one Meyer. But yeah, Bella.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: I mean that's a very common criticism of her husband
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: for twenty years. But like it is true.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: You know, she doesn't have a personality.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: Oh unless clumsy is part of a personality.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: Which, oh my god, which in the book is exacerbated
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: to like such an absurd degree. I clocked literally over
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: forty mentions in the book of her being like what
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: if I fall? And Edward's like, I know there's a
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: big chance you'll fall.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: Can you watch where you're going.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: I'll make sure you don't trip and die? Like it
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: just it really is, like it's it's so silly. Yeah,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: but it's I mean again, that's the pulling from the
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Lizzie Maguire school of heroine. You're like, well, sure she's
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: conventionally beautiful, but she false.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that doesn't stop everyone at school being obsessed
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: with her, including such characters as Eric, Mike Tyler, Jessica
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: played by Anna Kendrick, and Angela played by Christian Serrados.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: So now she has all these new friends immediately, so
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: her concerns about not having any friends at school where
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: she didn't have to worry. Then at lunch, Bella spots
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: a group of hot thirty five year olds, and her
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: new friends tell her that these are the Cullens, a
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: family of foster kids who were adopted by doctor Cullen
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: and who are dating each other, including Rosalie and Emmett.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Are a couple. Alice and Jasper are a couple, although
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: one of them is single. And this is Edward Cullen
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: because he's not like other vampires. One of the things
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: that I don't think I ever fully registered because she
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: looks so different in this movie, but that I appreciated
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: because the other Catherine Hardwick movie we've covered on this
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: show is thirteen, and Nikki Reid, the star of thir
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: and co writer of thirteen, plays Rosalie, which I never
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: noticed because again wig like, I just didn't know.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: And the makeup, it's the makeup in this movie is horrible,
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Like all of the vampires, like you can even tell
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: if you look at their like collar and their neck,
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: you can tell that it hasn't been blended correctly.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Oh brutal.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can still see like the pink of their
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: flesh when they're supposed to be pale as fuck. So
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: I don't know who the makeup artist was, but you
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: got to blend all the way down to the neck, honey,
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: all the way down down.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: I wonder if that's why there's so much blue color
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: correction in the movie, because it's like we got to
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: hide the bad makeup.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: Job, make it blue. Make it blue. Maybe that'd be incredible.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: I forget what two thousand movie we were discussing recently
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: where I also think that the teen fashion of the
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: late two thousands are doing nobody any favors in this
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: because I feel like teen fashions of the late two
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: thousands really aged teenagers. There are so many pictures of
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: me as like a junior in high school where I'm like,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: my aunt could be wearing this, Like I'm wearing these
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: like ponchos and like long vests and You're like, why
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: am I wearing what teachers were wearing? But also these
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: like big fake Victoria's Secret bras that my cousin would
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: give me, So it's like huge fake titties in like
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the most clothing possible.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the bombshell bra adds two cups, honey.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: I used to work in Victoria's Secrets, so I know
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: all the secrets that was thea My cousin worked there,
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: and so she's like, Okay, this is going to change
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: your life, and it didn't. They do look old, though,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: they do, yeah with all dudes. Not the actor's fault,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: because I think the actors actually are younger than they
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: look in the movie. They're all in their twenties.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Oh really, because they come on screen and I'm like,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: those people are my contemporaries currently right now as someone
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: in their late thirties.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: No, I think that they're all it's I mean, they're
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: not high schoolers. I think Kristen Stewart is one of
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: the only actual high school age actors. Yeah, most of
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: them are in their twenties, but I think I don't know,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: like they were just done dirty.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In any case, there's one single Cullen, and it's Edward,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: and he and Bella make eyes at each other. Then
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: they get paired up as lab partners in science class.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Except Edward is repulsed by Bella, although he also can't
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: stop staring at her. It's this weird like disgust slash
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: fascination thing that with understand why soon, and she notices
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: how repulsed he is by her, and she plans to
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: confront him about the except Edward doesn't show up at
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: school for days on end, so she can't confront him
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: right away. Meanwhile, cut to the woods, there's some dangerous
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: creature who's attacking people on the outskirts of town, so
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: that's looming over the story. Finally, Edward shows up at
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: school again, and he's no longer acting completely repulsed by Bella.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: He's actually being kind of friendly. And so now they're
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: looking at an onion under a microscope and we're like,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, onions have layers. Shrek, Shrek, Shrek.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Wow, I didn't pick up on that. That's why you
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: have the master's degree. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yes, Okay,
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: So they're like now talking kind of about nothing. He
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: also says something like, you're very difficult for me to
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: read because he loves making creepy declarations like that.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: And also that's so, you know, argublate because there's nothing
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: going on. There's nothing, there's no that was fella hatred. No,
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: I like Bella, but what is going on behind those
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: hazel eyes? To borrow a song title?
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and speaking of eye color, she notices that Edward's
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: eyes are a different color than the last time she
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: saw him, and he makes an excuse about the fluorescent lighting. Aka,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: this is the beginning of him gaslighting her.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: And kind of the most egregious ways possible In the movie,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: and just having reread the book, they really turn up
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: the casualness with which the gaslighting happens up to like
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: a fourteen because also Robert Pattinson's deliveries are so mean sounding,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: and I guess the way I imagined it was a
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: little more like no, no, it couldn't have been. I
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: mean that more the way I've experienced gaslight of like, no, no,
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: girl with tiny brain. But he's like, no, it's de
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: ferorescent lights.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: She's a fucking casshle.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: Anyways, I do love him. I would marry him.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: He talks to her about the weather, and he's like,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: why did you move to the Like well, she says
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: she hates the rain, any cold wet thing, Yeah, she hates.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: And then he like giggles.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: About it afterward because he's like, I'm cold and wet, yes,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: and you're about to fall in love with him, yeah,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: So they have really rivet in conversations about such things
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: as the weather and onions. Anyway, So one day, Tyler,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: one of the friends in Bella's friend group, is cruising
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: through the school parking lot at about sixty miles per
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: hour and he loses control of his van and nearly
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Krene's into Bella, but suddenly Edward is there to save her,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: even though he was just fifty feet away from her
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: like one second ago. But Edward is there and he
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: stops the van with what seems like superhuman strength. So
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Bella is taken to the hospital where she meets doctor
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Daddy Cullen. Edward is there too, and Bella is like,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: what the hell happened? How did you get to me
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: so fast? And then he proceeds to gaslight her more
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: and says that he was already right next to her.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: He said, you bunked your head real hard.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: You're confused.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: It really is like gaslighting one oh one lines like
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: you fell, Yeah, you must have wonked your head. It's
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: the lights. You're like, you've had one hundred years to
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: get better at gaslighting than you are, sir.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. So from this point onward, now Bella is
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: like dreaming about Edward, partly because he is fully stalking
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: her and sneaking into her bedroom and watching her sleep.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: He's also eavesdropped on her conversations. He's being generally cruel
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: and abusive to her, saying things like we shouldn't be friends,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: but also I want to be friends, but you should
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: stay away from me because I'm not the hero. I'm
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: the bad guy, and She's like, no, you're a good guy.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Come to the beach with me and my friends. And
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: he's like, I DK probably not.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: He's like, I can't. I can't go to that.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Whatever man, And we're about to find out why because
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: we cut to the beach called.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: La Push La Push La push Baby, which is a
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: real place, which is.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: A real place where the quill Yet people live. Edward
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: does not show up, but Jacob and his friends do
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, yeah, the Cullens don't come here,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: and Jacob proceeds to tell Bella that the quilt people
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: are descended from wolves, the Cullens are descended from an
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: enemy clan, but they've established a treaty as long as
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: the Cullens stay off Quillute land. So Bella is like,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: what's that all about? And she starts investigating. She finds
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: a book, a Belle Quilliute Mythology, and goes with her
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: friends to Port Angelis Ever heard of It? No to
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: buy this book while her friends, Jess and Angela go
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: prom dress shopping because everyone is gearing up for prom,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: although Bella is not going to prom because she'll be
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: out of town that weekend.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Well, van Alsa thinkause she's not like other girls.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: She's not like the other girls.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: She doesn't dance.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: She would and if she went to prom, you know,
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: she would be wearing Chuck Taylor. She's yes, because she
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: is not like, Oh god, I did have the I mean,
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: girls were wearing Chucks like no one's business at that time.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: I was wearing Chucks.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I still do, as in.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Really, I just I really appreciated when that fad pass
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: because they're just not I think my arches are too
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: high or something. They're just not comfortable to me.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're not the most comfortable shoe.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: I bravely wear crocs everywhere I go, every single day.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: I also want to point out that we see on
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: screen that Bella could have bought this book from Amazon,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: but instead she opts to go to a whole other
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: city and buy it from a local independent bookstore.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah that's Bela Swan praxis y right there, buys from
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: an independent bookseller, Yes, who we see in a single shot, right,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: but she does support local businesses.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Good for Bella indeed.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: But name a second thing about her.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: She read one book one time. What was the book?
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: We don't know?
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she still ends up mostly googling, which I thought
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: was funny that she went so far out of her
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: way to get the book. She still mostly googles the answers,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: which is relatable. I've done that. I've been like, oh,
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: I've made a big deal of getting the books and
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: then been like, huh, well, I actually have run the
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: clock and I have three days to read this paper.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: I made note of that. Though she reads exactly one
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: sentence from the book and then proceeds to google everything else.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: I felt seen like, that's what teenagers do.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: It's amazing. Okay, So she's hanging out in Port Angelis
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: buying books locally. Meanwhile, there is a group of scary
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: people and I wonder if they're vampires. They are James,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Laurent and Victoria. They're on the loose and they attack
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: a guy who we've met before. It's a friend of
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Bella's dad's. He's presumably murdered. Then a different set of
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: scary people start bothering Bella on her way back from
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: the bookstore, but Edward comes to her rescue because he
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: had followed her to Port Angelis.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah no, but it's a good thing he did kill
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: him right right, because because he.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Saved her from those scary people who were about to
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: assault her.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: He rescues her from so many bizarre predicaments.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, he heard what those low lifes were thinking.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, yeah. So then Edward takes Bella to dinner,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: where he admits that he had been stalking her and
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: also tells her that he can read every person's thoughts
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: in the room except for hers. And if you're wondering
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: if she has any kind of reaction to this, well
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: she barely does.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: We're being hard on Bella. I feel bad.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: Well, she thinks that something's wrong with her because you
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: can't read her mind, which is like so sad. It's like, no, honey,
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: there's nothing wrong with you other than the regulate that
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: you're boring. But there's nothing wrong with you.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: What's the thing is like her boringness is her power
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: question mark that I kept writing that down being like
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: it's her absolute blankness that which which we'll get into too,
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: because I think that, like both of the lead actors
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: of this movie were like pretty thoroughly dragged through the
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: mud in the press for something that has way more
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: to do with the source material than the performances, where
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: for years, I mean, I kind of remember this where
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: people were like, Kristin Stewart can't act. You know, she's
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: like a total blank slate. She's just like and I'm
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: just like, read the book. She's not given very much. Yeah,
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: and then a bunch of very homophobic, coded criticism of
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Edward and Robert Pattinson because he's too sparkly and vampires
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: are famously straight. Like I don't even know where people
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: are going with that because that's never been a thing.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: But like in any case, I was sort of like
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: revisiting that period of like Christian Stewart's a bad actor,
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: which you know, fifteen years on, you're like, yeah, monstrably untrue.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: She's not just a great actor, she's a queer icon.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I find it interesting that both she and Robert
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Pattinson have gone on to have like pretty prolific careers
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: as actors. And then Taylor Latner, I would say, not
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: so much.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I am always buying the wrong stocks. I tell you what.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: I was all in for Taylor Latner and he did
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: buy me a three dollars beer once.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I told that story on the first version.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Is like right after I moved to La went to
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: this cheap o bar called the Cha Chaw Lounge, and
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: for some reason, Taylor and his wife to be also
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: named Taylor were there and he was like, next round
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: on me. But all the beers cost three dollars, so
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: he couldn't have spent more than like thirty dollars. But
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: it was nice of him. I appreciated it. Yeah, So
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: I guess I got a three dollar return on setting
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: all my style and Taylor Latner three dollars plus tip.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I hope, wow, I mean could be worse.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Anyway, So Bella returns home and this is the scene
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: where she looks through her book for one second and
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: then looks everything else up online.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: I love a good googling montage. It's so pat but
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: I find it comforting.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: M hm. And what she's looking up is information about vampires,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: and she realizes that Edward is probably a vampire based
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: on his super speed and strength, his cold skin, his
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: ability to read people's minds, since that's famously a vampire quality.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: I love how they just wave aside the I do
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: appreciate Stephanie Meyer just waves off the tropes about vampires
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: she's disinterested in and adds the stuff that she wants
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: You're like, yeah, sure, it's your book.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: I guess She's like, they can be out in the daylight.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: It's just that their skin is sparkly.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: They just have this body glitter kind of thing.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: And they're also Professor Xavier from x Men.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: I've never seen an x man. Wow, I'm not like
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: you've never seen an x man. Oh, I was gonna say,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: I made a special note in a very late two
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: thousand's not. The Papyris font is indeed featured in oh
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: Bella's googling sequence, which it wouldn't have been in two
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: thousand and eight if she hadn't come across you know,
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: homespun HTML layout papyrus font website. So I appreciated that.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: That was important visibility.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: Yes for the papyrus part. Well, No, the papyrus font's
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: one year away from being the avatar logo. So the
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Papyrus font did oh perfectly fine for herself.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: True. Okay, So one day at school, Bella and Edward
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: go into the nearby woods together and she's like, so,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: you're a vampire, right, and he's like TI, yes, and
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: she's like, don't worry, I'm not afraid of you. Even
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: though you desperately want to kill me and drink my blood.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: You're a killing machine who has previously murdered people.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: This is the skin of a killer Bella.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah that light I so, y'all. I didn't tell you,
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: but I'm wearing a shirt. This is the skin of
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: a killer. I will show you. It has like the
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: meme of Probert Pattinson. Incredible And yeah, it's a T
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: shirt and I made it into a half shirt because
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: I love me some half shirts. And this isn't the
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: only Twilight half shirt that I own. I also own
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: one that is New Moon based. It's the scene where
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: Jacob says, Bella, where the hell have you been? Loca?
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is that half shirt.
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I do rock some some Twilight apparel still,
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: even though it's not a Team Edward shirt.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: Our producer Sophie is a big fan or like was
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: a huge twyhard back in the day, and they recently
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: screened near her and the like the whole audience in
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Unison did the bello where have you been? Look up together? Ah.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: There is something just so powerful about the memes that
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: keep us together. This is the skin of a killer Bella.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: That line read really holds up. It's so funny.
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: She's like, you're beautiful skins like diamonds.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: Diamonds, everything about me draws you in. Like, we'll talk
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: about like how Robert Pattinson, I feel like, almost in
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: a defensive way, came out against the Twilight movies because
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: he wanted to have a quote unquote serious career. In
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: starring in movies that are marketed at teen girls is
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: quote unquote unserious. And so he would sort of be like,
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: these movies suck, but I'm in them. They but I
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: hate them. But he would do it in a funny
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: enough way that it's hard for me to be mad
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: at him. But yeah, imagine having to perform that monologue.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: It's really really wild that he basically pulls it up.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So now Bella and Edward are irrevocably in love
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: with each other. He tells her some of his backstory,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: which I forgot to write down.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: He am in start of the flu Yeah, he had
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: Spanish influenza and Carlyle saved him and yeah bit him
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: and turned him into into a vampire.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: Right, and something that really struck me on this And
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: we can we can and should talk about this later.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: But that Carle. Like Carlyle's code of honor is that
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: he'll only turn people into vampires when they are already
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: about to die. But as ties into a lot of
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: the like undertones of white supremacy and like Mormonism specifically
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: in this franchise, he mysteriously only ever seems to have
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: an interest in saving white vampires or eventual vampires specifically,
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: including even though I think that this is a discussion
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: for a future episode because it doesn't come up I
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: don't think in this movie. But Jasper's fighting on the
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: wrong side of the Civil War canonically.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a Confederate soldier.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there is really I mean, we'll talk about
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: it in I don't know if it's the second or
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: third movie where that like there's like a full flashback
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: sequence I remember, and it is just not drawn attention
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: to as something that's wrong. And I know Princess Weeks
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: made a great video about how Confederate Vampire's Soldiers is
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: like this very scary trope that exists across vampire media.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: But yeah, doctor Daddy only ever saves white people on
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: the verge of death.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we learn that as Edward's backstory, we also
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: learn that the Cullens have kind of sworn this oath
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: to never hunt or attack or kill humans. They live
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: off of the blood of animals, but there are other
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: like vampire clans who do kill people, and that's what's
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: going on with James and Victoria.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: And you can tell by their eye color too, of
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: the vampires. Their eye color, you can tell if they
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: are vegetarian vampires or if they hunt humans, because the
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: vegetarian vampires have like golden eyes, and then the human
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: hunting ones have red eyes.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: So like, yeah, yes.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. So Edward tells Bella all of this. Then
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: he invites her to his house to have dinner with
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: his vampire family. Rosalie has a little outburst about it.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: She breaks a salad.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: We're gonna be tension between her and Bella throughout the series.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: Oh boy.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Also, Jasper is thirsty as fuck for Bella's blood, but
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: he's exercising restraint. Then we get the spider monkey scene.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Great that was added for the movie. Also amazing that
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: Robert Pattinson says it without laughing, so good.
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: That's a skill.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: That's followed by this like montage kind of thing where
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: they're just sort of like canoodling in the tree tops,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: as if that's like so romantic and I'm so afraid
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: of heights that Like I'm like, who who would find
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: that romantic? Like is this exciting for people?
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I would find that terrifying. Yeah.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: What struck me about that scene was that presumably what's
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: happening in that scene is they're getting to know each
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: other better and they don't show us that where it's
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: like it would actually be I mean, and I know
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: to some extent and this is like ten years ago
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: kind of styled this course around Twilight, but I think
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: it would be nice to see them have more conversations
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: to lock in what connects them as people.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: Why they like each other, right, Like.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: That's not too much to ask of a romance story.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: And it was like, I think we were watching that
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: scene happening, like we were far away, we couldn't hear it.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: It's like, oh, I would have loved to know what
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: they would what Bella would talk about? Yeah, no, I
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: read this is so many questions about Twilight if you
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: google them lead to a Reddit post from five years ago,
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: and this one is no exception. But later on, Stephanie
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: Meyer would write sort of rewrite Twilight from Edward's perspective,
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: called Midnight Sun. I almost was like, should I read it?
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: And then I saw it was a thirty six hour
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: long audiobook, and then I thought, maybe I know, there's
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: only so many days of your life.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But I guess in that she does get into
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: some of the conversations she has that Bella has with Edward,
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: and she at one point gives her list of favorite
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: movies and books, which are baffling given Bella's personality. She
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: says her favorite movie is Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Interesting,
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: which is coming from a character I don't think we
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: ever see laugh, is like so confusing. I was like,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: there's no way.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: Anyways, I guess in the source material in the book,
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: we find out that she reads Jane Austen books, which
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: you know, they're great books, but there couldn't be a
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: more bland thing assigned to a teenage girl character than
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: likes Jane Austen books.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, So then there's a scene where Bella introduces
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Edward to Charlie Swan, her dad, and Charlie's like, you
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: better watch out, young man, I've got a gun. Then
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: we get the baseball scene, which is an amazing scene,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: mostly because it is seven people total playing baseball, which
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: is not enough people to play baseball.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: And here's two referees but not enough player.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't even let Bella play because she's too slow,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: so they make her be the umpire. But anyway, this
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: is when the bad vampires show up. They want to
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: join in the fun. They want to play baseball, it's
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: America's pastime. But they notice that a human is among them.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: They smell Bella's like blood for something or human flesh,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: and James in particular wants to just eat Bella to
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: death and he is now going to hunt her down.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: So Edward and Bella have to leave to lure James
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: away so that they can basically eventually kill him. They
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: have to cut him up into pieces and burn the pieces.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: Right, which is always like there's always these like suggestions
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: of violence like that in Twilight, but they never like
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: they ordinarily don't really have at least in the first movie.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of like, I'm gonna do this, but
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: then it happens off screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because Mormons.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: So then there's a scene where Bella and Edward are fleeing,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Bella goes home and like has to hurt her dad
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: feelings to protect him. Then Bella and Edward split up
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: to hopefully trick James into following. Edward and Bella goes
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: off with Alice and Jasper all the way to Phoenix,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: where Bella receives a call from her mother, who James
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: has kidnapped, and James tells her to meet him at
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: her old ballet studio. Now Bella shows up, learns that
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: her mom was not actually kidnapped, it's just James there,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: and he's like taunting her and throwing her around. She
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: gets badly injured and she's bleeding, and Edward shows up
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: and he and James fight a bit. James bites Bella
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: and his vampire venom is coursing through her veins.
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: And it hurts, but it hurts so good question mark. Yeah,
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: the gnarliest moment in this movie to me is always
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: when pony Hill vampire break Bella's leg like that. That
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: to me is like the actual scariest part of the movie.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: It's so yeah, But then how would she go to
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: prom without her quirky leg cast, So in a way,
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: it had to happen ponytail vampire had to do so
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: she could look quirky or from.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, But before that happens, the rest of the
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Cullens show up to deal with James and they kill
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: him off screen. Meanwhile, Edward goes to suck the venom
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: out of Bella, but oh no, will he be able
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: to show restraint and stop in time, or will he
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: suck all the blood out of her and kill her.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: And give him vampire blue balls? Yeah, this movie is
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: so edgy.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Well, he manages not to bust a nut or whatever
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: the metaphor is, and Bella live.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: She wakes up in the hospital. Her mom is there.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Bella doesn't remember what happens, so or she I don't
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: know if she's like pretending not to or what. But
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: her mom relays the story that the Cullens probably told her,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: which is that Bella fell down two flights of stairs,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: broke her leg, and crashed through a window.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, if I'm Bella's mom, I'm like, excuse me, Like
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: how But I think that because that same excuse is
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: given in the book. If I'm remembering correctly, it's a
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: very long book. But I was like, is that why
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: they mentioned that she's so prone to falling because people
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: have to believe this ridiculous story that she could just
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: fall down two flights, like a Looney Tune style fall. Sure, Renee,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: I'm not her fan. If Renee has one fan, it's
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: not me, it's not you. I like, your daughter's a junior.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: You can wait two years to go on the road
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: with your sorry whatever. But like, if I was a
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: teen girl and my mom was like, actually I'm going
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: off to fuck this guy, I'd be like, all right, well,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: I hate you, you know.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: But now her mom is encouraging her to move to Jacksonville, Florida,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: to like hang out with her mom and her new husband,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: and Bella's like, no, I want to stay in Forks.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: But Edward is like, no, Bella, that's a good idea.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Actually you are safer away from me, and you should move.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: And she's like, no, I'm never leaving you and you
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: can never leave me, So don't say things like that,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: and that's love. And we cut to prom and Bella
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: and Edward are there together. Jacob just kind of randomly
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: pops out of the woods.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: He walks out of the woods. They did not do
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: a good job of making it like Why can't we
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: see him get out of a car? Why is he
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: have to I know that he's probably I know, I
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: know that that's what they're implying, but it looks so silly.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: It's goofy as hell.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so silly. I love it.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: And he like dresses up. He's like wearing a button
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: down shirt and tie, like rolls up sleeves and.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: Stuff, as if he's about to go to prom. But
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: he's not a question.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: She's like, no, my dad gave me twenty dollars and
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: I'm like, okay.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: He's like, my dad paid me to tell you to
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: break up with Edward and that will be watching you.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: And we're like cool, cool, cool, tight tight tight.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: At very least in the book, Jacob like they danced
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: together and there's like a clearer friendship established, and not
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: what happens in the movie, which is like Edward appearing
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: out of nowhere and being like, get away from me,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: and then they gave each other like Bruti boy eyes
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: monster boy eyes, and then Jacob walks back into the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: woods like that's where.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: He came from.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: So I hope he got that twenty dollars.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I hope. At very least because it's like,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: that's a very humiliating task to dispatch your sixteen year
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: old son to do.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Anyway, So then Bella and Edward are slow dancing and
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: she's like, you should have let me become a vampire
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: so that I can be like you. And he's like, no,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let you be a monster, and she's like,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: but this is what I want, and so he moves
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: like he's about to bite her neck, but JK, he's
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: just teasing slash edging her. And the movie ends with
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: a shot of Victoria, the bad vampire who's James's his girlfriend,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: leering at Bella and Edward from a distance because she
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: wants revenge, and that's partly going to be what some
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: of the other movies are about.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: I think maybe I was really bummed I forgot that
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: the Vultore don't show up in this movie because they're
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: so funny. They're the funniest part of all of the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: vivies where they're because it's just like this didn't fully
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: connect for me until like going through the Twilight rehash
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: discourse that's happened in the last five years. But it's
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: just how Stephanie Meyer views Catholic people, which is like
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: gay and evil No, Italian gay and evil.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's just so.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: Weird, I forget. Yeah, yeah, but you're gonna have to
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: wait for Dakota Fanning Italian villain.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, indeed. So yeah, that's the movie. Let's take
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: And we're back, Daneli, I want to sort of pass
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: the buck to you here. Where would you like to
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: start with discourse of Twilight.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know. Where's what it feels
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: like a good place to start, as far as like
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: things that you all wanted to cover as well.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think we didn't mention this, Caitlin,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: but we also during actually during Lockdown, I want to
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: say it was summer twenty twenty, we did a fundraiser
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: where we did a reading of the Twilight script with
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: past guests from the show. Jess Berwin was a part
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: of that conversation, and they and many Native writers have
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: been intensely and rightfully critical of the way that Twilight
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: presents indigenous culture, which I think we reference in our
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: first episode, but certainly not in depth because we were
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: also under educated on the issue at the time, So
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: I think that's a good starting point. And then also
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: just again for our listener's reference, we're not going to
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: get into every facet of that in this particular episode,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: because I believe that it's New Moon that really kind
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: of doubles and triples down on these really dangerous tropes
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: around indigenous people, and Jacob is not in this movie
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: very much. But I think that it is at least
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: to me like the unequivocally valid criticism of this franchise.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, friend of the show Ali Noddy has spoken about
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: this in depth, and I've learned an awful lot from
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: posts that she's made and videos that she's made.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: She made a great video essay on the topic, definitely.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: So Yeah, the glaring thing here because this movie does
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: go a little bit into some of the lore that's
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: basically at foreshadows a lot of what happens in New Moon.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: But there's a scene where Jacob Black again played by
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: a non indigenous actor. He is a member of the
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Quillute Nation. The character is again not the actor, and.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: The Quiliate nation really does live in Lapushe. I think
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: at the time that the movie came out, there were
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: only about seven hundred members of the nation, so it's
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: also a quite small nation.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, So what we learned from this movie is and
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: this is something that Jacob mentions, but that his people
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: are descended from wolves, which is part of Quiliute mythology,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: like that's part of the creation story. But basically what
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: happened is that Stephanie Meyer probably did one second of research,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: learned that and then basically conflated that with Quillute people
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: are where wolves.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: Right to like serve the pre which again it's just
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many issues with how Stephanie Meyer
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: dealt with writing a Qualiute character in general, but the
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: fact that she's also like equivocating a very real group
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: of people with a completely made up group of people,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: you know, inventing a treaty that is presented very matter
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: of factly, as if most of the treaties that have
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: been quote unquote made with indigenous tribes have not been
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: completely disrespected or later renegged on. The movie has no
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: interest in this. I also was reading that she didn't.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, it reminds me of how we talked about
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: Robert Eggers in the vivich oh where there was that
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: interview he did where they're like, how did you research
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: the movie? And he's like, I went to the library
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: one day like that, and that was all he admitted
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: to doing. She does seem to be borrowing from the
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: Robert Egger's School of Higher Education and that she clearly
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: googled a couple of things, never consulted with the quil Nation, right,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: it doesn't seem like visited, like did no due diligence
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: in writing that character. And that also she still somehow
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: got it wrong where I'm pretty sure that at least
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: I was seeing this because there's been a lot of
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: art exhibits and pieces written about it that the tribe
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: is said to have been turned to people from wolves
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: and not like it's not a back and forth thing, correct,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: So she's just projecting, you know whatever, making everything work
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: in favor of the story. The thing that stood out
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: to me and the Taylor Lotner thing is absolutely glaring.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: And there's also this very I think it was more
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: in the New Moon press cycle, so we can talk
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: about it more in that episode. But there was a
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: like round of discourse where Taylor Latner did like a
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: round of press where he was like, actually, I do
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: have some indigenous heritage. I just didn't know before. And
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: on my mom's side, I have some indigenous heritage, which
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: is like, don't do that. Like, and he's a teenager
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: at the time, Like, I'm more inclined to blame the
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: producers of Twilight that probably put pressure on him to
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: do that, to put out a fire. It's all very ugly.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: The thing that stuck out to me the most, though,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: that I wasn't fully aware of, or I guess I
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: hadn't been reminded of in some time, was in terms
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: of how the Quali tribe was able to benefit from
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: the success of Twilight. There was a lot written about this.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: The most in depth piece I was able to find
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: was in Highcountrynews dot com, which is a local paper.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: It is from twenty twelve, so towards the end of
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: the Twilight movies, in which the Quali tribe was holding
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: a public powow and was inviting people to become better
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: acquainted with their culture. And I think we might have
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: talked about this years ago. But what the piece illustrates
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: essentially is the fact that a because the Twilight production
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: was not required to give the Qualia tribe any sort
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: of public acknowledgment or financial compensation, they opted not to,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: and that this tribe, which again consists of around seven
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: hundred people, had to in response to the success from
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: Twilight and have all of a sudden all of this tourism,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: which we should just link the piece because it is
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: very interesting. On one hand, they're like, you know, having
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: tourism money come in is a net positive, But on
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: the other hand, they're coming in because of misinformation, and
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: so they had to develop, you know, for a small
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: group of people who have been historically persecuted, they had
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: to develop a pr job within the nation to sort
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: of not overtly condemned Twilight, but also work to correct
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: the misinformation that Twilight had created. And it's created this
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: entire like net of issues. And something that isn't mentioned
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: in this twenty twelve piece but feels worth mentioning is
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: the fact of, like, why do indigenous groups have to
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: rely on tourism money from you know, majority non indigenous
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: people because of the same capitalist system that is disenfranchising
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: them in the first place, And it's cost all of
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: this genocide and the fact that that is even something
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: that tribes need to interface with is like the result
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: of something far uglier. So just I have one quick passage.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I know him going along. It's just no
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: I love it. This piece is I want to shout
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: out the writer that not an indigenous writer, but who
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: attended this powo and spent a lot of time and
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: spoke with the pr advocates. All this stuff from writer
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: Brint Nelson in July twenty twelve, rites the Quilliad has
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: struggled for centuries to retain their land and culture amid
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: outside threats. In eighteen eighty nine, the same year a
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: treaty squeezed the tribe onto a fraction of its ancestral lands.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: A settler who had fraudulently claimed the remaining plots burned
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: all twenty six houses to the ground. By nineteen twenty,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: the last of the peninsula's wolves had been poisoned, shot
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: or trapped, severing another vital link to the past. They
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: also mentioned how there are many places in the surrounding areas,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: but not on their reservation or land, that profit off
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: of the twilight. You know what it was the word
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: being adjacent adjacent fairness. In twenty ten, a volunteer advisor
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: Angela Riley, director of the American Indian Studies Center at
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: UCLA wrote an editorial in The New York Times, Sucking
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: the Quill Dry, which blasted the ongoing exploitation. In perhaps
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: the worst instance, an MSN dot com film crew working
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: on a virtual Twilight tour filmed the reservation cemetery without permission,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: pairing grainy images of the gravesites of respected elders with
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: a creepy soundtrack. Deeply offended, the tribe secured a quick
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: published ecology and removal of the footage, but the incident
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: prompted a new level of vigilance. Now the Quilliut Nation
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: has an etiquette guide and photography policy, both prominently displayed
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: on its website. So it's just this examination of how
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: this small tribe has had to respond, deal with and
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: try to essentially make the best of this situation that's
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: been thrust onto them by this franchise. And I don't know, Yeah,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: I'm curious what you both feel about that. I mean,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: it's obviously very gross and it takes Stephanie Meyer kind of,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: I think, a very nasty amount of time to even
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: acknowledge this.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: I had come across a piece called Truth Versus Twilight,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: which was a collaboration between the Burke Museum of Natural
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: History and Culture and the Quilute tribe. And it goes
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: through a bunch of different talking points, many of which
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: revolve around the representation of the Quillut nation, and one
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: of the big points made was that the tribe received
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: no compensation to bite. The movie, making over four hundred
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: million dollars at the box office, made back its budget,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: like by over tenfold, Like made so much money. Obviously
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: we know what a cultural phenomenon this saga is, and
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: the Quilli nation saw no direct compensation from that. Again,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: there was no consultation that Stephanie Meyer did, and I
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: meant to look into this further, but I would doubt
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: that the film production did much in the way of consultation.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: So from what I can tell, no, So there's actually
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: it's mentioned in this piece, okay, from the same High
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: Country news piece. When the Twilight craze first erupted, the
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: Quillia lacked a public relations contact and events coordinator and
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: Penn Trials, a community leader who helps run the weekly
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: drum and healing circle, says producer of the first movie
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: randomly called villagers in hopes of securing permission to film
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: a scene on First Beach it was ultimately shot on
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: the Oregon coast instead. The producers eventually visited so eventually,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: well into production, the producers eventually visited La Push to
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: get a better sense of the community. Tribal Secretary Naomi
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: Jacobson says their idea of Qulio kids were upended when
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: they visited her cousin's home. They didn't expect them to
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: be modernized teenagers with iPods and we she says, So
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: this was just like, as with so many depictions of
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Indigenous culture well into now and thankfully there has been
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: more representation of but nowhere near what satisfactory, as we've
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: talked about in many episodes. But just like this is
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: an overwhelmingly white crew coming in based on I'm assuming
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: the false version of history they learned and never re
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: examined in American schools. Yeah, there was no compensation given
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: that I was a well to find and it seems
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: like the first literal person to say hey, could we
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: come to the Push and speak with you was well
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: into the production of the movie, which would have been
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: at least three years after the book came out.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: And it's like just the age old story of like
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: appropriation and benefiting from you know, other people's culture. It
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: saddens me, it outrages me that, you know, the Quiliit
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: people were not consulted, they were not compensated, and like
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: that happens so often, especially as a person of color,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: like we often are not compensated for our work, for
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: our labor. And this could have been an opportunity for
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: the production crew to be educated on the Quiliad tribe
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: and they could have been compensated for their time and
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: for their information. But it is sad that the research
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: was well into production and Stephanie Meyer didn't do a
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: lot of that work on her which is again, like
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: I'm so outraged by that, and like I I think
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: that when I was younger, I didn't I didn't know
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: this information, yeah, you know, and I just thought about like, oh,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: the romance, the story of you know, Edward and and
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: Bella falling in love, and there's so much I mean,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: this is a problematic fave, sadly, but there's there's so
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: much to really dive into. And again, like so many,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: so many issues that could be discussed about this movie.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: And you know, the books that made this movie happen,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: you know, absolutely.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, and and well this is like an issue
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: well return to as we cover more Twilight movies, because
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: it's like Twilight is a problematic fave for millions of people,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: and again, like we're our show is an every fun
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: about like if with very few exceptions, there's a few
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: movies where it's like, if you like this movie, you
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: might be a horrible person, but The Twilight is not
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: one of them. I don't think. I think that there
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: is so much important, valid criticism that was not being
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: had at the time that is important to have now.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: And I'm I mean that's why it's like Ali Natty's
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: work is so wonderful and yeah, well we'll revisit that
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: in our New Moon episode. But just to establish like
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: I know for sure, I was not educated to the
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: point where I could have told you when this movie
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: came out if the Clearly tribe was a tribe that
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: was based on real people or not, because we're so
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: under educated about indigenous issues. And also, Indigenous people aren't
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: a monolith as this movie. I think there's a lot
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: of stuff in New Moon that really, you know, turns
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: Indigenous Americans into a monolith. So we'll go back to that.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: But did anyone else have anything on that issue before
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: we forge ahead to the five hundred other things to
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: talk about.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: Let's forge ahead, I suppose so well. I think a
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: big talking point on our first episode was the discussion
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: around the predatory romance between Edward and Bella being framed
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: as this grand, romantic, beautiful love story and the effect
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: that that had on its audience. Sure, now watching this
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: movie eight years later and like having done this podcast
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: for eight years and like talking about so many movies
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: that do just that as far as framing an abusive
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: relationship or a predatory romance as being romantic, watching this
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: again for the first time in a long time, it
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: felt so heavy handed to me that it almost felt
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: like I was watching satire or like some kind of
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: farcical thing, because I was like, oh my gosh, because
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: I think that we have come long enough of away culturally,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: like the initial release of these books in these movies
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: that I think, or at least I hope most people
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: watch this relationship now and realize just how predatory it
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: is and they're like ooh oh, no, yeah, Because I
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: feel like on our first watch, I was kind of
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: still in the mindset of like, well, I don't know,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: I've always been conditioned that if a man stalks me
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: and love bombs me, and.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: To me, fair, I don't think that we were like,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: it's actually cool that he's we weren't that brand dead
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: There no, but we were coming off of being conditioned
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: by other media that, at least for me, I was
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: like kind of still in the process of like undoing, sure,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: unlearning a lot of that, and now I'm like, oh
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: my gosh, like WOWI wow, this seems this is so
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: outlandish that it feels satirical to me almost. But yeah,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, there's all the things of Edward gaslighting her,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: incessantly stalking her, showing up in her bedroom unannounced, watching
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: her sleep, love bombing her, blaming her for his reaction,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: like kind of like any angry outburst he has, he's like, well,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: you made me so angry. The implication that he's intrigued
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: by her because she's the only person whose thoughts he
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: can't hear, but he's still desperate to know what she's thinking.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: And just like all these weird, bizarro, predatory, scary, abusive
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: relationship dynamics. Also that he's like one hundred years old
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: and she's seventeen. You know, the list goes on.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's honestly, the main initial criticism
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: that we had of this movie that doesn't hold up
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: for me is the age gap, because well, I do
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: agree that a hundred year old shouldn't date seventeen year olds.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: That's not something that happens, and I don't think it's
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: like something that we're risk to do. I guess there
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: were a few things that as I was like revisiting
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: some of the criticisms that I pre I mean the
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: fact like, it's to me impossible to and this is
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: not a brave stance. It's impossible to look at this
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: relationship and be like, seems healthy. Yeah, it's definitely not.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: There's absolutely stocking. The gaslighting, like you're saying, Caitlin is
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: like so over the top that it feels like literally
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: a handout of like this is what a gas lighter
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: might say of like you don't know what you're talking about.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: You must have bonked your head, like you know, just
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: really really unsophisticated stuff. And the thing is, like I
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: still feel that way. I know that there's been a
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: lot of history that looks at the original backlash I
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: guess I'm curious, Yeah, where we all stand on that,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: because there are still a lot of the initial criticisms
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: that I felt about this movie. I still feel like, I,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm not gonna be like after eight years,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: I think that they actually have a great relationship. And
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: also the thing that is never gonna sit quite right
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: with me, even with the reflection on some of I
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: think the more extreme criticisms of Twilight at the time
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: is that this is media that's you know, marketed at
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: middle schoolers and high schoolers, so it's marketed at impressionable people,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: right and with all due respect to the youth, I
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: saw Juno and my takeaway was I have to get
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: pregnant right now because I like Juno and Juno was pregnant,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: and so if there's even a risk that someone is
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: like that and this is, you know, something that you're
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: very emotionally invested in, I think that that is very
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: up for debate, despite what the intent of the author
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: might have been. I think that something I've moved on
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: is movies that a very clearly marketed and intended for
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: adults having unhealthy relationship dynamics, where it's like, Okay, you know,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: if a movie is fully intended for adults and mainly
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: being consumed by adults, and you see an unhealthy relationship
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: dynamic and you say, I want that. To some extent,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: that's on you because you're a grownup, and not every
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: movie can model perfect relationship dynamics, But when you're modeling
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: them to an audience that are probably entering their first relationships,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: it is I think still right. You know, I stand
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: by and I think it is a valid discussion to have.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I think, like definitely, Like when I first
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: read the books, and then also when I first watched
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: the movie, I was completely convinced that this was a
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: beautiful love story. And I was convinced then too that
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 3: everything that he was doing was because he loved her,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: And I didn't find it to be controlling or gas lighty.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: But really, you know, what I mentioned before at the
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: beginning is that I grew up in a very sheltered environment.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 3: I grew up in a religious cult, very like Pentecostal adjacent.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: So the misogyny was, you know, real thick. And you know,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: for me, this was not so far off from what
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: I had known and already experienced, so it was easy
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: for me to make that leap from this very religious
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: upbringing to then you know, Edward being very controlling and
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: gaslighting and stocking her. It just was an easy transition
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: for me. I didn't really question it, which is when
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: I look back at it, very scary to think about,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: and you know, like it was you know, not only
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: was I a part of a religious system, I also
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: lived in an abusive household. So these were you know,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: things that I was seeing often and it was just
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: a mirror of my own experience and that was really
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 3: all that I knew. But it's it's sad that this
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: is what was being sold to, you know, young girls
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: and being told that this is what true love looks like.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 3: You know, if he loves you, he'll he'll follow you
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: and make sure that you're protected. Oh nayneh.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: He'll cut you off from any potential friendship that you
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: could possibly have with anyone of any gender, which is
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: like so egregious, right exactly.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: And there's just this you know codependence that they have.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, thinking about like the end of the movie,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: the thought of moving to Jacksonville just completely like Bella's
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: like freaking out. She's like absolutely like you could never
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: never leave me, and I think about the line in
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 3: the movie you know, so the lion fell in love
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: with the lamb, and it's like so so predatory in nature,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: you know, he is he is a lion and she
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: is this this lamb, And I'm thinking about how I
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 3: don't know if you all knew, but there were a
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: lot of hot topic came up with like a line
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: of like jewelry around the movie.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: Oh I bet they did.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: You'll notice some of the jewelry, like in the scene
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: in the science class when Edward like moves the kind
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: of the slides over to Bella. He's wearing this like
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: leather bracelet with the colin like crest on it. So
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: hot topic was selling all of this jewelry to young kids.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: So not only was there a jewelry with the crest,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: there was also a pair of rings that had lion
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: and lamb on them. And who owned them? I did.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: My first boyfriend gave them to me. And like most
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: like first relationships, it was not a healthy relationship at all.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: There was so much you know, codependence and controlling behavior
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: from both of us. But we were again a part
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: of a system that just ingrained that in us, So
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: it was that much more I guess dangerous for that
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: message to be continually like drilled into my brain. So
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: like when I think about like my relationship to the
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: movie now, it's it's very strange, and it's layered and
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: it's convoluted, and I have to think about, like again
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: my experiences that I had before watching the movie, and
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 3: then how I was as a young adult watching this
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: movie thinking that this was, you know, the love that
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: I was chasing, and then now after as an adult,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: fully understanding that that type of love is so damaging.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: And I myself have been in you know, abusive relationships
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: later on in my adulthood where there was stocking and
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: like restraining orders and it was just a really really
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 3: difficult time for me. And this movie, I do feel,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: like what you said, Caitlin, you have to watch it
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: with the eye of that this is satire. Otherwise, like
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: the indoctrination is again a very very damaging thing.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: Right, But that's the thing, Like it only feels like
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: satire now in like twenty twenty five because when it
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: came out in two thousand and eight, right, it was
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: coming out in the context of this culture that's still
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: very much normalized this type of relationship dynamic, which is
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: very abusive and predatory as being actually romantic. It was
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: coming out in a culture that rewarded men's predatory behavior
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: like that. So it doesn't fly now it feels so ridiculous,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: at least to me now, But in the context of
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: it coming out, it was different enough that it did
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: feel very like, oh my gosh, well this is love.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: I have to model my relationship after this.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I hope it say something positive that this
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: does Riada's satire now, I really hope it does, because
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: I think about, even though Twilight wasn't a complete like
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: hallmark of my youth, I think of like, how many
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: abuse of dynamics that you end up with in your life,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: And you're like, what was modeled to me that made
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: this okay? And then you can trace that up as
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: far as you like of like, if this is something
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: I saw modeled in someone in my life, what was
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: modeled to them? Was it? Media? Was that people? What
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: was it like? And you just and it's usually some
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: really bizarro mix of everything, like media that's withheld from
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: you with media that's given to you. At dynamics, you
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: see dynamics, you see projected like it's also very like
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: extremely complicated, and this is like not the relationship as
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: a twelve year old to aspire to like that is
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: so clear, and I think that that is like a
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: lot of who was reading this book is people who
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: had not you know, I generally feel like media about
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: seventeen year old girls is mainly being consumed by twelve
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: year old girls because they're looking for a model of
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: who do I want to become? Right and what? I
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: don't know. It's so tricky because I think that like
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: Stephanie Meyer is a piece of shit for so many reasons.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: But I always sort of, I guess, struggle with all
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: of these cultural issues that have been around for literally
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: hundreds of years falling onto the back of one work
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: like which I do think there is a tendency to
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: do that I know I've definitely been guilty of. Is
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: like there is this very broad, clickable take of like
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: Twilight is making a generation of young women want to
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: enter abusive relationships, where it is a facet of a
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: much larger problem, which I feel like ties into Stephanie
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: Meyer's background, which is as a devout Mormon, and I
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: didn't know anything about Mormon culture in twenty seventeen when
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: we recorded this episode, and I wish I could go back,
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: but I can't. And I do know a lot more
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: about Mormonism now and about how a lot of Mormon
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: values are sort of telegraphed in this work, and how
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: Stephanie Meyer, you know, I think like a lot of
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: authors who are women. We literally just talked about it
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: last week with Judy Bloom, but she was a stay
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: at home mom when she wrote this book, was not
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: anticipated to be successful. It was wildly successful. But you
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: can see a lot of sort of themes of her
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: life come out in this book in a way that
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: is presented as romance, because that's how Stephanie Meyer has
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: been conditioned to understand romance. So the way Stephanie Meyer
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: talks about indigenous people is a completely different issue that
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: I think there's absolutely no defense of her on definitely
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: in the romance department. I do think that there is
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: a like multi generational thing going on. I don't think
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: Stephanie Meyer is sitting in her in like Dexter's lab,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: petting a cat, being like I'm gonna write the most
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: toxic story ever. I do think that this, like she
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: would repeatedly say this is a story that came to
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: me in a dream, and that to some extent, this
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: is an expression of a fantasy that she has based
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: on her lived experience. As I mean, she went to
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: Brigham Young University, like she was full Mormon, And you
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: can see I think in the like edging like relationship
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: between Bella and Edward, through which a lot of the
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: violent and controlling things we're talking about comes through, are
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: pulled from this, Like I mean, I didn't I knew
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: very little about Stephanie Meyer's biography, but she met her
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: future husband as a child and they had this like
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: long standing crush on each other, but they did not
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 2: spend any time alone until they were twenty. So it's
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: a very like chastity until marriage kind of culture. Yeah,
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: you can see that in Bella and Edward very clearly,
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: absolutely down to the point where if he quote unquote busts,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: Bella will die.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: That's what happens when you have sex, you.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: Die, right, like because they're not married. But then when
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: she's married, she becomes a vampire, and then she doesn't
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: die if he busts, right, but you still don't see
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: him bust but it's implied, you know, like it is bizarre.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, and there's a lot of the contra Points
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: video essay that came out on this topic sort of
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: gets into the history of romance novels and how there
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: has been you know, I think those just like really
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: really complicated, really and it's so tricky because it's like
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: I I look at a lot of this and I'm like,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: I still feel basically the same way I did in
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. I think this is a toxic relationship that
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: is mainly being modeled at preteens, and I don't like that.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: And the one thing I do like is that this
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: sort of wave of pop culture gave way to like
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: dystopian teen fiction, which tended to have women characters in
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: more politically aware, active roles and not bella swan who's
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: like a human screensaver, no offense. But then also the
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: whole idea that there was this undeniable appeal to this
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: story to a lot of very sweet, wonderful normal people
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: people on this call included.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: And people of multiple ages, because I mean, your mom,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: yeah read these books as a full adult.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: There were moms specific Twilight forums because moms didn't want
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: their kids knowing how they felt about Edward Cohen. This
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: is like the history of romance novels too, is like
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: there's always been an implied shame and enjoying them and
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 2: the ContraPoints video I say, God, Lover, it's so long,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: but I rewatched a portion of it to get ready
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: for this, and the thing that stuck out to me
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: that kind of like shifted the way I view this
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: a little bit is the sort of like push and
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: pull that happens between and this is like a pretty
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: heteronal root of structure, but like of feminine fantasy versus
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: what men tend to take away from feminine fantasies. She
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: talks a lot about the idea of surrender as a
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: theme in romance fiction, and you know that is sort
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: of predicated on this idea of there is this expectation
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: of women to take care of everybody. And the part
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: of the idea behind surrender is, you know, while it
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: does read as someone telling you what to do, it
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: can be interpreted and a lot of the appeal of it,
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: based on research, is the idea of not having to
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: do things for everybody, and that explains a lot of
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: the moms who are into this. Right, is like someone
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: who spends a lot of their time, likely because of
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: how domestic work tends to be split up taking care
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: of everyone else, having someone be like, this is what
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: we're doing, and your pleasure is the priority. And so
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: while the romantic dynamics, if you're a twelve year old
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: and you have no understanding of how a relationship you know, should,
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: quote unquote be, can be very dangerous, I do understand
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: the appeal of it in a different context, and like,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: so that's part of why it's so hard to talk about.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: Right, So I watched the whole ContraPoints video bravely, all
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: three hours, basically the same length as Titanic. It's hard
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: to summarize because of its length and how in depth
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: it is, but basically, it looks at Twilight through the
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: lens of sexual desire and fantasy by way of prescribed
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: gender roles, social conditioning, power dynamics, human psychology, and how
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: nuanced and complicated all of those things are. Where yes,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: she acknowledges, the relationship dynamics portrayed in Twilight can easily
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: be considered problematic and predatory. But when you take all
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: of these different things into consideration, and you especially consider
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: patriarchy and something that she calls default heterosexual sadomasochism. I'm
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: not sure if that's a term that she coins or
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: if that's an existing thing, but it's basically this division
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: of sexuality in sexual dynamic into these binary roles such
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: as like masculine and feminine, top and bottom, dominant and submissive,
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: lover and beloved, predator and pray, like all these things,
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: but lumping several of them together in a way that
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: is very very prescriptive of cist gender roles, which is
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: extremely reductive and problematic and ignores the fact that like
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: people can be both masculine and feminine, people can be
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: a switch. They're not just submissive or dominant, you know,
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: you can be both, Like all these things, like all
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: the facets that one person can be or that a
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: relationship can be, where it's not just like this person
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: assumes this role and this person assumes this opposing role,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: and that's how it has to be, Like things are
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: far more fluid than that, And counterpoints basically comes to
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: the conclusion that maybe actually Twilight is kind of a
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: rejection of this, which like I don't know if I
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: fully agree with. But and then also for me, like
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: it is all about the audience consuming this.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: Right, That's the main thing that was like hard for me, Right.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: If you are a full adult who has come to
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: probably not peak emotional intelligence because you know, we're all
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: on a journey constantly, no one's there. Yeah, it depends
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: a lot on the age and maturity level of the
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: person consuming this. And because this saga the series is
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: directed primarily toward children slash tweens slash young teens. Again,
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: it's like, yes, the source material is a product of
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: Stephanie Meyers and so many people's conditioning as far as
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: what a relationship is supposed to look like. But then
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: this movie like reinforces that in a way that's incredibly problematic,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: where we hopefully and definitely now are seen a lot
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: more media that rejects a lot of the very abusive
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: relationship dynamics we see in Twilight and posits healthier versions
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: of young people and people of all ages in relationships.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: But we just weren't there in the you know, mid
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: two thousands and did the late two thousands and stuff
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: when these movies and books were coming out.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: Or really for like ten years after that, Like right, yeah,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: and maybe arguably now, like we're living in a time
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: of regression unfortunately.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the total trad wife thing that's coming
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: back around.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: Oh trad wives. Don't even get me started on trad wife.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, oh god, I agree with you, Caitlin. I
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: think that like, I really enjoyed the ContraPoints take on it,
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: and I learned I learned a lot about the way
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: that romance has been Again, then I think that like
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: does pull in a valid point that I want to
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: get into, is like the idea that media that is
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: targeted at any like, any group that isn't CIS men
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: and CIS white men specifically, will be presented as a
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: danger to society, and that it really requires a close
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: look at the source material to determine is that actually so?
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: But I think that what I learned more from her
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: piece on it was understanding why moms liked it and
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: that actually wasn't too weird. But I didn't feel satisfied
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: as to like, well, but what if you're you know, twelve,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: and you are years away from having any sort of
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: romantic connection with someone, and this is like consuming your life,
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: which was true for hundreds of thousands of young people.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: I did appreciate seeing it, but I think it did
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 2: sort of not quite get to like. But who was
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: this targeted at. Yeah, that brought me to sort of
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: something that I wanted to touch on callback that capacious
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: journal assay I was talking about about not just being
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: ashamed of liking the Twilight Yes series and being like, no,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: I would never like a popular thing that everyone likes,
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: and specifically where there was a resurgence during the early
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: days of lockdown with queer communities in re embracing this.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: I saw this firsthand with Wait, actually, I'm going to
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: read my friend's letterboxed review of Twilight Please to illustrate
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: this point. I feel like Cam will be okay with it. Okay,
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: this is my friend Cameron's review from January nineteenth, twenty
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: twenty five. Okay, yeah, and Cam's about my age and
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: they're I mean, they're the best. I can't believe I've
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: never rated this, obviously, this is one of my favorite
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: films in the entire world. I cannot truly explain what
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: this film did to me as a seventeen year old
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: virgin high school senior who had never kissed anyone and
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: was depressed out of their gourd because they were unknowingly
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: transcend gay and also had an undiagnosed mood disorder. The
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: books in this film were integral to my survival, and
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: I owe Stephanie Meyer's untalented sicko ass mind a whole lot.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: I think that this encapsulates a lot of people's experience
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: with Twilight.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 3: Honestly, Yes, Oh my goodness, thank you.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: Cam.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 3: Cam is their name?
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: Cam? Yeah?
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: Cameron, Yeah, Cameron. I feel this absolutely, like completely, I
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 3: am grateful for like Sephanie Meyer's sick oh mind, because
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 3: I it is like this weird nostalgic like comfort Watch
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: that I continue to like return to again and again
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 3: and again. And I think, Caitlyn, you said that you've
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 3: watched the movie like fifteen times or something like that. Yeah,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 3: and I think, like fifteen that's how much I maybe
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: watched the movie in a matter of like two months.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 3: Like I this movie is always on my TV. It's like, oh,
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 3: i'm folding laundry, let me put on Twilight. Oh I'm
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 3: having a really bad day.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: Twilight.
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: Oh it just got broken up with New Moon because
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: oh right, this bitch likes to lean into the heartbreak.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 3: Do you know what I'm saying. There's a pity, Yes, yes,
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 3: I've even wrote in a Twilight poem or two, and
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 3: a friend of mine we really want to edit an
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 3: anthology on poems based off of Twilight. And I think
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 3: for me, like, one of the reasons why I adore
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 3: Twilight with all of its problems is because it's so
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 3: ridiculous at least you know again now, it's like this
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 3: expected ridiculousness that feels very very comfortable to me. It's
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 3: so much of a go to to me that I
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: can't really imagine my life without it, which sounds like
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 3: really wild, but it's like to me, it's like just
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 3: as important to my survival as my wellview trend. Like
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 3: I need my Twilight to kind of be a like
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 3: healing bomb to the shit of the world, and it's
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 3: like a satirical toxicity that I can somehow kind of
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 3: digest as opposed to the toxicity that is actually happening,
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 3: you know, outside of my door right that I you know,
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 3: really want to run away from. So like, I'm so
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 3: grateful that your friend Cameron wrote that review. It feels
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 3: I feel so seen by that. That's gorgeous they were.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: Brave enough to say. I mean, then I think that
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: that is like a very common experience more recently, is
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: that like, this is also just becoming an adult where
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: you don't have to give a fuck what others think
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: quite as much.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: But yeah, a beautiful space.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: To be in, that sweet release that we've all experienced
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 2: mid thirties.
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 3: It's great.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But there was and again I think this was
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: about ten years ago. What the conversation stopped at was
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: that things that are marketed to and this is a
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: broad umbrellaturn, but at the time that things that are
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: marketed to teen girls are universally made out to be
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: a societal ill and embarrassing and don't admit that you
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: like it, and if you admit that you like it,
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: your cringe, which I do think is true, and that
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: is I think still to this day true. But that
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: was sort of where the criticism stopped and where I
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: appreciate where it's gone, and I feel like where I
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: hope it continues going is there is clearly an appeal
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: to stories like this to and again teen girls I'm
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: using very very generally here, but there's still a very
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: broad appeal to it. And so it's like then the
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: responsibility of their parents and mentors to talk to them
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 2: about why, because again, it's like, it's very easy to
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: be like Twilight is the problem, or I think like,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: you know, whichever bout of media is the problem, then
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: actually interrogating well, where did this come from? Because Stephanie
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: Meyer is a deeply problematic person, but she had no
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: idea that this was going to sell millions and millions
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 2: of copies. I think the more important question is why
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: does this sell millions and millions of copies? Why is
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: it so appealing to us? And how can you talk
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: to the intended audience for this without being an old loser.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: I don't have the answers to these questions, but I
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 2: feel like they're worth asking instead of being like Twilight
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: is bad for youth, maybe, but they like it, so
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: we should figure it out, you know, and like and
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: we liked it. Yeah, So anyways, we're getting into like
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: the queer fan base, which you know, we've talked about
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: on this show many times. A lot of aggressively heteronormative
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: stories have been embrace by queer audiences, and I wanted
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: to get into I don't think we talked about this
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: with Twilight last time, and I don't think it was
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 2: really talked about because there was still Twilight enjoying stigma
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 2: at that time. True, So this is from that capacious
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: journal essay still not as gay as Twilight, which I
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 2: guess was a meme. I did not remember that.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't see that.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: I don't think ever, but I guess it was a
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 2: very online meme from the early twenty tens, you know,
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: And it would often be queer users would post a
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: photo from like blue is the warmest color and then
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: be like, still not as gay as Twilight, and that
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: is that's the meme, basically postmodern affect, nostalgia and queer
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: Twilight renaissance during the COVID nineteen pandemic, and a lot
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: of this was just sort of analyzing to some extent,
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: just the broader shame no matter what your identity was
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: around enjoying Twilight at this time, which we've talked about,
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: but also their queer fandom. So just to share from
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: that quote, a focal pillar of this comeback is queer.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: Many queer fans within the Twilight renaissance are quote unquote
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: gayifying Twilight in the early twenty twenties, Twilight is gay,
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: but this time in a good way. One factor that
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: may have kindled the onset of the Twilight Renaissance is
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: when Kristen Stewart, the actor who played Bella in the
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: Twilight film adaptations, publicly came out as bisexual in twenty seventeen.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: The Twilight renaissance could also be sustained by former fans
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: resisting years of anti Twilight shame with the realization that
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: the mass anti Twilight rhetoric was merely misplaced misogyny that
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: essentially vilified the interests and desires of young women. Another
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 2: variable that might explain the fandom's heightened activity during the
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: pandemic is Stephanie Meyer's release of the fifth installment to
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: the Novels, which gets into basically Twilight from Edward's perspective,
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: but it also looks into a lot of the queer
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: fanfic that existed around Twilight, which I do remember was
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: quite prolific. You know, Edward, Jacob and you can just
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: kind of let your brain do the math from there.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: Why what what happened?
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: Just kidding killing You're not ready, You can't You're not ready.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: I can't tell you.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not old enough to know. I'm not ready.
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll tell you in a couple of years.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: Tell you yeah, tell me when I'm older.
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, I mean I think that this is
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: a story we're kind of familiar with, and the fact
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: that Edward Cullen as portrayed in the books and movies
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: of again, this very I think confusing, Like, no, vampires
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: are straight scary guys. I'm like, have you seen interview
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 2: with a vampire? Like, what do you mean? Yeah, what
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: do you mean? Have you seen any vampire?
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: Have you seen Dracula? Have you seen most of them?
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: Like Edward is actually one of the straighter vampires, right,
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: But it was literally just because you know, if you're
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: like a socially conditioned teenage boy, you're like, vampires don't sparkle,
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 2: that's not scary, you know, And that was literally it.
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: And so the way that gaslers were thrown around on
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: the two thousands, you can imagine how the character Edward
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: Cullin and eventually the actor Robert Pattinson was spoken about,
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: which we can talk about in future installments because I
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: know we're going along. But I do think it's interesting
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: to revisit those press junkets where Robert Pattinson's like, actually,
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: this movie's fucked up, Yeah, in a way that I'm
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: sure he did feel to some extent, but it also
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: does feel like on the defensive of having a future career,
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: because you don't want to be the guy that's like, oh,
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: I totally understand the appeal of this, and I really
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, or not even that, but even just like
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: I respect the fans of this franchise, which doesn't feel
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: like too much to ask, but I think it's like,
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 2: if he's thinking about wanting to go on to star
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: in a Christopher Nolan movie, you probably don't want to
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 2: be Like, the appeal of Twilight makes sense to me.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: Would he be Mickey seventeen if you know years ago
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: he was.
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: Like Mickey seventeen was mid But yeah, no, I mean
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: maybe not. I don't know. And that's the last. Sorry,
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: there's too much. One of the last things I wanted
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: to touch on was that, as we know, Kristian Stewart
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: Robert Pattinson go on to be huge movie stars. Yes
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: they're Mickey seventeen, their Princess Diana, et cetera.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: Their love lives bleeding, their love les bleed.
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, we love that, but I don't know how
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: many people saw it, but it's great and we're gonna
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: talk about it soon. But this movie, for all of
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 2: its faults, was written and directed by women, and the director,
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 2: as we've said, is Catherine Hardwick, who broke through with
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: thirteen and this is sort of her big blockbuster movie,
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: and she does not go on to direct any of
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: the other Twilight movies. I was not sure why this
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 2: reason was. I guess it was because this is I'm
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: pulling from Vanity Fair article from twenty eighteen, but that
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: she chose not to because of just being burned out,
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: and if she wanted to direct New Moon, she would
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 2: have had to basically never stopped working for like five
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: years or something absurd, and so she opted not to,
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: thinking I think logically that, well, if the first Twilight
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: movie does well, I will not have trouble finding work.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 2: And you can imagine how the story goes from here.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: Because we've heard it about one trillion women directors, she
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: actually had quite a difficult time finding follow up work.
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: Even though Twilight made almost half a billion dollars, every
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: other installment was directed by men, and Katherine Hardwick reflected
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: on this later. I guess interestingly, the screenwriter that Katherine
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: Hardwick advocated for, Melissa Rosenberg, who also wrote step up
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 2: another classic, Oh yes, and wrote on Deck and the
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 2: OC so she said two thousands, girly. She went on
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: to write all of the Twilight movies where Catherine Hardwick
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: never came back to the franchise and had a lot
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 2: of trouble sort of finding comparable directing gigs to this day,
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: which you know, for all of the valid criticisms of Twilight,
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: I think is like kind of ridiculous. Where you think
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: about how many male directors we've talked about that have
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: a movie that breaks even and they never want for
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: work for their entire lives. Here's someone who has. And
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 2: she also, you can argue, quote unquote turned around the
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 2: script because there was the original version of the script
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: that was going to be filmed, changed so much about
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: the source material that in some ways, I'm like, this
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: could have been cool, but it is a different story.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: Bella Swan was a long distance runner, cursed and used
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 2: shotguns against vampires who killed her father. Whoa And then
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: she wrote jet skis being chased by the FBI, And
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: you're like, well, that's not Twilight.
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: That's not even the Yeah, but.
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 2: I would see that movie, but that's not Twilight. Oh yeah,
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: So that.
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: Was Katherine Hardwicke's script, Like that was her interpret Oh.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, that was some random guy who was
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 2: hired to adapt Twilight being told we don't want only
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: girls to see this movie, so you need to take
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: this source material and make it appealing to men.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: Basically, Wow, so guns and jet skis.
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 2: Jet skis from the FBI. Yeah, And I was really
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 2: struggling with that because I was like, that sounds like
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: a fun movie. But yeah, when Catherine Hardwick came on,
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 2: she's just like and she read the script and she's like,
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: I don't love this. And then she read the book
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: and she was like, I don't understand how this is
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 2: the same story. And then she advocated for a woman
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 2: to write the story and write it more faithfully and
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 2: for better and for worse. I think Stephanie Meyer had
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: a lot of input in the movie during its production.
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, she's in cameos.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I was about to say, the diner scene, here's
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 3: your breakfast, Steffie. Yeah.
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: She also in the wedding scene later on in like
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: the later.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 3: Movies, Yes, she's in the wedding scene. Oh and Breaking
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 3: Dawn part one, Yeah.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: She's m night scheimalaning all over.
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: She's Alfred Hitchcocking.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is really funny, cause I don't think I
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 2: knew it once I was an adult. But the first
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 2: time I saw the movie, I definitely didn't know who
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: Stephie was. Here's your breakfast, Steffie, but it's so obvious
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: once you know. I enjoyed it anyways. Yeah, Catherine Hardwick,
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: I think is maybe slightly a better director than this
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: movie deserved, and I don't appreciate that having directed it
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: seems to have derailed her career to some extent. Twilight
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 2: didn't deserve her, but they got her, and I think
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: that that's why the first movie is a lot of
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 2: people's favorites, because she's she's pulling from the indie playbook.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: She's playing Radiohead during the damn credits.
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 3: The soundtrack is like something else. It really is amazing. So,
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 3: you know, as a former cult kid, like I wasn't
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 3: allowed to listen to secular music, and then when you know,
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 3: I started to leave that system, I was watching Twilight
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 3: and the Twilight movie was like the first time I'd
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 3: ever listened to Paramore before.
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, oh my god.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 3: That was my introduction to Paramour and Muse. It was
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 3: just like this again like rum spring U this like revelation,
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 3: this epiphany of all this amazing music that I'd never
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 3: heard before, and I felt so like rebellious. And yeah,
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 3: the soundtrack is amazing. Robert Pattinson is also on the soundtrack.
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 3: He sings two songs as well.
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: Wait, what I didn't I don't know this.
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: I don't think I remember that you did not know this?
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 3: Okay, no, no, yes, Robert Pattinson sings he's a musician.
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: What Yes, I knew he was a musician. I didn't
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: know he sang in this God.
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 3: So there are two of his songs. The first one
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 3: is the restaurant scene with the mushroom Ravioli. His song
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 3: is playing in the background, Oh my God. And then
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 3: the song that is playing in the scene in the
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 3: ballet studio when Edward is, you know, sucking the venom
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 3: out of Bella's wrist, that's also Robert Pattinson's song playing Whoa.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: That's so punk rock, sucking out blood to your own music. Yeah,
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: so I'm seeing Yeah, never think by Robert Pattinson, never
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: think Whoa? Good for him? Good for him? This also
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: got so many teenage girls into Claude Debussy which does
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: crack me up. Like the girls were playing Debussy in
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: the car this summer, Claire to Loon, let's go it
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 2: was yes, Paramore, Lincoln Park, Claude to be.
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, oh right, because it's that scene. I feel like
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: that's the only vaguely specific thing that ever gets mentioned
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: in the movie where she goes to Edward's bedroom. She's like,
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: you have so much music, and then we don't know
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: what any of it is except for she hits play
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: and it's that, and then she's like, oh wow, yeah, that's.
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: A good shit.
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 3: Claire Daluon is great.
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Just to revisit the Twilight one soundtrack, we also
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 2: have and I think it. I know that like Saint
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 2: Vincent and eventually ends up there in future installments. But
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 2: we've got muse Paramore, Lincoln Park, Iron and Wine and
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 2: Robert Pattinson. Those are the artists that I recognize.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 3: Iron and Wine, Flightless Bird, Like, wow, that is a
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 3: song like no other. H yeah, and that song is
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 3: actually then there's like a slower version of it that's
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 3: then played in the wedding scene in Breaking Dawn Part one.
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: Why do I feel emotional hearing that? That's the paradox
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: of Twilight. You're like, I know that this is bad
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: for me, but it gets me emotional and what is that?
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 2: What is that? And we don't know.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I think I'm still trying to figure
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 3: out why I love this movie so much, Like why
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 3: do I prance around the world with like Twilight t shirts?
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 3: I'm not completely sure, Like maybe I need to talk
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 3: to my therapist about it next week.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: No, I really do think that, like some of the
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: most thoughtful, wonderful, progressive people that I know are obsessed
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: with Twilight. Yes, so there's something going on, there's something
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 2: in the water.
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 3: It's just so campy.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: It's heroin. It's our own personal brand of heroine cannot
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: be explained. I feel like I have a similar It's
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: how I feel about Titanic, and that relationship isn't quite
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: so problematic, but I would still argue that it's pretty
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: problematic between drag and Rose. Sure, and I've seen this
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: movie going on two hundred times now and it's my
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: comfort movie. And I also love that Contra points in
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: her video references Titanic constantly, so that made me feel
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: all warm and fuzzy inside.
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 2: But millennial canon, you one must reference Titanic.
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just like, I'm not even generally compelled by
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: romantic stories, but every once in a while, something like
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: Titanic or something like Twilight, I'm just like, I can't
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: stop watching and we just don't know why.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: Whether we like it or not. Twilight is a generational text.
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 2: And that's not to say that it's good, right, but
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: it is a generational touch point, and I think that
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 2: it is worth engaging with. Yeah, because there's something about
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: it that keeps some of the great minds of our
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: generation really really really loving it. Yeah, there's something to it,
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: and it is ultimately kind of like a weird Mormon fantasy.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but maybe that's.
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 2: The shit we like and we should be asking why.
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: And that's what we've done for two hours here today.
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 2: It does pass the factel tests. It does pass the fact.
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 2: The last thing I want to say is Renee is
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 2: a bad mom. Yeah, sorry, she's a bad mom. Yeah.
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: I know that she's supposed to seem quirky, but I'm like, no,
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 2: this is quirky in this context. Is negligent.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she doesn't answer her phone, she like loses her
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 3: phone charger too, Like, how's your kid supposed to contact you. Yeah,
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 3: call them from a payphone.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: Your kid is getting run over by vans in parking
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: lots and attacked by vampires constantly.
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if your kid has a chronic condition of
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: falling down. Yeah, you're just gonna We've heard in a
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 2: very slippery climate.
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: Slippery it's cold and wet there, slippery place.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 3: I'm so curious if, like if Bella has what's called
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 3: Ailer's DOWNLM syndrome.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: Mm.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because there's there's different subsets of it, but one
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 3: of them is like hypermobility, and a lot of the
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 3: times people with Ailors downland syndrome are prone to more
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 3: like accidents. I haven't been formally diagnosed with Ailor's downland syndrome,
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 3: but I do have hypermobility, and I do exhibit some
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 3: of the clumsiness that Bella has. Like a lot of
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 3: things fall out of my hands quite easily. So, like,
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 3: I'm so curious about if that's like Ailor's download syndrome,
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 3: like coated you know, in some capacity. Interesting But anyways,
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 3: that's just yeah, fun fact.
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: I guess No, I didn't know that, right, I mean
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: it makes you wonder about different attributes that certain characters
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: are imbued with right, right, that like probably have some
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: underlying thing that the author.
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 3: Didn't didn't intend fully.
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: Understand, or just like observed in other people but didn't understand,
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: like oh that person has a disability, or you know,
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: whatever the case may be.
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 2: Speaking of disability. While Gil Birmingham, who plays Billy Black,
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 2: is a native actor, which is better than we can
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 2: say of one Taylor Lautner, he is playing a disabled
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: character and is not himself disabled, which I think is
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 2: always worth calling out. Certainly, which isn't a criticism of
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 2: Gil Birmingham, because I know indigenous actors have enough difficulty
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 2: being cast in the first place, but that is again
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 2: just fully a failure of the production to prioritize any
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: sort of inclusivity in their casting. And outside of that,
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is a very white story. There is
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 2: some diversity in Forks, Washington, but the characters who are
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 2: not white tend to have mysteriously small roles, such as
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 2: I think, Eric, Angela and Tyler I think are the
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 2: three non white students, and they comparatively to like Mike
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 2: and Dana Kendrick I don't remember Jessica, they get way
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: more screen time, They get way more focus. It's the
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 2: white students we're paying attention to.
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as we were hinting at earlier, the movie does
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: pass the Bechdel.
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 2: Test not well, No, but it does not well.
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: But it's there. But again, that's that's nothing compared to
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: the Nipple scale, the Bechdel cast nipple scale, in which
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: we rated the movie examining it through an intersectional feminist
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: lens zero to five nipples. M I wonder what we
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: gave it on the first episode. I do not remember.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna look it up, but you I won't tell you.
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 2: You have to decide, and then I'll hold this secret.
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, even though we've had a much more nuanced conversation
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: than the first go around.
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: It's a tricky motherfucker. It really is.
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is.
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: But I still don't think this movie has a net
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: good impact on society, or at least not for young
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: people watching it. I think for people who maybe watched
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: it as a young person and took the messaging from
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: it which was reductive and harmful, and then had to
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: unlearn a lot of stuff. But again, as we discussed,
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: that's not just Twilight's fault. That's a whole cluster of
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: movies and other media that were presenting a very similar
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 1: toxic dynamic and framing it as ideal and romantic and
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: something to strive for. So this is just one entry
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: of many things that did that. But this was so
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: popular and so consumed by so many people who were
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: adversely affected by it. But it does have this weird
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: cultural legacy. I don't know. The representation of Indigenous people
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: is absolutely abhorrent and there's no defending it whatsoever, and
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna focus on that as the basis for my rating.
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's an intersectional podcast that makes sense.
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, So it's gonna be one and a half
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: for two nipples. I think I'll say one and a
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: half nipples, but it is. I'd say it's like an
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: eight out of ten on the Caitlin Rompometer.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: I mean the baseball scene hits.
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, one and a half nipples, and I'll
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: give them to a spider monkey, no specific spider monkey,
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: which is spider monkeys.
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 2: I guess in general, I'm gonna go one nipple. I think,
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 2: and I say that feeling weirdly defensive of this movie
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 2: at different points in the episode. I think that this
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 2: movie is cultural imp I mean, I can't say what
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 2: the cultural impact is on the whole. I do think
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 2: that this franchise has a really weird, interesting history that
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 2: continues to either delight or haunt us, depending on how
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 2: we feel about it. I think that, you know, it's
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 2: clearly going to be with us for a while. People
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 2: still have a lot of interest in talking about it
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 2: and revisiting it. And I also, you know, this is
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 2: something that a lot of young people were ashamed to
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 2: enjoy and therefore could not start a lot of conversations
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 2: about why that was at the time. I think it
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 2: is like really interesting. I mean, Bella, you know, bless
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 2: her heart, she's giving nothing. She never has been, she
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 2: never will be. And I you know, that's who Bella is.
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 2: And I know that someone's gonna yell at me about that.
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 2: And you know, I do think that there is this
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 2: very conservative fantasy to some extent that has played out
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 2: throughout these movies of Bella does find some agency, but
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 2: it's mainly through marriage and motherhood and you know, all
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: this stuff. We all we'll talk about this in later episodes.
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 2: For this, you know, I did see myself in Bella
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 2: to some extent as a kid where it was like
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: I didn't feel lighting. In the book, they sort of
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 2: harp on this a little more of like Bella has
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 2: never been recognized as attractive or someone who's interesting, and
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, she's somewhere where she's the most interesting,
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 2: attractive person in the world, and who what misfit wouldn't
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: be pulled in by that? And I think that a
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 2: lot of people who felt out of place, that fantasy
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: is so appealing to be desired and for you to
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 2: be often in a dangerous way, but in a dangerous
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 2: way that not a lot of people understood in our generation,
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 2: but like to be wanted. And I think that that's
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: part of why I understand the appeal and part of
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 2: what still doesn't sit well with me because of the
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 2: intended audience, where you know, it's not Stephanie Meyer's job
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 2: to raise us, but I do think it is like
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 2: the responsibility of others and the larger culture to not
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 2: just reinforce someone's horny dreams, worst instincts. But there's still
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 2: so much getting back to what we've been talking about, Yeah,
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm docking mainly for indigenous representation and the
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 2: one visit to the library approach and no further compensation
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 2: or acknowledgement of the people whose culture you are profiting
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 2: off of directly and misunderstanding and misrepresenting. There's just absolutely
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 2: no excuse for that. The feminist discourse around this. I'm
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 2: gonna just be like, go with God, whatever you like there.
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: I have read every take in the world, and I
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 2: don't know which is right to me. I liked Bela
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 2: because I was like, I wear these shoes, but ultimately,
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 2: on revisit, I do think she's boring. I think that
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 2: Edward's like, I don't see what you're thinking because she's not.
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 2: But ultimately I think Team Jacob was the right team.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 2: One nipple and I am going to give that nipple
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 2: to the truck. I thought the truck was cool. Oh sure,
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 2: I liked the truck. I don't care if it's not
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 2: like other girls truck, I would drop that truck.
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, awesome, Dean Ally, how about you nipples?
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 3: Nipples? I'm thinking I think I go for like one
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 3: and a half basically, Like you know, for a lot
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 3: of the reasons that you both have mentioned, you know,
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 3: the indigenous representation is lacking so many different problems with
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 3: this movie. Portraying a toxic relationship as an ideal. It's
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 3: really hard to give this movie anything more than one
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 3: and a half nipples. And I think for me, one
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 3: of the most like iconic scenes in the movie is
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 3: the baseball scene with Alice and her pitch with her leg.
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, the little kick, Yes, oh my gosh,
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: what is she doing?
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 3: It's honestly, it's fucking beautiful. And I think that's when
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 3: I realized I was bisexual, was when I watched Alice
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 3: pitch during the baseball scene, and I think that's like
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 3: a really beautiful thing. So I think at the end
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 3: of the day, like you know, when I was younger,
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 3: I was team Edward, but in reality, like I'm definitely
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 3: like team Alice.
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 2: Like all the way, Alice is an awesome character.
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 3: I like her, yeah, and like even like when I
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 3: think about her relationship to Jasper, which we didn't really
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 3: talk about, but like I feel like she is kind
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 3: of more of like the dom and the relationship she's like,
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 3: I think she's like takes control and I really like
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 3: that about her. And I see myself more and more
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 3: in in Alice than any other character in the movie. Sadly,
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 3: I cannot lift my leg like that when I pitch.
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 3: I don't even pitch. I don't play sports. I do
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 3: visit the library though. But yeah, I think I'm going
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 3: to give one nipple to Alice and her leg and
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 3: then the other half nipple. I think I'm going to
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 3: give it to mister Molina, the teacher, because it's a
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 3: fellow educator.
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're so right.
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 1: No relation to Alfred Molina.
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 3: But I know how crazy you are about Alfred Molina. Yes,
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 3: but yeah, I think I'm going to give half a
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 3: nipple to mister Molina because as a fellow educator, like
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 3: he's just so earnest about science and you know, really
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 3: getting these students like invested in STEM. So I really
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 3: appreciate that about mister Molina. Yeah, I think he says
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 3: like compost is cool, and it is compost is cool.
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 3: So I'm gonna give half a nipple to mister Molina.
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, hell yeah, amazing, you know, L like, thank you
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: so much for joining.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 3: Us, thank you for having me, yes.
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 2: And thank you for choosing the exact right shirt.
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 3: I mean I always do, but especially today.
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: Tell us where people can find you online? Check out
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: your work plug.
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 3: Away so You can find a lot of info about
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 3: me on my website at dnlliantigua dot com. You can
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 3: follow me on Instagram at nowfel thirteen and that's n
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 3: e l l f e L L one three And yes,
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 3: I've had that screen name and I've used it for
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 3: everything since I was thirteen. And yeah, I do a
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 3: lot of like poetry readings and events locally, but I'm
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 3: also traveling to like universities, and you can find all
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 3: the info about my events on my website. My upcoming
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 3: events are mass Poetry Festival in Salem, Massachusetts, coming up
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 3: at the end of May, and I don't know when
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 3: this podcast will be coming out, but I think.
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 2: Before then, maybe before then.
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing that I do. I'm one of
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 3: the headlining poets. Hey, oh my god, so come and
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 3: listen to my poetry and I'll be on a panel
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 3: as well with some other LATINX writers. So yeah, that's
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 3: where you can find me and learn more about me.
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 3: Oh also, I almost for I have two books. My
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 3: first one is Ugly Music, and my second collection came
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 3: out last year with Copper Canyon Press. It's called Good Monster,
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 3: and you can find those where books are sold be
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 3: like Bella, buy it independent booksellers.
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's Bella's true triumph of Twilight one. She
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 2: shops local.
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, she says Amazon, No, thank you, I'm going
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: into a brick and mortar store and buying local. The
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: best way to support our show is to subscribe to
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: our Patreon aka Matreon, where we release two bonus episodes
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: every single month, centering an amazing genius Brilliant plus access
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: to the entire back catalog, which is nearing two hundred episodes,
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: so lots of hashtag content over there at patreon dot
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: com slash Bechdel Cast. Also check out our link tree
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: link tree slash Bechdel Cast for information about different things.
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 1: If we have upcoming shows that'll be there. If we have,
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: we have our letterboxed link on there, all kinds of stuff.
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: And with that, let's irrevocably get in our rusty old
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: red pickup truck. Uh huh and zoom zoom into the
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: Twilight Sky. Okay, I don't know, Bye bye. The Bechdel
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lickterman, edited by Mola Board.
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo and merch is designed by
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus and a special thanks to Aristotle Assevedo. For
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash Bechtelcast