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Let's Talk Witches: Wanda Maximoff · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Andie and Samantha. Welcome to Stephane never
0:07
Speaker 1: told you protection of iHeart Radio, and today we are
0:19
Speaker 1: thrilled to once again be joined by our friend, colleague,
0:23
Speaker 1: sometimes researcher on the show, Joey. Thanks so much for
0:27
Speaker 1: joining us show. We were so excited. I for sure, Yes.
0:31
Speaker 1: We had so much fun in the last episode you
0:34
Speaker 1: were on where we talked about America, Shavaz and U
0:38
Speaker 1: and in that I learned so much. Oh my gosh,
0:42
Speaker 1: are vital for our Marvel information needs. And we teased
0:47
Speaker 1: that you would be coming back in a very much
0:51
Speaker 1: uh looked forward to episode on Wanda MAXI mof a
0:55
Speaker 1: k a. The Scarlet Witch, and that is this episode,
0:58
Speaker 1: and we are very excited. There's a lot of ground
1:00
Speaker 1: to cover. There's a lot of ground to cover. Yeah, yeah,
1:04
Speaker 1: thank you. I'm excited to be back. Wanda is one
1:09
Speaker 1: of my favorite characters. I'm always excited to talk about her. Um.
1:14
Speaker 1: I think this is gonna be a little less of
1:15
Speaker 1: a deep dive into our character and more of a
1:18
Speaker 1: just talking about how she's she's been portrayed over the
1:22
Speaker 1: years and how she's been portrayed in the m C
1:25
Speaker 1: which is a interesting topic. There's a lot of facial
1:32
Speaker 1: a lot of pregnant pass and interesting facial expressions. Yeah,
1:36
Speaker 1: because honestly though, I only know one perspective. So when
1:39
Speaker 1: you brought uh, Wanda, did you know? And I was like, no,
1:44
Speaker 1: I didn't what And as I am about to embark
1:48
Speaker 1: on this journey for anybody who would be newbies like myself,
1:52
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to hold onto our seats because it's
1:54
Speaker 1: a whole lot of new information for sure. For sure.
1:58
Speaker 1: I'm just yes, and I do want to say I know.
2:01
Speaker 1: I sent you some messages Joey after your episode came out.
2:04
Speaker 1: But people have waded an. They are very excited. People
2:06
Speaker 1: do love this character, very pass Oh my gosh. And
2:13
Speaker 1: you just went to comic con right and you saw something?
2:17
Speaker 1: Did I did? Yes, I saw a lot of Wanda's Um.
2:21
Speaker 1: I did go to a New York comic con this
2:23
Speaker 1: past weekend. Um on Sunday, I was dressed up as Wiccan. Yeah,
2:28
Speaker 1: Wanda Max on sun So if you saw me, I
2:32
Speaker 1: don't know. It was funny. I got a message like
2:36
Speaker 1: on TikTok right after that was like, oh my god,
2:38
Speaker 1: I saw you, and I was like too intimidated to
2:41
Speaker 1: say hi, and I was like, what, Like, I don't know,
2:44
Speaker 1: I think at the least intimidating person on the planet.
2:46
Speaker 1: But yeah, anyways, but it was it was super fun.
2:50
Speaker 1: I took some fun pictures with a bunch of Wanda
2:53
Speaker 1: and Wanda and Vision caused players. That was very cute.
2:57
Speaker 1: So I had a lot of fun. Um, and yeah,
3:00
Speaker 1: I'm super excited to this episode. I do love Wonda Maximom.
3:03
Speaker 1: She is one of my favorite characters. I'm about to
3:07
Speaker 1: criticize her character a lot, so I just want that
3:10
Speaker 1: right up about I do love her. She was one
3:12
Speaker 1: of my favorite characters. Um. That being said, there's a
3:16
Speaker 1: lot of interesting kind of things to talk about I
3:19
Speaker 1: think with her, which I would love to kind of
3:22
Speaker 1: go into. Yeah, and I think that's a great point
3:24
Speaker 1: to make, is that you can love something and you
3:26
Speaker 1: can love a character, um and still critique, have criticism,
3:31
Speaker 1: criticisms of it, wanted to be better. Um. With that
3:33
Speaker 1: being said, UM, just a heads up so listeners know
3:38
Speaker 1: what to expect. Joey, what are some of the kind
3:40
Speaker 1: of heavier things we're going to get into. Yes, So, um,
3:44
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk a little bit about Antyro Monty
3:46
Speaker 1: racism in particular, and also anti Semitism and some of
3:51
Speaker 1: the history of that, um and also kind of how
3:54
Speaker 1: disappeared and a lot of like pop culture over the
3:57
Speaker 1: last couple of decades. So heads up about that. Yeah, perfect, Yeah, yeah, um,
4:05
Speaker 1: And before we get into this, can you give a
4:08
Speaker 1: brief like history of how you got into Scarlett Wish?
4:12
Speaker 1: Do you remember when you were introduced to her while
4:14
Speaker 1: you fell in love with her? Yeah, that's an interesting question.
4:19
Speaker 1: I don't totally know. Um. I think, like I remember
4:23
Speaker 1: her showing up in a lot of the like cartoons
4:26
Speaker 1: that I watched. I think like that the old like
4:28
Speaker 1: X Men cartoon, and like I think she should I
4:32
Speaker 1: don't know. I grew up watching like the the old
4:35
Speaker 1: like two thousand Excited movies. I think she's even mentioned
4:39
Speaker 1: or like I was born in I'm really sorry, I
4:54
Speaker 1: really know you are great. I'm just having a crisis.
4:59
Speaker 1: Keep Yeah, totally understandable. But I think I got more
5:07
Speaker 1: into comics when I was like a teenager and she
5:10
Speaker 1: was again, like Young Avengers was one of the first
5:13
Speaker 1: series that I read, and she's a huge part of that,
5:16
Speaker 1: and I thought I've always been really into like witches
5:20
Speaker 1: in particular, so I thought that was really cool. Um
5:23
Speaker 1: then ended up finding out she's actually Jewish technically in
5:26
Speaker 1: the comics, which I thought was cool. UM later found
5:30
Speaker 1: out she's actually supposed to be romani to which I
5:31
Speaker 1: want to talk a lot about that and kind of
5:34
Speaker 1: how that has been portrayed um in the comics and
5:37
Speaker 1: then not portrayed in the movies. But yeah, I think
5:40
Speaker 1: I think she's a She's a really fun character. She's
5:42
Speaker 1: again like she's been very popular lately. I think for
5:46
Speaker 1: very good reason. She's a super powerful female character, which
5:52
Speaker 1: is super fun. She has a really cool look. I
5:56
Speaker 1: think the scarlet Witch is a really cool name. And again,
6:00
Speaker 1: like I think witchcraft is always something that is super
6:02
Speaker 1: popular in pop culture. Um, it's also becoming more and
6:07
Speaker 1: more popular as like a spiritual practice for a lot
6:10
Speaker 1: of people, particularly I think young people and women in
6:13
Speaker 1: queer folks. That's actually something really cool. I think I've
6:16
Speaker 1: seen about her character recently is I've seen a lot
6:20
Speaker 1: of queer folks in particular that have kind of lashed
6:23
Speaker 1: onto our character because she's she's a very cool kind
6:25
Speaker 1: of I don't know, I think she could very easily
6:29
Speaker 1: be read as an allegory for a lot of that
6:30
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So yeah, yeah, we love that kind
6:34
Speaker 1: of thing. We better not get on that rabbit ol though,
6:37
Speaker 1: because we got a lot of stuff to talk about. Definitely.
6:41
Speaker 1: Can you give us a bit of background about this
6:44
Speaker 1: character for sure. Yeah. So Wanda Maximf originally appeared in
6:50
Speaker 1: X Men number four in March nine four, so she
6:54
Speaker 1: was showed up as a character pretty quickly in the
6:57
Speaker 1: X Men series, And she originally was a member of
7:00
Speaker 1: the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, which later was changed her
7:04
Speaker 1: Brotherhood of Mutants because I think that was a little
7:06
Speaker 1: too on the nose UM, which was led by Magneto.
7:11
Speaker 1: That was kind of the group of mutants that were
7:14
Speaker 1: opposed to the X Men. They were more focused on
7:18
Speaker 1: creating a mutant supremacist group rather than assimilating into X Men.
7:24
Speaker 1: Is super interesting. I'm not going to get into that,
7:27
Speaker 1: but yeah, she's she's part of the Evil quote unquote
7:31
Speaker 1: mutant group UM. Unlike Magneto and a lot of the
7:34
Speaker 1: other members, she and her twin brother Quicksilver were more
7:38
Speaker 1: reluctant villains. The duo originally joined the group after they
7:42
Speaker 1: were driven out of their village due to their powers,
7:45
Speaker 1: and Magneto saves the twins from an angry mob, and
7:48
Speaker 1: they sort of saw the Brotherhood as their best chance
7:51
Speaker 1: at safety and protection from you know, a lot of
7:55
Speaker 1: the anti mutant and then also which later I'm gonna
7:58
Speaker 1: get more into their both of Romani ancestry, and a
8:03
Speaker 1: lot of that's tied into kind of how they were
8:05
Speaker 1: seen by the community they're from. They're from. They changed
8:11
Speaker 1: it a couple of times, um either Serbia or a
8:15
Speaker 1: fictional country called Transia, which basically is supposed to be Serbia,
8:22
Speaker 1: So I don't know, Eastern Europe, Yeah, but yees. So
8:26
Speaker 1: over the years, if you know anything about XPN comics,
8:30
Speaker 1: you know there's two major again, there's two major mutant
8:33
Speaker 1: kind of ideologies. One is led by Professor X and
8:36
Speaker 1: it seeks to assimilate into non mutant society, and the
8:40
Speaker 1: other is led by Magneto, and he Magneto kind of
8:44
Speaker 1: goes back and forth sometimes which leans more in the
8:48
Speaker 1: human kind is never going to accept mutants. We need
8:51
Speaker 1: to just completely separate from the human world. And then
8:55
Speaker 1: sometimes he also is more like we need to be
8:58
Speaker 1: the superior, you're like, dominant group over human kind. Magnetos
9:03
Speaker 1: another fun character. What Scarlet which ever introduced in any
9:08
Speaker 1: of the movies of the X Men movies, just the
9:10
Speaker 1: wondering if I've missed it somehow. I know obviously Quicksilver
9:13
Speaker 1: was a few times. But yeah, I think she's like
9:17
Speaker 1: really briefly mentioned at one point. Okay, but I actually
9:22
Speaker 1: know that I think about I think it was just
9:24
Speaker 1: like I remember her in like the cartoons. Yeah, she also,
9:28
Speaker 1: I mean the Scarlet which and Quicksilver are interesting. I
9:31
Speaker 1: think some of that actually was because of like the
9:34
Speaker 1: weird like Box owning some characters and Disney owning it
9:37
Speaker 1: others because technically they are also yeah, because they do
9:43
Speaker 1: become adventures at one point, so I think, I don't
9:46
Speaker 1: know there parent trapped it, I guess, and put one
9:50
Speaker 1: wa with one group and one with the other descriptor parents. Yeah, yes,
9:59
Speaker 1: they have actually do the twins become Avengers. They switch
10:04
Speaker 1: sides and kind of from that point they're they're both
10:09
Speaker 1: sort of they go back and forth between being antiheroes
10:13
Speaker 1: and sometimes villains. They both, you know, they're separate characters
10:19
Speaker 1: that kind of do their own thing. Uh. But yeah,
10:23
Speaker 1: I Wanda is one of those characters. I think she
10:26
Speaker 1: is definitely motivated by a tendency to want to help people.
10:31
Speaker 1: That being said, however, I think she is. You know,
10:36
Speaker 1: the X Men are an allegory for a lot of things. Um,
10:42
Speaker 1: I think or I don't know, have claimed to be
10:45
Speaker 1: an allegory for a lot of things anybody who's sort
10:48
Speaker 1: of outside of mainstream society, whether not be people of
10:50
Speaker 1: color or queer people. Um. How effective that allegory is
10:54
Speaker 1: is another story. But um, I think Wand is a
10:58
Speaker 1: really interesting character, kind of similar to Magneto, and that
11:01
Speaker 1: she has an identity that's sort of beyond her mutinite
11:04
Speaker 1: edity that kind of makes her a target. Already Magneto,
11:08
Speaker 1: he's again he's to wish he was a Holocaust survivor
11:11
Speaker 1: uh the scarlett which she's a Romani woman who um
11:15
Speaker 1: and obviously Pietro also is Pietro's her twin. I don't
11:18
Speaker 1: know if I said his whole name. Um, he's also Romani.
11:22
Speaker 1: But I don't know. Wanda tends to get targeted along or,
11:25
Speaker 1: which I think is interesting. So I'm confused already. Here
11:42
Speaker 1: we go, sorry because because like, okay, so this take
11:49
Speaker 1: is saying that Magneto just protected them but from what
11:54
Speaker 1: I was gathering. I thought Magneto was possibly the father. Yeah,
11:58
Speaker 1: we're getting into that, Okay, yeah, this other introduced. Yeah.
12:04
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen eighties, I believe they revealed that
12:09
Speaker 1: Magneto is actually the twins father. The twins parentage was
12:14
Speaker 1: sort of a mystery for a while. They're adopted parents
12:19
Speaker 1: were Romani and they grew up in a Romani community,
12:23
Speaker 1: but they didn't know who their birth parents were, so
12:26
Speaker 1: Magneto it was their father, who again is Jewish Holocaust survivor,
12:31
Speaker 1: and their mother is a woman named Magda who was
12:34
Speaker 1: a Romani Holocaust survivor who had died in childbirth. This
12:40
Speaker 1: again was their backstory then for like the next thirty years,
12:44
Speaker 1: and then because it's Marvel, they have changed it again recently. Um,
12:49
Speaker 1: this gets a bit complicated. I don't know. I think
12:53
Speaker 1: they did this to try and match it up with
12:54
Speaker 1: the movies a bit more. But around two thousand five
12:59
Speaker 1: they ad it so that Magneto is not actually their father. Also,
13:02
Speaker 1: they're not mutants technically anymore. There powers come from like
13:08
Speaker 1: a weird combination of genetic experiments and also inherited magical abilities. Um,
13:15
Speaker 1: their adoptive parents, who are Django and Maria Maximof were
13:19
Speaker 1: actually their biological aunt and uncle, and their mother was
13:21
Speaker 1: a Romani woman named Natalia max Mof. I don't think
13:25
Speaker 1: they ever say who their father was. Again, this was
13:28
Speaker 1: like they did this in there were like thirty years
13:34
Speaker 1: of comic books of them being related to Magneto and
13:36
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, building off on that relationship.
13:40
Speaker 1: So I'm not totally sure. It's it's Marvel again, who's
13:44
Speaker 1: to say what they're doing? And our classic Marvel disclaimer
13:49
Speaker 1: we didn't give it, but it's so confident to try
13:52
Speaker 1: to explain these characters when they change quite frequently, rebooted, reinvented,
13:58
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. Yeah, honestly, I totally forgot that
14:02
Speaker 1: they did that until I was researching this character again
14:05
Speaker 1: because I again, who'say, they changed things all the time.
14:10
Speaker 1: But yeah, so technically now they're no longer mutants, which
14:15
Speaker 1: I don't know they were part of the X Men
14:17
Speaker 1: for years, but whatever. Um, they're also no longer Jewish.
14:22
Speaker 1: That was ever like a huge part of their character.
14:24
Speaker 1: But again, like at least for me and I know,
14:27
Speaker 1: like a lot of other Jewish comic book fans, they
14:29
Speaker 1: were always like some of the few like very explicitly
14:33
Speaker 1: Jewish characters that Marble had. Um. They are however, still
14:36
Speaker 1: romani which again when we talk about the Max Moms, Um,
14:42
Speaker 1: there's a complicated history of stereotypes about romany people that
14:48
Speaker 1: have made their way into their story and then also
14:53
Speaker 1: within the movie is kind of taking away the identity
14:56
Speaker 1: and whitewashing them. So yeah, so let's get into that more, um,
15:05
Speaker 1: because I know you have a lot. Okay, yeah, so
15:08
Speaker 1: then they all they have a new back story yet,
15:10
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna need you to go ahead and start
15:12
Speaker 1: at the beginning of that because it was sure. Yes,
15:18
Speaker 1: so as of right now, they are not mutants. They
15:22
Speaker 1: were experimented on as children. I guess again, like if
15:28
Speaker 1: you've seen the movies, I think they were sort of
15:30
Speaker 1: trying to match it up with thought. Um. They however,
15:32
Speaker 1: also did inherit powers from their family, which again I
15:38
Speaker 1: don't think I've gotten into Amanda as a reality bender.
15:42
Speaker 1: She can do magic and all these things they've always
15:46
Speaker 1: sort of interpreted like, um included magic into her powers,
15:50
Speaker 1: but as of the story now her power has come
15:55
Speaker 1: from like these magical abilities rather than genetics. I guess.
16:00
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever the X Men thing was supposed
16:03
Speaker 1: to be. Um Cook Silver is uh. He has superspeed.
16:08
Speaker 1: I don't know if they've totally explained how that factors in,
16:11
Speaker 1: but whatever, it's still somehow connected to magic. So, according
16:15
Speaker 1: to this new story, powerful magic abilities have run in
16:18
Speaker 1: their family and various that their ancestors have taken on
16:21
Speaker 1: the title of Scarlet Witch, including their mother Italia um Or.
16:26
Speaker 1: Also their grandfather was the Scarlet Warlock, which is the
16:30
Speaker 1: male version of that um. I don't know. I feel
16:34
Speaker 1: like they could have just kept it as Scarlet Witch,
16:35
Speaker 1: but whatever gender roles I guess. Okay, so they're no
16:40
Speaker 1: longer mutants they we have we have jumped from. This
16:44
Speaker 1: is how I'm going to put this in my box.
16:46
Speaker 1: They've jumped away from X Men to Avengers to being
16:51
Speaker 1: tested but also already enhanced, which is what we saw.
16:54
Speaker 1: And I know this is not the same as comic song,
16:56
Speaker 1: but this is how I'm connecting it. In one division
16:58
Speaker 1: where it finally comes out she was always a witch
17:00
Speaker 1: and that her background has always been witch because even
17:04
Speaker 1: when she was a child, the reason she and her
17:06
Speaker 1: brother were saved because of her Yes, magic, right, Okay,
17:11
Speaker 1: I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Now, what's his name?
17:14
Speaker 1: Pietro may have had speed but magic. Yes, um, it's
17:23
Speaker 1: somehow also connected to magic. But also I think part
17:26
Speaker 1: of it was on the experiments. It's okay, maybe that's
17:34
Speaker 1: not supposed to be like that. Okay, I'm going to
17:37
Speaker 1: assume that. I'm gonna pretend like I know that. Okay,
17:40
Speaker 1: And so Magneto is now out of the picture. Yes,
17:43
Speaker 1: Magneto is now out of the pictures of the comics
17:46
Speaker 1: going forward. I don't know how I feel about. But
17:49
Speaker 1: they're not Jewish anymore. They're not Jewish anymore. Yes, they
17:52
Speaker 1: were never very like Magneto has always been a very
17:54
Speaker 1: explicitly Jewish character. They've always been, you know, had Jewish ancestry.
17:59
Speaker 1: But yeah, I again don't really agree with I don't
18:05
Speaker 1: love that decision to kind of do associate them with
18:08
Speaker 1: Magneto and all that. But right the cannon right now? Okay,
18:13
Speaker 1: and there they still remain reminded of for some because
18:19
Speaker 1: they changed it to Cycopia for the movies. I don't
18:22
Speaker 1: know why. It's a whole different comments. Yeah, I've caught up.
18:27
Speaker 1: I've caught up. I think I now I have the
18:29
Speaker 1: parallel universes going through because you need to know doing
18:33
Speaker 1: one division, I was texting any going what the hell
18:35
Speaker 1: just happened? There's a lot of questions. I had so
18:40
Speaker 1: many questions it was hilarious. Which this is where we're at.
18:44
Speaker 1: So I feel like, is one division coming back to
18:48
Speaker 1: the canon of the newer canon, the two thousand and
18:53
Speaker 1: five era canon, I think so. Yeah, So that's again
18:56
Speaker 1: kind of I'm gonna talk a bit later about some
18:59
Speaker 1: of the two thousands, early two thousand's two thousand kinds
19:03
Speaker 1: of comics that inspired one division that are interesting. I
19:08
Speaker 1: think that delves a lot more into also some of
19:10
Speaker 1: the criticism of like misogyny and how that plays a
19:16
Speaker 1: role in one character. Yeah. Um, But before that, this
19:20
Speaker 1: is probably a good place to talk about kind of
19:23
Speaker 1: the history of witchcraft and how like whiches have been
19:27
Speaker 1: portrayed in film, which, again I think it's a really
19:30
Speaker 1: interesting topic. I love all things with which is that
19:36
Speaker 1: being said, there's a bit of a complicated history behind it.
19:41
Speaker 1: When she was introduced in nineteen sixty she was called Scarlet,
19:45
Speaker 1: which she was called Scarlet, which yes, okay, because according
19:49
Speaker 1: to what I've seen, he wasn't actually called Scarlett, which
19:52
Speaker 1: until one division, which was and then it really embraced
19:55
Speaker 1: her witchcraft. Correct the TV non comm person here, Oh
20:01
Speaker 1: and he's got a finger up. Well. Also that that
20:03
Speaker 1: I do know is based on legal ease that I
20:07
Speaker 1: love talking about. But that was when Disney was like, oh,
20:10
Speaker 1: guess what we twentieth century now double I think that
20:18
Speaker 1: on the purpose story wise, but it was very much like, oh,
20:21
Speaker 1: we own these characters, now use that name. I love this,
20:31
Speaker 1: but I love which is, so let's get into it. Yes, yes,
20:33
Speaker 1: I was gonna say I did love I don't want
20:36
Speaker 1: to spoil anything. I'm not going to say which show,
20:38
Speaker 1: but one of the shows they didn't drop the M word,
20:42
Speaker 1: which it was a little funnier from like from the
20:47
Speaker 1: legal perspective, having the it was it was very much
20:49
Speaker 1: like we could say this now and not get but yeah, anyways,
20:57
Speaker 1: which is the other side of that. So, yes, one
21:03
Speaker 1: does a witch. That has been part of her character.
21:06
Speaker 1: So that's getting kind of how that is, you know,
21:09
Speaker 1: originally as like her being perceived as a witch, but
21:12
Speaker 1: really her powers were routed more in science and then
21:14
Speaker 1: now they're taking the more witchcraft are out, which marvel
21:20
Speaker 1: all we sort of will blur the lines between science
21:23
Speaker 1: and witchcraft, which I think our magic, I guess, which
21:25
Speaker 1: it can be fun. Um. But yeah, that being said,
21:31
Speaker 1: her character is wrapped in a lot of very complicated
21:35
Speaker 1: and intersecting stereotypes about witchcraft, and rather than using her
21:41
Speaker 1: on screen appearance as an opportunity to unravel a lot
21:43
Speaker 1: of these and potentially subvert a lot of these stereotypes,
21:47
Speaker 1: they kind of just decontextualized her character, um and whitewashed her.
21:53
Speaker 1: So yes, again one is character was originally supposed to
21:58
Speaker 1: be Jewish and Romani. I think the Romani identity kind
22:03
Speaker 1: of is a lot more where a lot of these
22:05
Speaker 1: criticisms took place, but really quick with the history of
22:08
Speaker 1: Jewish people in witchcraft, which I think obviously I think
22:11
Speaker 1: a lot of people understand like the history of misogyny
22:13
Speaker 1: and uh, you know heteronormativity that is involved in the
22:18
Speaker 1: history of like the witch hunts. Um. I don't think
22:20
Speaker 1: as many people know that anti Sebotism was also a
22:23
Speaker 1: huge factor. Um. From an article from hay Alma that's
22:28
Speaker 1: called the Anti Semitic History of which is the quote
22:32
Speaker 1: is misogyny was undeniably a major motive for the execution
22:36
Speaker 1: of somewhere forty a hundred thousand people across three centuries,
22:40
Speaker 1: of which hunting in Europe. However, the popular construction of female,
22:43
Speaker 1: which is as we think of them today, didn't truly
22:45
Speaker 1: pick up until fourteen fifty to seventeen fifty prior to that,
22:50
Speaker 1: which was a Catchel term that referred to a wide
22:53
Speaker 1: variety of accused heretics or generally non conforming others such
22:58
Speaker 1: as Jews, and a lot of the myths and stereotypes
23:02
Speaker 1: when we think which has actually come from anti Semitic stereotypes.
23:05
Speaker 1: Another quote from that article, after twelve fifteen, Jews were
23:10
Speaker 1: required to wear distinguishing cone shaped Judean hut I can't
23:16
Speaker 1: speak whatever language that is, I'm sorry, which made Jew's
23:20
Speaker 1: visible targets for anti Semitism. So that's where you get
23:22
Speaker 1: kind of the witches hat stereotype. The article also pointed
23:26
Speaker 1: out that the fear of quote unquote, the witches Sabbath
23:29
Speaker 1: was directly a reference to the Jewish Sabbath or Shabbat.
23:33
Speaker 1: This is a whole other topic, but we can totally
23:36
Speaker 1: go into how wicked. A lot of kind of neopagan
23:40
Speaker 1: practices have appropriate to this term. Now from Jewish culture.
23:46
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get into that. That is a
23:47
Speaker 1: whole other discussion. UM. So yeah, there's definitely an interesting
23:53
Speaker 1: history there. The misogyny element does exist obviously or less
23:58
Speaker 1: of your ethnic background. Men were often persecuted as which
24:01
Speaker 1: is few sort of fell outside of the patriarchal norm.
24:05
Speaker 1: But if you were a woman of color, if you
24:08
Speaker 1: were a Jewish woman, if you were any other ethnic
24:10
Speaker 1: minority in Europe, you were more likely to be targeted. UM,
24:13
Speaker 1: and men too. It wasn't just women if you were
24:15
Speaker 1: part of that other identity. So then Romani people on
24:19
Speaker 1: the other hand, UM, This definitely I think is like
24:23
Speaker 1: a lot more complicated of history. UM. From a National
24:28
Speaker 1: Organization Women article from UM, the quote the media offers
24:34
Speaker 1: two stereotypes of Romani woman, the beggar who is dirty
24:37
Speaker 1: and exploiting social welfare and a hyper sexualized magical being
24:41
Speaker 1: who threatens the patriarchy. And again, hyper sexualized magical being
24:45
Speaker 1: who throwns the patriarchy could very clearly be describing one
24:49
Speaker 1: to max Off. Yes. Additionally, I think there was a
24:55
Speaker 1: really interesting quote from Georgia State University dissertation written by
25:01
Speaker 1: Melanie Covert on the representation of Romani people in contemporary media,
25:06
Speaker 1: and she called anti Romany racism the last acceptable form
25:09
Speaker 1: of racism, which I think is incredibly telling. She also
25:13
Speaker 1: goes on to state that this racism is perpetrated through media,
25:16
Speaker 1: leaving many with at the very least questions regarding Romani
25:20
Speaker 1: lives in existence and at the very worst, racist ideologies
25:24
Speaker 1: that were created centuries ago. So again, Wanda embodies lot
25:28
Speaker 1: the stereotypes. She is hyper sexualized, her magic is rooted
25:33
Speaker 1: in a lot of vague ideas about chaos and destruction
25:36
Speaker 1: and stereotypes about Romani people having magical powers. That being said,
25:43
Speaker 1: I think there was room for Marvel to sort of
25:46
Speaker 1: rework this story in a way that could have been
25:50
Speaker 1: a very interesting, like subversion of a lot of these stereotypes. Obviously,
25:55
Speaker 1: Marvel has been around for decades. There are plenty of
26:01
Speaker 1: very problematic versions of marginalized characters that you know we're created, uh,
26:07
Speaker 1: particularly around the sixties. Kill Monger from Black Panther was
26:14
Speaker 1: one character. If you look up his comic book character,
26:17
Speaker 1: it is very different Shoan Chi. I also read an
26:23
Speaker 1: article about I don't know as much about Chong Cheese
26:26
Speaker 1: comic book history, but I think his father in particular
26:29
Speaker 1: embodied a lot of very like orientalist stereotypes Moon Night
26:33
Speaker 1: even not so much the Jewish stereotypes, but definitely like
26:37
Speaker 1: a lot of the you know, orientalism around Egyptian mythology
26:41
Speaker 1: and history. And when they made that show in particular,
26:44
Speaker 1: they did higher an egyptology consultant and included Egyptian creators
26:50
Speaker 1: to work on the series. They did do this like
26:52
Speaker 1: a lot of other series like Shuan chi Um Black Panther. Obviously,
26:56
Speaker 1: so it's interesting that rather than kind of taking this
26:59
Speaker 1: route with the maximum offs, they just cast you white
27:03
Speaker 1: actors and completely erase the fact that they're not supposed
27:07
Speaker 1: to be white. They're not supposed to be Yeah, it's
27:12
Speaker 1: so that was an interesting decision, I think, agreed. I
27:17
Speaker 1: don't know if interesting is the right word. Obviously, there's
27:21
Speaker 1: also exceptions. I do think people tend to forget. Doctor
27:24
Speaker 1: Strange was another movie that was like, very heavily rooted
27:27
Speaker 1: in Orientalism. The comics are very heavily rooted Orientalism. They
27:31
Speaker 1: still whitewash the ancient one in the first movie, which
27:34
Speaker 1: again people I think people forgot that very quickly. But yeah, mhmm. Yeah,
27:41
Speaker 1: I feel like to have that kind of history in
27:45
Speaker 1: that background and just not included at all. I've always
27:49
Speaker 1: felt like Wanda's character in the m c U UM
27:55
Speaker 1: who I love in a lot of ways, but I've
27:57
Speaker 1: always felt like she was sort of like attack on,
27:59
Speaker 1: like she's like this here now, but it's never like
28:03
Speaker 1: it's always sort of like that's the vibe I got
28:05
Speaker 1: anyway that she was sort of will put her in
28:08
Speaker 1: there now, oh, take her out. She's not useful right now,
28:11
Speaker 1: but definitely doesn't give her like a consistent storyline or
28:16
Speaker 1: like when they do with one division, then the next
28:18
Speaker 1: thing is like one division never happened. Um, I don't
28:21
Speaker 1: know that's I've always felt like they sort of just
28:24
Speaker 1: use her however they need for usually the white man's story,
28:29
Speaker 1: the main white male character hero, and she's just like
28:32
Speaker 1: which I will say, I think that is an issue
28:35
Speaker 1: that started in the comics. You know, she was a character.
28:38
Speaker 1: She again it's a story written it was written by
28:42
Speaker 1: white men in the sixties, and she has a tendency
28:46
Speaker 1: to be very hyper sexualized. She's been a love interest
28:49
Speaker 1: for basically every every male character. Um. She wasn't really
28:54
Speaker 1: created as like a feminist symbol. I think that is
28:56
Speaker 1: something that people kind of took on later, which again
28:59
Speaker 1: I think that's really great. I think she is a
29:01
Speaker 1: character with a lot of potential. But I think it's
29:06
Speaker 1: interesting that instead of leaning into that potential like Marvel
29:09
Speaker 1: has with some of their other characters, they've just kind
29:11
Speaker 1: of continued that narrative of her being the sort of
29:14
Speaker 1: like almost like an object within within other people's stories.
29:19
Speaker 1: There was another really interesting kind of going back to
29:21
Speaker 1: the whole Romani representation piece from that dissertation I mentioned earlier,
29:27
Speaker 1: the covert had said while revelation of her Roman origins
29:32
Speaker 1: may or may not lend itself to the quote unquote
29:35
Speaker 1: mystical trope associated with the Roma, the fact remains of
29:39
Speaker 1: the writers from Marvel Comics created a superhero with Roman
29:42
Speaker 1: origins that remained unacknowledged her backstory, and the comics highlights
29:46
Speaker 1: the persecution and prejudice based by her parents, who are
29:48
Speaker 1: both Roman and Jewish. Again, kind of going back to
29:50
Speaker 1: that earlier backstory, I think Magneto is a fantastic character
29:55
Speaker 1: to talk about anticism temutism, But there again, who wanted
29:59
Speaker 1: character They just sort of moved on from that back
30:02
Speaker 1: to the quote. Despite her special powers, her backstory has
30:05
Speaker 1: the potential to highlight the history of the Roma people
30:08
Speaker 1: in a realistic way, bring their story into the notice
30:11
Speaker 1: of mainstream America and others worldwide. Again, her kind of
30:15
Speaker 1: identity is mutant and being kicked out of her town.
30:17
Speaker 1: Her and Pietro. Again, Pietro was also whitewashed. I feel
30:21
Speaker 1: like people focus a lot on Wanda, but again Pietro
30:23
Speaker 1: was also Romani, also awaitewashed, but their story of being
30:27
Speaker 1: kicked out of their town and persecuted for their mutant
30:29
Speaker 1: abilities really reflects that kind of history. When casting the movie,
30:37
Speaker 1: this character was cast as a blonde haired, blue white woman,
30:41
Speaker 1: a possible but not common look for the majority of Roma.
30:45
Speaker 1: I think also again with that, like with a lot
30:48
Speaker 1: of the anti Semitism to you know, there's a discussion
30:51
Speaker 1: there I think to be had about, you know, obviously
30:54
Speaker 1: not ignoring the characters Jewish identity isn't the same thing
30:58
Speaker 1: as whitewashing. But it was a little weird to cast
31:00
Speaker 1: somebody who is like very like blonde hair, blue eyed,
31:05
Speaker 1: kind of traditional European beauty standards looking person, especially again
31:12
Speaker 1: kind of going back to the whole history of which
31:14
Speaker 1: is and how a lot of those looks are rooted
31:17
Speaker 1: in anti Semitism. But yeah, and also the weird back
31:20
Speaker 1: and forth accent. Oh my god, that I don't know
31:24
Speaker 1: was that was really weird. That was one of the
31:28
Speaker 1: most baffling things. I'm like, why did she have an excent? Now?
31:31
Speaker 1: What's happening? Yeah? Okay, there was like a I forgot
31:37
Speaker 1: where it was from, but there was an article I
31:38
Speaker 1: was reading about it was like all the issues with
31:41
Speaker 1: one division, and one of the ones they pointed out
31:43
Speaker 1: was like, there's like literally a line where like the
31:45
Speaker 1: Pietro comes in, He's like, what happened to your accent?
31:48
Speaker 1: And they were like, yeah, what did happen to her accent?
31:50
Speaker 1: Like all right, okay, next, I guess. But again, yeah,
31:59
Speaker 1: going going back to the US, there was a screen
32:00
Speaker 1: rat article about this topic that pointed out that literally,
32:05
Speaker 1: if Marvel had just picked a creative team that had
32:09
Speaker 1: Jewish and Romani women, maybe we would have gotten a
32:12
Speaker 1: more in depth character. I honestly I might be wrong
32:17
Speaker 1: on this, don't quote me, but at least all of
32:18
Speaker 1: the Scarlet Witch comics that I've read have all been
32:20
Speaker 1: written by white men, which I think is interesting. Some
32:23
Speaker 1: of them have been great stories, but I really do
32:26
Speaker 1: love her in Young Bender's Children Crusade Um. I really
32:31
Speaker 1: did love also the more recent thousand fifteen Scarlet Witch Run.
32:35
Speaker 1: But again they're all stories written by white men, which, yeah,
32:39
Speaker 1: there's going to be problems of that happens. I think
32:58
Speaker 1: one in particular is an interesting character to talk about
33:02
Speaker 1: when we talk about like which is an entertainment media,
33:05
Speaker 1: because again there is that cultural history of ethnic minorities
33:10
Speaker 1: in particular being persecuted by which hunters. I think when
33:16
Speaker 1: one of the things that I found is because obviously
33:19
Speaker 1: like the idea of a witch and like the character
33:22
Speaker 1: trope of a which sort of having a resurgence and
33:24
Speaker 1: having like a positive resurgence. That being said, I think
33:30
Speaker 1: like if I were to ask you guys to tell
33:31
Speaker 1: me what you think of when you think of like
33:34
Speaker 1: a witch, there's probably like two main may just that
33:38
Speaker 1: come to mind. One is sort of the like traditional
33:41
Speaker 1: like Disney villain evil, which they're typically older a lot
33:46
Speaker 1: of times, big nose, dark features, fun, little intersection of
33:52
Speaker 1: you know, misogyny and also racism and anti semitism um.
33:56
Speaker 1: And then the other side of it, I think is
33:59
Speaker 1: like the newer trope, which is this like reclaimed feminist,
34:02
Speaker 1: which um, you know, you got like Sabrina and even
34:05
Speaker 1: like her mine, the kind of like American horse story
34:09
Speaker 1: COVID sort of thing, which is usually younger, more conventionally attractive.
34:17
Speaker 1: And again I think the m c us portrayal of
34:20
Speaker 1: Wanda maximum Off very clearly falls into this this sort
34:24
Speaker 1: of second category. Yes, so it's it's interesting. I think
34:28
Speaker 1: even with one division, it was interesting because I think
34:31
Speaker 1: to some extent Agatha sort of fallows into the first category,
34:35
Speaker 1: which again I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like and
34:39
Speaker 1: again like the actress who Playser is white and she's
34:41
Speaker 1: not Jewish, but she's like, you know, a little bit older.
34:44
Speaker 1: She's got kind of like curly hair and like darker
34:49
Speaker 1: hair versus like the blonde, blue eyed, younger woman who's
34:53
Speaker 1: like the good witch quote unquote. Now that you think
34:56
Speaker 1: about it, I think about the witches that are in hiding,
34:59
Speaker 1: so they're very attractive when they're in hiding, and then
35:01
Speaker 1: when they reveal their true selves, they are that stereotype
35:05
Speaker 1: that you talked about. So even today, like that two
35:08
Speaker 1: opposites come together in one and like, okay, we're going
35:10
Speaker 1: to really go into it and say it's both of
35:12
Speaker 1: these things instead of having an in between at all,
35:16
Speaker 1: say that what's it's like the the Mother Gothele from
35:21
Speaker 1: like Rapunzel. I feel like it's always the fun one
35:24
Speaker 1: because I'm like, why is it that? Then when you
35:27
Speaker 1: it's revealed she's older, she's or she's she see evil,
35:30
Speaker 1: you see that she's older and kind of less attractive.
35:34
Speaker 1: I how a bunch of people get mad at me
35:36
Speaker 1: on TikTok because I pointed out that a lot of
35:38
Speaker 1: the kind of evil female characters and Harry Potter, like
35:43
Speaker 1: if you think of like Beltricks and all that sort
35:45
Speaker 1: of fit more into the you know, big curly hair
35:50
Speaker 1: and like something about whenever, like they bring up that
35:52
Speaker 1: Snap has like a really big nose. I was like,
35:54
Speaker 1: all right, that's a weird thing versus you know, I
35:58
Speaker 1: don't know, like Hermione and gen who I love. They're
36:00
Speaker 1: great characters, but you know they're definitely like the younger attractive. Yeah, yeah,
36:05
Speaker 1: you're right. And then I think about the Witch. Favorite
36:11
Speaker 1: movie is literally like she's pretty, and then when she
36:13
Speaker 1: would build herself the way she turns old very quickly,
36:16
Speaker 1: it's gotta like huh, Yeah, that is We've talked about
36:19
Speaker 1: that many times with the fear of aging in the
36:21
Speaker 1: ages and being single and evil. That's true. Yeah, even
36:29
Speaker 1: I mean all of those things, even multiverse of idness.
36:31
Speaker 1: I was like one of the things when she she
36:34
Speaker 1: starts getting evil and like her features get sort of
36:39
Speaker 1: uglier and the fingers were turning black and it was
36:42
Speaker 1: it was a lot of weird kind of figured Yeah. Yeah, interesting.
36:51
Speaker 1: So again, obviously, I mean witchcraft is making a resurgence,
36:57
Speaker 1: Like idea of identifying this witch making a resurgence at
37:00
Speaker 1: something that I think anybody should be able to reclaim.
37:03
Speaker 1: That's totally understandable. I love that kind of stuff, like
37:05
Speaker 1: I'll you know, I love the whole witchy kind of
37:10
Speaker 1: spiritual stuff. But that being said, I I think it
37:14
Speaker 1: is one of those things that I'm not saying as
37:18
Speaker 1: many people kind of get into still unpacking, like a
37:21
Speaker 1: lot of people someplacement biases when we come to what's
37:25
Speaker 1: a good witch versus a bad witch? Where we even
37:29
Speaker 1: centering in conversations about witchcraft in the contemporary era, like
37:33
Speaker 1: even as like a spiritual practice, a lot of times
37:35
Speaker 1: it's still white women a lot of times as still
37:38
Speaker 1: younger white women. So there's a conversation there, right. It's um,
37:45
Speaker 1: I do think like a lot of this that you've
37:47
Speaker 1: talked about, no one really talks about. And I think, ah,
37:53
Speaker 1: I was of course watching a Hocus focus to the
37:55
Speaker 1: other day and I had a moment of like, wow,
37:56
Speaker 1: you know, like people died, a lot of people, Oh
38:01
Speaker 1: my god, which is and we just sort of, I
38:06
Speaker 1: don't know, are just like yeah, but I like, I
38:09
Speaker 1: like which is. So I get like you embracing it too,
38:12
Speaker 1: but I think it is important to remember the history
38:15
Speaker 1: behind it. It's definitely it's interesting and I think I'm
38:21
Speaker 1: on like whitchtok on TikTok a lot, and it's it's
38:25
Speaker 1: interesting because I think there's two sides of it. There's
38:29
Speaker 1: a lot of people that are still you know, with
38:31
Speaker 1: any community, there's we live in a pretty white supremacist world.
38:36
Speaker 1: People are going to have racist biases, people are going
38:38
Speaker 1: to have sexist biases, people are going to have agist biases,
38:43
Speaker 1: pteronormative all of that. I think again, I bun TikTok
38:48
Speaker 1: a lot. So I think I have been seeing more
38:50
Speaker 1: and more of people like calling it out and kind
38:52
Speaker 1: of wanting to start those conversations. But yeah, even hocus focus,
38:56
Speaker 1: that's another one where it's like they're older and they've
38:59
Speaker 1: got these I don't know, they're they're not traditionally attractive
39:04
Speaker 1: quote unquote women. Um, I guess except for Sarados Parker.
39:08
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's there those that part of the
39:12
Speaker 1: narrative still exists, and I think it's interesting, right, It's
39:17
Speaker 1: interesting that people don't really want to talk about it. Yeah.
39:20
Speaker 1: The conversation itself is that even within communities that want
39:24
Speaker 1: to be progressive and our counter culture, in some way,
39:28
Speaker 1: it still has a lot of problematic situations. The origins
39:33
Speaker 1: of witchcraft came back from the racist ideals of uh
39:39
Speaker 1: enslaved people's practices, like when we looked deeper and deeper
39:43
Speaker 1: about the originations of who's claiming what, and because it
39:47
Speaker 1: became popular at some point in time, white people took
39:51
Speaker 1: it over and said this is what we did. And
39:52
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, you're being racist because you're again discounting
39:56
Speaker 1: where it came from, the origination, why it was needed,
39:58
Speaker 1: why it was practiced, and you're making from someone's lifestyle
40:02
Speaker 1: and calling it evil because that's what you want to
40:04
Speaker 1: inherently call it. And then you're embracing it, making it
40:06
Speaker 1: even worse. So there's this whole level of connotation when
40:10
Speaker 1: it comes to the origination of where did this come from?
40:13
Speaker 1: And why did we claim it evil? Where did this
40:15
Speaker 1: come from? And when we try to reclaim it? And
40:17
Speaker 1: I say we and that I don't necessarily claim to
40:20
Speaker 1: be into witchcraft or anything. I'm also I've seen a
40:22
Speaker 1: lot of what's talking. I love it. I'm like, yeah,
40:24
Speaker 1: I give me all of that. Um, but like an
40:27
Speaker 1: understanding that we reclaiming something but ignoring the actual fact
40:31
Speaker 1: and behind the scenes is as problematic as as anything else.
40:36
Speaker 1: And that's that bigger conversation because yeah, it became a
40:40
Speaker 1: thing to target women, but where it came from was
40:42
Speaker 1: to evil and and to belittle and to diminish marginalized
40:47
Speaker 1: people like the enslaved people to begin with. So let
40:49
Speaker 1: it just began as a whole bad racist practice began
40:53
Speaker 1: to add to them, soogety of like, Okay, we can
40:54
Speaker 1: use this against women, let's do it this way. Two,
40:59
Speaker 1: now we're reclaim it. But this again, it's problematic because
41:03
Speaker 1: you're ignoring the origination of what this conversation is. So
41:08
Speaker 1: not only are you insulting what may should have been
41:11
Speaker 1: the story to begin with, whatever that original story is,
41:14
Speaker 1: but you're also uh insulting the origination and the downfalls
41:19
Speaker 1: and uh the trauma that it is caused because people
41:22
Speaker 1: want to claim this to be one way or another,
41:25
Speaker 1: and then white watching that and then making it a
41:28
Speaker 1: hobby like it's just so deep into what this conversation
41:33
Speaker 1: could be, and then having this here, like we can't
41:36
Speaker 1: even enjoy it to reclaim it because you are ignoring
41:40
Speaker 1: and dismissing who it should be by and who it
41:44
Speaker 1: was made for. Definitely, I think definitely. I mean I
41:48
Speaker 1: touched on this very briefly. But also something that I
41:51
Speaker 1: found really interesting is also the anti timitism aspect of it.
41:55
Speaker 1: And I think this is also why I like, even
41:57
Speaker 1: though Wando is never a very she was never the
42:01
Speaker 1: same level as like Magneto or even like other characters
42:04
Speaker 1: like even Wickan her son is like very very Jewish um,
42:07
Speaker 1: which that's the other story, which part of that is
42:10
Speaker 1: because he's raised with another family. We're not gonna get
42:12
Speaker 1: into that now. But anyways, I think I've always been
42:14
Speaker 1: very like very attached to Wanda being a Jewish character
42:18
Speaker 1: because I think people tend to forget the fact that
42:21
Speaker 1: anti Semitism was a huge factor in the witch hunts. Um. Again,
42:27
Speaker 1: I totally respect people that practice wika. I think it's
42:30
Speaker 1: really interesting religion. Um, there is a huge history of
42:35
Speaker 1: anti Semitism and cultural appropriation from a lot of Jewish practices,
42:39
Speaker 1: and the kind of erasure of the fact that anti
42:44
Speaker 1: Semitism again was a huge factor in the witch hunts,
42:48
Speaker 1: that you know is a part of wika and as
42:50
Speaker 1: part of the history of that practice. Um. That again,
42:55
Speaker 1: I think there's more and more people kind of speaking
42:57
Speaker 1: up about it, more and more individual creators. But it's
43:00
Speaker 1: still something that all of these things go hand in hand.
43:04
Speaker 1: Like it's right, everything's intersexual, yeah right, and is a
43:10
Speaker 1: layer upon layer, and that maybe the very reason why
43:12
Speaker 1: they didn't focus on it's kind of which being Jewish,
43:17
Speaker 1: because they're like, we can't add too mini layers for her.
43:19
Speaker 1: She's a woman now, So I'm going to believe it
43:22
Speaker 1: that they keep everything's a little quieter. Oh yeah, no,
43:26
Speaker 1: I mean it was. It was really weird. So when
43:28
Speaker 1: I when I talked about them taking away her Truish identity,
43:31
Speaker 1: they never they put there's one shot in Civil War
43:35
Speaker 1: where they put across in her room and it's really
43:38
Speaker 1: weird because it's really subtle, but it was like, why
43:40
Speaker 1: why did you do that? Like why that was an
43:42
Speaker 1: intentional thing to do? Also, I mean the other side
43:46
Speaker 1: of it, technically they changed their back I get that
43:49
Speaker 1: they had to change their back stories to make it,
43:51
Speaker 1: you know, fit into the m c U. Cannon, But
43:54
Speaker 1: they had Pietro and want to join a Nazi group
43:58
Speaker 1: despite the fact that Gun in the comics there parents
44:02
Speaker 1: are Holocaust survivors, which the interesting decision. I don't know.
44:10
Speaker 1: I thought, that's another one that I think I don't
44:12
Speaker 1: see people talking about as much, But that was definitely
44:14
Speaker 1: what that I was like, huh okay, um, Yeah, it's yeah,
44:21
Speaker 1: there's a lot of decisions here that I could lose
44:23
Speaker 1: by the question questioning. Definitely. Definitely we're speaking of one
44:30
Speaker 1: of the things we talked about pretty briefly in our
44:33
Speaker 1: American job As episode with You and then also Multiverse
44:36
Speaker 1: of Madness is this idea of like once a woman
44:41
Speaker 1: becomes too powerful, uh, she cannot handle it um, and
44:48
Speaker 1: that goes hand in hand with I think a lot
44:50
Speaker 1: of the trips we get about, which is too is
44:52
Speaker 1: like they get too much power and then they're dangerous
44:55
Speaker 1: and now they're evil and all of that stuff. So
45:00
Speaker 1: can you talk about that a little bit more? Yes, definitely. Um. So,
45:06
Speaker 1: first off, we have m c Uwanda, which you guys
45:09
Speaker 1: already talked about multiverseumadness that was homeless. There was a
45:15
Speaker 1: a Wired article about Multiverse amadness that I found that
45:18
Speaker 1: had a really interesting quote where they compared her to
45:21
Speaker 1: Jean Gray and the X Men, which is another character
45:24
Speaker 1: that um is very subject to a lot of the
45:28
Speaker 1: women can't be trusted with power um. But yeah, they
45:32
Speaker 1: pointed out the fact that Wanda's story is very similar
45:36
Speaker 1: to Jean's story in the Dark Phoenix saga, particularly um
45:40
Speaker 1: the whole Yeah. Again, the the article said, powerful women
45:43
Speaker 1: just can't be trusted. You never know what they're gonna do.
45:46
Speaker 1: Is sort of the takeaway from both of those storylines.
45:50
Speaker 1: The article also pointed out, you know, obviously Wanda and
45:54
Speaker 1: the comics was subject to a lot of this, uh,
45:57
Speaker 1: similar to what she was in the movies. House of
46:01
Speaker 1: Them is an interesting series. It came out in two
46:04
Speaker 1: thousand five. It was written by Brian Michael Bendis. This
46:08
Speaker 1: is It served a lot of the inspiration for One
46:12
Speaker 1: Division and for Multiverse Man News, which I think is
46:15
Speaker 1: really interesting. Basically, the series take place after Wanda again,
46:21
Speaker 1: she creates these children sort of similar to One Division
46:24
Speaker 1: and then loses them in a very similar fashion. She
46:27
Speaker 1: suffers from a little bit of a mental breakdown, which
46:31
Speaker 1: I argue, I mean, I think that's totally understandable, but
46:35
Speaker 1: again it's one of those it does like delve a
46:37
Speaker 1: little bit into the like female hysteria sort of thing.
46:40
Speaker 1: And because she has these powers that are getting out
46:43
Speaker 1: of control, some of the Avengers and some of the
46:46
Speaker 1: X Men uh talk about maybe maybe you just killing her,
46:51
Speaker 1: like maybe just and her father Magneto and her brother
46:54
Speaker 1: Quicksilver kind of overhear this and get her to create
46:58
Speaker 1: this false reality where mutants are the ruling class, Magnetos
47:03
Speaker 1: king of the whole world apparently. Also interestingly, it's like
47:09
Speaker 1: this kind of world where a lot of other characters
47:11
Speaker 1: get their like quote unquote idealized lives. So they show
47:15
Speaker 1: Spider Man in particular, he lives in a world where
47:18
Speaker 1: he's famous and Gwen Stacy's alive and they're married and
47:22
Speaker 1: they have a kid. Captain Marvel Carol Danvers actually she
47:26
Speaker 1: was originally Miss Marvel. This is the first time we
47:28
Speaker 1: see her as Captain Marvel. She's as much more like
47:31
Speaker 1: independent character. Um this aspect of the story I actually
47:35
Speaker 1: really love. I am expeling spot House of Them. I
47:37
Speaker 1: think it's an interesting story. It does. It gets into
47:41
Speaker 1: a lot of misogyny sort of stuff, but I think
47:44
Speaker 1: the whole idealized reality stuff is really interesting. Which I
47:46
Speaker 1: think one division that was something I liked about Want
47:48
Speaker 1: division I think was really cool, But again it ends
47:52
Speaker 1: a bit weirdly. Want to kind of realize is what happened,
47:55
Speaker 1: and the sort of illusion ends and she cast this
47:59
Speaker 1: spell that if you've ever seen the like no More
48:03
Speaker 1: Mutants thing in relation to her character, this is what
48:05
Speaker 1: it's from. She takes away the powers of a lot
48:07
Speaker 1: of mutants, basically like the majority of mutants in the world,
48:11
Speaker 1: which leads to chaos. This eventually leads to the Avengers
48:15
Speaker 1: disassembling and Wanted disappears at the end of it. Again,
48:19
Speaker 1: they kind of do this to like set up a
48:20
Speaker 1: lot of other stuff. This is like what sets up
48:22
Speaker 1: Young Avengers and sets up a lot of like darker
48:25
Speaker 1: Avengers sort of plotlines that happened in the two thousands,
48:29
Speaker 1: which you know, but yeah, but what the main criticism
48:33
Speaker 1: I've seen of it is the fact that it definitely
48:36
Speaker 1: delps into like a lot of the like female hysteria. Um,
48:40
Speaker 1: Wanda's you know, too powerful for her own good. She
48:44
Speaker 1: can't control these powers. She's very easily manipulated by her
48:49
Speaker 1: father and her brother to create this world where you know,
48:53
Speaker 1: all this happens. And then and response to seeing what happened,
48:56
Speaker 1: just decides to take away everybody's powers instead of like,
49:00
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's an interesting story, but yeah,
49:04
Speaker 1: it's um. The Wired article that I mentioned earlier pointed
49:09
Speaker 1: out the fact that a lot of the movies have
49:10
Speaker 1: kind of delved into that aspect of the story, where
49:13
Speaker 1: it's it's very rooted in like Wanda can't control her
49:15
Speaker 1: own powers. She's like should we trust her? Even like
49:19
Speaker 1: going back to like Civil War, I remember that was
49:21
Speaker 1: like a big thing, was like, oh, Wanda's like a weapon,
49:24
Speaker 1: she's not a human. And again, I mean, this was
49:27
Speaker 1: a comic book series that came out twenty years ago.
49:30
Speaker 1: They've written a lot of stuff since then that's really
49:32
Speaker 1: redemed want his character. Um. And the article pointed this out,
49:35
Speaker 1: saying multiple creators spent years redeeming the comic book Wanda
49:39
Speaker 1: and everything from Avenger's Children Crusade to the Trial of
49:42
Speaker 1: the s Girl, at which, however, on screen, Wanted is
49:44
Speaker 1: stuck in the same hero turned Billain sort of limbo again.
49:49
Speaker 1: The article states, it just seems unnecessary. They could have
49:52
Speaker 1: just let her be a hero. She's already proven herself
49:54
Speaker 1: to be again, she starts off as an antihero, so
49:57
Speaker 1: it seemed weird to delve back into the like now
49:59
Speaker 1: she's little and one of the other things about what
50:14
Speaker 1: multiverse madness and one division. I think that's interesting that
50:18
Speaker 1: doesn't actually come from the comics. I think this is
50:20
Speaker 1: something the movies do a bit more. There's a separation
50:23
Speaker 1: between witchcraft and sorcery, which is interesting because witchcraft obviously
50:28
Speaker 1: has like a feminine connotation that is portrayed as evil.
50:32
Speaker 1: There's like a line that Wong has where he's like,
50:35
Speaker 1: this isn't sorcery, Like this is witchcraft, and it's like
50:37
Speaker 1: that's how you know it's evil versus sorcery, which is
50:41
Speaker 1: more or less the same thing, except it has the
50:43
Speaker 1: masculine connotation. So that's okay. So that's again like an
50:46
Speaker 1: interesting kind of again unpacking the whole cultural narrative behind
50:51
Speaker 1: what's witchcraft versus sorcery or warlocks versus whitches versus sorcerers
50:56
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, I didn't even get that line that
50:59
Speaker 1: makes me mad. Yeah, I didn't even realize. You know.
51:06
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that disappointed me about
51:08
Speaker 1: there's many things about multi Verse of Madness is because
51:12
Speaker 1: it felt like in one division they addressed her grief
51:15
Speaker 1: pretty well, and that was one of the big things.
51:18
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people came out with like I
51:20
Speaker 1: really felt every word she says and lost like losing
51:23
Speaker 1: a spouse or a loved one, filling that angst and
51:27
Speaker 1: making those mistakes and trying to undo those mistakes, but
51:29
Speaker 1: at the same time understanding that this is how I feel,
51:32
Speaker 1: and the emptiness without being cheesy. And then they come
51:35
Speaker 1: back to this and be like, not that grief can't
51:37
Speaker 1: be always like fluctuating, because it is a constant, for sure.
51:41
Speaker 1: But the way they ended it was like such a
51:43
Speaker 1: level of like, man, why no, for sure? I again,
51:49
Speaker 1: like I get the criticism of house man. I think
51:51
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like kind of problematic descriptions of
51:55
Speaker 1: like women with power. That being said, even that comic
51:59
Speaker 1: book series, I feel like they gave Bwanda a little
52:00
Speaker 1: bit more of like, like, she's a more likable character
52:03
Speaker 1: in that because it does also show that she's grieving.
52:05
Speaker 1: It does show that she's being manipulated by the male people,
52:09
Speaker 1: like the the men in her life. And I think
52:12
Speaker 1: it compared to Multiverse Amanda, Yeah, multi Verse Amandess, it
52:17
Speaker 1: was just I don't know, it was it was a thing.
52:22
Speaker 1: It was a thing out of curiosity. In the comics
52:26
Speaker 1: Scarlett which still around, she is, Yes, she again, she's
52:30
Speaker 1: She's one of those characters. I think she shows up
52:33
Speaker 1: in a lot of different stuff because she there was
52:37
Speaker 1: I know she was in There was a big X
52:40
Speaker 1: Men event recently that was gosh, I have not been
52:45
Speaker 1: following comics as much as I should be, but there
52:49
Speaker 1: was like hell no, I'm sorry, but she did show
52:56
Speaker 1: up in some despite the fact that she's not a
52:58
Speaker 1: mutant now, she still shows up an X Men stuf
53:00
Speaker 1: of um. Again, there was that series in that the
53:03
Speaker 1: Scarlet which series that I think sort of set up
53:06
Speaker 1: her character going forward. I know she's appeared in like
53:09
Speaker 1: because again, her son Wickan has been in a lot
53:13
Speaker 1: more stuff recently. She's appeared as like kind of a
53:15
Speaker 1: background character a couple different times. You know, she's still
53:19
Speaker 1: sort of a mentor to him. Uh that actually, that's
53:23
Speaker 1: one of the I really want Marvel to do more
53:26
Speaker 1: of kind of going back to the whole like usually
53:28
Speaker 1: there's the older male characters that's the mentor to like
53:31
Speaker 1: the young female character. I think, you know, I would
53:34
Speaker 1: love if Marvel did more of like Wanda and Billy's
53:37
Speaker 1: relationship and how she kind of because personally, I think
53:41
Speaker 1: you should be the next Scarlett Witch. Um, but I
53:44
Speaker 1: think I think that definitely is something I want to
53:47
Speaker 1: see them explore more. But yeah, she she appears and stuff.
53:50
Speaker 1: I don't know if she has a solo series going
53:55
Speaker 1: on right now, but yeah, she's still She's still out there,
53:59
Speaker 1: and right now her actor is which not mutant? Yes,
54:03
Speaker 1: not the daughter of Magneto. Not the daughter Magneto, not
54:06
Speaker 1: a mutant, Okay, just okay checking. I don't know if
54:11
Speaker 1: you changed it that because I mean, I guess then
54:15
Speaker 1: her kids also aren't mutants now, but I don't know
54:18
Speaker 1: if they've ever officially canonized that. Okay, I don't know, Okay,
54:25
Speaker 1: I'm sort of caught up. I love this, we're just
54:29
Speaker 1: doing little chickens like, Okay, let me see may be sure, Hi,
54:34
Speaker 1: I'm still here. Okay. Well, I mean it's so complicated though,
54:38
Speaker 1: because it does depend on like when you read the comics,
54:42
Speaker 1: what comics you've read. As we talked about, headcanon can
54:45
Speaker 1: very much be a thing. So I've I've definitely gotten
54:47
Speaker 1: conversations with people where I'm like, we're talking about the
54:50
Speaker 1: same character and they're just coming from you. I am
54:57
Speaker 1: one is definitely one of those characters too that I
54:58
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of Scarlet which fans are like,
55:04
Speaker 1: some of the stuff written about her is terrible. She's
55:07
Speaker 1: treated terribly. We're just gonna ignore that. I'm totally on
55:11
Speaker 1: board for that. Yeah, it's so funny people I used
55:16
Speaker 1: to um, I still sometimes do you by guy? When
55:19
Speaker 1: I go to conventions, I would frequently go as the
55:21
Speaker 1: Winter Soldier, and people will come up to me with
55:24
Speaker 1: like questions about like very specific romantic storylines and where
55:29
Speaker 1: do I think it falls there and very specific other
55:31
Speaker 1: story lines and what do you think about this version
55:33
Speaker 1: this vision? And I'm like, look, I have are in
55:37
Speaker 1: the costume, but you could have your own opinions. It's okay.
55:42
Speaker 1: I'm gonna, oh my God, and then they say the
55:47
Speaker 1: little words to me and then I just run away.
55:52
Speaker 1: She and She and Vision are no longer together in
55:55
Speaker 1: the comics. I Vision dies similar to a he does
56:00
Speaker 1: in the movies. Again, that kind of was also some
56:03
Speaker 1: of the lead up to her whole House of Them storyline.
56:08
Speaker 1: He has been brought back to life now and has
56:13
Speaker 1: they gave him like a robot family. Basically, he's like
56:17
Speaker 1: doing his own thing. I don't think Wanda has kind
56:19
Speaker 1: of moved on, which I liked them together. They were cute.
56:24
Speaker 1: I also don't think I yeah, like they both sort
56:26
Speaker 1: of are doing their own things now. That was probably
56:30
Speaker 1: like interesting. My biggest issue with one division, which I
56:33
Speaker 1: did like, But they never give women in the m
56:37
Speaker 1: c U. I mean, as generally has been the case.
56:40
Speaker 1: They never give women any like character growth. So I
56:44
Speaker 1: was like, wait a minute, they're just together, and now
56:46
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be so sad he died and be
56:50
Speaker 1: barely gave than any time. You just kind of told
56:52
Speaker 1: me they were together, Like okay, all right, WHOA. Before
57:00
Speaker 1: we started recording, we were talking about some stuff going on,
57:03
Speaker 1: uh in the future, some things that are happening now
57:06
Speaker 1: that have started a lot of conversations. Can you talk
57:08
Speaker 1: about that for a little bit. Yeah, so, um again
57:12
Speaker 1: kind of can jumping around a lot, but going back
57:15
Speaker 1: to the whole Wanda being one of their first or
57:18
Speaker 1: was supposed to be one of their first Jewish characters
57:20
Speaker 1: and then deciding not to do that. I think the
57:24
Speaker 1: fact that Wanda's Judaism has been a race. I've definitely
57:27
Speaker 1: been seeing that more talked about lately than the Romani racer.
57:33
Speaker 1: Part of that is, you know, racism, But part of
57:37
Speaker 1: that also, I think is there you know, Moon Night
57:41
Speaker 1: recently came out that is another really explicitly Jewish character
57:45
Speaker 1: actually did show that he's Jewish. Um. Personally, I thought
57:48
Speaker 1: that was a great show. I thought they did a
57:49
Speaker 1: great job. I know other people have had criticisms, but
57:53
Speaker 1: I don't know, I thought it was fine. Um. But
57:55
Speaker 1: there was also recently a TikTok from the Washington Post
57:58
Speaker 1: TikTok account that talked about, uh, the kind of lack
58:04
Speaker 1: of Jewish representation Marvel has and how like compared to
58:07
Speaker 1: the fact that Marvel was created by Jewish writers and
58:13
Speaker 1: artists and it has a lot of roots in Jewish culture,
58:16
Speaker 1: Jewish American culture. They haven't really you know, I had
58:21
Speaker 1: a lot of Jewish characters. Again, I think this is
58:24
Speaker 1: like a more complicated issue because I think people have
58:28
Speaker 1: a tendency to want to like simplify everything to like, oh,
58:31
Speaker 1: it's whitewashing, or it's the same thing. It's it's not
58:34
Speaker 1: the same thing as whitewashing. Obviously, like whitewashing comes from
58:38
Speaker 1: the fact that it's very hard for people of color
58:41
Speaker 1: to get the same rules in Hollywood as white actors.
58:44
Speaker 1: White Jewish actors don't have that problem. There are you know,
58:47
Speaker 1: Scarlett Johanson, Paula they're Jewish, they're in the cu they
58:50
Speaker 1: play major characters. Um, there are. Yeah, it's not it's
58:55
Speaker 1: not the same as whitewashing, which I don't know. I
58:58
Speaker 1: think again, that is something that I've been being well
59:02
Speaker 1: meaning like ticktok creators like Twitter stuff about it. But
59:07
Speaker 1: I it's it's not the same thing. That being said. Obviously,
59:10
Speaker 1: like I said before, there are issues with erasing one
59:14
Speaker 1: is Jewishness and having her be part of a NATI
59:17
Speaker 1: organization and all this kind of stuff. Marvel's response to
59:21
Speaker 1: that recently has been to announce their first canonically Jewish
59:26
Speaker 1: character in the movies. Again, they had Modnight already on
59:29
Speaker 1: the TV shows, but in their movies. Um, and of
59:33
Speaker 1: all the characters, they decided to go with Sabra, who
59:38
Speaker 1: it was a very strange choice for a lot of reasons. Um,
59:44
Speaker 1: Sabra was a character created she is, she's a mutant technically,
59:51
Speaker 1: I think she uh, she's a missad agent. She works
59:55
Speaker 1: with these really government She is kind of supposed to
59:58
Speaker 1: be the this reely version of Captain Amy. Her comic
1:00:01
Speaker 1: book character is very explicitly racist. But there's been plenty
1:00:07
Speaker 1: of you know, people on Twitter and took talking all that.
1:00:09
Speaker 1: Now that I've pulled up specific comic book panels of
1:00:12
Speaker 1: her saying incredibly racist thing about people, about Palestinian people,
1:00:15
Speaker 1: which is not good. She also, you know, she she
1:00:19
Speaker 1: was a very Zionist character. It's it was a strange decision,
1:00:24
Speaker 1: I think, particularly right now. Yeah, again, it's a very
1:00:29
Speaker 1: problematic character. Uh, it was definitely there was a lot
1:00:34
Speaker 1: of controversy when they announced that character there. Marvel has
1:00:39
Speaker 1: claimed that they're taking a like new approach quote unquote
1:00:42
Speaker 1: to the character, which again earlier they have other characters
1:00:47
Speaker 1: that they've like rehabilitated and sort of taken away some
1:00:51
Speaker 1: of the racist stereotypes. But I think again, in this issue,
1:00:54
Speaker 1: it's not that she's embodying stereotypes, that she's like saying
1:01:00
Speaker 1: a lot of very racist things in the comics. So
1:01:03
Speaker 1: it's yeah, again, I I don't understand why they decided
1:01:08
Speaker 1: to do this. I my expectations are pretty low for
1:01:13
Speaker 1: Marble and what they do in terms of representation, somehow
1:01:18
Speaker 1: managed to like dig even lower. So yeah, I'm that
1:01:26
Speaker 1: will be interesting. Oh, that'll very uh interested to see
1:01:31
Speaker 1: what they do with that movie. I don't know if
1:01:34
Speaker 1: I'm excited, but I'm definitely interested. We'll be back talking
1:01:40
Speaker 1: about it. We'll be back job. Yes again, I think
1:01:44
Speaker 1: that it just it was it was very strange to see. Again,
1:01:49
Speaker 1: I think one of Max Moo is probably the easiest
1:01:51
Speaker 1: character to criticize, just because they so explicit, so explicitly
1:01:55
Speaker 1: took away her Jewish background. But it was it was
1:01:58
Speaker 1: interesting to see their response to that being we're gonna
1:02:00
Speaker 1: put It's not like they don't have Jewish characters. They
1:02:03
Speaker 1: have Jewish characters they could have used, but they went
1:02:05
Speaker 1: with like the one that probably aged the poorest, and
1:02:10
Speaker 1: it wasn't even it was still problematic back then, that's
1:02:13
Speaker 1: not even yeah, but it's yeah, yeah, wow. You know,
1:02:20
Speaker 1: this is one of the times I'm like, listeners, you
1:02:23
Speaker 1: need to see the facial expressions that we've gone through
1:02:25
Speaker 1: in this episode. I just again, my expectations for Marvel
1:02:32
Speaker 1: are low. This was one of the things that they
1:02:34
Speaker 1: announced and I was just like, I don't I don't
1:02:37
Speaker 1: even know what to say, Like, come on, it seems
1:02:40
Speaker 1: like it should have been so obviously not the move.
1:02:43
Speaker 1: But yeah, all right, all right, yeah, well we'll see,
1:02:49
Speaker 1: we'll see in the future. We'll also see what they
1:02:52
Speaker 1: do with Wanda the MCU, because it's, like I said,
1:02:54
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm unclear and whether she's alive or dead
1:02:56
Speaker 1: right now, but I think I don't know. The rumors
1:03:02
Speaker 1: are then she's coming back like a seven year contract
1:03:06
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. I don't know. Elusath Wilson
1:03:11
Speaker 1: seems to be very enthusiastic about playing her, so I
1:03:14
Speaker 1: think I think she'll come back. But yeah, we'll see
1:03:17
Speaker 1: where they go. We'll see where they go there. Yeah,
1:03:19
Speaker 1: we'll see maybe. I mean, I feel like we've come
1:03:23
Speaker 1: to full circles of her, like dealing with grief and
1:03:27
Speaker 1: hopefully feeling somewhat so maybe we'll see another I don't know,
1:03:36
Speaker 1: well something Yeah, yeah, that will be for future us
1:03:41
Speaker 1: to talk about on this podcast. Um, thank you so
1:03:44
Speaker 1: much Joey for stopping by. You are our resident Marvel
1:03:48
Speaker 1: expert now, so any you want to come back for
1:03:55
Speaker 1: is going to start sending you random messages like tell
1:03:58
Speaker 1: me what this is? Will ainsially start like emailing you
1:04:01
Speaker 1: to look what is happening and why, and it'll be
1:04:06
Speaker 1: so random. That's my favorite part is it's out of
1:04:08
Speaker 1: the believing you're like okay, yes, because I'm always like
1:04:13
Speaker 1: several weeks too, maybe months behind, so yes, it'll be late.
1:04:17
Speaker 1: I haven't even started with she Hulk, so wait for that.
1:04:20
Speaker 1: Yeah that I'm confused at this point with they're doing
1:04:24
Speaker 1: a lot. They're doing a lot right now, doing a
1:04:27
Speaker 1: little Well, where can the good listeners find you, Joey? Yeah,
1:04:33
Speaker 1: you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Pat
1:04:37
Speaker 1: not Pratt. That's p a t t n O T
1:04:40
Speaker 1: p r a t t. My last name is pat
1:04:44
Speaker 1: and it is frequently misspelled as Pratt. So that's where
1:04:48
Speaker 1: you're finding me. Yes, yes, And I look forward to
1:04:52
Speaker 1: seeing some of the pictures from Comicus for Sure, for
1:04:55
Speaker 1: Sure and listeners. If you want to contact us, you
1:05:00
Speaker 1: can our emails at stuff Media, mom Stuff at I
1:05:02
Speaker 1: Hurt me dot com. You can find us on Twitter
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