Latest / The Bechdel Cast / The Road to El Dorado with José María Luna

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The Road to El Dorado with José María Luna · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions ask if movies have
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zeph and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: bast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Our glorious podcast. Uh huh was built by dividities, by.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: Us, we are gods, we are mean there. I love
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: how this movie opens with just like they're like, let's
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: get into the false history moment one. Let's not waste
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: a shred of time. Let's not waste a micro second
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: with the truth or the or scene setting. Let's just
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: cut to the shit we made up. Yeah, welcome to
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: the Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie loftus aka God.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Droonte, also aka God, and this
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: off point. Jamie, what is it though?
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Oh boy, not that it's going to come into play today,
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: but no, so so everyone knows. It is a media
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: metric originally created or co created by Alison Bechdel, a
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: queer cartoonist, co created with her friend Liz Wallace, which
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: is why it's often called the Bechdel Wallace test, because
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: that makes sense. It originally appeared in her really funny
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: classic comic collection Dix to Watch out For. Is originally
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: used in a queer context, it has since been sort
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: of co opted to examine how people of marginalized genders
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: speak to each other in general. So the version of
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: the test we use on the show is that there
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: should be two characters of a marginalized gender with names
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: who speak to each other about something other than a
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: man for at least two lines of dialogue. And you think,
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: surely that's not too much to ask, but then the
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: movie says, no, no.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Yes it is.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: It's actually part too much ask. Grow up. And here's
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: another Elton John song. The problem. Okay, we're getting to
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: a popular request, extremely difficult movie to cover because there's
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: just so many angles from which this movie is fucked up,
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: and the soundtrack is imprinted on my brain and I can't, like,
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: I can never remove it. Unfortunately, it is like one
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: of one of those movies. We're talking about the Road
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: to El Dorado today, and we have so much to
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: talk about that I think we should just get our
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: guests in here.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. He's a filmmaker and video essayist. You
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: know him from our episode on Dora in the Lost
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: City of Gold. So our resident expert on stories about
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Gold cities. It's Jose Maria Luna.
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: Hi. Welcome back, welcome back, Thank you so much. I'm
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: so happy to be back here.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Oh there's so much to discuss.
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: I am the resident Gold City expert. Just any friend,
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: group by man, that's with my job I do.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: I Yeah. If people listening art on the matread it
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: is one of my all time favorite Matreon episodes. It's
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: a blast.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I think, well we read, oh yeah, we unlocked it,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: didn't we Yeah, we unlocked it on the main feed
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: a little while later.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: It's simply that good. Yes, okay, Well you can also
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: listen for zero dollars and isn't that a treat?
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: They were so excited to have you back. You have
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: made almost you know, two or three years ago. Now,
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: I think you made a fantastic video that touched on
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: the Road to El Dorado significantly, called Decolonizing Adventure a
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: cinematic Road to El Dorado. So there was absolutely no
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: one else we were considering for this episode. You have
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: covered the topic so thoroughly, so if anyone hasn't seen
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: the video, we're gonna link it in the description. But yeah,
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, I want to know about your history with
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: this specific movie and also what inspired you to put
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: together that video because it's so thoroughly research there's multiple locations,
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: it's just wonderful.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: Well, thank you so much for the kind words. I
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: have an interesting experience with this movie. I might have
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: seen it in theaters, but I was like three years old,
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: but I did have it on BHS and it was
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: on regular rotation because ever since, like in kindergarten or whatever,
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: we learned Colombian mythology and one of the most popular
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: myths originated in Colombia is or the territory that later
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: came to be known as Columbia because it is older
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: than the country, is the one about El Dorado. And
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: I was always very happy as a kid that there
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: was a movie talking about it. But even as a kid,
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: it made me very mad because even when I was
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: very young and I was like very nerdy, I could
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: tell that the movie at no point really touched on
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: the actual history behind the myth, which is it's a
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: whole very interesting story altogether. So I would watch the
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: movie a lot, especially because it is very charming on
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: a surface level. Then the animation is very pretty to
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: look at. I remember the textures of the CGI gold
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: are like ingrained in my brain. I just wanted to
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: reach out and touch that, and even rewatching now it's wild.
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: I'm always like thinking about how much it influenced my
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: like games like my play time, the whole thing with
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: the controlling the jaguar thing, or the I remember the
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: ledge from which they throw the gold. I remember recreating
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: stuff inspired by that on like the bathtub with like
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: the faucet. I don't know, a lot of this stuff
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: is like ingraining my brain, but I remember as a
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: kid the movie frustrated me. So I have a long
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: history of really engaging with the mythology, and this is
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: this myth is very particular because it's not it's not
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: an indigenous myth, right, it has a whole different story altogether,
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: but it is still like a myth and it was
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: originated here, and it is so often, as I remark
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: on my video, divorced from its setting. I enjoy talking
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: about it, and we here, particularly in Boda, we have
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: I'm Colombian. I don't know if we mentioned that the subtext,
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: but we have a very close relationship with the concept
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: of El Dorado, and that inspired me to make the
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: video in the first place, because I was like, oh,
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: this is a cool little history that I would love
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: to share. And I also have an interesting relationship with
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: a lot of the stuff that I talk about in it,
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: so it was like, yeah, we should re examine these things,
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: especially because it is such a It is one of
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: those movies that is like very beloved by a certain
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: millennial demographic. It's like very nostalgic to them, and including
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: I guess myself, it is nostalgic to me. I don't
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: belove it, but it is one of those movies that
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: people cheat us if it was like a like a
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: hidden jam. Yeah, that is sort of like an underrated classic.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: The narrative, Yeah, because it flopped in its time and now, yeah,
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: it feels like in the last even like five years,
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: there's like a huge contingency of people who are like,
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: actually it's it's awesome. You're like, no, we can, we can,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: you know, we can lead.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: To the point where a flop it's okay, to the
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: point where when I was on the Shrek Tannic tour
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: a few months ago doing the show in London. On Shrek,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: I was doing this section on the co director of Shrek,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: which is a woman and what's her name I don't remember, oops,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: but she had previously worked on the Road to El Dorado.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: And as soon as I said that in front of
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: a crowd of people, everyone was like whoo. And I
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: was like, wait a minute, do people like that movie? Because,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: as we'll discuss in a moment, it like missed me.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: I'm like too old of a millennial to have cared
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: about it. So I was like, wait a minute, should
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: we cover this on the podcast? And people were clapping
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: and cheering, So yeah, here we are. I mean it
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: really does.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like there is a huge I mean, most of
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: the videos that exist about the Road to El Dorado
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: on YouTube, it was interesting going back, are pretty uncritical
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: and are like this it's like economically queer movie, which
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: it isn't, but I get why, you know, but like
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: they're like, look it. This is like it's actually good.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: And the best I can say for it is that
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: it is unusual for a children's movie of that era.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of things that are not in most
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: children's movies, including just I mean, the theme of colonialism
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: in general is very prevalent. But also I think one
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: of the hornier cartoon movies I've ever seen in my life.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Like it is absurdly horny. Two the characters canonically fuck,
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: which I all stuple times, yeah, which I do, I do?
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: I do? Remember, Sorry, Jose, we didn't need to cut
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: you off as yeah.
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: Oh, I just thought the conversation was flowing.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: We just wanted to talk about the fucking as quickly
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: as possible.
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: When I was showing this movie to my boyfriend, who
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: had never seen it, at one point I was like, wait,
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: does the villain have like such a slutty waste? And
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: he was like, they all have slutty waste, yeah, like
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: they're snatched. It's wild.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: It's also the fact, I mean this this movie ticks
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: all of the boxes of colonial completely underthought story. But
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: the thing that really struck me this time was I
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: was like, Okay, let's look into the voice cast because
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: it is just like nonsensical top to bottom, Like the
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: guy who voices Checkle Khan is Irish Italian. You're like what,
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Like it was like so absurd, like and then even
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: the colonizing carearacter is like they couldn't be bothered to
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: find even a Spanish actor, Like it was like, no,
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: a British guy and an American guy and they're in love,
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: and then that you're just like, uh huh uh huh huh.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Jim Cummings plays Quarte. Also, the fact that I mean
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: of this movie is many crimes. The fact that her
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: Non Cortez, who you know you can trace twenty million
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: deaths too, is the secondary villain of the story. Wild
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: absolutely nuts. Well, okay, okay, Caitlin, what's your history with
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: this movie.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: I had never seen it before. Interesting, it came out
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: in two thousand. I was a teenager at that point,
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: so I was like, I can't be watching animated movies
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: right now. I'm too cool for that.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: Ain't a baby.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: And then, as I've discussed on the show before, a
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: few years later, I came back around and I was like, no,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: actually animating awesome. I'm eighteen, but I'm the baby still
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: and I've loved animated movies ever since. But there was
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: that period of a few years where I missed, like Mulan,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: I missed any movie from like nineteen ninety eight till
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: like two thousand and three or four, with the exception
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: of like Pixar movies and any other like. As soon
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: as a lot of animated movies moved to CGI.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: Adults were allowed to see. I mean, I would argue
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: that Wally is not for children, it's for adults. It's boring.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: I've never met a sink. I mean, not that I'm
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: around meeting children all the time, but like my niece,
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: my cousin tried to put on Wally for my niece
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: and she was like, what the fuck is this like
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: Hotel Transylvania three again, please, Like, that's a movie for children?
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, Wally. Come on. When I was like eleven
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: and I saw it in theaters and I cried, And
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: I remember telling the kids at school, oh, I loved
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: Wally so much. And someone was like, nothing happens in Wally, weirdo,
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: And I was like, I'm sorry.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: It's beautiful. I mean, it's we should cover it. It's
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: basically an art movie being marketed as a children's movie.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it's Hotel Transylvania three. I passed. I passed
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: a restaurant the other day that it was so genius.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: They just had Hotel Transylvania three playing just on the
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: TVs and it was full of families. Because there is
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: something really potent about Hotel Transylvania three to children, and
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: it is the third one. And I don't know why,
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: but my cousin, I mean, she's really sick of it,
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: and she's like, they put something in this movie. They
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: put something that is it's like a whistle that can
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: only be heard by dogs. Like adults cannot understand the
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: raw appeal of Hotel Transylvania three. Listeners with kids, please
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: let us I'm just curre, or you just DM me directly.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: Does your kid also watch Hotel Transylvania three five times
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: a day? Because it seems like a common, an underdiscussed
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: plague that is affecting our culture.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: Get there on that.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: Oh sorry, and I should say it's Hotel Transylvania three
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: summer vacation.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, we should have covered it this past summer. Well,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: I mean next summer.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: I guess Dracula at the Beach. I understand. I understand
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: why I would be laughing if I was seven, and
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: maybe I would just be laughing in general. I don't know.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Well, let me tell I'll tell a very quick story
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: and then we'll get back on track. I went to
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: go see Paranormal Activity three, I think, in theaters with
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: my friends. This was many years ago, and I quickly
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: discovered that there were creepy children in Paranormal Activity three,
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: and I cannot. I can't do creepy children in movies.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: So I walked out. I almost never walk out of
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: a movie in a theater, but I was like, I can't.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: WHOA And I walked into a screening of Hotel Transylvania one,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I believe. And the thing is, it wasn't three D
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: and I did not have three D glasses. So I
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: sat through a three D screening of a Hotel Transylvania one,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: walking in probably like twenty or twenty five minutes after
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: it had already started, and sat through the whole thing.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: And did you love it? Question Mark?
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Did she love my favorite movie? Now? Yes? Anyway, it
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: was that's my that's my exposure to Hotel Transylvania.
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: Incredible.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: That's I am now looking at And it was made
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: by oh gosh, I hope I'm saying his name right, Uh,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: Gendy Tartakovski. And now I understand because he made Dexter's
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Lab and Samurai Jack and like he does put a
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: secret ingredient in his stuff. He did Powerpuff Girls, like okay,
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: so they yeah, had no idea. Yeah, he's directed all
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: three all four? What four? There's four Hotel Transylvania.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: That's how many Shreks there are.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: It's wild that he's like.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Until Shrek five comes out soon.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: I would say he's like a really he's a fine artist,
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: and yet he is also a respected Okay. Anyway, now
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: that we've fully talked about Hotels Transylvania three summer vacation,
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: it's time.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: To get back to El Dorado. I had never seen could.
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: Have known watch it for.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Sorry, it was part of it's part of the prep,
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: part of the home in the prep.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: No, but I had never seen the Road to El
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Dorado before, and I was expecting bad things from a
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: movie from two thousand, but not as bad as what
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: we see in this movie. So I'm very excited to
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: talk about it. Jamie, what's your history?
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: So unfortunately this is a Three Bears situation where I
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: was the exact right age too. I like this movie
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: was marketed to me. I was like six or seven
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: when this came out, So yeah, I am assuming I
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: saw it in theaters. I remember that. My really, my
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: main takeaway was I loved the soundtrack to this movie
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: so much. I remember that like my aunt somehow found
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: a like I loved it so much that I received
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: a karaoke CD that was like unlicensed. I have no
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: idea where she found it, but my aunt like gave
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: me and my brother the karaoke CD to the Road
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: to El Dorado for Crispas that year. Yeah, it's weird.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: I mean it's weird because I didn't feel super attached
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: to the story. I remember thinking like parts were funny.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: I generally liked the movie, but it was the soundtrack
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: hit really hard for me, my brother and I still yeah,
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: my I have like a memory of my brother who
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: was like three when this came out, and he used
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: to sing the theme song by heart, but like with
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: baby brains, so he would he would say like one
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: thousand years oh, like he just couldn't do the g sound.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: So I have I have a lot of nostalgia attached
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: to this movie because it was something that my brother
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: and I both enjoyed together. However, it is I mean,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: what is I think really why I'm glad the film
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: failed is because while you know, if you learn and
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: you educate yourself as you get older, it's really quickly
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: clear that this is a pretty like dangerous approach to storytelling,
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: and it is completely based in colonial and narratives. There's
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: narratives here that are just taking four hundred year old
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: colonial texts as reality. There's the idea that like it
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: is can into this world, that Miguel and Julio are
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: smarter than everyone around that I mean, all of these
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: things that we'll get into today. But what struck me
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: is that at the time, I had not seen any
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: media that would contradict this narrative. So I just didn't know.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: And it's like embarrassing to admit that, but it is true.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: I think it's true for a lot of Americans just like,
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, just like were poorly educated intentions so on
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: indigenous culture and on colonizer narratives. And I mean, my
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: my first favorite movie was Pocahontas, which is a movie
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: we will one day cover on this show. And so
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: I was like, I you know, was drinking the colonial
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: kool aid with these kinds of stories, and it's embarrassing,
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: but it's also like it's it's on you. I mean,
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: Jose you sort of say this in the conclusion to
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: your video, It's on you to educate yourself and remove
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: your like I would never in my life show Pocahontas
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: or The Road to El Dorado to a kid. Now,
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: you know. It's it's because I think part of the
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: problem with these movies is that they are well made.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: I understand why people like them, and that's what makes
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: them dangerous. So I'm hoping that, yeah, by like having
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: these discussions and by like continuing to educate myself and
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: encourage other people, like it's that the legacy of these
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: movies will be single generation and that we're not going
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: to have to have like decolonize this movie that was
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: just like I had an addictive soundtrack because Elton John, like,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: why there's I Yeah, so I did. I really I
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: had a lot of nostalgia for this movie and have
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: intentionally not revisited it in at least ten years because
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: it's so deeply uncomfortable to watch and also have like,
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: you know, your little baby brain being like this song
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: is awesome, and then you read the lyrics and you're
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: like no, it's not. There's a there's a song in
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: this movie called sixteenth Century Man. I don't believe it
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: shows up in the text. It might be during the
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: credits or something, but it is like unbelievably racist, and
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: it is just like Elton John singing one of the
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: most racist songs I've ever heard. Yeah, this movie like
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: it's bad for the world, and it's the fact that
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: it is. So I mean, let's get into it. But yeah,
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: that's my that's my confession.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, we are products of our environment. So let's
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: take quick break and then we'll come back to do
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: the recap. And we're back. Here's the recap. I will
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: place a content warning as we will be discussing anti
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: indigenous tropes, racism, violence, things of that nature. We open
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: on a sequence slash Elton John song about how the
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: gods built El Dorado, which is, according to this movie
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: and many other stories, a real place. It's a marvelous
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: city made of gold. Then we cut to Spain fifteen nineteen,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: where Cortes and his conquistadors are about to travel to
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: the New World to quote unquote search for gold aka
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: to colonize steel land in resources, to rape murder.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: This is a wild trend during this period of animation
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: because we like, you know, Hernan Cortez was a very
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: real person and murdered millions of people, like we're tying
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: a Hitler grade villain appearing in the cartoon movie. But
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: this is something that I also it reminded me of
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Genghis Khan and Mulan like a real life character. It's like, well,
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: if you're putting this movie in such a specific moment
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: with a real life, famously colonial murderer, would you not
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: want to get a single fact right? Like why put
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: it in such a specific context if you weren't going
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: to bother?
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: I don't know. And I think, like, on that same note,
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: it is interesting how from the very first moment the
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: movie is already having that like loose approach to like
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: a very a very delicate history in that in a
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: very subtle way, and it is that the city canonically
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: is named El Dorado, which is, you know, it's a
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: Spanish term in which we'll probably get into the whole
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: detail later, but it is. It is interesting how from
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: the very get go it kind of like acknowledges that
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: it is a white perspective on ostensibly a story set
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: in like pre conquest America's so with that and the
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: immediate introduction of Alancortez, who is not like necessarily portray
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: in a positive way, but it is. It is so
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: loose with very real history without ever taking that seriously,
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: and it's all like a fun ramp and whatever. But
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: the undertones are very they're sinister in a way.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: I agree. It's like it's not like he is shown
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: as a good person. I mean this racist song I
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: was talking about sixteenth century, they're like Cortez, bad Cortez,
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: we don't like him, but like he's never shown to
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: be worse, Like it's implied that Chukal Khan is worse
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: for sure than a real person who was a career
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: genocide er.
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's absurd. And also going through the history behind this,
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: it was like I learned stuff because I have been
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: so under educated about this period of history.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, so we learn about this upcoming conquest. Meanwhile we
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: meet two Spaniard dudes, Tulio voiced by Kevin Klein and
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Miguel voiced by Kenneth Brownow it's.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: Just I will say they do have chemistry together. I
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: guess that, like I just as an animation head. I
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: was like, it sounds like they're in the same room together,
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: and they were, which is good approach to animation. That's
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: how they record the dialogue for Bob's Burgers. I feel
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: like you can feel it. Oh yes, yes, that said
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: the movie is dangerous. Yeah.
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: So they are gambling via some dice game and they
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: win a map to El Dorado. So already side note here,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: but the movie starts out very similar to the way
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Titanic starts out, because we open on a hidden treasure
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: of sorts either the city of El Dorado or the
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: shipwreck of the Titanic. We meet the rich villain Cortes
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: slash col and we meet a couple of scrappy guys.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: One of them's blonde, one's brunette, and they are gambling
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: and they win something that gets them closer to this treasure,
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: a map or tickets to the Titanic.
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: So we got man departing from Europe to the New World.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: To get on a ship to go to the.
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: Whoa, oh my god, makes you think I hope they
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: am here. Yeah.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Here, that is where the similarities and because so the
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: townspeople discover that Tulio and Miguel had been cheating and
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: playing with loaded dice, so they have to run away
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: and they end up on Cortes's ship, where they are
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: discovered and imprisoned for being stowaways, but Tulio and Miguel
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: managed to escape in a lifeboat along with Cortes's horse Altivo,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: who is voiced by Scooby Sorry.
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: I know, Frank Welker.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we've brought up Frank Welker quite a bit in
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: the show, and it is fun to find the Frank
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: Welker where it's like and this horse, there's one man
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: and he can be any animal. So yeah, I think
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: we should be asking Frank Welker to issue a statement
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: disavowing himself from the movie. But I was like, of course,
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: he's the horse.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: I do love the design of the horse. He's like
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: a little chonky and he has like this like his
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: face almost looks like a cow facing. How they over
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: emphasize that, Yeah, I don't know. I love the expressions
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: on that horse. I also had the Burger King toyo
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: of the horse as a kid, and I think I
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: had all the toys and watching the movie, I just
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: feel like I'm more familiar with the toys than with
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: the animation design, so it's a little bit weird. Anyway,
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: I love the design of the horse and Frank Welker
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: did a great job. She should disavow it, as you say,
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: you should this himself.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: The other beloved Bachtel cast stand by that is in
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: this movie is Tobin Bell. And wait, Caitlyn, that's Jigsaw
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: is in the Road to El Dorado, and we like,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: do have to talk about it. It's a small part
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: because I have no idea who this is. Tobin Bell
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: as Zara Goza, a sailor on the voyage to the
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: New World of El Dorado and the original owner of
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: the map, which he loses to Tulio. So he's in
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: the dice game.
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, he's the guy who disc the ruse, which.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: Is kind of wild because in the Road to Elorado
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: he's playing a little game.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: He loves to play a little game.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: Tobyn Belt like was not reading the script carefully enough.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: He's just like, oh, a little game. This is my wheelhouse. Yeah,
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: I'll be in one scene and there's going to be
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: a little game. So that's where the fun facts end.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: But yes, Scooby and Jigsaw managed to be in their
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: Road to.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: El Dorodo amazing.
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Well, okay, so the characters Tulio and Miguel, they end
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: up on the lifeboat with the horse. They spend a
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: few days stranded at sea, and they nearly die, but
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: then they eventually make it to land. The movie isn't
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: very specific about where they are, but Jose you mentioned
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: in your video that it's meant to be present day Mexico.
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: I think it is. The I mean, the aesthetics are
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: of it all over the place. I noticed that at
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: one point they get like attacked by piranhas, which you
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: you don't get those in meso America. But I think
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: like the implication, especially because the ship was headed to Cuba,
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: is that they are somewhere in the Mexican territory, and
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: all the aesthetics of the culture are very much like this,
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: like Mayan, Aztec, all mech even like hybrid. Yeah, so
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: I think it is. That's why I say it's in
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: present day in Mexico, but.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: It is vague, like the movie is not specific about.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it does feel, I mean and hosaia. I'm interested
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: in talking about it more in the discussion, but that
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: there is a lot of YadA YadA in the way
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: indigenous culture is represented and multiple cultures are rolled into
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: each other in a way that is just like, well,
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: how are how is like a white American gonna will
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: this seem authentic to a white American that has never
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: learned anything about this?
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: And it probably will.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the speaking from experience. I was not I
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: did not have questions at the time, Like so.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So they land and Tulio still has the map
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: to El Dorado, so they embark on a quest to
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: find the legendary city and steal its gold. That is
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: like their specific goal here.
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: They're literally colonists, Yeah.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: For sure, big time.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: And they just so happened to very conveniently land exactly
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: where the starting point of the map is. So that's
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: nice for the plot of the movie, and we get
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: a montage of them traveling. They're following the map, they're
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: reaching the different landmarks, and they finally arrive at what
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: they think will be the city of El Dorado, which
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: turns out to be a big statue with some images
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: carved into it, and they think they've been duped, but
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: it turns out that the entrance to the city is concealed.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Then group of indigenous warriors show up. They are chasing
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: a woman who seems to have stolen something, and the
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: warriors take Miguel Tulio and the woman. This is cell
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: by the way, voiced by Rosy Perez. They take them
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: into El Dorado, this magnificent city of gold inhabited by
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: a thriving community of indigenous people. Miguel and Tulio are
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: seemingly taken as prisoners, but then zeklcn, the high priest
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: of the city.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: Famous Irish Italian village Chaco Khan unbelievable. This is like
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: just flagrant, flagrant anyways.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: So he announces that these two men are actually gods
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: whose arrival they have been awaiting for a long time
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: and also worth mentioning here. We'll talk about it later
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: as well. But everyone, no one can understand each other
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: because the pre contact indigenous people are speaking the same
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: language as the Spaniards, which is English.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: We all speak yeah, I mean, it's it's Pocahontas all
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: over again. We're like, oh, we all speak contemporary American English,
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: right right.
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: Well, Pocahontas was like bold about it. It was like
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: it's magic. They can understand each other with magic. Here
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: they don't even bother.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: They don't even bother to explain it.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but magic is real in this world too, like
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: it's very fast and loose with like when magic is
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: and is not real, smoothie socks. All right, well, let's keep.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: It anyway, right. So then Chief Tenebuck voiced by Edward
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: James almost introduces himself, though he is skeptical that Tulio
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: and Miguel are divine beings and he wants them to
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: prove it. And then, by mere coincidence, Tulio and Miguel
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: seem to stop a volcano from erupting, so the people
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: of El Dorado now fully believe that they are indeed gods. Meanwhile,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Chell is let off the hook, claiming that she was
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: trying to help these gods find their way to El Dorado,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: and then she overhears Tulio and Miguel revealing themselves to
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: be not real gods, saying that if they maintain this facade,
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: they can live like kings and steal the gold. So
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: she tells them she won't wrap them out as long
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: as they let her in on their scheme, because she
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: wants much more than this provincial life. And we'll talk
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: about that as well.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean but they're like, oh, well, has
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: she lived here? Oh her life? Does she have family?
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: Does she have friends? Or does she just exist in this?
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Does she have this? Why does she want to leave?
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: Well?
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all questions, if you had them, will not be
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: answered correct.
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just like, yeah, I'm bored. And the end
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: of the conversation, it's like, okay, okay.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: It would have it even great to get that, you know.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: It's like, I'm bored in horny.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Right, too horny for this place, too horny to live here. Yeah,
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: we don't know. So Tulio and Miguel embrace their god
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: status and everything seems awesome until they realized that the
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: high priest sekulcn is about to make a human sacrifice
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: to pay tribute to these quote unquote gods. So Tulio
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: and Miguel swoop in to be like, no, no, no, we
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: don't want you to kill people. How about gold as
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: the tribute. So the people start throwing in gold into
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: this kind of whirl polly entrance to the spirit world Shabbalba.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: But then they're like, no, no, no, we want the gold
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: near us. We want to be able to bask in it.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: So they agree, and then they're like, by the way,
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: we're going to take that gold with us back to
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: the heavens, which we're gonna do soon, so please build
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: us a boat so that we can get to the
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: heavens via boat. And the chief is like, no problem,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: we'll build a boat for you in three days. So
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: now Miguel and Tulio have to figure out how to
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: keep up this ruse for three days. Tulio wants them
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: to lay low during this time, especially because Miguel has
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: a tendency to cause a ruckus, and sure enough, he
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: does not.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Lay lows caused.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: He's causing the ruckus. He goes out into the city
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: and he makes friends with everyone in a sequence that
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: suggests these indigenous people don't know how to have fun
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: until this white colonizer comes along and teaches them how
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: to enjoy themselves.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: But these these indigenous people are under the tyranny of
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: this best spot, and the white guy needs to come
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: in and be like, hey, chill.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, don't kill each other.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: They're like me, as a grifter from a colonizing culture
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: that aspires to steal from you and leave. Listen to me.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: I know what's going on. It also, I mean, we're
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: about to get into this part, but as they're found out,
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: it's like the way the indigenous characters are treated is
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: so baffling. I cannot get into. It's heavily hinted that
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: the chief knows that they're con artists, and he's like whatever,
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: He's like, it's.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, take the goal.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: You can stay in the position of God. Like what,
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: it just doesn't Yeah, it's ridiculous.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So while Miguel is out having fun on the town,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Tulio and Cell are fuckucking.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah it is. It's not subtext, it's text.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: It's text that they are not.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: They're simply fucking. This is where Cell's character goes off
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: the fucking rails. I don't understand why. She's like, let
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: Miguel go, Like, why does she do that? And I
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: guess because she wants to fuck Tulio. And then the
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: second she fucks Tulio, all of her agency as a
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: character turns into vapor.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, well that's happening. Cortes has landed in the same
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: spot that Tulio and Miguel did, and he and the
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: other conquistadors are making their way toward the city. Then
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: there's a scene where Suco Cohn makes Tulio and Miguel
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: play sports with a bunch of these like warrior athletes,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: and the two guys end up cheating via an armadillo
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: so that no one will realize that they're not gods.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: I honestly, I did love that armadillo. I thought that
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: armadillo was hilarious. Loved the armadilla.
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: The armadilla who can fly and manipulate the loss of physics. Yes, yes,
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: and it's somehow bouncy. I love him.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: You're like the but you're like magic, Is it is
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: the armadillo magic? Or is he just awesome? Like, we
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: don't drunk, we don't know. Even the it's so weird that,
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: like even the like Animal Friend, if we're going into
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: like the Disney model, this is clearly pulling from even
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: the Animal Friend is kind of like weird and horny.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: You're like, why why, Like I there's so many questions,
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: like were people just too horny to make a movie
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: that makes sense?
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know. And this is when
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: cucle Khan really starts wilding out. He's obsessed with human
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: sacrifices and quote unquote cleansing the city, and he keeps
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: trying to get Tulio and Miguel to sacrifice people, but
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: they always refuse. Soucle Con is now starting to suspect
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: that they are not God's after all. After three days,
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: the boat is finished, but Miguel is having second thoughts
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: about going though. Tulio invites Chell to go back to
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Spain with him, and she's like, what about Miguel, And
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: he's like, forget Miguel, which Miguel overhears. So I love a.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: Plot contrivance like this, and evesdropped this late second act.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: This happens in Shrek. Wow, sorry, true it does.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: There are Shrek tannic parallels.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: It's one of the laziest plot contrivances. You're like, and
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: then he was in the doorway and he's like, my
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: boyfriend broke up with me, which is the subtext to it.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: He's like, my boyfriend broke up with me. And also
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: Miguel takes it so literally where it's it feels so
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: clearly like yeah, I forget him, like, which is rightful.
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: But he's like I've been dumped, Like he's he's about
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: to move because he over received breakup which I've done.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I mean we.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: All have, so now they're kind of feuding. Meanwhile, cecle
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Con makes some potion or something magical happens and he
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: brings this huge stone statue to life, which attacks the
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: city and goes after Tulio and Miguel, but they outsmart
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: cycle Con and he falls into the whirlpool entrance of Shibalba,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: which spits him out in this lake right at the
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: feet of Cortes. So now he gangs up with Cortes,
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: but they don't know that, and Miguel and Tulio have
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: you know, White Savior style saved the city for now,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: but they're still feuding, and Miguel still wants to stay
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: in El Dorado and Tulio still wants to go back
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: to Spain with cell so he makes arrangements to leave
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: on the boat with a ton of gold. But before
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: he goes, everyone learns that Sukulcan is leading Cortes to
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: the city, so Tulio comes up with a plan to
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: destroy the entrance to El Dorado by crashing the boat
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: into the pillars so that Cortes won't be able to
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: find the city, even though it'll mean they'll lose all
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: the gold, but it's a sacrifice that Tulio is willing
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: to make.
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: Which is like it's a it's an interesting I was like,
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: don't they like trade with other people? Like that was
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: the entrance to their city. Yeah, like what are they
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: going to do now?
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: Also the fact that the like all of a sudden,
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: the chief is able to almost single handedly hold up
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: a pillar. Yeah, then weighs tons and tons and tons.
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: He's like, yeah, no problem, this plan makes sense again,
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: just like a moment where there's like five hundred ways
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: where that and it's like it's bad riding. And also
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: it's just like, at no point is Chell going to
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: give a passing shit about everyone she knows, Like it's
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: so weird that this moment is I understand why, but
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: it's like it just reveals the flaws. So it's like, well,
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: this is the first character growth we've ever seen in Tulio.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: But it's ultimately it's his idea just to act white
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: savior to white savior the place that he was in
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: the middle of colonizing.
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: Like yeah, it's just like very sloppily put together, Like
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: the climax is very evidently sloppily put together, and it
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: in hindsight makes like the seams of the rest of
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: the movie show a lot more. It's like, oh, it's
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: a very contrived movie in general.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: It's so weird and also I mean, just like the
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: just to shout out a very two thousand element, there's
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: clearly like it's a mix of two D and three
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: D animation in a way that's very jarring. There's just
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: like barrels and like you see gold, You're like, why
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: just the gold? Like there, it's very I feel like
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: there's a million early two thousands of movies that are
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: like they won't notice, they'll love this, and you're like
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: it looks bad.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, jose, I know you said you remembered the Gold
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: like it was very memorable. But like seeing this for
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: the first time, I was like, this looks like shit,
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Like it looks bad and weird.
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: Like it's one of those things that I find charming
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: because it's like, oh, it was very in its infancy.
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: There's like bland. But like there's like a lot of
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: things that I feel like because I watched them when
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: I was very young, Like the textures really stuck with me,
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: Like the the clouds in hercules also have that effect. Yes, yes,
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: on me. The jungle in Tarzan as well. I was
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: very fascinated by that because like I could tell that
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: they were like using something new, and I was like,
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: I was very fascinated by it. But I was saying that,
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: and but my boyfriend, who hadn't seen the movie, was like,
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: it's very weird. It is right, You're not attached.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: Right, right, I mean this movie, like an attachment to
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: it does make all the difference, which is why Kiln,
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: I'm kind of glad you like didn't grow up with it,
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: because there is like things that I will be like,
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: well but this, and You're like, well, no, not really,
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: and I'll be like no, no, And I was like, wow,
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: Kenu's being such a bitch today.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Classic meme.
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: It reminded me of like Star Wars prequel stuff too,
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: where you're just like there's all of a sudden something
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: that is like so old computery looking, or when they
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: like when you see prequel Yoda or whatever, and you're like,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: oh what yucky? Yeah.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: Anyway, So they collapse the gate. The gold is spilled,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: but El Dobrado is now safe from the conquistadors, and
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Miguel decides to join Tulio and cell on their adventure
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: back to Spain.
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: The end very abrupt ending. I will say, yes that too.
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: And we're back. Where do we begin?
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: I don't know so much going on?
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, who say, does anything stand out to you? Where
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: would you like to begin?
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: I think that obviously, like removing ourselves from the movie itself,
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: I think that the most interesting scene in it for
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: me is the Shibalba scene where they show the tribute
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: there they start throwing the tribute to the whirlpool, because
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: that is, weirdly enough, it's the only accurate scene in
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: the whole movie regarding the myth that it's based on.
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: In that, just for I guess, I guess that's a
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: good as good a place to start as any. That
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: the myth of El Dorado is not a myth that
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: is indigenous to the Americas, and it is rather the
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: result of the projections that Spanish people arriving to the
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: continent had of it, and it's clash with the local culture.
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: So basically, there's this Colombian historian, her name is Diano Due,
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: and she she has like this history podcast. She's incredible,
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: and she describes it as this clash between like all
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: the projections that the Spanish had of a world that
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: ultimately ended up challenging their ability to imagine the universe. Right,
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: these people arrive to a continent who have no notion
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: of how to process it. It challenges every single notion
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: of civilization that they have, every single notion of like
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: geography and history and even religion, and what they end
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: up finding does not mesh with their expectations of it.
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: So both of those things end up clashing together, and
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: they start to see all of the local population, the
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: local customs, everything the culture. They start to see it
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: through this very eurocentric lens, like in a very literal way.
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: So what happened when the Spanish people arrived to the
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: Caribbean coast of what is now Colombia. So they arrived
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: to what is now Santa Marta and Cartagena, these two
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: coastal cities, and they start making their way down the
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: Magdalena River to the Andes, up to the Andes. Wait,
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: how I've always struggled in English? People say the Andes.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: I think, yeah, say Andes.
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: Okay, Now I just want to make it. I just
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: want to say that that's what I'm talking about now,
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: because obviously I'll pronounce them like in Spanish. So they
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: make their way through the Andes and they start hearing
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: of this population farther down south that has a lot
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: of gold, and they begin to process that as like
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: they think that gold has the same value there that
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: it has in Europe. They think it's also monetary, when
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: in fact, the cultures here had a very different relationship
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: with gold. If you ever make your way to Bubbadad,
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: there's the Gold Museum, which is the largest collection of
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: gold artifacts in the world, and it is established as
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: a way to recontextualize gold not as a commodity, but
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: rather as an important cultural good, akin to like painting
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: or sculpture. It's very much a part of their everyday
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: lives in a more spiritual and cultural way than just money.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: But obviously that Eurocentric lens creates this distortion of it,
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: and so they're like, oh, they're very rich people. And
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: the farther than Sow they get, they keep hearing of
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: this place called the Muiska. It's called it was the
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: Muiska Confederation. It was a series of populations native populations
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: that fell under the Muiska government, and they occupy present
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: day Bogata in like central Columbia, and either they witness
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: or they hear or they start hearing of this ritual.
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: Where in Lake Ukuatawita, which is this lake it's like
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: two hours away from Bagada. It's gorgeous, another thing that
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: people should visit, and it's this perfectly circular lagoon that
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: kind of looks like a meteor fell and just fill
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: up with water. That's not what happened, but that was
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: a theory for a while, but it kind of looks
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: like that. It kind of looks like this big crater
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: full with water, and it's this gorgeous like blue green water.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: So it is a very mystical place in a lot
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: of ways. And what happened there was that that lagoon
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: was a sacred site. It was the origin of life
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: for the Muisca. And every time that a new leader
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: would ascend, he would cover himself in gold dust across
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: the lagoon in a raft and submerge himself in the
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: center of the lagoon, and then the people all around
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: the lagoon would offer gold and would throw the gold
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: into the lagoon because it was a way of it
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: was like a religious ceremony of tribute to the gods
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: and to the origin of life itself, and people start
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: hearing of this Golden Man or how they would call
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: it in Spanish like Eldorado, like the Golden Man or
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: the golden period, because in Spanish you have tacit nouns.
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: So this is where the Eldorado concept is born. It's
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: from Spanish interpretation of the traditions of the indigenous population,
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: specifically of the Muizka population, and their imaginations start running wild,
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: and they're like, these people are so rich in gold
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: that they just throw it into this lagoon. So not
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: only is there a lot of gold at the bottom
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: of that lagoon, there's also probably a lot of gold elsewhere.
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: And again because they we're expecting kind of like reserves
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: of gold like this, like piles and piles of gold
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: like stored up instead of everyday items that they used.
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: If you go to the Gold Museum, you see that
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: they would wear a gold and jewelry, but also like
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: I guess, a lot of like different jewelry like chest plates, belt, crowns,
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: but jars were also made of gold. Like the jars
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: were they stored food and coca leaves all these things.
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: They expect a reserve, they expect a place where gold
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: is stored, and they keep looking for it, and they
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: don't find it, because again, that is not the relationship
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: that these people had with gold, and so they begin
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: to believe that it must be hidden somewhere, and that
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: is how It's snow balls into the perception of a
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: city made out of gold that is hidden somewhere in
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: first in the area that is now Columbia, but later
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: on the whole continent became subject of that search, to
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: a point where there were myths about it being like
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: deeping the amaz rainforest, or even in like more like
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: North America. Seven Golden Cities of Cibola. I think it's
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: it's one of the ones that was in I think
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: like the southern United States, southwestern All this to say
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: that the one thing that stays from the origin of
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: this myth is the scene where everyone starts throwing gold
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: for tribute into the lagoon, which was what I found
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: very fascinating as a kid, because I was like, well,
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: they knew what they were adapting, but like, why is
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: everything else so weird?
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: And they make a specific reference to Hibbalba, which is
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: the actual name of the underworld in Maya mythology. Right,
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: but that's kind of the only thing that seems vaguely
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: rooted in something that was actually part of actual mythology
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: from that area.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really bizarre to be what this movie because
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: like that to me demonstrates like, you know, this production
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: had the capacity to do their homework, but they But
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: even the way that that is presented is, well, how
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: foolish is this? You know, like it's presented from the
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: colonizer's perspective of like, well, why would you do this?
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: You know, this is so like it's presented in a
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: very i think like pejorative way.
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: It's any Michelle is like it's like kind of like
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: she's in on it and like, oh, yeah, this is no,
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: don't do that. Don't let them do that.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: Right, like my own people are so foolish.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And it is still in that regard because a
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: lot of the things that they are throwing are in fact,
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: like the kinds of stuff that I was describing that
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: were like of common use, like jars, pottery, Well, I
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: guess it's not pottery if it's not ceramics, but like
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: that kind of like thing, it's like the civilization itself
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: is kind of like in that mindset of like gold
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: not as currency, yeah, but it is still being processed
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: from the point of view of gold ass currency, so
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: it it has like this class that makes it very
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: inconsistent like internally, I guess, and from that outside point
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: of view, like you said, like they had the opportunity
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: of like they did research, they investigated this, but it
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: feels like they were playing off from the very start
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: to like the expectations of what a movie like this
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: would be. And the esthetics of El Dorado within the
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: movie are all like mess America, and it's like this
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: like pyramids, which you know, there were not pyramids around
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: here specifically, and all these like the artistic motifs that
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: you see a lot in mess American art are like
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: in Aztec and in Mayan art, the designs of the gods.
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: That kind of stuff is very much all rooted in
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: that kind of like conglomerate of cultures, even though they
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: are talking about something that originated in a place where
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: the aesthetics were much different. But you know, it's not
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: as marketable, I guess. People here didn't living like huge
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: exciting pyramids, so it's not as cool to portray.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: It's not a cinematic yeah, quote unquote, you know.
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: And Indiana Jones does the same thing in the fourth
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: Indiana Jones movie, for he also discovers the City of Gold.
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: They do the same thing, but during the Amazon and
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: suddenly there's like pyramids there.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: Right, all that meso American architecture in.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: The classic mass it is. I feel like that scene
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: is in retrospect a clear tell that it's like this
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: production had the capacity to do their which is obvious.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: You know, it's a multimillion dollar production, but any creative
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: involved with this that we're like, well we didn't, we
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: didn't know. It's like, well, you knew enough to authentically
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: present something, but you presented it as if it were
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: full like and the rest is essentially made up. It's
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: really frustrating, and I guess, Jose, I want to encourage
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: all of our listeners to watch your full video, but
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: I did want to ask about, you know, where this
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: sort of falls in, because you cover in your videos
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: so thoroughly, how frequently El Dorado comes up in the
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: adventure genre in general, generally with white protagonists, and where
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: does this movie fall? Where had we seen these like
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: why did no one blink when this movie came out
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: unless they were, you know, aware of actual history or
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: indigenous themselves.
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: Well, I think that part of the the interesting thing
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: about this where this movie is said, is that it
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: is right at the end of that wave of like
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: nineties more sympathetic portrayals of indigenous people in movies, which
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: I think arguably probably started with like Dances with Wolves,
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: in which it was like kind of like that like
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: Hollywood notion of like why can't we all just get along,
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: you know, like we're not so different? Which obviously it
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: doesn't mean that the art was less flawed. It was
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: just flawed in a different way in which we were
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: no longer dealing with like racist caricatures like in a
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: lot of like westerns.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's something that the documentary Real Engine, which we
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: covered a while back on the podcast, examines, like this
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: sort of shift in media for a little while as
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: far as the way indigenous characters were represented on screen,
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: still by and large, not respectfully responsibly, but with a
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: little bit more empathy.
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, you see that a lot in like
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: Pocacontas and then in ro To Colorado, in that it
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: was so that it was also meant in like movies
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: that were going to be accessible to children. It was
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: not just going to be like serious dramas like Dad
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: says with wolves, but it was also going to be
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: like like I think that everyone could talk about in
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: a way. But and that kind of shows how naive
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: it was from the get go. It does have like
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: that kind of like children's movie mentality of things are
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: not as complex as they seem. We're more similar than
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: we are different. This can all be solved by just
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: talking to each other, which is kind of like the
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: resolution in Pocahontas to a very complicated conflict.
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that it has no interest in portraying.
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. So it's just the movie comes out at
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: the end of that wave of attempting more humanistic approaches
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: to portraying indigenous people. But it still has all the
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: baggage of its predecessors, and most importantly, it has all
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: the it carries on the tropes that by that time
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: people were already realizing that they were they were outdated.
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's not like when Pocahontas came out, there
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: wasn't any controversy. There was probably when this movie came
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: out there wasn't because nobody saw it. In its original
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: theatrical run. It was a flop, right, but it.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: Was a flop compared to its budget. But it's it
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: made seventy six million dollars at the box office.
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: So oh yeah, it's more than I thought.
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it made a lot of money. But it's
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: just the animated movies are so expensive and comparative. I
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: feel like it was like, yeah, used as an example
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: of like Jeffrey Katzenberg doesn't know what he's doing, which
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: is true.
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: It almost always is.
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but this is you know, we are counting
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: down to Shrek. Shark comes out in oh one and
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: then Katzenberg says fuck you for all eternity, even though
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: he's like, you know, one of the most ridiculous people
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: to have ever lived. True.
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: But I think that it is very telling that this
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: movie kind of on the Katzenburg end, it wanted to
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: have it all in regards to the last ten years
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: of Disney. It was like, we're going to try to
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: be more serious like Pocahontas, but we're also going to
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: have like the writers of Aladdin, make it into like
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: a fun adventure, right, and we're gonna have Alton John
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: do the songs. Alton John kind of like winging it.
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: I'm not as I guess. I grew up with the
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: Spanish dubs of the songs and it wasn't until very
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: recently that I listened to the ones in English. I
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: was like, it kind of sounds like he's making them
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: up as he goes. But see at the time.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: I was like, wow, five their earworms. Look, this is
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: where I get to bet I'm like theirs. A child
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: might want the karaoke CD. It's not inconceivable.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: I think they're boring there.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: Well you you don't, You're not six. Uh. I do
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: think it's interesting. I mean that is like well Worth Benching.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: I wanted to get to that where this writing team,
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, they sort of specialized in
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: this kind of colonizer narrative because they are or just
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: in in in Disney in general, where the opening sequence,
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: the way we meet Miguel and Tulio. I was like, oh,
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: this is like a ripoff of Aladdin, and you're like, oh, well,
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: it's the writers of Aladdin. And they also wrote the
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: Mask of Zorro. They are credited on Truck. Sorry, it's true.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: Pirates of the Caribbean.
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: And then they went on to the Pirates of the Caribbean.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's yeah, so it's like this is kind of
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: their bread and butter. It's like misrepresenting history to create
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: successful or attempted blockbusters.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and you can definitely tell that that they were
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: going for, like that kind of Aladdin tone, but with
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: like the added Elton John of it all and the
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: more serious like topic quote unquote, with like with Pocahontas,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: which was famously Jeffre Katzenberg's attempt at like Oscar Bold. So, yeah,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: it is it is kind of like trying to have
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: it all in regards to that while still borrowing the
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: problematic aspects of not only those stories but also the
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: ones that came before, because it is kind of like,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: in a way an update on the Bob Hope and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: who was it with Bob Hope? Oh yes, that they
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: would have these adventure movies like the duo Crosby Bing.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: Crosby famously unproblematic.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you know, so it imports so much stuff
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: from previous movies in an attempt to do something as
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: good as them, quote unquote, but it does not in
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: doing so, it imports all these like problematic elements that
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: also feel end up feeling incredibly disjointed, like narratively, and
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: every every one of the three main indigenous characters are
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: like a different stereotype, like infamous stereotype in a way,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: Like you know, you have like the jolly kind of
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: like himbo ish chief who who is just wants everyone
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: to get along, and you have like the the fearmongering
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: evil priests whose magical, magical, generically magical and mystical.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: And it is a pretty comprehensive you know, indigenous tropes
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: one oh one, like most are present in this.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right, And like even Pocahontas had, like you felt
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: like it had like actual characters, even if they were
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: like surrounded by a baffling movie in hindsight in a
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: lot of ways, but you know, you could feel that
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: they were characters here. They just feel like these tropes
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: that by then we're already feeling very tired. Obviously the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: cornerstone of the whole conversation, because this is the Bechdel
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: cast after all, Shell who is who's just.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: Like has a colonizer's brain put into an indigenous body
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: out of context, Like why.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: It even goes to her design like she is the
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: only indigenous character in the movie that does not have
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: like a cartoonishly exaggeratedly pronounced nose. You know, because cycle
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: Con looks like almost like the Native Americans in Peter
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: Pan like levels of like cartoonish exaggeration of racial features
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: like the the cheekbones, and the nose and like the forehead.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: They're all they all feel very reminiscent of that like
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: racist cartoon carry catcher rization of a whole like ethnicity.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, her features are anglicized.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I am. I mean my boyfriend when he first
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: saw her, I'm gonna steal a lot of jokes from
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: my boyfriend. Sorry, I watched it with him.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: What are boyfriends for?
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he was like, why does she look like New
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: Yurekan And I was like, she's voiced by Rosie Perez
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: and He's like, called it right.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: They designed the character around Rosie Perez versus the story.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: She's the only one that does not have like overly
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: pronounced indigenous features. But she's just the right amount of
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: like exotically designed so as to be like sensual and
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: seductive and very sexually available to the first white man
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: that she meets.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: Unbelievably, So let's get to that. I just wanted to
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: really quickly mention how just in terms of like where
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: this falls in animation, I think the I've never I
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: don't know, maybe I just haven't looked into it enough,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: but this movie feel very much in conversation with a
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: Disney movie that makes a lot of the same choices
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: that came out at the same year and was successful,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: The Emperor's New Groove, which also I mean it's down
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: to the production changes that were made because The Emperor's
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: New Groove, you know, like you've have maybe seen it
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: another movie. I have a lot of nostalgic attachment to.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: The same that one I did love as a kid,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: like an adultterated love, and I still have a lot
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: of love for it.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, it is funny and like and it.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: Is a better movie than this, Like as a movie,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: it is a lot better.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: More No, it's like definitely a more fully realized story,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: but it also is like still a you know, americanized
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: colonially you know colonial lens, you know, view of the
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: Incan Empire. I think that something that kind of saves
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: it is the fact that there is not a Colonizer narrative.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: All of the characters are for even though they were
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: voiced by David Spade and John Goodman. But what I
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: thought was interesting is first of all, that these movies
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: came out the same year there was clearly some internal
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: interest in representing indigenous cultures badly, and that there is
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: the same change at a certain point in production. Where
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: I didn't know this about The Road to El Dorado,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: I knew it about The Emperor's New Groove because there's
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: a whole really interesting documentary about it. Incredible, yes, really great,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: Like if you haven't seen it, I'm pretty sure it
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: was made by like Sting's wife at the time, which
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: is wild. But there's so many similar things that I
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: think are very much pulling from the success of The
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: Lion King and Toy Story, where you know, it's like
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, especially The Lion King, where it is a
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: group of white creatives presenting a very serious story about
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: a culture that is not their own, and then bringing
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: on a huge pop star to write the music that
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: is the Lion King playbook to a tea. It was
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: very successful with The Lion King, and you see these
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: sort of failed attempts to recreate that magic in a
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: way that gets increasingly offensive over time. And so by
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: two thousand you get The Road to El Dorado by
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was involved in The Lion King, and
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: then on the Disney side you get The Emperor's New Groove.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: And both of these movies were pitched as very serious
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: and were meant to be more like The Lion King
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: in the culture they're representing. And this isn't to say
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: that The Lion King got it right. You can listen
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: to our episode about it. But the movies were pitched
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: with a very serious tone, tested horribly, and then were
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: switched to be American comedies that took place in indigenous
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: cultures but presented a completely colonial Americanized Western sensibility and
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: sense of humor. And that happened to both of those movies.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: This like movie was originally in the Road to El Dorado,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: was in production for a long time. It was not
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: pitched as a comedy, and then it was changed when
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: they're like, well, this movie is a fucking mess, which
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: I'm sure it was, but they're like, okay, we're just
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: going to turn it into a comedy and kind of
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: forget everything else.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: You know, we'll turn it into a different mess.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it is. Also it's also interesting that
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: you bring that up, because yeah, I was also thinking
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: of and Personal Groove, but they both came at a
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: time where right after like the Latin invasion in terms
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: of you know, you have Ricky Martin and Jalo and
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: all this, like like the Macarina you have all this,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: uh top three, Yeah exactly, that's that's a cultural exports,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: important cultural exports exports. Both Ricky Martin and Jalo are American,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: but it is like the Latin invasion of in mainstream
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: culture of like music and stuff, and they start to
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: realize that, like the Latino public in the US is
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: not neglible, like they can cater to it. And I
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: think that Personal Groove was actually the first Disney movie
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: to open in Spanish in the US as well as
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: in English. There was this notion of like in some
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: way that the want this like desire to cater to
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: Latino audiences without really getting Latino or Latino adjacent voices
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: in a figurative way, not like literal, although in the
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: case of Emperson who grew very literal, they didn't even
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: get any Latino voice actors, but you know, it was
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: like unlike later on when they would try this again
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: with like Coco or Encanto or all these like other
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: like pieces of media that were in some way courting
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: Latin American perspective, a Latin American public, I mean with
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: a perspective. They didn't have that here. So those two
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 4: movies are very good examples of that, right of what
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: happens when you were you have this desire to explore
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: these other cultures without giving a seat on the table
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: to the people who come from those cultures, and you
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: get even it gets even more complicated when it comes
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: to indigenous cultures because obviously there is a difference between
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 4: the Latino population and the indigenous population of Latin America,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: and that is something that a lot of Americans, and
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: like the mainstream, those were not the conversations that were having.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: So that's why the the Hispanic characters in the movie
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: are voiced by white guys and the Indigenous people are
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: voiced by latinos.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: Well two or three, uh right, there is the Irish
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: Italian guy. Yeah, let's not forget.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So it is it is an interesting moment in
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: regards to all the conversions of all these different waves
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: and ongoing desires of the industry that aged very badly
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: because they were not done with like a that kind
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: of openness to perspective, just openness to consumers for sure.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let's unpack all of that via starting with
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: Cell first. So she is the one woman we meet
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: in the entire story.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: Shell exists in an unprecedented void, like a void heretofore unseen.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: In movies before instance, truly, So it's not even though
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: she's like not like the other girls because she's has
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: a colonizer mind, she's we don't even meet the other girls, right, Yeah,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: we don't have a comparative, you know, we don't meet it.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: There's another there's another woman mentioned, but she's very much
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: like what is the name of the character? Like missus smurf, Like,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: I'm like, are there we see other women in passing,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: but I don't think that another woman really speaks.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we we think so, Yeah.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: No, do they have a name? Like this fails the
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: Bechdel test on every single.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: Possible and a test was not made wild.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: No, we don't even learn her name. For a while.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: We learn very little about her and her backstory. The
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: only thing we really learn is her interest in capitalism
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: and colonialism. We'll get to that in a moment.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: And having that presented as agency too is really tricky.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, she is hyper sexualized the way that many
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: indigenous women and women of color in general are represented
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: in media, especially compared to their white counterparts. And then like,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: part of the way she convinces the two men to
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: let her in on their scam is that she's you know,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: being hyper seductive and flirtatious and you know, influencing them
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: using her feminine wiles, that kind of thing. So, not
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: only in her character design and costuming, but also her behavior,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: is she hyper sexualized? And earlier versions of the script
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: I read that she was sexualized even more. She had
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: even steamier love sequences, she was even more scantily dressed
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: as far as her clothing design.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, you can find a lot of early concept art
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: of cel and early like half animated sequences with her
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: at Tulio, and you're like, it's it's wild. It is
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: h Yeah, I actually you know, maybe don't maybe don't
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: don't watch it, but it is true.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then during some rewrites of the script, the
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: romance between her and Tulio was toned down and new
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: clothing was designed for her, and Worth repeating that the
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: hyper sexualization of Indigenous women in media has real world consequences,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: where Indigenous women are raped, abducted, murdered at disproportionately high rates.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: I feel like trope that we see all the time
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: encourages the interpretation that this abuse, this disproportionate abuse, is
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: brought on by them and brought on by their presentation,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: and that which is frustrating because women should be you know,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: maybe not in a kid's movie, but like, you know,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: women should be able to present however they however they like.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: But it's because you know, these are white guys. These
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: are the guys that wrote Jasmine, who are also writing Cell.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: It's i know, a different animation company, but there's a
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: lot of the same players. And I do feel like
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: when people are presented in children's media as more promiscuous
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: than white European people, that it is like the subtext
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: to it is like, so if anything happens to them,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: it's because they were presenting this way. They were not
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: whatever enough, And that is I feel like, really present
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: in Cell. And then you're like, well, at least her
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: character and then you're like, well, well no, just ding,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: just kidding, because her character also I think I have
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: seen some reclaiming. But it goes with Jose what you
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: were talking about earlier, the narratives that have sort of
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: popped up in the last half decade of this being
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: a you know, gem, a hidden gem of like well
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: you know cell, Sure there's a lot of tropes present,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: but is she not an active character? And the answer
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: is like, well, she's active to a point. The second
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: she's in a relationship with Tulio, her agency completely goes away.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: And the ways in which she's active is with a
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: colonizer mindset. So it's like, I don't think that, you know,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: like she's particularly reclaimable is like will you miswatched it?
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: Right? Yeah? With Shell in particular, I think she calls
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: to there's this figure in Mexican culture named La Malinche.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you know about her.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: I don't think so.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: Now, so she was this is Mexican culture, so it's
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: not my own fortep but yeah, okay, just confirmed it.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: She was the indigenous woman, like the Aztec indigenous woman
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: who served as Cortes's kind of like guide, an interpreter
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: and at first she was kind of like framed like
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: during the colonial leer, she was kind of like a
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: frame like as an ideal like kind of almost like
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: a noble savage kind of thing. And she ended up
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: marrying I don't want to get this wrong again, not
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: my culture, but it is something that I am. Okay,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: she ended up marrying a colonizer from the expedition, not
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: Cortez himself. That was almost the mistake that I made. Oh,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: she actually had a son with Cortez actually, But so
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: for a while, it was kind of like she was
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: kind of like a noble savage figure, and then after
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: the Mexican War of Independence, she became reframed as more
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: of a kind of like a trader, right because she
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 4: ate it in a lot of ways to the colonization
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: of what is now the Mexican territory and like the
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: end of the Aztec Empire and to this day in Mexico.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: It is kind of like an insult, like when someone
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: calls someone a malin che, it's specifically a way of
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: calling them like either a trader or like to use
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: Internet's lank, kind of like a white man's whore in
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: a way. So I feel like Chell in a way
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: is very much a malin che figure, which is weird.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: I don't even know if they were aware of that,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: but she kind of plays us one as kind of
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 4: like this this woman who well, in my opinion, shouldn't
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 4: necessarily be like demonized or anything, because you know, she
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: was also part of a probably very like she was
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: probably coerced in a way in to all of this. Right,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 4: We can't know.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: Right because I think that she was like a teenager
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: when she met Cortez and like all of these things
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: where it's like it's I'm sure that she is inappropriately maligned,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: but that's the way, Like this movie is so in
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: conversation with Pocahontas, where I mean and Pocahontas almost I mean,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: I don't want to say that Pogacontas does this better.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: It doesn't. It does it wrong in a different way.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: But like I feel like cell is presented so uncritically
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: as like you know, playing into third wave feminism, tropes
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: around like, well, she's sassy and she like pushes back
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: and she stands up for herself, So she is a
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: feminist character, and it just like falls under a microsecond
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: of scrutiny because she is presented yet hyper sexualized with
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: a colonizer mentality that I have no idea how she
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: would even you know, Like it's just it's like nonsensical
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: where even if she were, you know, a rebellious teenager
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: coming from El Dorado, like rebellion and would not look
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: like a place she doesn't know exists, and like we're
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: fully but and like you know, they're like embracing there
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: and like fundamentally understanding from moment one their values and goals.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: Like it's just she's so underwritten and and yeah, ultimately
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: I think like you're saying, like presented as like it's
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: the right thing for her to go to Spain in
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: the same way that it's presented at the end of
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: you know, Pocahontas. Well, I guess it's not. I guess poke,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: I'm talking about Pocahontas too, where it's like it's, uh, Pocahontas,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: you know, moving to England. She's she's just a fish
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: out of water. This is funny, this is weird, and
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: like I feel like these narratives are I mean, not
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: only is the history done not at all and like
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: presenting the colonizer's mindset, but it also like presents in
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: the same way of like what you were saying before, Jose,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: of like, well, we just need to talk to each other,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: and that completely erases any previous historical power dynamic between
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: It presents all cultures as having experienced equal power throughout history,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: and like erases any reason why these like it's just
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: it's like fantastical thinking.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: Right, and to an earlier point as far as like
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: her being kind of mapped onto that woman who was
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: later considered a trader, that is very much what Chelle
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: is doing. She's betraying her own people by like sneakily
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: helping the Europeans because her intentions are capitalistic, even though
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: she would have no frame of reference for that ideology,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: but she wants a portion of the gold for herself.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: She negotiates girl boss.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: She right, like the ways in which she is an
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: active character and who has agency, Like the context for
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: it is like very girl stuff, So it's not good
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: or feminist. You know, she's helping these white Westerners do colonialism.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: She's presented as believing that her people, her communities, customs
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: are just too quaint, they're too they're uncivilized actually, and
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: she wants to join these Westerners, these colonizers on their adventures,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: because she's like, I want to go to Spain with you.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: But historically, when Indigenous women were taken to Europe, they
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: were being stolen and trafficked. And then again she's shown
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: as seducing Tulio and they're having consensual sex in the movie,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: but again, in reality, white colonizers were routinely raping and
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: murdering Indigenous women. So it's just rewriting all of that history.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: It's just like a complete void. It's yeah.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: And because she's positioned as a love interest for Tulio,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: because women can't exist in a story without being the
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: love interest of a male hero, this movie does not
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: pass the Ali Nati test created by Friend of the
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: Pod Ali Naddi, which, if listeners aren't familiar, it is
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: a test that in order to pass, a piece of
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: media has to have a main character who is an
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: indigenous slash Aboriginal woman who does not fall in love
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: with a white man, and who is not raped or
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: murdered at any point in the story. So because she
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: falls in love with a white man and has a
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: colonizer mindset, huge failure of the Ali Nati test, and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: she has to be saved by him at the end,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: and then she's removed from the action toward the end whenever,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: like the giant statue is attacking Tulio and Miguel. So
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: just like tropes on top of tropes on top of tropes.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: I think that like what characterized that specifically, this moment
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: that we were talking about in terms of indigenous representation,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 4: I guess with a lot of also ethnic and racial minorities,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: it was this condescension of kind of like not giving
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 4: these characters the opportunity to be like real characters, and
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: they just had to like wholly depend on these other
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 4: narratives that were empathetic in name. But again, that condescension
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: kind of makes it all fall flat. It just ends
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: up feeling, which I think is like, I think one
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: of the movies that try to do this and succeeded
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: to like more than the others, I guess, is a
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which a lot of
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: the problematic elements of the depiction are kind of written
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: into the story, but the way the character herself is
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 4: portrayed does not necessarily fall into this condescension. I think
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: that's what makes Esmeralda in a Hunchback of notreiame kind
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 4: of like an outlier in this specific era of animated movies,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: animated children, movies about racial tensions.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: But a wild subcategory.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it's weird that it happened so many times. Yeah,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: but and I know that portrayal that I'm referencing positively
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 4: also has a lot of issues. But here you don't
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 4: even get like that kind of actual agency or taking
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: the character seriously in a way that kind of makes
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: her memorable beyond her her design is very memorable for
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, there is not great reasons you can.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: Trace a lot of Like I mean, I think so
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: much of why this movie is thought of like pleasantly
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: in retrospective is because it seems like, connected to the
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: three main characters, a lot of people had sexual awakenings
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: connected to those.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 4: Characters, which it can respect, I guess, but yeah.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: It's like that's your truth.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: That's your truth. It does not make the movie.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 4: Good or a hidden gem or underrated classic.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I feel like there is like so much of
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: a movie criticisms, just like just because it made you
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: horny when you were ten doesn't mean that it is
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: a good or culturally valuable movie. But I think that
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: that is a lot of unfortunately, and I'm sure we've
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: been guilty of this at that point. A lot of
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: millennial film criticism boils down to it made me horny
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 3: when I was ten, and therefore I will do olympic
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: backflips to find a way to declare this movie as
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: technically great. And you're like, as, no, you got horny
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: when you were ten, congratulations, Like where a lot of
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: us are in the same boat. The characters are hyper sexualized,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: I think. I think like Chell obviously is because she's
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: the only woman and she is very scantily clad, which
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: also the the other women we see but don't hear
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: speak are not. So she's also othered in the way
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: that she like she's not wearing the same kind of
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: outfit that others.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 4: Are, and it kind of ties into that her features
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: are also not as sure right, like phenotypically indigenous as
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 4: the other unspeak.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: Like non speaking women.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the word that I was looking for.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: Who're all presented as I think mothers because we mostly
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: see them around children, But like, there's no other woman
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: in the story that not even has narrative agency but
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: just does anything. It's like, it's wild.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 4: They're non entities essentially. Yeah, it's incredibly like even even
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 4: at that point that must have felt very dated.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: That that tapers into something I wanted to acknowledge, which
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: is that there were always haters of this and like
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: from the moment it was released, there were protests done
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: on the representation of Indigenous culture outside of screenings. I
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: don't think that that was the reason that this movie
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: failed financially. Most of the criticism you can find from
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: the movie at the time was like the movie isn't
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: very good versus it is perpetuating a very colonized or
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: racist viewpoint. So it suffered from a lot. But I
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: wanted to just revisit this op ed published in the
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: La Times when this movie came out from a writer
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: named Olin to Scott Leipoca, who was at the time
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: the director of the Machika Movement and Indigenous Rights Education
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: Organization specifically about people of Mexican and Central American descent,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: And this was published around the same time that there were,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: I think driven by, but not defined by the Michika
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: Movement protests of this movie in the way that it
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: portrayed indigenous culture in general. And I want to just
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: read from it because I feel like it's really easy
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: for us to characterize now like, oh, well, in hindsight,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: we can see that this was wrong, when very often
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: those criticisms were very present and just not talked about
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: very much when the movie actually came out. So the
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: piece opens by, you know, well, I'll just read from it.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: There's a lot worth reading. Imagine you're leaving a couple
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: of centuries in the future and have never heard of
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: World War two or Nazis. Further, imagine that you're being
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: shown a movie about the Nazi commandant portrayed as a happy,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: go lucky, romantic guy at a concentration camp. This is
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 3: a recreational Jewish camp where everyone is picnicking and having
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: a great time. Fritz, who is the character that the
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: Raiders naming whatever, is constantly looking to get rich off
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: the Jewish campers, and they freely offer him their gold fillings,
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: Swiss savings accounts, and other valuables. He meets an evil
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: rabbi who wants the valuables for himself, and a beautiful
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: Jewish girl who offers herself as a sex toy without
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: ever mentioning World War II. Nazis or the Holocaust. The
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: film ends with Fritz living happily ever after with the
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: wealth he has acquired from the Jewish people at the camp.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: This racist, sexist scenario of lies is the equivalent to
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: what is being done to us, the indigenous people of
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: Mexican and Central American descent by the new animated film
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: The Road to El Dorado, Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks and Universal
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: Studios present the story of two Spaniards who stow away
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: to the New World in the sixteenth century and wind
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: up saving the village of El Dorado from a powerful
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 3: priest intent on carrying out human sacrifices. This is an
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: outrage given the reality that the Spanish conquerors were responsible
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: for the genocide of twenty three million of our people,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: killing ninety five percent of our population. The film makes
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: it look as if we were immoral and evil, when
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: it was the Spaniards who were immoral. They stole our gold, labor,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: and land. They raped and culturally castrated our population, enslaving
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 3: us to their Spanish names, language, and interests. DreamWorks is
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: claiming that the film is a complete fantasy fairy tale,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: but the scenario of the concentration camp above would never
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: be accepted as a complete fantasy fairy tale by anyone.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: DreamWorks thinks it's acceptable here because the story is only
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 3: about Indigenous people. They have no respect for people, no shame,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: and the piece goes on. We'll link it in the
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: description to this episode. But it's it's clear that, you know,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: since this movie came out, people have been understandably outraged
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: about it and hearing it compared to the Holocaust in
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: that way. I mean, we are talking about a genocide
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: of equivalent and the fact that one is you know
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: that because it is an indigenous population, everyone is happy
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: to accept the narrative being presented.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: It's like so sad because we are already coming in
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 4: at the end of like not at the end, but
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 4: like at the we we are coming in after like
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 4: decades and decades of stories that perpetrate those exact like
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 4: mistruths surrounding the colonization of the Americas, that have become
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 4: so normalized to a point that people just assume that
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 4: certain things were are as depicted in these kinds of stories,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 4: which were started relatively shortly after the conquest in order
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 4: to perpetrate this idea of civilization. This idea, like this
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 4: kind of like white men's burden esque idea that I
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 4: feel like it is very present in the movie. That
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 4: is literally one of my notes that it's super white
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 4: man's burden coded, not even coded, it's just straight up
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: kind of that. But it's very textual and the way
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 4: that these stories keep it between things that are assumed,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 4: like just taken for granted, like the whole human sacrifice
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 4: aspect that has become a huge component of stories about
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 4: indigenous people, which like in a lot of ways they
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 4: exaggerate and if human sacrifice what was happening in in
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 4: the America is like, yeah, that is I guess bad obviously,
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 4: but it is not a thing where the Europeans coming
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 4: in had any moral authority in regards to handling it,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 4: because not only did they carry out a genocide, but
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 4: like human sacrifice through a peace gods, is what the
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 4: Spanish Inquisition was all about, and that was in full
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 4: swing at the time that this movie takes place. So
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 4: it always reframes things in a way that when you
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 4: hear about the Spanish Inquisition, it's like, oh, yeah, that's
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 4: that's messed up, But you hear human sacrifice that is like, oh, yeah,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 4: it was a battle between two evils, or there's this
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 4: whole series of myths that are told to justify it,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 4: like oh, but so many tribes ally themselves with Cortez
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 4: to take down the Aztec Empire. And it's like yeah,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: but like do you know that because of stories written
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 4: by the Spanish people that were like probably forcibly recruiting
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 4: Native soldiers in order to do this, or like they
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 4: were welcomed as God's things, which has never been present
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 4: in indigenous narratives about their own history, but it's always
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 4: present in these kinds of stories when there is no
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 4: actual historical evidence that Europeans were ever taken in as
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 4: like gods when they arrived to the New Continent, Right, that's.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: A story that they they indicated, Yeah.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 4: They told themselves. It's like this thing where in I
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 4: don't know the specifics of it, but in certain indigenous
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 4: narratives I don't remember telling where I know they were
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 4: mess for American but the whole thing was like, oh,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 4: they thought they were being received as gods because they
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 4: were being received with like these like ointments and like
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 4: this instance type things and stuff. But in reality, it's
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 4: just that they just got off a ship and they
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 4: smelled really bad, and so they were like kind of
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 4: like purifying the air around them, and they thought it
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 4: was a sign of honor. I don't know if this
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 4: is like actually based on historical narrative, indigenous historical narrative,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 4: but it kind of demonstrates that, like notion that there
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 4: are always going to be different to this official story
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 4: regarding the colonization of the Americas, and it does not
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 4: do anyone any favors to misportray them, even if you're
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 4: elevating them to the realm of fantasy, which it's not
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 4: like it's it might be a fairy tale, it might
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 4: be like a fantasy history, but you are participating in
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 4: not only the retelling but the perpetration of this. It's
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 4: perpetration or real word, sorry, perpetrating. I think so, yeah,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 4: you're perpetrating the story is in the first place, like
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 4: you're making sure that they keep getting told. But these
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 4: lies or these like racist myths keep getting told, and
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 4: that is just a deservice to the victims of the
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 4: genocide that was brought forth by colonization, but also to
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 4: the ongoing consequences of it. The fact that you know
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 4: Indigenous people in all across the Americas are still subjected
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 4: to systemic discrimination, to disproportionate poverty, to sexual violence. These
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 4: are all all, in one way or another part of
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 4: this story that is like this animated kids movie. Like
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 4: in any other movie, I would like this kind of
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 4: ending of like, oh, well, we don't have anything, but
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 4: we're going to keep going and adventure and whatever. It's
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 4: like I like that sentiment, but if it follows like
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 4: ninety minutes of these people taking their white man's burden
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 4: over this fictional indigenous culture, it just ends up bringing
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 4: very hollow like the people did not venture there to
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 4: with nothing and just make their luck. They actively stole,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 4: they actively ravaged, they murdered, they kidnapped, etc. And it
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 4: just makes me kind of angry. Despite how charming the
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 4: movie might be at point, it's.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 3: Just that's like it's the friendly Colonizer that again, it's like,
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 3: because we know that these character are being presented in
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 3: a way that's palatable, they're being played by white movie stars,
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 3: and like, you know, everything is setting us up or
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: setting up an uninformed audience, which I think the majority
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: of this audience would have been to children right to
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 3: swallow it all because you're like, oh, well, this is
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: the funny guy, because the music and the animation and
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 3: the focus is telling me that this is the person
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 3: I should be rooting for. And yeah, it's like giving
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 3: you know, I mean, even Cortes receiving I think at
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: best neutral press, you know, over four hundred years later
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: is unbelievable.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: It's that he is not the primary villain, and that
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: an indigenous character is.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: A heavily trope the primary villain.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the magical sinister uh.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: Right, right, perpetuating that trope of the you know, magical,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: mystical indigenous person.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 3: The elements of El Dorado's culture that we are shown,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: sub of which is pulled from real indigenous culture, some
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 3: of which is made up, is like it's ultimately shown
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 3: to be like beautiful but silly, and the Hibalba sequence
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 3: is like played for comedy. It's played for like why
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 3: would you do this? And does no examination into why
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: this was a real practice or I mean Jako Khan's character,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 3: any element of the religion that's present is shown to
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 3: be a force of evil and the reason that we
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 3: are supposed to like Shelle, she has no connection to
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 3: her culture at all. The reason that we're rooting for
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 3: her is because and like the times we are laughing,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 3: is because she's engaging with capitalism like that is like her,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 3: only like he he gatcha moments are her negotiating, right,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 3: It's ridiculous. So even when we are shown, you know,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 3: an attempt at culture, it's always like with this implied
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 3: eye roll of like, well, of course this doesn't work.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 3: Of course this culture is not present today because it's silly,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 3: not because it was willfully extinguiradicated.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 4: Right. And the idea that in some way to a
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 4: white guys participated in preserving a part of this the culture.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: By stealing off the city from.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 4: The protecting it from exactly, it's just so in poor taste.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 4: The example in the in the op ed that you
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 4: mentioned Jamie really like drives a point home. Just because
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 4: these figures are so historically separated from us by time
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 4: does not mean that they are fair game for this, right,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 4: and in fact it ends up being in very poor
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 4: taste when you realize the consequences of the events portrayed
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 4: in the movie, even if they're portrayed from like this
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 4: whimsical fictional point.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to. Unfortunately I do want to call
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 3: back to that song sixteenth century Man that I'm glad
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 3: doesn't have greater prominence in the movie, but I feel
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 3: like it just really betrays what this movie's beliefs are
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: rooted in. Because Elton john wrote and recorded this, Oh,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 3: it's great to say our homeland breathe the Iberian atmosphere.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 3: Just because we are Hispanic doesn't mean we're oceanic. Quite frankly,
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 3: we've had water up to hear, we've made waves to
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 3: last a lifetime. We've been saturated, almost drowned. We are Spanish,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: not Caribbean. We are human not Amphibian. We'll seek our
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 3: fortunes on Spain's solid ground. Just on the soundtrack of
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 3: this movie. And it's unbelievably violent and dismissive and like
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 3: comparing Caribbean people to amphibian and yeah to animals animal
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: like just saying like Spanish people human indigenous populations. Not
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 3: that's just in an Elton Johnson.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 4: I need to talk to who who was this Tim Rice?
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 4: Who did the lyrics?
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 3: Uh, let me check that is a good question.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 4: It was Tim Rise. Okay, I need to have a
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 4: conversation with Tim Rice to sit him down. Sir tim Rise,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 4: we need to talk.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: Well, even a song that is in the movie and
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: not in whatever like a credit sequence, I think it's
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: happening when they are like montaging their way through the
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: forest and the lyrics are about how they're blazing a
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: trail and going into uncharted territory, which like pushes that
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: false narrative of Western discovery, erasing the fact and they're
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: coming upon like clearly man made structures and it's like
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 2: we are the first to be here, and it's like, well,
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: who made those that? Like it's just erasing the fact
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: that indigenous people had already been there for millennia. But
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: that doesn't match up with their you know, narrative that
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: they have to push that, no, we discovered.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 3: This well, hose that that I think it connects back
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 3: to what your your video from a few years ago
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 3: is about that. So many, even though this movie wasn't
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 3: particularly successful, that Hollywood adventure movies are rooted in this
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: very colonial mentality of discovery not claiming something that is
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 3: not yours. I mean, I know, you talked about Indiana Jones,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 3: you talked about Tintin, you talked about all of these
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 3: sort of famous I know Tintin's not American, but you
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 3: know all of these famous Western and European narratives that
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 3: present this very uncritically.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it hurts a little because, you know, this
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 4: is a genre that I've always really enjoyed. I've always
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 4: liked the idea of it, and it pushed me to
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 4: like learn about like geography and about like all these
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 4: like ancient wonders of the world and stuff like that,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 4: because I like the idea of these journeying to different
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 4: places and you know, for the sake of adventure, and
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 4: I'm obviously growing up you start to realize that a
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 4: lot of it pushes these like colonialist narratives of discovery,
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 4: of like pillaging of all these real world atrocities in
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 4: a way that are just kind of you don't think
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 4: about that much because harryson Ford is incredibly charming and
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 4: hot and please call me but.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: Apologize for some of your movies.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 4: But I do love Indiana Jones movies, and I do
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 4: think that it is interesting that my favorite one is
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 4: The Last Crusade, and I mentioned that one video it
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 4: is the best one.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 3: And that's something I have no attachment to whatsoever. And
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 3: you're like, these are racists next, you know.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 4: But what I like so much about that one specifically
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 4: is that he kind of realizes that not everything needs
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 4: to be discovered, that not everything has to be in
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 4: a museum, that you can leave the alone. And he
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 4: only discovers that when the item in question is like
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 4: the Holy Grail. It's like part of in a way,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 4: he's upbringing. He's like Catholic or Christian upbringing. I really
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 4: like that, and I feel like that opens the doors
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 4: up for like all sorts of different stories that can
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 4: indulge in all these fun things that we love about
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 4: the adventure genre that this movie clearly has a love for,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 4: in like that whole song about like blazing the trail
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 4: and everything. That's like the charm of these stories, but
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 4: we can engage with them in a way that does
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 4: not alienate real cultures, that that does not like treat
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 4: them as The reason why I made the video specifically
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 4: surrounding the City of Gold narrative and the Eldorado narrative
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 4: is that it is a great encapsulation of you know,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 4: Europeans just made up a place and then this destroyed
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 4: like the continent looking for it, and now it has
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 4: become like this like stand in for a lot of
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 4: real cultures, a lot of real places that were lost
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 4: to colonization. They're not lost geographically, they're lost because they
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 4: were destroyed by colonization. And there are a lot of
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 4: ways to indulge in the in the genre, to explore
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 4: the genre in ways that reconnect real people with real
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 4: lost things instead of having to make them up, instead
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 4: of having to make up these cultures to make fun
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 4: of them.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: Such as Mowana, which I know you bring up in
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: your video and they're big fans of that movie. But
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: even that, I mean not without its problems. It was
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: made by yeah, white filmmakers.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 4: But it is it is the step in like, oh,
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 4: she is discovering something about her own past, about her
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 4: own culture, and she's setting off to find it because
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 4: it was at some point stolen, there was at some
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 4: point like misplaced or stuffing like that. I love that.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 4: I love that angle. And obviously Mona was still made
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 4: by white guys and by the Disney Core creation, but
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 4: it is a way of having more being aware of
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 4: the art that you're making and the consequences, the real
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 4: world consequences that they have.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 4: I do love Moana.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 3: I know so I'm so excited for Mowana too, I know,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 3: but I well, this is a whole other thing. But
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 3: they did not get Limbwell Miranda to write the music,
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 3: the only thing he's good for writing music for Moana.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 4: They got. Yeah.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 3: I was like, yah, prospects if they if they, if
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 3: they fuck up Mowana, I just I don't know what
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 3: I'll do. Yeah, I don't know. I guess yeah. I
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 3: don't understand more than ever. I mean, like, the reclaiming
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 3: of this narrative is never quite tracked for me. I
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 3: understand that there is a nostalgia, but I feel I
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 3: wish ultimately that there was a step back in general
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 3: from conflating nostalgia with morality, which is what I think
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 3: a lot of these reclaiming narratives have to do, is
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 3: that it is the morally upright and correct thing to
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 3: you know, say that this movie is doing something that
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: it very clearly is not, or that like you're just
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: not watching it correctly. It's like, you, nostalgia should be
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: removed from a critical view. That's like like what we
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 3: attempt to do all the time, and it's fucking hard,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 3: you know, but this movie feels like a particular one
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 3: where it has been aggressively reclaimed I think by focusing
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 3: on elements of the movie that are more fun and
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: kind of YadA yachting and the rest and being like, well,
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 3: sure it doesn't hold up, well, sure it is racist.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 3: Well sure it is technically really sexist as well. But
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 3: they're basically gay, right, and like that is the thing
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: that is what you see and and I agree, I
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 3: agree that, yeah, they're friends.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 6: They are like they there is a very bisexual energy
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 6: I guess to shout out that element that definitely seems
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 6: to stand out to people is.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 3: Like they I don't know, maybe they have this weird
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 3: colonial polycule by the end of the movie where maybe
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: the only canonical couple is a hetero couple. But the
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: way I mean, but I do, I get it. Tulio
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 3: and Miguel are boyfriend coded. They're taking naked swims together.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 3: They are weeping and saying, you made my life an adventure,
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 3: you made my life rich. They are very touchy, I think,
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 3: more than you would see a lot of you know,
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 3: a lot of cartoon characters in general. They're very touchy
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 3: with each other. They're very like I totally understand and
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 3: like I can't like it is a very horny movie.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 3: I understand the argument that these are by characters. Obviously
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 3: they're not like canonical by characters, but spiritually I get it.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: But the but the takeaway being that like bisexuals can
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 3: also colonize is just such a non starter. Like, yeah,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 3: but does that make it a good movie to show
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 3: to children? I just don't think so.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 4: I don't know. Yeah, I mean again, I understand. I
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 4: have my my movies that I like. I get sore
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 4: when they like when someone like critiques them in a
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 4: way that like hurts my nostalgia. But I've never understood
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 4: the impulse to be just like overly protective about them
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 4: in a way, like to morally justify them. Yeah, Like, yeah,
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 4: we all liked problematic things when we were kids. That's
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 4: a lot of kids. Media is doesn't always age well,
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 4: and it's like might.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 3: Be all you had, Like whatever, Yeah, you.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 4: Form a relationship with it, and that's like perfectly fine.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 4: But I don't think it does ourselves any favors to
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 4: just act like that makes them secretly great and moral.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 4: And I don't know, I like breaking apart things that
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 4: I like, so I can't relate to the impulse necessarily.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: That's why we do this podcast.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we love to we love to ruin others
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 3: good times. But it is like, I mean, it does
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 3: feel very Yeah, this movie feels like a standout of
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 3: like it's unusually bizarre that and not even moral. But
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 3: a lot of the reclaimings are like, this is actually
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 3: a well structured which It's like, there's as far as
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 3: I've considered, there's no argument there. It's poorly written.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 4: It is very badly written. Like everything in the plot
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 4: happens out of like a coincidence.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, overy, it's it's all And I guess because we
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 3: have co writers of Shrek. They also recycled the convenient eavesdropping.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 3: It's also there a woman who exists out of contact,
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, Fiona, maybe a more fully realized character, and
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 3: isn't that a shame?
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 3: But yeah, these writers love to have two men and
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 3: a lady. I mean a lot of writers love to
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 3: have two men in a lady or.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 4: A man a dounken a lady.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 3: Right, I guess, or a man, a monkey and a
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 3: lady in the case of Aladdin. I mean, this is
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 3: Dales's oldest time. They've got they've got a playbook. It
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 3: is generally successful, but I think like these are not
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 3: the writers you hire to talk about colonial history. It's
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 3: they're out of their depth and you can feel it.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 3: And also, I mean, I I don't know because this
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 3: movie was said like The Emperor's New Groove again was
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 3: said to be heavily rewritten, so it's really hard to
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 3: trace things to even a single person or the credited writers.
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 3: I mean kind of this is a movie where it's
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 3: like God knows who wrote.
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 4: This, but Jeffrey Katzenberg himself just fuck it.
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey kats with his diet coke, he worked all night.
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, jail for him. I just got Jeffre Katzenberg a
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 3: couple of years ago. I feel like this didn't make
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 3: you know, this didn't break out of the local sphere.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 3: But like Jeffrey Katzenberg marched down to Los Angeles City
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 3: Hall saying that he had the he knew how to
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 3: solve the homelessness crisis, and I was like, shut up,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 3: walk into traffic, like shut up, you fucking loser. Yeah,
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 3: part was one of your billion dollars. But he marched
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 3: down to city Hall and he's like, folks, I've figured
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 3: it out, and You're like, you're like burn in hell.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 4: No one should ever listen to Jeffrey Katzenberg about anything,
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 4: let alone heavily like systemic social issues.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 3: Just like the the fucking Goal. I just I hate
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 3: him anyways. Anything else to say about The Road to
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 3: El Dorada two thousand.
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 2: Chief tene book is I believe the only fat character
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: in the movie, and he is depicted in a way
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: speaking role at least at least that has right, And
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: he has depicted in a way that many fat characters
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: often are in media, which is that, you know, he's
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: very jolly and friendly and kind of a dufist, and
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: even though he seems to realize that these characters aren't God's,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: he doesn't care. He's too good natured to care about that.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: And I just felt like a very trophy depiction of that.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 4: It frustrated me when Miguel is like, oh, yeah, sorry,
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 4: my mistake or something, and the Chief kind of like
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 4: cheekily is like, oh, it's great toere is to be
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 4: human or towere is human whatever, because in any other
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 4: movie I would like that callback a lot. I think
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 4: like that little moment between them is very cute, but
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 4: also it's like dude, why are you going along with
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 4: this ruse? How does it benefit you?
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what is the point of this right, You're you're
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: just basically endorsing him stealing your materials, your gold, and like.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 3: The and it's it's very telling that the two indigenous
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 3: characters we are meant to have an emotional attachment to
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 3: are the Chief and Shell, who both are pro their
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 3: community being colonized by these random fucking liars like that thing.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 3: I did not remember that scene, and you're like, not that.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 3: It is much better to play that. You know, he
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 3: is so ignorant that he could not see what was happening,
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 3: but they're like they had there why bother saying that?
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 3: And he knew and he thought it was actually really
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 3: cool what they were doing. But he also instinctually knows
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 3: that what Cortes is doing is bad, but he's taking
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 3: political advice from the other colonizer, who is good. And
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 3: this is all just like unspoken in like the game
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 3: of five D chess being played in this Chiefs frame,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 3: like it does not scan at all. Why would he
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 3: hate Cortes and love Miguel The goal is the same.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 3: I guess that with Cortes, it's like It's almost made
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 3: to seem like, well, Julio and Miguel's goals are non violent,
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 3: so it's fine, they're just sort of little rascals.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 4: Let me actually just trust the guys that have been
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 4: lying to us for three days like I have.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 3: I just do not understand, even from like a plot standpoint,
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 3: why you would indicate that that character was well aware
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 3: of what was happening, Like, what does that add other
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 3: than confusion? I mean, I mean it does add more
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 3: pro colonial Like it's actually like wink wink, really awesome,
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 3: and maybe indigenous populations were completely open.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: To this, right, It's an extension of the idea of
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: Indigenous people don't understand what's going on in the world
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: around them. They don't know any better. They're uncivilized and
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 2: they're not as smart as Westerners, and therefore they need
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: the guidance of Westerners to exist.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 4: Condescension that makes the whole movie so frustrating. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 4: this little indigenous paradise that also is ruled by an
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 4: evil priest who needs to be stopped.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like by the white saviors.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 3: Right, right, which just goes on to again like demonize
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 3: a native religion. While you know, we're not really hearing
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 3: how obsessively religious Spanish colonizers were. That's not brought up.
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 4: Oh, which is actually very interesting because I did have
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 4: a point about that. In the opening scene when they
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 4: introduced Cortez, he says for Spain for glory, for gold,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 4: and it is incredible because it is constantly said that
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 4: the three tenets of Spanish colonization was God, glory, gold,
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 4: and they specifically changed the God for Spain in order
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 4: to remove the evangelization aspect of the colonization, which I
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 4: was like, oh, whatever, they wanted that out, But as
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 4: soon as you said that, I was like, oh my god.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 4: They are literally downplaying the religious cellotry of the colonizers
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 4: while demonizing the religious figure in the indigenous culture. And
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 4: that just makes it like evil.
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah I did. I honestly, I didn't know that, but
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 3: that makes it. I mean, there is like a flattening
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 3: of what the colonizer's culture was motivated by. It's made to,
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 3: which almost feels like a weird americanization of it of
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 3: like it's strictly capital. It's strictly nationalism and capital that
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 3: is driving this, which.
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: And those things are good, right, and we can't have
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: anything that demonizes Christianity. Yeah, it's it's such a mind fuck.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 4: It's well because, like I mean, Americans love like demonizing Catholics.
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 4: They could have taken that angle.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true. It's true. It was a national pastime
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 3: for a while.
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 4: Cowardly Protestantism strikes again. Okay, yeah, now.
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 3: Do we have anything else to say? No, I think
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 3: we forgot. There's also yeah, a religious Yeah.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 2: The movie does not pass the Bechdel tests.
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 3: Not even close. An attempt was not made.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: Again, it does not pass the Alley naughty test, and
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: on the Bechtel cast nipple scale, where we rate the
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 2: movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 2: on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, I give
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 2: the movie zero nipples. Yeah, not a nipple insight for
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: the Road to El Dorado.
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, hard to argue that point. I will meet you
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 3: at a solid zero, Jose.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 4: I mean I have to concur no, nothing in this
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 4: movie is nipple worthy.
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 3: I haven't a nipple to give.
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 2: Well, Hose, thank you so much for joining us again.
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 4: Oh as fun as last time. I love this. Thank
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 4: you so much for thinking of me and having me.
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, thank you for joining us. Come back
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 3: for a movie that isn't about a city of golf.
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 3: Next time, you know, whatever you.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 4: Want, we're running out of them.
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: It's true because we already did National Treasure Book of Secrets,
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 2: Jamie and I and the two of us and.
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 4: Oh, I need to listen to you. Just you just
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 4: released My best Friend's Wedding and I love that movie.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: Well, sorry, we don't love that.
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 4: No, that's okay again. I love it. My mom loves it,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 4: and I watched it with my mom a lot. But
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 4: I love conversations about it, like I feel like it's
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 4: one of those movies where even people who don't like it,
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 4: even if I do, really like it, and I have
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 4: a lot of positive things to say about it, like
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 4: from form. I love hearing people's takes about it, like
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 4: negative takes, because I feel like it is a movie
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 4: that was kind of designed for that kind of conversation.
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 3: True, yeah, it is a litmus test. It was at
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 3: least that was an attempt. I can't say that for
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 3: the Road to Al Doorado. My best Friend's Friending was
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 3: an attempt.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 4: I'm excited to listen to the episode.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 3: Well, truly come back anytime. We're so happy to have you.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 3: It's always like fun, chaotic adventure.
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Yeah, the real just like with them,
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 4: the real adventure was the friends we made along the way,
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 4: my gosh, and we didn't have to we didn't have
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 4: to colonize anyone for it.
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 3: No, and that's commonly misunderstood in popular narratives. You can
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 3: just have a You can't just be normal.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: And not scarce and have a friendship and not colonized.
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 4: Not colonized.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 3: Shocking but true.
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 2: Jose where can people follow you on social media? Check
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: out your stuff? Tell us everything?
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 4: So I'm on Twitter at jose m Luna and I
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 4: am on YouTube so Maria Luna. It's my full legal
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 4: name because I couldn't come up with uh a name
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 4: for a channel. So it's just it's hard, you know,
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 4: it is hard. And I have a real exciting video
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 4: coming up, so I hope people will check that out.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 3: I'm excited.
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 4: It's gonna be fun. It does not have to do
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 4: with gold cities or colonialism.
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 3: Love that.
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 4: So yeah, but it cool, and thank you so much
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 4: for having me. Really, it's a pleasure.
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 3: Oh please, I mean yeah, listeners, if you are not
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 3: subscribed to hosei channel, you are missing out it like
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 3: it is truly just like some of the most thoughtful
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 3: work on YouTube, which is you know, found few and
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 3: far between. So congrats with that. And as for us,
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 3: you can find us in all the usual places. You
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 3: can follows as mentioned our Patreon aka Matreon, we're for
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 3: five dollars a month. You can get two bonus episodes
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 3: a month hosted by Caitlin and myself and occasionally a
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 3: guest based off of a very specific theme we force
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 3: upon our audience. We can be found on Instagram and
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 3: occasionally Twitter when we feel like it at Bechdel Cast.
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 2: Indeed, you can grab some merch at teapublic dot com
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: slash the Bechdel Cast. Oh you want want to find
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: some treasure, you want to go on a treasure hunt?
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 2: We'll go to tea Public and buy our merch.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and with that, let's end this episode as abruptly
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 3: as the movie and be like.
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, bye, bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie loftis
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mola Board. Our theme
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 2: song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskresenski.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: Our logo in Merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 2: a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: the podcast, please visit link tree Slash Bechdel Cast