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

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