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

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