Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Chicken Run
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: On the Bechdecast, the questions ask if movies have women
- 0:04Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
- 0:08Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy. Zeph and
- 0:12Speaker 1: Beast start changing with the Bechdel cast. Cluck cluck, full
- 0:18Speaker 1: clutch cluck. Queen, how are you?
- 0:22Speaker 2: I'm doing so great? How are you.
- 0:25Speaker 1: Never been worse? And I cannot overemphasize that. But today
- 0:30Speaker 1: we are here to release I think kind of a
- 0:34Speaker 1: banger episode. Oh yeah, we're unlocking an episode from our
- 0:38Speaker 1: Patreon aka Matreon. If you enjoyed this episode, you should
- 0:42Speaker 1: obviously be subscribing. It's five bucks a month and it'll
- 0:46Speaker 1: give you access to over one hundred and fifty episodes,
- 0:50Speaker 1: plus new ones every month with Caitlin and myself. But
- 0:52Speaker 1: it's Chicken Run Week. It's Chicken Run Week.
- 0:55Speaker 2: Yes it is.
- 0:55Speaker 1: Oh, you didn't think it was Chicken Run Week.
- 0:57Speaker 2: Well it is.
- 0:58Speaker 1: Well it is.
- 0:59Speaker 2: Take that and there's a reason.
- 1:01Speaker 1: There's a method, Yes there is.
- 1:03Speaker 2: So this is an episode that we originally released on
- 1:06Speaker 2: the Matreon in February twenty twenty one as a part
- 1:09Speaker 2: of a theme that we didn't have a good title for.
- 1:12Speaker 2: But the theme itself was I think pretty solid, which
- 1:15Speaker 2: was movies with animals in the title, because we did
- 1:19Speaker 2: Chicken Run and Coyote Ugly, Yes, which has nothing to
- 1:23Speaker 2: do with animals.
- 1:25Speaker 1: Yeah, and two movies that are really like, couldn't be
- 1:27Speaker 1: less in conversation with one another, true, but two fun
- 1:34Speaker 1: episodes to do and Chicken Run I mean an all
- 1:37Speaker 1: timer movie film. There has since been a sequel released
- 1:41Speaker 1: on Netflix that I have not watched yet, what about yourself.
- 1:45Speaker 2: I just watched it yesterday.
- 1:47Speaker 1: My niece loves it and she's four, So there you go.
- 1:51Speaker 2: It was fun, I would say, not as good as
- 1:53Speaker 2: Chicken Run the original high bar kind of nothing, hy
- 1:56Speaker 2: Barticlear exactly. Anyway, you released this episode like three and
- 2:01Speaker 2: a half years ago, so if you hear some references
- 2:04Speaker 2: that feel a bit dated, that's why. If you're like,
- 2:08Speaker 2: why are they bringing up the sonic the Hedgehog movie?
- 2:12Speaker 2: Why are they talking about pandemic stimulus checks as if
- 2:16Speaker 2: it just happened, Well, that's wild.
- 2:18Speaker 1: I guess what. We weren't even vaccinated. Like, really, take
- 2:21Speaker 1: yourself back there. We were in the thick of it,
- 2:24Speaker 1: and we're in the thick of it now. But it's
- 2:26Speaker 1: in a different way. The reason we're doing this is
- 2:28Speaker 1: if you're in the Los Angeles area, you're in freaking
- 2:32Speaker 1: luck because we are hosting a screening of Chicken Run
- 2:37Speaker 1: at the Low's feel As three with American Cinematech on
- 2:40Speaker 1: August twenty fifth. We're so pumped. We technically hosted as
- 2:44Speaker 1: screening with them last year, but neither of us could
- 2:46Speaker 1: go this year. Things are a little different because you
- 2:50Speaker 1: had COVID last year. I have COVID right now, so
- 2:52Speaker 1: I'm not gonna have it in three weeks. So yeah,
- 2:56Speaker 1: we'll be there.
- 2:57Speaker 2: We'll be there presenting Chicken Run. Yes, this is part
- 3:00Speaker 2: of American Semitech's Friend of the Fest podcast festival, where
- 3:05Speaker 2: they have podcast hosts introduce one of their favorite films,
- 3:11Speaker 2: and we have the honor of presenting Chicken Run. And
- 3:16Speaker 2: we're like, hey, what better way to promote that screening
- 3:20Speaker 2: than to unlock our Matreon episode on Chicken Run. And
- 3:25Speaker 2: that's what we're doing right now. A men, Now, if
- 3:29Speaker 2: this is your first episode of the Bechdel Cast or
- 3:32Speaker 2: you know, you don't really know who we are and
- 3:34Speaker 2: what we are, we well, first of all, my name's
- 3:37Speaker 2: Caitlin Deronte.
- 3:38Speaker 1: My name is Jamie loftus.
- 3:40Speaker 2: This is our podcast where we examine movies through an
- 3:42Speaker 2: intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test as a jumping
- 3:48Speaker 2: off point. But Jamie, what's that well?
- 3:51Speaker 1: The Bechdel Test is a media metric originally created by
- 3:56Speaker 1: queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel Wallace Test
- 4:00Speaker 1: because it was co created with Alison Bechdel's good friend
- 4:02Speaker 1: Liz Wallace. This test was created as a joke, a
- 4:07Speaker 1: bit a lark an idea, a passing fancy by Alison
- 4:12Speaker 1: Bechdel for her iconic comic Iconic Comic Likes to Watch
- 4:16Speaker 1: Out for Great Comic. She's basically commenting on how infrequently
- 4:21Speaker 1: women talk to each other in a queer context originally,
- 4:24Speaker 1: but the way it's been adapted for the mainstream is
- 4:29Speaker 1: that it's looking at how infrequently people of marginalized genders
- 4:34Speaker 1: are allowed to speak about not men. So there's a
- 4:38Speaker 1: lot of versions of the test. The test we use
- 4:41Speaker 1: is this, two characters of a marginalized gender with names
- 4:45Speaker 1: must speak to each other for more than two lines
- 4:48Speaker 1: of dialogue about a character who is not a man,
- 4:52Speaker 1: and I honestly forget with Chicken Run. I honestly forget
- 4:56Speaker 1: you're gonna have to consult with us three and a
- 4:58Speaker 1: half years ago because they they know.
- 5:01Speaker 2: Yeah, well, if you want me to spoil it for
- 5:03Speaker 2: you right now, they definitely pass the Bechdel test.
- 5:07Speaker 1: I mean it is mostly about Yeah, this is a
- 5:10Speaker 1: chicken matriarchy in any case, that is what we're releasing.
- 5:14Speaker 1: And if you are in the LA area, we would love, love,
- 5:17Speaker 1: love for you to join us on Sunday, August twenty fifth,
- 5:20Speaker 1: at four pm. We're going to put the link in
- 5:24Speaker 1: the description of this episode. We're also going to be
- 5:26Speaker 1: plugging the hell out of it on social media, and
- 5:29Speaker 1: please join us.
- 5:30Speaker 2: It's eighty four minutes long, and it's been eighty four
- 5:34Speaker 2: minutes minutes and I can still smell the chicken chickens.
- 5:39Speaker 1: Yep, I can still smell the chickens.
- 5:41Speaker 2: The chickens had never been used.
- 5:44Speaker 1: Which is the whole point, Which is the whole point
- 5:47Speaker 1: of Chicken Run, which is the whole point. They're trying
- 5:50Speaker 1: to escape with their lives exactly. Yeah, just a perfect movie.
- 5:54Speaker 1: We would love to watch it with you. I you know,
- 5:57Speaker 1: I want to dress up like a chicken. There I
- 5:58Speaker 1: said it. I want to dress up like a chicken
- 6:00Speaker 1: do it. I don't know, like I've never really made
- 6:03Speaker 1: I believe in myself that I can make this happen.
- 6:06Speaker 1: I don't know what that's gonna look like, but you
- 6:09Speaker 1: should come and see see if we pulled it off.
- 6:12Speaker 2: Yes, definitely, so yeah, grab tickets for that. You can
- 6:15Speaker 2: also find the tickets on our link tree link Tree
- 6:18Speaker 2: slash Bechtel Cast and Yeah, we are so excited to
- 6:22Speaker 2: present this movie and we hope to see you there.
- 6:25Speaker 2: And in the meantime, enjoy this unlocked Matreon episode of
- 6:30Speaker 2: Chicken Run. Jamie, what's your relationship with Chicken Run?
- 6:39Speaker 1: Chicken Run's one of my favorite movies ever. I love
- 6:41Speaker 1: Chicken Run. I remember seeing it in theaters with my
- 6:46Speaker 1: family and being like, wow, look at this chickens run
- 6:50Speaker 1: and not really understanding you know, feminism, patriarchal structures or
- 6:58Speaker 1: or you know, workers live, and yet Chicken Run really hit.
- 7:03Speaker 1: I loved it. I thought. I remember being scared when
- 7:06Speaker 1: they go into the Chicken Machine. It was like for
- 7:08Speaker 1: me right up there with Toy Story three, where it's like,
- 7:10Speaker 1: oh my god, these adorable characters are entering a doom
- 7:14Speaker 1: machine and I'm so scared. I just love I just
- 7:18Speaker 1: love Chicken Run, and I watch it probably about once
- 7:23Speaker 1: a year for fun, depending on whether it's streaming places.
- 7:27Speaker 1: I just watched it a couple months ago because I
- 7:29Speaker 1: remember texting you about it, like fairly recently, and then
- 7:33Speaker 1: you came up with this brilliant theme, You're welcome, and
- 7:37Speaker 1: here we are back at Chicken Run, and yeah, I think,
- 7:41Speaker 1: I mean, there are elements of it that don't hold
- 7:44Speaker 1: up for me, but I think by and large as
- 7:46Speaker 1: a movie, as a product, as a story, as a romp,
- 7:52Speaker 1: as a romp, I mean, I think it holds up
- 7:54Speaker 1: extraordinarily well. And I still love it. And I tweeted
- 7:59Speaker 1: about loving today, and then you get five trillion people
- 8:02Speaker 1: be like, but what about mel Gibson? As Like, I
- 8:05Speaker 1: am aware that mel Gibson is in this movie. We
- 8:08Speaker 1: will talk about it, but I'm not gonna let mel
- 8:12Speaker 1: Gibson take away Chicken Run from me. I really love
- 8:15Speaker 1: this movie and fuck mel Gibson. Two things can be true.
- 8:20Speaker 1: What's your history with Chicken Run?
- 8:24Speaker 2: I haven't seen it as often as you, but I
- 8:27Speaker 2: too love this movie. I saw it when it first
- 8:29Speaker 2: came out in two thousand. I think I saw it
- 8:32Speaker 2: like a couple times. I think that was my first
- 8:35Speaker 2: introduction to that type of like stop motion from that
- 8:40Speaker 2: studio specifically, because I don't think I saw anything Wallace
- 8:43Speaker 2: and Grammt until after this.
- 8:45Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that I didn't see any Wallace and
- 8:48Speaker 1: Grammat until unless they I don't think they showed the
- 8:50Speaker 1: short and I don't think I saw it until like
- 8:52Speaker 1: Curse of the were Rabbit, and then I went back
- 8:54Speaker 1: and saw the short cartoons. Right, everything from this studio
- 8:59Speaker 1: is so fucking beautiful, Like all of the Arden and
- 9:03Speaker 1: Studios stuff is just like incredible.
- 9:07Speaker 2: Yeah, And I always get so I get and people
- 9:10Speaker 2: might drag me for this, but I get this studio's
- 9:14Speaker 2: content sometimes confused with Laika content.
- 9:18Speaker 1: Oh, I mean they also do could blame you thank
- 9:20Speaker 1: you so much ascept a bully. Yeah no, I mean
- 9:25Speaker 1: like the because Leika is like Coraline and shit like that.
- 9:28Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, but like similar, like especially with what did
- 9:32Speaker 2: I see recently missing Link that came out like twenty
- 9:37Speaker 2: nineteen or something. Yes, I was like, oh, this is
- 9:40Speaker 2: probably the same studio as Chicken Run. And then I
- 9:43Speaker 2: was like, oh wait, no it's the other one.
- 9:45Speaker 1: So looks very similar yeah, Thelika movies do like quiet,
- 9:49Speaker 1: and I feel like there's a lot of like they're
- 9:51Speaker 1: also all very British, yes, and so I feel like
- 9:54Speaker 1: it's also the tone to the movies, or I'm sure
- 9:57Speaker 1: that there is some overlap app creatively, but they're like, yeah,
- 10:02Speaker 1: they're very British stop motion movies. If anyone's if anyone
- 10:05Speaker 1: bullies you about that, launch me out of the chicken
- 10:09Speaker 1: what is it the catapult? Yeah, the chicken catapults.
- 10:13Speaker 2: I'll attack them more like the chicken polt.
- 10:17Speaker 1: Oh god, the sheer resourcefulness of these brilliant chickens.
- 10:23Speaker 2: I know. Oh, I can't wait to talk about it.
- 10:26Speaker 1: There's so much to talk about. Even in it's the
- 10:29Speaker 1: areas where it is not amazing, there's still a lot
- 10:32Speaker 1: to talk about, Like this movie. Now that I was
- 10:35Speaker 1: paying attention to the politics of the movie and not
- 10:38Speaker 1: just being like I love these chickens, which is usually
- 10:42Speaker 1: where I'm at when I'm watching Chicken Run. I'm eating
- 10:44Speaker 1: a plate of nachos and I'm like, these chickens are
- 10:46Speaker 1: so cool. But this is like this movie is like
- 10:50Speaker 1: if Animal Farm had gone right basically, yeah, like it's
- 10:56Speaker 1: animals like seizing the means of production. I have a
- 10:59Speaker 1: whole thing about it. But like they're seizing the means
- 11:01Speaker 1: of production, they are overthrowing the oppressive force. But there's
- 11:06Speaker 1: no like there's not enough infighting that the whole operation
- 11:10Speaker 1: gets sabotaged, like they liberate themselves. It's beautiful.
- 11:15Speaker 2: It is beautiful. It's also what So we recently were
- 11:19Speaker 2: guests on the podcast Creature Feature talking about B Movie,
- 11:23Speaker 2: and I feel like this is what B Movie was
- 11:26Speaker 2: like maybe trying to do and then like utterly fumbling
- 11:29Speaker 2: and failing every step of the way.
- 11:32Speaker 1: Yeah. B movie just ended up being like, Wow, capitalism
- 11:35Speaker 1: it's awesome. No, no, no, its it rocks. Although I
- 11:39Speaker 1: was thinking I was thinking about B Movie when Larry
- 11:41Speaker 1: King died, because I'm like, wow, what was his name?
- 11:43Speaker 2: Me, Larry King?
- 11:44Speaker 1: Be Larry King. That was like maybe his best maybe
- 11:49Speaker 1: his best work, his best credit, Yeah iconic. Yeah. No,
- 11:53Speaker 1: So Larry King's not in this although I wish he
- 11:56Speaker 1: was instead of Mel Gibson. Seriously, the Mel Gibson of
- 12:01Speaker 1: it all. It's so it fucking sucks that he's in
- 12:04Speaker 1: this movie, man, because other than that, it is like
- 12:07Speaker 1: such a fabulous.
- 12:10Speaker 2: Movie. At least we don't have to see Mel Gibson's face.
- 12:14Speaker 1: It does make it easier to I mean, it's I
- 12:17Speaker 1: hate that he got paid to be in this amazing movie. Yeah,
- 12:21Speaker 1: at very least he's playing an evil fraud. But then
- 12:24Speaker 1: also he's forgiven at the end.
- 12:26Speaker 2: Oh, don't get me, Sack.
- 12:27Speaker 1: There's a lot to be taught. I'm just like, you
- 12:29Speaker 1: know what, he should have just left and stayed gone.
- 12:33Speaker 2: And stayed gone exactly.
- 12:35Speaker 1: I don't know why, Like I thought, I really thought,
- 12:37Speaker 1: because I've been thinking so much about when we redid
- 12:41Speaker 1: Beauty and the Beast and we had that whole conversation
- 12:43Speaker 1: about like the burden of forgiveness on female characters, and
- 12:48Speaker 1: I didn't totally. I don't know. I just I'm never
- 12:51Speaker 1: paying super close attention to the plot points of Chicken Run.
- 12:54Speaker 1: And so I was like, she, Ginger comes so close
- 12:58Speaker 1: to like subverting that and being like, fuck you get
- 13:01Speaker 1: out of here, you coward, right, But then he shows
- 13:04Speaker 1: up and then she I'm like, Ginger, I mean, live
- 13:09Speaker 1: your life, don't let me tell you how to live, Ginger.
- 13:11Speaker 1: But like Ginger, I feel like we can just do better.
- 13:16Speaker 1: We can do better.
- 13:17Speaker 2: Ginger can do something.
- 13:18Speaker 1: I'm not opposed to Ginger finding love, but like Rocky
- 13:22Speaker 1: really literally it sounds like my mom of just like
- 13:26Speaker 1: my mom's like, you're gonna go off with some guy
- 13:28Speaker 1: from Rhode Island, which is literally who Rocky is. He's
- 13:32Speaker 1: some guy from Rhode Island. True, Ginger, do not just
- 13:37Speaker 1: go off with some guy from Rhode Island. I mean
- 13:39Speaker 1: that whole thing. We'll get there, but.
- 13:41Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, we'll get there. In the meantime, should we
- 13:44Speaker 2: recap it?
- 13:45Speaker 1: Yes, I'm sorry, I'm getting like so excited. I have
- 13:48Speaker 1: like a full glass of wine and I'm so excited
- 13:51Speaker 1: to talk about chicken run.
- 13:53Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, I love it. Uh, let's take a
- 13:56Speaker 2: quick break and then we'll come right back for the recap.
- 14:08Speaker 2: So the story is as follows. We open on a
- 14:11Speaker 2: chicken farm. The chickens are, they talk, and they're they're people,
- 14:17Speaker 2: But their chickens.
- 14:18Speaker 1: The most horrifying thing. I mean not horrifying. I don't
- 14:21Speaker 1: know how the animation gets away with not being scary,
- 14:23Speaker 1: but giving a farmful of chickens full sets of human
- 14:27Speaker 1: teeth is such like a decision that it should look
- 14:32Speaker 1: scarier than it does, and I feel like it speaks
- 14:34Speaker 1: to the animation that that is not extremely because wasn't
- 14:37Speaker 1: that like the reason that they completely reanimated the sonic
- 14:41Speaker 1: the Hedgehog movie is because they're like, why does he
- 14:43Speaker 1: have human teeth?
- 14:45Speaker 2: Oh? I thought it was because his like proportions were
- 14:48Speaker 2: all wrong.
- 14:49Speaker 1: Wait let me oh, hold on, Maybe it was a combination,
- 14:53Speaker 1: because that sounds right as well.
- 14:55Speaker 2: Because he was like, his like proportions were just like,
- 14:58Speaker 2: like his leg the length of his legs and arms
- 15:01Speaker 2: were just like really bizarre. And they were like, this
- 15:04Speaker 2: looks terrible.
- 15:06Speaker 1: So we're both right and and I forgot how scary
- 15:10Speaker 1: the first sonic was. Yeah, so he both looked too
- 15:14Speaker 1: much like an animal and his proportions were like two
- 15:17Speaker 1: Uncanny Valley photorealistic, Like he just looks like a blue cat,
- 15:21Speaker 1: but he has like a full set of like Joe
- 15:23Speaker 1: Biden viniars, Pete Davis whatever, whoever, Walton Goggins vinyars like
- 15:29Speaker 1: mm hmm, just really scary stuff. For some reason, the
- 15:33Speaker 1: chickens and the roosters they're allowed to have full sets
- 15:35Speaker 1: of teeth. It doesn't bother me, Yeah, why not.
- 15:38Speaker 2: I'll allow it. So one of the chickens, our hero Ginger,
- 15:43Speaker 2: is organizing a mass escape for her and all the
- 15:46Speaker 2: other chickens to basically do a prison break. And I
- 15:49Speaker 2: also read that when this movie was like being developed,
- 15:52Speaker 2: they were just like, let's do the Great Escape but
- 15:55Speaker 2: with chickens.
- 15:56Speaker 1: Which is like, holy shit, right, what a what a
- 16:01Speaker 1: wide swing?
- 16:02Speaker 2: Why didn't I think of that? You know?
- 16:03Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
- 16:06Speaker 2: So we meet some of the other chickens. There's Babs,
- 16:09Speaker 2: who is always knitting. There is Mac who is the
- 16:15Speaker 2: brainy chicken in Stem.
- 16:17Speaker 1: She's a chicken in Stem.
- 16:18Speaker 2: A chicken in Stem, and you'd love to see it
- 16:20Speaker 2: at last, at long Last.
- 16:22Speaker 1: She's also Scottish, which is constantly made a joke off,
- 16:25Speaker 1: and I'm like, I can't tell if this is offensive
- 16:27Speaker 1: or if I just don't live in the UK, but
- 16:29Speaker 1: she's very Scottish.
- 16:31Speaker 2: She also wears glasses.
- 16:32Speaker 1: She wears glasses exactly. Yeah.
- 16:36Speaker 2: Yes, there's Bunty, who lays a lot of eggs. I
- 16:42Speaker 2: think that's kind of the main thing that we know.
- 16:44Speaker 2: She's very fertile, Yeah, very fertile, full bursting at the
- 16:49Speaker 2: seems with eggs. There's also an old rooster named Fowler
- 16:55Speaker 2: who's like a former military man and he's always carrying
- 16:59Speaker 2: the world War two, yeah.
- 17:02Speaker 1: Or he says you did. He was actually just a chicken.
- 17:06Speaker 2: He's just a chicken this whole time. Yeah, but he's
- 17:08Speaker 2: always caring on about his glory days.
- 17:11Speaker 1: Right.
- 17:12Speaker 2: So Ginger is trying to escape and she gets caught
- 17:14Speaker 2: by mister Tweety, Mister Tweety's dogs and Missus Tweety.
- 17:19Speaker 1: Oh and iconic villains so scary. When I was a kid,
- 17:24Speaker 1: I was so scared of her. But I think, you know, Jen,
- 17:29Speaker 1: we'll have a more full discussion about her. But like
- 17:32Speaker 1: where older women are so often fully demonized, with Missus Tweety,
- 17:36Speaker 1: it's not because she's jealous of this. I think she's
- 17:39Speaker 1: very logically motivated and true. And I also think that
- 17:42Speaker 1: she is I forget where I thought this as I
- 17:45Speaker 1: was watching, and I'm like, you're reaching, Jamie. But then
- 17:48Speaker 1: I saw someone else wrote about it. I was like,
- 17:50Speaker 1: I think that she's supposed to be like low key
- 17:52Speaker 1: Margaret Thatcher. Oh, she styled kind of similarly. I think
- 17:58Speaker 1: she's supposed to be like rural Margaret Margaret Thatcher. That's
- 18:01Speaker 1: my working theory that at least I have their name
- 18:04Speaker 1: written down here, that at least one writer also thought.
- 18:08Speaker 1: But she's at least she is an She is like,
- 18:11Speaker 1: she looks kind of like an evil stepmother, but she
- 18:14Speaker 1: is a very highly motivated capitalist villain. Yeah, iconic, iconic, scary.
- 18:21Speaker 2: And voiced by Miranda Richardson.
- 18:23Speaker 1: Yes, too amazing.
- 18:25Speaker 2: So Ginger gets caught and is thrown into solitary confinement,
- 18:30Speaker 2: and as soon as she's released, she plans another escape,
- 18:32Speaker 2: and another and another. We get a montage, each one
- 18:35Speaker 2: ending in her getting caught and put in solitary.
- 18:38Speaker 1: They're all funny, Yes, I like when they dress up
- 18:43Speaker 1: like missus tweety and almost escape. Oh and then it's
- 18:47Speaker 1: just a dress full of chickens. Oh, I'm laughing.
- 18:50Speaker 2: The visual comedy in this movie is outstanding genius.
- 18:55Speaker 1: It's so good all Yeah, Like these chickens, they are
- 19:00Speaker 1: cracking me up eighty four minutes straight.
- 19:03Speaker 2: Even the scene where like they're trying to escape like
- 19:07Speaker 2: a trough they're like covering themselves up with it, and
- 19:10Speaker 2: then they flip over and all their legs are just
- 19:12Speaker 2: sort of flailing about. Like just the visual of their
- 19:15Speaker 2: legs is the funniest thing I've ever seen.
- 19:18Speaker 1: Yeah, Like anytime they're on, the chickens are on like
- 19:20Speaker 1: stationary bicycles. I'm laughing like it just chickens are funny
- 19:26Speaker 1: and and they're also you know, maytriarchy seizing the means
- 19:32Speaker 1: of production, so they're also very inspirational. Here is it's true,
- 19:36Speaker 1: Oh dressful of chickens, Like, who's gonna no, I can't
- 19:40Speaker 1: write a joke that good dressful of chickens hilarious.
- 19:44Speaker 2: So mister and missus Tweety this is an egg farm,
- 19:48Speaker 2: not a poultry farm yet, but they're keeping track of
- 19:52Speaker 2: the chicken's egg production, and if a chicken doesn't produce
- 19:55Speaker 2: enough eggs, the Tweeties chop that chicken's head, which we
- 20:01Speaker 2: see not like the gory details of it, but so
- 20:04Speaker 2: sad though, Like a chicken gets murdered within the first
- 20:07Speaker 2: ten minutes of the.
- 20:08Speaker 1: Movie talk about steaks, I mean, yeah, immediately that it's
- 20:14Speaker 1: life or death for the chickens because of what's her name?
- 20:18Speaker 1: Her name is Edwena Chicken Edwena at this on this view,
- 20:23Speaker 1: at least, I'm like, at least she didn't like it
- 20:26Speaker 1: would have been even because this is a g rated movie,
- 20:29Speaker 1: which is wild for how many times they almost knife
- 20:31Speaker 1: the chickens, right, But at least Edwena didn't. I was
- 20:37Speaker 1: worried that she was gonna go like, ah, like, but
- 20:39Speaker 1: it's just silent.
- 20:41Speaker 2: You just hear like the thunk of an axe.
- 20:43Speaker 1: I wonder if they're like if she clucks when she's beheaded,
- 20:46Speaker 1: it's PG or something. I don't know. That's too much.
- 20:52Speaker 2: Right, Oh my goodness. And also missus Tweety is sick
- 20:56Speaker 2: and tired of the farm's minuscule profits, and she sees
- 21:00Speaker 2: an ad to turn her egg farm into a gold
- 21:04Speaker 2: mine by producing chicken meat rather than chicken eggs. Meanwhile,
- 21:09Speaker 2: Ginger is trying to hatch a new plan to escape.
- 21:14Speaker 2: Get it hatch.
- 21:17Speaker 1: Ginger in these scenes reminds me of like every DSA
- 21:22Speaker 1: meeting I've ever been to, where there's like one highly
- 21:25Speaker 1: motivated person trying to get like fifty well meaning people
- 21:29Speaker 1: to pay attention to a good idea, and everyone's like, wait,
- 21:32Speaker 1: huh what huh. It's literally Ginger is a branch leader
- 21:38Speaker 1: of the DSA, and no one on the zoom call
- 21:41Speaker 1: is listening to.
- 21:41Speaker 2: Her exactly, so basically, she just keeps pitching ideas to
- 21:45Speaker 2: escape because her whole thing is she's not happy with
- 21:49Speaker 2: the expectation to lay eggs every day until she is
- 21:54Speaker 2: what is it plucked, roasted and turned into chicken dinner
- 21:58Speaker 2: or some some I forget the quote exactly.
- 22:00Speaker 1: Right, because it's like the Tweeties, even before they sell poultry.
- 22:03Speaker 1: Once you don't lay eggs, they will just eat you.
- 22:06Speaker 2: Correct. Yes, So she's not satisfied with this being her
- 22:12Speaker 2: fate and that's why she is longing to be free.
- 22:15Speaker 2: But the other chickens are like, well, you know what
- 22:18Speaker 2: if we don't try to escape because it never seems
- 22:21Speaker 2: to work.
- 22:21Speaker 1: Right, it's exhausting, I'm tired. And then that line where
- 22:25Speaker 1: Ginger is like, there's not just fences outside of the coop,
- 22:29Speaker 1: there's fences in your mind, and you're like, well, like exactly, Oh,
- 22:36Speaker 1: she's amazing.
- 22:37Speaker 2: She's a what a speaker, truly, and yeah there's stuff
- 22:42Speaker 2: to talk about with the complacency of the other chicken.
- 22:47Speaker 1: I love, it's literally it's just it's a Marxist tail.
- 22:54Speaker 2: Okay. So the other chickens are like, well, let's maybe
- 22:56Speaker 2: not escape. So Ginger is hopeless until a root stur
- 23:00Speaker 2: named Rocky this is mel Gibson boo yeah, flies into
- 23:06Speaker 2: their farm and Ginger gets the idea for the chickens
- 23:10Speaker 2: to escape by flying over the fence and out of
- 23:13Speaker 2: the farm, and she wants Rocky to teach them to fly,
- 23:18Speaker 2: but Rocky is not interested in that. But he cannot
- 23:21Speaker 2: leave because he broke his wing crash landing into the farm.
- 23:24Speaker 1: And then there's a great scene where they have to
- 23:28Speaker 1: like negotiate of like what services he's going to provide,
- 23:31Speaker 1: because at first he's like, no, I'm not gonna help you.
- 23:33Speaker 1: He kind of reminds me of like Chicken Han Solo
- 23:36Speaker 1: a little bit where he's like, screw the collective. I'm
- 23:40Speaker 1: just a I'm just a guy, and I'm just a
- 23:43Speaker 1: horny guy wandering the earth, and screw you. And then she,
- 23:49Speaker 1: you know, she kind of she's got them. She's like,
- 23:52Speaker 1: I'm not just going to This is where I feel
- 23:54Speaker 1: like there's a really cool something set up that the
- 23:56Speaker 1: ending doesn't really follow through on of like she does
- 23:59Speaker 1: not have sympathy for him, just because he says that
- 24:02Speaker 1: she should like in to establish their relationship, which is
- 24:06Speaker 1: such a strong way to establish a relationship between like
- 24:10Speaker 1: in a kid's cartoon. Right. Oh, I just wish it
- 24:14Speaker 1: stayed that way, but I love that. I love that
- 24:16Speaker 1: first scene where he's like what, You're not gonna help
- 24:19Speaker 1: me because I'm cute and she's like, fuck you, right
- 24:22Speaker 1: to the guillotine, sir.
- 24:24Speaker 2: And then I mean this is like, this is just
- 24:26Speaker 2: like a good screenwriting comment. But he's like, okay, fine,
- 24:30Speaker 2: I'll teach you everything I know, which he doesn't know
- 24:33Speaker 2: anything because spoiler alert, he doesn't know how to fly,
- 24:37Speaker 2: but he just like omits that, which is the same
- 24:40Speaker 2: thing he does to the two rats that we.
- 24:42Speaker 1: See Timothy's more. Timothy's spall like, let this man play
- 24:47Speaker 1: not a rat for once in his life.
- 24:49Speaker 2: He might as well have been playing scabberds. Yeah.
- 24:52Speaker 1: Literally, I'm just like, this man is being typecast as
- 24:55Speaker 1: a literal rat, and that's not nice. He was a
- 24:58Speaker 1: really good mister Poe in Series of Unfortunate Events, which
- 25:01Speaker 1: I am. I think I am going to choose that
- 25:03Speaker 1: for my birthday this year on the Matreon ooh yeah,
- 25:08Speaker 1: but yeah, poor Timothy's ball when I was like, wait
- 25:11Speaker 1: a second, it can't be and I'm like, god damn it,
- 25:13Speaker 1: they're still making Timothy's Ball play a British rat. Maybe
- 25:17Speaker 1: this is how he got cast in Harry Potter.
- 25:19Speaker 2: Ye, this was before the first Harry Potter movie.
- 25:23Speaker 1: That would be really yeah, because he doesn't even come
- 25:25Speaker 1: in till like the later movies, right, like the third
- 25:27Speaker 1: or fourth or something.
- 25:29Speaker 2: The third one.
- 25:29Speaker 1: Yeah, so that would be really sad but also kind
- 25:32Speaker 1: of funny if they were like, well, you know he
- 25:34Speaker 1: can play a British rat, well, Timmy's ball weird.
- 25:41Speaker 2: Yeah. So back on the farm, So some men show
- 25:46Speaker 2: up from the circus to collect Rocky the rooster, so
- 25:51Speaker 2: like he's a runaway from the circus. Ginger realizes this,
- 25:55Speaker 2: so she makes a deal with him that the chickens
- 25:59Speaker 2: will hide him if he teaches them to fly, and
- 26:02Speaker 2: he agrees.
- 26:04Speaker 1: Amazing negotiation by Ginger.
- 26:06Speaker 2: Incredible. Yes. Then the next day Rocky starts training the
- 26:10Speaker 2: chickens to fly by not doing anything related to flying,
- 26:15Speaker 2: and they don't seem to be making any progress because
- 26:18Speaker 2: chickens can't fly.
- 26:19Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like evokes I think that these
- 26:22Speaker 1: movies were made too close together, but like it evoked
- 26:25Speaker 1: the be a Man sequence from Mulan for me of
- 26:30Speaker 1: just like an insecure man leading a group of soldiers
- 26:37Speaker 1: for a mission that they will fail at. I guess
- 26:39Speaker 1: that's where I was coming from.
- 26:40Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, I mean a training montage is a training
- 26:44Speaker 2: montage is a training montage. You know they're I.
- 26:47Speaker 1: Guess I just don't watch many movies with trade. I
- 26:49Speaker 1: think these are the These are the only two movies
- 26:51Speaker 1: I've ever seen with a group training montage.
- 26:53Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Really I have seen are.
- 26:56Speaker 1: Other movies with training montages that are like a big
- 27:00Speaker 1: group of people, because I'm like, I've seen movies with
- 27:03Speaker 1: training montages, but I just feel like these movies two
- 27:06Speaker 1: years apart. I think that's why I'm just like, uh
- 27:08Speaker 1: huh oh yeah. Insecure guy leads a group of soldiers
- 27:12Speaker 1: that don't really know what they're doing.
- 27:14Speaker 2: I mean, just like any sports movie where like the
- 27:17Speaker 2: whole team is training, there's you know, dozens of those.
- 27:21Speaker 1: I've seen, remember the Titans. I haven't seen many sports movies.
- 27:27Speaker 1: I think that's why I'm like, Wow, look at these
- 27:30Speaker 1: two iconic movies borrowing from each other, Mulan and Chicken Run.
- 27:34Speaker 1: There's no way, but that was what I thought.
- 27:37Speaker 2: Sure, Well, gotta watch more training montages.
- 27:40Speaker 1: They're great, apparently, I guess.
- 27:43Speaker 2: Okay, so the chickens are trying to learn to fly,
- 27:47Speaker 2: no progress is being made, and then the equipment for
- 27:52Speaker 2: turning the farm into a poultry farm arrives and we're like, wow,
- 27:58Speaker 2: those steaks that we thought were all ready pretty high,
- 28:00Speaker 2: guess what even higher?
- 28:03Speaker 1: Who Now they won't stop rising.
- 28:05Speaker 2: They really won't. So some of the chickens, including Ginger,
- 28:10Speaker 2: are growing skeptical of Rocky because nothing seems to be happening.
- 28:15Speaker 2: She wants results, but he's also this like pompous, shitty
- 28:19Speaker 2: guy who's just like being dodgy about everything. Classic. Then
- 28:23Speaker 2: missus Tweety doubles their food rations to fatten the chickens
- 28:28Speaker 2: up so they produce more meat, which Ginger figures out
- 28:31Speaker 2: and tells the chickens, and then everyone is all sad
- 28:34Speaker 2: because they realize they're about to be murdered. And then Rocky,
- 28:37Speaker 2: to cheer everyone up, throws a party, right, and Ginger's like,
- 28:42Speaker 2: wait a minute, maybe I was wrong about him. Maybe
- 28:45Speaker 2: he's actually this good, nice guy after all, and his
- 28:49Speaker 2: wings seems to be better. So she's like, Okay, tomorrow
- 28:53Speaker 2: you can fly for us and show us how it's done,
- 28:56Speaker 2: and he's like, yeah, yeah, definitely, I can definitely sure
- 29:00Speaker 2: definitely do that. Uh huh huh.
- 29:02Speaker 1: God, he's such a coward. I always, I always forget
- 29:05Speaker 1: that he never even like admits. There's no scene in
- 29:09Speaker 1: which he's like, Okay, I actually can't fly. At least
- 29:12Speaker 1: then he would have a shred.
- 29:15Speaker 2: Of like integrity.
- 29:17Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's just a total like weak coward.
- 29:22Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 29:22Speaker 1: I mean, I'm it's nice, you know, for our purposes.
- 29:25Speaker 1: It's it's interesting that like Ginger figures out that he's
- 29:28Speaker 1: a fraud. She finds in the next scene, she finds
- 29:31Speaker 1: us the other half of the poster that basically says
- 29:34Speaker 1: he's a circus act. He can't really fly. So it's
- 29:37Speaker 1: good that she discovers that. But I'm like, this fucking
- 29:41Speaker 1: guy from Rhode Island is just lying, lying, lying, and
- 29:45Speaker 1: then he bails. He never even he never has to
- 29:48Speaker 1: face the music.
- 29:49Speaker 2: It's he's there. There are like one or two moments
- 29:54Speaker 2: where it's clear that he's like trying to work up
- 29:56Speaker 2: the nerve to tell her, but then doesn't he You
- 29:59Speaker 2: might say he chickens out.
- 30:01Speaker 1: He chickens out. He's the biggest chicken in the movie,
- 30:04Speaker 1: not just physically because he's pretty tall, but he's a cat.
- 30:10Speaker 1: He's a cowardly he's a chicken chicken. Yes, he bails,
- 30:15Speaker 1: he gets his little chicken bindle and he gets the
- 30:17Speaker 1: fuck out of there.
- 30:19Speaker 2: Also, does he ever apologize to her at the end? No,
- 30:22Speaker 2: he doesn't, didn't think so she there.
- 30:25Speaker 1: There are a few elements of like very girl there.
- 30:30Speaker 1: For the most part, I feel like Ginger's character like
- 30:33Speaker 1: manages to skirt around late nineties girl power feminism, but
- 30:37Speaker 1: there's a few moments where it's like he never apologizes
- 30:41Speaker 1: and there's that classic I feel like this happens in
- 30:44Speaker 1: every Mary Kate Nashley movie where he calls her like
- 30:48Speaker 1: a diminutive thing. He's like dollphace, angel beak or whatever,
- 30:53Speaker 1: and then she goes, my name is Ginger, and it's
- 30:56Speaker 1: like that edit some if you said a sentence like that,
- 30:59Speaker 1: that that's feminism, And like there was a time where
- 31:02Speaker 1: I feel like there's that happens in like Disney's Hercules
- 31:06Speaker 1: as well, where it's like, at least with Ginger, she
- 31:09Speaker 1: genuinely is like I think, a really feminist iconic character. Yeah,
- 31:14Speaker 1: but I feel like sometimes that's a shorthand for men
- 31:16Speaker 1: writing quote unquote empowered female characters. It's like, that's not
- 31:20Speaker 1: my name, this is my name, and you're like that's
- 31:22Speaker 1: all we get.
- 31:23Speaker 2: It's like, don't it happens in my name? Yeah, it
- 31:27Speaker 2: happens in Transformers with Megan Fox, where like her boyfriend
- 31:30Speaker 2: is like, come on, little bunny, and she's like, I
- 31:33Speaker 2: can't tell you how much I'm not your little bunny. Meanwhile,
- 31:36Speaker 2: she's like humping the hood of a car.
- 31:39Speaker 1: Don't ask me, don't ask me why. This is the
- 31:42Speaker 1: only thing I remember about New York minute starting Mary
- 31:45Speaker 1: Kate and Ashley. But that happens, for sure. I think
- 31:48Speaker 1: Dean from Gilmour Girls is like, hey, kid, and then
- 31:52Speaker 1: Mary Kate or Ashley is like, my name's not Kid, it's.
- 31:56Speaker 2: Mary Kay or Ashley.
- 31:58Speaker 1: Whatever the fuck? Yeah, I'm Mary kay and or Ashley
- 32:00Speaker 1: and he's like, whoa. What you said back there really
- 32:04Speaker 1: made me think, like you're just like that. So that happens.
- 32:08Speaker 1: But at least other things happened in Chicken Run, you know. Sure,
- 32:12Speaker 1: But that whole thing that was like my little nineties
- 32:14Speaker 1: feminism Antenna went up when she's like, the name is Ginger, mister,
- 32:19Speaker 1: like that whole thing whatever, Yeah, it's still Chicken Run.
- 32:23Speaker 2: Do you think Ginger was named after Ginger Spice?
- 32:27Speaker 1: I was thinking about as tohold by Ginger and then
- 32:29Speaker 1: I looked, did you ever watch that cartoon?
- 32:31Speaker 2: No?
- 32:31Speaker 1: Oh my god, it was a really good like, Okay.
- 32:35Speaker 2: Who is is someone me owing?
- 32:37Speaker 1: Yes, there's this cat. It's not Flea hungry.
- 32:42Speaker 2: For his chicken dinner. Oh it's a different cat.
- 32:44Speaker 1: No, it's Flea sitting at the window. Because there's a
- 32:46Speaker 1: lot of alley cats in our neighbor feeds and fixes
- 32:50Speaker 1: and relief, like it's like a catchabuili system. But there's
- 32:53Speaker 1: cats around, and Flea will talk to them. But there's
- 32:55Speaker 1: this one cat that we have checked on them multiple
- 33:00Speaker 1: times and they seem fine, but they just keep They
- 33:04Speaker 1: just kind of yell and then we're like, are you okay?
- 33:06Speaker 1: And we're like if given him food or her. I
- 33:08Speaker 1: don't know what the gender of the cat is. I like,
- 33:10Speaker 1: I secretly, I'm like, what if the cat is pregnant?
- 33:13Speaker 2: Oh?
- 33:15Speaker 1: Gregs and just is like uncomfortable because she's full of Gregs.
- 33:19Speaker 1: I don't really know what's going on, but it's been
- 33:21Speaker 1: going on for a week and every time she starts screaming,
- 33:25Speaker 1: flee gets stressed out. Oh I don't know.
- 33:28Speaker 2: I'm just thinking of a bunch of little kittens named Greg.
- 33:33Speaker 1: The little Greg's running around five hundred. Anyways, chicken run right, Yes.
- 33:41Speaker 2: So where do we leave off? Oh Ginger, Yeah, he's
- 33:47Speaker 2: a fraud, but she doesn't Ginger doesn't know that yet. Meanwhile,
- 33:51Speaker 2: missus Tweety has gotten the equipment together, the U and
- 33:56Speaker 2: it's basically just this machine that turns a chicken to
- 34:00Speaker 2: a packaged chicken pie, and she wants to test it out.
- 34:04Speaker 2: So they grab Ginger and put her in the pie machine.
- 34:07Speaker 2: Rocky goes to save her. The two of them go
- 34:11Speaker 2: through the machine. They managed to escape and fuck up
- 34:14Speaker 2: the machine, and now everyone's like, wow, Rocky, what a hero, even.
- 34:19Speaker 1: Though he does nothing at least because I was like,
- 34:24Speaker 1: oh god, we're damseling Ginger. But then it's like Rocky
- 34:27Speaker 1: truly does not help in any significant way, and that
- 34:31Speaker 1: he just kind of joins the distress, Like.
- 34:36Speaker 2: You mean, like when they's inside the machine.
- 34:39Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean mainly, I mean, I guess it seemed
- 34:41Speaker 1: more like a group effort and it wasn't like she
- 34:43Speaker 1: was damseled and now, oh no, he has to like
- 34:46Speaker 1: single handedly rescue her, and it was at least like
- 34:48Speaker 1: a group effort to get out of the machine in
- 34:51Speaker 1: one piece.
- 34:52Speaker 2: Sometimes well, I was I was like paying super close
- 34:55Speaker 2: attention to this because I was like, okay, is it
- 34:57Speaker 2: like he saves her sometimes she saves him sometimes, Like
- 35:01Speaker 2: how how does that dynamic play out? And it felt
- 35:04Speaker 2: to me like he does do a few things to
- 35:07Speaker 2: save her from certain death, she does one thing to
- 35:11Speaker 2: save him. But it felt to me like the scales
- 35:13Speaker 2: were tipped into like she is being damseled territory and
- 35:18Speaker 2: he does have to save her a few more times
- 35:20Speaker 2: than she saves him, or that she's able to save herself.
- 35:23Speaker 1: Interesting, I was, I was not doing the exact math
- 35:26Speaker 1: on it. I was, at least I guess I was
- 35:28Speaker 1: more expecting like, oh, we're damseling her and then it's
- 35:31Speaker 1: going to be a clear cut like end of The
- 35:34Speaker 1: Little Mermaid, like I'm gonna defeat the villain, and then
- 35:37Speaker 1: you know it's at least a little more subtle than that.
- 35:40Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean I totally trust that. I wasn't. Yeah,
- 35:44Speaker 1: I wasn't keeping counts. Yeah, I just love Chicken Run
- 35:48Speaker 1: too much. Disappointing, disappointing Chicken Run, do better, Chicken Run.
- 35:52Speaker 2: Seriously, So he he emerges like this heroic you know, Wow,
- 35:58Speaker 2: I saved her and then he and Ginger have a
- 36:01Speaker 2: little moment and we're like, uh, oh, don't like where
- 36:05Speaker 2: this is going.
- 36:06Speaker 1: But you know, you know, I'm like in the year
- 36:09Speaker 1: two thousand. You know, it's so fucked up. She doesn't
- 36:15Speaker 1: need him.
- 36:17Speaker 2: No, no, she really doesn't. But the next morning it's
- 36:20Speaker 2: time for Rocky to show them his flying abilities, but
- 36:24Speaker 2: he's nowhere to be found. And this is when he
- 36:26Speaker 2: leaves behind like the rest of the circus poster showing
- 36:29Speaker 2: him being shot out of a cannon, revealing that he
- 36:32Speaker 2: cannot fly and never could. And we're like, oh, wow,
- 36:36Speaker 2: have we arrived at the low point of the movie much?
- 36:40Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounded like a second And what's more, Ginger's
- 36:44Speaker 1: lost all hope the end of it.
- 36:49Speaker 2: Until Ginger gets the idea, inspired by Fowler's time in
- 36:54Speaker 2: the Royal Air Force, to fly out of the farm
- 36:58Speaker 2: by building an airplane slash giant flying chicken apparatus. So
- 37:06Speaker 2: they get to work on building this while mister Tweety
- 37:10Speaker 2: gets to work repairing the chicken pie machine and he
- 37:14Speaker 2: finally fixes it, so now it's like a okay, and
- 37:17Speaker 2: it's now or never. The chickens roll out their flying
- 37:21Speaker 2: chicken plane. They take off Rocky comes back to help,
- 37:27Speaker 2: but missus Tweety is there trying to stop them. She
- 37:30Speaker 2: grabs on They have to scary, very scary scary. They
- 37:36Speaker 2: have to fight her off, and they do and then
- 37:39Speaker 2: they you know, finally fly over the fence toward their freedom.
- 37:43Speaker 2: And then the movie ends with the chickens living in
- 37:47Speaker 2: like a grassy nook paradise.
- 37:50Speaker 1: Like Chicken Themyscira basically like yeah, except that there's like
- 37:57Speaker 1: a few men allowed to be there. Yeah, they end
- 38:00Speaker 1: up in chicken paradise the end.
- 38:04Speaker 2: So let's take another break and then we'll come back
- 38:08Speaker 2: to discuss where do we want to begin.
- 38:22Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I would like to kind of
- 38:24Speaker 1: get the you know, touch on the mel Gibson stuff
- 38:28Speaker 1: at the top and as well as the stuff we've
- 38:31Speaker 1: been just like alluding to the whole time of like
- 38:34Speaker 1: for me, two of the most crushingly bad things about
- 38:38Speaker 1: this movie are the fact that mel Gibson is involved.
- 38:42Speaker 1: And I don't don't I don't even want to like
- 38:45Speaker 1: rehash his crimes here, but he's I mean famously his
- 38:50Speaker 1: career has been more or less like unfortunately not stopped,
- 38:54Speaker 1: but you know, impeded significantly by the number of anti
- 38:58Speaker 1: semitic and missile is and violent things that he's said
- 39:02Speaker 1: over the years. And so unfortunately we've had a discussion
- 39:06Speaker 1: of this sort in our What Women Want episode as well,
- 39:10Speaker 1: because I think that's the other big mel Gibson movie
- 39:12Speaker 1: that we've covered. Yeah, but nothing, it's it's fucking inexcusable,
- 39:18Speaker 1: and no matter what we say about this movie, there's
- 39:21Speaker 1: there's no excusing mel Gibson and the fact that he's
- 39:25Speaker 1: still cast and shit today like is inexcuse, like inexcusably bad.
- 39:32Speaker 1: He should not have a fucking career at the very least.
- 39:36Speaker 1: So I just wanted to touch on the mel Gibson
- 39:38Speaker 1: stuff at the top, Like, no matter how much love
- 39:40Speaker 1: that we have for this movie, doesn't excuse anything mel
- 39:45Speaker 1: Gibson related, Right, But going off, I guess the number
- 39:49Speaker 1: one thing, or not the number one but up there
- 39:52Speaker 1: of like the things of this movie that don't hold
- 39:55Speaker 1: up for me, is the the chicken love story. You
- 39:59Speaker 1: don't need it.
- 40:00Speaker 2: Why is there a chicken romance?
- 40:02Speaker 1: Why? Yeah, it's also not like I feel like it's
- 40:06Speaker 1: interesting because recently on the show, I think we've encountered
- 40:09Speaker 1: actually like a few different heterosexual love stories that felt earned. Yeah,
- 40:15Speaker 1: but this is not one of them. This is not earned.
- 40:18Speaker 1: This love story sucks and it feels very It feels
- 40:22Speaker 1: very studio notesy to me because it doesn't really fit
- 40:24Speaker 1: into the story.
- 40:25Speaker 2: Uh uh yeah, for a number of reasons. One that
- 40:30Speaker 2: Rocky spends a large chunk of the movie lying to
- 40:35Speaker 2: all of the chickens.
- 40:36Speaker 1: Classic two thousand rhetoric.
- 40:38Speaker 2: Yeah, and specifically Ginger because she's the one, you know,
- 40:41Speaker 2: kind of orchestrating him, teaching them how to fly. She's
- 40:46Speaker 2: negotiating with him, so he's like kind of directly lying
- 40:49Speaker 2: to her first and foremost, he is nagging her and
- 40:54Speaker 2: like you mentioned, calling her, you know, sexist names.
- 40:57Speaker 1: And it's kind of dealt with in a very I mean,
- 40:59Speaker 1: I think unfortunately, it's dealt with better than a teen
- 41:03Speaker 1: movie of this year would deal with it, because at
- 41:06Speaker 1: least she doesn't like she I don't know. The first
- 41:10Speaker 1: half of this movie. I like how she responds to
- 41:15Speaker 1: his bullshit, like she is using him for a very
- 41:17Speaker 1: specific purpose and wants nothing to do with him outside
- 41:20Speaker 1: of his immediate use to the collective that she feels
- 41:23Speaker 1: beholden too. And then it's like the last half hour
- 41:27Speaker 1: of the movie, that whole, like I thought really subversive
- 41:32Speaker 1: setup just totally falls apart, and I'm like, and then
- 41:35Speaker 1: it just becomes fucking like she's all that of like
- 41:39Speaker 1: or ten things I hate about you? If like, oh,
- 41:40Speaker 1: this person who like has been nothing but cruel to
- 41:44Speaker 1: me actually loves me and I don't care to dielide
- 41:47Speaker 1: and I don't and I do who care? Apology? Never
- 41:51Speaker 1: heard of it?
- 41:51Speaker 2: Like right?
- 41:53Speaker 1: Just oh god, why does Rocky have a redemption arc?
- 41:57Speaker 1: Like get rid of it?
- 42:00Speaker 2: Get rid of Yeah? He he abandons them in their
- 42:03Speaker 2: like their moment of dire need, like he does everything
- 42:06Speaker 2: wrong every step of the way, does not deserve redemption
- 42:12Speaker 2: the fact that Ginger just like forgives him and yeah,
- 42:17Speaker 2: that whole like burden of forgiveness applies here, Like why
- 42:23Speaker 2: because again he doesn't even do the bare minimum. Really,
- 42:26Speaker 2: he just throws a party to like cheer some people up.
- 42:30Speaker 1: But he does that selfishly too. He does that to
- 42:33Speaker 1: distract from the fact that he can actually help them, right,
- 42:36Speaker 1: I just it's so frustrating because it's like the burden
- 42:40Speaker 1: of forgiveness thing bothers me even more in the way
- 42:43Speaker 1: it plays out in this movie. Because this isn't saying
- 42:47Speaker 1: much for Beauty and the Beast, But you know, when
- 42:49Speaker 1: Belle meets the Beast, she's gonna forgive him one hundred percent,
- 42:52Speaker 1: no doubt in your mind. There's never like, oh, is
- 42:56Speaker 1: she gonna go her own way here? Because bell is
- 42:59Speaker 1: not beholden to collective there we have yet to see
- 43:02Speaker 1: a feminist theme or her interact with a woman. We
- 43:05Speaker 1: have no reason to believe that she wouldn't like.
- 43:08Speaker 2: And it's a fairy tale going in, so you assume that, Okay,
- 43:12Speaker 2: the main woman, the title woman, and the title man
- 43:15Speaker 2: are probably going to get together at the end.
- 43:18Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah, it's like Beauty and the Beasts. It's not
- 43:21Speaker 1: like Beauty like bales on the Beast because he's a
- 43:24Speaker 1: fucking asshole. Like that should be the title though, Chicken Run,
- 43:29Speaker 1: Chicken Run, Chicken Run, so waved toxic character like there.
- 43:35Speaker 1: It just it would have been so easy and more
- 43:39Speaker 1: more like I think, like thematically satisfying to have her.
- 43:44Speaker 1: It just seems like it doesn't make sense with her character,
- 43:47Speaker 1: Like the way she said, she's set up so distinctly
- 43:49Speaker 1: and so strongly as like a character who would not
- 43:53Speaker 1: I keep almost saying a person she's a chicken. She's
- 43:57Speaker 1: a chicken who would not have any patience for this
- 44:00Speaker 1: kind of shit. And then the second that he like
- 44:03Speaker 1: lies in a way that means he is no longer
- 44:05Speaker 1: useful to her collective mission, she would never talk to
- 44:09Speaker 1: him again. Like, it just doesn't make sense none at all.
- 44:13Speaker 1: It just doesn't make sense other than they talked on
- 44:15Speaker 1: a roof once, which is another contrivance that it's like,
- 44:18Speaker 1: oh god, come on.
- 44:19Speaker 2: Yeah, especially like you said, the way that she is
- 44:23Speaker 2: characterized in the beginning is just like having these you know,
- 44:27Speaker 2: strong values and wanting to be autonomous and not be
- 44:32Speaker 2: a cog in the egg machine, right and not that
- 44:37Speaker 2: like someone who you know, a woman who is like
- 44:40Speaker 2: strongly convicted couldn't and wouldn't end up with a romantic partner.
- 44:44Speaker 2: But like she seems to like have a good chicken
- 44:48Speaker 2: head on her shoulders. Yeah, you know, she doesn't tolerate
- 44:51Speaker 2: bullshit from anyone, right, much less a shitty man who
- 44:55Speaker 2: again lies and nags her and abandons her and like,
- 44:59Speaker 2: just like all he does everything wrong. There's nothing about
- 45:04Speaker 2: what her character had been established to be that would
- 45:08Speaker 2: make you think that she would be at all willing
- 45:11Speaker 2: to forgive him right, and yet that's what she does,
- 45:16Speaker 2: even though he does not apologize or hold himself accountable
- 45:22Speaker 2: at all for anything he did.
- 45:24Speaker 1: No, I mean in the way that he's like, I
- 45:28Speaker 1: don't know, Yeah, the whole I want to give the
- 45:32Speaker 1: writer of this movie, who's written a lot while committing
- 45:36Speaker 1: the sin of being a sis man, has written a
- 45:38Speaker 1: lot of like iconic children's movies that I really love.
- 45:42Speaker 2: Wait, what else has he done? I forgot to look
- 45:43Speaker 2: him up.
- 45:44Speaker 1: His name's Carrie Kirkpatrick. He wrote James and the Giant
- 45:48Speaker 1: Peach the movie. He wrote Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, he
- 45:51Speaker 1: wrote Chicken Run, he wrote The Little Vampire, iconic like,
- 45:56Speaker 1: He's written a lot of classic kids movies. And he
- 46:00Speaker 1: also wrote and directed small Foot, which was one of
- 46:05Speaker 1: the animated Bigfoot movies that came out a couple of
- 46:09Speaker 1: years ago. And it is the good one?
- 46:12Speaker 2: Is it? The one that was? And Zendaia is me.
- 46:16Speaker 1: Chi, Yes, it is that one he wrote. I mean,
- 46:23Speaker 1: had he not written and directed small Foot, we wouldn't
- 46:25Speaker 1: have Sunday's Meat Chie. So there's a lot, you know,
- 46:30Speaker 1: there's a lot. But he's like, he's written kids movies
- 46:34Speaker 1: that at very at least have stuck with me that
- 46:37Speaker 1: seemed to be like pretty different for their time at
- 46:39Speaker 1: least or not just like you know, fill in the
- 46:42Speaker 1: blank kind of movies. Sure, I wouldn't be surprised, And
- 46:46Speaker 1: maybe I'm giving Carrie Kirkpatrick too much credit here, but like,
- 46:49Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if, like in two thousand, Mel
- 46:53Speaker 1: Gibson is this big star, if notes come back of like, well,
- 46:57Speaker 1: we have to have the mel Gibson Rooster character redeemed
- 47:00Speaker 1: by the end of the movie, and there should be
- 47:02Speaker 1: a love story, because that's pretty standard for these kinds
- 47:04Speaker 1: of movies. But it just, I don't know, it sticks
- 47:07Speaker 1: out extra unfortunately in a movie that it has so
- 47:11Speaker 1: much like really power, Like the first half of this
- 47:15Speaker 1: movie is like incredible, and then starting at the point
- 47:19Speaker 1: where Ginger is low key Damsel, I feel like that's
- 47:22Speaker 1: one of the first cracks you sort of see of
- 47:24Speaker 1: like oh no, oh, no, contrivances are starting to happen.
- 47:29Speaker 1: But I don't know, like a good half of this movie,
- 47:31Speaker 1: I'm just like, fuck, this is really cool, Like yeah, yeah,
- 47:35Speaker 1: so the love story in this one, I can't can't
- 47:40Speaker 1: defend it in any way doesn't make sense with the character.
- 47:45Speaker 1: There's no earned redemption, there's no apology. I don't want
- 47:48Speaker 1: to see chickens kiss period, and especially if those human
- 47:53Speaker 1: teeth in their beaks are all clacking around nasty. Where
- 47:57Speaker 1: are those teeth rooted? They don't have gums, you know,
- 48:01Speaker 1: hard to know why these dentured chickens are kissing. And
- 48:05Speaker 1: I didn't.
- 48:06Speaker 2: I know why? Why? Well, I know why they have teeth? Oh,
- 48:10Speaker 2: because go on, it's because Jerry Bruckheimer was like, get
- 48:14Speaker 2: these chickens somephon ears.
- 48:16Speaker 1: Oh, that's great foreshadowing for our coyote ugly episode, Jerry Bruckheimer.
- 48:22Speaker 1: That I mean, I knew. I wish I didn't know
- 48:25Speaker 1: as a Jerry Bruckheimer movie going in, because the second
- 48:27Speaker 1: you see someone's mouth, you're like, well, I know who's
- 48:31Speaker 1: behind this, uh Bruckheimer teeth Lord Michael's and Jerry Bruckheimer like,
- 48:37Speaker 1: someone's gotta someone's gotta hold these men to account about
- 48:41Speaker 1: the whole teeth issue, Like what is wrong with you?
- 48:44Speaker 1: Like sirs creepy old men being like why don't you
- 48:48Speaker 1: get a new mouth, young lady? Like get away from me,
- 48:55Speaker 1: young man. I mean, they don't, they don't discriminate by
- 48:57Speaker 1: gender of who they will force to get a new mouth.
- 48:59Speaker 1: Anyone will get new mouth for these at least there's that,
- 49:02Speaker 1: So that's yeah, they are god so creepy. Anyways. Yeah,
- 49:08Speaker 1: the relationship aspect suck.
- 49:12Speaker 2: Hate it. Get it out of there. You could easily
- 49:14Speaker 2: remove it. The movie would be even better than it is.
- 49:18Speaker 2: And yeah, I hate the chicken romance.
- 49:22Speaker 1: No chicken romance please.
- 49:24Speaker 2: Another thing that I felt was in the same vein
- 49:27Speaker 2: of like why is this here and why did you
- 49:30Speaker 2: make this choice because it goes against everything that had
- 49:33Speaker 2: also been set up about like Ginger especially was when
- 49:38Speaker 2: they're rolling out the Chicken plane at the end of
- 49:42Speaker 2: the movie, see where you go. They engineered themselves, They
- 49:45Speaker 2: designed it themselves, they builded themselves. And then they're like, okay,
- 49:49Speaker 2: we're ready to take off. Fowler, go get into the
- 49:52Speaker 2: pilot's seat because you have to fly this thing. And
- 49:54Speaker 2: he's like, well, I don't know how to do it.
- 49:56Speaker 2: I was I was a mascot in the in the
- 49:59Speaker 2: Air Force, so I can't fly a pilane.
- 50:01Speaker 1: First of all, you're like, a chicken was a mascot
- 50:05Speaker 1: for the Air Force in World War Two?
- 50:08Speaker 2: What you know what Sorry to all of the UK listeners,
- 50:13Speaker 2: but I would not put it past.
- 50:16Speaker 1: That's really me. That's so funny, that's so funny. Yeah,
- 50:22Speaker 1: sorry UK listeners, but you've.
- 50:24Speaker 2: Got some weird mascots.
- 50:26Speaker 1: Yeah. I also found this plot point really frustrating.
- 50:28Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So what happens is basically they're like, Fowler,
- 50:31Speaker 2: you need to fly this thing, and he's like, well,
- 50:32Speaker 2: I don't know how to do it, and they're like,
- 50:34Speaker 2: but you're our only hope, and it's like he has
- 50:36Speaker 2: no more experience than any of the other chickens. Why
- 50:39Speaker 2: wouldn't Ginger fly or why wouldn't Mac the brainy stem
- 50:44Speaker 2: chicken fly it.
- 50:45Speaker 1: I thought Mac was the more logical choice for this,
- 50:49Speaker 1: especially because it's like it's one thing like they could have.
- 50:53Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just such a weird choice because
- 50:56Speaker 1: on one hand, it's like, I like where that scene
- 50:59Speaker 1: is going, where there's kind of this theme throughout Chicken
- 51:03Speaker 1: Run of men overcompensating and like men putting their pride
- 51:09Speaker 1: first and being deceitful because of their own insecurity and
- 51:13Speaker 1: because of their own pride, and like that's the theme
- 51:15Speaker 1: with Rocky and that's a theme with Fowler. And I
- 51:19Speaker 1: like that. I think that that's like an interesting dynamic
- 51:22Speaker 1: to play around with. And so Rocky is exposed as
- 51:25Speaker 1: being a fraud. He bails, right, Fowler is exposed as
- 51:28Speaker 1: being a fraud, and it's like, Okay, I like that
- 51:31Speaker 1: they made that choice because it's like his character kind
- 51:35Speaker 1: of is reflected that the whole time. He's always like,
- 51:36Speaker 1: look at me, look at me. And then if he
- 51:38Speaker 1: has to do anything, he's like, oh, I don't know,
- 51:40Speaker 1: ask Ginger because she's the only as told by Ginger,
- 51:43Speaker 1: it's the only like she's the only person that knows
- 51:46Speaker 1: or chicken. She's not a person, she's a chicken. She's
- 51:50Speaker 1: the only person chicken in the Oh my god, it's
- 51:53Speaker 1: so stressful. She's the only chicken in the coop that
- 51:56Speaker 1: like is she's like the organizer, right, And yeah, so
- 51:59Speaker 1: I like that his character is kind of exposed as
- 52:02Speaker 1: a fraud. But then it's like, if you're gonna do that,
- 52:05Speaker 1: why immediately in the same scene offer him a redemption
- 52:09Speaker 1: arc Like that's such a weird choice. Yeah, this should
- 52:13Speaker 1: have been like Mac should have been at I mean,
- 52:15Speaker 1: Mac at least had an integral like it seemed like
- 52:17Speaker 1: she was like command control inside of the plane. But
- 52:21Speaker 1: she should have been driving the fucking plane.
- 52:24Speaker 2: Come on, Yeah, I would have liked it way better
- 52:26Speaker 2: if maybe like Fowler sort of like of his own accord,
- 52:30Speaker 2: gets into the pilot's seat, like realizes he can't fly,
- 52:34Speaker 2: and then like Ginger's like, wait, you can't fly, Well,
- 52:38Speaker 2: then get the hell out of there. Hey, Mac, you
- 52:41Speaker 2: engineered this thing. Surely you know how it functions. You
- 52:45Speaker 2: fly the plane. And then she's like, yeah, here I go.
- 52:49Speaker 1: I wanted to. I wanted to see Mac and Ginger
- 52:51Speaker 1: in the front seat of the plane doing the damn
- 52:54Speaker 1: thing like I it's it's frustrating because it's like and
- 52:58Speaker 1: it's not I'm not even saying, like kick Fowler off
- 53:01Speaker 1: the plane, like just put him on a bike. Just
- 53:03Speaker 1: put him on a bike. Yeah, you know, like I
- 53:05Speaker 1: think that you know Fowler, it seems like he is
- 53:08Speaker 1: the kind of character. He is very flawed. He is
- 53:11Speaker 1: like very pompous, but he can be worked with in
- 53:16Speaker 1: a way that I don't think Rocky can. Right, Like
- 53:19Speaker 1: he has like loyalty to the chickens of the coop
- 53:22Speaker 1: at least, and it's like, don't toss him off the plane.
- 53:25Speaker 1: But don't tell him to drive the plane. He just
- 53:28Speaker 1: told you can't drive the plane, like what? And then
- 53:31Speaker 1: I feel like there that was another thing that, Like, God,
- 53:34Speaker 1: most of my problems with this movie are in the
- 53:37Speaker 1: last ten minutes, which is frustrating because I just like,
- 53:41Speaker 1: it's such a chicken run is so good, but like,
- 53:45Speaker 1: if we're if we're if we're pecking it apart. Wow,
- 53:50Speaker 1: I know.
- 53:51Speaker 2: It's catching cocka doodle do, cock a doodle do? Tell
- 53:57Speaker 2: more one of the cockodoodle doos and cocka doodle don'ts
- 54:02Speaker 2: of chicken run?
- 54:04Speaker 1: Oh my god, Wait, now I forgot. I was gonna say,
- 54:08Speaker 1: I'm so sorry for no, We're just making so many perfect,
- 54:11Speaker 1: hilarious jokes. Wait, there was something. Wait, I'll get a.
- 54:15Speaker 2: Chicken pun chicken instead a chicken run.
- 54:21Speaker 1: Okay, wait Fowler. Fuck. I don't know. I don't know
- 54:27Speaker 1: it had something to do with Fowler. I don't know. Sorry, Oh,
- 54:31Speaker 1: I'll figure it out of Itally, I just I got
- 54:34Speaker 1: so taken in. Yeah, I don't know. I guess. It
- 54:40Speaker 1: just seems like this movie was making really interesting points
- 54:43Speaker 1: about masculinity and the expectations of masculinity, but then they
- 54:48Speaker 1: just kind of offered all the male characters who had
- 54:50Speaker 1: displayed those traits in immediate redemption arc at the very
- 54:56Speaker 1: end for no reason, for.
- 54:58Speaker 2: No reason, completely under like they did nothing to earn.
- 55:03Speaker 1: I think, like, honestly, I think that like I would
- 55:05Speaker 1: have accepted a Fowler redemption act if he had had
- 55:08Speaker 1: to work for it, and if he had had to
- 55:11Speaker 1: like accept Oh I remember, I was gonna say, but
- 55:14Speaker 1: if he had had to like be humbled in some
- 55:17Speaker 1: way instead of being constant like that was his arc,
- 55:20Speaker 1: was that he was not humble even though he didn't
- 55:23Speaker 1: know how to do anything right, Like, so that should
- 55:26Speaker 1: be the resolution of like, Okay, we don't hate you Fowler,
- 55:29Speaker 1: but like sit down, you know, like yeah, that's but
- 55:33Speaker 1: that doesn't happen. Oh, so that was okay. So what
- 55:36Speaker 1: I was gonna say is, in the majority of this movie,
- 55:40Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting and like generally kind of
- 55:43Speaker 1: cool how the chickens. The chickens are not like Mary
- 55:48Speaker 1: sued at any point where it's not like they suddenly
- 55:51Speaker 1: know how to get out of the coup. They suddenly
- 55:54Speaker 1: like they pick up a whatever and all of a
- 55:57Speaker 1: sudden they're superheroes and they like you see them working
- 56:01Speaker 1: closer to their goal. You see them try and fail,
- 56:04Speaker 1: you understand kind of what their journey is. But then
- 56:08Speaker 1: at the end, Fowler is Mary Souon where all of
- 56:11Speaker 1: a sudden he's like, I don't know how to ride
- 56:13Speaker 1: a plane. Two seconds later he's like, I'm driving the
- 56:15Speaker 1: plane right. How though, Like it's for a movie that
- 56:19Speaker 1: seemed pretty conscious of like showing the character arcs of
- 56:23Speaker 1: like how they're getting closer and closer and closer to
- 56:27Speaker 1: knowing how to do what they need to. Hm, it's
- 56:30Speaker 1: such a weird last minute choice to just be like,
- 56:32Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this character that never gets his
- 56:35Speaker 1: ego checked once, even though it seems like that's where
- 56:38Speaker 1: the character is going, right, can suddenly magically drive a plane.
- 56:42Speaker 1: Like it's just weird.
- 56:44Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, like you said, Mac, we it's established
- 56:49Speaker 2: that Mac is the brainy chicken and stem she does
- 56:53Speaker 2: complex you know, calculus and physics equations and all you know, geometry.
- 57:00Speaker 2: Who knows what all she's even.
- 57:02Speaker 1: Doing bits of shit. It's out of my pay grade.
- 57:04Speaker 2: I don't know, right, But they're like, yeah, byye, but
- 57:07Speaker 2: she she understands thrust, you know, she like designs this
- 57:11Speaker 2: catapult and then she's put in charge of engineering this thing. Babs,
- 57:17Speaker 2: who is seen constantly knitting, is in charge of manufacturing.
- 57:23Speaker 2: And like other chickens are you know, getting the material.
- 57:26Speaker 2: They're like all doing something in contributing.
- 57:27Speaker 1: Which I appreciated that that was paid off on too.
- 57:30Speaker 1: That like her because the knitting thing, it's like, oh
- 57:32Speaker 1: you could. I was like, is this a reductive thing?
- 57:35Speaker 1: What's happening? What's happening? What's happening? But then like that
- 57:37Speaker 1: that plant and payoff baby, she's like she's a textile manufacturer.
- 57:43Speaker 2: She sees the.
- 57:44Speaker 1: Means of productions in her little chicken hands.
- 57:46Speaker 2: M h.
- 57:47Speaker 1: I love her.
- 57:48Speaker 2: Yes, So yeah, that was disappointing to me that they
- 57:53Speaker 2: did that whole thing with Fowler. And then the the
- 57:56Speaker 2: other thing that we already talked about a bit and
- 57:59Speaker 2: we don't need to reh too much was just the
- 58:02Speaker 2: you know, women need to be saved by men, even
- 58:05Speaker 2: when they're all chickens so like.
- 58:08Speaker 1: Which is frustrating because it's like Ginger is so set
- 58:11Speaker 1: up to be able to do it that there's really
- 58:14Speaker 1: like I was, I was able to get as far
- 58:18Speaker 1: as like, Okay, I understand why Ginger would enlist Rocky's help,
- 58:25Speaker 1: but the second she finds out he's a fraud, I
- 58:27Speaker 1: have no like we no longer have any narrative excuse
- 58:30Speaker 1: to like have him even in the story, Like right.
- 58:34Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't I don't mind that she enlists his
- 58:37Speaker 2: help because he seems to be able to fly and
- 58:40Speaker 2: they need to learn how to do that, and.
- 58:42Speaker 1: We've already seen them try and fail so many times
- 58:45Speaker 1: that it's like, oh, okay, Like narratively, it like she
- 58:48Speaker 1: will you know anything that seems promising, she will try
- 58:51Speaker 1: mm hmm.
- 58:52Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't mind that at all. I'm talking
- 58:54Speaker 2: more just specifically about the she gets put in the
- 58:57Speaker 2: chicken pie machine and Rocky like goes in after her,
- 59:01Speaker 2: and yeah, like her feet are stuck in the dough.
- 59:04Speaker 2: She he has to pull her out of the dough
- 59:06Speaker 2: before she gets crushed. They're about to get splatted by gravy.
- 59:10Speaker 2: He takes like a vegetable and like crams it into
- 59:13Speaker 2: the gravy machine. At the very end of that sequence,
- 59:18Speaker 2: she does pull him out of the pie and get
- 59:21Speaker 2: him out of the oven. So she does one thing,
- 59:23Speaker 2: but it's mostly him rescuing her.
- 59:27Speaker 1: And the thing is like there, see I wasn't. Yeah,
- 59:30Speaker 1: I mean we already kind of ash. I wasn't keeping
- 59:32Speaker 1: track of like who is doing how much in that scene.
- 59:35Speaker 1: But the whole time I was watching that scene, I
- 59:37Speaker 1: was like, this should be like Mac, or this should
- 59:40Speaker 1: be like I guess that it's that's okay. I guess that.
- 59:44Speaker 1: That's kind of like the last kind of issue I
- 59:47Speaker 1: have with how the Chicken Collective is written at times, right,
- 59:53Speaker 1: they are sometimes written too and it's like, God, everyone
- 59:57Speaker 1: take this with a grave of salt, because it is funny,
- 1:00:00Speaker 1: like a grain a chicken feed can feed. But like
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: the chickens are I think framed as being like quote
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: unquote hysterical at times where they are put in. I mean,
- 1:00:16Speaker 1: the thing is like the steaks are very high, and
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: so it's not like they're overreacting, but they are often
- 1:00:22Speaker 1: like ah, like they're they're always panicking, which which makes sense.
- 1:00:27Speaker 2: Very funny to look at.
- 1:00:29Speaker 1: It's so the thing is, it's so funny to watch
- 1:00:31Speaker 1: the chickens panic, and so I'm like hah. Then I'm
- 1:00:34Speaker 1: also like, but wait a second, wait a minute, this
- 1:00:37Speaker 1: podcast has destroyed my brain. I can no longer enjoy
- 1:00:41Speaker 1: cartoon chickens running around I have to be like, but
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: what are the implications of the cartoon chickens running around?
- 1:00:48Speaker 2: Let's the inherent sexism here?
- 1:00:49Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think there is something like there is
- 1:00:52Speaker 1: like the chickens are sometimes made out to be like
- 1:00:54Speaker 1: I think like humorously overreacting, right, if we're saying, you
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: know that a lot of these like these chickens are
- 1:01:01Speaker 1: drawn from life, human life, so that we were to
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: imagine a group of women panicking and running around, and
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: I think that it's kind of most egregious. And when
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: Rocky is like I've got this and no one kind
- 1:01:14Speaker 1: of stands up to be like, well, Gingers are like leader,
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: like she's our leader, Like no one offers to go
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: with him, there's no like it just seemed almost.
- 1:01:24Speaker 2: Like they like volunteer him, right, They're like, you have
- 1:01:26Speaker 2: to go do it, Rocky.
- 1:01:28Speaker 1: Which strikes me as like a little cowardly of the
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: chickens of like Ginger is addicted to putting her life
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: on the line for all of you chickens, Like why
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: are none of the chickens like let's make sure, Like
- 1:01:43Speaker 1: I just kind of wish that in that scenario, I
- 1:01:45Speaker 1: don't even like hate. I think that it's like plot wise,
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: seeing the how how dire the chicken machine is and
- 1:01:54Speaker 1: how scary it is, like that is a valuable plot point.
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: But you know, it's like maybe Fowler could have been
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: kidnapped or one of the chickens could have gone to
- 1:02:05Speaker 1: like navigate their way out with Ginger. Like I just
- 1:02:07Speaker 1: ultimately the fact that the chicken knife machine pop pie
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: scene ends up serving the romantic narrative. I just didn't like.
- 1:02:15Speaker 1: I don't hate that the scene happens. Yeah, I was
- 1:02:17Speaker 1: so scared of it when I was a kid, and
- 1:02:19Speaker 1: I would have been just as scared if it was
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: like Mac or Babs or like whomstever else. And it
- 1:02:25Speaker 1: also makes more logical plot sense to me that one
- 1:02:28Speaker 1: of her like lifelong chicken friends would go I don't know.
- 1:02:33Speaker 2: Yeah, I think my fix would be if well, then
- 1:02:37Speaker 2: mister Tweety is like I know, oh, I know, just
- 1:02:40Speaker 2: the chicken because he has a vendetta against Ginger, so
- 1:02:43Speaker 2: it makes sense that Ginger are in solitary right exactly.
- 1:02:47Speaker 2: I think my fix would just be like Gingers able
- 1:02:50Speaker 2: to save herself, because we've seen her be very resourceful
- 1:02:56Speaker 2: this whole movie. Can't she just for self and get
- 1:03:00Speaker 2: herself out because yea, the function it serves in the
- 1:03:03Speaker 2: story for Rocky to save her does sort of ignite
- 1:03:06Speaker 2: their romance, which doesn't need to be in the movie.
- 1:03:09Speaker 1: Their trauma bonded chickens. You're like, I don't need this,
- 1:03:13Speaker 1: or even if we need to have Rocky show up,
- 1:03:16Speaker 1: maybe he shows up and he's completely useless because that's
- 1:03:19Speaker 1: kind of his thing. And then she's She's like, oh great,
- 1:03:21Speaker 1: now it's twice as hard for us to get out
- 1:03:23Speaker 1: of this chicken machine. You fucking lose her like there.
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: I don't know. I just like, yeah, I don't like
- 1:03:30Speaker 1: because it's I think that that's such a scary effective
- 1:03:33Speaker 1: scene and to have it service this like I don't know,
- 1:03:36Speaker 1: romantic subplot that we both hate. I was just like, man,
- 1:03:40Speaker 1: don't love it. Should we talk about things we love about? Yes? Kay? Okay?
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: I read a lot. There's like kind of a stunning
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: amount of think pieces about Chicken run oh, which I
- 1:03:57Speaker 1: do love because I had all these that I'm like,
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: are these irrational?
- 1:04:01Speaker 2: Am I?
- 1:04:02Speaker 1: And And some of them were and I won't bring
- 1:04:04Speaker 1: them up, but others were. Okay, So I do feel
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: pretty confident and I'm pulling I'm gonna be reading from
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: uh two pieces. One is from Bitch Media by Dehan
- 1:04:18Speaker 1: Jotanovic and the other is from Film School Rejects by
- 1:04:23Speaker 1: Brianna Ziggler that kind of comment on the either the
- 1:04:29Speaker 1: like hyper feminists or because I kind of went into
- 1:04:32Speaker 1: Chicken Run being like, oh, this is like a really
- 1:04:34Speaker 1: feminist movie, but it's also a really like I'm gonna
- 1:04:39Speaker 1: quote the piece because I always like it's a very
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: anti capitalist piece of g rated children's art, which is
- 1:04:46Speaker 1: so fucking cool, like yeah, yeah, And and Brianna Ziggler
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: in particular gets like full on into like Marxist theory,
- 1:04:53Speaker 1: which is like locate out of my pay grate, but
- 1:04:56Speaker 1: like she is, she is right where it's like I
- 1:05:00Speaker 1: did you read Animal Farm in high school? I did, so,
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: Like there we were confronted with kind of an Animal
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: Farm style situation here, right, And it's based on literally
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: a movie called The Great Escape about people like escaping
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: a prisoner of war World War II camp, and so
- 1:05:21Speaker 1: it's like pulling from some pretty dark stuff. So I
- 1:05:24Speaker 1: just want to read a section of Brianna Zigler discussing
- 1:05:28Speaker 1: the Marxist themes in Chicken Run because I truly do firmly. Like, Yeah,
- 1:05:36Speaker 1: Ginger reminds me of every DSA chapter leader I've ever
- 1:05:39Speaker 1: interacted with. Like, Okay, So here's what Brianna says. Quote
- 1:05:45Speaker 1: the Tweeties farm and their chickens mirror the oft maligned
- 1:05:48Speaker 1: working environments and practices of our modern day capitalist society.
- 1:05:51Speaker 1: We're only valuable to our bosses as long as we
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: can provide them with labor and therefore profit. As soon
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: as we aren't profitable, we're disposable and reply. Thus this
- 1:06:01Speaker 1: idea of Marxist theory inherent within chicken run, the objective
- 1:06:05Speaker 1: of Marxism being the self emancipation of the working class
- 1:06:08Speaker 1: i e. The chickens. German philosopher Karl Marx believed in
- 1:06:13Speaker 1: a socialist revolution in order to bring about control of
- 1:06:16Speaker 1: political power for the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat,
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: as he called it, would give the proletary public ownership
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. I'll skip
- 1:06:32Speaker 1: down a little bit. It gets pretty dense. Part of
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: Marxist theory also includes this idea of seizing the means
- 1:06:40Speaker 1: of production. Means of production being what is used to
- 1:06:43Speaker 1: produce goods and seizing them, as in taking control and
- 1:06:46Speaker 1: using them for the greater good instead of personal gain
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: as with capitalism. Thus, the chicken's entire bodies are the
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: Tweedy's means of producing goods as well as being the
- 1:06:56Speaker 1: goods themselves. In the end, the chicken's ultimate way of
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: the escape relies entirely on their bodies hand powering a
- 1:07:03Speaker 1: plane they built all by themselves unquote. So it's like,
- 1:07:09Speaker 1: also this incredible labor story where like, you know, I
- 1:07:14Speaker 1: feel like missus Tweety is kind of like a classically
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: evil hyper capitalist villain, right, and I think that it
- 1:07:21Speaker 1: framed even slightly differently. She's basically a girl boss, right,
- 1:07:24Speaker 1: where she's like, I'm going to start my own business
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: and like, yes, ladies, let's grind these chickens to death,
- 1:07:30Speaker 1: like that kind of vibe where she is motivated by
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: personal profit. And then the chickens like they are basically
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: performing some form of like unpaid prison labor. They are
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: held captive. They are used strictly for what they can produce,
- 1:07:47Speaker 1: which at first is their eggs, which are immediately sees
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: from them, with the only exchange being food, you know,
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: the ability to continue to live and produce, which already
- 1:07:57Speaker 1: you're like, okay, this is a labor story. And then
- 1:08:00Speaker 1: when they are no longer useful to produce eggs, they
- 1:08:03Speaker 1: are then harvested for the personal profit of missus tweety.
- 1:08:09Speaker 1: So yeah, I just thought it was like a really
- 1:08:12Speaker 1: heady but fascinating point that, like the means of production
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: at first are the chickens' abilities to produce eggs, and
- 1:08:20Speaker 1: then eventually the means of production once it becomes clear
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: that it's actually more profitable to just mercilessly harvest the chickens,
- 1:08:30Speaker 1: the means of production becomes their actual bodies, and so
- 1:08:32Speaker 1: then using their bodies to escape is also seizing the
- 1:08:36Speaker 1: means of production. Like strictly by having bodily autonomy, the
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: chickens of Chicken Run have reclaimed the means of production
- 1:08:45Speaker 1: and they can self determine what they want to do
- 1:08:48Speaker 1: with their lives on Chicken Island. I just so shout
- 1:08:52Speaker 1: out to Breonna Ziglai. I will send you this link
- 1:08:55Speaker 1: so we'll have it in the description as well. But
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: it was phrasing things that I didn't quite have like
- 1:09:02Speaker 1: the Marxist vocabulary to say. But it's like, fuck, yeah,
- 1:09:08Speaker 1: It's like on top of the fact that we are
- 1:09:11Speaker 1: living in a chicken matriarchy. They literally like liberate themselves
- 1:09:17Speaker 1: from capitalism.
- 1:09:19Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's amazing, it's amazing. I like the commentary
- 1:09:23Speaker 2: too on. So not only is Missus Tweety this like,
- 1:09:29Speaker 2: you know, capitalist stooge bourgeois owning and controlling the means
- 1:09:34Speaker 2: of production villain. She also she's like explaining the branding
- 1:09:40Speaker 2: that she wants to do for the chicken pies that
- 1:09:42Speaker 2: she intends to sell, and she's like, yeah, they're going
- 1:09:45Speaker 2: to be called Missus Tweety's chicken pies and her husband
- 1:09:48Speaker 2: her husband is like missus and she's like, yeah, a
- 1:09:53Speaker 2: woman's touch makes the public seem more comfortable. So she
- 1:09:56Speaker 2: understands like marketing, but also like she understands like the
- 1:10:01Speaker 2: patriarchal structure that her chicken pies are going to be
- 1:10:05Speaker 2: like distributed and sold to.
- 1:10:07Speaker 1: She's literally a girl boss. She's a chicken girl boss.
- 1:10:11Speaker 1: Like she understands the patriarchal structure, and instead of using
- 1:10:16Speaker 1: that understanding to liberate herself and other people she's operating,
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: she's continuing to operate inside of it in order to
- 1:10:23Speaker 1: turn a profit for herself. Personally, she's a girl boss,
- 1:10:27Speaker 1: and I really like that her downfall is underestimating the chickens,
- 1:10:33Speaker 1: like she That's where I'm just like, Okay, Carrie Kirkpatrick,
- 1:10:37Speaker 1: are you a socialist? Because like the especially with how
- 1:10:41Speaker 1: the tweeties talk like the chickens the chickens do, they
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: are the chickens are socialists, but it's kind of like
- 1:10:50Speaker 1: worded a little more ambiguously for them. But when the
- 1:10:53Speaker 1: tweeties are talking, I'm like, this guy took a couple
- 1:10:57Speaker 1: courses because like mister Tweety is made out to be
- 1:11:01Speaker 1: really paranoid for saying like the chickens are organized, like
- 1:11:04Speaker 1: the chickens are going, they're like plotting their escape. And
- 1:11:08Speaker 1: the reason that missus Tweety ultimately or part of the
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: reason the chickens are able to seize their bodily autonomy
- 1:11:14Speaker 1: and build a plane, is because missus Tweety doesn't believe
- 1:11:19Speaker 1: that the chickens are intelligent enough, like the underclass chickens
- 1:11:24Speaker 1: being beneath humans. Yes, that the underclass is like intelligent
- 1:11:29Speaker 1: or motivated enough to organize and rise up, And so
- 1:11:34Speaker 1: I liked that that's like that's made explicitly clear, like
- 1:11:38Speaker 1: a bunch of times that missus Tweety does not believe
- 1:11:41Speaker 1: that people, not people with their chickens, that living creatures
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: she views as lesser than and less intelligent than her
- 1:11:51Speaker 1: could possibly outwit her, which I feel like you can
- 1:11:54Speaker 1: apply that. I mean, that applies to a wide array
- 1:11:59Speaker 1: of historical risings. But right, I like, how I I
- 1:12:03Speaker 1: think that missus tweety and and mister Tweety, I mean
- 1:12:05Speaker 1: they're both kind of villains in that you get kind
- 1:12:09Speaker 1: of two kinds of capitalist villains. You have like the
- 1:12:12Speaker 1: super motivated one and then you have the kind of
- 1:12:14Speaker 1: the bystander.
- 1:12:15Speaker 2: Right, so just sort of like passively participating, and.
- 1:12:19Speaker 1: Like, to mister Tweety's credit, he does notice that the
- 1:12:23Speaker 1: chickens are organized. It's just no one believes mister Tweety.
- 1:12:27Speaker 2: Yeah, missus Tweety's gaslighting him the whole time. She's like,
- 1:12:30Speaker 2: it's all in your head to her own detriment. Yeah, yeah,
- 1:12:35Speaker 2: she should have just listened. Believe mister Tweety.
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: Believe mister Tweety's believe. How did you feel when mister Tweety? Okay,
- 1:12:45Speaker 1: this was kind of I was like, oh, how did
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: you feel when mister Tweety was very willing to let
- 1:12:50Speaker 1: his wife die. At the end, I was like, kind
- 1:12:55Speaker 1: of always just like, I guess she's not nice to you,
- 1:12:59Speaker 1: but you're like benefiting from everything she's doing. Like I
- 1:13:03Speaker 1: kind of didn't. I was like, mister Tweety, that's like
- 1:13:06Speaker 1: fucked up. You're just gonna let your wife get all
- 1:13:08Speaker 1: ground up.
- 1:13:09Speaker 2: I think he is. He's had it up to here
- 1:13:13Speaker 2: with her gaslighting him and just being cruel to him
- 1:13:17Speaker 2: and making unreasonable demands of him the whole movie, and
- 1:13:21Speaker 2: she's and he's just like, you know what, I've had enough.
- 1:13:25Speaker 1: Off of their head. I just like, I guess I
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: don't know, not that I have this like well of
- 1:13:31Speaker 1: sympathy for missus Tweety, but I'm like, damn, the one
- 1:13:35Speaker 1: person who she thought was her ride or die was
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: very willing to let her get turned into a pot pie.
- 1:13:42Speaker 1: Yeah she does live. That also felt very g random.
- 1:13:44Speaker 1: She doesn't get ground up. She lives, but then she
- 1:13:46Speaker 1: also gets crushed by a wall, so maybe she does die.
- 1:13:49Speaker 2: So maybe she does die. Hard to say, I have
- 1:13:51Speaker 2: three jokes that I love in particular in this movie.
- 1:13:55Speaker 2: One of them is toward the end when mister Tweety
- 1:13:59Speaker 2: goes to all the chickens to put them through the
- 1:14:01Speaker 2: chicken pie machine. They're like, what's the plan, Ginger, and
- 1:14:05Speaker 2: she's like attack, so they all attack him and he's
- 1:14:08Speaker 2: like in the background flailing around like all covered in
- 1:14:11Speaker 2: chickens and he's like, the chickens are revolting, missus tweety,
- 1:14:15Speaker 2: and she says, finally something we can agree on.
- 1:14:19Speaker 1: The wordplay that is really funny, Yeah, amazing iconic.
- 1:14:24Speaker 2: And then also my two other favorite jokes are when
- 1:14:27Speaker 2: the chickens are trying to learn to fly and they're
- 1:14:30Speaker 2: just sort of like falling everywhere. One of the rats
- 1:14:34Speaker 2: is like, it's raining. Hen hilarious, right, I love I
- 1:14:38Speaker 2: love a pun. And then this one unfortunately works because
- 1:14:45Speaker 2: mel Gibson being cast as Rocky. So I'm but after
- 1:14:51Speaker 2: Rocky is exposed as a fraud, I think it's Bunty
- 1:14:56Speaker 2: says I knew he was fake all along. In fact,
- 1:14:58Speaker 2: I'm not even certain he was a mayor, which is
- 1:15:01Speaker 2: funny because mel Gibson is also not American, but he's
- 1:15:04Speaker 2: doing an American access.
- 1:15:05Speaker 1: Oh I didn't realize that that.
- 1:15:09Speaker 2: I don't know if that's intentional, but I was like,
- 1:15:13Speaker 2: so God, that's such a peak Mel Gibson joke that
- 1:15:16Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, to be there there.
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: I also had a whole section that about how Rocky
- 1:15:24Speaker 1: the Rooster represents the hollow promises of the American dream
- 1:15:32Speaker 1: enlighten me. I won't take as long as I did
- 1:15:34Speaker 1: for the chickens being socialists, which they were.
- 1:15:38Speaker 2: But that's fine. I have my own little allegory that
- 1:15:41Speaker 2: I'd like to share.
- 1:15:42Speaker 1: But okay, great, go on. Yeah. I also had a
- 1:15:45Speaker 1: little thing that I wrote down and I was like, Okay,
- 1:15:48Speaker 1: if I can find one writer that has mentioned this,
- 1:15:50Speaker 1: I will say it on the show. So okay. So
- 1:15:55Speaker 1: you know we're on a chicken farm somewhere in England, right,
- 1:16:00Speaker 1: We're in the UK. At least we know that there
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: are Scottish chickens there, so it's kind of ambiguous where
- 1:16:06Speaker 1: it is. Anyways, an American chicken shows up, right, he
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: kind of flies out of the sky quote unquote, and
- 1:16:15Speaker 1: he promises all these amazing things, and he's like, I
- 1:16:18Speaker 1: can do this, I can do that. I've seen everything,
- 1:16:21Speaker 1: I've been everywhere, I've lived this really rich and satisfying life.
- 1:16:25Speaker 1: It turns out that he has been deceitful and that
- 1:16:30Speaker 1: there's nothing behind all these huge promises that he's made
- 1:16:35Speaker 1: to them, and he's kind of like made off on this,
- 1:16:38Speaker 1: you know, reputation of being this like intrepid American when
- 1:16:42Speaker 1: in fact, you know, he is completely lost in his
- 1:16:46Speaker 1: life and he is strictly running on this like hyper
- 1:16:49Speaker 1: masculine American image and it ends up being false and
- 1:16:53Speaker 1: all the layers are pulled back. So I wrote down
- 1:16:59Speaker 1: Rocky the Rooster better example of false American dream than
- 1:17:04Speaker 1: Great Gatsby. Oohoo, hot take, Oh wow, hot take. I
- 1:17:10Speaker 1: think you know goodness eighty four minutes and you get
- 1:17:14Speaker 1: the message way easier than reading The Great Gatsby.
- 1:17:18Speaker 2: I like all of our references to orwell, we've read above.
- 1:17:23Speaker 2: We've got an f Scott Fitzgerald in there. Okay, we
- 1:17:27Speaker 2: haven't readst in.
- 1:17:27Speaker 1: We went to an American high school.
- 1:17:30Speaker 2: Okay, but don't get used to it, because I won't
- 1:17:34Speaker 2: be reading any more books I've read.
- 1:17:36Speaker 1: That's why we're not doing Jane Austin January, because we
- 1:17:40Speaker 1: don't want to read a book. Don't make us Oh
- 1:17:43Speaker 1: my god.
- 1:17:46Speaker 2: No, I yeah, I like that. That works for me.
- 1:17:50Speaker 1: What was your allegorical connection? I'm excited this is maybe
- 1:17:55Speaker 1: me reaching. Okay, I'm perfectly willing to admit that, but
- 1:17:59Speaker 1: because you know, I was rewatching this through the Bechdel lens,
- 1:18:03Speaker 1: I was also thinking that the chicken farm could be
- 1:18:06Speaker 1: interpreted as like an allegory for the patriarchy, and by
- 1:18:12Speaker 1: that I mean like the institution of the farm, like
- 1:18:15Speaker 1: not its occupants, but the farm as an institution, and
- 1:18:20Speaker 1: how it's like physically made to be very restrictive, like
- 1:18:24Speaker 1: a prison, especially because the expectation for the chickens is
- 1:18:30Speaker 1: to use their bodies to produce something that this institution wants,
- 1:18:36Speaker 1: much like the way the patriarchy historically for millennia has
- 1:18:42Speaker 1: expected that the role that women take on in society
- 1:18:47Speaker 1: is to bear children and raise them. And that's not
- 1:18:51Speaker 1: exactly what the chickens are doing in this movie, but
- 1:18:54Speaker 1: it's still this like patriarchal expectation for anyone with eggs
- 1:18:59Speaker 1: in their bodies to use their bodies to incubate either
- 1:19:05Speaker 1: like the eggs themselves or like human babies that come
- 1:19:09Speaker 1: from egg cells. And you know, for human women, historically,
- 1:19:14Speaker 1: that's been the role that we've been ascribed and that's
- 1:19:17Speaker 1: what value we have been seen to have in society. Yeah,
- 1:19:23Speaker 1: and not much beyond that. And obviously that's less true
- 1:19:27Speaker 1: for human women today. But I still think this allegorical
- 1:19:32Speaker 1: patriarchy argument works. Oh for sure. I think it's like
- 1:19:36Speaker 1: run by a woman, but it absolutely is a patriarchal structure. Like, yeah,
- 1:19:41Speaker 1: just because a women's at the top doesn't mean it's
- 1:19:43Speaker 1: feminists for the last time.
- 1:19:46Speaker 2: People, Right, women can still uphold patriarchal standards. We've said
- 1:19:53Speaker 2: it before, we'll say it again.
- 1:19:54Speaker 1: And that kind of echoes like turf ideology too, of
- 1:19:58Speaker 1: like defining womanhood by the ability to reproduce, which is
- 1:20:01Speaker 1: how a lot of you know, like turfs kind of
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: continue to perpetuate harm towards trans women and like, you know,
- 1:20:09Speaker 1: saying that being a woman is defined by your ability
- 1:20:13Speaker 1: to reproduce, which obviously intentionally excludes trans women and it
- 1:20:17Speaker 1: excludes people with wombs who don't want to have children.
- 1:20:22Speaker 1: Like it's just such an absurd Yeah, and I totally
- 1:20:27Speaker 1: agree with you. Like it goes back to like, oh,
- 1:20:29Speaker 1: your value is determined by your ability to perpetuate X
- 1:20:34Speaker 1: y Z in this case food life, right, whatever, and
- 1:20:38Speaker 1: then if you're not deemed useful enough, then we'll just
- 1:20:42Speaker 1: eat you.
- 1:20:42Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was my whole thing, because like, the
- 1:20:48Speaker 2: chicken farm is extremely restrictive. It is sort of like
- 1:20:52Speaker 2: based on these very rigid gender roles and expectations for
- 1:20:56Speaker 2: the chickens. And I was like, what is this but
- 1:21:00Speaker 2: the patriarchy it is.
- 1:21:01Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also like the turf patriarchy on that, like
- 1:21:07Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, if you only define an
- 1:21:08Speaker 1: animal by their ability to reproduce, your excluding so many
- 1:21:13Speaker 1: out of sheer you know, does either prejudice or desire
- 1:21:18Speaker 1: to profit or often both. Yes, So you know we
- 1:21:22Speaker 1: should have you know we I think that they should have.
- 1:21:25Speaker 1: You know, let missus Tweety die. She should have died.
- 1:21:30Speaker 2: She was she was.
- 1:21:31Speaker 1: You know what if nothing else, I'm like, we've gotten
- 1:21:34Speaker 1: this far, Like, let's do the guillotine. Yeah, we're here.
- 1:21:39Speaker 1: I don't care if it's PG. Make it PG and
- 1:21:41Speaker 1: drag out a chicken guillotine.
- 1:21:45Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:21:46Speaker 1: One thing I liked in this movie was and that
- 1:21:48Speaker 1: I wish we had more of, and I think if Rocky,
- 1:21:51Speaker 1: had Rocky's storyline up been treated differently, we would have
- 1:21:54Speaker 1: gotten more. Was Ginger and Max friendship and their collaboration.
- 1:22:00Speaker 1: I really thought that there was kind of more to
- 1:22:03Speaker 1: kind of mine from that relationship, because you do get
- 1:22:06Speaker 1: a few scenes with them. They are like they're both
- 1:22:09Speaker 1: friends and they are like co organizers, where I liked.
- 1:22:14Speaker 1: I always love when there is I mean there there
- 1:22:17Speaker 1: is sometimes internal conflict at the Coup, but it is
- 1:22:22Speaker 1: not it's it's I don't know, it is, like I thought,
- 1:22:25Speaker 1: pretty logically driven conflict. It wasn't just like, well, there's
- 1:22:29Speaker 1: a lot of women in this area, so of course
- 1:22:31Speaker 1: they're going to be arguing with each other.
- 1:22:33Speaker 2: Like right.
- 1:22:34Speaker 1: I really liked that, especially with Ginger and Mac. They
- 1:22:37Speaker 1: both brought something different to the table. Ginger was like
- 1:22:40Speaker 1: an ideas person. Mac was a logistics person. Chicken I
- 1:22:45Speaker 1: keep saying person.
- 1:22:47Speaker 2: I mean they're personified chickens. They're base, they're people. Chickens
- 1:22:51Speaker 2: are people too. I'm peta now, oh my god, streful.
- 1:22:56Speaker 1: There's like, you know, we have our right brain chicken
- 1:22:58Speaker 1: and our left brain chicken and they're colaborating. And I
- 1:23:01Speaker 1: like that they sometimes disagree with each other, but it's
- 1:23:05Speaker 1: never like and now we're fighting and like everything is over.
- 1:23:09Speaker 1: Like there's even one scene where Ginger is kind of like, well,
- 1:23:13Speaker 1: Rocky's going to teach us how to fly, so don't
- 1:23:15Speaker 1: worry about it. And MA'X like, I believe that, but
- 1:23:20Speaker 1: has he flown? Like the way that they approach conflict
- 1:23:24Speaker 1: to each other is very respectful, Yeah, and seems true
- 1:23:27Speaker 1: to their friendship. And I just really liked it. I
- 1:23:31Speaker 1: felt like that could have been an example of like
- 1:23:34Speaker 1: a needless argument between two female characters in a a
- 1:23:39Speaker 1: story that is treated in a pretty grounded way of
- 1:23:42Speaker 1: like Max sort of knows that Gingers drinking the rocky
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: kool aid too much, but isn't you know, isn't aggressive
- 1:23:49Speaker 1: about it? You know, She's like you definitely could be right.
- 1:23:51Speaker 1: I believe you, but like, but considered, they don't need
- 1:23:54Speaker 1: to know it, but like, have you considered, we've never
- 1:23:57Speaker 1: seen him fly? Like, I just I liked that. I
- 1:24:00Speaker 1: thought that was like a really positive, subtle dynamic that
- 1:24:05Speaker 1: I wish we had gotten more of a look at.
- 1:24:08Speaker 2: Yeah, but like you said, I appreciate that there wasn't
- 1:24:12Speaker 2: just like all this chicken infighting because oh women, female
- 1:24:16Speaker 2: chickens be petty, so they have to be constantly arguing.
- 1:24:20Speaker 2: Any conflict within the chickens felt justified, And that kind
- 1:24:24Speaker 2: of brings up that the complacency thing I mentioned earlier
- 1:24:27Speaker 2: of like, again, if you're looking at this chicken farm
- 1:24:30Speaker 2: as like a capitalist machine or as the patriarchy, and honestly,
- 1:24:36Speaker 2: what's the difference. You know that there's often complacency with it,
- 1:24:41Speaker 2: like among the masses, because when oppression is normalized, as
- 1:24:47Speaker 2: it often is in capitalism and the patriarchy, you don't
- 1:24:53Speaker 2: often have the tools or resources to break out of it,
- 1:24:56Speaker 2: or you know, sometimes you don't have the full awareness
- 1:24:59Speaker 2: of what's even happening because you know, maybe the oppression
- 1:25:03Speaker 2: is kind of subtle, or again, like it's just been
- 1:25:06Speaker 2: so normalized and you have yet to unlearn the toxic ideology.
- 1:25:12Speaker 1: Or it's just like a conflict a verse, like it's
- 1:25:15Speaker 1: you can't not see where the chickens are coming from there,
- 1:25:18Speaker 1: because it's like their fear is like if we quote
- 1:25:21Speaker 1: unquote overreact to this, maybe we'll just get killed, or
- 1:25:24Speaker 1: like maybe our predicament will somehow worsen exactly. Yeah, I
- 1:25:28Speaker 1: don't know. I was like I was full like galaxy
- 1:25:32Speaker 1: brain meme watching that can play some chickens because it
- 1:25:35Speaker 1: does like it almost I got into an argument with
- 1:25:37Speaker 1: someone for reasons right like a few weeks ago about
- 1:25:43Speaker 1: the two thousand dollars checks that we.
- 1:25:46Speaker 2: We here in the US were supposed to have.
- 1:25:47Speaker 1: Received, and then all of a sudden, the Biden administration
- 1:25:50Speaker 1: was like, actually you got six hundred, so now it's
- 1:25:52Speaker 1: gonna be fourteen hundred. Fourteen hundred plus six hundred equals
- 1:25:55Speaker 1: two thousand, so shut up, like you should be happy.
- 1:25:59Speaker 1: And how there was like a lot of kind of
- 1:26:01Speaker 1: infighting online about like, you know, people who are like,
- 1:26:05Speaker 1: just take the fourteen hundred dollars, like, just take it,
- 1:26:07Speaker 1: and then other people are like, but we were promised
- 1:26:10Speaker 1: a lot more, and like we feel justified in arguing
- 1:26:14Speaker 1: that we should get at very least what we were
- 1:26:17Speaker 1: promised instead of having to accept these kind of piecemeal things.
- 1:26:20Speaker 1: And I know that that's not exactly what's going on
- 1:26:24Speaker 1: in Chicken Run, but I did think of it because
- 1:26:26Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the chicken's legitimate fear is like
- 1:26:30Speaker 1: if if we rock the boat too much, we are
- 1:26:33Speaker 1: putting ourselves in danger, which is true. And they even
- 1:26:37Speaker 1: like say that explicitly towards the end, where like gingerfull
- 1:26:40Speaker 1: On like beating her chest battle cry like we're gonna
- 1:26:44Speaker 1: die oppressed, or we're gonna like we're gonna like die
- 1:26:49Speaker 1: trying in this effort, and then she's able to like
- 1:26:51Speaker 1: get the energy she needs to get the chickens to revolt. Yeah,
- 1:26:55Speaker 1: but it makes sense that it's like I always appreciate
- 1:26:57Speaker 1: because I feel like a lot of times, every every
- 1:27:00Speaker 1: day like the e your everyday chicken type character is
- 1:27:05Speaker 1: made out to be like not smart, when that's very
- 1:27:10Speaker 1: often not true, and I feel like it's not even
- 1:27:12Speaker 1: productive to tell a story that way of like anyone
- 1:27:15Speaker 1: who is like oppression is normalized is not smart, Like
- 1:27:20Speaker 1: that is kind of a ridiculous precedent to set.
- 1:27:23Speaker 2: Mm hmmm.
- 1:27:24Speaker 1: I like that as far as the chickens go, we
- 1:27:26Speaker 1: at least do understand in story why they are, you know, nervous,
- 1:27:31Speaker 1: because they've seen what happens to chickens who step out
- 1:27:34Speaker 1: of line. They get fucking beheaded.
- 1:27:35Speaker 2: Uena gets her head chopped off.
- 1:27:37Speaker 1: So I don't know. Yeah, I found that like that
- 1:27:40Speaker 1: part to be like really affecting of Yeah, of like
- 1:27:46Speaker 1: they're not just like sheeple, you know, in the way
- 1:27:50Speaker 1: that I think some like large groups of people or
- 1:27:53Speaker 1: like towns people in movies are made out to see them.
- 1:27:56Speaker 1: They're not total sheeple, like they're they're chickens with the
- 1:28:00Speaker 1: legitimate concerns, right, and just because they are like it,
- 1:28:05Speaker 1: I agree that they should rise up and that the
- 1:28:08Speaker 1: time has come, and I'm glad that Ginger was able
- 1:28:10Speaker 1: to motivate them, but you also see where they're coming from.
- 1:28:12Speaker 1: At the beginning, I'm just like, oh, these are just
- 1:28:14Speaker 1: people who are like, let's take the fourteen hundred dollars check.
- 1:28:17Speaker 1: Why are you so mad? And it's like, right, I
- 1:28:19Speaker 1: don't know. I was like, okay, fourteen hundred dollars check, chickens,
- 1:28:22Speaker 1: got it, wrote that down. Fuck.
- 1:28:27Speaker 2: But and then also just like it reinforces Ginger is
- 1:28:32Speaker 2: this like is this feminist icon? Like she's the one
- 1:28:36Speaker 2: who's like, you know what, yes, the steaks are high,
- 1:28:39Speaker 2: Yes we might die, but we are going to die regardless, exactly.
- 1:28:44Speaker 1: Like it was just so bleak.
- 1:28:46Speaker 2: Right right, But yeah, I think her the quote was
- 1:28:49Speaker 2: like we're gonna die free chickens, or we're going to
- 1:28:53Speaker 2: die trying. And then Babs is like those are only options.
- 1:28:56Speaker 1: Hilarious.
- 1:28:57Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, she's like, you know what, I've had
- 1:28:59Speaker 2: enough of this, fed up and we're gonna revolt.
- 1:29:03Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it's like and by that point it's
- 1:29:05Speaker 1: like they are so they're like literally, if they don't
- 1:29:09Speaker 1: do anything, they're only extending their lives by a short
- 1:29:13Speaker 1: amount of time. And so it's like, okay, the time
- 1:29:16Speaker 1: has come, like uprising, we're building a plane and then
- 1:29:20Speaker 1: the one man here is gonna magically know how to
- 1:29:22Speaker 1: fly the plane. Don't love that, but the I don't know.
- 1:29:26Speaker 1: I just the way that the uprising was like orchestrated.
- 1:29:28Speaker 1: You're just like, shit, I got all I got all
- 1:29:31Speaker 1: worked up. I was like, damn, she's right, She's right. Yeah,
- 1:29:37Speaker 1: Ginger is amazing. Ginger is so amazing. I hate that
- 1:29:40Speaker 1: she has to date Rocky, some guy from Rhode Island
- 1:29:43Speaker 1: at the end. It's so not okay, you have nothing
- 1:29:47Speaker 1: going for him. I liked how we kind of alluded
- 1:29:51Speaker 1: to this earlier. But I like how Babs is seen
- 1:29:54Speaker 1: doing like she's knitting. She's like a nervous knitter, and
- 1:29:57Speaker 1: she's doing kind of like traditionally domestic and I feel
- 1:30:00Speaker 1: like that's another thing that sometimes we see in movies
- 1:30:03Speaker 1: that are like trying to present themselves as feminists, where
- 1:30:06Speaker 1: they're like fuck domestic work, when that's actually really reductive
- 1:30:11Speaker 1: to people who perform domestic work of any gender. Like
- 1:30:15Speaker 1: I like that it's not just a joke of like
- 1:30:18Speaker 1: the work, the traditionally feminine work she's doing ends up
- 1:30:22Speaker 1: like being a big part of the reason that they're
- 1:30:24Speaker 1: able to fly.
- 1:30:25Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. Love it.
- 1:30:27Speaker 1: I love that this, like this coop, this revolution is
- 1:30:30Speaker 1: inclusive of all sorts of women and all sort of
- 1:30:35Speaker 1: like any everyone is welcome to the revolution, including Rocky,
- 1:30:39Speaker 1: which is like, well, let's where are we going to draw.
- 1:30:41Speaker 2: The line, but like draw the one somewhere.
- 1:30:43Speaker 1: But I do like I like that the we haven't
- 1:30:45Speaker 1: really talked about the rats because who really cares, but
- 1:30:48Speaker 1: like the rats sort of redeem themselves to some extent.
- 1:30:52Speaker 1: They sacrifice something that's important to them in order to
- 1:30:56Speaker 1: join the revolution, and there is some sort of like
- 1:31:00Speaker 1: like hesitate to say there's like restorative justice applied to
- 1:31:03Speaker 1: the Timothy's Ball rat, but it's like kind of true,
- 1:31:06Speaker 1: like they they are welcome to the revolution if they
- 1:31:09Speaker 1: are willing to contribute in a meaningful way and not
- 1:31:12Speaker 1: be assholes, and like that is kind of it seems
- 1:31:15Speaker 1: like that's kind of the line of like who's welcome
- 1:31:18Speaker 1: and who isn't is like, will you act in favor
- 1:31:21Speaker 1: of the collective if you will get on the plane, baby,
- 1:31:25Speaker 1: jump on a bike. I love it. Yeah, let's build
- 1:31:29Speaker 1: a plane and get out of here.
- 1:31:33Speaker 2: Seriously, Here's something else I like, which is that Bunty
- 1:31:38Speaker 2: is voiced by Emelda Staunton aka Aunt Lucy from Paddington.
- 1:31:45Speaker 1: Aka She's gonna play the Queen. And the last season
- 1:31:48Speaker 1: of The Crown.
- 1:31:50Speaker 2: Oh cool, cool cool? Yeah, you have watched The Crown yet.
- 1:31:52Speaker 1: But it's boring. It's boring, but I've seen every episode,
- 1:31:56Speaker 1: which is a lot of things.
- 1:32:00Speaker 2: Also, how is Fouler not voiced by John Hurt?
- 1:32:04Speaker 1: Yeah?
- 1:32:05Speaker 2: I was like, oh, that's for sure John Hurt. And
- 1:32:07Speaker 2: then I looked it up and it's like it's not
- 1:32:08Speaker 2: John Hurt and you're like, what.
- 1:32:10Speaker 1: It's whoever you call? When John Hurt is an.
- 1:32:12Speaker 2: Available Benjamin with throw I guess that's very British sounding.
- 1:32:18Speaker 2: Yeah right, And then speaking of voice acting, okay, so
- 1:32:22Speaker 2: oh yeah I saw this or not. But the sequel
- 1:32:25Speaker 2: of Chicken Run is in development. I think it's slated
- 1:32:28Speaker 2: to come out in a couple of years this year.
- 1:32:31Speaker 1: Actually, it comes out in twenty twenty one.
- 1:32:32Speaker 2: Oh, no kidding. Oh my goodness. I looked it up
- 1:32:35Speaker 2: on IMDb and it said that it was tentatively to
- 1:32:38Speaker 2: be released twenty twenty three, but also, IDK maybe maybe
- 1:32:44Speaker 2: the pandemic has pushed Maybe it was originally twenty twenty one,
- 1:32:48Speaker 2: but the pandemic pushed it back.
- 1:32:50Speaker 1: Aandemic has pushed back. All I don't they're fun industry
- 1:32:54Speaker 1: insider info because I work in stop motion animation. Stop
- 1:32:58Speaker 1: motion animation that makes sense, yes, not which the animation
- 1:33:01Speaker 1: is kind of impossible to do without people in the
- 1:33:04Speaker 1: same room, so yeah, makes sense.
- 1:33:07Speaker 2: But anyway, so the A sequel is in development, and
- 1:33:11Speaker 2: the voice actor who plays Ginger, Julia Sawala.
- 1:33:16Speaker 1: I have never tried to say her name out loud.
- 1:33:18Speaker 2: Yes, so apologies if I got that wrong, But she
- 1:33:22Speaker 2: revealed in July twenty twenty that Ardman, the animation studio
- 1:33:28Speaker 2: behind Chicken Run, intended to recast her, saying that her
- 1:33:33Speaker 2: voice now sounds quote too old, and Julia said, in
- 1:33:39Speaker 2: response to that, I have officially been plucked, stuffed, and roasted,
- 1:33:44Speaker 2: which is the quote from the movie that I butchered earlier,
- 1:33:47Speaker 2: butchered loved that.
- 1:33:49Speaker 1: She was like, listen, you think I don't deserve to
- 1:33:53Speaker 1: be in Chicken Run. Here, I am quoting Chicken Run.
- 1:33:56Speaker 1: This is such a bullshit thing. Yeah, that there, And
- 1:33:59Speaker 1: it seemed to be done because it sucks because it's
- 1:34:03Speaker 1: like Mel Gibson is rightfully not coming back for the
- 1:34:06Speaker 1: next Chicken Run movie, and so they kind of use
- 1:34:08Speaker 1: this as a blanket excuse to get rid of Julia
- 1:34:13Speaker 1: Sowalha as well, when it's like, but she didn't do
- 1:34:16Speaker 1: anything like she this is her. This is an iconic
- 1:34:20Speaker 1: I always like it's it's so frustrating. How like if
- 1:34:25Speaker 1: there's any area of acting where agism should particularly not
- 1:34:31Speaker 1: come into the mix, it's fucking cartoon voice acting seriously,
- 1:34:35Speaker 1: like that is a level of agism that is just
- 1:34:38Speaker 1: like almost inconceivable because you're just it's there was like
- 1:34:43Speaker 1: a similar discussion going on for it. This was like
- 1:34:46Speaker 1: five or six years ago, but when the new Powerpuff
- 1:34:48Speaker 1: Girls cartoon was coming out, they were like, we're getting
- 1:34:51Speaker 1: the old Powerpuff Girls are not coming back because they're
- 1:34:55Speaker 1: forty now, and it's like, well they were twenty five
- 1:34:58Speaker 1: when they were the Powerpuff Girl, Like what are you
- 1:35:01Speaker 1: talking about? It's so it is so like bizarre and
- 1:35:05Speaker 1: frustrating that there's ageism in any area of entertainment, right,
- 1:35:09Speaker 1: but like in particular voice acting, it's like on what grounds.
- 1:35:13Speaker 2: Yes, not that any of it makes sense, but like
- 1:35:17Speaker 2: that makes the least amount of sense.
- 1:35:19Speaker 1: We're in such a level of fantasy where it's like
- 1:35:22Speaker 1: she is voicing a claymation, Chicken. How are you too
- 1:35:27Speaker 1: old to voice a clamation? Chicken? Yeah? That was That
- 1:35:31Speaker 1: story is so fucking fry, especially because it's like we
- 1:35:35Speaker 1: should just now. It's like we can't purely be thrilled
- 1:35:39Speaker 1: for a new Chicken Run because it's like what at
- 1:35:41Speaker 1: first when I remember when that came out, when it
- 1:35:43Speaker 1: was like, oh, Chicken Run, but this time no Mel Gibson,
- 1:35:45Speaker 1: sign me up? But yeah, but you can't. I really
- 1:35:51Speaker 1: I'm curious if there's ever gonna be especially if it's
- 1:35:53Speaker 1: being pushed back to twenty twenty three. I wonder if
- 1:35:57Speaker 1: that prompted any discussion in the right direction, because it's
- 1:36:02Speaker 1: like there's no reason to recast Ginger, absolutely none, especially
- 1:36:06Speaker 1: like a movie going to Netflix where you don't need
- 1:36:09Speaker 1: to promote it like on what grounds. Yeah, Ginger is
- 1:36:13Speaker 1: an icon, And I'm also very glad that Julias Sawall
- 1:36:16Speaker 1: has spoke up yea for herself because.
- 1:36:19Speaker 2: There was backlash. I mean, I'm reading I read this
- 1:36:22Speaker 2: on Wikipedia, our favorite scholarly journal, of course, and it
- 1:36:26Speaker 2: didn't go into a whole lot of depth about like
- 1:36:29Speaker 2: the backlash that the recasting received, the people saying that,
- 1:36:34Speaker 2: you know this is extremely ageis why is this happening? Yeah,
- 1:36:37Speaker 2: so I don't know a lot of details about it,
- 1:36:39Speaker 2: but there was I mean, maybe the studio will listen
- 1:36:44Speaker 2: and be like, sorry, we goofed, Julia come back.
- 1:36:48Speaker 1: I really hope so, because it's like I don't know,
- 1:36:51Speaker 1: I know that it's like foolish. Just I just I
- 1:36:54Speaker 1: have such a strong love for Ardman animation, like all like,
- 1:37:01Speaker 1: don't recast Ginger, you fight?
- 1:37:04Speaker 2: Like yikes.
- 1:37:06Speaker 1: Yeah, I was disappointed to hear that. I was interested.
- 1:37:10Speaker 1: Did you know, Caitlin that Chicken Run is the highest
- 1:37:14Speaker 1: grossing stop motion movie ever by like a lot.
- 1:37:18Speaker 2: I did also read that on Wikipedia.
- 1:37:22Speaker 1: I forgot how like Chicken Run was like a moment
- 1:37:26Speaker 1: Chicken Run was fully I was curious, but like this
- 1:37:29Speaker 1: this movie came out the year before there was an
- 1:37:32Speaker 1: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, Yes, which was such
- 1:37:35Speaker 1: a Bummer. I was just like, Wow, Chicken Run. I
- 1:37:37Speaker 1: feel like would have had it on lock.
- 1:37:40Speaker 2: So yeah, I was reading that it got snubbed for
- 1:37:43Speaker 2: like because it was like it could have been a
- 1:37:45Speaker 2: contender for Best Picture.
- 1:37:48Speaker 1: But that just doesn't happen in animation. Yeah.
- 1:37:51Speaker 2: Right, So basically everyone's like, g whiz, kind of sucks
- 1:37:55Speaker 2: that Chicken Run didn't win anything. Let's make a Best
- 1:37:58Speaker 2: Animated Feature categor the following year, which was won by Shrek.
- 1:38:05Speaker 1: Never forgot there's, I mean, of all the iconic things
- 1:38:08Speaker 1: about Shrek, the fact that it won the first Animation
- 1:38:11Speaker 1: Academy Award is like wow, just wow. Chicken Run walked
- 1:38:16Speaker 1: so Shrek could run, and that is a beautiful thing.
- 1:38:20Speaker 2: That is a beautiful thing.
- 1:38:21Speaker 1: I wish the Chicken Run had more trophies, but the
- 1:38:23Speaker 1: fact that Chicken Run was so rawly powerful that people
- 1:38:28Speaker 1: were like, we need a new oscar so we can
- 1:38:30Speaker 1: give it to to Shrek.
- 1:38:35Speaker 2: That's so bleak.
- 1:38:36Speaker 1: Oh my god. Shrek is funny though, So you know,
- 1:38:39Speaker 1: what can you do?
- 1:38:41Speaker 2: While we're covering Shrek two this year? Sometime on the matrix,
- 1:38:45Speaker 2: we spoke it. We spoke it in reality, we manifested it.
- 1:38:50Speaker 2: Chicken Run is really.
- 1:38:51Speaker 1: Like so iconically good and I want to marry Chicken Run.
- 1:38:57Speaker 2: I love Chicken Frun.
- 1:39:01Speaker 1: It's amazing. I saw I was a PlayStation game, and
- 1:39:04Speaker 1: I was like, what, whoa? I know? I want to
- 1:39:07Speaker 1: play the PlayStation Chicken Run game.
- 1:39:09Speaker 2: Damn too.
- 1:39:11Speaker 1: Yeah, did you have anything else? Anything? That's about everything?
- 1:39:13Speaker 2: I know? That covered? I'm pretty sure Yeah, that was
- 1:39:17Speaker 2: everything I had. So this movie does pass the Bechdel test.
- 1:39:22Speaker 1: Not between many many chickens, so many chickens. Chickens talking
- 1:39:28Speaker 1: about seizing the means of production passes the Bechtyl test.
- 1:39:32Speaker 2: Period when chickens talk to each other about the laws
- 1:39:37Speaker 2: of physics such as thrust passes the test.
- 1:39:41Speaker 1: I wonder if that's like it sounds like that's the
- 1:39:43Speaker 1: sort of thing that I'm like, it sounds like science.
- 1:39:46Speaker 1: I wonder if we have any any any listeners in stem?
- 1:39:50Speaker 1: Was the Chicken science accurate? Because I just want genuinely curious.
- 1:39:56Speaker 1: It sounded real to me, But everyone saying science and
- 1:39:59Speaker 1: movies sound real to me. Let us know, Yeah, how
- 1:40:03Speaker 1: many nipples were given this thing? Hmmm?
- 1:40:06Speaker 2: I would give it? I can. I want to give
- 1:40:12Speaker 2: it like three or three and a half. It definitely
- 1:40:17Speaker 2: gets points taken off for you know, those like early
- 1:40:21Speaker 2: two thousand era, like hetero romance getting wedged into the
- 1:40:25Speaker 2: story for absolutely no reason, several male redemption arcs that
- 1:40:30Speaker 2: are completely unearned and undeserved, female character having to be
- 1:40:35Speaker 2: saved by a male character, that kind of stuff. Yeah,
- 1:40:39Speaker 2: but it's like this society of chickens who like form
- 1:40:44Speaker 2: their own matriarchy even though they are living within this
- 1:40:48Speaker 2: like these oppressive confines of this like capitalistic patriarchal structure.
- 1:40:55Speaker 2: They're like, not for me, not on, not today, We're
- 1:40:59Speaker 2: gonna kape out of this, and they do, and they
- 1:41:05Speaker 2: are extremely motivated, they're extremely active. They're iconic, absolutely iconic.
- 1:41:11Speaker 2: I think I'm going to give it three and a
- 1:41:13Speaker 2: half nipples, and I'm going to give one to Ginger,
- 1:41:20Speaker 2: I will give one to Mac the chicken, and Stem,
- 1:41:26Speaker 2: I will give one two Babs, who's knitting saves the day.
- 1:41:34Speaker 2: And I will give my half nipple to Edwina, who
- 1:41:37Speaker 2: does unfortunately get murdered maybe before we even meet her,
- 1:41:43Speaker 2: but I.
- 1:41:43Speaker 1: Feel like she kind of ends up being like I
- 1:41:45Speaker 1: feel like I wish that Edwina's name was invoked more
- 1:41:48Speaker 1: of like she's kind of a martyr for this cause
- 1:41:51Speaker 1: like her, like that is the last straw. They're like, Okay,
- 1:41:55Speaker 1: they're taking Edwena, Like there should be a statue of
- 1:41:58Speaker 1: Edwena on Chicken Island, and I hope there is because
- 1:42:02Speaker 1: she like she literally that she's kind of the inciting
- 1:42:05Speaker 1: incident in a lot of ways of just like we had,
- 1:42:08Speaker 1: like the steaks have never been higher. It's we're not
- 1:42:11Speaker 1: bucking around anymore. They took it Weena from us, and yeah,
- 1:42:14Speaker 1: now I'm like, damn it Weena should be like literally
- 1:42:17Speaker 1: like a cultural chicken icon.
- 1:42:20Speaker 2: Truly. Yeah, she's like the Joan of Arc of the
- 1:42:24Speaker 2: Chickens exactly exactly.
- 1:42:28Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna maybe overdo it a little. I'm
- 1:42:30Speaker 1: gonna get this four nipples because it is literally a feminist,
- 1:42:35Speaker 1: socialist movie that is g rated for children and it's
- 1:42:37Speaker 1: about chickens, and so uh there, I totally agree. I mean,
- 1:42:42Speaker 1: we've we've hashed out kind of the shortcomings. Most of
- 1:42:45Speaker 1: my issues with this movie are in the third act.
- 1:42:47Speaker 1: Feels like a lot of studio notes of like we
- 1:42:49Speaker 1: gotta have these chickens with teeth kissing, which nia don't,
- 1:42:53Speaker 1: and like we have to have all these last second
- 1:42:55Speaker 1: male redemption arcs, even though they're not set up in
- 1:42:57Speaker 1: any way, and it's actually set up for a way
- 1:42:59Speaker 1: more interesting ending. But all that said, it's literally like
- 1:43:05Speaker 1: it's a story of a matriarchal chicken society seizing the
- 1:43:11Speaker 1: means of production, demanding bodily autonomy, defeating capitalism, and moving
- 1:43:17Speaker 1: to Chicken Island. That is amazing. That is so amazing.
- 1:43:23Speaker 1: I wish that there were more women involved in the
- 1:43:25Speaker 1: production of this movie. I will say, like Ardman is
- 1:43:28Speaker 1: a company that I fully love that is a bunch
- 1:43:32Speaker 1: of old white British guys, and I hope that that
- 1:43:36Speaker 1: is no longer the case. I own. I haven't been
- 1:43:39Speaker 1: keeping up with their roster of people. It seems to
- 1:43:42Speaker 1: usually be the same couple of guys, much like Pixar.
- 1:43:46Speaker 1: But all that said, I mean it's this, It's like powerful,
- 1:43:51Speaker 1: and it got me all worked up. Even now when
- 1:43:54Speaker 1: I watch Chicken Run, I want to join a revolution,
- 1:43:58Speaker 1: and I think that's a great thing for children and
- 1:44:00Speaker 1: to rise up against their oppressors and build a plane.
- 1:44:05Speaker 1: So I'm going to give Chicken Run four nipples and
- 1:44:08Speaker 1: to give one to Ginger. I'm and to give one
- 1:44:11Speaker 1: to Mac and give one to Edwina, and I'll give
- 1:44:14Speaker 1: one to Babs because she makes the textiles that make
- 1:44:17Speaker 1: the plane fly. Baby. Yeah, yeah, shout out. Chicken Run
- 1:44:22Speaker 1: really a cultural moment.
- 1:44:24Speaker 2: This movie also, in addition to you know, inspiring me
- 1:44:28Speaker 2: to revolt more, yeah, I also am like, yep, I
- 1:44:33Speaker 2: think I might have to fully commit to veganism. Now
- 1:44:37Speaker 2: there you go.
- 1:44:38Speaker 1: You don't that's beautiful.
- 1:44:39Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I'm on My current food intake
- 1:44:44Speaker 2: is I get one meat cheat a day. Sorry for
- 1:44:47Speaker 2: a day. I get one meat cheat a month where
- 1:44:52Speaker 2: I can eat meat once a month, and then the
- 1:44:54Speaker 2: rest of my meals are vegetarian or vegan. But now
- 1:44:59Speaker 2: I'm just like, damn, Chicken Run might push me over
- 1:45:02Speaker 2: the edge and I might have to just commit. We'll see.
- 1:45:06Speaker 2: I'll keep everyone posted.
- 1:45:08Speaker 1: Ginger is an absolutely, I mean an inspiration. She really is.
- 1:45:12Speaker 1: She's a feminist. I think she's entering my pantheon of
- 1:45:15Speaker 1: all time feminist icons because she's not a feminist that
- 1:45:19Speaker 1: just works to liberate herself, which I feel like if.
- 1:45:21Speaker 2: She's uplifting other chicken women.
- 1:45:23Speaker 1: That which is, which is like one of the most
- 1:45:26Speaker 1: core important things is like, you're not just working to
- 1:45:30Speaker 1: liberate yourself, because then you're just a girl boss. You're
- 1:45:33Speaker 1: working to liberate the collective of the oppressed. Now we're
- 1:45:38Speaker 1: fucking talking and that's what Chicken Run is saying. And
- 1:45:42Speaker 1: I love I love Chicken Run. Yeah, it's it's almost
- 1:45:47Speaker 1: a perfect movie. Let me rewrite the last, you know, half.
- 1:45:50Speaker 2: Hour seriously, like end of AC two onward. There's just
- 1:45:54Speaker 2: some changes that could be made and then it would
- 1:45:56Speaker 2: be perfect and.
- 1:45:57Speaker 1: They wouldn't even need to be big changes. You can
- 1:45:59Speaker 1: still on like a plane of flight and Chicken Island
- 1:46:01Speaker 1: just sea the things. Oh, anyways, an amazing piece of cinema.
- 1:46:08Speaker 2: Wow, Well there you have it, folks. That was our
- 1:46:13Speaker 2: unlocked Chicken Run episode unlocked from the Matreon, which, again,
- 1:46:18Speaker 2: if you like this episode and you're not yet a
- 1:46:20Speaker 2: Matreon subscriber, you should do that immediately by going to
- 1:46:25Speaker 2: patreon dot com slash spectal Cast and subscribing for a
- 1:46:29Speaker 2: mere five dollars a month and that gets you two
- 1:46:33Speaker 2: bonus episodes every single month that are always on a brilliant, genius,
- 1:46:37Speaker 2: incredible theme.
- 1:46:39Speaker 1: Yeah, we've never missed. I actually and I sometimes speak
- 1:46:42Speaker 1: sarcastically randomly, But I actually do think of the Matren
- 1:46:46Speaker 1: we have rarely, if ever missed in one hundred and
- 1:46:49Speaker 1: fifty one hundred percent hit rate.
- 1:46:52Speaker 2: Only hits, Yeah, only the hits for our Matrons.
- 1:46:55Speaker 1: There's only one time on the in the history of
- 1:46:58Speaker 1: the Matreon where we accidentally did not cover a movie
- 1:47:01Speaker 1: at all, and it is one of our best episodes
- 1:47:03Speaker 1: we've ever recorded, So we've.
- 1:47:05Speaker 2: Never Yes, are you referring to the episode where we
- 1:47:09Speaker 2: tried to talk about the shape of water and instead
- 1:47:12Speaker 2: got carried away talking about the three eleven cruise.
- 1:47:16Speaker 1: Yes, and all of the hilarious ways that it would
- 1:47:18Speaker 1: be funny for it to sink like the Titanic, Like
- 1:47:22Speaker 1: I just the band is already on the boat. The
- 1:47:26Speaker 1: point is, and that could happen again at any time. Yeah,
- 1:47:31Speaker 1: So join us at the matreod. It's fun, it's it's
- 1:47:35Speaker 1: it's still the discussion you love, but more of a
- 1:47:39Speaker 1: more vibes. There's vibes over on the matred.
- 1:47:43Speaker 2: Tons of vibes.
- 1:47:44Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you want to have even more vibes
- 1:47:48Speaker 1: still again, if you are in the Los Angeles area,
- 1:47:50Speaker 1: please come and join us on Sunday, August twenty fifth
- 1:47:53Speaker 1: at four pm at the Lowsphilas three. Thank you to
- 1:47:57Speaker 1: American Cinematech for inviting us to participate in Friends of
- 1:48:01Speaker 1: the Fest even though we aggressive we both did not
- 1:48:04Speaker 1: show up at our screening last year.
- 1:48:06Speaker 2: We had good reasons.
- 1:48:07Speaker 1: We had good reasons. My dad was in chemo and
- 1:48:09Speaker 1: you had COVID and this year neither of those. They're
- 1:48:12Speaker 1: non issues. They're no issues. And so please join us
- 1:48:16Speaker 1: for Chicken Run. It's been eighty four minutes.
- 1:48:19Speaker 2: It's been eighty four minutes, that's right, And you can
- 1:48:22Speaker 2: grab tickets. We'll have the link in the description of
- 1:48:26Speaker 2: this episode. You can also go to link tree slash
- 1:48:29Speaker 2: Bechdel Cast and get those little.
- 1:48:32Speaker 1: Tickets, those little tikies, those.
- 1:48:34Speaker 2: Little chickens, those for Chicken Run. Is that anything?
- 1:48:40Speaker 1: No notes? Episodes over, Bye bye.
- 1:48:48Speaker 2: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
- 1:48:51Speaker 2: Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
- 1:48:55Speaker 2: by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
- 1:48:59Speaker 2: Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo and merch
- 1:49:03Speaker 2: is designed by Jamie Loftus and a special thanks to
- 1:49:06Speaker 2: Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit
- 1:49:11Speaker 2: Linktree slash Bechtelcast