Latest / The Bechdel Cast / The Women (1939) with Ramzi Fawaz

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The Women (1939) with Ramzi Fawaz · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdecast, the questions asked if movies have.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn bast
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: start changing.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: With the Bechdel cast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: Oh hello, hey, did you want to hear some gossip
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: about Jamie Loftis that stupid bitch?
• 0:23
  Speaker 4: What to wait?
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: That's not a word that we use here, certainly not
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: outside of Kennel's. Oh yeah, Also, this is Jamie on
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the phone.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: What the hell you're Jamie loftis?
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Oh noah no, and I'm I'm fucking your husband?
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: Oh sorry, wow, sorry.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Look a girl. A girl has to survive. I'm just
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. They hate think you found me in
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: a perfume counter. There's nothing I could do. Job, It's fine.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bexdel Cast. Really feminist exchange we just had.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Oh we can do a mid Atlantic accents today. My
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: name is Jamie Loftis.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: My name is Caitlin Doronte.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, come on, get on.
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: Well.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: I find the way they speak in this whole era
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: very grading. I'm so sorry everyone.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I look, I think you may be alone on the
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: zoom call but we will, we will fortune.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: I'm going I'm going to be the villain of this episode.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I think you're going to be the joan of the episode.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so true. Yeah, oh my gosh, Yeah, I'm the Crystal.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: What's her name?
• 1:23
  Speaker 5: Crystal Adams mess, Crystal Alan, Crystal Allan, great character name,
• 1:32
  Speaker 5: great character name, all around.
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: I can't wait.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're talking about the women in nineteen thirty nine today.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Very thrilling. But before we get there, before we get
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: to words that aren't frequently spoken outside of Kennel's, let's
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: talk about what the hell this show is because it's
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: actually very very relevant to the themes of our show today, Kitlyn,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: where are we?
• 1:54
  Speaker 6: What's happening?
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: Well?
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: This is the Bechdel Cast, a podcast where we examine
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: simply as a jumping off point, that, of course, being
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: a media metric created by dear friend of the show,
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Alison Bechdel alumni. Indeed, there are many versions of this test.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: The one that we use is do two people of
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other?
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: And is there conversation about something other than a man,
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: and then we particularly like it when it's a narratively
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: meaningful conversation and not just like throwaway dialogue that you
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: could cut out and the story would be no different.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: And just to get ahead of our conversation about this,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: because this movie, the movie we're covering today, nineteen thirty
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: nine's The Women, adapted from a nineteen thirty six play,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: is a movie that's come up on the show. Oh,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I think almost is the first yes, because there are
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of popular, I think popular narratives around this
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: movie that are not necessarily true when you watch the movie.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: I think that this was almost like a memafied piece
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: of like twenty tens information that would make the rounds
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: every so often is that The Women is a movie
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: that came out in the nineteen thirties that features only
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: women on screen, but doesn't pass the Bachtel test after
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is a beloved movie for me. We'll
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: talk about our respective histories, but I think that that really,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: if this is a memafied piece of information you've absorbed
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: by osmosis I certainly had. I think you will find
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: yourself pleasantly surprised by how what what a dense, rich
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: text this is at least for two thirds of the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: movie and then the end of But I wanted to
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: address that at the top of the episode because I
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: think we have referenced this movie in a number of ways,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: and I'm sure the further back you go, the you know,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: less sophisticated the conversation becomes and now we're perfect geniuses.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: So we have to correct the record, of course.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: But I just I'm so excited to talk about I
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: can feel myself talking faster for having watched this movie
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: twice in the last two days. It's going to be
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: fabulous darting. So yes, that is the Bechdel test, and
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: we have an incredible guest today, so let's hop to it.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: Let's do it. He is a professor of English at
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: the University of Wisconsin Madison, host of the podcast Nerd
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: from the Future, and author of the books The New
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: Mutants and Queer Forms. It's Ramsey Fawas. Hello, welcome, Hey, thanks.
• 4:33
  Speaker 6: For having me.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, really brave. I was like, wow, I
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: can already fill our guests being like he him on
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the episode about the women.
• 4:41
  Speaker 6: Listen lock In, lock In, we bound through it. I'm
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: lost in.
• 4:47
  Speaker 7: I have listened I've always felt the affinity with women
• 4:51
  Speaker 7: from the beginning of time. I say at the end
• 4:53
  Speaker 7: of my book Queer Forms, I say, this book is
• 4:54
  Speaker 7: a love letter to feminism and the women in my life.
• 4:57
  Speaker 7: So I have never felt any problem with the idea
• 5:00
  Speaker 7: of cross identification, like let's go.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a Q core movie, like this is
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: this is a girl's in Cays kind of.
• 5:06
  Speaker 6: Movie, and yes, yes, it's really.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: We're so excited to have you. First of all, thank
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: you for coming.
• 5:12
  Speaker 6: Thank you me too. I can't believe I haven't been
• 5:13
  Speaker 6: here before.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: We're being huge the dogs they put in kennels by
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: not having Yeah, but we love your work.
• 5:26
  Speaker 6: And I thank you. That's so humbly well.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Truly, And I'm very curious because I've had a Celsius
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: today and I'm vibrating. I'm so curious what your history
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: with this movie is.
• 5:39
  Speaker 7: So, you know, when I was asked to create a
• 5:41
  Speaker 7: list of movies to potentially talk with you both about,
• 5:45
  Speaker 7: this was one of the ones that popped out from
• 5:48
  Speaker 7: from you guys sent me a list of possibilities that
• 5:50
  Speaker 7: I was like, Oh, the women they haven't talked about
• 5:52
  Speaker 7: the women.
• 5:52
  Speaker 6: Amazing. I encountered the women in the single most formative.
• 5:57
  Speaker 7: Undergraduate course I ever took at UC Berkeley. I took
• 6:00
  Speaker 7: a class on the year nineteen thirty nine.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so jealous.
• 6:05
  Speaker 6: That's cool.
• 6:06
  Speaker 7: My mentor, my great mentor, Kathleen Moran, who's on my
• 6:10
  Speaker 7: own podcast.
• 6:10
  Speaker 6: She's on one of the last episodes of the first season.
• 6:13
  Speaker 6: She's incredible. She had invented this.
• 6:15
  Speaker 7: Class with a brilliant political theorist who was her best
• 6:18
  Speaker 7: friend named Michael Rogan, who had just died a year
• 6:22
  Speaker 7: before I came to Berkeley. So it was the first
• 6:24
  Speaker 7: time she was teaching it on her own, and people,
• 6:26
  Speaker 7: if people don't know, the audience doesn't know. Nineteen thirty
• 6:29
  Speaker 7: nine is this unbelievably momentous year in American politics, history, culture.
• 6:34
  Speaker 7: It's the moment of sort of the waning of the
• 6:36
  Speaker 7: Great Depression as we entered World War Two. It's the
• 6:39
  Speaker 7: moment that we start to commit ourselves to the arms
• 6:43
  Speaker 7: race leading up to World War Two. It's also the
• 6:45
  Speaker 7: golden age of Hollywood, So it's like that year alone
• 6:49
  Speaker 7: produces the Wizard of Oz MGM, the Grapes of Wrath Gone.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: With the win, mister Smith goes to.
• 6:57
  Speaker 7: Yes, misters Smith, we watched that amazing. I mean, these
• 7:00
  Speaker 7: are that one year. Four of the films are considered
• 7:03
  Speaker 7: by the British Film Institute to be four of the
• 7:05
  Speaker 7: most important movies ever made. So I found that class
• 7:09
  Speaker 7: just extraordinary that you could study, like all the different
• 7:13
  Speaker 7: dimensions of American culture through the prism of this one year.
• 7:17
  Speaker 7: Of course, we study things that were also fell outside
• 7:19
  Speaker 7: of that year. We study things that are sort of
• 7:21
  Speaker 7: mid thirties, early forties. But it was an amazing and
• 7:24
  Speaker 7: transformative thing, and I want your listenership to.
• 7:28
  Speaker 6: Know how I watched it.
• 7:29
  Speaker 7: We read the work of Elizabeth Hawes, who was a socialist,
• 7:35
  Speaker 7: feminist fashion designer.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Each word better than the last, isn't this that's like fascinating.
• 7:41
  Speaker 7: She wrote this incredible book that nobody reads now, but
• 7:43
  Speaker 7: everybody should get their hands on it called Fashion Is Spinach,
• 7:47
  Speaker 7: and it was basically her saying that for her early
• 7:50
  Speaker 7: part of her career she worked for all these couturiers
• 7:53
  Speaker 7: in France, and she said, basically, what would happen is
• 7:56
  Speaker 7: that there are these companies where they would send people
• 7:59
  Speaker 7: like me to go look at the designer clothes on
• 8:02
  Speaker 7: the runway for Dior and to copy them for middle
• 8:06
  Speaker 7: class women who couldn't afford the originals. And she said,
• 8:10
  Speaker 7: at some point I was like, why am I wasting
• 8:12
  Speaker 7: my life doing this?
• 8:13
  Speaker 6: I should bring couture level clothes to working class people.
• 8:17
  Speaker 7: And so she comes back to the United States and
• 8:19
  Speaker 7: she starts making ready to wear clothes but that are
• 8:24
  Speaker 7: made with a coturier's eye for men who work in factories.
• 8:28
  Speaker 7: And so it forced us as the students to think
• 8:32
  Speaker 7: about The Women as a movie that is partly about
• 8:35
  Speaker 7: fashion and about how women use fashion to exert.
• 8:40
  Speaker 6: Some kind of social control in the world.
• 8:43
  Speaker 7: We'll talk today about how like there's suddenly a full
• 8:46
  Speaker 7: color sequence that's a fashion show in the middle of
• 8:49
  Speaker 7: the movie.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: God and another minute queer icon moment for it because
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: it's all Adrian clothes too, which is like, yeah, I
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: had every time I watch this movie, because I watched
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: it about six months ago just for because it was
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: on Canopy. Yeah, the first outfit we see Roslin russelln
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: with the eyeballs, and like I would, I would cut
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: my own head off to own that. I know.
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: Good honey, this is modernism and this is daw Da.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: The disembodied hand during the Bashi Job.
• 9:16
  Speaker 7: Yeah, this is like the Lesbians of the Left Bank. Honey,
• 9:20
  Speaker 7: we go like it's it's wide what we see on screen.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Truly, mm hmmm, truly.
• 9:26
  Speaker 6: So that's kind of my history with it.
• 9:27
  Speaker 7: And then I remember seeing the two thousand and eight
• 9:29
  Speaker 7: version and sort of being like, oh, I feel like
• 9:31
  Speaker 7: they missed the point of what this movie is about,
• 9:33
  Speaker 7: even though it's entertaining and I like all the people
• 9:35
  Speaker 7: in it, and it stuck with me. The last thing,
• 9:38
  Speaker 7: I'll say, it stuck with me deeply because there is
• 9:40
  Speaker 7: a book that I adore that I wish more people read.
• 9:43
  Speaker 7: There's a book by this feminist cultural studies scholar named
• 9:46
  Speaker 7: Janie Scandura. She wrote this amazing book called Down in
• 9:49
  Speaker 7: the Dumps about depressive modernity and needs. The book that
• 9:53
  Speaker 7: is all about the idea that American modernism, which is
• 9:56
  Speaker 7: all about the future and progress and advancement and civilization,
• 10:00
  Speaker 7: requires the production of a culture of waste, of throwing
• 10:04
  Speaker 7: away of the fact that like in the Great Depression,
• 10:07
  Speaker 7: millions of appliances that people could no longer afford had
• 10:10
  Speaker 7: to be thrown and were thrown away into dumpsters and
• 10:13
  Speaker 7: all of this stuff. And she does a chapter about
• 10:15
  Speaker 7: Reno as the dumpster factory for women, the idea that
• 10:20
  Speaker 7: Reno was this place in Nevada that women were basically
• 10:24
  Speaker 7: disposed of in our culture, like they're thrown away when
• 10:27
  Speaker 7: they get divorces. And I remember reviewing the movie after
• 10:30
  Speaker 7: I had read that book and being like, oh my god,
• 10:33
  Speaker 7: this is a document of Reno as this place right
• 10:36
  Speaker 7: where they say, where women get renovated so that they
• 10:39
  Speaker 7: can get married again. And so that was the other
• 10:41
  Speaker 7: kind of dimension of my relationship to the movie.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Oh kidding, this is Oh you just gave me an
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: incredible reading list.
• 10:48
  Speaker 6: Thank you, such a good book. It's wonderful.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, this movie really does. I've seen different depictions
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: of Reno in media, old and new. I mean I
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: think also about how in mad And there was like
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: a whole Reno narrative way back in the day. But like, yeah,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: but this is the most compelling. Yeah, and also manages
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: to make Reno look kind of fun, a dreamy, yeah,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: kind of like oh, it's just kind of like girls camp.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, you're horseback riding.
• 11:17
  Speaker 6: You know, we're vibing.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: I'm like we should all just maybe stay here.
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: This is like the beginnings of a compound.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: We're so close.
• 11:22
  Speaker 7: There's another representation of Reno, I would say, in this
• 11:26
  Speaker 7: very famous, very dark drama with Marilyn Monroe, which was
• 11:32
  Speaker 7: written for her by Arthur Miller after they had divorced.
• 11:36
  Speaker 7: It's one of the last movies that she makes. I
• 11:38
  Speaker 7: don't know why I'm forgetting the title.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: It's so Clark Gable one or not that's before that.
• 11:43
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 11:43
  Speaker 7: It has another very famous male lead, but it is
• 11:47
  Speaker 7: about a woman who's been divorced and she's in Reno,
• 11:50
  Speaker 7: and it is a very dark, brilliant I mean, I
• 11:52
  Speaker 7: think Monroe is a genius, and I think like it's
• 11:56
  Speaker 7: her first time trying to do a dramatic role, and
• 11:58
  Speaker 7: Miller sort of writes this role that's.
• 12:00
  Speaker 6: Both amazingly suited to her and that's very punishing.
• 12:03
  Speaker 7: He makes her seem sort of liking a promiscuous woman
• 12:08
  Speaker 7: because he's mad at her about the failure of their marriage.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: And so make love.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: Is that it?
• 12:13
  Speaker 6: That might be it? That might be it?
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: Okay?
• 12:15
  Speaker 6: If so?
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Directed by George Kucore. Pretty cool.
• 12:19
  Speaker 6: Oh stop?
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, parallels. Wow, that's that's incredible. Yeah. I think that
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: her her last movie is The Misfits, that's what I'm
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: thinking of.
• 12:27
  Speaker 6: That's what it is.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: It's the Missing It is okay, great, it's.
• 12:30
  Speaker 7: Incredible that people should be watching that movie. That's an
• 12:33
  Speaker 7: incredible movie.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I've got to see it. I still have never seen it. Yeah,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: I feel like I hear it reference constantly.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: I haven't actually seen it.
• 12:39
  Speaker 7: It is very moving and very powerful, and of course
• 12:42
  Speaker 7: written by one of the greatest playwrights of all time.
• 12:45
  Speaker 6: Yes, you're right, it is Clark Gable. It is like
• 12:47
  Speaker 6: kind of at the end of his career when he
• 12:49
  Speaker 6: becomes sort of a little bit of a has been.
• 12:51
  Speaker 7: Sort of like you know, actually like Leonardo DiCaprio's character
• 12:54
  Speaker 7: in Once Upon a Time on Hollywood. He's still a
• 12:57
  Speaker 7: hard throb and he's still a big deal, but is
• 12:59
  Speaker 7: like waning and it is a pretty it's a very
• 13:01
  Speaker 7: moving film.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And Montgomery Clift. Wow, there's so.
• 13:05
  Speaker 6: Much Yeah, I mean.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, Okay, I'm having a great time. Thank you,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you for that. Caitlyn. What is your history with
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the women?
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: Well, and here comes my villainy go for it.
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: Go well.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: Listeners of the show will probably know that I am
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: not that big of a fan of the classic Hollywood
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: era Okay. There are very few movies from this time period,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: and I've seen many of them, but there are very
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: few that I connect with or have any affection for,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: and this one, so sorry, not really one of them.
• 13:43
  Speaker 6: It's a hard pass.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Well, So I saw it for the first time a
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: few years ago because it would come up on the
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: show here and there.
• 13:53
  Speaker 6: So interesting, and it wasn't really on.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: My radar before that, but it would. It would be
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: referenced pretty frequently by you, Jamie or guests, and I
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: was like, what's this movie? So I watched it and
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh, okay, it just doesn't really appeal
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: to my sensibilities. You know, I have a lot to say,
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: a lot to talk about. I'm still sort of like
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: forming opinions about it. The end drives me nuts.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, but I don't think it could have ended any
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: other way in nineteen thirty nine.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: But right, so, but yeah, it's it's it gives us
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: lots to talk about. Yeah, but again, I'm not as
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: enthusiastic about this era of cinema in general. So I'm
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: gonna be the nah person on the show.
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: The kill Joy. Yeah, we always need a kill.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: Joy, we do. Thank you.
• 14:45
  Speaker 6: Balance by the way.
• 14:46
  Speaker 7: I'm about to be a kill joy for Heated Rivalry
• 14:49
  Speaker 7: because I keep telling you, I'm writing an essay for
• 14:52
  Speaker 7: Film Quarterly about how much I can't stand it, not
• 14:55
  Speaker 7: even not the actors who I adore, and I'm so
• 14:58
  Speaker 7: glad that they're getting all the success.
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: And it is a very sexy and hot show. I
• 15:01
  Speaker 6: think it's message is awful, and I think people's.
• 15:03
  Speaker 7: Unhinged obsession with it really needs to be put in
• 15:07
  Speaker 7: its place. And so I listen, we all need to
• 15:10
  Speaker 7: occupy that seat at some point or another.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: People just have to come in and be a female
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: dog in a kennel. Yeah, yes, yeah, I still haven't
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: seen Heated Rivalry, but I just know that everyone I
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: talked to is obsessed with it.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm going to wait until I get the flu,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: and then I'm going to watch Heated Rivalry.
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: Right, not a bad idea, I think that's right.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: That's how I watch most television, as I wish.
• 15:35
  Speaker 6: Okay, so that makes sense.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Jamie, what is your relationship with the women in
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: nineteen thirty nine?
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: I really love it. I've trying to remember specifically what
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: when I first saw it. I think it probably would
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: have been in college. But I've been on a journey
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: with this movie where I did sort of feel, you know,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: buy into a lot of popular narratives around this movie.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Prior to oh, I think probably around twenty twenty one
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: would have been my big turning point with this movie
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: because I'd seen it.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: I enjoy it.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I enjoy this like dialogue Cadence, I like old Hollywood divas,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: like a lot of it works for me. And I
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: also like the you know, sort of, for lack of
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: a better phrase, gimmick of this of we don't see
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: a man, we simply don't and how refreshing not.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: A single man, not a single man's voice. Even the
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: animals on screen are all female ANIMs.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, I like, I really appreciate that, But I did
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I think in prior references to this, I sort of like,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: even though I'd seen it, i'd like, basically enjoyed it.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: I also find the ending very dated and frustrating in
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: a way that I feel, like, you know, I think
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: that there are reclaimable elements to it, particularly the more
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: I learned about the context of who wrote it, how
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: it was written, when it was written, all this, But
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I still do find the ending like I'm never looking
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: forward to the ending of the Women. I'm looking forward
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: to the first hour and a half. But I had
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: a churning point with this movie probably around yeah, around
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: the pandemic, because that was the time that I was
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: working on Act Cast, which listeners of the show probably
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: already know, was a podcast that took a look at
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: the Kathie comics of the seventies into the twenty tens
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: and how it was sort of this mirror to in
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: conversation with feminist movements of the time and before, and
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: so to do that I did, like my first which
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: feels kind of like ridiculous, but like my first deep
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: feminist history research, at least in America. And since doing that,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: going back to movies of this era has been interesting
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: because you can pick up on what it's in conversation with,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: which I think this movie is very much in conversation
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: with the results of the first wave of feminism, and weirdly,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, but also before World War Two, in the
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: sense that we are not encouraging women to be in
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the workplace quite yet. It's not seen as a noble thing.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: It's seen as kind of embarrassing. So I really enjoyed
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: especially the first two thirds of this movie that it
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: is doing a lot. It's written by women all the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: way down, and like fascinating women. It is directed by
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: like one of the most famous queer directors ever, George Qcore.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: It features designs by Adrian It's just like it's girls
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: and gays. It's girls and gays, and so it is
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: impossible for me to dislike. But my favorite thing learning
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: about it in this round as I never really I
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: knew that the there's two women screenwriters, which already nineteen
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: thirty nine is like amazing. I really do appreciate that
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: to a larger extent than the majority of productions at
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: this time, and still like that there is some level
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: of commitment to the women behind the camera as well,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: where it's based on a work by a woman and
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: it is adapted by two women, including someone we've talked
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: about before show Anita Lows, who wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: and also adapted Gigi for Broadway. Just like a complete legend.
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: She's a genius, she really is.
• 19:11
  Speaker 7: I mean, I recommend people to go read the original
• 19:14
  Speaker 7: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It's a work of nineteen twenties modernism.
• 19:18
  Speaker 7: It is experimental and avant garde. She's playing with language
• 19:22
  Speaker 7: and she is exploring what it looks like for women
• 19:26
  Speaker 7: to have to invent a language of sounding dumb while
• 19:30
  Speaker 7: being smart.
• 19:31
  Speaker 6: That's the whole point of the book.
• 19:33
  Speaker 7: It's about these two women who basically are using our
• 19:36
  Speaker 7: intentionally sounding stupid to men because they know that it
• 19:43
  Speaker 7: is a way to manipulate social like socially constructed mores
• 19:47
  Speaker 7: around gender to get what they want. And there's that
• 19:50
  Speaker 7: great you know, in the Marilyn Monroe adaptation in the fifties,
• 19:54
  Speaker 7: there's that great moment right at the end where the
• 19:57
  Speaker 7: father of the man she's marrying just can't stand to
• 20:00
  Speaker 7: her because he's like, you're a gold digger, and she's like, no,
• 20:03
  Speaker 7: I love your son and also want his money. Yeah,
• 20:07
  Speaker 7: And she's like, if you had a daughter, wouldn't you
• 20:10
  Speaker 7: want her to marry for love.
• 20:11
  Speaker 6: And money because you're rich.
• 20:13
  Speaker 7: And he looks at her and he's like, you know what,
• 20:15
  Speaker 7: You're right, And it's a kind of an amazing moment
• 20:18
  Speaker 7: where Lewis is saying, like, we're all playing a certain
• 20:21
  Speaker 7: game within this arrangement, and like, let's just admit that
• 20:24
  Speaker 7: women know what the game is right, and let's act naive.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: I really appreciate.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, we cover gentlemen prefer Blondes all the way
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: back in twenty eighteen with such a good movie Koreana
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Longworth the legend. But it's something I want to revisit
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and kind of take another crack at, because yeah, no,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Anita Lowe's is wonderful.
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: Co written with Jane Murfin, who's also a prolific writer
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: of the time at a time where it's like women
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: working professionally as writers.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Was so rare, and the fact that this was you know,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: a part of the marketing was that it was made
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: by women. Again, Yeah, it is telling of the misogyny
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: of the time then, and that it is a marketing
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: gimmick that women made it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 6: Sure, but I think.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: It's really impressive and really cool, And yeah, this was
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: my first time learning about sort of getting back to it.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: I knew about the screenwriters, I didn't really know about
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the original playwright, Claire booth Loose, who will talk about
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: her in the contact section of the episode, but just like,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: holy shit, she's so cool. I was so blown away
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: by like just her life in general, because in ways
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: where I.
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: Was trying to understand. I think I'm always trying to understand.
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: It is clear to me that.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: The writers and actors and director all love these characters,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: where even when characters are presented I think in a
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: heavily stereotyped way, in certain cases it feels less.
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: Punching down than you would expect.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I think, particularly in the case of Sylvia's character, which
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: we'll talk about, I feel like Sylvia.
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: I was like, I think that she's.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: So funny and you are given the proper context to
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: understand why she's doing.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: What she's doing, even though what she's doing is horrible.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: And I'm very excited to talk about that because Claire
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Booth Loose was the other woman, you know, like she
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: and in the same way with Crystal, where like Crystal
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: is framed as a villain, but also like you have
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: the information you need to understand why she's doing what
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: she's doing, and she.
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: Gets she gets. I guess there's two last words in
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: this movie. She gets the better one. Yeah, frankly, because
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: Norvas sheers like pride is for losers.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: I'm going back to my husband and you're like, well,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I think the line about bitches is far better. But
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Claire Booth loose has been both of those women, and
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: I think that, like you can feel that where she
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: wrote this play and produced it a year after being
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the Crystal Allen in her then husband's relationship, where she
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: you know, whatever that dynamic played out he left his
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: wife for her. Then she wrote this play and released it,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: and it feels like it was like an attempt to
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: process in a very kind of brutal way, just the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: roles that women have to fill in how they relate
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: to each other. I'm going to shut up because it's
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: been like four hundred minutes since I started talking, But
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I just.
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: I really really appreciate this spuffee.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I like it so much, and it makes me want
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: to talk really fast for a week.
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: Ooh.
• 23:19
  Speaker 7: Always, I think that's already how I live, so to
• 23:22
  Speaker 7: speak to Caitlin's point, I completely get it. But I
• 23:25
  Speaker 7: also like I speak and operate in this ballistic mode.
• 23:29
  Speaker 7: So while I don't always enjoy watching it, I'm fascinated
• 23:32
  Speaker 7: by it, and I think I have a lot to
• 23:34
  Speaker 7: say about that in a minute when we get back
• 23:35
  Speaker 7: to that.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: Wonderful well, let's take a quick break and then we
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: will come back for the recap.
• 23:41
  Speaker 8: Yay and we're back.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Here is the story of the women.
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: That's yes, and we are introduced to just to set
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: the scene. It did crack me up.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: It was it did not escape me that we do
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: begin the movie by introducing all of our main characters
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: by comparing them.
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: To wait for it, animal animals look look.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Very pretty, pretty like and and oh the older the
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: women get, the more cows and donkeys.
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: You're seeing horses.
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: Ye, horses.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: You're You're like, okay, this is now, now let's hear
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: them out.
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: But that is a bad look, the bad luck to
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: start with, sure.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: Right, because you have like the main character Mary is
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: a sweet, little innocent dough and then.
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Crystal is a panther.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: Gnarling, and Sylvia is a is a black cat going.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Amazing, which I was like, I wasn't even really quite getting.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: There were some of the comparisons that I'm like, yeah, right.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: Right, maybe it's just a reference to how some women
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: are catty, so they literally have cats.
• 25:00
  Speaker 9: Oh yeah, the woman who gets into the late stage
• 25:02
  Speaker 9: cat fight in which it is said that Rosalind Russell
• 25:06
  Speaker 9: actually bit and gave a permanent scart to the other actor.
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: No, because it's hilarious.
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: And again that it's one of those old Hollywood anecdotes.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: It's been rehashed so many times that you're like, it
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: might not be true, but sure, I've read it in more.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: Than one place, so let's just leave it at that.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: Amazing for sure. Yeah, Okay. So we open at a
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: salon full of women doing various beauty treatments because women
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: be doing their hair and nails and stuff, and a
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: manicurist is gossiping about a Missus Haynes and how her
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: husband is cheating on her, and she tells this to
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Sylvia Fowler played by Rosalind Russell, who is friends with
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: this Missus Haynes, and then Sylvia also tells another of
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: their mutual friends, Edith, played by Phyllis Pova, and the
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: two of them are kind of like reveling in this information,
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: this gossip, and they're trying to decide what to do
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: with it. Again, very caddy stuff. We cut to missus
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: Mary Haynes played by Norma Shear and her daughter Little Mary,
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: their horse riding together because they're rich. It seems like
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: every woman in this movie is a socialite who has
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: access to wealth to some degree, and Mary and her
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: daughter talk at length about Mary's husband, Stephen slash Little
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: Mary's father, and how they love him dearly, and it
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: seems like a very happy family. If Stephen is cheating
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: on her, Mary has no idea. Then Mary invites several
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: of her friends over for lunch, including Sylvia and Edith,
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: who we just met.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Sylvia wearing truly one of the greatest the eyeball articles
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: of clothing I've ever.
• 27:05
  Speaker 6: Seen, very Salvador Dolly.
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: It's just like and it's so it's like so character
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: driven that.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: It's almost too much, but kind of like there's no
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: such thing as too much in this movie, and I
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: love that.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: So they're there as well as Peggy, a sweet young
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: woman who got married recently, and then Nancy, an older
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: career woman, a writer who never got married.
• 27:34
  Speaker 7: So an old maid, as she says exactly. She's aware
• 27:37
  Speaker 7: of her.
• 27:38
  Speaker 6: Status as whatever spoiled goods.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, but she has frozen assets, let's not forget. And
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: so she is society's worst nightmare. And she's well aware.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: I every character, every almost every character, I'm like, you,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I die for them, Yeah, I die for them.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And so these women are all chatting and they're
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: like insulting each other, but in very like veiled ways. Again,
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: the cattiness is very present, and Sylvia keeps making all
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: of these remarks about Mary's husband, Stephen, insinuating that he's
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: cheating on her, stepping out, which stepping out on her.
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: I'm curious how, because there is just simply so much
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: dialogue in this movie.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: I always forget and I try to figure out if
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I miss it or if it just is very telegraphed
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: in one line of dialogue pretty late in the movie
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: that Mary and Sylvia are cousins. Yes, correct, which to
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: me because I feel like that not to stereotype all cousins,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: but that contextualizes so much of Sylvia's behavior. It's like
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: this is her perfect older cousin. Sure, I don't think
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: it's said enough. I think that I that I needed
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: the Stranger Things Netflix treatment of being reminded they were
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: cousins at certain times.
• 28:53
  Speaker 7: This is like a crucial moment when the career woman
• 28:57
  Speaker 7: of the group says to Sylvia, like, of course you're
• 29:00
  Speaker 7: being about Mary because you can't.
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: Be happy that she's happy, right, She's actually contented.
• 29:05
  Speaker 7: There's an amazing line we could talk about later where
• 29:08
  Speaker 7: she says, you know you're unhappy that Mary is a
• 29:10
  Speaker 7: woman and that and Edith and Sylvia.
• 29:13
  Speaker 6: Say, well, what are we? She says, well, you're.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Females, right, like suggesting that like a woman is like
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: someone who is more evolved, someone.
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: Who is like a yeah, yeah, and there is.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: But like, I just think it was really a really
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: smart choice to introduce like a familial jealousy. I feel
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: like it helps me get away from the like the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: cattiness of it all, where you're like, oh, at any
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: time someone's related, I feel like I will tolerate thirty
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: percent more pettiness and all behavior.
• 29:40
  Speaker 10: You know.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So we see this interaction and Mary is like, hmm,
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: is my husband cheating on me? Then Stephen calls her
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: to tell her that he has to cancel a two
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: week trip to Canada that they were about to take
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: because he simply can't get away from work. And Mary
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: is very disappointed. And maybe because she is suspicious, or
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: maybe she's just taking Sylvia's nail color recommendation, but Mary.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: Yes, so iconic.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Mary pays a visit to Sylvia's manicurist, the one who
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: is known for being super gossipy, and not realizing who
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: she's speaking to, the manicurist reveals that Mary's husband, Stephen,
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: is in fact having an affair with a woman named
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: Crystal Allen, who he met at a department store. Mary
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: is devastated by this. Her mother comes over and tells
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Mary that basically all men cheat, including Mary's father, but
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: Stephen probably doesn't love this other woman, so Mary shouldn't
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: say anything or confront him, and basically just pretend like
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: it's not happening, especially because they have a daughter to
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: think about this.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: One of the many things they appreciate about this movie
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: is its attention to generational differences at this exact moment.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: It's really and because I think in a lesser movie,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: you know, while there is a clear argument and it's
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: not totally wrong to say that the older women in
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: this movie are portrayed as silly, right, but their perspectives
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: are clearly telegraphed and taken seriously. Absolutely as well as
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: her daughter, Like where I think that, you know so
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: often we see like oh little also such a.
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: Power move when women name their daughters after themselves. I
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: love that very Gilmore girls to do.
• 31:37
  Speaker 6: I think the daughter is totally weird.
• 31:39
  Speaker 7: The daughter is We're gonna come back to that. I
• 31:42
  Speaker 7: actually think the daughter is like very psychoanalytic. There's like
• 31:45
  Speaker 7: a whole Freudian thing going on it where she's having
• 31:48
  Speaker 7: like an electrocomplex where she's obsessed with her mom and
• 31:51
  Speaker 7: she almost wants to be her mom's girlfriend, and like,
• 31:54
  Speaker 7: I kind of love all that, but also like.
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: It's done in a way that's like not fun. It's
• 31:58
  Speaker 6: like weird.
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: If you're talking about the whole backscratching thing. I used
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: to do that with my.
• 32:03
  Speaker 7: Mom, but all of it, she's always like do you
• 32:05
  Speaker 7: love me as much as you love dad?
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: And like are you in love with me?
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: Mom?
• 32:09
  Speaker 6: Yeah?
• 32:09
  Speaker 7: She can't understand the idea that like the love between
• 32:12
  Speaker 7: a husband and a wife is different than the love
• 32:14
  Speaker 7: but like it's just like it's it's so accentuated in
• 32:18
  Speaker 7: the story that it's symptomatic.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: I think the issue for me was that, like she
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: just seems a little bit too old to be thinking about.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: That's exactly it for me.
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: That's fair one thing where it's like if you're six,
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: you're like what is this? But like she seems like eleven,
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: and I'm like.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she looks like she's eleven.
• 32:34
  Speaker 6: She's like, do you really love me?
• 32:35
  Speaker 7: Mommy, and you're like, your mom is obsessed with you,
• 32:38
  Speaker 7: Like you just said, she just named herself you after herself,
• 32:41
  Speaker 7: so like, relax.
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: Little Mary. Such a flex to do.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish I liked my first name better because
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: that would be such a flex little Damie.
• 32:49
  Speaker 7: But I do want to say that the conversation with
• 32:51
  Speaker 7: the mom, I hope we were churned. That's one of
• 32:52
  Speaker 7: my favorite moments in the entire movie.
• 32:54
  Speaker 6: I think it's brilliant.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating because it's like, you whatever, even in like
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: almost one hundred years later, you find yourself being like, well,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: I hear what she's saying generationally, but like, no, Mary
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: needs to stand up for herself. And then she literally does,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: and she's like, you know, it's just it's really cool.
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: I wish that this movie was allowed to end differently.
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: But also Hayes code, you know, yeah, we cannot be
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: disparaging marriage and the home. And that's later to bring
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: that back any day. Now, Hay's code is gonna come back,
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: coming back. He's good two point zero, Yeah, somehow worse.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah. In any case, So Mary's mother is trying to
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: convince Mary to not do anything about the knowledge of
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: this affair because basically, boys will be boys and just
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: accept it and move on. Mary is not willing really
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: to do this, and it seems like maybe to sort
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: of like take a break from this whole situation, she
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: decides to take her mother to Bermuda.
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: Well, and it's also a power move.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: I think, like something that I thought was interesting tracking
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Mary's behavior through this time, because I think, I don't know,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: I've heard a lot of stuff.
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: That is a little more dismissive of Mary.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Than I feel of like, oh, she's too perfect, blah
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: blah blah, she's the perfect wife.
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: But it's like you can see that she's making decisions
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: not because.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: She actually wants to be away from home, but because
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: she thinks that by leave, her husband will miss her
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and that.
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: Will resolve the problem.
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: Which is what her mom told her. That was her
• 34:25
  Speaker 6: mom's idea exactly.
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right, right, right right. I feel for her.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I think she's having like a weird like Frances hostile
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: vacation where she like does not want to be doing yet,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: but is like it feels like I should be doing this.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So, while Mary is away, we meet Crystal Allen
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: played by Joan Crawford. She receives a phone call from Stephen,
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: who is canceling their dinner plans that night, even though
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: it's her birthday, because it seems like he is trying
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: to spend more time with and that he's like trying
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: to his wife is trying to focus on his marriage.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: Then Mary's friends, Sylvia and Edith, the very gossipy ones,
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: go to the department store where Crystal works to find
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: her and basically fuck with her. They keep mentioning Stephen
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: Haynes and his wife and she's not like falling for it.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: No, this is also like it doesn't I think we're
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: encouraged to think that this is not Crystal's first rodeo
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: when it comes to managing a situation like this. Yeah,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: but this is her first rodeo dealing with these difas specifically.
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: But I just think it's so like and again we'll
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: come back to this, but there.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Is well, I do think it's like easy to reduce
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: that interaction to cattiness between women.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: There is a clear class dynamic going on there too,
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: and oh for.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Throughout like again, just like the Shades of Gray that
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I feel like this movie doesn't often get credit for.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: It includes like care for generational perspectives and for class perspectives,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: because not only is everyone every person we see on
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: screen a woman, and addressing the elephant in the room
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: now as we will later, majority majority, majority white women.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I think that there's two or three characters who are
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: black women who exist strictly in service roles.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: Sure, I don't even think you could call them characters.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: They're on screen for a minute or less.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: They're there to react to what white women are doing,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: including Butterfly McQueen, who also was in GOM with the
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Win that year.
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, but this movie.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Is clearly only interested in the interests and affairs in
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: politics of white women, which.
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: Is very very relevant.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Within there there are generational and class perspectives that I
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: was like, especially doing like a close read of it
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: for this, like you're like, oh, there is more here
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: than I you know, generally give it credit for even
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: as a movie that I really like.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, Okay. So then we cut to a couple
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: weeks later, Mary and her mother have returned from Bermuda,
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: and it seems like ever since then, Stephen has been
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: more attentive in their marriage, though we do not see
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: this on screen because again famously, there are no men
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: on screen at any.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Point, we just have to take back, bring it back,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: So we're just kind of taking Mary's word for it.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: Then Mary and a few of her friends attend a
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: technicolor fashion show that lasts for again, like six minutes
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: on screen. It seems like it's just sort of like
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: a commercial wedged into the middle of the movie.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, does any was anyone able to find in your
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: like research what the hell is going on there?
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: I actually did. I forgot to go out of my
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: way to figure out why that is there. In that way, I.
• 37:47
  Speaker 7: Didn't research it, but I think it's something we can
• 37:49
  Speaker 7: talk about that it is. I mean, it's if you
• 37:51
  Speaker 7: read it in a Freudian way, it's simp it's symptomatic, right,
• 37:54
  Speaker 7: like the fact that there is an explosion of technicolor
• 37:57
  Speaker 7: in the middle of this black and white movie that
• 37:59
  Speaker 7: is all about fashion, and that the fashion show is
• 38:02
  Speaker 7: a performance of the entire arc of the daily life
• 38:07
  Speaker 7: of a rich woman, starting with playing sports in the morning, tennis,
• 38:11
  Speaker 7: all the way through going to the zoo, so all
• 38:15
  Speaker 7: the way through going to a dinner party with a
• 38:17
  Speaker 7: gown and whatever. Like, there is something it is like
• 38:21
  Speaker 7: a Freudian slip like the movie.
• 38:23
  Speaker 6: Is telling on itself.
• 38:25
  Speaker 7: It's saying, like, this is actually the fantasy that is
• 38:29
  Speaker 7: at play in living this life, and the fantasy is
• 38:33
  Speaker 7: radically different than the reality. I mean, I think that's
• 38:35
  Speaker 7: part of the place where the movie is so smart
• 38:38
  Speaker 7: is that the movie is very aware of the fantasies
• 38:41
  Speaker 7: that women have to navigate, the forms of denial that
• 38:45
  Speaker 7: they have to live to navigate the sexual arrangements of
• 38:48
  Speaker 7: mid century American life. And I think that the technicolor
• 38:53
  Speaker 7: moment is also giving the audience the joy, the pure
• 38:58
  Speaker 7: unbridled joy of that fantasy before it says, u uh uh,
• 39:01
  Speaker 7: that's not what you're gonna get. That's not what this
• 39:03
  Speaker 7: whole movie is gonna be. Right, Like this whole movie
• 39:05
  Speaker 7: we could the whole movie could have been technicolor. That's
• 39:07
  Speaker 7: what The Wizard of Oz does.
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: It's incredible, Like I I know that.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: I Mean, the most thing I was able to find
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: out is that George Kkor did not like that.
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: I think that that was sort of like something he
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: was forced to.
• 39:19
  Speaker 6: Do, got it by like the studios.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he felt it like it it disrupted the rhythm
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: of the movie, which I think is true, but also.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: It definitely does.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: However, I think in some ways, Kitlyn, let me know,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: you think, like if you do, if you are kind
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: of exhausted by how fast this movie is, this is
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: kind it kind of functions as an intermission.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: Of like, uh, all right, it's true, you know, get
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: catch your breath and buckle in because they're gonna be
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: talking even faster in the back half. Yeah, And I
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: don't know.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: And also just because nineteen thirty nine there's so many
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: fun like overlaps here.
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: We're like Adrian Queer Icon who had like a.
• 39:57
  Speaker 10: Famous lavender marriage to Janet Gaynor, also designed the ruby
• 40:02
  Speaker 10: slippers and may like he was having a hell of
• 40:06
  Speaker 10: a year in nineteen thirty nine, just just a legend.
• 40:10
  Speaker 6: And that's incredible.
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: Did all the costume designs for the Wizard of Oz
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: as well. Okay, so yeah he was. He was really
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: cooking this year.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: So I'm like, while I do find it a little weird,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: I don't hate it only I mean it is kind
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: of an intermission.
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: I love the disembodied hand dress.
• 40:25
  Speaker 6: Oh my, so that's incredible.
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: At the end of the day, I'm not mad.
• 40:28
  Speaker 6: That's modernism, honey.
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: It is just oh, it's so weird. I love it.
• 40:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's great.
• 40:34
  Speaker 7: I would just say as a side note, you know,
• 40:35
  Speaker 7: there's this extraordinary book by a dear friend of mine,
• 40:38
  Speaker 7: brilliant film scholar who should totally have on this podcast
• 40:41
  Speaker 7: named Matthew Tinkham. He actually wrote the British Film Institute.
• 40:44
  Speaker 6: Book on Greg Gardens.
• 40:45
  Speaker 7: Oh oh, and he wrote a book called Brokeback Mountain
• 40:48
  Speaker 7: and Queer Theory.
• 40:50
  Speaker 6: Incredible.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: Should have covered and we haven't yet.
• 40:53
  Speaker 7: So oh my god, Greg, I have on for Greg Gardens. Honey,
• 40:58
  Speaker 7: he will blow your minds hell.
• 41:00
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 41:00
  Speaker 7: So he makes this amazing argument of that book where
• 41:03
  Speaker 7: he says Golden age Hollywood system, while it was intensely homophobic,
• 41:09
  Speaker 7: was obsessed with the cultural labor of gay men because
• 41:14
  Speaker 7: it believed like there was a there was an understanding,
• 41:18
  Speaker 7: a cultural understanding within the film industry in the nineteen
• 41:21
  Speaker 7: thirties and after that. Gay men had a distinct aesthetic
• 41:26
  Speaker 7: style that was extravagant, that was over the top, that
• 41:30
  Speaker 7: was flamboyant and beautiful, and that fit beautifully with the
• 41:34
  Speaker 7: desire of Warner Brothers in MGM to.
• 41:37
  Speaker 6: Do these extravagant musicals. And he shows you.
• 41:39
  Speaker 7: He has a chapter about how like he gets the
• 41:43
  Speaker 7: title of his book from an amazing interview of the
• 41:45
  Speaker 7: head assistant to oh why am I forgetting his same
• 41:49
  Speaker 7: He's like one of the most famous musical directors, Judy
• 41:51
  Speaker 7: Garland's first husband.
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: Is it Vincent Manelli?
• 41:54
  Speaker 7: Thank you, yes, thank you yes, that Vincent Manelli's head
• 41:57
  Speaker 7: assistant in the fifties and sixties was interviewed looking back, and.
• 42:02
  Speaker 6: She says to the interviewer, I don't know how else
• 42:04
  Speaker 6: to say it.
• 42:04
  Speaker 7: And I don't mean it at all as a dig
• 42:08
  Speaker 7: She's like he worked like a homosexual, Like he had.
• 42:11
  Speaker 6: A style, right.
• 42:13
  Speaker 7: And so the idea was that audiences when they viewed
• 42:16
  Speaker 7: those movies and they're incredible, over the top technicolor extravagance,
• 42:20
  Speaker 7: they didn't think gay. They thought that's entertainment, right, And
• 42:25
  Speaker 7: so he talks about how like gayness was was woven
• 42:29
  Speaker 7: into the fabric of the esthetic of the Hollywood musical
• 42:33
  Speaker 7: Star is Born, Wizard of Oz, all of these movies
• 42:36
  Speaker 7: of Singing in the Rain, but that it could be coded,
• 42:39
  Speaker 7: and that is very true here. I think the explosion
• 42:43
  Speaker 7: of technicolor here is also about the celebration of extravagant femininity,
• 42:50
  Speaker 7: that is pleasurable to gay audiences and also women.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: I hear that, and this movie has all of that,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: like oh yeah, and and the fact that I feel
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: like the most again like echoing what you were just saying,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: like the most prominent voices and fingerprints you see on
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: this are women and queer people, Like, yeah, George ku
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Koor was like you know, obviously not open to the public,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: but like known to be openly gay and as well
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: as like I think probably maybe this is wrong, but
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: one of the if not the first director who was
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: known to be like women loved working with him. Yes,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: And so part of what I mean we can get
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: into because there's some interesting like production narratives that come up.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: But like for all of the like maybe true, maybe
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: not true narratives about how the stars of this movie
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: interacted throughout production, what no one ever disagrees on, and
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: I've never seen anyone say, is that George Kukre was
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: not like deeply respectful and reverent toward women actors, which
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: I think, particularly given the time, must have been such
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: a breath of fresh air. Almost any story you hear
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: about a director of like gaystrake whatever, like yeah, it
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: was okay to treat to quote movies like The Women,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: to treat women like chattel and to treat them like
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: they were garbage, and that they were like, you know, meat.
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: Puppets to be to do what you were supposed to do.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: And George Kukor was like collaborative and respectful and everyone
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: loved him.
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: It's so nice.
• 44:25
  Speaker 7: I mean, think about the fact that he is one
• 44:27
  Speaker 7: of the directors of The Wizard.
• 44:29
  Speaker 8: Of Oz.
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: All the CPS sequences, right, yeah, King.
• 44:33
  Speaker 7: Dar and he most of his greatest movies, Philadelphia Story,
• 44:38
  Speaker 7: A Star is Born with Judy Garland are female led,
• 44:42
  Speaker 7: like behemoths of film history.
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: We love George.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: We love George, and in Adrian another very like queer
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: artist whose fingerprints are everywhere.
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: And then it's written by women and you're just I'm cheering.
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: I love it.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Also, George k Kerr directed Gaslight like he's just so
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: in the conversation he's awesome, amazing.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: Sorry, contin well, I was gonna say. Apparently there are
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: two uncredited screenwriters of the movie, according to IMDb, at
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: least who are men, including f Scott Fitzgerald.
• 45:18
  Speaker 6: That makes a lot of.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Sense because of Anita Lowe's and I'm pretty sure Anita
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: or was it the other screenwriter?
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: Maybe I think it was Anita Lowe's let me double check.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Anita Lows worked with and on fitzgerald projects pretty thoroughly
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: throughout her career, so that that makes sense, given like
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: the time and the place.
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: I don't know, honestly. I mean, I've read The Great Gatsby.
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: I don't know that much about Scott Fitzgerald. I've never
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: fallen down that particular rabbit hole.
• 45:47
  Speaker 7: I mean, the main thing you need to know is
• 45:49
  Speaker 7: like one of the greatest kind of chroniclers of the
• 45:51
  Speaker 7: misery of the of the rich. I mean that's really
• 45:55
  Speaker 7: like right, Like he was incredible at being able to
• 45:59
  Speaker 7: capture both the allure, the aesthetic allure, the color, the lights,
• 46:04
  Speaker 7: the fashion, the parties.
• 46:06
  Speaker 6: Of an emergent nouveau reche.
• 46:08
  Speaker 7: Class in the nineteen twenties and the misery that that
• 46:12
  Speaker 7: culture produced. I mean, he is essentially writing about today,
• 46:16
  Speaker 7: right He is writing.
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: About what Jesse Armstrong is doing right now.
• 46:21
  Speaker 6: Yeah, decadence.
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's so cool.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: Sorry, we just did a ten minute de reil ie
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: of where are we in the movie. It just started, oh,
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: a fashion sequest.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: The fashion show, and then Afterward, the women ever heard
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: of them are deciding which dresses they want to buy,
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: and then Crystal Allen comes in and orders a bunch
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: of expensive dresses and it seems like Stephen will be
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: footing the bill and Mary is gutted by this. This
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: is her first time seeing Crystal face to face. The
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: drama loving Sylvia wants Mary to confront Crystal, which Mary
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: finally does, being like, hello, miss Allen, I believe you
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: know my husband, but you won't be knowing him any longer.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: And Crystal is like, well, bitch, that's not for you
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: to decide. I can do whatever the hell I want.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: Love her.
• 47:19
  Speaker 11: The next thing we know, it is also wearing like
• 47:21
  Speaker 11: this like gold lea May She's doing She's Whenever you
• 47:26
  Speaker 11: see Mary and Crystal in this, you're just like, okay, yes,
• 47:30
  Speaker 11: these are these are very different, the women very different.
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: The women's I love it, Yes.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, indeed. The next thing we know, Mary
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: has asked Stephen for a divorce. There's a scene where
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: Mary and Stephen have a big fight, but once again
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: it's off screen because we don't ever see men.
• 47:48
  Speaker 7: This is I want to just say real quick, this
• 47:50
  Speaker 7: is important. And again we should come back to this
• 47:53
  Speaker 7: the entire fight between her and like, because men are
• 47:56
  Speaker 7: not in the movie, Yeah, they have to come up
• 47:58
  Speaker 7: with all of these really smart and interesting narrative and
• 48:02
  Speaker 7: visual techniques to represent what's.
• 48:05
  Speaker 6: Happening with men without them in the picture.
• 48:07
  Speaker 7: And the way they do this is that the two
• 48:10
  Speaker 7: women who work in the house, the woman who runs
• 48:13
  Speaker 7: the kitchen in the apartment and the woman who's like
• 48:15
  Speaker 7: cleans the house, they are gossiping with each other, and
• 48:19
  Speaker 7: the younger one is narrating to the older one all
• 48:22
  Speaker 7: of the fight that she's hearing.
• 48:24
  Speaker 6: Yes, and so what you get is.
• 48:26
  Speaker 7: Working class people, people who work in the service side
• 48:31
  Speaker 7: of serving rich people, interpreting what they are hearing. They
• 48:35
  Speaker 7: not only repeat what they're hearing of the fight between
• 48:39
  Speaker 7: Mary and her husband, they also interpret it. And they're
• 48:42
  Speaker 7: also like thoughtfully judgmental of both of them. They're just like,
• 48:46
  Speaker 7: why is he talking like this? Why is she saying
• 48:49
  Speaker 7: that she should know better? He should know better? Like
• 48:51
  Speaker 7: there's a really canny knowingness among working class people that's
• 48:55
  Speaker 7: sort of like, we love these people, but also like
• 48:58
  Speaker 7: what an eye roll?
• 48:59
  Speaker 6: They know how to blow up their own lives, like
• 49:01
  Speaker 6: get grow up?
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: The older woman especially is providing some very colorful commentary
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: during those where the whole thing she's like, men ain't shit,
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: they're all liars, they cannot be trusted, they suck the
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: horrible I.
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: Mean, something I appreciate, and I do think there's shades
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: of this in real life. I think every woman over forty.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Five, that is the main narratives that they are presenting
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: us with, even if they're like and I do it
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: all again.
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: But like men more like love.
• 49:33
  Speaker 6: She loves love.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: She loves love, you know so much that she is
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: fully I mean, and again there's a class privilege to
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: this that you can afford to have your life.
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: Blown up time and she'll get five divorces. But yeah,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: so you could afford to keep getting back on that train.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: But there is a really cool element of that where yeah,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: every woman who is like not in their thirties or
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: younger basically are like, yeah, men are.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: Awful, and you choose to engage with them or you don't.
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: And I don't know, there is a timelessness to that message.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I just thought that was like such a
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: smart writing choice where I think that there is an
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: argument for like, I wish that we outside of Crystal,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: and even that, I feel like there's something left to
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: be desired.
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: But outside of Crystal, the working class girls, we really.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Don't get to know what their inner lives are, but
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: we mainly get insight into we know their perspective exactly exactly,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: and it's like, you know, one movie can't do everything,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I don't know, I just again it feels
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: like peanuts. But like even having their perspectives considered and
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: included is so unusual, especially in a way that doesn't
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: feel you know, trauma, poorn or like condescending in a
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: way that I think that, like, you know, working class
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: people are so frequently treated in movies.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So Mary starts divorce proceedings and she tells
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: her daughter that she and her father are splitting up,
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: and little Mary is very sad, she's crying. Then Mary
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: heads to Reno, Nevada. Because at this time, and we
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: alluded to this already a little bit. We can talk
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: more about it later, but at this time in the US,
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: getting a divorce was very difficult in most states and
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: most areas in general, except for in Reno, there were
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: certain laws that just made it very easy if you
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: basically moved there for a few weeks, set up residency.
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: You could basically get a divorce, no questions asked. So
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: that's what a lot of people, and especially I think
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: a lot of women did during this time. So Mary
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: heads there on the train to Reno. She meets several
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: other women who are in the middle of a divorce,
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: some of whom are despondent about that, including her friend Peggy,
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: but a couple of the women seem to be thrilled
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: about getting a divorce, including an older woman named the Count.
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: Just a love I love.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: Her, I love her who at this point has been
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: married and divorced four times. She's like, in the middle
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: of her fourth divorce.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Who among us doesn't have an aunt that is somewhat
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: like this, ye, Lamore, lamour.
• 52:14
  Speaker 6: It's two of them tried to murder her. Just oh
• 52:17
  Speaker 6: my god.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: And again it's like, okay, we could we can academic
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: afy that to death.
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: But just the.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: The casualness that she presents it with, yeah, I feel
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: like is actually really powerful. Where it's like, oh, of
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: course women can be expected to have attempts on their
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: wife done casual and YadA, YadA whatever.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: I get back on the train, and uh no harm,
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: no bowel. That was like I love the energy, love
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: the energy.
• 52:40
  Speaker 8: Yep.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: So there's her, and then there's a younger woman named
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: Miriam played by Paulette Goddard with her is getting her
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: first divorce.
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: With a with a with a Bob of the century.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: Her bangs start all the way back at the back
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: of her head.
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: Her bangs start like on her butt. It's like her
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: bang is It's so there are so many really interesting
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: characters introduced very deep into the movie.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, And so Mary starts kind of piling
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: around with these two women who perhaps are helping to
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: give her a new perspective on divorce that maybe it's
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: not so bad. We cut to Reno. Mary has been
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: there for six weeks and her divorce is almost final.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Because I think you have to like establish residency, like
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: there's a whole you basically have to agree to go
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: to like divorce summer camp, which again the movie does
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: manage to make look pretty fun for most people.
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would like to see a movie made
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: now but set in whatever thirties, forties, fifties agree about,
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: like Reno Divorce Summer Camp. I think that would be
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: about load of fun. Yeah, but so you know Mary,
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: the divorce is almost final, and she seems content about
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: her choices and her life. For the most part, Sylvia
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: shows up. She's also getting divorced.
• 54:05
  Speaker 6: Because come up, then has happened?
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, her husband has been having an affair with
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: It turns out that Mariam, woman we just met.
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: I did appreciate it. This was the first time I
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: really like clocked this. But how because I really do
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: love Barry. I hate that she goes back to that.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Loser, but I love I have a lot of love
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: for Mary, and I really appreciated that she was able
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: to when when Sylvia showed up at divorce camp, be
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: like welcome instead of being like you fucking sat, which
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: would have been well deserved for Sylvia.
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: I think she's just like, welcome, the water's fine here.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Like I just was like, Wow, she's really good at
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: being the bigger person.
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: She just shouldn't have gone back to that.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Those are but nineteen thirty nine, we have to reinforce
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: hays Code.
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: Hayes Code.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: Indeed, indeed, yes, so, so Sylvia pretty quickly finds out
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: that this Miriam Will who her husband was having an
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: affair with or currently is is right there. So they
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: get in a physical fight. They're pulling each other's hair,
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: they're whipping each other's clothes. Sylvia bites Mariam et cetera.
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: Yes, and and and look, it is what it sounds like. Listen,
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: it is what it sounds like. I did appreciate.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: Again, we get so defensive of every choice in this
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: movie for no reason that at least we get to
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: see the other women enjoying the fight.
• 55:28
  Speaker 12: We get to see them be like, let them Yes,
• 55:31
  Speaker 12: happens all the time, don't worry about it.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: Let's like get a drink, let's see what happens. I
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: was fun.
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: There's a woman who I left out of the recap.
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: I believe her name is Lucy. She's sort of like
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: I don't know if she's like a cook at this
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: summer camp.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: Or seems to be like I guess I viewed her
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: as sort of like this is a poor comparison, but
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: like the house mother of like divorce Cass seems like it.
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: But yeah, she I mean I thought she again a very.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: A very stareeotyped character that the actor made their own
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: in a way that I got. And again, the details
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: we learn are like and it's it's partially just like
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: the very frank kind of cynical view that this movie
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: has for the first two thirds.
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: But like we we do learn a lot about this character.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Who we are introduced to as I believe a donkey,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: which is like, yeah, I am assuming a man's.
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: Fault, okay, shrek vibes.
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: Oh okay, we're reclaiming donky.
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: So that's actually a huge compliment to become of the context.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Of so a very shreky in choice but intended as insulting.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: But we do learn that, like, you know, she as
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: another working class character who is presented.
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: In a heavily stereotype way.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: However, we do learn that like she you know, has
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: a very i mean, speaking to your point, Ramsey, like
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: a very specific perspective on where she is and what
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: she's doing and how it connects to her own life.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: We learn that she is the victim of tremendous domestic
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: abuse and has internalized it and to accept it. And like,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: that is a lot to learn about a character who
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: is intended as comedic relief.
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: But I don't think that again, it's just like I
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: don't know if it's like the George Q. Koor of
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: it all if it's the writing, if it's a performance.
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: But I feel like as well as this.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: Movie can handle it, It's clear that she is intended
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: as comedic relief.
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: But the comedic relief is not that she's abused, true, which.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Is a difficult needle to thread. And I think, you know,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: could could it have been more sensitive? Sure, but like
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: in the context of a big, you know, talkie comedy,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I think it does pretty well.
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. So Okay, So Sylvia and Miriam have
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: had this big cat fight and Sylvia is pissed at
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: Mary for not defending her and kind of taking Miriam's side,
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: so they have a falling out about it. Then it
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: seems Mary's perspective maybe starts to change back too, Well,
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: maybe I shouldn't get divorced, maybe my marriage can work.
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: After a couple things happen. One is that she sees
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: her friend Peggy, who has just found out that she's gregnant,
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: and Peggy tells her like soon to be ex husband,
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: that she's expecting a baby, and he decides, oh, we
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: shouldn't get divorced, let's get back together, so they reconcile
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: in their marriage is quote unquote saved. So Mary sees that,
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: and then she also has a conversation with Miriam, who
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: tells her about the importance of a woman's role in
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: a marriage, such as being a caretaker in all capacities,
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: being a mother and a nurse maid and all these
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: things like very traditional prescriptive gender role stuff by our
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: modern standards, of course. Ye, but Mary takes this to
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: heart also, like Mariam is like, you're a coward for
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: not fighting for your man. You should have tried harder
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: to stay with Stephen.
• 59:02
  Speaker 7: I actually love this conversation. We're going to come back
• 59:04
  Speaker 7: because I don't want to. I don't I want You're
• 59:06
  Speaker 7: almost at the end, yes, but we're going to come back.
• 59:08
  Speaker 7: I actually love that conversation. I think it's so smart.
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: Oh, I'm interested.
• 59:13
  Speaker 6: It's the one that you have a hard time like recuperating.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, it is like so much so. And
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: it's like I think that it's because this conversation happens
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: when the movie is actively losing me God that I'm like,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to feel about that, and then
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: the movie moves so quickly through the end, yet I
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: feel like I've never really fully understood how to feel
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right, we'll talk about it.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: So Mary is like, hmm, maybe she's right, Maybe I
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: do need to go back to being a wife and
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: a caretaker to my husband. Then Mary receives a call
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: from Stephen, and she's coming in with this renewed sense
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: of love and hope, and it seems like she's willing
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: to call the divorce off until she learns that the
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: reason Stephen is calling is to tell her that he
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: married Crystal Allan earlier that day. So Mary is devastated
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: all over again.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: Night before. Why why aggressive?
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: Like, literally the moment she gets divorced, he goes out
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: and gets married to someone else.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 7: Time to die, Time to just life in prison without
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 7: the possibility.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: Of work, anti KURSRL, except for.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: Step except for Stephen. Okay, we cut to Crystal. It's
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: I believe, like a year and a half later. She's
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: in the bathtub and she she's horrible, she's entitled, she's cruel,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: and she is cheating on Stephen with another man. And
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: she and Little Mary have a chat because she's now
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: little Mary's stepmother, and Little Mary is like, oh, you
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: think I don't like you, Well, you're right, I hate you,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: but I never said it, but I never said it
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: because I'm polite.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 6: Polite, I'm proper.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 7: I didn't say it to your face, but you made
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 7: me say it to me because now you said that
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 7: I don't like you when you're right.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: And you're right. Then Sylvia comes in because she and
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: Crystal are friends now, and Sylvia learns that Crystal's new
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: lover is a man named buck Winston, who is the
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: current husband of the Countess de lave No, Mary's friend
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: who she met on the train to Reno.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Who has who has basically fab we later learned fabricated
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: the career to make her loser, cheating husband feel better.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: And you're just like ooh ooh, okay, anti cars rule,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: but maybe not for buck Winston.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 6: Maybe yeah, abolition but not for him.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: Maybe jail for him, Yes, yes, yes.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: Then Mary has a conversation with her daughter where Little
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: Mary reveals that Stephen is miserable in his relationship with
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: Crystal and that Crystal is clearly having an affair with
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: someone else, which once again gives Mary a renewed sense
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: of hope. She's ecstatic, thinking that she can possibly win
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: Stephen back, so she rushes off to a restaurant where
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: she knows that Sylvia and Crystal and Stephen are going
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: to be Yes, there's this convoluted thing that I was
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: having a hard time following, But basically she gets Sylvia
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: to admit that Cristal is having an affair with Buck
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: Winston in front of and I don't know if this
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: person is a gossip columnist or someone.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: Who just okay the gossip columnists.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: I was like, maybe she just like spreads gossip for fun.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: But rather than writing about it, this gossip columnist just
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: runs into the room and loudly announces to everyone about
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: this affair.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: That's how that job works, right, it does Macana.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 6: I mean, I think you can call it that it.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: Is gossip x Macana.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: So now Stephen knows that his new wife Cristal is
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: cheating on him, and so he wants to reconcile with Mary,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: so she runs back to him, and then the movie
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: ends with the implication that Mary and Stephen will get
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: back together the end.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 7: I think it's important to remember also that the final
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 7: shot is Mary putting her hands out super melodramatically crying
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 7: but with joy rushing towards Stephen, and we are the
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 7: first time that we get that close to the subjectivity
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 7: of a man. We are this is like male gaze
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 7: one oh one, right. We are in the position as
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 7: the audience of Stephen, So while we never see him,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 7: we inhabit him figuratively as she's rushing towards us, which
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 7: one could use to argue either way that it's a
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 7: deeply sexist ending or that it's actually kind of an
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 7: amazing ending. We're really the romance stories between the audience
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 7: and Norma Shearer and not Stephen.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Sure, okay, And then before we kick to break, it's
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: like it's worth mentioning that that gossip columnist is played
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: by the gossip calumnists of.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: The day had a hopper who comes up.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 6: Wow, I didn't know that.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's really a really fun cameo in the movie.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: Okay, and with that, yes, let's take a quick break
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: and we'll be back to discuss. And we're back.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, where the hell to start?
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 7: Can I before we start with specifics, can I do
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 7: like a like a I don't know, this isn't exactly
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 7: a read, but I want to like lay out.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 6: The case, please please please?
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 7: Okay, So I want to start by saying, like to
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 7: anyone's current eyes if you were to watch this movie today,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 7: on its face, it is so obviously sexist as to
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 7: be like not even a question. And let's lay out
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 7: what those are. The comparison at the beginning of women
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 7: to animals coming in hut, The idea that women seem
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 7: to live in a universe where all they do is
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 7: talk about men and their relationships with men, their entire
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 7: life orbits of the desire of men, the money of men, etc.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 7: The perception that women are against each other, that they
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 7: turn on each other.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 6: That they are caddy.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 7: It begins with another animal allegory where these two rich
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 7: women are walking into a salon and their dogs are fighting,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 7: and the dogs fighting are symbolic of women fighting with
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 7: each other.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 7: There is a continual blame the victim story in which
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 7: women are made to feel that it's their fault that
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 7: men cheat on them, that they aren't understanding enough. And
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 7: of course the ending, which is a reconciliation with a
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 7: cheating husband that would appear to tell you.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 6: Like this is so sexist. However, what I want to
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: say is that those elements are the.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 7: Movies payoff to Hollywood to be able to do something
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 7: feminist like the ending is the way in which Hollywood
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 7: gets its way so that women can take center stage.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 7: And if you think about it, the structure of that
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 7: is completely undermined by the formal logic of the movie.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 7: So if the plot appears to be really sexist, everything
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 7: about the form is not.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: It is a movie that is only about women.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 7: Women are the center of the screen, and they are
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 7: presented in a way that both allows for the male
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 7: gaze but is really about the gaze.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 6: And their gaze on women. Right.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 7: So like, while we do see women in this pleasurable,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 7: fetishized way, it's usually to celebrate fashion, and it's usually
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 7: to celebrate the pleasure of a woman's form.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 6: So number one, there's that. Number two, it.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 7: Is a movie that is ballistic dialogue between women. It
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 7: caused every single sequence is like a seven minute extended
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 7: moment in which women are talking to each other constantly,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 7: and even if patch the Bechdel test they are always
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 7: talking about men, what they're really talking about is what
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 7: the feminist psychoanalyst Dorothy.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 6: Dinnersteine would call sexual arrangement.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 7: The movie continually presents different competing theories of what gender is,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 7: so like in every moment, there is a woman in
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 7: every different class saying well, I think gender is this.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 7: I think gender is this. The mom is like, gender
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 7: is compromise, right, like other people are like, actually, gender
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 7: should be about liberation.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 6: Actually it should be about this. There are competing visions of.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 7: What gender is, and the fact that a movie in
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 7: nineteen thirty nine is presenting a bunch of women talking
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 7: about competing models of gender. The reason it seems sexist
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 7: to us today is because one of the models that
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 7: is not acceptable in the moment is simply the idea
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 7: that women could exist without men. But the economic structure
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 7: of American society does not even make that viable, because
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 7: to be without a man is to essentially be working class,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 7: and rather thence make that invisible.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 6: We see it all over the movie.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 7: We see many single women who are working class, who
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 7: are like, the only way I can work within the
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 7: system is to try to steal a rich woman's husband.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 7: Those women are very aware that the arrangements of gender
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 7: are always temporary, and so part of what is so
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 7: feminist about the movie is that because the women talk
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 7: so openly and honestly about different models of gender, they
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 7: always acknowledge that gender is sort of miserable that gendered
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 7: arrangements between men and women provide temporary security. The Countess
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 7: de lav will have this amazing moment at the end
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 7: where she's like, she seems like she's happily married for
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 7: a fifth time, and she looks at all the women
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 7: and she says, isn't it so lovely that we're all
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 7: settled for now at least, right? And she is so
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 7: aware they're all aware that it's all bullshit, that the
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 7: entire system is temporary, it's contingent, it's always being overthrown,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 7: and the working class women know what the best Because
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 7: when Crystal Allen, while she fights so hard to get
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 7: her quote unquote meal ticket by marrying this guy, when
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 7: she ruins it all and it blows up in her face,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 7: how quick she is to say, h, I guess I'll
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 7: work at the counter again. She knows that all of
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 7: these arrangements are temporary, and so at the end of
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 7: the day, the movie is so unbelievably realistic about how
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 7: the fantasy at the end of getting back with your
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 7: husband or whatever is just that it's a fantasy and
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 7: it's temporary, and so I think part of its genius
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 7: is that it's honest about the fantasy.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 6: And the last thing I will say for the moment,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 6: for the.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 7: Case is that it is one of the rare texts
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 7: that we could say that this is really patriarchal, but
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 7: that acknowledges that men are part of that arrangement and
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 7: that men are also miserable with it, right that, Like,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 7: that's why I love that conversation with Mary, because Marianne
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 7: is not totally wrong. She's like, Mary, what do you
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 7: think your husband was gonna do? He's now been publicly
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 7: embarrassed by his infidelity. He has to make the infidelity legitimate.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 7: So he's gonna do the silliest thing ever, which is
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 7: what men always do. He's gonna get married to this woman.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 7: He doesn't even love to make it look legitimate. Yeah,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 7: And she's saying, like, you created the conditions.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 6: You were also part of the game.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 7: And I think what's important is we live in a
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 7: moment today where we think that feminism means women are
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 7: always right, they are always injured by men, as opposed
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 7: to like a radical feminist view in the seventies is like,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 7: women are injured by men, but women also participate in
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 7: injuring men and in creating the conditions where they are
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 7: injured by men.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that that is still a facet of
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: modern feminism as well.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: It's like holding other women to account.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 6: Oh for sure.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 7: I don't think it's the popular discourse of feminism.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: I guess I disagree.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 6: Oh okay, yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 7: I think my experience has been that men are basically
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 7: like their view of feminism today is like everything we
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 7: do is wrong.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but men are always wrong, so that I actually.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 6: Can go along with that. I think it's also fair
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 6: to say that women are also wrong sometimes.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: No, but that's what I'm saying, is like that women.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: I do think there is a lot of vital discussion
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: among women in modern feminism, holding each other to account
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: and figure it out. I don't think that there is
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: like a through line of like, yeah, oh, we all
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: agree with each other and we have only.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: Been injured by men, and men cannot possibly be our allies.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 7: No, you're totally right, I think. Tell me if you
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 7: agree with this. I don't think that nuance has been
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 7: translating to the mass public.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 4: I definitely don't think it's translated to the internet.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 7: I mean when I teach young men, even really progressive men.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 7: They have not received the message that there is a
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 7: nuanced conversation going on within contemporary feminism that includes any
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 7: of their interests or the idea that they might also
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 7: be injured and that they might all like, I don't
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 7: think they perceive that.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: I agree, but I guess I like a lot of
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: my read of why that is is not necessarily primarily
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: because of how feminists are talking to or about men.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: It has to do with how feminism is presented to
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: them by other men, and like, I feel so much
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: of that, so much like the I don't know, I've
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: done like a fair amount of like research and repretting
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: on the manisphere and how the.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: Ideas of feminism are twisted to seem completely exclusionary to
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: men and then.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: Having it sold back to like don't even try, yeah,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: to talk to women because they hate you.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: And I don't think that's true.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 6: Totally Yeah, No, I think that's totally fair.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 7: But I like that the movie it never really deeply
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 7: investigates this, but it suggests that men and women are
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 7: participating mutually in a quite miserable and unhappy sexual arrangement. Yes,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 7: that should be changed, but the movie doesn't exactly know
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 7: how to change it.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 6: It does have the conversation totally.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: I would also add that, like monogamy, culture contributes to
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: a lot of this, and like, yeah, for some people,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: monogamy is very restrictive. And it appears to me that
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: a lot of the characters in this movie, men and
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: women alike, are non monogamous. They're not practicing it ethically,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: but they seem interested in having multiple partners at the
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: same time, because almost everyone in this movie is cheating
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: on their spouse. But the expectation at the time was
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: that everyone present to society as though they are monogamous.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: But if these characters were more open to like I
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: don't know, like using older terminology, but like being swingers,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: like some.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: Of them kind of like soft are anyway.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 6: Oh god, right, yeah, well that's also it's so sexual.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 7: There's so much sex happening without it being erotic movie
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 7: at all. And he does seem like everybody's cheating on everybody,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 7: and it's kind of commonly known that that happens, and
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 7: divorce has happened now, right right.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: I mean I think going off of that was like
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: thank you for articularly in that this is so good.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 6: So I just wanted to lay out the larger Yeah.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I feel like, for me, this movie
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: is presenting a lot of stereotypes of the time that
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: are I mean, it is really bizarre watching this like
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: eighty seven year old movie and seeing like, oh.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: A lot of this is making a really intense comeback.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: Right now, including the values of marriage and what does
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: it mean and all this stuff. Yeah, but what I
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: think like saves this movie from becoming impossibly dated is
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: you're right, like women writers and women lend productions at
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: this time had to play ball yeah to be released.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: And while I do think.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: A lot of stereotypes and stereotypical misogyny are presented, almost
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: all of it is common upon yes, and like the
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: characters are frustrated by it, even if they are playing
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: into it.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: That's part of why I find I think Sylvia is
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: my favorite character.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: Oh interesting, I really appreciate her from a number of levels,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: but also like she just seems to me someone who
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: Maybe on the page, is like internalize a lot of
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: misogyny and.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: Is projecting it back, and it's like presented almost as
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: like she's doing it for fun.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: I think you can really find someone like who's very wounded.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: In her because she's never the way she talks about
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: her husband, who eventually.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: Leaves her for another woman, she's very dismissive of him.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: She's like, I don't care fuck that guy, blah blah blah.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 6: She's also like, I gave you my youth.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: It's not resentful, but it's I think that a lot
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: of the ways, really, with the exception of Mary, the
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: ways that the women in this story talk about men,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: it's not about them, it's about how it's about survival
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: in an environment that is not designed for their independent survival.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 4: So it's like about survival and it's.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: About how they're perceived by the women around them, which
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: is part of why I kind of feel for Sylvia.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: Where she's not trying to get a man, she's not
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: trying to keep a man. She is hyper fixated on
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: what the women around her are doing and trying to
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: like win their favor or not. Where like how she
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: like gloms on to Crystal after her falling out with
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: Mary feels so telling where it's just like, yes, it's
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: their approval that matters. It's not her fucking loser husband,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: but the losing her husband affects how women see her,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: and losing her husband affects her ability to survive. And
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: it's just like, I don't know, Yeah, there's like so
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: much interesting stuff going on.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: That I feel like it's like, oh, let me know,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 4: how do you feel about this?
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: But I think that like Mary is the only person
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: in this movie who seems to.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: Genuinely have affection for her spouse, and the.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: Rest is like it's survived because like you're saying, like,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: how old are you going to survive at this time
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: particular before I mean, and again, this is a very
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: white conversation.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 13: Yeah, because white women were actively encouraged to not work,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 13: and it was the shape like and and that was
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 13: not the case for any other racial demographic at the
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 13: time that are completely ignored by this story, partially because
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 13: of the Hayes.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: Code, but also if you keep scrolling on Claire Looses,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wanted to say, like, she's an incredible figure,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: but she gets pretty conservative later in her life. She
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: was elected to office, she served at the House of Representatives,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: like started pro Roosevelt, then later turns on him.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 7: Interesting, also groundbreaking. I mean, that's a pretty cliche. That's
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 7: a pretty cliche arc right, Yeah, for a lot of people,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 7: for a lot of people in the culture industry.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: It's very exactly. Yeah. I was like, and we can whatever,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: how many people can we think of now? I mean
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 4: we can start with jk. Rowling, the the like successful
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: woman writer, tough for people person pipeline.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 6: I know what is going on, so.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: Not to like endorse all of her views because she
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: to this day there is like I'm seeing like.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: A loose like conservative women's club that exists to this day,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: which is pretty diabolical.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: But anyways, getting back to.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like this this movie, even though the tagline
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: is it's all about men, I don't think that's true.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: I think it is about how women.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: Perceive each other. Yeah, at this time, and I wish
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: that they that we got to see more of it.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: I wish that we got to you know, like it
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: would be. I think there is room in this movie
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: to have a better understanding of the working class women's
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: lives outside of how they perceive the upper class.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: There's sure there's room for a lot of different things.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: But I don't know. Yeah, I guess if.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: You go with this movie's marketing, it's all about men,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: but it's just like it is it just it clearly
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: isn't It's about a lot of frustrated women trying to
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: figure out how they're going to survive in a political
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: climate that is designed to leave them reliant on men.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: Yes, and well, speaking to both the stereotypes present in
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: this movie and the rampant whiteness, and to your point, Ramsey,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: like one of the reasons that this movie, again looking
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: at it through our modern twenty twenty six lens, the
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: way the women are presented and their interests and their behavior,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: so much of it is again very catty, very gossipy.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: Women are superficial, They're obsessed with their appearance and their
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: beauty regimens, like all these very stereotypical things. But also
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: we have to remember that most of the characters in
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: this movie are affluent white women who are classist and
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: racist and fatshlobic and a number of other things. And
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: the thing like, affluent white women usually are caddy and
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: superficial and cruel and harbor a lot of prejudices toward
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: marginalized people. And I know that, like there are you know,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: you can read deeper into that, and you know there
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: is a discussion about, like, well, the context behind why
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: these women are so caddy is because there is a
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: survival component and because there are so many constraints to
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: how they are able to survive, so they have to
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: sort of game the system or play the game or whatever.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that I think the.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: Movie, you know, a lot of it is like contextual
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: and implicit. There aren't that many explicit conversations about that.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: And you know, again, it's nineteen thirty nine, it's whatever.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: But I kind of came away from it being like, yeah,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: we do see a lot of stereotypes about women, but
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: it's a bunch of rich white women and.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 4: It feels pretty true, like how, yeah, like how women
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 4: in this position would have behaved.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know, because I do think like there are moments. Yeah,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: I'm curious about you.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: You think Gramsey of like, I think you have one
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: specific class moment in the movie that I don't remember.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: I think it's Edith. There's one hundred and forty women
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: in the movie. I'm pretty sure it's Edith.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: It's after what I think, because I like, I love
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: Roslin russell performances and her physical.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: Comedy is just like she's following a crash. She's like
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: the Hillary Duff of her time she is pratt falling, yeah,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 4: and that I have always loved that, like weird Pilates scene, or.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: She's like whipping her legs around and delivering forty pages.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 4: Of dialogue like it's unreal.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 6: Well, and that's okay.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 7: So this if I if I'm if my premonition is correct,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 7: you're gonna tak That's an amazing moment. Yes, where she
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 7: has paid along with her friend Peggy. She has paid
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 7: for them to have a class, an exercise class that
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 7: is calisthenics, and she wastes it by gossiping the whole
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 7: time and then kind of cutting it short. And the
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 7: woman who's leading the class is like, are.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 6: You sure you want me to leave?
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 7: And she's like, yeah, I do. And finally the woman
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 7: is like, this is such a waste of money.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, she says like shut the hell up. But she says,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 4: if you could just relax your muscles from the chin up,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: and you're like, oh, okay, right.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 7: But I do think that it is a moment in
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 7: which a certain kind of wealth in the United States,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 7: like returning to Gilded Age moment. There are women who
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 7: are watching this wealth being wasted and saying like oh
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 7: my God, like your emotional and sexual profligacy, like the
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 7: fact that you guys are all miserable in your marriages
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 7: and it's all sort of a sham. Is redoubled in
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 7: the fact that you guys waste so much money, like
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 7: in the service industry, and that is like shocking to people.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 7: But I want to also comment on types and stereotypes, right, Like,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 7: stereotypes are not all the same in the sense that
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 7: some are more pernicious than others. We can say that
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 7: stereotyping in all forms is pernicious, but the reality is
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 7: that human beings in habit types, and not because we're
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 7: innately or essentially so, but because Like the problem with stereotypes,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 7: right is that they say, well, this group of people
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 7: is essentially like this, all black people are like this,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 7: or all queer people are like this. If you have
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 7: a different view of typology that says types are socially
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 7: constructed and we see them modeled for us the way
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 7: gender is. Right, Like, the flamboyant gay man is a type,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 7: and I have inhabited that type.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 6: I know a lot of people who've inhabited that. When
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 6: you watch gay media, like Looking or Fellow Travelers, you're like, oh.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 7: My god, that's that gay guy. That's that gay guy.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 7: I know that person, right, I recognize that person. What
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 7: the movie does that's so great. I think it drills
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 7: down less into stereotype although it's all over the movie,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 7: and more into types. It's about the there's a reason
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 7: why there's so many women in the movie because it's
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 7: multiplying the types of women that you see in a
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 7: crowd like this. And one of the ways that type
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 7: apology is played out is that different types are represented
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 7: by their individual choices of the kinds of psychological compensatory
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 7: things they pursue to make up for the failures of marriage.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 7: Edith is the one that decides, I'll have an endless
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 7: number of babies. Oh yeah, and that's a type, right.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 7: They keep making fun of her because they're just like,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 7: oh my god, like another.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: One of eight children.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 4: Now it's I was like, okay, Catholic coded. They're totally so.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 7: The idea that like, she's the type of woman who
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 7: compensates for the failures of marriage to live up to
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 7: all of its promises by having a lot of babies.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 7: Rosalind Russell's Sylvia compensates by taking everybody down a peg, right,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 7: like that is her joy.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, out of clear insecurity, which I think is like
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: clearly telegraphed in the performance and on the page.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah there's Yeah, I found the lae I was looking for.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: It is a line from again I'm like one of
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: the older women. I'm not totally sure because she also
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: covered in cosmetics.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 4: But it's after that moment you were talking about Ramsey.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: Where like, yeah, the pilates or whatever, the exercise instructor
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: is like all right, I'm gonna leave.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and she's.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 14: So clueless, and it's like it is a good pestige
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 14: of like clueless, wealthy white women, where she says, honestly,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 14: the class feeling you run into, I'm so sick of
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 14: paying creatures like that to insult me, calling a working
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 14: class woman a creature, and also fully not questioning that.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: She may have been in the wrong, like it's just,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: it's just and it's it's kind of fun seeing that
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: played out by actors.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 4: Who are we know, privileged white women.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, totally also in that scene because Peggy eventually
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: comes in and starts doing the Calisenics with truly the
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: worst form I've ever seen, like the form of these.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 4: I know, like Frankensteining toward the camera. Totally so funny.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it made me laugh. But Peggy comes in, So
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: she's the one who is newly married. She seems to
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: be a bit naive, and it also seems as though
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: she makes more money than her husband.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 6: And her husband that's a problem.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: Very clearly resents her for it. He makes her give
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: him the money that she earns. He won't let her
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: buy a car with her own money, like all of
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 3: these things, and she tries to So she is sort
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: of in a different place class wise than her peers
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: because she has a job. We don't know what it is.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: I don't think she works for her own money. And
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: her husband, unlike all these other women, is not wealthy,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: so she's sort of in a different position in class
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: than her peers. She tries to confide in Sylvia and
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: then later and Mary about this financial situation she has
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: had with her husband. Neither of them really know what
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: to do in response to this. But I also like
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: to speak to your point about types, like we do
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: see so many different types of well not so many
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: different types, but different types of women. They are various
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 3: positions in life. There are various perspectives in life. Some
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: of that is informed by class, some of it is
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: informed by generation and age and experience, some of you know,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: all these different things. And that is one of the
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: things I appreciate about this movie. And I don't know
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: if we want to turn gears to Mary's mother, but
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: I feel like we all have so much to say
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: she about her fascinating. She's major because she's one of
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: the older characters. She's an older generation than most of
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: the women who are like piling around together. She is
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 3: very much someone who like recognizes that, like men's behavior
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: is often questionable, a lot of them tend to lie
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: and cheat, but she insists that you just have to
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: accept it. So in that way, she's she's upholding patriarchal
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: expectations and like allowing men to have the power to
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: be shitty and to display all this horrible behavior. She's
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: just like, that's how we have to survive. Don't even
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: say anything about it, don't do anything about it, just
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: accept it. Boys will be boys.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: And also reveals, I mean, yeah, that seemed really always
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: kind of stops me in my tracks because it also
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: reveals that like it comes from a place of like
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: a very personal place, because she experienced it, yeah, and
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: that her daughter had no idea as.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 4: A very much an adult. I just that seems so much.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: It's so weird to watch now because I think that,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: you know, while it is cool to see Norma Chera's
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: character stand up to her mother about that, because it
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: is clearly ideals that need to be pushed back on
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: and exist in a larger conversation, but there is like
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: a level of like pragmatism that a lot of this
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: movie talks about that I think is again, like you've
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: both referenced, at this point, there is no clear solution,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: but it's interesting. I'm like, I don't know if it's
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: my I don't know how to feel about it, but
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: I definitely notice.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: That there is this element of like.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: Mary acts on her righteous anger and her righteous feeling disrespected,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: and she acts on her personal politics and her personal values,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: and she sulfers for it, and that is like a
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: very I think that that's something we don't often see
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: in movies, because movies are meant to show you like
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: that following your heart can only.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 4: Achieve a positive and uncomplicated result.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: This does not achieve a positive and uncomplicated result.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 4: She's very like I mean she she finds.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: I like that we see her find herself over time,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: but it is not immediate.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: I still don't think she should go back to Steven
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: at the end, but I think that it is interesting
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 4: watching her Reno narrative and watching the eighteen months later narrative.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: Where you see her like learn to be okay, but
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: the world is judging her for it, and that is
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: is like I think, a more realistic view of people
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: whose you know, personal politics and values don't align with
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: their culture acting on them like it is a long
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: and difficult road, and I appreciate that her.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 4: Mother is able to accept that, even.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: If she doesn't completely agree with it. I was reminded,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know like my parent, like my It's just
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: interesting that to know that that that line of thinking
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: doesn't go away, especially when it comes to like how
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: do you manage this situation when there's children involved?
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 4: And I really love there's a line with Mary that
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 4: feels very.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: Just reminiscent of many divorces, including my parents, where it's
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: like she says something like, well, what good is it
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: going to do little Mary if she grows up in
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: this like miserable household that is full of tension and
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: unresolved contra conflict.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 4: What is the point of that?
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and she's right, and also that doesn't mean that
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: this divorce isn't going to be very difficult and complicated
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: for everybody. And I just like, especially in the in
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: like the context of like a pretty fast paced talkie comedy,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: to have complicated ideas like that presented with the almost
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: like realism of like and we don't know how to
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: resolve it.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 15: It's part of why I find the ending so like, ooh,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 15: I would like even if there was a way under
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 15: the Hayze code for the ending to be more ambiguous
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 15: than it is.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 4: Whatever it was eighty seven years ago, I get it.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: But it's been eighty four years.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 4: It's been and then some.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: But like, it's just it is really interesting to see
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: these cyclical conversations that exist among women and within feminism
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: presented so clearly.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 7: Yeah, because I mean, if you think about that conversation,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 7: the part of it that is boys will be boys
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 7: is when she says, this is how men resolve their unhappiness.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 7: Women do it by change their hair or remodeling their house.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 7: So that part is essentialist, right, She's saying, well, women
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 7: have a way of doing it.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 4: Men have a way of doing it.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 7: Yeah, but the underlying message is actually way more complex.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 7: She's saying men and women are equal in the fact
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 7: that they're existentially both unhappy. Like that is such a
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 7: powerful thing, And all I could think of when I
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 7: rewatched it, if you put it in the current moment,
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 7: is that if you think about the you know, the
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 7: brilliant psychotherapist as their Parrell who writes all about how
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 7: like we now have in our current era, this obsession
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 7: with the idea that if someone cheats on you, it
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 7: should destroy the whole relationship and blah blah blah, blah blah.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 7: And she says, that's a completely new paradigm. The idea
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 7: that people have affairs and that that's basically normalized was
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 7: completely like that was common knowledge, you know, before this era,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 7: because the idea was security mattered more than sexual fidelity,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 7: right that having a lot like right, like the mom
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 7: says it matters who you and like who's with you
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 7: at the end, right, And Parrela is not saying the
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 7: earlier model is good and the new model is bad.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 7: She's saying each one of them are good and bad
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 7: in their own ways, and She says, one of the
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 7: bad parts of the contemporary model is that we play
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 7: such a premium on sexual fidelity that if someone cheats
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 7: on you, there's no possibility for repair. It's not seen
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 7: as the potential for the beginning of a new chapter
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 7: of the relationship. And there is no attempt to understand
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 7: why someone cheated. And I think that there's an amazing,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 7: you know, thing that the movie is saying that is, like,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 7: maybe it's worth exploring that men do these things because
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 7: they're unhappy, and women also do things because they're unhappy.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 7: The movie can't accept the idea that women also cheat,
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 7: that women also have affairs.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 4: Well, but Crystal, you know, like Crystal, that's actually right.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: I take that back, and Miriam, it's pretty accepted that
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: Miriam does, so yeah, you're so right.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 4: Is interesting though, Yeah, I totally. I mean, if we
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 4: start talking about the politics of cheating, will be her
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 4: all night.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: Sure, But like, it is interesting how this movie approaches it,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: because I don't know, like, in my perspective, the way
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: that cheating is handled culturally is like almost irrelevant to
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: the point where like it's it's culturally relevant, but it's.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 4: Like it just depends on the people involved, right, Like,
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 4: it's just like there are some people who can whatever.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 4: It's it's all circumstantial.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and for Mary, she can't tolerate it, you know,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: and that and she acts on that, and then there
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: are relationships.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 4: That can withstand that can and like handle that stress test.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 4: But I don't know, it is like you're totally right
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 4: like that that.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 16: That can of worms is opened and it's an unresolvable
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 16: can of worms. Oh totally and like and I like
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 16: that the movie doesn't pretend I mean again, the ending
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 16: kind of feels like nope, if you're I guess like
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 16: that's part of why.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: It's an idea introduced in this fascinating way by her
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: mom in a way that is clearly personal, in a
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: way that is clearly pragmatic, in a way that she
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to see.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 4: Her daughter lose the security that she has.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: So it's almost like, you know, love isn't enough, but
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: it's nineteen thirty nine, so what are you going to do?
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 4: It's an interesting idea to present, but then I feel
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 4: like the.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 12: End of the movie kind of overvalidates it by I
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 12: don't know, I guess, like the way that this movie
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 12: is in conversation with like first wave feminism is interesting
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 12: because obviously, like first wave feminism was deeply racist.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: And homopholedic, as is to some degree every way of feminism.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: But with regards to like marriage, first wave feminism did
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: accomplish a lot in terms of like pushing back on the.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 4: Idea that a man is essential to survival.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: And I feel like the movies that we see in
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: the years following women getting the vote are trying to
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: interact with that idea.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 4: While subtly being like, but you should still probably be married,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 4: you know, like that, and that's the ending.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 7: And let's add that they need to for economic reasons.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 7: I mean, something we haven't talked about is like the
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 7: movie It very honestly dramatizes the fact that this dysfunctional
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 7: sexual arrangement between men and women that we call heterosexuality
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 7: feeds our economy.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 6: Yes, like it is absolutely important.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 7: The fact that women respond to feeling left alone, feeling undesirable, unloved,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 7: that they go and spend tons of money on clothes,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 7: that they buy tons of things for the house, that
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 7: they travel, that they go on vacation. The idea that
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 7: like this arrangement keeps people in their place and keeps
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 7: the economy running. Reno is basically like funded by the
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 7: fact that tons of women go there and pay money
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 7: to be in these like sort of halfway houses and
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 7: all of this stuff.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 6: So I think that the movie is really honest.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 7: About the fact that heterosexuality also feeds the economy. And
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 7: I think it's an interesting historical context to think that
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 7: the movie is right on the cusp of the moment
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 7: when millions of American women will enter the workforce as
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 7: part of the World War two effort, right, and they
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 7: will end at the end of that many of them
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 7: will end up like Peggy, which is that they will
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 7: be making their own money and they will start to
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 7: be like, do I really want to go back?
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 6: The government has to go through a.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 7: Massive cultural effort to literally fund making people go back
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 7: into the suburban. Like the GI Bill is the government
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 7: saying we will pay you a check and pay for
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 7: you to go to school and buy a house if
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 7: you get married and if women stop working, like that's
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 7: the payoff. So I think like the movie is at
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 7: the cusp of that moment.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it is such a weird historical moment for
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: this movie to come out, But it's so interesting and like, yeah,
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: unfortunately because we're living in love fucking ra boris Like
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: it feels very real evant to a lot of stuff
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: that we're talking about now, where it's like we have
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: significant government forces trying to force marriage back upon women,
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: force comphet ideals and punish people who are who resist that,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, it is interesting having a character
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: like Mary who's pushing back on it, but the moral
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, the last words out of her mouth are like,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: I don't have time for pride.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 4: I'm in love.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: Like but having that, like we've been talking about, like
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: having that sort of like challenged by the working class
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: girls where there is still even though Mary's come so
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: far as a person, there's always going to be sort
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: of this baseline privileged naivete about her worldview she can
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: afford to, you know, be doing this. Crystal is like
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: survival wise in this world, I have to go back
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: to work, if.
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 17: You know, and absolutely work making sucks ass and there's
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 17: not a lot of like fun interesting jobs available to
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 17: women at this time and so like, I don't know,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 17: I just I have a lot of I mean, Crystal
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 17: is So it's also just fun watching like a Joan
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 17: Crawford villain.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: Oh sure, because she's just so good at being a bitch.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 6: She's like wicked. She looks like wicked.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 4: Eyebrows, and it's just like amazing. I know.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 7: The fact that it's painted on is also kind of
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 7: Hollywood saying like she's an authentic her and her eyebrows.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, her and Rosalind Russell.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: In anytime they're together on screen, I'm like, woo, it's
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: just I love them. But but yeah, like that that,
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: you know, she has to sort of go back, but
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like I don't know, like by the
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: end of the movie, it almost feels like this weird
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: handshake between the two.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 4: Women where she like, it's not they're never gonna be friends,
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 4: like why the hell would they be, But it's almost like,
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 4: all right, you in this round, we play the game,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah you next time, bitch, Like it's kind of fun.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 4: I don't know, And is that misogynous?
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 17: Yeah, but there, I don't know.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 4: It's just it's such a beefy little text.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 6: It's also honest in a way.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, because it's like the world is not going
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: to repair in their favor anytime soon, so the chances
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: are we will be encountering this issue again until the
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: world is different totally well.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: To me, there are three major reasons why the ending
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 3: is so frustrating. One is that for a while, the
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 3: movie seems to be on a trajectory where we think
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 3: it's going to end with Mary like fully realizing and
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 3: coming to terms and being content with the decision she
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: has made to leave her husband and not settle for
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 3: a man who is dishonest and doesn't meet her emotional needs.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: But then she goes back with him after he realizes
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 3: that his current wife is cheating on him. So that's
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 3: reason number one, where there's a certain trajectory, a certain
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 3: of expectation that the movie starts to set up for
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 3: the audience, and then it's like, just kidding, Nope, never mind. Yeah,
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 3: number two and this is kind of part of this,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 3: but Stephen has done nothing to redeem himself, nothing true,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 3: earn her back or anything like that. It's just that
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 3: he's gotten a taste of his own medicine. He's been
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 3: cheated on, and now he knows how it feels, so
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 3: he'll go back with his first wife.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 4: And you're just like, that's not how that works. That
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 4: there is an element of like he started it. She
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 4: was not doing anything wrong. She was driving, she was
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 4: driving horses. She was whatever she was doing when.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: She was quote unquote supposed to do, which is also
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know, just like such a I whatever, my
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: dad's dead, it's fine, like my but like listening to
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: how my mom processed infidelity within their relationship, it was
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: like not dissimilar to Mary.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 4: I mean, if we didn't have fucking horses, we were poor.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: But the idea of like I was doing all of
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: the right things, how could this have possibly happened to me?
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: And like almost like it's the disappointment and anchor of
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: being cheated on, But it's also the like I mean
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: questioning the entire view of the world where it's like
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: you've done everything right and your worst case scenario still happens,
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: So what now?
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 4: And I feel like, Yeah, the ending does not really
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 4: pay off on that.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: Because it's like, oh, she goes on this whole journey
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: of self discovery, she seems basically happy, and then she
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: just goes back to where she was.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like the arc that the movie seems like it
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: was setting up for her is just like completely abandoned.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 3: And again Hollywood movies of this era had to adhere
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 3: to the restrictions of the Hayes Code, which was all
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 3: about promoting you know, family values aka conservative Christian American values. Yeah,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 3: but it still makes for a frustrating conclusion to this narrative.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 3: And then the third reason that I find this ending
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 3: to be frustrating is that Mary cooks up this little
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 3: scheme where she exposes Crystal for having an affair, and
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 3: this happens at the expense of her friend, the Countess,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 3: who humiliated. She's devastated, and Mary does not seem to
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 3: give a single shit that she hurt her friend.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 7: I think it's because Mary wants to exercise a degree
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 7: of wickedness that she's never been able to write. Like
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 7: the movie allows her this because she's been jilted.
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 4: But like the Countess catches a serious stray.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I didn't even I honestly hadn't really fully
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: connected that because the ending moves so fast.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 3: Totally, yeah, it really does. But yeah, I'm just like
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 3: my second watch, I was like, oh my god, Like, yeah,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 3: the Countess is devastated, she's crying, she's been publicly humiliated,
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 3: and Mary's just like it doesn't matter. I have my
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 3: husband back.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 8: Hah.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 6: It's like she'll take one for the team.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, But it's like Countess has I don't know,
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: I really have liked the Countess Lucy, like older wiser
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: women who are presented as types, but who are also
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: does fundamentally wont to be supportive to the.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 4: Younger women going through what they've already been through.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: And so it's like that in that specifically, like in
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: that context that is so like they should be.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 4: Respect your elders. Norma Shearer.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Caitlin and Jamie jumping in with a quick pickup
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 3: because future us future us here. We ran out of
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 3: time during our recording with Ramsey, but we just wanted
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 3: to jump in here with just a quick pickup to
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 3: talk briefly about a character named Lulu. So basically, we
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 3: see a character at the department store where Crystal works.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 3: I believe it's one of Crystal's colleagues who makes a
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 3: racist joke about this character, Lulu, who we see very
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 3: briefly in a different scene, played by Butterfly McQueen. She
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 3: I believe plays a maid who works for Crystal.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 4: Which I believe it's true.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 18: But the fact that we have to guess tells you
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 18: how much we know about this character precisely, And Butterfly
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 18: McQueen was type cast very often as a maid, the
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 18: way that for many many years in Hollywood, black women
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 18: were type cast in service roles.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 3: Black actors in general were very limited, and.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: This same year, Butterfly McQueen famously played an enslaved character
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: and Gone with the.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 3: Wind, Yes, exactly. So I just wanted to share a
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: quote from her that is relevant to her character in
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 3: this movie, because she says, quote, I didn't mind playing
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: a maid the first time, because I thought that was
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 3: how you got into the business. But after I did
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: the same thing over and over, I resented it. I
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 3: didn't mind being funny, but I didn't like being stupid unquote.
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 3: As far as she's presented in this movie, i've I mean,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 3: we only see her in that very brief seen and
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: then we see white characters say racist things about her,
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 3: and that's really just all we get.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately, this is like nowhere near again. It's like,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: just speaking to Butterfly McQueen's nineteen thirty nine, this is
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: nowhere near the most offensive way that this actor has
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: been portrayed in this calendar year.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 4: So just again to speak to it.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 6: And this is also still.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: While the Hayes Code is in effect and it will
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: be for many years to come, which just inherently limited
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: the roles that were available to black actors, even if
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: creatives wanted to provide better roles, which is I mean, we.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 6: Could do it.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: Doctoral thesis is worth of discussion about.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 4: That, but feel's important to reference here.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, So, yeah, we just wanted to call attention to
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 3: that and shout out Butterfly McQueen. And then the last
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 3: thing and very seamlessly we're jumping back into the episode
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 3: is to examine whether or not this movie passes the
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 3: Bechdel test because there is a discussion to be had
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 3: around it.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 4: Does I think it does too.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: It is mostly women talking about men. I would say
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 3: probably ninety percent of the conversations are women talking about men. However,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 3: there are short exchanges where women talk about perfume, dresses,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 3: your right hair, sekincare, nail polish.
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 4: I also, I'll push back a little more.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: I think that there are a number of conversations in
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: this movie that are about how women perceive each other.
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 4: It is not the.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: Majority of the movie, but it is enough of it
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: that I feel like I'm officially against the tagline of
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: the movie.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 4: It's not all about men. It is a lot about men,
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 4: but it's not all about men.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 6: That's fair.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually agree with you both.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 7: I think that's exactly right. I also think, you know,
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 7: the women, it's very meta. The women talk about not
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 7: just men, but their relationship to the problem of relating
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 7: to men, like right, Like that I think is so interesting.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 7: I mean, the one thing I wanted to say in
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 7: this episode also was like, the movie that this reminds
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 7: me of the most is The Boys in the Band from.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 4: Nineteen seventy familiar.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 6: It's astonishing movie.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 7: It's the first movie with all out gay men as
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 7: main characters. The majority of the cast are gay men.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 7: There's two straight men in it. They're not straight in
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 7: the movie, but they're straight in real life. And you know,
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 7: it was first also a play on Broadway. It ran
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 7: for like a thousand shows, sold out. And what's amazing
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 7: is it has very similar structure that it is like
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 7: about a group of gay men living in New York,
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 7: most of whom are upper middle class, not rich at all.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 7: Most of them work, but they're middle upper class and
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 7: it's them screaming at each other for an entire evening
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 7: about their experiant of homophobia. And so one could argue
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 7: that it's a group of men talking about men, but
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 7: really what they're doing I have a whole chapter of
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 7: my second book about that happens, and I'm obsessed with it.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 7: They are talking about their their emotional and effective relationship
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 7: to the problem of male desire, right, Like they're just
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 7: like desiring men puts us in this marginalized position, but
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 7: also sort of is like sexy and makes life also
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 7: kind of a nightmare because men treat each other like garbage,
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 7: and like there's so much internalized homophobia, and it's them
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 7: working that out, and they do it in a way
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 7: that's very vicious towards each other.
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 6: And what I love about the movie is it was
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 6: panned in.
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 7: Its moments as homophobic, as stereotypes and blah blah blah.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 7: And one of the things I argue in my work
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 7: is like, but the genius of the movie is that
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 7: it's honest about the fact that when people who've been
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 7: marginalized first start to un pack the depth of their oppression,
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 7: they are going to be mean to each other. Like
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 7: it's going to bring up so much unresolved rage that
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 7: cannot be adequately projected onto the right sources, that they
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 7: will do it to each other. And that's honest, and
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 7: expecting people from jump to be super nice while they're
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 7: doing that right is unrealistic. And I love that the
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 7: movie basically says like there's a great moment at the
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 7: end where after this one friend has basically like annihilated
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 7: everybody and he gets socially punished by his friends for it,
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 7: and in the last moment, one of his best friends
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 7: looks at him and like just nails him to the wall,
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 7: like just is like you, how you have behaved tonight
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 7: is so disgusting.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 6: And then at the end of it is like I'll
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 6: call you tomorrow, all right, Like yeah.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 7: There's this amazing like like we know. And I think
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 7: The Women is an earlier version of this that is
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 7: about women trying to relieve themselves of the amount of rage, irritation,
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 7: and frustration they feel towards the way that men are
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 7: treating them, and they take it out on each other,
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 7: but they also have a very thick skin and their
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 7: ability to survive it and to also sort of like
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 7: be like Okay, whatever, I forgive you you know, like,
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 7: I guess i'll see it, see it tomorrow. Right, There
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 7: is this sense that that I think is the meat
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 7: of the movie, and I think the idea that it
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 7: ends with her returning the last thing I'll say about
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 7: the end. I think it's fair to say there's enough
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 7: of an intelligent audience who watched that movie and we're like, oh,
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 7: that's ridiculous, but I love the movie.
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 6: Yeah, right, who can see the ending as ridiculous?
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 3: It's it is ridiculous, as ridiculous as fantasy.
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, and also is like, well, I think what it
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: had to be to be released in the time it
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: came out, correct, Yeah, totally.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 3: I mean you could do you could do a super
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 3: cut from this movie that's just all the lines of
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 3: dialogue where women are saying something like men cannot be trusted,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 3: men only want one thing.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 7: Men, You're living enough fools paradise across generations, across class.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 3: That super cut would be like ten minutes long. Like,
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 3: there are so many examples absolutely this, and so what
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 3: you know, we we joke on the podcast sometimes that
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 3: it does pass the Bechdel test when women are like
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 3: shit talking men.
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 6: Sure, yeah, yeah.
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: I think this is a movie where you could actually
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: really make that argument, because yeah, some extent, it's.
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 4: Like in the period you're writing and releasing it into
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 4: what can you get away with?
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: And I think that this movie is doing almost everything
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: it can, not quite but more than most movies, and
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: more the most popular movies at this time could to
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 2: get away with a lot of stuff that even almost
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: one hundred years later, you're.
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 4: Like, oh, that was a good one, totally.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 6: It's really amazing.
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: The Bechdel test is one thing that what about the
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: world's only perfect media metric, which is the bechel Cast
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: Nipple scale.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 3: The nipple scale where we rate the movie on a
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 3: scale of z. I wrote to five nipples based on
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 3: examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. Now here's
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 3: the thing with this movie. To me, The Bechdel Cast
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 3: Nipples scale is such a modern metric, and to apply
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 3: it to a movie that's almost ninety years old, I don't.
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 3: I Just what I'm saying is I might I might
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 3: refrain from rating on the nipple scale because I have
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 3: no freaking idea.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 7: Well, I will, I will get I will whether we
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 7: rate it or Notah, I'm not overly attached to giving
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 7: it a rating.
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 7: Jennifer Nash, famous black feminist, she says, you know, in
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 7: her book Black Feminism Reimagined, She's like, one of the
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 7: problems with intersectional thought is that it has centered race
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 7: so intensely that it leaves out the question of, like,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 7: can you do an intersectional read where race is not
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 7: the dominant sure category? Right, And in this movie race
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 7: is everywhere without being talked about in terms of whiteness,
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 7: but blackness is not that which was centered or.
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 6: Other forms of racialization.
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 7: And yet it intersects age and class so intensely. Those
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 7: two you guys talked about the intergenerational competition. There's three
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 7: generations of women, the grandmothers, the mothers, and the daughters basically,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 7: and I think that classes everywhere. So I think, whether
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 7: you rat it or not, it is a deeply intersectional film.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 7: It's just not intersectional in the way that we associate
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 7: with with its origins and black feminist thought, because it
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 7: is it does not centralize race and or blackness specifically
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 7: as a primary vector of cultural analysis, which so few
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 7: movies from this era did totally, which is why, which
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 7: is why.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 4: It's like it's hard to apply this scale.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so well.
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 4: We can, we can, we can say we're going to
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 4: forego it.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: And if you want to know what we think, we
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: just recorded over two hours, so yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, just rewind and listen again. So with that, Ramsey,
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 3: thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 6: Oh my pleasure, this is such a GIF. Thank you
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 6: for having.
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 4: Me come back for I would love you whatever you want.
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 6: Okay, there's a million ideas I have.
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 4: We could totally oh yay perfect.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 3: Where can people follow your work? Check out your writing?
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 3: Plug anything you'd like to plug?
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 7: So, ramseyfowas dot com is a phenomenal resource. I have
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 7: all of my published essays available open source for people there.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 7: I have links to all my books, to the special
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 7: issues that I have edited, and I also have information
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 7: there about my yearly or annual courses at the Esslin Institute.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 7: The Esslin Institute is an extraordinary, world famous consciousness expansion
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 7: retreat on the edge of Big Sur, California. It's one
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 7: of the most beautiful, miraculous places you could go in.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 7: Every year, I offer a five day seminar where I
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 7: kind of take a lot of the ideas from my
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 7: scholarly work and I package them in a wellness model
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 7: where I kind of talk about how feminist feminist thought
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 7: can also benefit reducing your anxiety and actually like changing
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 7: your relationship to the world. So I'm teaching a seminar
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 7: in June called the Thrill of Groundlessness Flowing through Life
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 7: without Absolutes. People can find information about that on my website.
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there so cool flow.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 7: It's such a beautiful environment. We're gonna read, We're gonna
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 7: read a little short excerpts from different texts, and we're
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 7: gonna watch movies. We're gonna talk about them. And it's
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 7: an amazing place. And I'm also a columnist for Film Quarterly,
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 7: where I write a column every three to six months
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 7: about a different media form.
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 6: I just published a piece about.
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 7: And or amazing show, revolutionary show, and I will be
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 7: writing my next piece about heated rivalry, and so you
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 7: can find all of that on my website.
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 4: Arts will be Broken. I can't wait.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 7: Art's gotta be broken. Listen, sometimes we got to get
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 7: out of that fantasy. I'm gonna be the kill Joy.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 7: I'm gonna be Caitlin in that essay.
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 6: Love It Brave, Oh a blessing. I nerd from the
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 6: Future on Instagram.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, perfect, check that out, listeners, and you can find
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: us in all the normal places, which is really just
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: two places. You can find us on our Patreon aka Matreon,
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: where for five dollars a month you can get access to.
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 4: Two new episodes a month on a theme of your
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 4: choosing with me and Caitlin, as well as back catalog
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 4: going back.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 2: Like eight years, So a couple hundred episodes for your enjoyment,
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: all for five dollars a month, a price that we
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: might add has never ever changed.
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 3: What a damn good special. Yeah, damn good with that.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 3: Should we all get on a train to Reno and
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 3: drink a bunch of champagne?
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 4: Oh honest, yeah, that sounds perfect.
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 6: Honey, Let's divorce from Patriots.
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 7: Let's say yes, Let's get a divorce from the patriotchy
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 7: Bye bye.
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: The Bechdel Cast is a pretty action of iHeartMedia, hosted
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: and produced by me Jamie Loftus and.
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 3: Me Kitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann.
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: And edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of them? That's
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: me and our logo and merch and all of our
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus ever heard
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: of her? Oh My God, and our theme song, by
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: Katherine Voskrasinski Iconic and a special thanks to the one
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: and only Aristotle Asceveo.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 3: For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree, slash
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 3: Spcdelcast