Everything Is Content - Mob Wife Winter, Reboot Fatigue and Poor Things

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Join Beth, Ruchira and Oenone as we celebrate all things Mob Wife Winter - and ask why we’re so obsessed with making everything into a ‘-core’. We take a deep dive into Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film Poor Things and Beth has a confession to make about the Love Island All Stars reboot.—YOUTUBE: Back To Black Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu4VJLCyD3g ITV: Love Island All Starshttps://www.itv.com/watch/love-island-all-stars/10a5231/2a3697a0505GUARDIAN: Mean Girls review – high-school sadism comedy as sugar-rush movie musicalhttps://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/10/mean-girls-review-high-school-sadism-comedy-as-sugar-rush-movie-musical-tina-fey DAZED: Leopard, leather and lashings of gold: how to dress like a mob wife https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/61746/1/leopard-leather-gold-how-to-dress-mob-wife-winter THE REST IS HISTORY: Sixties Fashion - Swinging London https://podcasts.apple.com/tr/podcast/sixties-fashion-swinging-london/id1537788786?i=1000625845804 REFINERY29: is there personal style in the era of tiktok aesthetics?https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2022/09/11103764/personal-style-core-aesthetics-tiktok THE TIMES: Poor Things and the trouble of too much sex https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/poor-things-and-the-trouble-with-too-much-sex-2dcgdctzmEMMA GARLAND: Gabrielle - A Newsletter About Desirehttps://substack.com/@emmagarlandBARBICAN: The Costumes Of Poor Things (until 26th January) https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2023/event/the-costumes-of-poor-things ITV: Mr Bates Vs The Post Office https://www.itv.com/watch/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office/10a0469?gclid=Cj0KCQiAtaOtBhCwARIsAN_x-3K3-B1sd57l72zsuvwKhQoQ9MoMazlxJT6kd2-Ybp_yrHuJG5x3L3QaAsJoEALw_wcB ---Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpod @beth_mccoll @ruchira_sharma@oenone ---Everything Is Content is produced by Faye Lawrence for We Are GrapeMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-Meenar Artwork: Joe Gardner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

do we need to say more things i feel like we haven't really said anything i'm beth i'm richira and i'm anoni and you are listening to everything is content this is the weekly pop culture podcast where we take you foraging for delicious content in the wilderness of the internet make sure you follow us on instagram at everything is content pod where we'll share memes have deep discussions give you book recommendations and just generally have a nice little chat so guys what has been on your timelines this week white lotus season three and the cast announcements have been all over my timeline i saw that amy lou wood from sex education has been one of the announced cast members but i don't really recognize any of the others do you guys know of any of the other people

that's all so excited for white lotus to return but i just kept getting caught by the hoax tweets of like people that were going to be on white lotus and getting so excited and finding out they weren't real but i did see that parker posey from um josey josey the cat can't think what else but everyone's really excited for her to be on the show yeah i'm really really excited for that um but it sort of has missed me despite being a huge fan of the first two either i didn't keep up with it or like you like i saw a hoax that rosamund pike was gonna be on it i got really excited r.i.p saw i had been scammed and fooled and was like i'm never gonna fall for this again but apart from amy lee wood yeah i don't know that many of the other characters but i was just thinking in the previous seasons there have been actors maybe they have

been big actually no season because megan fahey we'd all watch the bold time right yes and audrey plaza the wildsgar friend who i love one thing I will say is I remember when the cast for the second series got announced I had this weird feeling in my heart where I was like none of these people fit this show I don't know where it's gonna go I love them but oh I don't know if the second one's gonna be really good and I got it the same time again and I think I don't know obviously Mike White is just amazing and I think he's obviously gonna pull together a third season but I really just don't like the change I feel like something about it's like oh no I want my friends to come back I want Tanya to be back I felt exactly you're so right when the second season rolled around I was like no I want the same characters but then I thought

the second season was better than the first so I think I kind of want to watch the first season again and the second season should we re-watch yeah definitely do a re-watch i think it builds on the universe each time i just saw patrick schwarzenegger's in it yes he was son of arnold arnie uh did not know he was an actor i just thought he was a boyfriend of famous women so fantastic news i think i have actually seen him in something but i can't think what carrie coon who i don't know if you guys probably recognize her she was in one of my favorite shows of all time the leftovers which um had justin through in it it was a smash hit a really weird show one of the best so she is like i think she's a real cult hit so i think she's got that prestige element so i'm really excited to see her

so maybe this series is like less more understated in terms of the cast but they're all big hitters they're all really really talented i was thinking as well because the whole cast again to my knowledge is completely white and i know that is kind of like a i guess that's an aspect of the show because it is always about privilege but natasha rothwell's coming back is she the masseuse but then she's the only person of color or black woman i think that's on them that we know yeah yeah i'm interested to see how this choice of cast is like intentional in terms of all of them being white and whether or not that's going to play a part in the storytelling so yes cannot wait for white lotus have no idea

when it's happening but i'm sure it's going to bring us infinite joy when it does yes and only have you got anything from your timelines to bring to the table yes and i'll be surprised it hasn't been all over your timelines as well it is the new back to black amy winehouse film directed by sam taylor johnson starring marissa abella as amy winehouse so far so negative and i i'm inclined to agree um have you guys seen much about this i saw in production people were really criticizing yeah from beginning to this point when we've got a trailer critique i saw mark ronson defended it at whatever award show he was just at but overwhelmingly like you say criticism people are not happy with this it feels very disrespectful um to a lot of viewers yeah

yeah no i'm the same i saw the trailer i already kind of preempted that the trailer was going to spark off the discussion again what did you think about it I personally my first thought is let this woman rest I do not know how many biopics films exhibitions things need to be made about her life I think her music stands to tell a story in of itself I think she's like a musical genius and I she is one of those losses that when I think about the fact that she's gone actually genuinely makes me upset. And there's not that many famous people that I still hold like a. No. Like it genuinely makes me feel sad.

So the idea there's something about like bastardizing her for another film that I just find like it's not been that long. It would be in her lifetime were she alive. It just does not feel a respectful distance. And it feels like for who's her legacy like you say stands on its own it's not like she needs um you know this story needs to be told we were it's in living memory yeah all of this happens um i know her father's involved and people are very unhappy with that that he would continue to to perhaps make money from the decline of of his daughter in just the most tragic way like what she went through what the press did what the media did to then feed the media this story

a retelling of the worst moments of her life yeah the best as well but from what I've seen from like the press photos it's it's the moments when her partner is arrested when she's running through the streets being harassed by paparazzi those things happened but we have video evidence of that happening do we need to recreate it for a paying audience yet again it feels like spectacle it feels so icky i'm so uncomfortable with it also some of the criticism was saying that marissa doesn't her like facially she doesn't represent the unusual kind of striking features that were so important and so part of Amy's look and she kind of is like a prettier not pretty is not the right word because I think Amy's beautiful but like a more whitewashed kind of palatable version of

Amy and it just doesn't feel like she's doing a service by Amy and like her uniqueness something about it just feels so odd and uncanny it feels very hammy the costuming I don't like I'm sure that they've done like a good job on it but it just doesn't some there's a disconnect there and I just find it so I find it revolting the film's out in April um I don't know if I'll see it but I'm very interested to see what the reaction's like who it's for and maybe we'll be proven wrong yeah I yeah I'm tired of'll see it, but I'm very interested to see what the reaction's like, who it's for, and maybe we'll be proven wrong. Yeah, I'm tired of the biopic thing, but I mean, they're not slowing down. Absolutely not.

So guys, I have broken a promise myself already this week what is it you're going to be disappointed so i've already started watching love island i've told everyone that i wasn't going to do it i was so proud of myself i was like i'm done with love island this this new series so it's like an all star series so i was like that's not real love island i'm not going to watch it i'm watching it and is it good dreadful i mean okay no that's too harsh it's not great so Island. I'm not going to watch it. I'm watching it. And? Is it good? Dreadful. I mean, okay, no, that's too harsh. It's not great. So I'll set the scene of what this one is.

It's not like normal Love Island. It is like normal Love Island, but all of the contestants have been on previous UK series. And they're not like, they're quite big names for their series. I'm not saying they're the most famous people to come out of it, but they're all recognisable. If you, like me, have watched every single episode of Love Island to date, which shamefully I have,

you'll recognize every single person that's on there so far. As it go back to like series one, who's the oldest person? They have Hannah and Louis from series one, which series one was an absolute wild west. They didn't know the show was going to be successful so it was a reboot of a celebrity show they got loads of ordinary people in they smoked they drank they shagged on top of the covers so they had people from that series who have obviously been out of the spot or like been in and out of the spotlight for the last decade

and then they have people from the last series which is a very different animal so it's really interesting to see who they've got back how they're interacting but something about it just doesn't feel like love island and i think love island hasn't really felt like that for a while but this more than ever it just feels like influences mingling a little bit of like a fame top up a little bit of like a return to public life but it just doesn't feel like any one of them are actually there for love yeah i have a confession i also watched the first episode for discourse um and i completely agree it was so depressing i also thought it was quite cruel okay tell me why so right at the end they bring back one person from season six who has recently broken up with the partner they made during the love island series six and you know bam they bring back that ex-girlfriend

as like a oh you know controversy this is gonna be our twist i felt so grossed out and you know what i've said this before i love reality tv lots of the reality tv I love is disgusting but it just felt so mean on his part for him yes for yeah for all of them like they've got two recent exes they brought in as a twist do you know what else I was just looking through the cast and I think it's interesting is some of the people on here like Georgia Harrison for example she's such a well-known person now in the celebrity arena she's had so much media training love island works off the idea that like you kind of aren't as aware so this celebrity reboot to me feels like it won't work because they're just too self-aware they just know what they're doing yeah they've been in the fame machine that long that which is why actually richard when you said that you felt

sorry for them what i thought was this is all set up which is really interesting and I think that's that's a guess I'm completely speculating that this couple Molly and Callum yep because they broke up six months ago in my head this is all planned and maybe the reason I'm suspecting that is because I know how media trained they are they have been in this fame machine for this long they know what it takes to succeed on a season but also interestingly though what it takes is often controversy big moments and I think they can manufacture those but they are best when they are natural when it's like a row or when it's like a really funny one-liner or when it's like a natural friendship I think it's gonna be very contrived so are you gonna be watching it after watching

the first episode should I be watching no I don't think so don't get sucked in because I am already a little bit sucked are you yeah which is such a shame i said i wasn't going to do it i think there's nothing going on really in my life right now so i will be watching it if i'm still watching this in five i think it goes on for five weeks we'll intervene there will need to be a wellness check for me but for the moment we'll take your laptop away unless anything crazy happens i don't imagine we'll talk too much about it because i do think the audience is going to have a very similar reaction they know only people that like watching this are going to be diehard fans and I think they're going to be a bit disappointed and is there a normal Love Island season this summer I think so and will you be watching that I don't think so you know last year was the first year

that I didn't watch it after watching it religiously every single year I also think I don't know seeing seeing this happen seeing an all-stars cast it just makes me feel kind of depressed about the franchise as a whole it feels like i don't know they keep they keep trying to pump out winter love island they're doing this now there's a summer i think if they made the gap bigger maybe it would build up an appetite it may maybe i don't know if that would happen but because of love island constantly being in my mind because of all of these spin-offs it just makes me more like oh i don't want it we're fatigued aren't we we've i think reboots are exhausting i guess i've had enough of unoriginal material remakes happen seemingly like three or four years after the original i that just fills me with horror if

something is great the first time do we really need it done again well we've had the mean girls reboot just this week of course the sing-along no so the musical that was never said to be a musical yeah i've seen some clips of people in the cinema when they start singing they're just like groan that goes through the audience which is really funny like i don't mind musicals but you must disclose it to me i actually have to say love a musical are you gonna watch this mean girls i am gonna watch it because i'm fascinated i was really cross when i first saw the trailer because there are lines that are lifted that are exactly the same it's not like a it's not like a remake where it's sort of inspired by the characters are all called the same thing they do the same stuff like some of the dialogue is changed to become more relevant to today's audience more like gen z or whatever

but i was so shocked that they were making this like reboot so close to the original and then i found out it's actually based on the musical that tina fey like the broadway musical yeah so that kind of made more sense to me i have to say i do feel like a boomer but i just have so much nostalgia for like the original cast the original outfits like even when i see kind of it doesn't feel the same it doesn't feel as expensive in a way like when I see the production and like the costume and stuff so I will watch it just that fascination but I have a feeling it's not going to be for me no yeah it's kind of like an obligatory watch just to see but did you see when they were like this isn't your

mom's I know and I went what do you mean mean this is like that was their marketing this isn't your mom's mean girls rude excuse me what year did it come out 2004 mean girls 2004 2005 i think so we were eight to 20 years ago yeah i'm being very young like i watched it maybe five years after it came out because my parents wouldn't let me see it yeah i do so maybe i guess if you were of the generation that was a teenager when it came out, plus 20 years, you could be 36, you could have a teenager,

but not that likely, maybe. It just rubbed me the wrong way. No, I agree. None of us have teenage children. We don't even have baby children.

Not that we know of. Not that we know of, yeah. It's interesting that we're talking about the reboot of Mean Girls when we've just been talking about Amy Winehouse. I don't know if you guys have seen it yet but I just went to see Priscilla which

has obviously come out on the back of Elvis coming out and it seems like biopics reboots it's all that seems to be coming out of Hollywood right now and it's just all stories that we already know just being told in a slightly different way by a slightly different person and I personally in 2024 I want to see really new interesting stories being told by diverse voices yes so we've got Love Island spin-offs coming out the wazoo we've got a Mean Girl reboot and I'm tired I'm really really tired I think long gone are the days where we're content to watch 20 influencers in bikinis make very trite small talk i i just want to watch two dozen strangers murder each other in a castle oh yeah it's so little that i asked for this week tiktok has given us a new aesthetic and if you're not on tiktok that's basically the

lexicon they use to describe a trend so this week there's been an aesthetic that i've been kind of obsessing about it's called mob wife winter have you seen it yeah and i feel like i've been living it for the past how many winters of my life agreed it's literally been the aesthetic which in hindsight i feel like i've been living loving laughing with for years of my life so tell me what encapsulates the mobwife i assume i can guess but i'm never sure with the internet okay so carmella soprano, Adriana, it's basically women in furs, cherry nail nail varnish, big hair, big blowouts, like stiletto heels. It's giving luxury, but it's very loud luxury. Loads of people have been comparing it almost like the binary of the quiet, luxury, clean girl aesthetic that's been dominating TikTok for ages. I have some stats. So mob wife aesthetic currently as a hashtag or, you know, as a phrase has 59 million views on TikTok.

Clean girl aesthetic has 7.9 billion. Wow. So it's not reaching the heights of clean girl aesthetic just yet, but it's building. And this week, for some reason, it's kind of gone, kind of gone bigger. I think more people are talking about it you know how tiktok works a few people talk about a trend more people make videos about that trend then it starts a discussion three gorgeous women talk about on a podcast it spirals i am so happy about this and this is why you should never dress for trends just stay put in your trend that you like and eventually it'll come to background to you because I have always I have got a big fluffy furry I've got big coats in every color fur I have every size gold hoop you can imagine I've got

tons of sunglasses like mob wife winter's what I've always done I never do clean girl I never have done the quiet luxury it's not in my remit it's not in my lexicon I do not have the clothes I do not have the cleanliness. I, for one, I'm so glad that I stuck to my guns and that I wear my ridiculous outfits. Our time is here. I'm back in fashion, girlies. The listeners can't see,

but Anonia's dressed head to toe in leopard print. She's got gorgeous gold jewelry on. This is quite mob wife. It's also, I think, I realized Janet from Friends. Do you know what? I see it, but I see both of you in a mob wife. My also i think i realized janet from france do you know what i did i see it but i see both of you in a mob wife my thing is oh thank you beth thank you oh is it mob wife or is it just

winter and people are wearing big coats are we is this a prediction of a trend or is this just noticing god a lot of people have got coats on people just call anything an aesthetic anything an aesthetic also core adding core to the end of everything suddenly solidifies it as a thing or era yeah like did you see clown core did you see gorp core auntie core there's there's too many cores guys i'm caught out i think what bothers me is that they'll do all of this and then they'll share it and like i'm just looking now through the tiktok comments on these videos of mob core people to go, oh, no, no, I'm not ready to let go of my clean girl. I'm not ready to let go. Precisely.

You don't have to. I think once you get older and you've been through enough trend cycles, it's like I don't care now what's like if it's into a high waisted jeans or if it's into a whatever. Like I wear whatever fits my body. I will never probably wear a skinny jean again. But that's just me. You do emancipate yourself from that as you get older. So maybe I'm being like kind of a bit of a mean girl. But this thing of trans-f, I'm really interesting.

I was actually listening to an episode of The Restless History and they were talking about fashion in the 60s and kind of the swinging 60s and how London became the epicenter of this kind of style. It's actually a really interesting episode and they talk about Twiggy and how they kind of were really fetishizing people looking very young and everyone was wearing

like really big doe eyes and like hardy lipstick and it was all about looking really young but they were also talking about how it was all a myth that everyone was dressing in this style and like actually at the time people were writing like magazine articles and they were like no one is dressing like this but in pictures and in like it's a law it's a story it's a myth it's like how people talk about london the 60s but actually most people weren't wearing any skirts or dressing like that what is the predominant trend now how will we look back at this because i do feel like there are so many disparate trends this one i was going to say is interesting because what is happening because the internet is you do actually see people going around all wearing literally exactly the same outfit in different fonts like if you have any gen c people living in your area they are all wearing an iteration of the

same outfit and it's kind of fascinating to watch them go around they're wearing trainers that my dad oh they were last month wearing trainers that my dad owns and i was like fascinating and then everyone's wearing like a puffer jacket with a red scarf red scarves are such a thing like it seems like it's such a non um accessory and i don't want to sound like anne hathaway's character at the beginning of the devil wears prada being like oh i'd never do that and like it applies to me i get it like we participate in trends it has trickled down to us personal style matters i find it fascinating i just find the crossover with the way that we'll have a trend cycle and fast fashion companies will

churn out new styles we'll line the pockets of you know billionaire male ceos and it just doesn't feed into a culture of individuality or actually embrace and enjoying fashion and enjoying clothing so maybe i'm i'm making my mind up about it and i don't want to be a grouch i don't want to see people dressing as mob boys and kind of roll my eyes and go you did what the internet told you like we all do we all do follow trends but it's maybe just knowing you're allowed to opt out and i don't want to blame the influences as you know famously i am one but i was thinking about this with hair trends like at one point remember everyone was dying their hair blonde but with like they were doing that purple shampoo thing and it was really like white and silvery and then it went back to kind of natural and if you buy into that you're changing your hair up every like two to three months it's costing so much money

if you're following these trends that means every few months you've got to buy a whole new wardrobe of stuff so all it is really is cash cow it's going to need to buy new things I don't know if these young tiktokers are inadvertently creating trends because they need content so they're like let's switch it up or if they're also beholden to something else all I know is that big fashion whoever the big daddy of the world of fashion is they are making so much money out of these trends and that's where I kind of this is that upsets me because it's like that isn't what fashion style should be about but it is it's just so capitalistic isn't it so I read a piece by Francis Sola Santiago I think I'm saying the name right on Refinery29 from 2022 she titled it is there personal style in the era of

TikTok aesthetics and I think that kind of ties in everything that we're talking about which is I feel like there's a lot of people having personal style by kind of ascribing all of these identities of fashion constantly and just kind of falling into a trend every few months and not really developing this idea of what makes my identity when it comes to how I dress and what I present as and they wrote that basically it's kind of playing into the over consumption of everything if we're just going to be clean girl and then the next month be mob wife era you're not going to achieve that unless you know you're the one percent by getting versace vintage or dolce gabbana you are just probably going to be going to zara primark h&m to make those looks happen and get away with it so i don't know all of these trends just kind of basically fall into the same stuff we always talk about which is

over consumption totally and if you're buying it and then you're throwing it away in that quick succession that's a problem yeah definitely and i think it's nice to take something from each trend like I love the scraped back hair I'm going to keep that with me through all of my eras. I still love a blazer like I like picking and choosing from each thing and I do want to grow old and be Helena Bonham Carter levels of wacky like i want to wear two different shoes wacky what's it called wacky wacky core wacky wacky core quacky walk quacky walk coming soon okay everyone last week we went on a school trip as the everything is content podcast and we went to a screening of poor things and my life has not been the same since no i've not stopped thinking

about it no i am exactly the same oh thank god i don't think i've been that shocked by a film ever saltburn how does rate on saltburn shock but salt burn was shocking but in a way that was sort of like it was very tame shock this i think was surprise yeah this was like something i just not it made me uncomfortable because i didn't know how to feel about it salt burn was kind of like gross and disgusting but it's nothing that i've not yes seen or heard of before right from the jump i feel like the premise of this is just like so unsettling and so like a slap to your face so it's kind of like a modernized take on mary shelley's frankenstein and then the more recent book of the same name poor things by alistair gray which i

haven't read have you guys read it i know i've got it on my kindle and i've looked through the early bits because i was so curious i think it's gl Glaswegian author and it's it's set in it's apparently like a really really good political novel about Glasgow as well as being about what it's about which is very difficult to talk around so it's directed by Yorgos Lanthimos who you might know from his direction of The Lobster and The Favourite and it's a fantastical story about Bella Baxter who is a young woman and she's brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist. She's reanimated with not all of her original parts, shall we say. Yeah. The movie starts, we meet this Bella Baxter character, and she is a fully grown woman visually, but she doesn't have like full linguistic skills.

She kind of wheeze on the floor right at the beginning of the movie. And so straight away, it's quite unsettling. And as it progresses, you're kind of faced with an ethical conundrum throughout the film. Yeah. It is a coming of age story

in just the most bizarre setup. It's so hard to talk about it because I think a lot of us went in not knowing really what to expect and i think that's a great way to see it and we look for certain trigger warnings and things like that but i think it's a really good way to see it to be completely surprised by it but that's the setup it is modern day frankenstein it's sort of like dracula it's like a creature that is it's human but with the addendum of of not fully human or not human in the way that we understand who is human and who gets to be like autonomous i think one of the things that i just

loved so much was the world that was created so it kind of like it's based it's kind of like magical realism would you say that that's yeah it's cartoonish like the real world becomes almost like alice in wonderland yes alice in wonderland's a really good a really good reference for it yeah it's recognizable as the world we live in in that kind of victorian world yeah there's so many adjustments i think lanthimos does this and a lot of his films he'll thrust you into a world and not hold your hand through it you kind of have to discover it as you go so she's on this sort of odyssey i won't give too much away but we see the world and it's a world that is recognizably you know europe and the uk but in this really fantastical

bizarre way some ways which are so brilliantly funny other ways which are really heartbreaking so i i think he does an incredible job of like world setting so bella baxter is played by emma stone uh the movie also stars mark ruffalo willem dafoe and rami yusuf it is an all-star cast the acting is some of the best acting i've ever seen i think this time of year is always amazing for film obviously because it's like the oscars season but i think for me personally this film ticked every single box i was absolutely blown away i want to watch it again i thought it was a performance of a lifetime from all of them what did you guys think so i agree i completely agree i thought emma stone was amazing she's so

charming in this character which basically challenges you to identify with her but like i don't know you just do you just do she makes you fall in love with her i thought her physicality was incredible the way she contorts her body to be this, you know, extraordinary character is insane. We were watching it together. So we were in the row in the cinema and there were so many moments when we were laughing uproariously.

And then we'd all, I'd look away because there were some moments where you just, either it catches in your breath and it's so upsetting or it's very disconcerting or just gruesome. And I think we had those very visceral reactions, which is what he does so well. He draws that out of the audience. And I love,

I love the world. I loved, as you said, I loved Bella Baxter. I loved, so she was created by the scientist Godwin, known to her as God. And they have this very interesting relationship.

And I mean, it's just, it's so much to think about leaving. I want to go and see it again, just so I can have more things to think about. Me too, because I think obviously when you're watching it for the first time there are all these shocks and surprises and there's this huge massive plot storyline which is so thick and rich but then beyond that there's this gorgeous costuming which i honestly cannot stop thinking

about gorgeous there's the acting and there's there's so much it's so rich in every sense of the word yeah and it's done amazingly well like Emma Stone won the Golden Globe for it I wouldn't be surprised if she they will win Oscars I did see a negative review in the Times 2 Mac by Alice Thompson and it's called Poor Things and the Trouble with Too Much Sex what we haven't touched on is that this film is full of sex this film is sex this film is literally the embodiment of sex. You can smell sex through the screen while you're watching it.

And even though I felt conflicted and confronted throughout the film with some of the sex scenes, I felt in an, almost in an argument with myself about whether or not I was allowed to be watching. I felt like a voyeur, but then I also was enjoying it, blah, blah.

She finishes this piece and says, everyone will hurl it as a triumph lantham austin stone will win every award it'll have a cult following just not me it didn't feel like a feminist rewriting of a great novel more male fantasy about a ravishing nymphomaniac dressed up as modern classic i read that review and i could not disagree more with a review i thought everything she said was just so different to what I thought. I'm going to bring up something I referenced last week, which is Emma Garland's essay in Gabrielle about sex.

And in it, she talks about how we've got to the point that there's maybe two depictions of sex that we have in the media, more modern media post Me Too, which is either traumatic interpretations of sex that we learn from or moralistic depictions of sex like in sex education depictions that we're meant to learn from in this i thought what they did was show all the massive gray area of sex sometimes sex is boring sometimes sex is wildly out of this world amazing sometimes it's bad but not traumatic sometimes it's kind of uncomfortable kind of

pleasurable at the same time I thought he did that incredibly do you know you're so right and when I was watching it I think where I felt uncomfortable at the same time I felt comforted by the fact that Emma's character Bella is constantly enjoying herself she is insatiable she wants to get fucked and she likes it and so that you're never feeling there are some uncomfortable moments there are scenes where she's like not enjoying it as much but as you said it never feels traumatic you never feel like she's really doing something against her her will it's kind of almost about female pleasure and that's an interesting angle for me it's desire it's

she's driven by her base impulses i find it really interesting that we would say like coming of age like a or not even just coming age of a total discovery arriving in the world why wouldn't you be driven by why wouldn't a woman be driven by her desire for sex her love of sex her love of pleasure and that's what it is it is discovering the world and its sensations I mean it's the same with food she eats as though it's her first meal. She loves food. She spits out what she doesn't want to eat. She fucks when she wants to fuck. I really read this review.

I read the end of that review and I was like, I just don't see it. Why? It's not a, you know, we're all created in this sort of patriarchal image. We are filtered through the world that we live in. But sexual desire, it springs from someone really primitive. What's so interesting is i think you could watch the film in both ways there is an element when i was watching i felt conflicted on both those spheres where it's like as i said am i a voyeur this this creation in some in some

way does feel like she's a sex doll like she's been created for the pleasure of men but then as you say at the same time she's got no social conditioning around what it is to be a woman what sexual desire is what pleasure is and it's kind of like us unlearning our own well my specific catholic guilt but anything we've been taught around sex it's like imagine if we didn't have all of these beliefs around like masturbation female pleasure whatever maybe we would be approaching the world in the way that that bella baxter does yeah totally completely so it's interesting because I can see both sides. I can see why someone would feel icky watching it. I could see why someone would feel reserved

or feel as though this is quite like a porny show for the male gaze or male desire. But at the same time, she literally has everyone wrapped around her finger because she just wants to get laid all the time. She does. And she comes out on top. So one thing i

thought was really interesting is with mark ruffalo's character he perceives her to be almost like his sex object he feels like he's in control but i thought it was really telling how once she starts speaking her mind and she just basically isn't you know a baby doll sex object that he wants her to be and just says how she feels wants to fuck kind of more than he does kind of makes friends on her own will does what she wants to do he just can't handle it yeah i don't i don't think it's you know presenting her as a sex doll i think it's unpicking the idea that on the surface kind of men would love if we were like that in a way definitely and when we're not they really struggle with that power imbalance and i think by having her be this kind of frankenstein creature it exposes that in a

really stark like blatant way it's a film about male control it's a film about how women are still women are allowed to adventure but only under the understanding that they will return to the fold yeah we're allowed to fuck but only as you know as it serves a man when we're allowed to go out but they must come back even the quote-unquote good male characters in this are agents of male control of female subjugation and it's so interesting what they do throughout the film and how this film ends and on the note it ends and what that says about what is possible for a woman what is possible when we you know she comes she comes into consciousness in this world so she begins it as a reanimated woman she learns

this world through her fucking and eating and traveling and by the end it's almost like will she will she end this film a beaten down woman or will she retain that glee that joy that power and that's i think that to me all through the film i just thought what is going to happen like what will what will that final scene be and will that be something very feminist or will it be like the ending of um what's that emerald finnell film promising which i think was really sour for me so i think that is watch that watch the film with that in mind one thing i think is happening with this i kind of feel like it's getting salt burned in the same way that people are assuming it's a feminist retelling of frankenstein has has the director even said that has the book even been about that because i don't think this needs to

be a feminist film as emma stone i think said when she collected her emmy she said it's about a rom-com with bella falling in love with life and that's the lens through which i see it and when you see it like that i'm i just think it's a roaring success of a film i don't really understand why it needs to be a feminist film that's not me saying that um films are good if they're not feminist or films are bad if they are that's just me saying i don't understand where this lens has come from that we're applying to this that's interesting because i've read a lot about that I've also read a lot of people who are beginning to look at it through a disability lens a kind of neurodiversity lens I think it because

it's so rich there are many ways to view it but you're right it stands alone as this exactly as she says there are so many ways you could read this I wouldn't be surprised by any take because there are so many elements and I could live in the Bella Bats universe. I could happily have sat in that cinema for another six hours and just seen where she went. I've never been so absorbed, enthralled. I feel bereft that I'm not with her anymore. It's truly something different. And we were talking about original stories. And this for me is like, wow, look where cinema can take us.

And it's beautiful. It's strange. It's new. It's challenging. It's not on the nose. I'm glad it's it's beautiful it's strange it's new it's challenging it's not on the nose i'm glad it's complex complicated and messy and not sort of this flattened polished politically correct feminist retelling this has guts gore vulgarity humor just real grit to it and it's just it's so fantastical. It's so gorgeous. And we laughed and we cried and we were, I think we were so in it. And actually, yeah,

I didn't even begin to think these things until I left the cinema, which I think is testament. That's what I want. I want to go to cinema, live in a world for a while. And then later I'm, I can't stop thinking about it. I don't want to be in there doing analysis and going, I can see exactly what they're saying with that. And you're right about this. I felt my whole body, my stomach was churning and then i felt my loins were burning and then i was like a sensory overload in a good way i agree in the way that cinema i don't think sometimes you watch something and like oh that was fun this really i was like i'm in faye our producer was basically completely vomiting she hates anything if you are squeamish about like

surgery or something this might not be for you because we were all like it was amazing and faye was just green it's out in cinemas and you need to go and see it and tell us what you think as well let us know yeah please dm us because i could talk to you about it all day so if you do want to check out the costumes from poor things you can go to the barbican they actually have an exhibition on with all of them and they're gorgeous it's going to be there until the 26th of January so definitely definitely go we obviously are all plugged into the traitors and I know that you guys are as well but if you want another bit of very excellent television I have to recommend Mr Bates versus the post office it is on ITV so you can get it on the itvx platform is that what it's called yes nice

and it's basically about the post office scandal which started in 2003 and it is a dramatized retelling the actors in it are great and it's just such an important piece of british history i think first of all i never want to go to the post office or post anything again because i'm so cross you will cry it's just honestly one of the highlights of british tv i can't recommend it enough and it's a really moving one you can watch with parents you can watch with a boyfriend you can watch both south but do have a box of kleenex nearby no i'll definitely watch that the story is yeah the story is absolutely insane remember we always leave all the links to what we've discussed in the podcast description make sure you subscribe leave us a

review and do tell your friends if you love the podcast please do word of mouth really helps us out we'll see you this time next week and in the meantime we'll be over on instagram at everything is content pod thanks for listening bye