Red Scare - Corona de Vil

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

The ladies discuss Fauci's emails and review Disney's Cruella.

We're back. The real podcast is what happens behind the scenes. Yeah, it's all the stuff we say before we hit record. Red scare the unreleased tapes. Yeah. Black box. How are you Anna? I'm okay. I'm like deranged and delirious, but you know. Yeah. I'll keep on keeping on. How are you? I'm fairly well rested, so I'm hanging in there. All right. I haven't had like a full night's sleep in two months now, but I've adapted, you know, which is scarier than not adapting. I mean, apparently like didn't like Benjamin Franklin only sleep like a couple hours at a time. Yeah, but he was a man with a

labile inventive mind. Yeah. He was a dumb broad. Yeah. I'm just a stupid bitch. Yeah. You seem like you're in good spirits and stuff. You seem as sharp as ever. Yeah, which is like pretty dull. Don't give me too much credit. How are you other than being well rested? Pretty good. Yeah. You know, normal. Not mine though. Yeah. I don't have, I'm back at the gym. Oh yeah. How's that going? How's that going at the nox? It's going awesome. Yeah. It's so good to be back. Total mask, maskless. Oh, because if you say you're vaccinated, you can. They don't even really ask, but apparently. Yeah. I went to AMC villages yesterday, which did have a thing that was like, if you're vaccinated, you don't have to wear a mask. But then people were still masking.

So I kind of keep mine on. Yeah. But equinox now everyone there is like an athlete. So they don't, they're not scared of like getting sick and stuff. They don't know what is even like Yeah, because they're so strong. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's going great. It's good for you. I'm legitimately jealous. I just canceled my gym membership because I like, oh, I didn't cancel, I downgraded it because I just like, don't go to the gym and ride my stupid little bike in the house. You'd have the station or your peloton. Yeah. My like hood peloton. Cruella. Cruella. Oh, well, before we get into that, we should announce our movie night. Oh, yeah. So we'd watch Cruella, but we're going to also do it's been a very slow news cycle. Yeah,

cycle. So we're going to watch what's eating Gilbert grape. Yeah. Thanks to popular requests from ourselves. Yeah. And then we're going to pair it with Lars von Trier's The Idiots. Yeah. So tune in. Yeah. Do your movie homework. Fine pairing. Yeah. For a fireside movie chat over on our Patreon. Yeah, I mean, there's like literally nothing going on in the news. It's like a trickle. I was already bored by that like Naomi Osaka news that I sent to you and I'm glad you like, we're like, no, I mean, another women's mental health story. Well, she doesn't want to do press. Yeah. And she shouldn't have to. Yeah. Do you agree? I mean, I guess I don't even know the story really. Just, I don't think there's any reason for athletes to

do more than they're already doing, which is being like incredible athletes. Yeah. At the top of their field. Yeah. To like appease the bottomless media. Do you like Uber Eats commercials and stuff is like degrading? Yeah. I saw a show for like an ad for a new Lebron show that like replicates like a barber shop in a studio and it's like him and Jay-Z and like Bad Bunny and other like people just like an extended podcast basically. Yeah. They just like sit around and talk about how they got their start. I mean, yeah, the only like inside the NBA. Okay. Yeah. Like athletes like sports commentator is like really the only like media pivot I want to see though I like seeing Shaq. I was actually watching that stupid show where like they make celebrities eat hot wings. Oh yeah.

I was like watching Shaq's episode of that because I like wanted to see how he like handled spicy wings. Yeah. So he's particularly suited and charismatic for it, but like most athletes don't really have that much to say and we should take their word for it. Yeah. It's Shaq and Charles Barkley holding it down for the athletes turned commentators. Yeah. Though I feel like someone else made the joke that Fauci is in for like an ESPN gig. Why? Because he's like done in his uh, after these emails, he's like done in his uh, career is like a public, the public face of the COVID crisis. They leaked the emails leaked or no, they, they were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by like BuzzFeed and Waypo and there's like thousands of them and I, you know,

didn't really bother to come through. I scammed. Yeah. And then I looked to see what people on on Twitter were like reporting on. Yeah. Um, what did you make of the, of the Fauci emails? The Zuckerberg stuff I noticed was retracted a lot of it. Yeah. What I, I didn't get to the Zuckerberg stuff. I mostly read his exchange with Hugh Auchin loss. I'm not going to pronounce his name correctly. And um, some other people that were like sounding the alarm, there was basically like a list of stuff that like, you know, I didn't, I don't hate myself enough to like comb through the dossier of thousands of emails. But um, I feel like the coverage already, I think like the most interesting angle of the story, because it's mostly stuff we already sort of knew or surmised.

But I think the most interesting, the lab leak, the masks not working. Yeah, exactly. Is like how the media is going to cover this kind of with the meta narrative, which is like, you know, it's going to fall along partisan lines as usual with the Libs being like, well, he was just making lemonade out of lemons and the conservatives. He was trying to be a sane scientific voice in a time of untruths, political instability. Now that RBG has gone, he's taken his rightful place as like the guy on the candles that they sell at all, like shitty, like liberal bookstores. But yeah, and they can't do the almost sexual thing. No, not anymore. Yeah. And then I think like the conservatives are, you know, painting him as this Cruella-esque villain,

who's complicit in all these coverups. But I basically, there's no smoking gun, but there's like a lot of fairly mildly dramatic revelations. Like he, they, the email seemed to indicate that he was aware of and potentially tried to cover up the fact that the virus was possibly genetically engineered rather than naturally occurring, that there was gain of function research going down at that Wuhan lab and that the US was had financial ties to it, which he calls like distant ties. It's like the NIH grants evidence that masking was largely ineffective, which like, who knew? Who could have known? You didn't have to wear three masks. Yeah. Well, and his flip-flopping on the issue is like notorious because he was anti-mask and pro-mask, then two masks and three

masks. And the emails mostly reflect that like his, yeah, knowing that the masks were mostly an effective are from like March and February of last year, which is around when they were saying that. And, you know, there's also evidence on the efficacy of like existing therapies and treatments, which he downplayed. Evidence the virus was already in the United States and couldn't be contained. And all the major organizations are writing headlines like the emails reveal one man under enormous pressure or like emails reveal Fauci's reluctance to embrace his newfound celebrity. And it's like this kind of stuff. But we'll see. He's, he'll either go to SPN or transition or get like a fancy private sector job. He'll be fine. Yeah. But I don't know. Like I'm kind of,

just randomly, I'm kind of like an AIDS history buff randomly. Like this has been like a topic of Freudian obsession since I was a kid. So, you know, I read or what's up? Well, Fauci's been on my radar for decades because I'm like, you know, like an AIDS whisperer. And like, you know, I read you can say fag hag. Yeah, I'm a fag. I'm a spiritual faggot. But I read like the Randy Schultz book, you know, back in the day, I followed the activism of Larry Kramer and David Wynarowitz. I took a class in college that was an elective course on the history and virology of AIDS, not for any noble reasons, but because I figured I could kill two birds with one stone, like scratch my Freudian compulsion to learn about this virus and also not take a hard science class like biology

or chemistry. A nice history of science. I took introduction to plants in college because same like Audubon bird watching. Yeah. What do you think it is about just to unpack a little bit? What do you think it is about the AIDS virus that is so compelling to you? I think I like as a teenager, I was like a profoundly broken and damaged individual who was very sexually promiscuous. And I think I sympathized always with like the plight of gay men because I could narcissistically put myself in their shoes. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's probably it. That's that tracks. Yeah. I mean, I'm also very like not to the sounds like to the extent that you are, but like, you know, haunted and touched by the AIDS epidemic because you think of all the great creative

gay guys who died and stuff. Yeah, to be replaced by like, Pfizer and Bank of America gays, fake gays. But yeah, I think somewhere along the line, not during COVID, I think a lot of people are like under the impression that Fauci only made it into the limelight because of his role in managing the COVID crisis. But he was already in the limelight once at the AIDS crisis, he was like the chief clinician. And I think somewhere along the line, like, way before COVID, like decades before, like at the height of the AIDS crisis, he made that Fauci and bargain, you know, but where he like, decided to forego, I think, like professional ethics for, you know, public adoration. And like, I have a very like,

what did he do Fauci? Well, he's, I think if you look at his response to COVID, which is very hedgy and flip floppy, I mean, his his, he took a page from his own AIDS playbook, which is issuing like authoritative sounding, but ultimately speculative pronouncements that were hedged with various kinds, you know, like, you know, hedgy terms so that he could walk it back later, because he knew full well that like collective memory was short. And the media were a bunch of fawning dollars who would run with any story, you know, yeah. And like at the height of the AIDS crisis, actually, he was the guy, I think like people can hop into the DMs and correct me if I'm wrong, as they did with them, the China stuff, they actually confirmed that

Africa was essentially owned by China. Okay. But at the height of the AIDS crisis, he sort of like casually popularized and then casually disowned the theory that AIDS could be spread through casual contact in the home, like non sexual non intravenous contact, which kind of created a moral panic. Right. And I think he's done that several times now with COVID. I mean, yeah. Like with the masking stuff, the droplets, the droplets, yeah. And I guess like I have a kind of unique disdain for Fauci, because I think that he's a very common bureaucrat who's going to be be made into an uncommonly evil villain, a la Cruella de Vil, you know, by the partisan media. You think? Yeah, I don't think he's like, I think he's like more banal than evil.

That's, yeah, I would agree with that. But I think in popular consciousness, like you said, it's like the public memory is very short. Yeah. And the derangement that so many of like COVID lives have for him, I don't see being even totally diminished by no, it's not going to be. I think now, I don't think he'll be, I think he will be villainized by some, but still totally like Carol that is a hero by others. Yeah, I think, well, I think he's going to be a fall guy for conservatives because he's, he's the perfect fall guy because he kind of served his role under the Trump administration. And he wanted to be an influencer and he flew too close to the sun and now, you know, they can vilify him. But it'll, but because like now in the current media

landscape, you can't, there are no truth claims only like competing narratives. Yeah, exactly. He will be like the subject of like hagiography by the liberals and the subject of vilification by the conservatives, but it's going to be like a gay partisan dog and pony show. But I think your read is correct that functionally he is really just a, just a bureaucrat. Well, I think he's also the worst kind of bureaucrat because like I said, he's a common bureaucrat, but one with delusions of grandeur. Like I really do think that he courts fame and wants to be famous, but my distaste for him is bigger than my distaste for like your garden variety social media influencer like Chrissy Teigen or Demi Lovato, because I think

his relationship to like fame or celebrity is like disingenuous essentially, like he wants to pretend to be modest, tell noble lies. Well, it's also totally at odds with his like the ethical paradigm that would be required of his job description. So he can't be a totally like craven fame whore. Yeah, but he is. And like you look at all the kind of anecdotal like stories that circulate around him in this liberal hagiography. And it's like, he's a family man who jogs 10 miles a day and fields thousands of emails. He's a Roman Catholic without a homophobic bone in his body. It's like this kind of stuff, you know, like he's the savior of the gaze. Dr. Fauci, well, I was trying to find today the Larry Kramer quote about Fauci, but when I was

like preliminarily searching, there was just all of these like obituaries being about like their complicated relationship and like Fauci sort of remarking posthumously on his relationship with Larry Kramer in like a tepid neutral light, you know, yeah, it's complicated. I can't imagine. I mean, I think they like kind of begrudgingly recognized each other, but I can't imagine that they would get along because Larry Kramer is like a kind of messianic Jew. Yeah. Who could never ever, he could never be comfortable with himself because his moral gravity always was competing with his like penchant for hedonism. So he couldn't be like your average, fun loving homosexual on Fire Island. Right, right, right, right. He had to like shake his

fist at all these guys like having casual sex on the beach and in bathhouses or whatever. Which I appreciate. I understand Larry Kramer. Um, yeah, but yeah, I have to let me see if Fauci did anything wrong. Yeah, I mean, that's basically kind of the thing with those emails. I saw the one where he said too long for me to read. Oh yeah, that was great. And then of course, yeah, the masks not actually being effective. Well, that the, the TLDR one was the guy writing in reference to the fact that, um, clearly there's this guy saying like, Hey, like the pandemic has likely already hit US shores and there's nothing we can do about it and that sort of thing. Yeah. But I think like it's almost like Karmic comeuppance that, that Fauci is having some sort of reckoning. I don't,

I agree with you. I don't think he's going to have like any sort of serious reckoning because he's too big to fail and he's like the favorite of the libtards, but, um, it's also a little bit suspect that these emails didn't come to light until now. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Why now Buzzfeed? Yeah, I mean, I think like, well, I think now he probably again has served out his, his role, his like function as like a useful idiot and you know, there's probably some sort of like devious political or economic motivation. Now that Biden's like investigating the lab leak and all of that stuff, he can be sort of thrown under the buzz. Yeah, I think there's something like that there.

And all those, yeah, Fauci t-shirts will go to a landfill with only like a vote paraphernalia that we were inundated with for months. Yeah, I wonder like, yeah, they should like measure how many, like in sheer tons, how many like libtard products, like pins, candles, socks. Yeah, all from China, political products in general, any kind of like branded the MAGA hats, the RGB candles, the action figures, and all the like magnets and stuff that are sold at airports. I mean, it's just like a sheer volume of overproduced crap that we don't need. That's a bigger pandemic than COVID and similarly hails from China. I mean, people are still going to be masking for so long, you can tell. I know, yeah. It's alleviated a lot

in New York outdoors, especially, but there's still well, I'm actually shocked that I'm seeing so many people without masks. I'm frankly impressed. I thought that this was more way more of like a liberal enclave than I assumed. But there's a lot of people who like following the guidelines now won't wear the masks outdoors. Yeah. But I think it's still going to be like a good year of their being a real masking presence. Yeah. I mean, between like Chinese people who mask anyway and offals who will continue to mask, because it gives them a sense of moral superiority, a lot of people are going to be like perma masking for the next foreseeable future. Sucks. I know, it's so stupid. And it's like so stupid that it's just defies common sense and

kind of always has the idea that, I mean, still people masking outside, it seems, it's always seemed honestly implausible. And we all got kind of caught up in a panic, but that like walking by people on the street, you would be breathing droplets that would like contaminate their airflow and give them COVID-19 has always been like retarded. Yeah. I mean, you really have to be like up in their face, right? Or like, yeah, that will end. They said you have to be within six feet for more than 10 minutes. But even after that, it was only three feet for children. Oh, okay. Because they're bioperimeters, smaller, whatever.

Yeah. None of that has made sense, I think, to any reasonable person like for a long time. I know. Yeah. But we still are going to have to be like living with the remnants of it. Yeah. I mean, it's like really kind of scary because in this kind of like post 9-11 landscape, there's like shifting imperatives and like it's very much like never let a good crisis go to waste. And this was like a great moment to further rob people of their civil liberties. And that's what happened. And you know, Fauci's like partly to blame for that.

He's definitely, yeah. Like more than minimally. Primarily maybe. Yeah. I mean, I guess Trump as well. Yeah. I mean, it's the whole, this is like truly a nonpartisan issue because it's like, it crosses like party lines. So many people are like complicit in this like total, like I really do think like now, like doing the post mortem and looking back, the lockdowns as they were administered in the United States probably were much more harmful

than the virus itself to people's like mental states, their financial states. Yeah. Which all contribute to deteriorating health. Yeah. Stress is the real killer. Yeah. I think as even more is revealed, we'll see. I don't know. But I think we'll be very vindicated. Yeah. I think so too. I think so too. Especially, you know, people were mad about the vaccine stuff. But like again, there's like some non-trivial evidence, for example, that vaccines

are more risky for kids than the actual viruses for kids. Like stuff like that, that like, you know, you can't like, you have to investigate fully and anyway, I'm not going to go down there. But we'll keep it, we'll keep it light. Let's keep it light. Let's keep it PG 13, like Disney's new movie, Cruella. Yeah. Would you, would you think of it? Okay. Better or worse than the Joker? I was going to ask better or worse than a promising young woman. Better than both.

Better than both. I think. Okay. Well, okay. Here's my thing. Cruella is, is higher stakes than a promising young woman. Probably equivalent stakes to the Joker. In terms of like the production value, the investment, like that sort of thing. Right, right, right. The massive, yeah, like it's more similar to the Joker formally. Yeah. So we, we rate it kind of, we hold it to a higher standard, I think. Right.

Um, I mean, I personally enjoyed watching it because of how like egregiously bad it was and how it like was so heavy handed on like the Libfem narrativeizing, you know, it was like literally like the, the parable of like girl bossery on screen. Um, yeah, I enjoyed it. Yeah. It was like, initially like I started watching it and she's like, fuck this shit, but I like slowly learned to. I was sort of dreading it, but then maybe seeing it in a theater honestly helped because it's also just been so long.

And I was like, just having a good time and eating like nachos and stuff. Um, but I was, I mean, I basically liked it. I mean, it was really flawed in a lot of ways, obviously, that we can get into, but I thought I really like Emma Stone. Yeah. I feel like an extraordinary amount of goodwill towards her for some reason and her kind of like screwball charms. Yeah. Yeah. I like her because she has kind of like a deep voice, a deep voice,

an Irish flair and bad posture. She's like an authentic woman. I really like her posture. Yeah. It's like slouchy, but not in a high fashion way. No. It's just like in an Irish potato famine way. She's actually Swedish, but she's like, she reads as Irish to me. Yeah. I think she's like one of those like Christina Hendricks who's like not a natural

redhead, but seems like she is. Or maybe, yeah, she's like a mousy blonde, but the red really suits her. And I think she's a real star. I thought the little girl who played her also was cute and the tropes that it invoked of like the little chimney sweep kids and the like dogs and stuff. I was like, oh, I was like, I was like smiling and stuff like at points. Well, you know, this movie for me was like a total mashup of the Devil Wears Prada meets all of her twist.

Well, it was written by the same person who wrote the screenplay for Devil Wears. Oh, that makes sense. They're just like literally copy pasting. I mean, it was written by a few people. Yeah. And that's my basic kind of critique of it, I guess, is that I thought I was like surprised by how enjoyable it was and thought that it did have moments that were like, maybe even a little bit inspired. And I did think it was better than the Joker, but ultimately it was just so like

ripped apart and processed through like the Disney factory. Yeah, the algorithm. Yeah, and there were so many like choices made that kind of like scrambled any real integrity or like admirable decision making that went into the process. Yeah, totally. My thing is like the people that make these films, do they know what they're doing? Like, do they know that they're selling like movie product to like malnourished lump in? Like, because that's what they're doing.

I think they have ambitions to be like fine filmmaker. Well, when you say the people who make these movies, I mean, like the producers do know that they're essentially turning out a movie product. And that's for most, I think maybe even the heights of their like aspirations, it's like their job to kind of be like, that's why I mean, so many music cues, like one right after the other. And that to me definitely felt like some like post production producer decision that was made because they were telling like for, I mean, I don't watch a lot of Disney movies, obviously,

but it was seems like a kind of more, I don't know, humane and character driven story than they typically are. But they could even with that, they couldn't sort of like trust the audience enough to understand it. So then they had to just like jam it full of all of this like visual and like musical infirmary, they basically made like a ton of trailers like in succession. Exactly. Yeah.

Like, well, yeah, it was, it was kind of yet again, like it reminded me of those algorithms that can write an entire like Washington Post article for you, except it was like the movie version of that. And they're just like on the formal level, like before we even get to the kind of analysis, the critique, like, let me pull up my notes because I took a bunch of notes like that basically it was so it was kind of like a Libfem retelling of like the origin story of this like iconic Disney villain. And it was marketed very much like Joker for women.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard like Disney poisoned Libfems. Totally. Yeah, their Joker moment. Yeah, it's like childless 38 year old project managers for babies. But yeah, like, it was, I do agree with you that it was better than Joker because I think this is a movie that knows what it is on one level and also just like was less of a drag. The Joker was such a fucking slug and a drag. It was like, it looked better.

It was less, it was more stupid in some ways, but in that way also less stupid. Yeah. Because it didn't take itself as seriously and was like more primarily for children. Yeah, that's true. Though I doubt any children are watching this movie. I think this is mainly, this is a movie that's like marketed for children. There were some kids at the movies. I think, I think like preteens, I think would go see this movie and might, they might find like a

a resonance with like young people, but primarily yeah, like the same women who like Harry Potter. Yeah. And write nasty Jezebel headlines about us. But yeah, it was like very like kind of visually like unnecessarily aggressive. It was cut like a music video. So it was like a succession of way too fast scenes for people with negative attention spans. You know, like it's cycled through scenes really quickly. Um, I thought the CGI was really bad, like the Dalmatians.

The color grading was annoying and over the top, but I maybe it has more of a place in a film like this rather than the joke or like the color grading in the joke or really like Well, it was infuriated me. Yeah, because the color grading in the Joker was trying to make it look like it was a movie made in the 70. It was trying to make it look like taxi driver and this at least was like a more glossy and kind of baroque, which sort of fit the thematic tone of the film more. It was more jewel toned rather than acid tone.

Exactly, exactly. And the dogs, yeah, that was so weird to me because the dogs don't even do anything that crazy. I know they protect their owner. I mean, in terms of like the for a dog actor, yeah, to do certainly you can train a dog to like to growl and like run around, but the CGI dogs looked terrible. My other beef with the dogs just like on a strictly like annoying, litigious, chronological level, like how, how did those, all those dogs live that long? Cause well, going from her childhood to her like mid twenties, that's like at least 10 years.

Dogs live like 10 years. Dogs can live longer than that. They live less than like 20 years though. Definitely, but yeah, she does say that it's like 10 years past from when she befriends her little like orphan buddies. Yeah. And then went to when she becomes like Cruella again. Yeah.

And she is roughly a span of like 10 years. Yeah. She goes from being like a cottagecore orphan to like living in a Bushwick loft with a bunch of other geriatric millennials and their fur babies. But yeah, the music too, like I took, I took down like the songs that were used. It's just like they were so on the nose is the zombies, time of the season, Nancy Sinatra, these boots are made for walking Nina Simone, feeling good, the Beatles come together. And of course, Rolling Stones, sympathy for the devil.

So it's like this almost felt like, you know, those like PBS ads that were like long ass commercials, like, you know, Wayne Newton and like Marie Osmond selling a CD collection for boomers to fly over the phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like remember the, they still have those commercials on television. I always watch them because I'm like, wow, people are still like, yeah. And they're clearly selling like they got the rights to like a couple songs, but then the rest of the CD collection is like trash.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's literally like, you know, they'll do like a showcase of like Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers singing a duet and then yeah, try to like sell you on. I couldn't. I was, yeah, I was shocked at how much the musical cues pandered to just the total lowest common denominator.

Yeah. It was stunning. And like also to whom? Because the music was like very boomer level. It wasn't even like music that geriatric millennials listened to. But definitely not zoomers. No, but they're all of those songs are like so movified already. Yeah.

They're like basically in like a database just for using in movies. Like no, no one listens to like sympathy for the devil. I think in their downtime at all because it's like, yeah, because you just now associate or the like, I'm going to get you song that wasn't like the Rugrats movies and tons of other movies and stuff. It's like those songs like no one even listens to recreationally because we associate them so much with like, it's like listening to Credence Clearwater Revival and like not thinking about like Vietnam Montages.

Exactly. Like they're just so linked with. But this to me seemed like a giant wasted opportunity because there was like a lot of potential, a lot of room for like a soaring cinematic score for a movie like this. But they were clearly like, you know, trying to do it on the cheap. And they didn't have original score that was good actually. But yeah. It was kind of buried.

It was buried under just all of the like music videos basically that they had to or felt like they had to put put in the movie to like hold people's interest. Yeah. And yeah, the whole movie, I mean, it was trapped in this kind of like Fisherian like nostalgia time warp. Like it starts in kind of the mod era and ends in the punk era, but you never really know what era it is. Like it's ostensibly the 60s and then the 70s, but it's very kind of nonspecific,

like generic, you know. Yeah. I think the second half of the movie was really doing like a Vivian Westwood 70s punk England. I mean, they literally saying like, I want to be your dog, which was incredibly cringe. And then yeah. While you're stewed, like begrudgingly plays guitar. Yeah.

I mean, it just felt like overall, like that there was like a lot of wasted talent and a lot of wasted resources. I thought the costumes were really well done. Yeah. The costumes, the costumes were like probably the best element brought a lot to the table. The Baroness Costume Department. And that's like, yeah. I mean, I think when you say like the people who make these movies, do they know what they're

doing? I think like costume departments, yeah, it's like movies like this aren't like obviously like inner tours vision. They're just like an amalgam of like departmental, delegated tasks. And sometimes there's a synergy between them that works and some departments are better than others. Yeah. That's what I said. Yeah.

Like costume department versus like music supervisor. Yeah, it's like very designed by committee, basically. Yeah, exactly. But even it's funny because like it had that kind of devil wears Prada vibe, which makes sense now that you mentioned that the kind of chief screenwriter was on devil's or devil wears Prada, but it's also always very, it's very funny to see like what Hollywood thinks high fashion is, because you would think that there would be a lot of communication between those two industries, but they're like really isn't.

And like kind of mainstream Hollywood people have to be like the worst dressed people on the planet. Like you watch the Oscars now and it looks like everybody's going to the MTV music awards. Yeah. Like and I get a lot of those like Instagram Explorer carousels of like Selena Gomez or like Kendall Jenner or like Margot Robbie and they just look so horrendous all the time, like skinny jeans with like suede chunky heeled sandals that you look like you'd get like DSW floppy hat, studded flat.

Yeah, like that kind of vibe or like Alicia Keys wearing like a pants suit with like a petticoat and a fedora. There's definitely like a disconnects, different kinds of homosexuals dominate in both fields, I think. Yeah, exactly. That's also well said. They're like competing, they're conflicting, mutually exclusive homosexuals. And in Cruella, she befriends this like gay guy with like subtle David Bowie makeup who

she meets in like a thrift store who she enlists to kind of like help her with her like fabulous fashion shows and all of that dialogue. Much like all of her exchanges with like the Baroness played by Emma Thompson, which are very devilish product-esque, they also have this like, well, what's in it for me? And it's like, what do you mean? It's going to be fabulous and maybe a little bit of mischief and it's like just the same notes over and over and over. Yeah, it's like contentious and transactional.

It's like a window onto like modern geriatric millennial friendships in the workplace. It's literally that. And like, he's like a thrift store NB, he's like, I'm non-binary and I actually sometimes get abused and get weird stares on the street, but nothing is as horrible as being ordinary. This guy, he's like a mashup of the Elton John biopic and the David Bowie biopic, both of which are films that should only be viewed on airplanes. Like that kind of vibe where it's like literally like a simulacrum of a simulacrum. Yes, and yeah, he's her kind of gay sidekick and because this is Disney revisionism,

you can't just have like a film with like victims and villains. You have to kind of like nest important social justice lessons into there. So he's like, it's implied that he's like oppressed for his non-binary status. Of course, her best friend in elementary school is a black girl, the kid who rescues her from orphaned and adopts her is mixed, you know, it's like this kind of like very predictable stuff that's not even like upsetting or offensive anymore, because it's so like par for the chorus, right?

Like of course, her friend is black. Who's a pretty thankless character also. Yeah, she's like a journalist on the grind. Well, also, I mean, as like a prequel to as like a Cruella origin story, much like the Joker, Cruella is meant to be sort of the story of how Cruella becomes villainous, except in this film, she doesn't really become villainous. She doesn't much like in promising young woman. Yeah, there's this very like morally uncompromised Disney universe that it's

functioning in. Well, the original Cruella skinned a bunch of Dalmatian puppies because their fur was softer than that of adult dogs. Or here she does plan to. I think she doesn't pull off the the jig is up or something because it's like two. Yeah. Like that's I don't remember 101 Dalmatians enough, but that she kidnaps the puppies. But then they're rescued or whatever, hijinks ensue.

But yeah, I mean, this is like a story like, you know, we're supposed to understand what makes Cruella evil. Like something happened to her like, you know, sexual assault or or some other kind of like she finished school. Yeah. And it's like, you know, as it as it turns out, another woman bullied her and her mother before her. But that other woman is actually her mother.

That's the spoiler. Yeah. But actually, she's not evil. She's just misunderstood. Yes. And she, you know, it used to be that villains in Disney movies were just kind of like greedy, rich assholes. Like, you know, like Cruella DeVell.

She was an heiress. Yeah. And there was no explanation for why, which was kind of better. But now I think like maybe this is a conceptual stretch, but because these movies are designed for like morally confused 38 year old women who have like foregone personal happiness to like scale the greasy corporate ladder or whatever. And who don't know how to watch movies. Yeah.

Yeah. Who are contemptuous of art. Yeah. Basically, the kind of humanizing justifications are actually there to excuse and justify cruelty, further cruelty in a way, because, you know, the Cruella that emerges from the scroll of Stella is like kind of a shabby person. She's not an evil person. She's just kind of like an asshole and a bitch.

Well, she's out for vengeance. And there's it's like sprinkled with all this lib fem rhetoric. Like I took down all these quotes being a genius is one thing. Raising a genius does come with its challenges. Like all the all the lines smack of the that like, you know, those mugs or pins that they have at bookstores that are like a well read woman is a dangerous thing. Well behaved women rarely make history. Yeah, like that kind of thing.

Yeah, I don't know. I think it's weird this new kind of Disney thing where we have to like humanize villains. I mean, it's transcends Disney. I really feel like it's was kind of born out of the Joker. Some execs somewhere had an idea to be like what it's a girl joker that we can do anything about like, oh, Cruella, okay, but she's an heiress. Okay, but what if she was an orphan first? And then like, but it really is just because the Joker's about how the Joker becomes so chaotic.

This is about how Cruella becomes so cruel. Right. And so it's like meant to kind of justify the cruelty. Yeah, exactly. But more than I think, I guess like a revisionist agenda, I really think the well of intellectual property is just running dry and they're really just running out of ideas. Yeah, no, they are. Yeah.

And it's like, you know, it's funny because this is basically a story at the end of the day about like intergenerational female psychological warfare. Like trauma kind of yet and trauma like swathed in like uplifting feminist morality. Like that's basically the kind of punchline, you know, notice all the talk also about being competent and extraordinary, which is how like contemporary feminists who are secretly miserable and I like sympathize with them and not like trying to like insult them want to fantasize about feeling, you know? Yeah, but also I thought the use of psycho was very interesting.

Yeah. Like when she, I think she says even verbatim, like I'm psycho or like I'm going to go psycho. She also like alludes to like the bareness as being like a psycho. That felt like, I don't know, I was like surprised that that was the terminology and like the frankly ableist slide that they were using because as much as as awful as I think want to feel extraordinary and competent, they also fantasize about like going insane. Yeah, because they're always like one thread away from losing it.

And like think of all the women who are kind of like- They love to snap. Yeah. That like, you know, Amy Klobuchar berating her staffers and eating a salad with a comb, Elizabeth Holmes perpetuating a massive like medical startup grift, Cheryl Sandberg, Huma Abedin, like Hillary Clinton, all these women who are like profoundly careerist who will do whatever it takes to like be at the top of their game. And like, you know, I think like because this is a parable about girl bossry, this is really

just a tale of becoming crueler than your master, which usually means your employer, you know, so she really has to upstage and outcompete the baroness who is also, as it turns out, her mother. There's a lot of like nest of the weird like liberal shit up in here. Yeah. But she never, I guess like, what isn't compelling about it is that she never really compromises herself morally. She doesn't like kill her mother. She doesn't skin the dogs. Yeah. And it's very, it's very comparable to a promising young young women, which woman,

which was billed to us as like some sort of like bloody revenge caper, but she doesn't actually kill people. She just teaches them a lesson. Exactly. Like some annoying- And then murderize yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like very like, I'm going to count to three. That, yeah, to me is like a very confused and unsatisfying way of storytelling. Yeah. That fails again to acknowledge female agency and cruelty. Hence the, as you correctly point out, like the whole psycho thing. Like I hadn't even thought of that, but like this obsession with like almost losing it, they should make falling down for women. Don't give them any good ideas, Anna. You know, it'll be terrible. It's just like a fat chick who like slips at the frozen yogurt bar. The unwillingness of Hollywood to really kind of depict an actually like villainous,

morally compromised woman is annoying. Yeah. Totally. And for all the great pains they take to entertain, I think they ultimately fall short. Yeah. I mean, it is an entertaining film. Definitely. Definitely. But I think the essence of, I don't know, there's some quote that like a playwright ex-boyfriend told me once, which is like it's not, the essence of drama, it's not dramatic to see someone almost do something bad. Right.

It's like you have to see someone do something bad. Right. Exactly. But I think like, you know, it cuts to the core of the issue, which is that you know, like women don't want to acknowledge they don't want to be seen as kind of evil or capable of evil. And it's also like very, I thought it was very interesting that this woman was not only her boss, but also her mom. Yeah. And she sort of nabs her in the end, knowing full well that the baroness will kind of seek to kill her. So instead, Cruella fakes her death, but gets the baroness arrested,

because it's apparent that she pushed her as revenge for pushing her surrogate mother. And that to me was also like a very liberal feminist fantasy like that plays out on social media, like on Facebook and Twitter and stuff as people denouncing their racist uncle for something he said at Thanksgiving. You know, there's this like underlying drive compulsion to kill or at least jail your family members. Yeah. And all of that gets a little bit like convoluted and inelegant in the way that it's told and then depicted again with this CG. I mean, obviously spoilers, but she'll like, then she has like a parachute on, you know, and it's and her little friend is down below the cliff

in a boat. And that's the CGI looked awful. And it always like very like wrapped up. And then obviously it takes place in like an unreality where the audience isn't engaging with it as like a naturalist piece of filmmaking. But also when someone goes to jail, you don't like get their inheritance. Right. Wait, what? You don't know that you do when they die. Oh, okay. But if someone's in jail, you know, get to move into their house. Well, at the end, spoiler, she does move into the house and she takes down the inscription on the gate and throws up Arbite Mach Frey. Just kidding. She just writes Hell House. But yeah, so she basically, the idea is that she usurps her mother and becomes her, but she becomes kind of like

the better nicer version. It's very conflicted and compromised the kind of lesson at the end. But I guess knowing what she then does, if it is meant to be a kind of prequel, what eventually happens to her with the Cruella de Vil arc, then you one can infer that like through moving into Hell Hall and stuff, she becomes increasingly evil. Yeah, I guess that's the idea. Or not. Or we just like lay a total totally different like revisionist narrative over the old myth and she becomes like a girl boss who like donates to NGO or something. She fights to sterilize people in Africa. It's a story of Melinda Gates. And there's an interesting part where like, it's revealed that she was basically handed over by the Baroness to the Baronesses, or

not by the Baroness, but by her butler to the maid, because the Baroness instructed the butler to kill the baby. Because she was a narcissist also. Right. Noted interest of the Baroness being described as like a pathological narcissist. Yeah, I was like, wow, people are in Hollywood are really reading that. But that to me was almost like this weird kind of like backhanded, like mythical justification of abortion or something. Okay, a bit of a stretch, but I'm just trying to psychoanalyze it like, you know, like in a Jungian way, like what these things mean in reality, like these kind of like Marvel Disney. I mean, if anything, I would think with the Baroness being like the sole kind of like unequivocal villain of the film,

that her willingness to kill the baby, maybe even you could make the argument that it had like a subtle pro-life message. Yeah, maybe. And then at the end, she says, you know, that was a mistake. I shouldn't have given you away. You're so extraordinary. Yeah, but she's lying, right? She wants to lure Cruella into giving her a hug so she can push her off the there's a lot of like conflicted messaging, but it was like very like, kind of like, neo-lib office politics. That's the word I haven't used before. But you know, like even in the course of their relationship that like plays out in the fashion house where Estella slash Cruella is like a promising young upstart and the Baroness steals her designs and Cruella just wants credit,

you know? It's right. Like they're, of course, at the end of the day, they're fighting over who gets credit. When will they toast to me? Yeah, for like some stupid project. It's like very much a workplace drama. And then also like a domestic drama. Yes. But primarily, yeah, it's about the like moving upwards in your professional life and building your career. Yeah. But again, in the kind of malnourished, like nutrient division, moral kind of mindset of liberals, this is seen like the point comes down to like a game of tug of war over who gets credit, like who gets the corner office in the end. So it's a very kind of like limited, narrow minded, you know, outlook. Yeah.

Yeah. But all in all, a pretty good movie. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to say nothing of its watchability. Yeah. If you're on a plane or if you just have an afternoon to go to a matinee, I would probably recommend it. This is a great film to watch on an airplane. Totally. I remember like being on an airplane before COVID and like everybody was watching either the queen biopic, the Freddie Mercury or like the Elton John one. Good for Emma Stone. Yeah. I mean, she's great. She's a lot of fun. She's great to watch. Do you like her or Margot Robbie more? I like Emma Stone more. She stays in her lane a little, a little more. I think there was a screenwriter from the favorite also involved. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. We reviewed that one, right? I think so. Yeah. It was like the

Olivia Coleman. The Yorgos Lanthimos one. Yeah. I mean, it sucks that, I don't know, that so much stuff is based on IP and then the stuff that isn't is like promising young women. Yeah, that's true. I guess this is an original film by this fennel, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But everything else, yeah, is kind of like rehashed and focus grouped and then like micromanaged through like giant studio houses and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And that's disappointing because I think like it really kind of like curbs, curb stomps the talent of people like Emma Stone, who I think in a different model would have more to offer, you know, I mean, like, I'm sure like the Cruella thing is like a good role for her and she probably made a ton of money off of it and stuff. Was this

movie popular? Um, I don't know. It came out recently. Yeah. And how's it doing on the market? I wonder. I think I saw something that said it, less people watched it than Mulan. Okay. But I don't know if that's the globally or or what like those numbers were based on the me look. Hmm. Oh, another thing that sucked about it was that she doesn't smoke cigarettes. Oh, because you can't depict smoking in a, in a indie, in a Disney movie. Oh, you can't because of the kids. It's just not their company policy. But that's retarded and iconic kind of signature of Cruella Deville was that she had like the cigarette holder and like the drama of the smoking. So that was the movie got demerits in that way for me too. That's crazy. Like it's also like so

gay how everything has to be like safe and comfortable for people. Like you can't depict some bitch smoking a cigarette in a movie. That's insane to me. I know. Um, when it's like literally it's like her two tone hair and her cigarette holder or her like two chief characteristics, it's like second at the box office, 61% of the tracked audience was female with 43% being under 25 years old. Oh, okay. So it is like tweens. Yeah, I think because they relate to Emma Stone because they just like to go to the movies. So they can jack each other off or whatever teens do these days. Yeah. That's why I used to go to the movies. What to like do hankie-pankie. Yeah, guys. Yeah. That's probably why I went to the movies too.

I don't remember any of the movies I watched. Um, so yeah, I think the audience for I could I probably when I was 12 would have liked this movie, it would have like appealed enough to my, uh, like burgeoning punk sensibilities also and I with not enough like critical, developed critical thinking skills to engage with it on that level. I would have probably just been like, cool. Yeah, she's a badass. I mean, what a badass little girl. Well, that's the thing. I don't know how, um, how much this actually movies like these actually kind of leave lasting lessons in the minds of like 12 and 13 year olds. Yeah. It's hard to say like on what like on what level that registers. I think they're less about imparting lessons than they are

just about like reaffirming dominant ideological modes. Well, I think the lessons are kind of written accidentally and incidentally. Like it appears that there's some sort of like, you know, like I can analyze it and be like, this is like a lib femme parable, which it is, you know, very obviously, obviously, but I don't think that that's necessarily intentional, you know, that just emerges through the process of like designed by committee and like the way that people's minds are molded. I think they naturally come to certain collective decisions. Yeah. And that's the only way to really engage with films like these, I think, because you can't really evaluate them for their aesthetic or artistic merits. Yeah. I think the any sort of aesthetic or artistic evaluation is

just like purely for your own edification for fun. Yeah. Like you can't like there's no actual deep moral lesson to be gleaned from them. Definitely. That like, I mean, I think art in general, like I saw some people were like passing around in a Tessa Moshfag interview where she was like, basically pushing back against like woke social justice or whatever. Well, my prediction is that that will sort of be the next wave in Hollywood. Like the overton window will shift and there will be some fatigue with like the dominant modes of woke ideology. And then we'll see sort of like, cancel culture backlash stuff emerging. Yeah, maybe. I mean, it'll be interesting how that shakes out. It'll take a while.

Yeah, like, what's a while like five years, 10 years. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Next gen. Like these epochs will be long, but not everlasting. Yeah, no, I mean, I agree. I think that like these things, like I said, are cyclical and things will come back around. So there's no reason to be like horribly pessimistic unless you're trying to sell subscriptions like the Daily Wire, which I still get emails from. Yeah, I sent you that Quaid interview. Wait, was it Randy Quaid or Dennis Quaid? That's the slightly hotter one. Yeah. Yeah. But he's also has a bone to pick with cancel culture. Yeah, he's doing a Reagan biopic. Is he playing Reagan? I didn't read the I didn't

read the interview. That's funny. I read actually the first paragraph and it's like, it was really working very hard to make Dennis Quaid look like a successful actor and not a washed up actor in between projects. He's busy. He had a spare moment to talk to the Daily Mail. No, it was like literally that. But I think like you're right. And there will be a backlash against like so called cancel culture. I really hope it's not overly gay and on the nose. I mean, even the cut wrote about like the girl bossery of Cruella. Whereas I think like a couple years ago, people wouldn't have been talking about things in those terms. Right, yeah. And they're sort of catching up to the grift. Yeah, I mean, I remember how like novel it felt in 2016 to be like,

well, it's pretty morally reprehensible to name a pair of yoga leggings, the Rikers Island pant. Everyone's abolishing presents and taking down gatekeepers. But I think like in the meantime, I feel like somebody needs to make an Ursula revisionist history where like Chrissy Teigen or Demi Lovato plays Ursula and she's evil because she got body shamed as a teen. Like it has to, yeah. Yeah. Or maybe like a fat black actress like Raven Simone. She's like non binary and bisexual. Okay. That's why Ursula is the way she is. That's I could actually see that getting me. That's not even that outlandish. Yeah, me too. That's why I bring it up in the cut article. Yeah, I wrote I quoted this part.

If you look closely, Corella is indicative of the very culture it pretends to critique. Its central character is a white woman whose concerns and politics begin and end with herself. She's a girl boss pretending to fight against the powers that be she doesn't want to overthrow the establishment so much as become it. Corella takes one of the richest narrative archetypes, the mad woman, and will it whittles her down into a glossy hollow capitalism approved monster fueled by girl boss politics. It has nothing to say about how women move through the world. And that's all kind of true. But I don't think the movie is like pretending to offer a critique of girl boss culture to begin with. Yeah, I don't think it's

it's criticizing or endorsing girl boss culture. It's very just like a product of its time at a little bit of a delay. Yeah, because this is like a thing that was going on in 2016. Right. And it just like kind of like openly describing the with like the feminized influence of like the Joker. Right. Yeah. And like this kind of like modern like definition of madness, which is just like meamed quirkiness or something. But yeah, there's like a lot of I mean, like just like some of the lines where they talk about or they, you know, the Baroness says gratitude is for losers. Caring is an obstacle. At lunch, Estelle tells the Baroness like you must hate her regarding Corella and the Baroness says actually I'm conflicted. She's bold and

brilliant, but she's made it either me or her. And I chose me like this kind of stuff. Like that's very just like, it's like one dimensional. Yeah. Also, again, unreality like fantastical Disney world, but very implausible that Emma Stone would be unrecognizable as Cruella because she has like a eyes wide shut style mask. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I had that thought too. We're Emma Thompson is like, she looks familiar. Like, you know, it's like, like that and the, the dogs still being alive after 10 plus years, those are the two leaves of faith that I'm not willing to take. Sure. I'm going to die on that hill. The dogs, the dogs shouldn't have been CGI and they should have perish and they should

died like five years before this movie even got made. Yeah, I don't know. I think like, yeah, there's no, there's no like critique in this film. And even in that, that's like a wrong way to watch a movie. Yeah. But I think, yeah, like bracing yourself to sort of understand and dissect the critique that I may be making. And I'm like very guilty of this tendency myself because I like to understand psychologically like what's going on. But I think like, yeah, with films like these, like there's no point. I mean, we just expended an entire episode on this, but there's almost no point in getting like I said, it's I think for your own entertainment. Yeah. And the entertainment of our lovely listeners, which I guess I wouldn't really

recommend it to men. Cruella. Yeah. I feel like it's not really for the fellas. Well, what did Dan think of the film? He didn't really like it. He exhaled it. He fell asleep actually for a portion of it. Yeah. You like just got up and left. Then he said, that should suck dad. I mean, I think this movie is like profoundly alienating for men because it's literally about women and having like competing fashion shows. Yeah. Women in fighting. Yeah. I was like, it's it's the big fashion show and he was like asleep. It's a bias cut skirt. Well, the cockney vibe was also entertaining to me. Oh yeah, the fat guy. Like what are you doing?

Yeah, you can't be having a fashion show in the park. Go on, get it. Where was Cara Delevingne? I know. I know. Very Miss Women's opportunity for a little cockney cameo from our favorite chimney sweep. I know. Our little artful Dodger. I think like Emma Stone actually has Cara Delevingne artful Dodger vibes, which suits the role. And to her credit, she did hold the accent well. She's a great actor. She's a pro. She is. Yeah. I'll give her that. I like Emma Stone, no complaints there. But yeah, the cockney stuff is always like a nice touch in any movie. Even like they could just like parachute it into like a movie where it totally doesn't belong. It's just so legible. You know, you like really get it or like, yeah, they're little orphan kids.

They've got a little floppy hat. Yeah. They're doing petty crimes. They sleep in alleyways. The capers. Yeah. They clean chimneys for a living. The way that she gets her big break with her mother slash boss is that she steals like a fancy crystal craft from the department store managers. Wicker cabinet gets wasted. Designs a fabulous window display. Yeah. That was very like the window display. The aesthetics were very also like FIT grad slash project runway reject. Yeah. It's like that aesthetic. And then like the boss lady came waltzing in and was like, fabulous. You're hired like on the spot. There's lots of stunning, fabulous redundancies, lots of like circular dialogue that's like basically just punctuated by extensive music

sequences. Yeah. That are excessive. Yeah. Agreed. And annoying. Yeah. Anyway. So yeah, on our next episode, we'll talk about what's eating Gilbert grape. And the idiots. Yeah. Do we have anything else to plug? I don't think so. No. I did a guest podcast on Russians with Attitude, which is an English language podcast, but it's hosted by two Russian guys. Cool. So that's coming up, I guess. I went on Celebrity Book Club recently to talk about Kelly Catron's memoir. So that is also forthcoming. We can just wrap it up. Yeah, well, let's wrap it. See you around.