The Bechdel Cast - A Little Princess with Joelle Monique

Episode Date: August 8, 2019

Little Princess Caitlin and Little Princess Jamie invite Little Princess Joelle Monique as their special guest to discuss A Little Princess.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @JoelleMonique on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you.

You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories,

and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hey, everyone.

Quick note at the top of the show. Bechdel continuity check for all you eagle-eared listeners. You're about to hear an episode about the movie A Little Princess, one of the stars of which is Vanessa Chester, who you may know was recently on the Bechdel cast for our Booksmart episode. Now, in this episode, we are talking as if we don't know her because at the time it was recorded, we didn't. That's true. We met Vanessa after this episode was recorded. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, hey, why are they talking about this Becky character as if they'd never met the actor? Well, that's why. We simply had not met her yet.

And in the magical world of podcasting, sometimes you record an episode and then it sits on the shelf for a while and then you release it. Until the time is just right. Yes. So now you know. And get ready for a hell of an episode. Here's a little princess. Yes. The Bechdelcast.

Hello and welcome to The Bechdelcast. My name's Jamie Loftus. My name's Caitlin Durante. That was a dramatic pause I did. I panicked for a second. I was like, should I talk? I saw you panic. I have an Alfred Molina update. Please. That you you actually provided me with because we both follow his finsta we are not at liberty to

disclose his finsta aristotle actually found the finsta and passed it on to us because that's just what he's like finsta i know that's instagram but like why the f it's like your fake instagram it's like where like either you sign up to post passive-aggressive things. Not a good idea. I would never. Or it's what famous people do to have an account that is just for people they actually know and not for fans. Like Beyonce definitely has a Finsta. As much as she loves Instagram, she for sure has a Finsta.

You guys keep me young. Thank you for keeping me young. So this is Freddie's finsta that we became privy to. So we're recording this around the time that abortion rights are simply gone. Hopefully when you listen to this, that won't be true, but probably it will be even more true than it is right now. Unfortunately, yes. So, but he posted in solidarity with women because he is

a feminist icon he posted what appears to be a kaleidoscopic image of a vagina yes and then said quote those of us without a vagina need to shut the fuck up dot dot dot in the abortion argument no vagina means no voice unquote i mean a true feminist icon truly what an ally i just started start by breaking the bechdel test yeah and sharing that that's okay because we're gonna only pass the bechdel test from here on out yeah we were uniquely suited to with our movie this week yeah so yeah we use the bechdel test as a jumping off point to initiate a larger conversation about the representation of women in movies. And the Bechdel test, of course, is a media metric created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel that requires that a movie have two named female identifying characters who speak to each other about something other than a man. Let's demonstrate.

All right. Hey, Caitlin. Jamie, what is it? Oh, shit. characters who speak to each other about something other than a man let's demonstrate all right hey caitlin jamie what is it um oh shit i know what i was gonna say i was gonna break it never mind that passes that's a test that's a twist it passes i was gonna say didn't you see john c reilly at a at a roller skating place i I was like, motherfucker, we've been doing this over three years. We still don't know how to pass the Bechdel test. Brave of us. Well, anyway. How vulnerable. So today we're talking about A Little Princess, the 1995 movie directed by Alfonso Cuaron, which I always forget he directed. It's during his green period his green days learned a lot about his green period lots of stuff uh and without much further ado let's introduce our guest that

we have today yes she is a pop culture entertainment critic she's written for hollywood reporter play boy paste magazine pajiba.com it's joelle monique hey hi what's up guys oh we're so excited thanks for coming i'm so excited to be here i love this show it's super funny you guys have great guests including you of course now i'm part of the echelon yeah yeah you're canon i was so excited because when we talked about getting you in the show at first, you didn't think for a moment before you were like, oh, A Little Princess. It's a longtime favorite. A problematic in places fave. But if you're just looking for a really solid representation of women, oh, good Lord, Your Soul Could Fly.

And it's like magical and whimsy and fantasy. And when it came out, I was six. So it's like the perfect age for this movie. And Emmanuel Levitsky did the cinematography, and he's like iconic. He's so good. So yeah, it was a no-brainer. It's a beautiful movie. It looks so beautiful.

Yeah. And very green. Extremely green. Caitlin, what's your history with this movie? I watched it a lot as a child. This and The Secret Garden garden i was watching constantly i've probably seen this movie 30 times or so because it came out when i was nine so i was that's still like yes still the age to be appreciating this and my sister and i would watch it all the time and then a couple

years later titanic would come out which you of course, takes place around this same era. There's a music box in this movie that plays the same tune that Rose's music box plays in Titanic. Whoa! The one that goes, doo-doo-doo. I did not notice that. Doo-doo-doo. I was surprised that we didn't talk about it because when I rewatched it this morning, I was like, I know that music box tune. Oh, my goodness.

It must have just been a very popular music box from the early 1900s. Very different vibes, though, because in A Little Princess, it's that little girl wailing because her mother's dead. And in Titanic, it's Cal Hockley being like, why can't I fuck you? And she's like, no. Same music box, very different themes. scenes yeah so this was one of my childhood favorites but hadn't watched it for probably 20 years or so um so it was an interesting re-watch jamie what's your history i don't have much of a history with this movie most people i talked to about this movie that were not completely in love with it as children very often confuse it with the secret garden I am firmly in that camp I mean it's

based on work from the same author the visual styles are similar there's problematic themes about colonialism in India in both of them uh but I I think I saw it like maybe once or twice when I was when I was little but this movie came out when I was like two or three so I I think I kind of missed it and then saw it at a friend's house later but I'm not I wasn't particularly attached to it but watching it back I mean it's like it's an unusual movie for kids where it like takes heavy topics and deals with them in a heavy way which you don't i don't know it's like an unusual approach true uh i don't know i like it and i like my favorite color is green so i'm a fan it's good should i do the recap yes all right so it's 1914 titanic sunk titanic has been sunk for two years. We're over it. We meet this little girl named Sarah.

She lives in India with her father. They are clearly British colonizers. Davos on Game of Thrones. Sure as hell is. That's my favorite part. You're like, wait a second. I know this, daddy. You took care of another little girl who needed a lot of help oh shereen i love davos

he's like you're my little princess this indian woman named maya who's like all girls are princesses i don't know her relationship to this indian woman exactly it's not clear they really skirt what is very clearly her dad's job of participating in colonialism. Yes, they do. They really skirt it. I have, I, after the recap, we can get into why I think in this instance, it might be okay. This is entirely from the perspective of a child.

Right. Children don't understand these things. I don't know. I'm wishy-washy about how I feel about the presentation of that. Sure. It's, I mean, definitely like Sarah being so naive about everything benefits the story in every way. Because you would, I guess you wouldn't if you were like, how old is Sarah supposed to be? She's 11.

The actress is 11 when this movie is released. So she's, I think, between the ages of 9 and 12. Okay. So, like, you wouldn't necessarily realize exactly what your parents at that point yeah and you're sheltered from a lot of that too is like and i think that it plays it makes because she is that way it gets us to this like amazing villain that i i just i really like the dynamics of the villain being like listen girl like the life that you think you're living is such a facade and you don't know hard work and

you don't know what like difficulties are like and i feel like she's really justified in a lot of places not all of the places she's also terrible but i understood her there is yeah seeing seeing uh seeing her as an adult you're like oh you're someone hurt you yes that is the world hurt you yeah i get it um okay so then uh then Sarah's father has to go and fight in World War I. So Sarah is sent to a boarding school in New York City. Ever heard of it? Wow. And she has like the biggest bedroom.

All her toys are there. She clearly comes from a place of extreme economic privilege. Yes, daddy. Yes. She gets a tour of the school she meets i guess the head mistress miss mention she's very strict an icon skunky stripe love it we meet her sister amelia mention who is nicer than her her sister miss she's like a teacher there. Yeah. And then Sarah sees this little black girl who is mopping the floor

and she is like, hmm. And then Sarah meets the other girls who attend the school and one of them is really mean. No! All she wants to do is brush her hair! What a bitch! Sarah starts her lessons and the school has a lot

of rules. Miss Minchin is always yelling at her and then Sarah sees this black servant girl again and she's curious about her and she finds out that her name is Becky which love the irony of a black girl being named Becky so Sarah goes up to Becky's living quarters and she's like, you have to go or we'll both be in trouble. She's like icing her feet. She has like very uncomfortable shoes. Yeah. So then Sarah sends Becky a new pair of shoes.

Shoes that I would like to have myself. They are yellow. They're furry shoes. Yeah. They have heels, but they're slippers. Yeah. They're beaver lined. Listen, this is 1914 and they're fancy as hell she spared no expense and then sarah gets in trouble again because she uses her imagination to liven up story time and miss mention is like

don't you fucking use your imagination but uh the girls want to hear Sarah's stories about like the princesses and princes in India. So she's like sharing stories that Maya had told her previously. I think that's what we're meant to. Or stories she learned when she was living in India. Yes. Yes. So all the girls go to Sarah's room in secret so that they can keep hearing her stories. Meanwhile, Sarah's father is deep in the trenches of world war one davos is in it there's mustard gas and everything it sucks

it's rough out there and then during sarah's birthday party she receives word that her father was killed in action and that the brit British government has seized control of his company and all of his assets, which means that Sarah is now penniless. She has no money. This is the one scene where I feel Miss Minjin went too far. I have mixed feelings about it, too.

I don't, I want to get too into it, but, like, I just, you didn't have to stop that little girl's birthday party. Right. Like, why couldn't she have had one more hour of happiness? Of just joy.

Like, the peak of her joy, she's like, now's the time to crush it. But, like, yeah, I also feel like she's a woman who's, like, why couldn't she have had one more hour of happiness? Of just joy. Like the peak of her joy. She's like, now's the time to crush it. But yeah, I also feel like she's a woman who's like, these girls need to be prepared for harm and hurt. And I'm not going to shield them from it because the world certainly wouldn't. And she has such a hard time getting the words out to say it. It's clear that she doesn't take joy in hurting her. But I also think that she does take a little bit of pride

being able to knock her down a peg. It's such a weird time to be taking pride in something like that. And especially with a child. She's just so insecure. I feel for her deeply. She needs a good therapist. Yes, she does. God, no one believed in therapy at this time.

Freud, who is he? Passenger? And then that black balloon that is like moving toward her it's so good the cinematography in this movie is so good it definitely feels like foreshadowing for the it

2017 2018 like remake oh miss mention who hurt you miss mention her daddy didn't tell her that she was a princess enough, and that's why she's mean. Classic. So, yeah, Miss Mention is like, you're alone in the world now, Sarah, unless I decide to keep you here out of charity. So all of Sarah's belongings now belong to Miss Mention, and she is put to work as a servant in the school to earn her room and

board. She's living like next in the attic with Becky. Yeah yeah and Miss Minchin is like you're not a princess any longer because throughout the story so far Sarah has has been telling her peers at school you're a princess I'm a princess we're all princesses so you know she's taken down a peg so she moves to the attic with becky and starts working as a servant they become good friends and then also there's something going on next door there's an old man who lives there uh who has a son who is also fighting in the war he has gone like mia and then there's an an Indian man who lives with him again that relationship is unclear although according to some of my research he is identified as a servant to the old man and then Sarah keeps seeing him around town and then there's an injured soldier

with amnesia who turns up who they think might be the old man's son john but it's not because it's sarah's daddy papa papa papa papa can you hear me listen i really thought she was gonna launch into a full musical of the end told just papa can you hear me it's amazing the restraint in this not being a musical is incredible although she does sing the song at the end Oh, is that her? It is definitely her. They were just this close We'll talk about the child actress who played her

She has a crazy life story Oh, really? I don't know anything about it So the old man takes Papa in but he doesn't remember anything. He doesn't know who he is He doesn't know that he is he doesn't know that he has a daughter and sarah of course is not yet privy to this information young sir davos still hot he can get it now he could get it then this is available so sarah decides to start getting

back at miss minchin they pour some soot into her room. The other girls help Sarah get her locket back by stealing it from Miss Minchin. They go up to the attic to give her the locket and to hear more of her stories. But then Miss Minchin catches them and she's like, Sarah, how many times do I have to tell you? You're not a princess. Look in the mirror. You're gross. And you're not a princess look at the mirror you're gross and you're not allowed to eat tomorrow and neither are you becky sarah's all like well i am still a princess all girls are princesses didn't your father ever tell you that and then miss mention she's crying and she's upset but we'll never learn why she has to become a chimney sweeper. Her boss is a kid.

They explain literally everything. You're like, okay, but why is she poor? Oh, okay, because the government sees it. They give you an explanation for everything, but then at the end, she's like a chimney sweeper. You're like, that doesn't track. I don't understand what happened here. We didn't see her get fired.

She didn't really think cops didn't seem to care. They're like, I guess we just go home now. Four men to arrest a little girl was a lot, but now we're done. Oh, weird sequence of events. And then the plaque

on the school says like the Randolph School for Girls and I think that's the name of the man next door. Oh. So I guess he buys the school. Okay, so reading

is fundamental. It's just giving me a second. But before that all happens, Sarah and Becky have been told that they're not allowed to eat at all. They have to do like all their chores without any meals for the day. And then they wake up that morning and there's this whole feast in the attic for them that we are meant to believe the mysterious Indian man next door somehow provided for them and he like there's drapes made it snow at one point he makes it snow he gives their whole room a makeover some real mystic wizardry going on here right and then miss mention comes in and sees all this stuff and she

thinks sarah stole it so she calls the police so sarah escapes into the house next door and sees her father but he still has amnesia and doesn't remember her scene of the entire film oh it gets me when she howls oh my god her performance in that scene you're like whoa listen she almost fell off a building like climbed out in the rain running from the police say goodbye to a girl she considers her sister finds finds the one thing she's looking for, and he's like, I don't know you. I don't know who you are. I'm so sorry.

This is not my kid, Maury. Please take her to the stage left. She just breaks out. Oh, crazy. And then, so he doesn't remember who she is, so the police come in and they're taking her away, but suddenly he does remember because, again, the Indian man stares really hard at him. And he's cured of his amnesia. And the music cue with the no more amnesia.

You're like, oh, this is all sorts of wrong. It's only that one music cue for all the magical happenstances. Exact same one. You're like, okay, I guess like Pavlovian responds too because you're like at this point oh something good's about to happen right it's so weird and then they have that conversation

when Davos' like blindfold is still on you call him Davos what's it Liam Cunningham he's Davos but he's wearing his like his blindfold and his memory starts to come back when the indian man says he's from india and then davos is like india that's but his daughter's voice screaming for help across the alleyway no shut the window that's just a loud little kid next door

but there's india you speak it's his favorite place on the planet it's only dream in india okay bro so then yeah so then her father remember papa remembers and they reunite and then everything is great. Becky goes with them. I guess they go back to India. Not sure. Unclear. They at least take a left. That's where the movie ends.

Somewhere better than this. And then, yeah, Miss Minchin has to work as a chimney sweep. Amelia has run off with the milkman. Good for you, girl. And that's the end of the story and then uh there's no one to educate the girls and we don't know what happens to them the french teacher i guess is still there oh that's that's not good for those girls he did not seem competent he just wanted tea and a nap okay he was so tired and to be very rude to ladies in charge listen we don't

always have to agree but in front of children we are a united front for you to be very rude to ladies in charge listen we don't always have to agree but in front of children we are a united front for you to be like she could teach you a thing about your friends like bitch what how dare you miss mention uh miss mention ending up and then the kid who's her boss was a kid she had yelled at earlier i appreciated that kid's arc i was like oh he gets yelled at by miss mention and then he's like i'm your fucking boss i'm seven like that kid's arc i was like oh he gets yelled at by miss mentioned and then he's like i'm your fucking boss i'm seven like that kid had cojones he was going in for that money he was like excuse me no you pay me i did my job he knew his value yes yes and taught our girls some value oh my god what a fun movie what a wild story uh let's take a quick break and then we'll

jump into the discussion. Yeah. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere,

a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you.

You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you.

Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh,

I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. Not hawk the slalom.

I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies.

Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Where should we start? Well, there's so much for me, having grown up with this movie and still appreciating it to some degree. It's a story that is at least partly about female friendship. Like that's one of like the core tenets of the movie.

And then it's specifically about female friendship among young girls, which is not that common in like mainstream movies which is crazy but like we talked a little bit about this on the it takes two episode but there's like just so few movies about like girls being friends or like an ensemble cast of young girls and like the stuff that they do together and the things that they talk about together and like what they have in common i i appreciate it i was a little i had forgotten about the bully character and i was like oh it's so easy to like create friction that way but even though like sarah and what's the name of that character yes i have an aunt named lavinia so i have a super soft spot for lavinia hell yes i love Lavinia I love Lavinia because

she is like I feel like the film does a really good job of showing like what Lavinia's issue is like Lavinia was most popular and probably would never have had a problem with this girl except for that her teacher like she's gonna be the most popular girl and she was like whoa whoa my status is in jeopardy and her status is like the only thing she has she loves having these like girls follow her around and it's not no it's definitely not like the best kind of person. You don't want to model your life after Lavinia. But it's like an honest portrayal of, I think, a girl who has found herself like a corner of attention.

And I think it strings through all these girls' stories. They just miss their parents really bad. And I think Lavinia never talks about her parents, but I imagine part of this is missing her parents. Part of this like popularity and being surrounded and being comforted and knowing people like prefer her like it's not I do a lot of inferring in this movie so feel free to be like Joelle

that's a great headcanon but this is not what was shown in the movie I have a problem with it because I don't know maybe I'm trying to justify it but I feel strongly like Lavinia has a really solid arc because even at the end we get that great little hug where she was like I love that yeah because you're no longer going to be a problem

you can't steal my thunder if you're not here so I like you plenty I was like okay she did not redeem herself in any way Lavinia did not but suddenly Sarah's like okay let's hug it seems a little to me like Lavinia is Cersei and

Sarah is Daenerys and she like kind of comes sarah's very very pure uh yeah she i i i liked the lavinia i liked that there was an arc and that that was resolved and it wasn't just like and now the mean girl is mean forever and right i don't know i mean all the relationships between the girls felt like i mean they spoke like they were you know 30 at times but that's movies but i thought but also the time period i think like children especially of an educated certain level were required to they were spoken to like adults. You were considered like a young adult at like 12 instead of like us were like, you're 20, 25 now. You're like a whole person.

People didn't live as long then. They had to age up quicker. But I liked, I mean, all the relationships between the girls at the school felt like realistic and it was really nice to see how their worldviews were shaped by the adults around them which i think was like had part to do with how the other girls received becky just based on what they had been told by adults where like that's there's that exchange between sarah who this is like her first time we're assuming this is her first time seeing an interaction like this and she doesn't seem to understand like why isn't Becky with us why is she wearing something different yeah and then the girl she's speaking to Lottie oh no you're right Lottie screaming child 1914 she says that's Becky she's not allowed to talk to us why not she's a

servant girl and she has dark skin so well doesn't that mean something like it's just like I mean it was just like it was interesting to see like a young girl like encountering that and then also having the girls around her explain oh isn't this just like how things are and like just not challenging it and it's such a great like the reason I really love this film is because of Becky. Essentially, like Becky's the only black girl in her school. I was only black girl in my school until seventh grade. So the way the girls reacted around her, the way that they had a lot of thoughts about who Becky should be or how she should act, like all that, like really resonated.

Like Becky looks different. She acts different and her responsibilities are different and it's like to see a film explorer you have to be taught to hate in a way that isn't so in your face about it was sort of refreshing i love the way that that scene ends because there isn't really anything for her to say like she challenges as much as she can and sarah challenges most situated like when they're like no talking at the dinner table she's like well that's unnatural people discuss you know it's weird i just said thank you usually that's you know really rewarded as a child like oh she knows her manners right um and so i i like the idea of i think this film does a really good job of showing like kids have agency and are people and have thoughts but oftentimes they don't know what to do with those thoughts like i feel like a

lot of times like when we get smart kids in a movie, they're just slam dunking on adults. I mean, we talk about the precocious child trope all the time, and I didn't feel as though any of the children in this movie fell into that trope. Which felt refreshing to see kids acting like kids, and even when Sarah challenges Lottie the smallest bit, you almost see her be

like oh i i don't know like like that's just i don't know i never had a cognitive thought about this i just accepted what was given to me absolutely and i guess it makes sense for sarah to have that attitude because i mean she grew up in india among people with dark skin and like that i mean she was a british colonizer even though she has an american accent confusing but i guess i mean people with dark skin were very normal to her this is where i think it gets muddled as to like okay it would have been great to have gotten some reference points of what her status was in that society and where her father's position of rank was because is he

like just a soldier hanging out and he's practically one of the people and then he's got so much money yeah which makes me think that he's much higher also when we see her room in india it's like elaborate and gorgeous they say it's the biggest room he says i spared no expense like he's they're clearly very wealthy totally and so i think trying to figure out like how much did she see how much is she aware because as much as i believe you have to be taught to hate i also believe that by like 10 you've seen enough of the world that you can start putting together how humans treat different humans differently um and i think she would have seen bits and pieces of that in india and so it's like i don't know it's nice that she's so innocent and you can kind of

pass it off but it's also hard to believe that she would be like that and yeah it's like I don't know it's nice that she's so innocent and you can kind of pass it off but it's also hard to believe that she would be like that and yeah there's I mean and there's like a lot of and we can get into this later as well but like there's a lot of you know like confusion and a little bit of I guess I don't know if we can call it a controversy if it's an 100 year old book but Frances Hodgson Burnett who wrote this and The Secret Garden, never went to India, had never been there. But uses like those colonial themes like in the background of so many of her books and presents Indian characters as like very docile. And like the Saeed really was bothering me by the end of the movie. I'm like, this is like maybe a third of his lines are just

that one word and it's such a signal call of servitude and it's just like i don't think we needed it she hangs out with so many like servants people of different skin color like you could have made this person a human being as opposed to just the magical genie figure right yeah and i mean and it's like especially because like this movie takes place in 1914 when rebellion in india is becoming like a huge thing this is like when gandhi's movement is taking off and they're like no they're mostly just uh there to make dinner appear by magic like it's just it's i don don't know. So the whole way that that author approaches stuff like that seems to be, like, agreed upon that it's, like, at best, very misguided. Yeah. That might serve as a good transition into the conversation that I had with our friend Pallavi Ganalan.

Friend of the show. Friend of the show. We had a quick chat with her that we will play for you now. Hi, Caitlin here. I am sitting with friend of the podcast, Pallavi Ganalan, who watched the movie with us and then also recorded this previously. and then the audio quality was bad my fault so we're doing this again yay i get to talk more yes so thanks for coming back we really appreciate it and we would love to hear your insights about the representation of Indian people, Indian culture in the movie A Little Princess.

Yes. You gave me notes because this was a month ago and I forgot. I guess we could start by talking about the mythology that's represented in the movie. And that's like the story of the Ramayana. To set this up a little bit, the Sarah character is telling a story to her classmates throughout the course of the movie. So every so often we'll cut to scenes of Sarah telling the story and then there will also be other cuts to characters enacting the story that she's telling. So that's the setup. And I think we thought that from the

beginning of the movie it was a story told to her by an indian woman that she's then relaying right that's what we're meant to believe i think but i think she is taking ownership of the story because her friends are all like you're such a good storyteller and it's like she just was telling hindu mythology like a whole religion to her friends and it's just like just was telling Hindu mythology, like a whole religion to her friends. And it's just like, I came up with this. Well, full disclosure, when I watched this movie a lot as a kid, I had no idea that the story that she was telling was any sort of Hindu mythology.

I thought that, I don't even know what I thought it was. I think I thought as a kid that she was just kind of making the story up as she goes, especially because we see a scene in the movie at some point where she doesn't like the boring story that's being told at story time so she starts to invent yeah an alternate ending for like she basically writes fanfic in her during story time so i just kind of assumed that she was applying those creative storytelling skills to her telling this story. But now I know. Thanks to you.

Lord Rama and Sita. And it's a whole a whole big thing in Hindu mythology. And the way that it's presented. One thing that I didn't I know that they can't tell like the whole story of it, but they left out like glaring parts. So they're banished to a forest and he has a brother. They don't bring up the brother. I know that they can't tell the whole story of it, but they left out glaring parts. So they're banished to a forest, and he has a brother. They don't bring up the brother. The brother's a key character.

She gets captured by Ravana, who is a demon with many heads. The representation in this fucking movie was like an acid trip. Not that I would know what that is. Of course not. Of course not. Of course not, recorded audience. No one has ever done drugs. Nobody knows what drugs are. But assuming, but yeah, it was crazy. Like the representation of the demon was insane.

And then there was like whole chunks of the middle. The monkey god, Hanuman, is a big part of this story and wasn't brought into it. So it was basically the kidnapping of Sita and the rescue of her that was only represented in this retelling. Which is very much like a fairy tale almost. Yeah. Like a Hans Christian.

They just gentrified the shit out of it. Right. It's just like a princess gets captured and a prince needs to save her from a tower in a castle. Like that's what... Yeah, I don't even remember the tower being a thing, but I was like, when I saw it, I was was like is this rapunzel like what's happening it's kind of

invoking like yeah that sort of imagery yeah so yeah it just it seems to me like she's just like doing this very like americanized like bastardized version of this hindu mythology and they whitewashed it even more by having white actors play the god yes okay right so when the movie cuts away to rama and sita playing out the story that sarah is telling the actors who are playing those two characters are white we've got liam cunningham who plays sarah's father who's also playing rama in like blue face yeah but like brown face essentially because it's you know a brown it's a brown blue face okay right right um and then sita is played by an australian actor named allison moyer was she like the mom in the photograph i think so yes okay i think that's what so basically

sarah is like retelling a story with her parents cast as like hindu gods and goddesses and shit yeah damn that's bold that is bold you were also saying that she butchers a lot of the pronunciations of different like oh yeah i can't remember specifics now but for sure yeah um which is like it's understandable why people can't pronounce things we know this i'm sure i've already mispronounced it's fine several things everything together was troublesome right because i mean it's essentially again because there's no nothing is done in the movie to explain that the story that she is telling actually comes from hindu mythology and is not just some like make-believe she's yeah it's like a white girl just taking over a whole religion which is very invoking of that do you remember

when that like dad went and planted a flag in africa and declared that land his daughters like that american dad that's like that American dad that's what that felt like a little bit it's like my princess owns this now right yeah okay so then the other main issue as far as I can tell with the movie in this context is the character his name is ram das is that how you say that ram das yeah he is the indian man who lives next door to the school where sarah attends school he essentially assumes the role of a like mystical magical person who's like all seeing all knowing he seems to have powers like because like white movies american movies love to poise like a person who is black or east asian or south asian as the like magical foreigner trope and this movie does it i'm fine with as long as you think we can curse you

i don't give a shit as long as you think we can curse you i don't give a shit as long as you think we're more powerful than you fair i don't give a fuck like bow to us or whatever right on good good yeah so he's like he does always show up and there's was i imagining this or like did i is there like the sound of wind chimes whenever he shows up or something like that there's like a specific music cue very indian yes it's like almost like a sitar or something i don't know yeah like i know what it was he like does his powers which is like anytime you look at him and he's just like right because here are a few of the things that happen as it relates to his magical mysticism He somehow always knows what's going on with Sarah. He happens to be on

the boat that Sarah and her father are on when they're traveling from India to the U.S. He just happens to live next door at the school. It's suggested that he is the one who brings them like this big feast. He decorates there. He basically girls eyes yeah their room you know he does he gives them new clothes he gives them food he does the whole bobby decoration thing it was it was um sarah and her friend yes and it was yeah they like walk into the room they're like oh my god they wake up oh yeah they wake up like in the like very ornate bed so it's like how did he do all this stuff without waking them up he like did this overnight So it's like, how did he do all this stuff without waking them up? He like did this overnight. So it's like this.

I've always argued that Santa Claus is Indian. We're very hospitable and we'll come to your house and give you sweets. I mean, the things that he does in the movie, you know, are very kind and generous gestures. But I think that some people might find this trope problematic yeah i'm i know it is i just like exercising power over white people yes that is important but yeah it's not it's not good to dehumanize other ethnicities yeah it also um justifies trying to colonize them right it's like you're trying to harness their power. Right.

It's like the fucking Wakanda thing, why everybody's trying to go there. You know what I mean? They're like, they have something. We want it. So that's, I don't know. That character was played by a brown man, right? Yes.

So at least they didn't whitewash every Indian character in the movie. Yeah. And then the really wild thing is that there's like this weird like deus ex machina thing that he does in the movie where it's the climactic scene her father still doesn't have his memory and then ram das just looks at him but like really hard really hard like he looks at him. But like really hard. Really hard. Like he looks at him like super hard. Very determined.

And then that somehow with his magical energy, he is able to restore the memory of Sarah's father. And then that's what effectively resolves the whole story. It's just really playing into the trope of like. Indian doctors. You're playing into the trope of like Indian doctors. That's you're playing into that trope too. Not every Indian is going to heal your memory. People.

Right. Like Indian people do other things besides be magic and be doctors. Also like we have to study hard to be doctors. Okay. We don't just stare at people. Probably not as hard as everyone but no i'm kidding i'm kidding oh so that yeah that's not great and then we also see him in like several different scenes over the course of what we can assume as many different months yeah the movie

takes but but he's always wearing the same exact outfit. Was it the same outfit? I think so. I remember there being, so we talked about orange and green. Green, yeah. He wears orange and green a lot too, right? Yeah, he's wearing, I think, mostly gold. Yeah, or like orangey gold. Yeah, but if memory serves,

he's either wearing the same thing or nearly the same exact thing in every, as if he only has the one outfit yeah so that's also and if you've ever been to a fucking indian wedding you know that's not true right they're very we do changes during the wedding ceremony in south india so like literally the bride changes her sari so i just feel like that doesn't do our culture justice. Misrepresentation. There's another kind of bizarre thing that happens where Sarah puts a curse on another classmate of hers. She like kind of speaks in a language that I certainly didn't recognize. You said that you didn't recognize it. It might just be that she's kind of speaking in tongues and then

she's like oh that was just a curse from a witch that i learned in india it'll probably make your hair fall out so it's just like adding another layer of like showing indian culture as being like this mystical foreign potentially like almost like scary thing that is like unfamiliar and strange to white people but that white people can use at will that can appropriate like yoga right they've taken our powers from us i mean yoga the kama sutra. Yeah. Fucking coconut oil. White people love to steal stuff from other cultures. So those were the main things that struck me in the movie. Was there anything else that you wanted to touch on? I think one thing that I,

we were talked about last time was that the only representation we had at that point was like Apu. Right. And then like this this and then people would confuse the indian in the cabinet and just like make a joke and i'm like that's a different thing but okay um so there wasn't much so it it is interesting that they took this like mysticism route as opposed to like the poverty route that usually people take i honestly don't really remember this movie from my childhood.

So I don't remember anybody like making fun of me with it or whatever. Like I feel, I feel like this movie was definitely for white people. Like a thousand percent. Whereas I think like Apu, like there's so much, so much issue with it that people have now, but like it definitely penetrated Indian American culture or like South Asian

American culture. Like it was like in our lives but this movie i like don't really remember it affecting me watching this movie i was like oh it'd be so dope if hindu mythology there was like a different take on it that was like more american but still like true to it because like watching it i was like the coolest parts was the story like you know what i mean like the ramayana parts but like i was thinking like it'd be cool if there was something like a you know romeo crossed juliet or it was like leonardo dicaprio like something like more modernized and like weird and fun i would love to watch that but like for hindu mythology but then also so whenever it cuts to the rama and sita, all the set design is like extra campy.

So, oh, that is camp. Oh, now I know what camp is. Everybody was arguing about what camp was for the Met Gala. And it turns out it's just those scenes from The Little Princess. Exactly. Amazing. Yeah. The colors are just like really weirdly like saturated and just like everything's

like plastic and it just like yeah they definitely made it look very fake yeah which was disrespectful right yeah it would be cool to see like a because all of those mythologies like they're told over and over again in india in like these different like serials and like these movies and tv shows and stuff but it would be cool to see like an American do it like an Indian American or Hindu American, like whatever do it. But with the technology we have now and with like more like modern, that'd be kind of cool.

For sure. Someone pay me. Yes. Give Pallavi all of your money. Thank you. Anyways, that's a thought that I had. Yeah, no, that's great. This has been has been great thank you this perspective is so helpful so we really appreciate you taking the

time twice of course the next time it'll be even better let's delete this thanks again so much thank you for having me you're a very helpful perspective and uh well back to the episode we gotta take a quick break but we will come right back You're a very helpful perspective. And back to the episode. We got to take a quick break, but we will come right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia.

I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers.

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Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Wow. Queen Pallavi, she's done it again. She's informative and helpful in placing my feelings on where things happen and why they happen and i feel like what kind of that conversation reveals that it really we could have added like a few moments here and there of dialogue like when they first meet like what if he introduced himself and was like hey how you doing like and she could have like maybe said like i miss india and they

could have maybe talked about a place that for them was both home you know and that might have given like some levity and we didn't need like you know 20 minutes of that you need like two yeah like some vaguely defined friendship between them like i think that would have served the story too totally instead of him just appearing there's a lot of characters in this movie that i'm like we we just don't know enough about them. I would include Becky in that. We don't really know what her background is. And there were a few opportunities to provide that context that just doesn't. I was so frustrated in the scene where they're on the, you know, they're talking through like the wall in the attic and they're talking about how um sarah misses india like this would be a great time for sarah to ask becky like what is your background how did you end up here she does not do that and we never we like we're given very little information about becky's background which and i mean even less for the indian man and and also Miss Mention like we don't really know like who what happened why is she I don't know if I want to know any more about Miss Mention

I've been going really I've been going back and forth about it a lot because on the one hand I'm like well maybe there was like a thing with Sarah's mother because we know Sarah's mother went there maybe that's like she has like this ingrained like internal hate but on the other hand like this movie is doing something that I wish more movies would do which is tell me less there's something great about being able to fill gaps in a movie it doesn't quite work for tv shows and it's 1800 hours of content there but when you have like 90 tight minutes and you're just exploring people being themselves in these moments it's it's really intriguing to start wondering about it like because that dad line really triggered her like that actor got to make such great choices based entirely on

just where she wanted to take that character she's really she was in the Beatles help um people think that maybe Eleanor Rigby was named after her I couldn't find any backup information on that I Paul McCartney did an interview with GQ I think maybe last year where he explains like where these songs came from he describes Eleanor Rigby as a song about World War II widows that he like grew up with in the projects in London and it's a song dedicated to them and how their lives never quite got right but

her name is Eleanor she was in Help maybe but she also has like all these cool like weird roles she plays a lot of like witches and weird old people and I think to get such a she's so cool. She's alive and now I'm trying to track her down. I'm trying to do a series on aging Hollywood people because I'm really intrigued.

If you're an outlet who wants that, DM me. Let me know. Will our readers like this? I'm like, yes! What happened to these people who are 90 years old? Doris Day just died and nobody got her final statements on how she felt about her life. It's really annoying. I digress.

She's really cool if you know her. Like tell her people love her still. But like to do such cool things like women who especially at a time where your option was get married or live a life of some kind of servitude. For her to live alone, for her to clearly not like that path. She did some great things with she's British. But there are moments where you get like this New York accent that's very much like a street New York. for her to live alone, for her to clearly not like that path. She did some great things with, she's British, but there are moments where you get like this New York accent that's very much like a street New York,

like Brooklyn sounding. It comes out particularly when she's, sometimes Sarah is so eloquently said, but sometimes it's like Sarah with a hard E. Sarah! Yeah, like almost like a Southern, like it's really, and I really feel like this actress

is just making really strong choices to be like, listen, this is a woman who rose up a bit. I think she, doing the math, it seems like she must have inherited the school from a mother figure or somebody older. The school is called Miss Minchin's Seminary for Girls, but it was established in the 1850s. So it's like a family. Or maybe she's 200 years old and has found the fountain of you she's a day walker i love it um but yeah you don't get to see characters like either of the me chums especially in kids movies

they're either totally awful or incredibly sweet and to see an adult who has an issue with the cakes i don't know if you guys hang out with any kids but my roommate my other roommate is a school teacher and she's like man some of these kids are just bitches and i was like now she works in beverly hills so i don't know how much money has like a financial strain on things but it's certainly your personality is there and sometimes you just don't like a child yeah how does that manifest and how does that child deal with that because she said i didn't do anything i think me too has very valid reasons for being like this girl is foolish and she's going to get steamrolled by life. And I'm going to be the hard person who's in her face telling her like it really is.

Imagination sucks, Sarah. She can grow up. Get used to it. But she also is so limiting, so refined, even in herself. That floating down the stairs came in. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's still.

It's so creepy. Things that float in movies, especially older women like i don't know if you guys have ever seen house on haunted hill it was a super good movie for your show because it was written by a lesbian um but it is like any floating lady just really creeps me out and she just glides her legs do this like weird daddy long legs thing and then her like whole her her frame is just like still floating and i'm like how she looks like she's dolly tracking herself you're just like how is that humanly possible it was that was like one of the only things i remembered about the movie at all was that very memorable

it's so freaky it it says a lot about her she's clearly trained to be among high society. And I think she's dealing with, if you look at the kids, who she picks on, I think she's picking on kids who remind her somewhat of herself, of something that she shut down. Because the other girl, Ermengarde. Ermengarde. What a damn name. She was the bumblebee girl in that 90s music video. Some kind of punk music video.

Oh, No Rain. Yes. Yes, she was. Yes. So that's the music video. Oh, No Rain. Yes. Yes, she was. Yes. So that's the same actress who also did a really lovely job. She comes from, I'm guessing, like an Irish cop father who rose through the ranks. Again, I have a lot of headcanon on these characters. I love Irving Gard.

She's so sweet. She's adorable. But Minchin picks on her a lot in class for not being able to do math. And she's like frustrated. And I think anything that reminds her of like low class or head in the clouds she just cannot stand looking at that part of herself or just like excessive naive like naivete and kids seems to really bother her because like sarah is very naive when she gets there and then is like la la la here's my story and she doesn't like that i feel like ermengarde sort of falls into that category as well where she's yeah she's like floatier and spacier and like miss mentioned

she's a realist yeah she's like the world is gonna hurt you and if it doesn't hurt you i will i love that scene with when ermengarde goes to the attic and it's like she's very upset and she's just like wait don't you want to be my friend anymore like i was like oh god i had that interaction so much when i was like i was gonna say if you're a girl you've ever bared your soul to another girl in a very platonic way of like why are we not friends i'm trying to understand it gets you oh man i really loved that scene and then they had and then like sarah and becky have the knocking system. And I was like, oh, this is like little girl paradise of secret codes and baring your soul constantly. The slumber parties where she's just telling her very factually inaccurate and probably racist story. But the fact that they're all buried under the covers and listening and very intrigued.

And it's like there's a power in girl groups that, and especially I think if you're isolated the way they are, they don't have any agency over their like daily activities. So they're sort of very much bound to each other in the system. And it's weird to me that we don't have more stories about this because it's such a defining point for like every woman. You would think that there would be, I mean, I want to have more stories about this because it's such a defining point for like every woman you would think that there would be i mean i want to see more stories i would buy tickets to see more stories like this i mean there's so few it's it's wild how few there are and like the sister like the whole school kind of has this like subtle-ish arc where at the beginning you have

lottie like not questioning anything and just being like, oh, well, this is the way things are, of course. And then they also have the girls in the school, even the ones we don't know as well, by the end, they're all down to do this locket operation. And they've made the decision that they're going to support each other and not just like, I'm getting all choked up. I do like it. There's like an Ocean's sequence where they like heist the hell out of this locket yeah where they get the locket back and oh it's so and then like becky gets like her big moment where she makes a noise in front of people she goes that little like i i i i thought it's a mouse you just mentioned it hits the door and you eat shit and we're like, yeah, that was great.

Just so perfect. It's so sweet and charming. And Becky's journey, as much as I think that she could have been a more central figure, what we do get out of her is so like great like there's if you're black you care about your hair a lot and how kids are represented in films is really important to me and it was frustrating at first to be like man this girl's hair is so messy i'm so frustrated by it but the more i watch the film and and again watch the arc that all of these girls get it's like you shouldn't have anybody who cares for her right like she's clearly somewhat depressed and how could you not be being surrounded by girls your age and not being allowed to

have any kind of interaction with them that even this girl just looking at her is like wow and you get like even the reversal of the moment when sarah kind of storms in on becky to be like sarah in in her again very naive mind it's like i'm gonna like just go make friends and becky's like who the hell are you doing? You cannot be in my room. We are both going to get in so much trouble. Please leave. She stands up for herself in a way, I think, when you get it.

Here's what I'll say. If you get a token black character, so often they are just treated very much like side characters. And for Becky to get not just a name, not just a role, but like to be taken with her at the end. And her dress looks so good. Her hair is so perfect. And she's like, they're very much treated as equals. Like even though it's like magical and silly how they get that breakfast, like they both get the same shoes, which I like always love.

And that kind of stuff, like I have like Susie Carmichael, Becky in this movie yeah as far as like talking with my white peers about like black representation under the age of 12 this those were kind of it as who they knew and so to see like both of those characters sort of rise and be powerful in their own rights and like Becky literally finds her voice by screaming and you know as to how these other chump white girls who didn't really give her a lot but she didn't have a lot of else to work with um and I man I like it still even though it's problematic even though it's very much a signal of how desperate I was for representation in any of the things I was watching it's you don't get black girls in

period pieces I'm obsessed with period pieces I'm obsessed with fantasy and so it's like becky always has like a special place in my heart she's awesome that's great i do like i love sarah and becky's scenes together are very sweet and very we're just like it's so nice yeah i have a question yeah um do you think this is a white savior story oh i mean yeah if you're just looking becky isn't given enough to do to really save herself and she doesn't really seem to ever desire more we again like you guys said we don't really know much about her life outside of this situation there's not even a lot of like foreshadow i mean that would require a lot for an actress to of that age to imbue more about her outside of what's in the text so yeah it is a white savior story I like it damn it this is so hard I always feel like analyzing this movie is much more difficult than just sitting back and

enjoying it like no it's just whimsical and like the guy who did children of men lit the snow scene and it doesn't make you want to cry. It's so pretty. But when you think about it in context, you're like, dang, issues. I don't, I mean, and a lot of those problems seem to be, it's like a lot of it, I want to blame a lot of it on Frances Hodgson Burnett because that's like so built into the story. And she has such a bad track record with like writing non-white characters at all. But with adaptations, it's like there was room in this movie for us to know more about Becky.

There just was. This is Alfonso Creon's first studio film in America. So you have two Mexican auteurs essentially in Lubitsky and Creon coming up to do their first big precious also emmanuel's first big studio film so i know that they they were kind of felt free in in the visual representation because that's why they got hired but outside of that i'm not sure like how much agency they felt they had to imbue dark-skinned characters with storylines and to be fair that never seems to be alfonso's sort of bag either i don't think he really cares about I mean he's out there directing Harry Potter movies yeah oh yeah and he just did uh Roma

which is great but also has a lot of colorism issues if you want to talk to indigenous Latinx women about that so yeah it definitely I think if it were made today we would demand much more out of it as a film yeah uh did you know that this movie failed spectacularly at the box office i didn't yeah it had a 17 million dollar budget only made 10 million dollars back what were we doing in 1996 i know it's like it's i i feel like for the like year it came out, you're not going to get much better. To be fair, though, my parents were big movie buffs. We were at the movie theater a lot. I did not see this until home VHS.

So we might have been part of the problem. I'm sure my dad was like, first, I'm not sitting through any princesses movies. And no, go yourselves. And then I have no idea what my mom was doing. This is totally up her alley. That's interesting. Was it a Christmas release release do you remember the release date I should have looked it up really it was released in May it was released what that's the problem okay if we go back we talk to the ad people be like this is a Christmas season film okay get the hearts warm

we like Dickens era stuff it vaguely looks like Christmas in this weird indescribable way because it's half it's green which is half of christmas color oh can we talk about alfonso and green yeah he's really weird for green he loves green um i was okay so when we were watching this with palavit we were all like the green and the gold there's got to be some symbolism here. I read some hokey blog posts that posited some theories. None of them quite lined up. And I was like, OK, well, maybe he talked about it. Maybe there is a, I was like, is this in the book? Is it him?

I don't know what. And the answer is puzzling. And it is simply that Alfonso loves green. That's it. There are quotes from him. There is, like, a great interview done with the costume designer of this movie, Judy Anna Makovsky, right when this movie came out. And apparently they had, like, a big argument about how he was like,

I only want green. Nothing cannot be green. She's like, I can't do that. She's like, I will quit if you make me make everything green. To do that green on green schoolgirl uniform. The clothes are green. The building that the school is in is green. It's a beautiful green.

The shots of like anything happening in the kitchen. There's so much lettuce and green apples in the frame. Where are we getting all this money to buy all of this fresh produce? That kitchen seems very suspect to me. I was like, was like no no you didn't buy that at the new york market we saw her just shopping at no yeah so so and then the quote like a year later i guess he was asked about this directly in a new york times interview and he says quote i have to say green is the only color i understand i can really frame frame it. I know how to work with it. I see other colors, and they feel alien.

I cannot give you an irrational explanation. I love that. And that's the answer to the green. It's just my art. Will you please just watch it or don't? It's so, like, I just don't care. I'm obsessed with the color green. Me too.

It's my favorite. Especially in this era when you've got that, like, weird emerald marble green a lot. So it's, like, gold and white flecked. But then you're also dealing with a lot of natural greens. And I think coming from the India set scenes to here, this looks like such a polished like studio film. It's like a 30 style like studio. Like when they're doing the kind of, it's not CGI yet. Special effects, visual effects is what we would have called it back in the day.

It's that freaky,aky yeah that freaky sequence which if you oh my gosh there's an Alec Baldwin film where a similar demon creature like that comes up and I'm like did they borrow things from each other um I love it I love all of the green in this movie it looks like a living like urban jungle and I feel like now that urban jungle is really in as a style choice, we're, like, looping back. I really, I mean, it's always because we get so, like, I mean, the point of this show is to be in the weeds and, like, really analyze everything. And then sometimes you're just like, nope, there's no reason. And that is so comforting. You're like, great. Everything is chaos.

Alfonso likes green. That's why i don't look for meaning in anything yeah that's why we're ending the show today something i wanted to talk about is that a big deal is made in this movie about the idea that all girls and all women are princesses yes this i think can be seen as an empowering message for the young girls who are seeing this movie who this movie is targeted to because it's basically saying all girls have value but i also think that the connotation behind the word princess invokes like a certain image and certain idea blonde with giant blue eyes in perfect manners yeah right and like sarah down to it i mean like all like all canonical princesses does not have

a mother like down exactly princess tropes and yeah so this like idea of like the the princess type has historically not been empowering and largely because what media has like put forth about what a princess is. Right. Basically every Disney movie pre-2009 or today. Because like princesses always end up with a prince or a man in general. Right. They rarely have a storyline that's anything besides a romantic relationship they are largely cis het white able-bodied girls or women they are rich and

from the highest socioeconomic class they rarely have a mom or really any female relationships to speak of so it's a lot of i mean in this movie sort of plays to that. Plays to a lot of these. Yeah. It plays against type a lot too. If we think about just the last one you said, doesn't have a lot of female friends. She's only got lady friends. She doesn't have a mom, but yes, has a lot of girlfriends. And then if we look at the fact that who else she sort of inspires or shows to be princess,

not just Becky, who she takes with her at the end. And they, they again looking like sisters uh like they belong together same costuming and all of that you also get the same thing with amelia who is like the plump lady who would definitely have been considered past her time this the milkman is kind of hot they actually have chemistry which i get really upset when uh plus-sized women as a plus-size woman, when women get cast against guys who are clearly not into them. I'm like, listen, casting, we got to do better.

Like, find better actors. You don't really have to be in love. Lots of actors are not. But I need to see, like, the chemistry. Otherwise, I'm not believing it. They clearly were into that whole, like, two-second milk exchange. I think that's what it was like. Hot.

Oh, my gosh. it's so sweet. And she's like, I'm just gonna wait. He's definitely coming back. And she just like holds on to the thing. And it's like, don't go like we are connected. You know this. All kinds of like glorious sexual. And from the get go, like Sarah sees all of them as equal.

So I think it again plays into our earlier issue of naivete. You know, how much do we believe that a girl of her status who looks like she does who has all the advantages in the world truly believes that everyone is treated equally in in the film she does and again because she does it just justifies that villainry more like if we keep following back into that idea of okay probably not but maybe she's the exception you can kind of i can bridge the gap i can bridge the divide yeah i i feel the same i mean i i totally agree with all i mean the concept of a princess in culture is like flawed and like right up until today i think that i just felt like the way that she uses the word princess like her meaning of it is a little bit different

like i didn't think that she was saying like oh everyone is like rapunzel i felt like she the way that sarah was using it and i don't even know if this is the way that davos meant it to when she said it to her but the way that she interprets it, I thought, was, like, saying, like, a princess as, like, worthy and, like, worthy of, like, respect. Yeah. Well, and then the film even follows that logic, too. And, like, I really love the idea that, again, as wrong as the stories were, the way they were used as devices to inflict and impact her life were really interesting. Like, when she's first sent to the attic, she creates a of safety like the one from the story to protect herself she gives she takes the same advice she gave not lillian the other the little girl who cries a lotty lotty she gives her the same advice you

know just because i don't know just because i can't hear them doesn't mean they can't hear me and so she starts calling out to her father but then we get that really great emotional exchange where she's in the street and it boy, out of the kindness of his naive heart, gives her a coin. The mother is like, nope, that's awful. Look, she just followed us. She's trying to give the coin back. She's like, I don't want it. I don't need it. I'm okay.

Now she has the money, so she buys herself what I believe is a cross-hot bun or some kind of sticky cinnamon. It is a hot, delicious treat. It's cold and she has been working all day a hot, delicious treat. And she is cold. And she has been working all day. She had to fight a boy to keep the stuff in her basket. And right as she's about to eat it,

she sees another girl who are clearly having much worse lives than her. Like they're trying to sell flowers. Somewhere where they got these yellow roses in the middle of winter. I have questions. But they have them. And they're selling them.

And so she gives it to that girl. That girl's mother is like, make sure this girl gets a flower. Don't let her go without it. She in turn gives the flower to the old guy who just found out he lost his son. And when she gets a flower, she calls her a princess. She says, for the princess. And so I think this idea of being a princess, not being about having money. She was a princess even when she hit her lowest point, even when she didn't have anything.

Like, it was still her ability to just be kind and giving. And again, it's just, oh, man, it's really hard in to just be kind and giving and again it's just oh man it's really hard in the world being an adult and living in this world to be like yeah none of this happens but if you want to enter a land of like make-believe and and believe in like the quality and good in children who have not yet been corrupted oh wow it's impactful yeah and i mean the way that sarah uses like something i was, thinking about through the movie is I feel like, you know, like, we talk a lot about privilege. And I feel like it's generally used as a negative term. But I think Sarah is, in some ways, there are ways where you're like, oh, this is getting a little white savior.

This is getting a little, like, it's a very delicate balance of like how to write one of these characters well but for the most part i thought that the way that sarah used her privilege and that she clearly has was setting a relatively good example of just like she does use her privilege while she still has money and fancy stuff she uses it to help people and then and then when she doesn't have much she you know she still has a fair amount of privilege and still tries to help people so it made me wish i had seen this movie when i when i was younger because it's you know it's like if you do have a protagonist that has a lot of privilege then like you know go to great lengths to show how you can

use your privilege for good yes yeah yeah i agree there to me there are two kind of main takeaways from this movie that are potentially conflicting but one is that like sarah is a princess because she is kind and because she is generous and nice to everyone and she isn't afraid to challenge the oppressive systems that are in place. The other takeaway is that everything will be fine as long as the loved ones you thought were dead are actually still alive and you are still very rich. Right. I mean, her, like, return to richness and, like, that vague thing that, like, Davos at the end is like, yeah, I told them I wasn't dead. Got all my shit back.

See you later. You're like, oh, OK. I do wonder how this film would have turned out if either her dad never got his memory back or he just wasn't there and had died in the war. Think about it. She has no motive. It's not like she's motivated to go find her father. Like she is just going to escape. And before she escapes, she turns to Becky and she's like, I'm coming back for you. And there's a small part of me that really wants to believe this girl is tough as hell

and would have figured a way out in New York and probably not kept all of that, like, glorious sweetness about her, but maybe would have found a way to survive and create a space for her and her friend. It would have been hard. Listen, someone write the alternate universe fantasy fiction and send it to to me these girls got to just survive on their own and they're like amazing and tough and scrappy they start a small business there i liked uh one of my favorite parts of this movie was during the escape part the deus ex plank that appears a perfectly measured

plank to get from one window to the other and i like went back to because we watched it last night with paula v and then when i watched it again this morning i'm like maybe that maybe the plank is set up maybe it's been there the whole time but she got like sarah just turns to becky and he's like help me get this board i was like what board is it from the floor i thought it was going to be the green like thing that moves in between their walls it's like they have like a loose kind of plank I thought she was going to be like just snap that off and let me

climb across it the thing that connects us launches us into a new life I don't know something but it was not you're right it just came out of nowhere I love deus ex plank the plank in the machine the magical Indian man who lives next door foresaw this would all happen and gave her the plank whenever he was like decorating the room and like setting up this huge banquet for them.

Oh, so he was like, I actually he's like he set everything up really quietly and like because he knows he sees sarah he saw her on the titanic like boat that they come to america from india on he saw them like daughter and father dancing together he knows their relationship he knows that daddy is sitting 10 feet away. He also saw Daddy Davos give Sarah a heart-shaped necklace, not on, like, what happens in Titanic. So, yeah, he's, like, this omniscient guy who knows everything. We could have really solved a lot of these issues if we had just seen him watch dude come into the building with his daughter. Because, like, if he is aware of, like,

oh, this guy looks like the same dude that dropped the daughter off at the school right well you should take him in sir because you have the means to do so if you can re-watch this movie thinking about this guy as just playing the shit out of everyone around him it is wildly more entertaining i just feel like it is yeah it's just i don't know with the plank and the ending it like it gets so fantasy at the end that i'm like i i mean i'm i'm happy to accept like and everything worked out like the happily ever after sure davos is alive sure you know like why why not i something i did like though that we haven't talked about yet is like the way that grief is portrayed in this movie i thought was really cool and not something you get to see

in kids movies at all or especially like played in like i thought like a pretty thoughtful way yeah because joel you were saying earlier like it's like clear that all these kids are missing their parents and then in the case of Lottie and then later Sarah are actually their parents aren't coming back for them and like seeing that play out in different ways with Lottie it's just the screaming fits in front of the music box or like Sarah gets like I mean it's like really devastating to watch how depressed she gets. Oh, yeah. She's like, there is no magic. Right. Yeah, she's very clearly going through the depression phase of grief. Yeah, and, like, just the way that she, like, sort of,

it just sort of saps all the, like, positive energy out of her. And then it's sort of then the young girls that she knows that, like, lift her back up. And so I just, I really thought that it was, like, a cool, thoughtful presentation of grief. i really thought that it was like a cool thoughtful presentation of grief and again it's like all that is sort of undone at the end where you're like you didn't have to grieve daddy was across the street but but the way it was presented what i thought was like was lovely and and also i just found out on wikipedia.org ever heard of it that the chimney sweep is alfonso cuaron's son oh my god yeah he's a natural adorable he was so good yeah he was so good and we need to talk

about the girl uh lisa matthews is the girl that plays sarah my god listen she comes from like a billionaire family whoa from chicago which explains the American accent. She's a Pritzker. Yes. Great actress. Went on to do Air Force One. Yes. Played, oh my gosh. Harrison Ford's daughter.

I was going to say Han Solo, but I'm like, that's not right. Played his daughter. She did one more movie after that. Not as successful. But now she runs a hedge fund company that gives money to sub-saharan africa she is a kajillionaire and like we're i mean her family owns hyatt hotels oh and we know about families that own hotel chains it always ends well uh they own the royal caribbean cruise line they own the transunion credit bureau she's from like a lot of fucking money.

So basically she was like, I want to be an actor. Exactly. And then everyone was like, okay, you're an actor now. But she's a really great actress. I thought she was a really good child actress. I don't know if it just didn't transition as an adult or she was like, oh, I have money. I don't have to do this. Go do something else.

She married a hot guy who kind of looks like jamie lannister like like an average jamie lannister you know they live in boston it's like it's it's rich people like i do it's funny i'm really glad that she is like she like or at least was like a very talented child actress because i'm like the second i was like started reading about her i was like oh she was like dad wouldn't it be cool if I was a movie star and he was like yeah sure do what you want kid I don't care

businesses to run multiple also Camilla Bell is in this movie wait which one was Camilla Bell Jane I don't know one of the girls at the school I hope it was the girl wait a minute was she the girl who told Lavinia like I don't care what you're doing. I'm going to listen to these stories.

Oh, I hope so. I don't know. I was like, I don't really remember. And there's two, Jane, Betsy, and Ruth are characters that I, I'm assuming that they were all girls at the school, but I have no idea. They were hanging out in the background. I like that, A, it was a small group of girls and they were not running through child actors they're like no this is the group they're here yeah deal with it um and i also like the staging for this i would be so curious to talk about like

what is it like to direct that many kids because i talked to a bunch of the stars from shazam and they're like so there were six kids and they were a lot like kind, cool kids, but wow, that's a lot of energy. There must have been so many child wranglers on set. Oh, totally. I mean, you have to think that Alfonso Cuaron has to just work well with children. Because it's like, I mean, this movie especially, there's basically only children. And he manages to get some really impressive performances out of kids. Which is a testament just as much to him as it is to them.

And then, you know, he tamed Rupert Grint or whatever later. performances out of kids, which is like a testament just as much to him as it is to them. And then, you know, he like he tamed Rupert Grint or whatever later. Like, he knows how to work with child actors. I mean, notoriously, I love Rupert Grint. I'm crushing him forever. Is he a good actor? I mean, I don't know. I like his new comedies, his little BBC TV show things. They're adorable and definitely like his lane. His second act is fun. This is where you shine. Well, I mean, also like Dan, oh my God, what's his name? Daniel Radcliffe.

Daniel Radcliffe was a bad actor in the first two Harry Potter movies and then gets pretty good in Prisoner of Azkaban. I'm sure. Emma was like, listen, we can get this together. I'm convinced. She was like, let's just try some exercises. I feel like they all level up in the third one, kind of. Yeah. And by the fourth one, we're really just flying, which for me was perfect.

The fourth book is my favorite. And I was like, here we go. And then our cats comes in. My heart is really softening toward Harry Potter as I age. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. Now that I'm 500 years old. Can we go back to Amelia really quick? And I'm so glad to hear that. Now that I'm 500 years old. Can we go back to Amelia really quick? And I would like

to pose a question. How do you feel the representation of bigger women is in this movie? Like all of the representation, we got so close. They did not let a fat joke slip until her final moment. I was livid. I was like, guys, we did

so good. She was just a guys, we did so good. She was just a lady. She fell in love. None of the kids were like judgy or making jokes or faces behind her back. Like it was a polished, perfect, and then they're like throw the suitcases at the guy and land on top of him because that's what sells. I was like, damn it.

That was really annoying. I mean, I feel like she, her character in general, and I couldn't really tell how much it was like whether it was a comment on what she looked like at all, but she was the slapstickiest of the people at the school.

Anytime someone would make a loud noise it would be like, whoa! She would she had big physical reactions to things at all times. She was responsible for the crying girl, which was so great. I'm convinced she's conspired with Satan to curse me. But I liked the scene with Sarah and Amelia on the staircase.

I thought that was another lovely little Sarah moment of like, you're worthy of love. And she was like, oh. And then Amelia's like, I hate children. Get me out of here so that's where i think that they the film does like it's like good in two ways and then bad in three like i think they do a really good job of subverting expectations fat women are supposed to like love kids they're like you're the natural caregivers you have the tits like make it work um and so for her to like for the whole time just be like, I'm really not, I don't know how to, don't want to, would rather not be here.

I thought it was interesting for a character like her. I think that, yeah, putting her in a slapstick position certainly, I don't know. I feel weird about it because if it was two men running an all-boy school, we most likely would have had the exact same dynamic. You know, like, a tall, thin person thin person and like a shorter, fatter person has been like comedy, how we make it work in partnerships for so long visually. I'll say this again.

We're desperate for representation. We're grasping to what we have. This movie goes above and beyond what most representations at the time were. And I think if you look at it in a time period capsule that way, you can be like, OK, I can value what we were aiming for even if if it came out today we would not anywhere near reach our standards of excellence yeah and at least i mean you do know more about

amelia than you know about miss minged like she has more of like we know more about her personal life and like her feelings and thoughts and context for them true then for her sister the main thing or one of the main things that you know about amelia is her like fawning over a man that's true i don't know i mean but we also know she hates her job like i don't know we see her as a person who like okay so since we've been game of-ing, just batting it in all over the place, my girl Brianna Tarth gets laid. Like, not anywhere on her to-do list, right? But she finds herself falling for a guy. Then next day, dude's like, so I'm actually still in love with my sister.

I got to go back home and deal with that. And she cries. And it's like the whole internet, like, it's having a very divided meltdown of whether like these tears are okay. I think when you put women who present differently in situations of love and allow them to be soft, that it's a blessing. Because I know certainly I didn't see a lot of that growing up. Like if you were tough, you were just tough all the way through and no man could ever get to you and you did not need love.

That's not like a realistic like situation for many people some people do desire love and i don't think that i should always fall back to that and i do think for both brienne and for amelia that there were opportunities for better representation that being said like amelia got her dude like she like got to fall in love and it was something that that character clearly wouldn't allow herself to think about before and so to see her be in love to see her come to terms with that and then to see her go for it like that's a cool story arc that frequent and for the most part not be made fun of for it uh until the last i think it's really beautiful we really had to squeeze it in didn't you couldn't help yourselves yeah that's a great

point yeah i um also and let me know what your thoughts are on this but um the way that ermengarde is characterized is i mean most of the girls at this school are very slim ermengarde ermengarde is a little bigger she uh seems to be characterized at least in the beginning as like kind of a more pathetic you know i was worried about that tropes like seeping in of like token chubby girl who all the other girls are going to make fun of but then the movie i don't know i mean it kind of likes to flesh her out more than almost any other i don't know that's true i mean she she is only picked on by one girl the girl who picks on literally everybody so there's that point i think she is shy but then they make it not about her body but about her worry that she's not going to please her father and that man that conversation also brings me when she talks to sarah about her dad

and she was like you know he doesn't like being here she's like well why would she he sent you to someplace he doesn't like to be and she's like well he wants me to fit in and he doesn't feel he can fit in and to use such kid words for such big grown-up ideas of like I want better for you but also I hate this place and if I become this do we not have a relationship anymore and she doesn't have any of the words to describe all the things she's feeling but she's trying and it is so beautiful and so I think again the way the film lets in these little contexts and the fact that it doesn't give you the answers to everything it allows for better headcanon representation than maybe what the film's intentions were but i'm gonna keep clinging to it that's what i had

i i i stan ermengurg i like i i wish she could have i wish she could have gone with Sarah and Becky, too. She had a dad, but I also caught myself thinking about the exact same thing. Like, take Erminger with you. She also needs liberation. Yeah. And then her dad is proud mean, all the what is this man's role in colonialism aside? I liked the relationship between Sarah and her dad. I thought it was like very it was nice to see, you know, just like a positive relationship between a father. And I feel like so often, even in movies about princesses, the father and the daughter are at odds about the expectations of her. It was nice to just have the presentation of, I mean, he says it in the first scene, the only scene where they're actually in India, where he's just like, I think you can be anything you want to be. It's just a very, if you wrote out stock, nice daddy Davos character, it would be this.

And I thought that was like lovely. And it gives her a lot of agency to speak on her own behalf to like in the when they're in the classroom. And the teacher's like, yeah, you can't wear jewelry. And she like looks her dad and he's like, what do you want to do, kid? She's like, yeah, I do insist on keeping it. And before then he just he always allows her this sort of space to just be herself so that again it's sort of believable

that she feels sort of like a little adult because she you know she's the one constantly comforting him. It's like what are you doing memorizing me by heart? She's like I know you by heart daddy. I'm going to be okay you got to go to war or whatever. I was like, is she his wife?

It does get a little promising-y at points where I'm like, yikes. Maybe Dad needs to find a wife. Yeah, Dad. Like she's taking on many more roles. Bumble. But overall, charming and sweet. I don't know if you guys are daddy's girls i there no certainly am uh i mean my pops are very tight um but he would never allow me to be a princess

he was like i don't know what any of that garbage is but take it out of here get to school on time mow the lawn like do some dishes and maybe we'll like watch a movie after work at the hockey rink jamie but it is nice to see yeah like a single dad like being able to like connect with his daughter in a in a way that we usually don't see in movies because usually i'm thinking of like um a league of their own where like the one dad like the single dad raised his daughter like a boy basically because he's like i don't know how to do girl stuff so she boy now yeah i am dad me don't know what to dad do there but yeah so it's like he's like embracing the femininity that she wants to display at that time in her life and he's like

yeah you are a princess and yeah but you can be whatever you want to be yeah that was nice it was really it it warmed my frigid heart i thought it was so nice does anyone have any other thoughts about the movie i will say that uh in the alleyway when we're seeing the chimney sweep, there is a cat. That cat has eight nipples. Can we also love Daddy Davos to death, but how amazing would Freddie Molina have been in the dad role? He would have been, I mean, he's British. He's very kind.

Maybe I just want to hear him say you're a little princess maybe I just want that audio clip out there in the world I don't know he would have been incredible in that role like genuinely I hope he was approached and was like sorry I'm preparing for Spider-Man 2 10 years from now he like, I need a long time to figure out this role. I mean, I have to play Doc Ock and Tevye in the same year. What would he have been doing in 95? Is that when like Species came out? Let's check. Okay, this is actually a critical part of the show.

What was he in? What was he doing? Maybe he was doing theater. Okay, he was in something called Nervous Energy. He was in something called Hideaway. He was in something called Scorpion Spring. He was in something called Dead Man. He was in something called The energy he was in something called hideaway he was in something called scorpion spring he was in something called dead man he was in something called the perez family what a busy man he was in something called the steel he was in species that year yeah knew it yeah so uh you know he apparently he had tons of shit going on very busy 1995. My goodness. Damn. Paying the bills in 95 Molina.

So many questions about where this Molina obsession began. Oh, God. He's just so handsome. I will not deny that. And then we later found out, also woke. A feminist icon. Yes. I mean, did you see that scary kaleidoscope vagina he posted?

Loved it, hated it? I don't know it was the ultimate uh older gentleman ally move where you're like this is actually a bit much but i appreciate where you're coming from it feels like my lawrence fishburne obsession and i really like value and appreciate your love of molina oh i hope molina and fishburne are friends. I feel like they're such character actors. I just assume all character actors are friends. Why wouldn't they be? You guys have the same talent.

Bond over it. Exactly. Make our dreams come true. Fishburne and Molina, 2020. It's better than most of the candidates we have. We have to overlook that Alfred Molina is fully British. That's true. Whoops.

Hey, speaking of talking about men or not, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? It for sure does. Oh, yeah. All over the damn place, it does. Yes. Many combos, many different conversations. Hard yes on that. Yeah.

Let's rate it on our nipple scale. Okay. Zero to five nipples based on our nipple scale. Okay. Zero to five nipples based on its representation and portrayal of women. I think I'm going to go like three and a half. That seems accurate. I feel like we have fully synced when it comes to nipples at this point. Yeah. Because there's a lot of good things that this movie is doing.

You know, it's a very female driven story. It shows a young girl like using the privilege that she has to empower other people, specifically Becky. And that does get into, you know, white savior territory. And, you know, there are some like mean girl characters who seem to be mean for no reason or like their characterization is kind of glossed over but you have enough other different personality types in the other girls that it's not as all like oh all girls are pitted against each other anything like that so you have like what are several very healthy relationships between girls so that is very nice to see there are some weird things about how indian culture and people are depicted thank and and triple a million thanks to paula v for uh for giving us some context for that she'll be back for a Dark Knight episode. Watch out, everybody.

Yes, thank you so much to her for her insight. And then, yeah, other little things here and there where, you know, there's like that fat joke that they didn't need to do and then they did it. You know, different things like that. But, yeah, I would say a solid three and a half. I'll give one nipple to Ermengarde. I'll give one nipple to Ermengarde. I'll give one nipple to Amelia Minchin. I'll give my remaining one and a half nipples to Becky. Yeah.

Love it. I'm going to go three and a half as well for basically all the reasons. I mean, there's a lot of examples that I think we've talked about at this point of things getting close and then either petering out at the end or like with Amelia, like you're like, oh, we've got we've got a story arc for a fat character. And it's like but then it's sold out at the last minute or like there's a lot of little examples of that. Like there's no excuse adaptation wise that we shouldn't know more about Becky and that she shouldn't be like grounded in her own story it would only help literally everything um everything that Frances Hodgson Burnett put pen to paper on in regards to India is cuckoo and uh there's a lot of bad tropes at play there that again like, like adaptation-wise,

and this movie should be mentioned was there are two writers. One of them is a woman, which is, you know, good and never happens. So that's positive. But there were a lot of issues with the source material that could have been improved upon in the adaptation that just didn't happen, which is disappointing because it is a beautiful movie with a lot of great messages. And anytime there's a group of girls who are supporting each other and it's not antagonistic, and even when it is, it's resolved.

And it just felt very wholesome and lovely. And I liked it i like that and i like that there's no reason for the green it honestly just like i had such an exhale and i was like oh my god green i mean as much as i love picking things to death what a relief that there was no reason for the green what would have explained it nothing i don't know it would have been terrible any explanation other than i just wanted it that way you would have been like i don't need any of this i feel like david and db explaining things after game of thrones like that's not why any of the things happen and if it is i'm so disappointed it's just there it's just what it is and so to all

you weebly bloggers out there 15 years ago you were wrong wow it's about fucking nothing burn so i love i mean yeah three and a half nips uh i'll give two to becky one to amelia and then i'll give the the last half to alfonso's son a little sweep oh yeah a little sweep cute i i will also go three and a half because it just feels right it just it's appropriate uh i'm just gonna give all of mine to becky literally all the love and joy i had never seen a person of color in a historical drama before this remember that i was young and then when i did it was so often slavery amasad came out not long after this saw that in theaters horrifying really triggering experience don't take your eight-year-old to see it um and she just so so full of love and trying and just a desire to make a connection and

girl i could identify many many a year later in 1997 when i started my first grade year it was horrible um but becky and depictions of Becky were great. And I also want to thank you guys because I always get on my dad about watching old movies. I'll be like, doesn't this bother you? Look at these racist depictions. He's like, these are the movies of my childhood. How dare you try to rip them away? And I'm like, oh, old man, so stupid.

And here I am defending this movie like it's my life right. No, it's fine. Everything's cool. Gloss over it. We get to the good stuff. And so, you know, now we're closer. Now I understand his perspective. So yay.

Oh, well, thank you so much for joining us, Joelle. Yeah, this was so much fun. And where can people find you? Yes. Go to Twitter. I live there. It's only 16 hours a day. You'll be able to contact me on Twitter. It's at Joelle Monique.

Or if you're so inclined, you could go to IG. I'm trying to Instagram story more. It's not intuitive for me, but that's Joelle underscore Monique. Also visit me over at Paste and Pajibo where I do the weekly content, the movies and the TVs and all the fun stuff. Awesome. Amazing. You can follow the Bechdelcast on

social media at Bechdelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon. It gets you two bonus episodes every month, including the entire backlog of all of the episodes we've recorded already.

It's over 40 episodes at this point so if you like bonuses and you like uh mp3 files of me and caitlin hanging out at our house that's the place to go yes it is uh and you can find that at patreon.com slash bechtelcast you can buy our merch feminist icon alfred melina merch. You know, and yeah, all of our goodies are at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. Hey, we're all princesses.

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