The Bechdel Cast - Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

Jamie and Caitlin are doing their first re-do of the entire 'cast -- we're talking Beauty and the Beast (1991) with the wisdom of 2021 on our side!This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow@BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Nerves the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption. They were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. 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?

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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 once upon a time there was a podcast i'm bailing i'm bailing on the bit I'll keep going and this podcast this podcast was really mean to a lot of movies

and one day a poor little movie walked into the podcast castle and the poor little person said please don't hate my movie i tried my best okay okay i like where this is going an orchestra can be anything where is this going okay sorry

2021 2021 I'm crying the podcast was like get away from here get away your movie sucks and we're not gonna give it a chance and you I'm laughing at your music

what's so funny about my beautiful music that's amazing um so anyway this move this little movie was like please don't turn me away please give me a chance and the podcast is like no i can't i kept trying to make it quieter. Oh my god. I don't know what's happening. Anyway, so the moral of the story is that the podcast was really mean

and it had to learn well, I don't know. Did it have to learn anything? What I'm saying is... Get ready. The next song is starting. Little podcast is a quiet podcast every episode like the one before oh good cell phone little podcast full of little hosts waking up to see.

Back to cast. Back to cast. Back to cast. Back to cast. There goes the back to cast. It's a whole movie. I know every line of dialogue in this movie. There's movies I could, in a pinch, I could close my eyes and basically watch, you know, like, because you've just seen them so many times.

I could probably do this with, like, movies like Beauty and the Beast and, like, Titanic. Titanic, obviously. Some DCOMs, just, like, movies that are just, like, foomp, just there forever. Yes, same. This and a few other Disney Renaissance movies are that for me as well this was one of like the four main ones i watched on repeat as a kid bell was my favorite because she had brown hair and she could read and i could relate with those things which i think we said okay so first of all hi this is the bechtel cast welcome 2021 the chaos be our podcast be our podcast that doesn't make any sense this is the bechtel cast

my name is caitlin durante my name is jamie loftus and this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test merely as a jumping off point to initiate a larger conversation about representation in cinema. This is kind of a special episode for us because we are redoing, revisiting, returning to four episodes throughout this year. We haven't really decided when but we thought this would be a fun place to start yes of uh episodes we did early in the series that were like we can do we can do better we just it's been and it's because it has nothing to do with anything other than that they are four-year-old episodes and there's just kind of more to say now yeah they were all episodes

that like among the first like 10 episodes we ever recorded and released and believe it or not it was before we really knew what we were doing yeah our guests our guests are and were amazing and then we were just like we we missed it with the four movies, especially. We just missed things that seem very obvious to us now that we just full on did not mention at the time. So we're redoing them. And Beauty and the Beast is our first episode that we are redoing throughout the year. Later in the year, it's going to be what? It's going to be Mad Max Fury Road.

It's going to be The Matrix, which I will watch watch and people will leave me alone about people forever well people will also riot that you people will i mean i will be a different person once i've actually seen the matrix um i will be red pilled uh and then uh and then it's kill bill we're gonna redo our first episode ever so but this is we're doing Beauty and the Beast to kick off the year. It's, if not a fan favorite, a movie that everyone on the face of the planet has basically seen. I think so, yeah. And since we last covered it, there's been a really bad version of it that came out almost four years ago at this point and made it was like that whole okay we're gonna be talking about kind of a smorgasbord of beauty and the beast adaptations we're grounding it in

the 1991 classic but um i watched the 2017 one for the first time today and was just like holy shit a billion dollars can look like anything you, like how that movie made over a billion dollars. Wait, did it? Yes, it made 1.2 billion dollars. It made so much money. And then Emma Watson goes, like, she sounds like T-Pain. Like, she's so auto-tuned you're like what is going on a billion dollars and that's why I feel pretty firmly convinced once Disney did that once Bob

Iger, Bobi Gare was like oh we can make a billion dollars off of that I guess quality is not a problem and they and and that's why all the reboots are just like bad yes because they don't have to be good because they made a billion dollars with with the worst one that i've seen i haven't seen them all but i've seen a couple of them and beauty the piece is so yeah it's uh yeah i saw it in gavin's in theaters i saw it bravely i saw in theaters i Iconic. I saw it. Bravely, I saw it in theaters. I was contributing to the billion dollars.

You and a billion other people. I'm kidding. It doesn't cost a dollar to see a movie. But like a billion dollars. That's so many dollars. So many dollars. The Disney reboot. I haven't seen the Dumbo one nor the Cinderella one from, I think.

Or I haven't seen Maleficent either. But I've seen like Aladdin, Lion King, Jungle Book. Maleficent is low key. I kind of liked, I have only seen the first Maleficent, but I was like, the first Maleficent was kind of fun. It was like Diet Wicked, kind of. I have not seen the Cinderella one and won't. And I did see Dumbo. Wow.

Thank you. It was a mess. It was a disaster. Wow. Thank you. It was a mess. It was a disaster. It was so bad. I haven't seen most of them. I've seen, I have seen The Lion King. I watched The New Mulan once the paywall was brought down. Oh, right.

I haven't seen that one either. It's fun. It's fine. It's fun. There's a lot of controversy around. I mean, that's a whole other, we'll get to that one eventually. There's, you know, there's, it's fun. It's fine. It's fun. There's a lot of controversy around. I mean, that's a whole other. We'll get to that one eventually. There's, you know, there's it's OK.

They're all essentially none of them are as good as the original. And they're all like generally like not very good. But Beauty and the Beast was like about like, holy shit. What was what happened? Everything went wrong. Everything. And then they made a billion dollar like i just no one learned a damn thing no well you know what a damn thing something i need to be reminded of often is that nostalgia is a powerful emotion and people will make decisions. Not strong enough.

But I mean, that explains, I think that explains why a billion dollars was made. Yes. That's why a billion dollars worth of chance is being taken. But like, I can't imagine. I mean, I'm curious in the future when children who saw the 2017 reboot,

then process it later, they're like that. What was that? What was that all about? I about i don't know it was so it was wow wow i love luke evans and then at the end you know how like okay we're gonna get to the 1991 one the good one but the there there was that huge show made of like lefou josh gad's character is going to be the first out gay character in all of disney history right and then you're like when is that going to become clear and then it never does but there's this shot at the end where like lefou dances with a man we we don't know. We don't know. For a second. And they're like, yeah, it happened.

It was. Yeah. Wow. I mean, so many parts of the movie were a slap in the face, but that was, that was a special one. Tell me about it.

That was a special slap. Yeah. One of many issues. I can't. And then I also like when the beast came to life, I don't know who i thought that actor was going to be but i i had this flash of rage where i was like who the fuck is that there at the end where the whole cast is supposed to all of a sudden be a very famous person at the end

right you've got emma thompson you've got audra mcdonald you've got ewan mcgregor you've got Emma Thompson. You've got Audra McDonald. You've got Ewan McGregor. You've got- Ian McKellen. Ian McKellen. Stanley Tucci. Stanley Tucci. Oh my gosh, Stanley Tucci's in it. And then they're like, and here's the beast.

And you're like, who is that? Who the fuck is that? I don't know. Who even was that man? I couldn't tell you a bunch of people are about to like swan dive into my mentions and be like he was in i didn't know who that man was he wasn't famous enough to be in the movie he wasn't famous enough i don't know why i can't say famous today he was not famous enough to be in the movie and that interpretation of the beast was horrible he was so mean yeah he

was so mean oh my gosh and he looked like shit all the cg in that movie was a disaster and oh my god bell's dress i okay wait i have to pull up a tab because i looked up the um the costume designer for the 2017 movie yeah very like well-regarded costume designer um i will find what her name was but it was the i think maybe the most eye partyist dress for bell like her the one in the yellow dress yeah i was like i'm pretty sure i wore that in the like that exact dress in like the second grade like what is going on here it was nominated for best costume design i'm seeing at the academy awards a billion dollars i don't even know what's going on absolute disaster jacqueline duran very well regarded costume designer has done some of

the most iconic like she did she did atonement she sent some of the the best costume designs of our lifetime sure and then she went to eye party I just couldn't tell you don't know well don't know did we i don't think we've said what the bechdel test was yet the bechdel test i guess the bechdel test do you want to say it or should i i don't know i'm so mad about it i'm fine i'm happy to say it it's um it's a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel that requires that two people of any marginalized gender have to have names have to speak to each other and they have to talk about something other than a man our standard is a two-line exchange or more of dialogue so that's the Bechdel test and then we'll determine if Beauty and the Beast 1991 or other adaptations passes yes later on the 2017 one definitely passes the Bechdel test but it's just a perfect example of what a flawed metric

it is because you can just be talking in the worst movie you've ever heard and it can pass the back door so okay we are talking about the 1991 movie caitlin what is your history with the 1991 beauty and the beast feature film like i said i just i watched this movie on repeat as a kid it came out and when i was like i was like five when it came out perfect target demo baby so i basically was watching it since we got it on like vhs that year or in 92 or whenever um and have been watching it ever since um so yeah so this is one of my favorite animated Disney movies or at least it was at you know the time I have mixed feelings about it now but I deal there's still a lot that I that I appreciate about it and love especially the score which you so beautifully were singing earlier I mean it's

iconic yes um what's your history with it uh I mean about the same it came out uh before I was born but I literally don't remember a life before this movie I just it's oh it's always been the one it was uh Belle was my fave because she was not like the other girls because she could read a book so yeah i i absolutely loved it watched it five trillion times and as i get older and then i started working in animation it's like some of the most beautiful animation ever it's so like when i was in college i think they released um like a remaster of it in theaters um and i went to see it in theaters like in imax and it's so beautiful and yeah i just i i really i really uh love this movie on a lot of levels it's not i mean it's so it's so mired in a lot of shit but i think of the disney um renaissance it's not even close to like the

the worst uh disservice of a female character which is not you know speaking sure super complimentary the bar is on the floor but um right yeah re-watching it for for this and then also kind of watching the various attempts to update it um i think it holds up you know relatively well obviously i mean it's there's been so much discourse about this movie that i don't even think i have any like new points to bring to the table the problems with the story have been pretty well trodden and we will trot it again yeah but i still love the movie i so to prepare for this i watched the two disney versions love the original hated the reboot and then i also used to watch with my mom for some i don't know why this was a 4th of July

tradition um but on the 4th of July my mom and I used to watch there was a tv series on CBS that was called Beauty and the Beast and it starred Linda Hamilton as the Belle character but she's called Catherine and the show and she's a high-powered assistant da problematic wow and then the beast is played by ron perlman in the most makeup you've ever seen in your entire life but even ron perlman on like vhs quality cbs TV show in 1987 looks better than the 2017 CGI beast with like whatever tennis balls all over his head. But yeah, so I watched a few episodes of that to prepare as well because I was like, well, let's find a midpoint. And, you know, the TV show is a disaster. George R.R. Martin wrote on that show.

Right. One of his early creds. That's one of those things that I learn about and then immediately forget and then relearn like six months later and then immediately forget and then relearn and just like it's just on a constant loop. Because the second it appeared on screen, I was like, I've read that somewhere, even though I don't even care. But yeah, the show was fun. The the beast lives in we know how it's like it's almost like us like empty tunnels the beast lives in one of those tunnels he lives in one of the us tunnels and Linda Hamilton goes down to one of the us tunnels and then they I don't know I only watched the first three episodes but it's like they agree in the pilot they're like this can never be because you're a da and i'm the beast like it's so weird because she's like very 80s and he's still like

the beast and he lives in a subway tube that's i mean that sounds a bit like phantom of the opera it's extremely phantom of the opera yeah to the point where i'm like why didn't they just do that i my my guess is phantom of the opera would have been a really popular broadway show at this time and they were like how can we have phantom of the opera without paying for the rights to it i see that's my guess because this was like 87 so pre disney making a good version of this so we're like let's make a really bad version of it and they did um but i recommend it i got cbs all access for it and i'm not gonna remember to unsign up so now i just have it so now you have it congratulations yeah let me know if you want my password if you want to watch the good fight is that the one with christine bransky because

if so i'll watch it hell yeah okay well yeah i mean my notes mostly focus on i have a little bit of like what the live action remake attempts to do to like update stuff but most of my notes are on the 91 animated version yeah yeah no let's fun to talk about. Yes. Okay. Let's take a quick break and then we will come back and get into the recap. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay 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?

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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. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know.

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And we're back. So we get some backstory about the Beast. Oh my God, I'm going to piss my pants laughing again. But just imagine. Right, right, right. So we get some backstory about the Beast. He was horrible to this old beggar woman who shows up at his castle. She turns out to be a beautiful enchantress.

So as punishment for him mistreating her, she turns him into a beast and places a spell on the entire castle, which we will eventually learn that all of the occupants of the castle are turned into like enchanted objects, household objects. Yeah. So she says, this enchantress, if you can get someone to fall in love with you, if you fall in love with someone and get someone to fall in love with you back by the time the last petal fells on this enchanted rose, this spell will be broken and your beast curse will be lifted. Right. So that's the backstory. Very specific curse she's casting.

But I remember when I was very tiny, how in the stained glass introduction, the, I guess, witch, or recalling her a witch. She's a sorceress. An enchantress is what the movie she's wearing this beautiful green dress that I was I was like oh I wish that you actually saw her um like that I just liked that dress the end that's all I have to say that was my only note. It's a beautiful dress. Okay. Then we cut to Belle.

She lives in a small French town with her father, Maurice, who is an inventor. She loves to read. She is very beautiful. And those are the two most important things about her really um she is so hot that the guy who owns and operates a bookstore doesn't say anything when she treats the bookstore like it's a library he never corrects her he's never like you you have to pay for the books so hot people can be very intimidating like that that's why hot people are generally really rude and have no idea. They're just like walking around because everyone's like, oh, then no one.

No one ever tells them that they're being rude. Yeah, she did. That is true. She treats the whole damn place like a library. And then he's like, actually, you can keep the book for free. I'm like, you're doubling down on not teaching this woman what a store is not only are you letting her borrow books that you are trying to sell for human money you are giving them away now to this hot woman for free so yeah that's how hot she is and that's how much

she loves to read really hot i love this is kind of like probably the as a as a child of our generation um this is probably the first like not like the other girls song that really gets like nailed you know into your head over and over like if you're hot and you can read a book guess what you're going to be both very desired and you're hot and you can read a book, guess what? You're going to be both very desired and you're going to be very reviled, which is like, I don't know what message, what the message is. What's the message? We don't know. But if you're hot and you can read, look out. People are going to have strong takes.

True. One way or another. So that's Belle's whole thing. She also, she wants more than this provincial life in this small French town. She sings about that. And then there's also the French Chad, Gaston. Yes. He wants to marry Belle because she is hot, but she has no interest in him because he's dripping with toxic masculinity.

Yeah. Gaston also has a little sidekick lefou right so um bell's father maurice is working on this wood chopping invention to take to this fair and he sets off but gets lost along the way and happens upon this dark and scary castle which is like i think we talked about this the first time, but like, does no one know about the castle? How long has the castle been there? Is the provincial town not aware that there's a gigantic castle?

How long has the curse been going on? Because it seems like he's pretty young when the curse is put on him, and they're like, you have until your 21st birthday. So you're like, okay, max a couple of years years so did the monarchy fall a couple of years ago but then everyone got like men in black like forget ray and they forget that there was we've talked about this before yeah and this is one of the things that um the live action remake attempts to address. And I would recommend checking out, Lindsay Ellis does a really great video essay on this live action remake.

Yes, friend of the cast. Friend of the cast. And how a lot of the problems with it are the movie trying to address fan criticism over the years. Well, my thing is i don't even super object to like a remake trying to address fan criticism but like almost every every way that this reboot chooses to address it is basically incoherent like right there's a there's a one sentence way to address that criticism that doesn't whatever

it's like a nod to the fact that yes the plot point doesn't super make sense uh but it isn't like this whole like convoluted like every attempt to explain anything in the reboot you're like what are you talking about yeah it weakens the story for sure on every occasion yeah i feel like you can you can nod to it without being like oh there's a whole like pixar theory on you're like it doesn't really matter right it's not that big a deal anyway so maurice shows up at this castle and this is where the Beast lives. And the Beast takes Maurice as his prisoner. And then also, as we mentioned earlier, the prince who is now the Beast, his servants have been turned into these enchanted objects.

So we've got like Lumiere is a candlestick. Cogsworth is a clock. Mrs. Potts is a teapot. Her son Chip is a little teacup. And these are all characters that Maurice meets early on. They're all cute. They're cute. So back in town,

Gaston is trying to force Belle into a marriage. She's not having it. And then her horse shows back up without her dad so she goes looking for maurice and also ends up at the castle where she comes upon her father comes upon the beast and offers to take her father's place as the beast's prisoner and the beast is like sounds good to me here's your cell and so like it would be so easy to just be like do i need a prisoner you know but whatever i mean i mean we'll talk about the story goes it's just how the story goes so lumiere cogsworth etc see bell being there as an opportunity for

this spell to be lifted and they basically try to orchestrate a romance between Belle and the Beast basically right away. But the Beast has an awful temper and he's yelling. He's like, never fucking go to the west wing of the castle. Here's a bedroom, but don't go to the west wing meanwhile back in town gaston is singing about how awesome he is and then maurice comes into the tavern he's like hey there's this beast and he has taken bell as prisoner and everyone thinks that maurice is delusional and then gaston sees this as an opportunity to kind of use the possibility that Maurice could get locked up as leverage to try to get closer to marrying Belle. Which is truly one of the most evil ideas in all of Disney canon.

Yes. I feel like it's not discussed enough. What a truly base and evil idea that is. Yeah. He's like, I'm going to lock your father up bell unless you marry me sound good that was his plan okay and yeah so back at the castle beast has demanded that bell have dinner with him she doesn't want to and he screams at her and tells her to go ahead and starve and then later that

night because this a lot of the recap so far has only taken has taken place over the course of a single day which i always forget it is a lot of things to happen in a day and you have to keep in mind that when you take a step into the woods it's immediately night which people don't remember yes but the second you're in the shade it's actually night which people don't remember yes but the second you're in the shade it's actually night and that's just kind of how the visual works yeah it's very jarring and i feel like again just like one of the things that translates to live action a little weirder right in the animated in the animated version i never i truly never noticed yeah but when you see it in live action you're like huh it truly is just a tuesday for for this town yep so beast tells her to starve but later that night

she does come out of her room for some food and this is when we get the be our guest song beautiful some of the most beautiful animation ever so good so pretty jerry orbach iconic performance it's just so good what i should have said earlier was beck dull cast beck dull cast that's way better than this the seven minute tangent we went on at the beginning i guess we have to let's start over welcome to the mectal cast my name is kaylin dorante be our guest is so beautiful i've also i'm remembering now i've also seen this the animated movie in la before because you know in the before times where they used to show old disney movies at um el capitan

theater oh yeah i went to see beauty and the beast when i was um by myself wait i think i remember this yeah i think i went maybe after a bechtel cast recording once because it's close to the studio yeah yeah yeah it was so nice it's like when you get there you're like wow this is a lot of families and i am a single adult but it was really beautiful and they bring bell out at the beginning and she throws confetti at the audience wow classic bell the kids love it um okay so later that night because it's still the same day. It's just Tuesday. It's just Tuesday. She sneaks into the West Wing where the Beast had told her not to go. And she comes upon the rose and she almost touches it.

But the Beast stops her and he flips out. This is another point in the reboot where there's way too much backstory that no one wanted. Where she goes to the West Wing and she's like's like oh it's the story of the royal family and all the and there's like a whole family tree thing and then you're like huh and then the beast is like no both of our moms are dead and that's why we're and it's like it turns out i didn't want it turns out i didn't want it yeah i didn't care i didn't care and it's easier. There's just an oil painting of a hot guy that she doesn't know is the Beast. An allegedly hot guy. I contend.

I too contend. I also think that the Beast as a man looks exactly like Patrick Wilson does in Phantom of the Opera. As a rule. Like dead ringer. Agree. I think that was part of why I was so outraged at the end of the 2017 one. I'm like, they should have just, I mean, he, the age gap between Emma Watson and him would have been pretty large.

But I was like, it should have just been, they should have just photoshopped in Raul. What can you do? Nothing. I mean anyways so yes she comes across the rose and the beast is he freaks out he's throwing furniture around he's being a very scary guy yes he is and she is very frightened understand, and she runs out of the castle. She's like, I don't care what I said about agreeing to stay here. I'm leaving. And it's easy for her to do, which is good.

And she does remember this because she does it again later. Yeah, the doors aren't even locked. One of my things is, why does she accept her fate so quickly? Why doesn't she try to escape sooner? You know, we can talk about that. which is a few different times um it's not a problem yes the staff the the not only is the beasts quote-unquote staff very much on her side there's not enough of of them to stop and they're they're candles what are they gonna do right what are they gonna do nothing nothing if i was bell i would just be like what are you gonna do truly what are you if you fall asleep i could just at any moment

not be here anymore but you know what can you do there is that big wardrobe maybe that would like fall over try to fall over on her or something but she's like bell's best friend she's like you're so beautiful and great and i love you and she would never collapse on bell true but it would be funny if she tried um so bell leaves but in the woods she gets attacked by wolves who we've already seen attack maurice because apparently all the wolves in this you know land are hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry somebody's got to feed these wolves they seem like they might have rabies i don't know but also this is this is like super nitpicky but it just it does make me laugh it's

winter in the woods it's winter and night in the woods at all times and yeah but it's it's like fall it's a different season nearby it's not snowing another thing they like try to pass off as a joke and try to explain in the remake which again and it looks bad it looks so bad it's also just like trust that your audience can suspend their disbelief for some stuff it's fun to notice it's simply fun to notice and i didn't need emma watson to do a a Shakespearean monologue about it. But whatever. But I like that it's winter in the woods. The coyotes are starving.

They're so hungry, hungry wolves. And they try to kill Belle. But the beast swoops in and saves the day. He gets bitten up by some of the wolves. And she has a moment where she's like, am I going to leave and escape for good or not? And she decides not. She decides to take the beast back to the castle, return with him as his prisoner, and kind of nurse him back to health. And this is when things start to change. Basically, he starts to become more caring and

gentle than he was before he shows her the castle's library and bell loves it because bell loves books she loves to be reading books then this all kind of happens really fast but then there's like then there's this romantic evening where they they basically have a ball but it's just the two of them and they both get dressed up be very uncomfortable in real life but it's beautiful in the movie right i feel like it's to just imagine like being dressed up in this huge crinoline dress and then share the clink clink clink of forks um with you and someone who's sitting really couldn't be sitting further away from you um we're like clink clink clink like yummy um yeah but it is romantic the way it's presented and it's so it's iconic it's beautiful and when they dance it's the first

like one of the i think it is like the first computer generated animated shot ever featured in a feature film it's beautiful yes yeah it's nice and this is also where we get the song pod is old as time it's nice it's angela lansbury and then when emma thompson sings it later you're like i love emma thompson but it's not fair that she had to you know you're not gonna do better than angela lansbury it's angela lansbury i know you know they shouldn't have tried but they made a billion dollars so they had to right so they're having this romantic evening they're having a nice time but bell is like oh shucks i miss my father and the beast is, here, look at him in my magic mirror. And she sees in the mirror that Maurice, who has been out looking for Belle, is lost and alone and possibly dying. So she's like, hey, Beast, I need to leave. And he's like, okay, you can leave. You are no longer my prisoner so she leaves the castle and finds maurice and then once they're back home

gaston is like oh shoot like if there's this beast out there we have to we have to get rid of them gaston really uh as a villain knows how to think on his feet because he goes in with a game plan and then he with a very evil game plan yes which is to basically imprison maurice with a cartoon character who terrified me as a child oh my gosh yes the old man with the scraggly hair terrifying terrifying terrifying person so his plan is to basically throw maurice away in exchange for bell's hand in marriage that's what he goes in thinking and then he pivots and he's like actually we're going to commit a murder right

now which is like galaxy brain villain activity I did this time this watch I was like wow he really thought on his feet there and if he was on the right side of history imagine what we could have accomplished with Gaston because he just like changed the plan so quickly and got everyone on his side and

I feel like one of my opinions that maybe has sort of changed between um 2016 when we first did this episode and now is I feel like I vaguely remember being like it's mean to the townspeople to say that they would just you know turn and they would be so gullible to have to turn like that um I don't feel that way anymore because guess what I've been alive for the past calendar year and that happens all the fucking time yeah so now I'm like wow that was hyper realistic and i'm upset because especially because they are set up from the beginning as like being strong admirers of guest on they're like presented as being just kind of like sheeple who will go along with whatever this like hunk bully has to say right so and so it um it turns out they were right i was naive and this does happen yes it's basically just an anti-mask riot going to you know murder someone for no reason these

things happen they happen yes so yeah guston's like come everyone, grab your pitchforks and let's go kill the beast, which is also a great song. And they attack the castle, but the enchanted objects fight back. Love that. And Belle and Maurice, who are still locked up somewhere, I think their basement or something, I don't know. Chip, who has stowed away when Belle left, helps them escape. Belle goes back to the castle and then Gaston is about to kill the beast. And there's an altercation there. Gaston stabs the beast, which would not be happening these days.

We're not, no longer would we have the main antagonist actively stabbing stabbing stabbing but i do i do i do like that gaston um dies yeah well he does the classic disney thing simply kill that yeah he falls into falls into an infinity pit but he goes splat and i kind of miss when the villain went splat it made me nostalgic for when the villain used to go splat. I get why the villain no longer goes splat and the villain, you know, kind of learns, oh, I was wrong and I'm going to rehabilitate. But I kind of miss when they went splat sometimes. Does that not happen in the remake?

I feel like he falls into it. The remakes all happen the same. I'm talking about like new original Disney stories. I see. Yeah. Where I feel like more like maybe it's even like a Pixar thing, but more often than not, like you get like a Toy Story 3 thing where it's like actually the villain had a traumatic backstory and they're villainous with context. And now they're going to start unlearning the traumatic things that made them villains and they're going to be nice, which is beautiful. But I kind of miss when they went splat.

Sure. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right, okay, so Gaston first shoots Beast with a bow and arrow and then stabs him, and then Beast is kind of ready to give up because he thinks that Belle doesn't love him, but then Belle shows back up at the castle. He's like, wait a minute, Belle is back. Maybe she does love me. So he kind of gets a second wind, and there's this whole altercation.

Gaston falls into the ravine but um it goes splat beast is dying from the stab wound but bell is like beast i love you and that heals his artery the spell yes that undoes the internal bleeding that he is dying from and which is which is great for him so good and uh the spell has been broken the beast turns back into a human prince all the enchanted objects in the castle turn back into people and they all live happily ever after. Sure. Why not? So why not? That's the story. Let's take a quick break and come back to discuss.

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No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. 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, Lugey. Not hawk the slalom. music. I just was like, who is this person? I gotta hawk this slalom, Luge. I'm not gonna hawk this 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. And we're back. Where should we start? I guess, I mean, do you want to just start by talking about Belle? Does that make sense? That makes so much sense. I think that's a good place as I need to start. Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is like a discourse as old as time.

Wow, Jamie. Thank you so much. Belle, I feel, I mean, this again, this is not a super compliment. The bar is low. I still feel like Belle is among, at least foundationally, one of the stronger of the 90s Disney princesses in how she is written. We will get to, I guess I'll just say what that she's intelligent. We really just know she can read. We don't know what her comprehension level is, really. I think we're meant to, I think like her loving to read is code for, it was like, she's smart. Can be interpreted as, yes, she's very smart. I like that she is confident in that. And even when people give her shit about it she is still out there reading i appreciate that i appreciate that her unlike some you know disney family dynamics her dad um is very supportive of the fact that she loves to read he is not actively trying to marry her off to some random

person uh when bell says that she doesn't want to marry gaston he respects that sure so i generally like the dynamic that they have it makes sense that this eccentric inventor would have a brainy daughter and he does and he appreciates that and they appreciate each other and i like that um and i feel like bell is uh put in and i guess this is like a entryway to the rest of the conversation but she's put in a series of pretty impossible situations and is making active decisions pretty frequently right the situation she's being put in and the choices that she makes are certainly up for debate. But she is not like a Sleeping Beauty passive character. She is making decisions actively throughout.

Right. Just a bummer that there were not better choices or options at her disposal. And then related to that, I think is, and this is part of a larger conversation to be had also, but the Beast spends a great deal of the movie mistreating her. And she does push back on it a lot of the time. Yes, she does. Which is good. Which is good. Which is good. So again, just kind of a more maybe passive character or a less thoughtfully written character would not have been characterized that way to challenge the Beast in a lot of his behavior. So I appreciated that that was like a nice thing as a young person to see especially to see like a woman in a movie targeted toward children to like challenge like a man being shitty yes I

especially I mean we have talked to death how imperfect 90th third wave feminism is. And I feel like Belle is very solidly a part of that discussion where it's like she is doing a lot and she's speaking up more and she's pushing back and she like values her intelligence and her outcome is more or less the same as it would be if she were not doing those things. So that's not ideal. But I, you know, it is definitely, I feel like one of the things we lacked from our first pass at this discussion was the context of when this was coming out. Sure.

And so when this was coming out, the last Disney princess you had to compare her against was Ariel. And so it's a step forward. Yeah. In that regard. I also don't know how much we talked about the screenwriter of this movie at the time. Linda Wolverton. Right. Yeah. Who has kind of, even since we last recorded, remained in this, I guess it's not, I don't know what to call it she's written disney heroines for almost 30 years now where she wrote uh beauty and the beast she did work on aladdin she was has a co-writing credit

on the lion king she did work on mulan she wrote the screenplays for the tim burton alice in wonderland she wrote maleficent she wrote alice through the looking glass and she wrote the second maleficent so she's been in it yes for a bit writing i think these pretty commercially successful commercial feminism characters yes so So, Belle's very much a woman of her time. And by her time, I mean 1991. One of the big things that, and I think this might be sort of me repeating myself from the first episode, and there will be a little bit of that. Well, no one can go back and check. Well, yeah, certainly i wouldn't so but i took issue with it then i take issue with

it now still that one of the big things that just strikes me about her character in general is she is characterized in the very beginning as her uh and this is so this is a pretty standard thing for a lot of protagonists of any story where they are kind of equipped with a longing a desire something that they want some sort of like empty void the want disney song yeah right some some void in their life that in theory will be fulfilled by the end of the story and a lot of times the story is about how they go about yeah filling that void or whatever journey that they've gone on manages to fill that void so bell's song her want is and she says it very explicitly in song form i want much more than this provincial life i want adventure in the great wide somewhere so she's talking about

i mean well maybe she should have been more specific when she said somewhere. Right. But yes. Yeah. She doesn't get what she wants. Right. So she's talking about wanting to venture out into the world and see what it has to offer. And rather than doing that, she ends up sacrificing her freedom.

So her ability to do that for a man, her father, and then falls in love with a different man the beast right by the end of the movie so she doesn't get adventure in the great wide somewhere unless you count the confines of this castle the great wide somewhere which it shouldn't be like it's this is like one of the many ways that it becomes like it it's kind of an impossible not impossible there's a way to update a very old story to make it to have it have the core message of the original and also have it feel very modern i always go to like clueless for a really good example of like this this is a Jane Austen story, but it doesn't feel like it at all. And it feels very of the time it was released. I feel like Beauty and the Beast, maybe it doesn't really retain those same qualities because the

this is again, just like, for so for forever, Disney and a lot of you know heavily funded popular media does not take chances on original stories very often so we get these old this is an old french story right and it follows all the beats of that story and then tries to insert all this modern sensibility into it but the modern sensibility is kind of chafed with the story they're adapting so it ends up like the modern things they're inserting into this movie don't really end up paying off in any meaningful way because it still ends like it did in the 1700s or the 1800s right and so it's like it's not it ends up almost like making you feel a little more bummed out because because Belle doesn't get what she wants.

And it's a very like progressive thing to say like, oh, and she wants so much more. But that's unfortunately not how this story goes. And it's like, well, then why did you have what then maybe why did you ever say it then you know it right or if if you want to write a movie about a young woman who kind of feels trapped in this kind of small town life and wants to venture out and like go off on an adventure then don't adapt beauty and the beast exactly just write that story exactly you know like the the modern stuff chafes with the source material and then it never really i feel like it kind of fails to meet in the middle in a way that doesn't you know that doesn't matter that much if you're like five years old and watching this but as an adult

you're like oh i mean if we're even going from like the disney formula of like the the main character singing about what they want at the beginning of the movie you know at least ariel technically gets what she wanted which was to live uh above water and she does get that by the end of the movie um she accomplishes that goal uh bell's bell's song should have been about something different she should have like sung about like i want to have a gigantic library because she gets that like yeah if we yeah if we need the story to end with her living in a castle nearby then it's a bummer to have her dream be like really not that at all or even i mean if she just wants like romantic love in her life and that's like the thing that she longs for

and there's no suitable suitors in town and even like just like someone who it would even work if it's like she wants to like live in a place where she feels understood yeah or like where she feels like her interests are like it doesn't even need to be necessarily a romantic goal sure she can just be like i want to feel understood by someone other than my weird dad like that's a relatable goal yeah to be like i feel misunderstood where i live I want to feel understood by someone other than my weird dad. Like, that's a relatable goal to be like, I feel misunderstood where I live. I want to live in a community where people respect where I'm coming from and they understand me, regardless of the coordinates of where it is. But that's not, that's just not her goal. She's just like, I want to live anywhere else.

And then she doesn't. And that's a bummer. But, I mean, it's part of of the i feel like part of the fun of talking about this movie is nitpicking it but yeah it is like that that is a really fundamental like she doesn't get what she wanted and that makes me i like to think they moved you know because all this whole movie takes place over the course of a couple of days who knows what happens next week right i like to think of the the straight to vhs stuff definitely not canon they move they move even just the fact that she says i want

adventure right and again like she doesn't unless you count being a prisoner i guess i mean i guess getting held prisoner is it's a venture i mean that's a it's a it's a really shitty the shitty adventure adventure he held hostage is the shittiest adventure um i think a movie that obviously comes out much later but handles this way better is moana because she has a very standard like i have this longing this thing that i desire and it's to be out on the sea she also wants adventure in the great wide somewhere which is the sea and then that's what the entire movie is about she has that adventure and then she finds a home within herself and she goes on this whole journey and it's like and bell i mean that's just

especially where like disney movies are at at this time i feel like and i want i mean i would be so curious to hear what the writing process of this movie was like in terms of like what kind of notes would you be getting back in the late 80s early 90s when when linda wolverton was writing this thing i'm sure it was messy as hell like i would be so curious of like what she tried to write in that didn't really get there and like where is the line i guess because it's it's yeah i mean it's it's like move the even even disney movies have come you know reasonably far um outside and again it's a kind of outside of their reboot sphere their original stories have come pretty far but yeah it's it's just weird there's just a little bit of dissonance watching it back

as an adult because it's just like the movie is ultimately not that invested in what bell's goals are not at all and that that yeah brings me to a whole spiel i have but just to kind of go back to what you were just saying there are let me count 10 or 11 10 somewhere around there story by credits for this movie so there's a screenwriter who wrote the screenplay but then there are but like an additional like 10 story by credits and that doesn't always mean that like 10 people worked equally on the story together you know some people get story by credits because they wrote like two lines of dialogue kind of like you know just like weird things like that the industry's weird sometimes but um it seems like there were a lot of people and a lot of just kind of like too many so when you i mean when too many too many cooks in the kitchen yeah but it's

like this is how these disney movies go where like it's so it's always so interesting to hear when someone is a little bit outside of that disney machine and they speak more frankly about like these are the kind of notes i was getting this is like what the conversations actually were because like a story by credit could mean kind of anything especially in animation like it's so vague what would constitute a story by credit and yeah there are um there is there is one woman on this team there's one woman on the story by team and then the screenplay credit is also a woman but that's not this that's not um proportionate and it shows there's a man named kelly oh yeah okay but yeah it's weird i mean i feel like this is

unfortunately we are still in the era of disney movies with empty feminism we're not we're not out of it there's a few exceptions but for the most part we're still not out of the empty feminist capitalism movement but but this but a lot of the foundation is kind of being laid during the disney renaissance of like we're gonna give an a nod to all the ladies out there but guess what honey you're still gonna marry the uh emotionally abusive guy at the end and that's something i know that it's like again it's like part of this is criticizing the source material and ultimately it's like if you don't want these story problems don't adapt these old ass stories like centuries old fairy tales best way to combat uh anti like prejudiced shit is not to adapt the oldest

story you can possibly find it's a great way to do it yeah but the same way we're like with the with the relationship of bell and the beast where there's a lot to talk about here and a lot of it is like kind of boring discussion but i do feel like ultimately you know the burden of forgiveness lays on bell in a way that is not fair like in a way that is expecting a lot it is very toxic and I don't think that he really you know I I think that the beast certainly demonstrates growth throughout the story sure would I would I you know were I in her shoes would I feel he has earned forgiveness maybe not for me no I think maybe he's you know he's also he's been on this journey for two days like let's let's see some more

results um right yeah and and the but the burden of forgiveness very much lays on bell or the story can't resolve exactly and that brings me to a little segment I would like to call the expectations of women's expectations. Hit it. Is that a song from the movie or is that just your own song? That was the Price is Right theme song. Okay. Okay. So I think that this is a thing that's true in real life and i think it's reflected in media where when it comes to hetero romance women tend to be expected to have low standards for men in a bunch of different areas areas like personality emotional intelligence emotional maturity hygiene etc amount of shit you will put up with before bailing yes and a lot of that comes from the boys will be boys mentality

where you know all men are just gonna fuck up they this is just how they are they don't know how to be people and we just have to forgive them which plays very much into male redemption arcs and this to me is a story that is largely about the beast getting to redeem himself yes and you know there's other kind of thematic things happening but that's a big part of the story in the reboot they they managed to make it a story about fathers and sons which i hated um right not in the animated one he is simply a man who needs redeeming like needs redeeming and then like being allowed and like everyone like giving him the space to be able to redeem himself and i've stated in other episodes how i'm generally not thrilled with a lot of redemption like male redemption stories and it's not that also how low the bar is that

you need to clear in order to warrant a redemption a redemption yes which is like yeah like stop holding a woman prisoner is a very low bar you have to clear for only a couple of hours before immediately being like you know what i i'm back i'm back yeah right okay bleak and i want to be clear it's not that i think that people and men in particular don't deserve second chances and shots at redemption i'm not saying that i think it's a very like case by case basis. You know, what did you do? And do you deserve a shot at redemption? That's very generous. Scenario by scenario. Thank you so much. But so many cinematic stories are about male redemption,

because like people are just conditioned to be way more tolerant of men's mistakes and just expect that men will make a bunch of mistakes and be perfectly willing to give them second chances. But on the flip side of that, which is this double standard of women just kind of being expected to be perfect from the start. We don't really tolerate a woman's redemption because we don't tolerate anything besides a woman being there shouldn't be a need for a woman's redemption because a woman should have just like done everything right from the beginning which and also the and also i feel like in in these sorts of stories specifically uh women are not given enough narrative space to even make a mistake like yeah they're mostly just

cleaning up after the men that they are beholden to so for like bell gets into this whole situation because maurice didn't turn his gps on like right like he he gets lost she's cleaning up his she's rescuing him which is good she's rescuing him that is an active decision that's like i don't dislike the maurice bell relationship you know it's like we've all cleaned up after a parent but but it's like you know she doesn't really have the space to make a mistake because gaston's coming at her from one end maurice is fucking up over here now the beast is holding her prisoner when is she she doesn't have she doesn't have any space to to do and she doesn't know a woman you know so it's just well nor is she written to be a character who would make a mistake because she's basically written

to be perfect even though the the town thinks she's weird but we are not meant to root for the townspeople but yeah it's like they hate her because she is the 90s ideal of what a woman is, which is right, completely hot, perfect Western beauty standards 10. And a genius. She's a hot genius. And in 18 something France, people are like, what's going on? But it's like, that's, you know, whatever, the cultural ideal is to be a hot genius, right? The townspeople are presented as you know anyone they're not they're not going to appreciate creativity or innovation or anything that's like new or different you know they are the type of people who and they're they're also

they also fall victim to i've just like animation stuff of like they're drawn to look poor yeah and bell is you know of their class but she's drawn to look not like them right um her her character design is something we've talked about you know to death but like she's designed like a human woman yeah and not just human woman but like western beauty standards beautiful human woman yeah like she's drawn to look like an algorithm, you know, image of like the perfect 1991 woman. Right. Is what she's drawn like. And everyone else is a literal cartoon because it's a cartoon. Yes. Yes. So. So Belle is like we said, she's a genius. She's very smart. She's well read. She's beautiful. Her name is literally means beautiful she's ambitious even though she never gets to realize any of her ambitions she's this like perfect character without any flaws although

i would argue that she is too forgiving of people who mistreat her um but that's not what the movie that was considered a flaw exactly well that's also not what the movie wants you to think this is just what i think about yeah they're like oh no uh forgiving the's also not what the movie wants you to think this is just what i think about yeah they're like oh no uh forgiving the like i think that the movie is like oh no forgiving the beast is what a beautiful genius would do like i think that's where we're supposed to get it's hard to get there these days but like i think that that's where you were supposed to get because so i think this story would be way more interesting if bell had a flaw and also had character growth and a character arc much like the beast does but she is presented as someone who from the very start has the capacity to look beyond someone's

external appearance and see beauty from within because this story wants to be about like can someone possibly fall in love with a beast someone who's so hideous on the outside but bell is presented as someone who would always have the capacity to be able to do that so there's no arc there there's no she's just like flat from the start yeah it's like she doesn't really change like she mostly is just kind of managing a lot of situations at once she's doing it all but she basically remains the same person fundamentally because it's like she is because even when she's afraid of him it makes sense that she would be afraid of him he is threatening her yeah with impressive with with like it's never it's never

that she like i think that that's like another thing where i kind of get like what's happened what is what is happening here with the like 90s sensibility being inserted into this century's old story right where bell really never never judges the beast for being other you know like she never really judges him for looking different than her she really only gets upset with him when he's means threatening her life violence yeah like so i agree with that so it's like it like she doesn't really have an arc from being like, I judged him based on his appearance to now I have learned that there is no way to live your life. But that's never a problem for her. She never judges him based on his appearance. She judges him strictly based on how he behaves towards her right and the whole curse that the enchantress and i cannot say this word

enchantress puts on the beast the prince at the beginning is like oh you're uh good luck finding someone who's gonna love you because you're a beast now and it's all about you know finding beauty within his problem is he was an asshole. Right. But yeah, what beauty within? This guy sucks. He's so mean and awful. And he treats Belle, if so, like just to run through everything he does. On the first night alone, he imprisons her and takes away all of her freedom for the flimsiest reason imaginable.

He demands that Belle join him for dinner. He screams at her while doing this. He threatens her saying, come out or I'll break down the door. He then tells her to starve. Then he invades her privacy by spying on her through the magic mirror. Later that night, after she's gone into the West Wing, he screams at her again. He violently throws furniture around. Just his actions are very alarming. He's a scary guy. And scary and to the point where she runs away for her dear life kind of thing. And the whole thing is like, oh, he just needs to learn to control his temper.

Right. But it's, I mean, it's like, yeah, which is true. He does need to to learn to control his temper right but it's i mean it's like yeah but which is which is true he does need to learn how to control his temper yeah but that doesn't mean that whatever the burden of forgiveness thing always bugs me in any story because it's like if someone behaves horribly towards you you are not obligated to forgive them like they hopefully they will work on themselves and not perpetuate that behavior to other people but that doesn't mean that you have to personally be like i forgive you that's not always guaranteed in right the way that like not everyone's going to be able to forgive that behavior and that makes a lot of sense when someone throws furniture at you you know that is going to

take more than two days to forgive and that's the other thing too is i always forget how little time is spent on screen in this movie developing their romance because basically beasts don't fall for it in the 1991 one though right still sometimes i'm like in the 2007 okay this is like a super nitpick in the 1991 one they have a little snowball fight and it's kind of cute and you're like oh they're starting to get along that's in the 1991 one they have a little snowball fight and it's kind of cute and you're like oh they're starting to get along that's nice the 2017 one he like throws a huge snowball at her head yeah and like knocks her over intent to kill um that doesn't have i had to like go back to the 1991s 80 like oh he doesn't throw anything at her no it's in terms of snow it's her throwing

a bunch of snowballs at him and then he gets a snowball together but then he doesn't throw anything at her. No, it's in terms of snow. It's her throwing a bunch of snowballs at him. And then he gets a snowball together, but then he doesn't throw it at her. He's like Teehee. Because he would hurt her. Because he would do it. My killer. Because she throws a snowball at him and he has like the big one lifted over his head. But then it like falls onto his head also.

So he just gets pelted with her snowballs his own snowballs yeah it's very he's very fun and flirty um it's a very flirty snowball fight you know like has he really earned the snowball fight i guess that that's certainly up for debate but like it's not a violent violent altercation and emma watson gets like likeikaze'd with a snowball. It's alarming. Yeah, she falls down and then he laughs about it. It's horrifying. Also, I do think that the 2017 live action remake does attempt to draw out their developing romance more.

Yes. But they don't do it well because of that scary snowball fight. And the Beast just like negs spell a bunch he's like oh you like romeo and juliet typical that you'd love that romantic drivel it's just all like it's not very sweet um and then it doesn't help that the that the two actors have like no chemistry whatsoever like the most chemistry i feel in the 27 and i am not a josh gad fan as listeners know i find him to be a very frustrating person but i felt like luke evans and josh gad had the best chemistry between two actors in the entire movie because they were like we can actually sing so let's just hang out and have a good time sure but no one else

i mean my god that yeah like emma watson and that pile of tennis balls did not have it that kept negging her did not have any chemistry it just didn't i you know it's like i i appreciate but again it's like i i think for watching these right in a row, it's clear which one is superior. But even so, like seeing 1991 sensibilities plugged into an old ass story with the Disney formula didn't really logistically work if you think about it. And then seeing the same thing be attempted in 2017 worked even less. Really doesn't work

because now the values are even further apart than they were you know 15 years ago and so it makes even less sense that they would end up together at the end if we're going to make this with 2017 values they would not end up together right at the end it's yeah a mind fuck make a different movie but they can't they can't do that They need a billion dollars literally so badly, so they have to do it. I also just wonder, so, oh,

so what I was saying is that so little screen time is spent in the 91 version developing the romance, which just like, he shows her a library and suddenly she's like,

he's not so bad. Like, he was just screaming at you and nearly killing you to be fair bell wants free books really bad she she's been conning her way into free books for a long time and so this is actually a big opportunity for her she could maybe like start flipping these books they look antique oh sure uh they look so if she's in it for the free books oh my gosh boy then she's the right man is that's such a more interesting story to me if she's like

yeah i'll pretend to be in love with this guy and like make a life with him just so i can have access to these millions of books in his library it seems like there's only one guy to get them from in her entire zip code and it seems like you know it's a small shop he never has any new books in she's like do you have anything new and he's like no and she's like oh my god like so i see that you know based on the scarcity of of literary works in this area maybe that's a reason to hang out but but it's also like i don't know i i just it's such a it's such a mess this whole relationship is such a mess i really i mean i feel like the most and this is like addressed in a different lindsay ellis video but the most popular criticism of the bell beast

relationship is that she has stockholm syndrome which is just like just a fun little history lesson for everybody that stockholm syndrome is like whatever it's i feel like the popular interpretation of it is it's like when you begin to feel empathy for someone who is your captor, who is not treating you well. Right. But it's like a false, it's just kind of a false premise for any sort of like psychological reaction to a situation. Because the whole thing with Stockholm Syndrome was that there was a group of people who were taken hostage in a bank and the reason that they began to empathize with their captors is because they were terrified of the police who were probably going to kill them if they walked outside so it kind of has like really there's a lot that's been written about it but yeah it has very little

to do with like oh now i i love my captor. My captor is amazing. It's like, no, I feel like my captor is less likely to kill me and has a less vested interest in killing me than a cop. So it's not as far as I know, there's no cops in Bell's neighborhood, which is amazing. I mean, a utopia. That's good. It's good it's good so so the whole stockholm syndrome thing is just like a non-starter in terms of any sort of meaningful discussion right i do i do think that it's like there's a pressure put on that character to really do some empathy gymnastics and forgiveness gymnastics in a way that doesn't really match up with the

character that we've been introduced to i mean even though it's like she she clearly has a big capacity for empathy and understanding because she is a hot genius who's perfect um but we're also told that the beast doesn't really come into like what her goals are and and we learned so early in the movie that it's really easy for her to get away from him if she wants to um right and why wouldn't she want to because he's horribly mistreating her yeah it's again just like the values of the stories are chafing with each other in a way that's kind of like you know if if you look if you if you squint at it a little bit you're like oh i guess that doesn't really

make sense it's yeah what i feel like is i don't know this is okay here's my hot take of the episode please the ending of this movie really made me appreciate the ending of Shrek because Shrek I knew Shrek was gonna come up today you know Jeffrey Katzenberg you texted I woke up to a text about Shrek from you oh can I read it yes please I said sorry let me find it here, I got my email today saying my Shrek 3 lingerie is on the way. Oh my goodness. Add the sign. Okay, I can't find... We just text too much.

It's too far back, but... We simply have too healthy a friendship. Wait, we're... Oh, wait. Yes, you said, look, all I'm saying is we should cover Shrek 2 this year. And are you wrong certainly not certainly not i'm actually very correct right but the ending of shrek right so the so these are two katzenberg um masterpieces we're talking about yes you know r.i.p quibi all of that i'm also

seeing as it relates to jeffrey katzenberg and beauty and the beast that the reason there are so many story by credits on this movie is because of jeffrey katzenberg he had the entire first draft of this movie which was non-musical scrapped and rewritten as a musical so that is part of the reason why there's so many story buys is because there's like just a ton of different versions of it got it um but the ending where i feel like the ending of shrek is a bit more impactful and here's why is because um shrek at the end first of all we have like a lot of like beauty normative issues in this movie right where there's a very like rigid binary of like good equals western beauty standards of whatever the movie's year released into standards um bad equals literally anything else and this

movie definitely subscribes to that kind of thing i guess with the exception of Gaston. But Shrek, you know, at the end, Fiona goes out of the Western beauty standards character and becomes a person or an ogre rather, who she's more comfortable as and feels more fully herself. And that's the happy ending is they are both like just feeling their truest selves and they don't care what anyone thinks whereas the way this movie ends and the way that many movies end is like the the beast

is designed to be this othered character and it's like he's not even like they they somehow managed to make the beast kind of hot i stand by to this day but you know he's he's this othered character right and then he's a monster right and then at the end he's he looks like patrick wilson in phantom of the opera he is you know a rich white guy with longish hair and this is his quote-unquote reward for two days of working on himself and that's just like kind of a very that's a very like you know simple hollow ending right and just again kind of enforces that rigid beauty binary that exists in you know everything to this day but in this movie it's pretty egregious because it's a fairy tale where things tend to be very rigid. Yeah.

And it's also kind of validating that rigidity by inserting all this 90s mentality into it and kind of like validates it in a way that I feel like doesn't work super well. Mm-hmm. Agree. Aye, yay, yay. We could talk about monster othering characters all day long. And we've talked about it in other episodes as well. But yeah, that I mean, that's, I feel like one of the more egregious elements of movies like this. Again, I guess I would say with the exception of Gaston, who I guess is there to be like, even if someone is, you know, I think I think we're supposed to think, you know, know gaston he's like this man's man and he's you know the masculine ideal but it's very toxic and it's so yeah i guess it kind of succeeds in the gaston area but then with the main with the movie's two title characters it's just kind of like fart noise for me you know right because with gaston he is the embodiment of toxic masculinity. And I appreciate that his toxic masculinity, his fragile male ego, his misogyny are all vilified. Like these are traits that he is openly displaying in the movie as showing you, look how bad this is yeah and i feel like the modern elements inserted into that are some of the

more like more effective ones in this adaptation like the way that gaston the way that we're told that gaston is a bad guy and also the ways that we understand why people think he's a good guy i feel like it kind of it still pretty much works for me right except for this one little thing so like the movie is like beauty's in the eye of the beholder you have to see someone's inner beauty unless you're a woman unless you're a woman right so and then you better be beautiful the whole damn time right so the reason that Gaston is designed to be like traditionally classically handsome is that like even though all the other townspeople kind of fall under his like oh what a handsome popular like you know quarterback

of the football team kind of guy that we all love even though he's horribly toxic Belle doesn't fall for that because she sees that he has no inner beauty right but it makes me wonder why does she not put up with gaston's mistreatment of you know her and the other people around but she she does tolerate it in the beast i think that i mean my guess is that goes back to the fairy tale logic of again it's like whatever these stories are so it doesn't work when you stretch it out for an hour and a half but my guess would be that the beast it with this story logic the beast does two or three things to indicate that he could possibly change down the line whereas gaston does zero things and he doubles down on his negative qualities right that would be my guess but it's i mean it's still like it's a very

simplistic way of approaching it but i'm pretty sure that that's yeah the vibe they're trying to strike there and i don't know they're also it's so and then and then we haven't even talked about the staff that's another fun thing where it's like you would think you would think and maybe we even said this in our first pass at this episode oh i want to know more about the lives of the working class you know servants working in this castle but again if you want that sort of examination and discussion you really just it can't be this story because if you add in i found the way that they attempted to mitigate that issue in the 2017 adaptation to be horrifying and pretty jarring and like kind of upsetting to have to watch because you know it's like again it's like whatever this is the story the story does frame all of the you know household objects that used to be servants

as side characters and sidekicks and there is something to be said about like well you know why are we making anyone who is poor very much a side character except for i guess technically bell who doesn't seem like she's extremely well off because her father hasn't invented anything yet right but in any case like i think that there is something to be said for kind of the way that people of different classes are stylized and the way their stories are treated but then in the 2017 movie they try to give like Lumiere and Cogsworth backstories. But then it just becomes like so sad. It becomes really, really upsetting because you just are constantly thinking about how their lives are on the line based on whether Belle tolerates abuse or not.

And that's just kind of 10 miles of bad road narratively where it's like oh this woman who we know does not you know she said at the beginning of the movie she doesn't want to be here but now if she doesn't stay here the like people are gonna die lives are at stake in the 2017 when we're at the end i was like oh where they like are they're all dying like they're like their faces are disappearing they're like turning to stone and you're like this is not how i want like i don't know yeah i guess i didn't want this i guess i didn't want this i thought i want this i didn't want it it's really scary to look at yeah and think about and um and and again it's by trying to address that it puts more narrative pressure on bell to theoretically act against her own interests of what she said she wanted like

well now she has to go back to the beast whether he improves or not or all of her friends are going to die right like that's not a good vibe to bring into the chat that's a huge sacrifice with that little dark cloud over her head right that was really upsetting at the end i'm like emma watson you gotta get back there yeah gregor is dying in that castle you're gonna go save him you're gonna let audra mcdonald die i don't think so go back to that pile of tennis balls staley tucci's keys aren't gonna be able to play themselves anymore life is on the line here well oh my god here's something i didn't pick up on in in our first rendition of this episode uh that i find extremely troubling now some of the in fact many of the lyrics to

one of the best songs in the movie be our guest yes are very fucked up because the lyrics are all about how the servants actually love being servants to the ruling class and if they are not being servants to the ruling class then their lives are actually pointless and yes i find that which is it's kind of like i was thinking for that too i just think that that's like a funny premise to try to update because that would be kind of the cultural equivalent of like a barista thing about like if i'm not frothing up milk i might might as well be dead. Like that is kind of because it's like like they're they're working job. Like no one is like if I can't froth milk, I wish to die. Like no one feels that way about their job.

No one feels that way. Do we feel that way? Are we like if I can't pod, I might as well roll over and die. I do feel that way. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh my God. But like, I just, I mean, I just also find it especially weird. I don't know when this story takes place in relation to the French Revolution,

but like, it's just so weird for this like French story to be like, yes, we, the proletariat, actually love serving the bourgeois class. And if we can't do it, then we, what are the lyrics? It's like, life is so unnerving for a servant who's not serving. He's not whole without a soul to wait upon.

Like, especially when we know that, like that, that was an amazing point with like the, especially in france in the 1800s this is a weird vibe to be you know taking on yeah it's like i mean it's like having a bunch of people being like jeff bezos isn't he awesome especially but we know that their boss specifically is not nice to them like really awful their boss be really mean to them yes and we also it also is

just like another i don't know the music and this movie is so beautiful and it's also like some of howard ashman's like final work and he's such an icon and this movie is dedicated to his memory because he i believe he passed away before it came out and like he's just so amazing and it feels like the lyrics from howard ashman and the screenplay are often in conflict because it's like howard ashman's lyrics say bell wants more than this story says actually no she doesn't right lyrics say we love being members of the proletariat it fucking rocks uh but the screen play says that they really desperately want to be people again so like they don't want to be dishes which makes sense right like it's so there is a little bit of i mean whatever it's a kid's movie but there's

definitely there's definitely conflict there yeah here's also something that we i think we talked we touched on this in the first episode but um of the enchanted objects the quote female objects aka the characters who are voiced by voice actors who are women tend to be traditionally like feminine objects for example you've got feather duster teapot yes like cleaning supplies uh cooking supplies cooking supplies women a wardrobe because women be trying on clothes you know not like telling time that's a man that's a man's job yes yeah but yeah like traditionally feminine and that was another thing that the reboot sucked at where they're like okay we got to make bell a feminist icon how do we do this and then i heard that this was emma watson's idea and i laughed and laughed

and laughed um until i cried the like in the movie bell is also an inventor but she invents laundry things and that was emma watson's idea she's like wow she was like out here in interviews being like i told them bell's gotta make a laundry machine and i was like okay all right if you insist they did it they did um it was weird but they did it um yeah but yeah the like equating female voices with traditionally like female caretaking tasks yes bad oh another thing about the be our guest song and this has always bugged me but so bell skips dinner with the beast because he is uh he wants her to starve and die oh but then she doesn't eat she goes downstairs because she's hungry a bunch of food gets made and brought out but she never we never see her eat any of it except for they give her like getting just like

little tiny tastes of stuff they give her a doggy bag i just i hope so but like why are movies so against letting us see women eat on screen oh okay yeah i do see that to the point where the same thing happens in the 2017 remake and worse if they fade to black like i'm like does she have sex with the pudding like why are we fading the black what is this they? They kind of make it a joke, like where she is very desperately trying to like grab food to eat, but that keeps like prancing away because it's like dishes who have personalities or whatever. I hate that damn movie. I'm just like, well, then do it.

Do it or don't do it. Don't be all cute with me. Let us see Belle eat. That's my main issue with this movie. No, but. We don't really. Yeah. I mean, she drinks soup.

Right. Oh, later on. Yeah. What the fuck? Yeah, that's her first meal is three days later. She drinks. She finally gets to eat some porridge. So that's too bad.

Yeah. But that the animation in that scene is so beautiful. So good. It's so good.'s so good it's such a fun movie i just i love it um yeah so i i'm trying to think of uh what else what else do we got here um yeah i guess just going back into like we we've basically touched on this but just the kind of um inherent like i i felt almost like uh this is the wrong movie to equate it with but the general energy of like a revenge of the nerds kind

of redemption arc going on with the beast where i feel like it's kind of pretty common in movies for a character that is treating a woman shitty at the beginning to very intentionally say, hey, if I do A, B, and C, like I will have demonstrated enough growth to earn this woman and then I will have her and then she will be mine. As my prize. Yeah. Right. And I think that that is kind of how the Beast's storyline plays out as he does one or two

things to demonstrate growth, which is good. We're going in the right direction here. But then he's immediately, quote unquote, rewarded with the unconditional love of a woman whose forgiveness he has not necessarily earned, right? Right. And I feel like that is just kind of a thing

that we see play out in real life over and over and over of like i did this thing why do you not why are you not my bride it's like no that's just how like people who aren't assholes act like there isn't necessarily a prize in uh demonstrating personal growth um right sometimes that is the prize is that you suck less. That's the prize is you're less of an asshole now. You don't get something. Right. Beast goes from being violent, abusive, scary to just like being bare minimum decent.

Like nothing gets even established about why they might be compatible romantic partners. He just goes from being frightening to no longer being frightening. I feel like it's like we see like a little. I definitely see in the 1991 beast. Definitely not much 2017. But I see a capacity for growth. I don't think that he earns the love, the eternal love and trust of someone inside of a couple of days. It seems like he is on an arc towards being a better person. And in

kind of more concrete ways, he's like, having to challenge his own entitlement to people. And I think that's the message we're supposed to get when he quote unquote, let's bell go, even though she can technically leave whenever she wants, whatever. When he lets her go, that's like an unselfish act that he does that we're supposed to be like, oh, okay. So he's behaving less entitled to access to people and access to people's time and attention and like putting others, someone else's interest before his own. That is certainly a step. That's a step in the right direction great sure but yeah it's like but then immediately rewarding that one that one thing um but i mean in that that's not good right but and i agree that he definitely demonstrates more capacity for growth than the other the live action version yeah and just in general but even

so where's the compatibility between them even if he grows and becomes a kind gentle person what are they compatible about snowball snowballs they both like throwing snowballs they like to throw snowballs at each other and they like to save each other from wolves and that's just kind of and so i think if you can find someone like that you really can't let them go that's what really i mean a match made in heaven i that's what really bothers me about a lot of romantic stories is that yeah we've talked about this before it's like well why do they like each other oh because they're both hot and they're near each other in this movie it's one of them's hot and they're near each other and well it's like even like what yeah and it's like and then they end up together because one is no longer being actively antagonistic which is honestly

more than we get in some movies like there are some romantic movies that end with one of the hot parties still being actively antagonistic towards the other true but now it's cute because reasons um yeah i just i think compatibility gets skipped over a lot and i think that romantic movies need to pay more attention to it well yeah and it's again that's like another thing that makes sense in the context of the fairy tale where like everyone is like marriage was not necessarily a love game but when they're applying the 90s values of marriage is very much a love game um in an individual choice the end game of the story ceases to make sense right um which is why they they just write it and just let them write an original story then yeah i just i feel like

especially as time goes on not that disney's ever going to stop cashing this check for a billion dollars it's just whatever like mindful adaptation it's not impossible to adapt an old story with contemporary values but you can't just kind of copy paste them in where it suits you like there has to be meaningful adaptation choices made or any level of scrutiny is going to cause the whole thing to kind of fall apart and yeah like that's definitely an example of where it falls apart here is like if we're coming at this from the like you marry for love not for survival um this the ending to this story makes no sense because they're not compatible right in the fairy tale that probably mattered less right but in the 1991 theoretically that should that did matter i did the i don't know the movie's really good but it's a mess

does it pass the vectal test it does i think we decided that it it like sort of between her and the wardrobe right that was the that was uh yes i think maybe they they or her and miss bell and mrs potts but i think it was like sort of kind of maybe sometimes i think it's one of those things where it's like even if they have a two line exchange where a man does not get explicitly mentioned. I think the context of every conversation is still about preventing the beast from murdering me today. Yeah. So I think either the beast or like Maurice is the context of every conversation. Sure.

So I would say considering context i would give it a not i'm gonna give it a note the uh the 1987 one does pass the bechdel test but it's maybe the weirdest tv show i've ever watched in my life the linda hamilton one yeah yeah the linda hamilton one you gotta watch it i'll give give you my CBS All Access password. Thanks. And then you can watch Picard. Oh, Picard. Yeah, no, I would recommend watching an episode of it because it's so 80s.

And also Ron Perlman is like acting through the makeup. And I'm like, whoever the fuck is in the 2017 one, did you not watch Ron Perlman? He transcended the makeup. Jim Carrey transcends the Grinch makeup perlman he transcended the makeup jim carrey transcends the grinch makeup why can't you transcend the makeup whoever you are it's just strange wow so yeah and then i think that the the 2017 adaptation does pass the bechdel test but it still um sucks so bad so flawed metric movie also the 2017 thing the 2017 one does one of my least favorite tropes on movies that are like trying to be feminist but actually very much or not um where they're like

the patriarchy is one guy look at him he's not nice like it's just one guy who's mean and it has not there's no systemic anything it's just one guy it's like well then uh kill that guy if it were that easy we would just kill that guy to be perfectly honest that guy would simply be killed but that's not how it works throw him into a ravine yeah yeah it's like oh gaston and that guy are the only misogynists in france well let's get rid of them. Like, but that's just not how, but whatever. That's movie logic. Yes. I love Luke Evans. Queer icon Luke Evans.

Mr. Gaston. He's great. He can sing. He can dance. After all, Miss, this is France. It's true. He's also in Fast and Furious 6. Oh, I saw that. And he was in Ma.

He's in a lot of fun movies. Wow. I still have to see Ma. You gotta see Ma. I'm looking through just to see if I have any final things. I mean, it's almost hardly worth mentioning, but Belle's mom is not alive. Oh, yeah. She's dead.

And then in the 2017 movie, they give context for it and it's like why it doesn't have anything to do with anything it doesn't go anywhere it's and again it's just like copy paste adaptation brain of like oh this was the problem let's just paste in an explanation for it and people will be satisfied it's like no you need to build it up from the base like i don't even object to adding a storyline with a mother as a backstory for belt but you can't just be like here it is here's the worst song you've ever heard in your life about it so bad uh like you can't just paste it and you need to like go back to like build the story from the ground up with that as an integral part of it you can't just add it at the end or it doesn't work so i i kind of like slightly object

to like the whole like oh don't change anything when you're updating to the live adaptation of course you know change things but you you can't just like add it as a little flourish and like a wink and a nod at the end it It needs to actually have like a meaningful, like if you, whatever, it's just like basic writing. Like if you took it out of the story and nothing changes, then you need to go back and have it matter. Right. Yes.

That's all. That's all it is. Aye yi yi. The 2017, the live action remake does something kind of similar with clearly like Disney got the note, has been getting the note. Hey, maybe not have so many just only white people in your story. So they do seem to make an attempt to include some more diversity because there now are some black people in the town there are some black actors voicing some of the enchanted objects but it's the same kind of thing where the characters are pretty secondary or tertiary they are not important they are not among like the core cast right so i think my my main takeaway

from watching the 91 and the 2017 one is i feel like even though the 91 movie in terms of like quality is vastly superior, you kind of see like the same filter lens of the year it's coming out on top of it without meaningfully building in those values into their rewrite of the story and i think probably the 2017 one's even worse because it's like a rewrite of a rewrite yeah and so it just gets even more like chaos yeah but it's yeah it just it's i don't know there's such a dearth of like good adaptations that like consider the context of the time it's being released into into it coming out and it's like either adapt an old ass story with and just do it and have it have you know old values that kind of speak to no one and just do that or you know try try a little harder a little harder yeah the reveal that like lefou is gay at the end because he dances for one second with a man it's nothing that's like but

that's like a perfect example of that like yeah the instagram filter of like oh 2017 updated right because we did these two things with like barely that's good enough right and it's like no right disney it's not it isn't it just isn't and it's not like there couldn't be a gay character meaningfully included in this story there's like it's a broad enough story that there's room to do that like but but they just didn't so they just didn't i mean and that's i mean i guess i'm just kind of like done expecting then a disney adaptation especially a disney adaptation of a disney adaptation right is going to do anything super meaningful. Sometimes they do.

Most of the time they don't. I don't go in expecting that they will. That said, though, I would say that this 91 version is a good example of being a stepping stone movie almost that allows us to track specifically like Disney fairy tale animated movie progress where like Beauty and the Beast is more feminist than say Snow White, which came out several decades before 91 Beauty and the Beast. But it is also like less feminist than something like Moana, which came out 25 years after 91 beauty and the beast and even moana has things in it now that it's like you know i don't know if i would give moana five nipples if we covered it now instead of four years ago i feel like it's i'd give it 4.5 with disney it's always going to be a commerce game in a way that is like even though it's

sometimes frustrating to consume i feel like it's an interesting historical yardstick because disney is never not going to do what's going to make them like they're always going to do what's going to make them the most money and they're going to play to whatever they need to to cast the widest that they can to get the most people's money that they can and so any movie that comes out is going to reflect that and so they they so become products of their time yes and so it's like beauty and the beast is reflecting 1991 values in the most commercial sense moana is going to reflect 2016 values in the most commercial sense possible they're never not going to do what's not going to make them the most billions of dollars right

and then and it just sometimes it's going to be done in a good faith, beautiful, artistic way, as I feel like it is in the 1991 movie at many moments. Mm-hmm. And then you're just going to get some real farts. Oh, boy. Here it is. It's been two hours. Let's get out of here.

Let's get out of here. Let's get out of here. It's 11-11. Make a wish. Make a wish. Do, do, do, do-11, make a wish. Make a wish. What would you rate this on our nipple scale?

Our scale of 0 to 5 nipples based on how the movie fares looking at it from an intersectional feminist lens? I don't know like one or one and a half yeah i guess maybe maybe one i mean i guess i would say it's weird because it's like i still i'm trying not to come in with a nostalgia opinion here yeah i guess i'll go one and a half. I think that the issues with this movie are very much rooted in adaptation. I like Belle.

I'm rooting for Belle. I think she is a very strongly motivated character whose agency is kind of pulled back and back and back as the movie goes on. And I want more for her. But it's like, i don't know i i feel like this bell in particular is like people really clung to her for a reason which is that she like expressed such a universal sentiment of like wanting more in the world and um i don't know yeah i guess i'm i'm kind of stuck on a one and a half where are you at i'm prepared to give it even a little higher. I was going to come in with a two.

Nice. Even if, you know, does the movie deserve it? I'm not sure. Does the Beast deserve to be forgiven by Belle? He doesn't deserve Belle's love. I just, I want to, I like, I just, I'm always rooting for Belle. Also, I think it's worth mentioning that bell is kind of the first disney princess who is like definitively an adult which is kind of nice

there's yeah that that was like a discussion that comes up in disney princess discourse as well as like for the most part um disney princesses are teenagers um it is i don't know if it's ever explicitly stated in the movie but i guess canonically bell is an adult woman uh-huh which i feel like is good yes that is good um to not be releasing movies where teenagers are getting married off in the 20th and 21st century that seems generally positive so i appreciate that she is an adult woman making decisions in an impossible world i just yeah i guess i'll go one and a half this time but i just i love her i want more for her i wish that this movie was could make up its mind of where it wants to be like i like a lot of the i don't know it just it clashes

so much the the beauty binary rigidity comes it doesn't hold up in certainly not in a feature length 20th century format right um it made me miss shrek so take from that what you will. And I was like thinking about Shrek so much. Well, I mean, we must never forget Shrek. Right. We will never forget Shrek. We're always thinking about Shrek. Where's the t-shirt? Never forget Shrek.

It's got to be out there. No, I'm saying our t-shirt. You have to make it. Oh, my God. That's what I'm saying. I've done enough shrek art in this lifetime um but yeah i i guess i it's almost frustrating that we have kind of a rarity in disney canon where we have like a strongly motivated female character who is intelligent and knows her values at the core of the story where normally we kind of don't have that we kind of have like a young woman who has an idea of what

she wants but like it's it's usually connected to romantic love that's not bell's goal she has goals beyond that but then she gets the same end game as anyone else would so i feel like she's just kind of cheated out of the ending that you would want for her. Yeah. I love her. And this movie is so beautiful and iconic in its way. You know, shout out to absolute legend Howard Ashman forever. Yeah, I guess. And then but but it's like the dynamics of the the bell beast relationship are never gonna sit well with me i am all for a story about forgiveness i think that that especially now

could be like a really impactful narrative to present but this just kind of isn't the one where you feel like someone has really earned it by the end of the story yes so yeah i hope yeah yeah yeah one and a half i'll echo everything you said and that as much as i like bell i wish she had been characterized a little bit differently just in that she could have been given an area of growth or like potential growth that we i would have liked to have seen so that it's there's not so much of a burden on her to just like accept mediocrity all around her and like not even media like verbal abuse and like the beast throwing furniture around like she just tolerates so much and i like you said that that dynamic even if he stops being abusive like that's not enough to warrant a romance a like loving relationship right there's even a way to like if they need that i don't know like even if they need bell and the beast to end

up together at the end there's a way to say like and now they're on like a path towards forgiveness versus like and now i am married to you and we are married today and i love you forever like there's a there if they're going with these 90s values maybe you know end it by having it seem like and things might actually work out here i guess we'll see she's, because I feel like it's a satisfying enough arc to have her give him a second chance, period. He hasn't even really earned a second chance, much less eternal love, you know. But it's like, a second chance would at least be a more palatable end game than eternity. Especially, like, it's the whole, you know, the fairy tale. Especially like it's the whole you know the fairy

tale like it's like well what do you expect it's a fairy tale this is how fairy tales are you fall in love and you live happily ever after and you don't have to see that they're compatible they're just they're near each other so they're in love but it's like well yeah but when you're adapting a fairy tale in the late 20th century

and then again in the early 21st century like our cultural values have progressed a little bit beyond you know uh fairy tale values so it can't have it always in these situations you just can't have it always but they're never going to stop but again it's like i guess they can because they have a billion dollars. They showed us. And another, I bet in another like 30 years, they're going to readapt it. And it's just going to be a cycle of shitty adaptation after shitty adaptation. I do love this movie. I know.

I love it. So I, the 91 one, in spite of all the flaws we've been talking about for two hours is a perfect movie. So I don't make the rules. It just is what it is. Yeah. I'll stick with my two, even though I think I'm being a little too generous. Two nips.

I love it. I'm giving one to Belle. I'm giving half a nip to one of those hungry wolves. Someone should have just fed those wolves. Feed that wolf. Half a nip to one of those hungry wolves someone should have just fed those wolves feed that wolf half a nipple i'm gonna give both of my nipples to stanley tucci in the live action remake i love it i love it there you go stanley there you go stanley hope you're happy yeah happy now stanley all right well there we there you go so we did it we've reckoned with our past and hopefully a more nuanced conversation than we had you'll never know so yeah uh welcome to

2021 we have a bunch of exciting episodes planned and thanks for being here you can always follow us online you can follow us online. You can follow us at Bechtelcast on Twitter or Instagram. Follow your heart. You can also sign up for our Patreon, a.k.a. Matreon, where each and every month you can get two additional bonus episodes for a mere five additional dollars out of your life and you can check out our merch store at tpublic.com slash the bechtel cast where you know there is a noticeable absence of shrek merch but wow bullied into making shrek merch you're gonna regret you're gonna rue the day that i post my Shrek lingerie to our Instagram without warning. It's going to be very toxic.

I won't rule the day. I will rule the day. Love it. Anyway, yeah, you can find us there. And you know what? Give us a little 2021 rate and review on iTunes, why don't you? Hey. Could it hurt?

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