The Bechdel Cast - Dora and the Lost City of Gold with José María Luna

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

This week, we're going on an adventure and unlocking a Matreon episode on Dora and the Lost City of Gold with special guest José María Luna! (This episode contains spoilers) Show Notes: Check out José's video essay "Decolonizing Adventure: A Cinematic Road to El Dorado" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4gWOpSvyQ ....and subscribe to his YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6gBFgzP-9nr2mbvJFLh-lg For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @JoseMLuna on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante, and @jamieloftusHELP  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister? Or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, They're just dreams. and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, known for his research on brain function, behavior, and neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to adapt and rewire itself. The expectation on us is not perfections, being able to toggle between these different states. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. 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 Bechdelcast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdelcast. Ever heard of it? Ever heard of it?

I hope so. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na. Oh, welcome. to the Bechdel cast. Ever heard of it? Ever heard of it? I hope so. Welcome. You already said it. And well. But what are our names? My name is Caitlin Durante. Oh, awesome. My name is... What's your name? It's Jamie Bethany Loftus. Whoa. Yeah, I know. I've probably said that on the show before. Definitely. But I never in the intro. And what's your full name? Oh, my full legal government name is Caitlin Marie Durante. See, I knew that.

But I wanted everyone else to know that. Wouldn't that be a really confusing, like, that's like a slight Berenstain Bears, like, Mandela effect thing. Like, if we just all of a sudden started using our full names every single time like hi my name is Jamie Beth Loftus and I'm Caitlin Marie Durante and welcomed and people would get they'd be like little shifts in the matrix like that would really fuck with people it bothers me when stuff like that happens where I'm like, you're who? Anyways, welcome to the Bechtel cast. This is our podcast, where we take a look at your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens, if you can believe it. I can believe it. Yeah. And what we are doing today is unlocking one of our

Patreon aka Matreon episodes that we released earlier this year on dora and the lost city of gold and we have a guest on that episode jose marie luna we don't often have guests on the matreon episodes and this one has really and first of all if you're a matron you already know this episode uh really fucking ruled and jose is so wonderful that uh we we must unlock we must share with the world we must yes so that's what we are doing so now that it's a main feed episode we just want to include the kind of standard you know do the the standard protocol the bechdel cast protocol if you will yeah as far as introducing an episode so we will explain the Bechdel test for example Jamie what is it uh well well okay relax the the Bechdel test

is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace test I feel like I want to start specifying that it was originally created as a one-off joke in a comic, but it has been widely adopted since as a way of examining the media around us. There's lots of different versions that have evolved in this test over the years. The one we use to start our discussion is this. We require that there be two characters of a marginalized gender with names that speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue the reason this metric is so popular is because for a very very very long time and

still sometimes now um that didn't happen yes so but with me and caitlin it happens all the time it happens all the time because we we're out here talking about movies yeah such as well i was gonna say like shrek 2 but that's that doesn't work out that's that's a man's story that's a masculine who don't get me started on the raw masculinity of that story um but when we're talking dora it's passing it's passing oh yeah oh yeah and the other thing to know about this episode if you've never listened to an unlocked episode before is this um well we do have a wonderful guest covering an awesome movie it's a a looser discussion. It's not maybe quite the buttoned up Bechtel cast you're used to. So if you hear me maybe lightly cyber bullying Mark Wahlberg's nephew, we just kind of get a little loose.

And like, that's just how the nature is. Of the Matreon. Yeah. So deal with it. It's kind of like, I feel like the Matreon is, do you remember in like the late 2000s when like if a Judd Apatow movie came out, there would also be like a DVD that's like the unrated version of the 40 year old virgin. And so that's just like kind of what the Matreon is for us.

Wow. That's true. Kind of. It's just like we get a little bit loose. The Bechtel cast unleashed, you know, unleashed. Yeah. Anyways, so we're very excited to share this episode with you. You're absolutely going to love Jose Maria Luna. We love him dearly. And with that, enjoy the episode the bechdel cast hello matrons us again welcome back to lost treasury there's a second lost treasure we want to talk to you about today i was trying to think of how it would be fun to like introduce this episode the way that this movie is introduced like it seems like it's going

to be one thing and then it like cuts to us sitting at a cardboard box being like which is basically how we record our shows true so true it sounds like a a wild sweeping adventure full of education and friendship and it's really just us sitting in a box and my microphone is actually made of cardboard and we our mom is a desperate housewife she comes in sometimes and she's like stop pretending to have a podcast the one thing and truly anyone can have and does that's so it'd be funny to i maybe this is a thing where like kids are like i don't think any children like children grow up and they want to be YouTubers or like TikTok stars. I don't think anyone's like, I want to have a podcast about an esoteric subject. If so, that's interesting.

And it's so it's such an achievable goal. Truly. But I would also argue that being a TikToker or having a TikTok account. As the kids are saying. As the kids are. Yes. A TikToker. Is that are, yes, a TikToker. Is that what it's called? TikToker?

That doesn't sound right. We're so old. Oh my God. Yikes. Well, friends, guess what? We have a special surprise for this episode. Normally here on the Matreon, you know, it's just us. Me and Jamie goofinging goofing goofing

yeah being irresponsible being irresponsibly goofy going off doing bits which we will do today but the twist yeah and just like that we have a guest we have a guest joining us today for this episode on Dora and the Lost City of Gold. He's a writer, screenwriter, occasional video essayist. It's Jose Maria Luna. Hi, everyone. Hi. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me. This is very, very exciting. Oh, my gosh. We're so thrilled to have you. We've already I feel like we we are already on such a journey uh the three of us for those listening um jose left the room for a second i didn't realize that he still had his earbuds in and i immediately started to tell caitlin that i've had pms for 600 days and there's no end in sight and it turns out you're you're the whole thing and there's no end in sight. And it turns out you're,

you're the whole thing. And that's the, the intersection of art and technology. It was a very important bonding experience. Like we needed to go through that in order to record the podcast properly. Exactly. I don't think we really could talk about Dora and the lost city of gold without having had that experience first.

It was very, very bonding. This movie is wild. I'm so excited to discuss it. Yes, I'm also very excited. And Jose, we reached out to you because of a wonderful video essay that you did entitled Decolonizing Adventure, A Cinematic Road to El Dorado, in which you analyze several different movies, Dora and the Lost City of Gold being one of them. So tell us about your relationship to this movie. And maybe if you have any relationship with the source material of Dora, the cartoon, and all that stuff. Dora as text. Dora as text. Well, the seminal story here,

I did watch Dora when I was very young, or maybe not that young. I remember watching Dora, so it couldn't have been too young. And I watched Dora growing up in Colombia in Spanish and she taught you English. Okay. Unlike like the original cartoon. So it was kind of very wild to me learning later on that Dora is just supposed to be like a Latina who's teaching like Americans Spanish. And I was like, oh, I guess I never saw Dora as particularly like foreign I just thought she spoke English so I did enjoy Dora I was more of a blues clues kid okay they they are back to back I just remember that that's true yeah the golden age of Nick Jr. I don't know what airs on Nick

Jr. anymore I don't know if no idea back in my day anymore. I don't know if... No idea. Back in my day, Nick Jr. was better. It's not that I grew up. And I didn't watch the movie when it came out. I just remember it came out when I was very busy. But I just very distinctly remember my friends being like, oh, we're going to the movies for my birthday. What should we watch? We were thinking of seeing Yesterday.

This was my friends here in Colombia. And I was like, don't watch Yesterday. Go see the dora movie sounds a lot better and they did oh and you were right dora was way better than yesterday i i forgot about yesterday i feel like did the world just did we all agree like that never happened yeah and then someone will come up with the idea for the movie yesterday because everyone else forgot about it. This is our Groundhog Day culturally where we're doomed to continually watch the movie yesterday. The world's worst, most expensive idea. To this day, I haven't seen Yesterday.

Neither have them. But we've all seen Dora and the Lost City of Gold. I saw it later on. These were my friends here in Colombiaia and i was still in the states so i couldn't join them and i ended up watching that for research for my video essay yeah and i ended up really enjoying it it was i didn't really know what to expect but it was it was a wild time truly in a lot of ways yeah the twists the twists in this movie did i expect a poop hole no i did not so jamie what's your history with dora and the lost city of gold slash dora the intellectual property dora as text at no that I definitely like, I think my younger cousins watched the Blue's Clues Dora block. A classic Nick Jr. block.

They used to have that mascot. I hesitate to even call them a mascot. It was a mascot called Face. And it was just a block of color with a face. And then he'd be like, hi there, face here. And I loved the face. The face would just tell you what was going to be on TV. It was a little scary, but it was also kind of exciting.

I loved face. Right? Face changed colors all the time. Face like would have holiday, like face could sing. I have no idea what you're talking about i feel like there's probably porn of face but that would be like kind of but i don't know i feel like but i i'm sure it's out there but that's actually really challenging because it's the whole look if you look up face it's just a screen the whole screen was a face it was like if rocky horror

was for children and not scary kind of like the beginning of rocky horror but a whole a whole face that was just like blues clues again somehow that's a great way to put it so i guess i'm saying i've i saw dora i liked dora dora is like the sweetest, most lovable kid character. And also I feel like in the Nick Jr. universe at that time, where like the really young kids universe, there were like not really many girl children who were like the leads of shows. And especially non-white girls.

So I don't know. Dora's cool. I hadn't seen this movie. I remember seeing the poster for this movie and being like, this could go a lot of ways. Like, this could be so fun or so bad or, like, who knows. But I didn't see it until preparing for this episode. And I just remember that you loved it, Caitlin. And you saw it, like, four times.

So, perfect transition for what is your history with Dora? You saw it four times? I don't think so. You saw it four times i don't think so you saw it multiple times not in theaters no i only saw it once in theaters but i did watch it a few times after that prior to prepping for this episode because i kept being like hey friend of mine do you want to watch the dora the explorer movie and they're like i, but then we would have such a fun time. Anyway, so. Okay, so I did not grow up watching the Dora animated series, of which there might be more than one. Isn't there like Dora the Explorer and then like Dora and Friends?

Diego had his own show. Okay. Yeah, my little sister watched Diego okay yeah and I think later they did like one where Dora was older right I think that's Dora and Friends because she was like a pre-teen I the only thing I remember about that is that there was an upset that always happens when a big company ages up their IP and they like drew Dora to be over sexualized as a preteen. And there was a big issue. Like anytime they redesign the Disney princesses, suddenly they're thinner. Like there's,

you know, it was like that, but for Dora. And I remember there was quite a bit of upset and they ended up changing the design. I think rightfully so, but it's just always, I'm like,

how is that still happening? Right. And I think that that's something that this movie avoids in a way that I was so pleased about. Yeah. So I didn't watch the cartoon. As you might have noticed when earlier I said TikToker, which I actually think is the right phrase. But anyway, I'm so old. I think so. I was being I'm so old. I think that's right.

I think so. I was being old. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jamie. The point is I had aged out of being the target demographic for Dora and Blue's Clues. I never watched any of those.

In fact, I never had Nick Jr. I didn't have Cable until I was an adult. Stuck with Arthur and Dragon Tales. Oh, Dragon Tales slapped. Dragon Tales did slap. I feel like it was underrated. Where's the live action? Actually, I don't want it.

Oh yeah, please don't. But I remember they introduced the Colombian kid. I think it was a bit after I had aged out of it, but my sister was watching it. And they introduced like a Colombian kid in one of the later seasons and becomes like a main character. I didn't know that. I think I cried. And I was like, too old to cry over Dragon Tales when that happened. You're never too old to cry over Dragon Tales. I didn't know there was a Colombian character on Dragon Tales. Wow, that's so cool. It meant a lot to me, even though I didn't watch it anymore. You're just like, well, good for children.

Yeah, good for the Colombian kids out there, including my sister, I guess. Oh, that's awesome. I mean, goes to show how important representation is. That's true. But so there was no reason why I was so excited to see dora and the lost city of gold but i was like i'm gonna go see this movie i think it's because again like adventurers trying to find lost cities or lost relics is like my one of my favorite sub genres so i was like cool a movie where this like vaguely familiar character to me is doing that i'll go see it so i went to

see in theaters loved it had a blast uh and have wanted to cover it on the podcast ever since so here we are finally doing it we got we got a fair amount of um we got a fair amount of requests when the movie originally came out, too. Yeah. Because this movie, like, what I'm excited to I mean, there's a lot of stuff to talk about, but this movie does subvert a lot of, I mean, because, Jose, we did Romancing the Stone

for our first adventure movie, which makes most of the mistakes you can make in this genre. And so it was interesting to watch an adventure movie that centers on a woman that came out 30 years later and see how things changed.

Yeah. I haven't watched that one because a lot of people would bring it up when I mentioned that I was Colombian. And I was like, I don't want to see what, like, a 1984 depiction of Colombia is like. You can skip it. You can skip it.

Yeah. Very jealous of everyone, of every Colombian who gets to move to the U.S. now because they won't be getting like, oh, like Narcos or like, oh, like romancing the stone when they said they're from here. Instead, they have Encanto, which, you know, huge improvement. Thank you. Let's take a quick break and we will be right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now.

The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid

the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Hey everyone, Amy Robach here along with TJ Holmes, and we have a very exciting announcement to make to all of you. We are expanding. We are now going to be coming to you Monday through Friday for a new part of

our Amy and TJ franchise, if you will, The Morning Run. We're going to help listeners navigate the busy news cycle and the historic political season that the country is facing, and we're going to do this now each and every day. Wow, we have a news franchise now. I like the way you put that. We're going to be covering all the latest news headlines for all of you. We'll have entertainment updates, and we'll even give some perspective on the current events that are happening right now. This, by the way, is in addition to our already established bi-weekly podcast that we hope you guys are tuning into as well with more in-depth conversations and interviews. So we're going to be with you Monday through Friday with Morning Run.

Listen to Morning Run on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session.

24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out?

I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams dream sequence is a new horror thriller from blumhouse television iheart radio and realm

listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back um should i dive into the recap for Dora and the Lost City of Gold? Yeah, good luck. This is a wild one. Okay, so we meet young Dora and her cousin Diego when they're six years old, give or take. They love exploring the Amazon rainforest where they live. We meet Boots the monkey. We meet Dora's backpack. We meet her map briefly.

I think these are all characters in the animated series. Yes. Yes. And you won't believe this. They're way less scary looking as cartoons. Yeah. Boots design. Oh, my God.

Danny Trejo Boots is what? They should have sonic'd that because it looks boots looked too much like like a very real monkey but like kind of blue i didn't love it it is not a good design for boots just i did not care for it at all that's like my biggest complaint of the movie same and the cgi animals in general because i think swiper the fox also has a weird character design slash like cgi that looks like it was from like 2005 like it seems really outdated swiper kind of has these bedroom eyes in this like did you i a scary cgi character for sure but then like these piercing blue eyes i'm like wow they really went above and beyond and that specific part of the character which i don't think is how the cartoon even looks like why they give him these like flirtatious i don't know i've

had pms for 500 days maybe maybe the eyes weren't flirtatious and I'm just like fully removed from reality. I don't know though, because there are so many examples of people seeing an animated Fox in a kid's movie and it making them very horny because the Disney Robin hood is like, is a sexual awakening for a lot of people. Isn't that like a

famously furry cornerstone? Yeah. Really? Yeah. I love a good furry cornerstone. I didn't know that. That's wild. And then also, I know Fantastic Mr. Fox, people get all foamed up for that

fox as well. I get it it but let's not get into it too much none of us want to discover that tonight no but like Swiper was on screen and there were moments where it's like is this a date you know like this is this is wild okay it's probably Benicio del Toro's voice. Yes. Doesn't hurt. Does not hurt. I also completely forgot. Part of what was satisfying about this movie when it came out was the,

just like when you first see the trailer and you're like, that's so many famous people for what this movie appears to be. You're like, and Danny Trejo as Boots. And you're like, huh? What? Because Boots in the, Caitlin, in the cartoon, Boots is like a five-year-old. Like Boots is. That's funny.

Certainly not an adult man. Much less Danny Trejo. Like, anyways. I love that. Scary looking Boots. Okay. So we meet Scary Boots and other of Dora's sidekick characters. We meet Dora's mom and dad. Her mom, Elena, played by Eva Longoria,

and her dad, Cole, played by Michael Peña. Who, famously, Chuck E. Cheese's favorite actor. Also famously, a Scientologist. Those are my Peña facts. Michael Peña's a Scientologist? Yeah. Yeah. He's pretty... He's not like a super like public

like you know tom cruising around about it scientologist but he's definitely a scientologist who in one of my favorite youtube videos of all time chucky cheese interviewed michael pina on his channel he's never interviewed anyone and then then out of nowhere, he was like, today I have an interview with my favorite actor, Michael Peña. What? It was to promote Tom and Jerry, another Michael Peña movie with a lot of bad

CGI. Huh. Okay. Michael Peña rocks. And that's literally everything I know about him all in a row. I'm learning so much about Michael Peña rocks and that's literally everything I know about him all in a row I'm learning so much about Michael Peña right okay so Dora's parents are professors archaeologists maybe not super clear what their exact jobs are but they're professors of some sort they're explorers and they're explorers right not treasure hunters but we'll get to that so they tell dora and diego about the legend of

parapata a lost incan city of gold which elena and cole are trying to find but again they don't intend to keep the gold because they make the distinction between explorers and treasure hunters where explorers equals good treasure hunters equals bad so it feels like they're working more in like a historian like documenting history yeah right which is cool i'd never heard that distinction made in this genre before ever. True. It feels very self-aware in that regard. Right. Which is pretty interesting, given the fact that even very recent adventure movies

make a lot of mistakes in that regard. Including one that came out recently, aka Uncharted, which sucked. And then at the time of this recording The Lost City starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum has not yet been released but I would be surprised honestly if it makes any of those distinctions and is very self-aware we'll see yeah but anyway the next, Dora has to say goodbye to Cousin Diego, who moves back to the States. Then we cut to 10 years later.

Dora, now played by Isabella Merced, who was, I think, Isabella Moner at the time. She is running around the jungle. She's still exploring. She's talking to animals. She's talking around the jungle. She's still exploring. She's talking to animals. She's talking to the camera. And she is looking for Patapata. She is so wonderful. Her performance was giving me Amy Adams in Enchanted.

It was so cartoony, but also grounded enough. And she just lights up every scene she's in i loved her i'd never i'd never seen this actress before and i just fell in love with her same that is a very good comparison because it is it is kind of feel like like that kind of like satire that doesn't really get mean it's very like we're having fun with the character without having to you know make like cheap jokes about it it's very very we're having fun with the character without having to, you know, make like cheap jokes about it. It's very, very sincere in a way that makes it so enjoyable. Right.

Especially because it gets commented on a little later when Diego, after they've like been in school for a little bit. And Diego's like, don't you see that like everyone's making fun of you for the way you are? And she's like, yeah, I see it. But like, this is just who i am like this is how i am and i'm not gonna stop being myself because other people don't like it and dora it's just very sweet what a sweetie i think one of my notes when watching the movie is i would die for dora yeah she is such a sweetheart and like i i did like like that's something that again it's like oh wow you really there's a bad version of this there's a lot of times in this movie where it could have gone down a very like generic boring road where it's like dora has to change to fit into high school and like dora gets a makeover from sammy to fit into high school but she doesn't change

she stays herself wins people over and then all of a sudden the high school portion of the movie suddenly ends and it's a different movie um which was wild but i was on board a very gracious transition she's kidnapped out of the movie that started and then a second movie starts hey it works for me i liked it yeah okay so she like her parents is now looking for patapata and she finds a big clue which turns out her parents already know about and they already have plans to head to per to find Parapata. But they don't think Dora is ready to come along. So they send her to live with her aunt and uncle and cousin Diego in Los Angeles.

Ever heard of it? She goes to, I think, a fictional Silver Lake High School. Yeah, called Silver Lake High School. Is it really called Silver Lake High School? In the movie, I think so. Yeah. I love that they keep calling it the city. It's like, if it weren't for the map that they showed, like when she's flying, we wouldn't really know. They just keep saying like, yeah, you know, they moved to the city and they live in the jungle. Right, right. It feels very like tongue in cheek to the way that the show would refer to places

yeah i don't know if it was a purpose but it always got a giggle out of me when they were like yes in the city dora welcome to the city like they didn't know where they want to shoot right like i didn't think about the fact that that could have been intentional like in a reference to the show because i was just like there's there's a lot of this movie that is like kept extremely vague that you're just like why i mean at least location wise i was like okay i don't know we can talk about it but yeah well the way that like the first indiana jones movie when indiana jones is like stealing an artifact from indigenous people. The text on the screen just says like South America. And it's like, do you want to be more specific?

Like where in South America? No, thank you. Listen, it's the South American jungle. What else do you want? Right. Okay.

So Dora is sent to live with cousin diego in the city aka los angeles and specifically the neighborhood of silver lake which is one of the cooler neighborhoods in that's where i live we got brunch come on by i do miss silver lake it's great definitely one of the one of the best neighborhoods okay so her parents want dora to go to the city and make friends but dora doesn't know how to make friends then dora arrives in la she reunites with diego now played by jeff walberg he who okay i was having a crisis this whole one of the things that bothered me about my top two maybe complaints about the movie that are silly are that boots looks like shit and that whoever's playing diego is the worst actor i've ever seen i was like why is this teen actor doing such a bad job to the

point where like, I feel like the music was doing heavy lifting for him sometimes. And I was like, oh, I guess he's sad. But he was just like sitting there. He's Mark Wahlberg's nephew. That is why he's bad at acting and in the movie. That's why his name is Jeff Wahlberg. That's why his name is Jeff Wahlberg. Because all the other young actors in the movie are doing I think I thought we're doing a great job like they were really fun they're doing kind of these like theater kid performances that the movie requires and then you just have

like this guy who's like Dora I am cool I am cool Dora I'm the cool guy at school and then he's like I have a crush and I was like why is this kid so bad it And then he's like, I have a crush. And I was like, why is this kid so bad? It's because he's like weird nepotism. At first I thought you were implying that he was bad because he was related to Mark Wahlberg.

I mean, I think that is the subtext. It's not his fault that his uncle is his uncle. It is his fault that he's not doing a very good job we can't blame mark on that one no unfortunately we can't but maybe we should he's promoted from manager at walbergers to being in this movie i mean maybe we can blame mark walberg if mark walberg gave him acting lessons which i'm fine with that headcanon as explaining why Jeff is never good. He was always talking as if he had like a bunch of marbles in his mouth. There was like one line in the museum where I was like, Jeff, Jeff, we need another take from Jeff.

Like he was just like, oh, here we go again. Like he's he's and I was like, maybe he's just doing too convincing of a job of being a teen boy who's not interested because teen boys weren't interested mumble all day long sure but I'm like Jeff do you know the camera's on I just it was like I don't know I there I don't mean to tease it I just had to check to make sure that he's like yeah he's like 26 years old. Jeff, you did a stinky job, but that's okay. You'll get other chances. You're nepotism, right?

Okay, so Dora goes to her first day of high school. She meets a couple fellow students, including Sammy, played by Madeline Madden, who she needs to be the smartest person in the room and who Diego thinks is mean and awful. And we also meet Randy, played by Nicholas Coombe. I don't know how to say that name. He has been beamed in from 2005. Like, what is this kid's haircut is like hannah montana i was like children don't have this haircut anymore it was just that was another fascinating element that just felt

very outside of time he had the haircut that all the characters in the fourth harry potter movie have yes yes it's like bad rupert gr Grint hair. Like, it's... What? I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm tearing these young men to shreds. I'm like, Jeff Wahlberg, no talent. This kid... It's your PMS, Jamie. This is how your PMS is manifested.

I'm just bullying young actors. That's okay. Oh, yeah. Well, anyway, so Randy is kind of a like, quote unquote, nerdy kid who is really into astronomy. Both he and Sammy are social misfits, as is Dora, who is super friendly to everyone. But everyone thinks that she's a dork. Even Diego is embarrassed of her especially at a dance where Dora dances all silly I love I love that they did not uh again just like a this movie is so funny to me where it's like they call they're like more like dorka I'm like okay we need a punch-up did we get one punch-up writer on this

like dorka like Jesus but again you know high school bullies like in real life can't come up with anything much more clever than that that is true i had i had a theory that nicholas coombe the haircut guy i looked at him i was like i think he's secretly 30 years old and that does happen i feel like there's always a it happened on hannah montana where there was like a 17 year old who was like 500 it was like wild and he was uh he was he was 27 when this movie came out okay so that's like euphoria casting kind of you know degrasse not degrassi degrassi is appropriate wow that's wild because Dora, like the actress, is like 20 now. I remember looking up.

So she must have been like 17 when she shot this. Yeah. Yeah. I think she was like actually a teenager. And I think the other three actors are a little bit older, which is fine and like normal for movies. But I was like, I think haircut guy is working on his doctorate. Okay. All right. was like i think haircut guy is uh working on his doctorate and okay um all right so we then get a montage of dora going to school she's also corresponding with her parents and tracking their journey through the rainforest on her map but then she stops hearing from her parents and she grows concerned about that

then on a field trip to the natural history museum dora diego sammy and randy all end up in a group together and then all four of them are kidnapped by some bad guys these mercenaries who are trying to find Dora's parents, who they know will lead them to Parapata. So Dora and friends, although they're not friends yet, Dora and company are taken to Peru. But then they're rescued by Alejandro, played by Eugenio Derbez, a friend of Dora's parents. Allegedly. Right. They are all running away from the mercenaries. But then Swiper the Fox, voiced by Benicio del Toro, steals Dora's map. But Dora and friends are able to escape once again.

And they set off to find Dora's parents. They find Dora's parents' car and her family symbol painted on a nearby tree their family symbol is also a red circle just a circle again i'm just like second draft please that's this looks like a placeholder i was like is this a hilarious joke because it would it's a very funny joke if like their family symbol is just a red circle and they keep calling it a loop diego's like the red loop right the mere notion that dora's family has like a symbol was very funny that too that got a huge laugh out of me the first time when she's like my family symbol and i was like i laughed so much like everyone has one yeah it couldn't be like, oh, look, a survey marker.

Oh, look. No, it's my family symbol. It's like, oh, my God. I don't know if that was meant to be a joke, but it got a huge laugh out of me. It is funny. And then the fact that the symbol, it could just have been there by accident because it's such a nothing. Like my family symbol would be a lit cigarette in someone's back pocket. You would know when it's my family's symbol.

But they're like red circle. I was like, God. So they find that and Dora and company head into the rainforest on foot to follow their trail. They find Dora's parents' campsite, but it's been ransacked. But then Bo boots the monkey shows up and joins the group then there's a scene where sammy has to poo that's the whole thing and then suddenly a bunch of arrows are being we're just gonna go past that i mean we i guess we can unpack the poo there's a whole song there's a whole song

right okay i kept trying to be like is this progressive or is this just something that happens in the movie i guess it's like whatever it's like oh in adventure movies no one ever takes a shit and isn't that interesting and it's like oh women taking a shit you don't see that in movies very often but i'm like but do i want to i guess not really but but people really like really loved when melissa mccarthy pooped in bridesmaids they're like wow this is the first for some people that's how that scene changed cinema because a lot of women a lot of people didn't know women pooped before that were that scene let women poop in movies but only she had to poop and then she

was like i haven't pooped for 48 hours and i was like what like they've only been gone for like six hours so it seems like she's having like a separate problem yeah and no one else has to poop the whole movie so i think she is just like she went on the field trip constipated. Yeah. And I'm not sure she even gets to poop because as soon as she starts pooping, then these arrows are shot at the group and they have to run away.

Let women have dingleberries. Okay, that's your subsect of my movement let women poop yeah you say that and then i stand up i'm like and another thing yeah i'll have a little poo left over well she didn't finish and she didn't have i mean toilet paper right yeah so we don't know what's going on with sammy but she's thrown into a love yeah before you know it she's she's in love she's got tingle berries she's in love anything's possible in this movie true okay so all these arrows are being shot at them and alejandro thinks it's the lost guardians whose mission it is to protect patapata they managed to get away they nearly

cross paths with the mercenaries who are also now in the rainforest following the map to try to find dora's parents so they nearly cross paths with them, but then Dora and friends head in a different direction toward an old opera house. But oh no, they step into some quicksand. Classic. And Alejandro almost dies, but then the teens save him. The teens don't really save him, though.

The plot saves him, because it actually was quicksand that just fell into regular sand it was like a ledge yeah right like yeah but they pull him out from beneath and then also scorpions have sex on his head did you say that i did not say that that feels worth mentioning scorpions do have sex on his head this is a pg movie dora excitingly saying like the scorpions are mating they're mating but then when you look at them they're just kissing the scorpions yeah they're they're fucking french in each other they're so they get out of the quicksand situation and then they cross paths with an old woman who tells them plot wedge right uh who tells them in the indigenous language of

quechua yeah it's quechua that anyone who is seeking patapata is a curse or like will be cursed or i forget exactly what it is but then she offers to guide anyone who wants to go back home so Sammy and Randy say goodbye to the rest of the group and set off with the old woman but then they notice a tattoo of the symbol of the lost guardians which is far more intricate than the Dora family symbol, which is again, just a circle. What if she also had a red circle? I'd be like,

wow, she's part of Dora's family. You see a milk cap. You're like, wow, red circle. They must know Dora. I'm going to get that tattooed on me.

Just a red circle. And then you'd be like, what is that? I'm like, Dora's family will understand a red circle and then be like what is that I'm like Dora's family will understand yeah yeah if you know you know right exactly so they see this tattoo on the old woman's wrist and they freak out and they run back toward the others meanwhile Dora Diego and Alejandro make their way through this patch of giant flowers, which release hallucinogenic spores that make them just completely trip balls. The movie becomes animated for a few minutes. It's like Judd Apatow,

2000 and something like you're, you're like, it's like a Seth Rogen movie for like a minute. I liked that scene. That was fun. I loved it. It was a cute way of inserting all the show art because it's

animated in the style of the show. Right, right. And they feature all the characters that didn't make it to a live action bit. A little bull. Yeah, and like the iguana and like it was just very cute in a very non-cute

context, I guess. Right. it was like doors tripping and suddenly it's like oh the animated show is like sure right because they just wanted to get that in there yeah i'm wondering if they're like oh let's like pay homage to the animated show how can we do that what if the characters trip balls and hallucinate that they're all animated this movie is so wild like i just it did remind me how like i feel like this was true when we were kids as well but like how nickelodeon they were just always doing weirder stuff and you could always count on a nickelodeon cartoon to have stuff that was like slightly not appropriate for children in a way that like disney uh simply didn't so they're like okay we're gonna

make our protagonist a teenager who's on drugs and you're like cool it's euphoria euphoria high school dora actually goes to euphoria high school that would have been that is where she goes it does you i haven't seen euphoria does it take place in los angeles yeah i think so that would be i'm pretty sure so funny if they had the movie with this tone they're like oh she's not in euphoria but they all go to the same high school and dora's just dealing with some very different problems they're actually they're kind of comparatively very innocent that would be i've seen the first episode and a half of euphoria it's such a heavy show that i like just could not keep watching i know but i'm pretty sure yeah they live in the valley so put dora in that show it would she would really you know i again i

don't i don't watch the show because i i like one of the teenagers in this movie, am 500 years old. But I think she would bring some much needed levity. I agree. I agree. Yeah. Okay. So they're all tripping. And then Sammy and Randy find Dora and Diego and Alejandro again.

And then they all set off to find the entrance of Parapata but they then fall into an aqueduct that starts filling with water they figure out how to escape that and right then Dora's parents find them and Dora explains why they're there and that Alejandro rescued them and her parents are like we don't know anyone named alejandro because twist alejandro is a bad guy who is working with the mercenaries who right then show up and capture dora and her friends and parents that was very weird to me like it was for a twist that is kind of obvious like it took me by surprise the first time i saw it because i'm used to eugenio herbez being kind of like just like the funny sidekick like to me he's just to me he's just donkey from shrek yeah he does the spanish voice for donkey

so whenever i hear him it's just like that's just donkey wow and then when he was the bad guy was like oh my god they made eugenio herbez the bad guy so it's like i felt's just like that's just donkey and then when he was the bad guy was like oh my god they made eugenio hermes the bad guy it's just like i felt betrayed just like them i mean there's also so much foreshadowing because right after he's rescued from the quicksand he's like i'm a bad guy i'm such a bad guy and he's basically just telling you that he's the bad guy and then dora's like no no no no no you're not we all feel like that sometimes that was dora's one fumble but then i was like she's an explorer she's not a journalist so right i i can't believe that didn't that didn't cue me in i i was me either

gasped the first time around i was like what that twist took me by so much surprise when i saw it in theaters really yeah guys really he's like i'm a friend of your parents but you've never heard of me also i'm wearing the scarf that the villain of the movie always wears he's wearing he's wearing a neck scarf look villains always wear neck scarves true in paddington 2 he wears a cravat yes yes okay so they see patapata off in the distance but before they get to the entrance boots shows up and unties the teens and they're able to escape but they need to get into patapata so that they can get the gold and use it to bargain for dora's parents lives and then that's when we get the fun scene where boots actually talks to dora boots is voiced by danny trejo this no boots is voiced by danny trejo he i thought it was so funny but also the fact that boots is the one giving I was like

is Dora still on drugs is this something that's still and he tells her like friendship is important and growing up is is goals and you go girl boss uh-huh and they never speaks again I liked it it's comedy comedy gold the real gold in this movie is the comedy. Wow. I think we can all agree. That is true. It is a surprisingly funny movie in terms of how smart the humor is. Right.

It's just, it's just, it very rarely do they go for like a very obvious joke. Except for the poop hole. I wouldn't even call that obvious. But that was still subversive. That was, it was, It was just a weird choice. That was an intellectual choice. I kind of expected that kind of humor when I found out that it was directed by James Bobbin, who directed The Muppets, the 2011 reboot that I adore.

Yeah. 2011 reboot yeah that i adore yeah and i feel like that takes that same kind of like half joking but very sincere approach to its ip yeah and i was very pleasantly surprised when watching this that i was like oh my god they he managed to keep that same tone it's just uh just very fun when the reboots don't feel the need to like make fun of the ip to be like oh we get that this is silly uh yeah we're making fun of it with you it's just very yeah i agree the real gold is the comedy thank you thank you so much um uh james bobbin also wrote for flight of the concords i believe I believe. So lots of good humor here. Anyway, so after solving an astronomy-based jungle puzzle, the teens are able to open the entrance to Patapata. They go into a temple. They have to solve some more jungle puzzles. There are various booby traps and dangers along the way.

Then they come upon a couple piles of treasure and the last puzzle. They have to make an offering to the gods via a small golden monkey statue. And then the offering has to be what the Incas revered the most. So Alejandro shows up and he thinks the answer is gold so he makes an offering of gold but he's wrong and the ground opens up beneath him and swallows him except he doesn't die because it's a kid's movie pg yeah so he's just kind of hanging on the wall this does feel like a movie that is like wild enough wild enough and enough, like, surprising things happen that I was prepared for someone. I mean, not, like, a main character, but I'm like, someone could die in this movie. Someone.

I don't know why, when I rewatched this, I had the vague idea that Swiper had died. Oh. And then I was like, and then I rewatched this, and I was like, oh, maybe I imagined it. But I don't know why. I didn't really was like, yeah, Swiper died in the Dora movie. And I was like, oh, no. I guess I made that up. That's like the sort of thing, though, where if you told me that, I wouldn't doubt you for a second. And like, that's a lie that has some legs.

Yeah. Four legs. Swiper's legs. Whoa. Jamie. Thank you. Thank you. I have PMS.

So you keep saying. Okay. So then the old woman from earlier shows up with the lost guardians of Parapata. The old woman turns out to be a young Incan goddess? Question mark? I think they call her a princess. Princess. Right.

She's played by Koryanka Kilcher. Dora explains to her that they are explorers, not treasure hunters. And then Dora makes an offering to the monkey statue of water, which is the correct answer. And then doors open to reveal an enormous golden monkey statue.

But then Swiper shows up, who has not perished. He shows up. has not perished. He shows up. Alive and well. He's alive and well. Kind of hot. He shows up and swipes the little monkey statue and then all hell breaks loose.

So they have to rush out of Parapata. Dora puts the little monkey statue back and then Parapata seals itself closed again. So then Dora and her family and friends return to their house in we're not sure where maybe so the map that we see dora leaving from she's either in columbia or brazil or like right on the border there she's in the amazon i guess she's in the Amazon, I guess. She's in the Amazon, right. So they return to her house there, and her parents invite her on their next exploration, but Dora tells them she wants to return to L.A.

and learn more about high school culture. Bad idea. At Euphoria High. She wants to go back to Euphoria High. That's the one thing you don't do. Don't go back there. Hor horrible shit happens at euphoria high including a big song and dance number which is how the movie ends where dora and her friends are singing and dancing about the adventure they were just on and that's the end of the movie so let's take another break and then we will come back to discuss.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Hey everyone, Amy Robach here along with TJ Holmes, and we have a very exciting announcement to make to all of you.

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I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back, and where to begin? Yeah. I think we didn't establish how hot Swiper was, like, enough. Yeah, could we actually talk about that? I mean, I want to make sure that we really are hitting on everything, and I think that that is obviously the most relevant course of discussion here. Swiper, look, Swiper is very hot.

Not very. I take that to very. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's, you know, I'm'm gonna feel so differently about it tomorrow um anyway so um i'm gonna say i i am i would love to sort of start this discussion by talking about looking at this movie and and looking at this genre for your video essay and kind of taking us through through that journey and sort of starting the conversation there uh yeah just like caitlin said i i feel like i've always been also really into that lost city kind of story i mean i grew up watching indiana jones and uh i remember

watching the road to el dorado a lot yeah But even though I didn't really like it, the El Dorado myth was originated here in Colombia. So I always was like, oh, it's kind of like Colombia. And I watched it a lot. Even though the movie does not take place in Colombia, it is just like a very Mesoamerican aesthetic, which is its own thing. But I feel like I always really loved adventure.

And the more that I started learning, you know, growing up and everything, I was like, oh, it's always so othering was, among other places, my country, it was even weirder. It was kind of like, oh, this thing that I've always enjoyed is just like, it has this kind of like dark underside. Is underside a thing? Yeah. I make up words sometimes. Underbelly, side boob, whatever you want to call it. Underbelly, that's what I words sometimes underbelly side boob whatever you

want underbelly that's what i was thinking of dark side it has a it has a an underbelly uh a dark underbelly that i don't know that i was i started to get very curious about exploring so you would you say that you're you yourself are an explorer? Yes, actually. If you're exploring this topic. I am exploring the explorers exploring. Wow. Who explores the explorers? It's you, but who explores the explorers that explore the explorers?

And why is Swiper sexy? There's so many questions that we need to answer here truly uh-huh yeah so i don't know i mean i just remember that that as a little kid like the thing that i always said that i wanted to be when i grew up was like adventure explorer etc so later as a grown-up like kind of like investigating about that was so it drew me so much to it and yeah you you run into all these like lost city stories that are kind of like these outsiders finding a culturally important relic or place for this often extinct sometimes hidden civilization and it just has all these like colonial baggage to it it's very like it's it's kind of like you know oh yeah we we have to uncover this puzzle that was probably not ours to

solve and find this place and you get that in a lot of things like you get that in in the road to el dorado in all the indiana j, in like National Treasure, I don't know. In all these lost cities or like lost treasure stories. And I guess I approached Dora, the lost city of gold, with a similar mindset. I was like, oh, it's probably going to be like that. But it feels so aware. Like we said, it feels very self-aware of how this is often an issue and it kind of like has its like built-in disclaimers to kind of have like kind of like

have its cake and need it too right it's just like oh we get to do like a fun adventure romp but we also get to do it you know without that baggage, which I don't think that's like very successful. I think that kind of baggage is harder to get rid of. But it is very cool that we are finding ways to tell this exciting like lost city stories that I really enjoy in ways that are more aware of the context in which they exist because you know like the city of gold as a myth was kind of made up by the spanish and that propelled like colonization across the americas so it is something that has very specific historical baggage right that is now kind of like oh fun little goal fun little quest and it's like yeah but but uh so i don't know uh i guess that's what always draws me to this kind of story is the kind of uh approach that they will take

and it's just exciting like the jungle puzzles are fun randy randy says that right yes like in the movie uh so yeah i don't know i don't know if i answered your prom no that was amazing i felt like i derailed at some point not at all no i i first of all we're we're gonna link your video in the description it really is wonderful it's like so well done and i did i was i was pleasantly surprised by this again, just like a simple choice that the movie makes that I thought was like a like a lesser movie would have complicated needlessly. It's like all of the kids are on the same page of being anti-colonial. They know it. They all agree to the point where they're like citing very specifically examples of like intense imperialism and colonialism as it pertains to adventure stories where they're like, oh yeah, England, France, America.

Yeah, when she says America and then she says the United Fruit Company, I was like, oh my God, a United Fruit Company mentioned in Dora the Explorer, the movie? It was like, who writing this movie was like, let's talk about corporative colonialism in the americas by way of a joke in dora the explorer right it's kind of amazing like oddly the people who wrote this movie were three white men and then also the director is a white guy which does lend itself to a few things about

this movie that are still tropey and like not very thoughtfully done and we can get to those in a moment but one of the reasons i like this movie so much when i first saw it is that it was such a departure from you know like the Indiana Jones movies that I also grew up loving but then once we unpacked one of those movies on this podcast I was like oh my god like oopsies my bad for loving this movie so much it's kind of it's kind of wild the stuff that the Indiana Jones movies get away with. Even the latest one. And hopefully the fifth one is different, because I will be watching it. I'll go see it at least twice.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's like I was going to watch it, and then you cast Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Like, I'm going to be there. Yeah. But it is kind of, I don't know yeah the things that they get away with in some in in those especially the the temple of doom and uh crystal's call it's just like yipes yeah so so much of it is just i mean like so much of the genre like you were like you were

saying earlier jose is just like to a point where I feel like it's uniquely so ingrained in like anyone who grew up with Hollywood movies that it took me I think probably embarrassingly long to interrogate I was like oh they're stealing from an indigenous culture and we're rooting for that the whole movie like right that is such an insidious absurd idea to to grow up with to the point where it even when i think we're having a lot of larger cultural conversations we weren't having you know 10 15 20 years ago there's still huge movies that can get away with doing the same old shit like you were saying with that was it the shitty tom holland movie that came out, Caitlin? Oh, starring Jeff Wahlberg's uncle as well. That's what we should start calling him.

God. Yeah, Dora just feels like such a departure from this, not in every single way, but in the way that, again, as you point out in your video, when it comes to the El Dorado myth, and then you can extend this to basically any movie about adventurers looking for any lost city, any lost treasure, any lost relic, anything like that. These stories are so steeped in imperialism and colonialism and asking the audience to root for white explorers who are trying to claim the treasure as their own or at the very least

they're just showing up uninvited to other people's homes and and land cities and territories and trespassing and the indigenous characters who the white characters are normally stealing from or invading their space are never the protagonists of these movies they're like aggressively troped and othered and villainized and like right because it's also it's like even the way we use the term explorer as it pertains to white protagonists it's like no they're colonizers they're thieves they're not good people and we shouldn't be rooting for them to fuck each other at the end of the movie like it's just so absurd and frustrating like and the dora movie also does not frame the indigenous people who they are trying to learn about either so that's you know problem number one where it's still Dora and her friends who are largely non-white.

So I guess there's that. But they're still invading the lost city and the people who still live there who are also, again, another trope here, but like magical, mystical. They are the only magical aspect of the movie like before i i didn't notice that until the rewatch i was like oh there's no other magic other than the the indigenous transformation and the curse in the city before that right it's kind of like yeah like that trope

of the i don't know if magical indian quote unquote is a trope. It sounds like the name of a trope. It sounds like the name of a trope. I just don't know if it's like a term. I think I'm thinking of like a similar trope when it comes to black characters. But it does feel kind of like that thing where like it's the contrast between like the the sciency explorers and the magical indigenous like the mystical indigenous uh which is very rooted in you know you know that those kind of like reasons for colonizing people it's like oh well they're doing witchcraft and they're you know we need to stop them even the the whole like hiding thing. It's like, it's also very rooted in this kind of, here in Colombia, they talk about this indigenous malice.

Which is like, it's referred to like this habit of like, you know, like tricking and like hiding and it's just that it's a very very bad concept that people just mention a lot when talking about how people white people here are so uh sneaky it's just oh you know we inherited the indigenous malice and it's just like i feel like you know not wanting people to steal your things doesn't mean that you're like hiding something that's not malicious yeah so that brings me to another thing about this movie and many movies in this genre but dora is still guilty of it and i dora meaning the movie not the specific character because not the cartoon dora did nothing wrong herself dora is seven years old caitlin so this dora movie is what i mean but okay so think of like the arrows that the indigenous people fire at dora and her friends think of the aqueduct that

dora and her friends get trapped in that belongs to the indigenous people think of the various jungle puzzles and booby traps and all that stuff that Dora and her friends have to solve and get past. So it's obviously completely understandable that these Indigenous people would want to protect their land and their city and set up defenses against people invading their space and stealing from them. But these things are all presented as obstacles for dora and her friends to overcome and from a storytelling perspective the audience is rooting against the obstacles and rooting for the hero and her friends to overcome these obstacles so in this way the indigenous people are framed as an antagonistic force the people and their defenses right so it's it's so it's

i it's so frustrating because it's like yeah there are like moments where you're like oh the movie is doing the thing that the movie is very self-aware that it shouldn't be doing and i i understand why it's like because these are so entrenched in what this genre is but it's like this movie gets around so much that there is a way for that to not happen because i guess that that is like the trickier part of i really like like we were talking about i really appreciate and like how immediately evil angoria i don't know the character's name evil angoriaoria is Evil Angoria is Evil Angoria. But she says at the beginning of the movie, we are not treasure hunters.

She literally says treasure hunting bad, exploring good. Right. Which is like, okay, cool. But exploring also seems to permit and involve like clearly just blowing past boundaries that are clearly set. I mean, I guess that that's somewhat complicated by the fact that they're on a rescue mission, but it's like, I don't know. It's kind of like that Indiana Jones thing about how he's the good explorer in Indiana Jones because he's like, it belongs in a museum.

You know, he's not like, he doesn't want to sell the things for profit or anything. He wants to put it in a museum. And that's like framed as the good thing. But like, it's like, you're deciding if that should be in a museum. That doesn't belong to you. It's not your choice to make. Yeah. And it's a museum that's like a shrine to imperialism.

Yeah, exactly. And so here it's kind of like, well, we're exploring. It's like, you're encroaching upon other people's territory and i get that they think that this the city's abandoned and they're like in an anthropological like mission to discover and it's like okay i guess that's understandable uh in a in a way of like well you know but you you also don't have any Inca people around to help you. You know, the Inca people are still there. Right.

And want nothing to do with Dora. Like, it's... Yeah, when they discover that the Guardians are still trying to safeguard the city and everything, it's just kind of like, oh, okay, well... I guess we should keep going. People still live here. Maybe, like...

Yeah, exactly. Big deal. They're trying to kill us with arrows, but maybe we should just keep going. And it's like, well, no, that's not the takeaway. Yeah. It is a tricky thing that, again, it could be like, just like, oh, we're working with Inca anthropologists and they also want to discover their city and something like that. Like, this is not a problem that doesn to discover their city and something like that. Like, this is not a problem that doesn't have a solution. Right, sure.

I think I always use as a good example of what an adventure Lost X thing could look like is Moana. Yes, Moana! It's just kind of like, oh, she's discovering something that belongs to her own culture. And so she's going through this quest that she has a personal connection to right so it's like i'm not saying that they should have made you know dora inca i i guess uh that would come with its own thing especially with no indigenous writers right they don't even have like Latina writers, much less Native Americans in a more like general way, not just the United States. Like indigenous Americans from the two continents, from the home. It's weird.

I still haven't figured out how to go around the fact that people in the U.S. call their country America. It always provides a bit of a language barrier for me right yeah i always try to say the states yeah not that other countries don't have state like it's right it's like but no one else refers to themselves the the the big old piss pot i like to call it the big toilet i like to call it the poo hole. The poo hole that they dig for Sammy to poo in. That's what our country is. Wild. Anyway.

I mean, that's an excellent point of just like a way that you can keep the adventure story and ground it in a way that isn't taking great pains to other another culture which the movie keeps telling you and we know we shouldn't be doing that so then when it starts to happen more and more like into the second and then the third act especially when dora meets the incan princess i guess i mean it's barely a conversation dora is essentially just like no i'm good and the inken princess is like oh okay and like that's kind of it you're just like no no no that's not what it's interesting because i i don't know i i feel like again like i said like the movie wants to have it both ways it wants to enjoy this while also being more aware of it, which is a thing that I want for it

because I love the adventure genre and I don't want it to die. You know, it needs to evolve kind of like Westerns. It needs to find something that's not colonialism to attach itself to. And I think part of where it begins is to start treating the cultures around the object as real cultures and not just set dressing. Totally.

And I feel like this movie gets so much of it right. It's very kind of quote-unquote faithful to the idea that we have of the Incas in that time. But at the same time, it gets a lot of stuff weirdly wrong it just is a lot of shorthand that is like oh i i don't know if you need it but like in one point in the in the aqueduct thing when they're trying to escape it or i don't know if it's the aqueduct in one of the the jungle puzzles there's the golden ratio yeah they refer literally the golden ratio and i was like that's greek yeah like why couldn't you find like uh you know an incan mark of wisdom it's just like or like knowledge it's just always even think of that yeah it's like when in in other movies they're

in like south america but you see like mayan pyramids right and it's just like no that's not where those are yeah that's not what this architecture looks like so like they have so much of the oh the astronomy thing that's pretty good and it's like yeah that's you're you're on the right path but then they're like oh they this movie does a better job than others treating this as like an actual culture and not just the generic south of the border indigenous which is always like colorful feathers and pyramids and gold

which is something we discussed a little bit in our Romancing the Stone episode because of the many ways that that movie completely fumbles representing Colombian culture it like what you're describing of the all over the place just lumping in everything othered they didn't shoot the movie in Colombia it was shot in Mexico it's like just all of this stuff that is not furthering a conversation that needs to be happening among moviegoers about you know resisting this urge to lump every non-white culture into one villainous force like it's just absurd how yeah right yeah it's this generic other that is like, yeah, that's them. That's what indigenous people look like.

And it's always like, oh, if you're doing an adventure movie that is specifically about anthropologists, I guess, explorers. But I think they're probably anthropologists. They seem to be bad at the actual like archaeology aspect. And they don't seem to know what their job title is which i'm just they're like we're professors they're like okay so there are no professors of exploring right other than indiana jones i guess right i guess that is true i mean i i that felt like more tongue-in-cheek where i'm like wow these 45 these 45-year-olds are like, I explore. It has that same energy of the city, the jungle, and that is just very like, it's kind of like a kid,

like a kid kind of wrote that. I like that. I thought that was fun, yeah. Professor of exploring. Another thing I wanted to talk about, and I'm curious as to what your thoughts are on this. So for the Incan princess who also has magical mystical powers because she transforms from an old woman into a young woman. So like,

like we said, there's that kind of like trope of like the, the mystical magical indian i feel like there's also maybe the stoic indian stereotype at play here and then indian just being a a term to refer to indigenous people in general but uh i think that's the name of that trope but all this to say that this princess slash goddess character again we know nothing about this person so i don't even know how to describe them or identify them because that's how little i think in the credits they refer to her as a princess right okay not that we know that

yeah exactly from the movie in the movie it's just like, she might as well be, you know, like the security guard. A very nicely dressed security guard. Right. So when she's on screen, she's barely speaking. She's not really reacting to anything that's happening in this whole climactic sequence. These intruders have come in, some of whom to steal the treasures of the city, others to archaeologically document the city. They're just tourists thing. They're just visiting. There's just tourists. She's really not reacting at all. Mostly just kind of standing there stoically and totally permitting dora to make this offering to the gods

and it just confused me as to why if there are these like lost guardians who have all these measures to deflect intruders and all these like defense defensive uh. Jungle puzzles. Exactly, jungle puzzles to deter intruders. Why then when the intruders are there, is she just like, mm-hmm, go ahead. So I feel like there's that stereotype at play. And either way, it's just an example of the one indigenous character with us. Actually, no, because, well, Tamora Morrison,

shout out to that actor who plays one of the mercenaries, who is Maori. We've talked about him on the show before. He's in Aquaman, among many other things. Oh, yeah, and he's like Moana's dad, isn't he? Yes, I have to double check that, but yes. So he plays one of the mercenaries, which is also weird casting to cast an indigenous actor as one of the people who is like trying to steal from indigenous people. Yeah.

This movie is too inclusive. Right. It's like more indigenous mercenaries treasure hunting right you're like right that's not the representation we need you're like who who's that representing like that who's that helping i yeah i i don't think i even recognized him but you're well because he's usually like boba fett and so he's got like a mask on but yeah so that's weird casting i guess i know him from being moana's dad so i couldn't have recognized him from that either cartoon right so anyway this princess this um incan princess

is at the very least someone who we don't know anything about, which is just another part of this issue of these stories never being told from the point of view of the characters who are being invaded and stolen from, or just like, you know, these stories rarely center. And again, like Moana is one of these few examples of an adventure story that you know does center an indigenous character learning about her own history and heritage but this movie leans into too many of these tropes yeah and like you said i the the whole like stoic affect is very it's like it's like in most in most of these kinds of movies like the indigenous women tend to be either you know very for lack of a better word very like

slutty i guess very like sexualized sexually available i guess that's the better word we found it we found it it's just that the way that they're portrayed i'm just right it tends to be like very american slutty extreme kind of trope or like the very stoic uh you know it's just kind of like i think like uh disney's pocahontas kind of is somewhere in between she's very stoic but she also like falls in love with this guy like very soon she's just like dressed differently yeah yeah she's just wearing less than any other disney princess yeah yeah yeah so it's kind of like that uh i guess if you have to choose between her being one or the other i guess stoic is the better option. But, you know, she can also be fun or

angry or like you know, more interesting emotion than just like blank. But, yeah, it is kind of interesting. I mean, I guess we did see her as the old lady, right? Because she's like the two characters.

She's the old lady that they run into that kind of warns them against it who is fun she's smashing things with rocks that was like another trope of like older woman bad and scary and confusing and you don't know anything about her but for some reason when she turns into a younger woman you still know nothing about her yeah but it's but it's good now you're like because uh old women are bad she's young and hot now so now we like her yeah so now we're like oh i'm not afraid of her anymore it turns out i'm afraid of uh older women because that is movies kind of like the beast in beauty and the beast like oh sorry i didn't know you were a hot young

sorceress right i'm like she's still fucking your life up like she's and statistically sexy people are more likely to ruin your life that's just a fact oh can confirm yeah so it is it is it is a very again the the indigenous portrayal in the movie is, I guess, the most confused aspect of it. The kind of, like... They keep validating the indigenous claim over their own territory. They keep saying, like,

this is not ours. We have to return that. Dora returns the gold that Swiper stole. It's just kind of like... But... Swiper's a colonizer. Right. Swiper's a colonizer. Right. Cypher's a colonizer.

In the credit song, they have that monkey statue again. So apparently Dora's family did steal it. Oh, I thought that was just the one that they already had. Oh, did they already have one? Yeah, the one that... I think that's the one that Dora finds.

Okay. Right, I forgot about that. I was like, that would be a huge miss. That didn't... one yeah the one that uh i think that's the one that dora finds okay okay right i forgot i was like that would be a huge mess that didn't i thought you were going to mention uh i thought for a second i thought you were to mention my one qualm with the the credits musical number is that they have to have that very tired joke of like oh indigenous food grows in the they they have that one bit in which they force eugenio to eat bugs and it's just always like right it's like i can't believe we haven't gotten rid of that they even i don't think a lot of people watch the jungle cruise movie uh hello 500 times i i mean i watched it because i kind of loved the ride uh and i love that

aesthetic so i was like oh maybe this will do something interesting like dora did no but they have this one moment in which they're like at the and one of the indigenous like villages and the the the guy's like oh this beer is very nice and then the duane johnson is like that's masado it's fermented spit and you know it's very much like the joke of like oh indigenous food is gross but like guess what that's not what masado is masado is one of the most popular drinks here in colombia and it's not fermented spit and it's just like kind of like why do you feel the need to keep making that same joke over and over again it's like the temple of doom dinner scene it's just like yeah exactly it's like do you know what europeans eat it's like

yeah but i was about to say i was like meanwhile you got i'm i'm just dunking on my own Irishness over and over. But I'm like, canonically, nastiest food on the planet. I mean, we eat hot dogs. Hot dogs are just. Okay, shut up. And I love hot dogs. Yeah, that's right. April 2023, my hot dog book is coming out about how awesome.

No, I'm kidding. It's about how it's pretty fucked up and colonial oh no um okay i can't believe you would dunk on hot dogs in front of me i'm fucking believable i'm so sorry so one question that i had as i was watching this movie that required going back to interrogate the source text of dora is i guess dora the explorer is a cartoon that started in 2000 it was on nickelodeon and specifically where dora's heritage is is never specified by the show and i was wondering like did I misremember that like is a certain culture referenced in regards to to Dora and her family because you meet her family in the show you see her all the time but I I went back and and did some research on it and you do not find out um

and I and I was wondering how intentional that was and it was extremely intentional um going back to when this show was first developed so uh bear with me uh very much two white women hosting this show but i there there's a really fascinating paper i found by elon berkman called dora the explorer lat Latinidad, and the Crisis of Identity in the Transition to Neoliberalism. Which, honestly, that's a mouthful, and I'm also like, this is the shit that I like to read.

Same. You said the title, and I'm like, where do I find this? It's a very good paper. I only read the first couple of sections. I read the first 20 pages because the answer to the question is very thorough and there's more shades of gray than what I was expecting. What I expected was that Dora the Explorer was a show developed by white executives, true, that did what a lot of adventure genres do, which is, you know, take every single

Latin culture and just turn it into a extremely generalized culture without any specificity which is what happens with dora but the reason it happened because there's there is a another there's a great radio segment as well on npr called the legacy of dora the explorer that came out when this movie did that unpacks the development of the show because Nickelodeon for you know all of their faults did at this time especially in the early 2000s have by a long shot the most diverse slate of shows there there was like quite a bit of representation uh for this time at least but all these shows were run by white executives usually with consultants which is something we come up against in movies all the time of like

why can't not a white guy direct this movie instead of like we gotta have a white guy but we'll hire consultants it's like there there's a better way to do this. But I wanted to quote from this paper because that is a quality of Dora that very much follows through to this movie. I don't think that it's specified her country of origin. We just know that she lives in the jungle. She moves to the city and she's from a Spanish speaking family. So this is about the development of the original animated series. Quote, in order to make Dora marketable to the widest possible audience, Dora's producers took the tact of rendering her as pan-ethnic. That is, they blurred lines of cultural and national identities in order to

envelop as many Latin-identifying communities in Dora's Latinidad as possible. At the advice of historian Carlos Cortez, Dora's creators decided to avoid specifying Dora's national origin. Instead, they placed her in a fictional and unnamed world full of mixed Latin signifiers, which cannot be located on any map, but recall real world locations and elements. Cortes argued that this would allow all Latin children to see in Dora a hero that they related to and were proud of, while non-Latin children could, quote, embrace someone different, unquote. Dora's creators enthusiastically admit to designing Dora according to this logic. That is, to giving her what they call, quote, pan-Latino appeal, unquote.

Their phenotypical design decisions reflect this same intentionality. For example, they changed Dora's eye color from green to brown after a content supervisor pointed out that the majority of Latinos have brown eyes, unquote. Though delocalizing, dehistoricizing, and despecifying Dora's identity in these ways may be a financially advantageous tactic, it creates a glaring contradiction that destabilizes Dora's character when partnered with her alleged quote-unquote authenticity to create a pan-ethnic stereotype of latinidad and then to label it as authentic is to erase reduce essentialize and fetishize a multitude of national cultural ethnic racial historical and linguistic identities and then to claim that the product still perfectly mirrors reality. Unquote. Which that totally scans for me. And then on the other side of this very real reality. Okay, Jamie.

Sounds like your PMS is acting up again. My PMS make me forget word. Wow, feminist podcast uh and while this is true on the other end of that it sounds like based on this oral history that was put together that one of the reasons that decision was intentionally made was because nickelodeon was going on the assumption that there was only going to be one show that would have a Spanish speaking protagonist and they wanted so it there was like almost a pressure to represent as wide a net of children as possible because of course we're not going to have two

shows with Latin characters from a specific culture that would be ridiculous and so it's it's a very like early 2000s style paradox but i will link the paper if if you if you want to dig into it it's a really really fascinating read that very much like unpacks like while dora was certainly a huge stride there is still a lot of marketing hollywood over sanitized bullshit attached to right the franchise yeah i the the quote that you read i i feel like more concretely and more eloquently than i ever could have put together like a very good idea that I like that idea of that pan-ethnic look that pan-Latino aesthetic that is so popular in a lot of Hollywood media it's always kind of like on one hand it's like oh that's nice I mean we you know I certainly did not grow up watching a lot of uh latino kids shows other than like you know like ones that were

made in latin america but you know i being a little kid sometimes you like the cooler shinier foreign stuff better i guess that's not an experience that americans have but it is an experience that not kids usually no yeah exactly like i guess it's not until like you're old enough to recognize that American booze is not very good and you start looking for a European one. Mike's Hard Lemonade. Mr. Hard Lemonade, but like a word. I guess I was thinking like champagne. I don't know.

I only drink the cheapest thing I can find, so I'm not a very good reference for this. I don't know why I chose that simile. I need a drink. Are you also PMSing? I don't know.

Maybe. It can be transmitted through it's contagious and can be transmitted through zoom calls uh you know ever since i watched turning red it's been it's been it's been feeling very much like that i forgot what i was saying oh the the pan latino thing yeah so you you grew up wanting to watch foreign stuff because you you know, it has, like, a better budget. It has, like, cooler things. I don't know.

It's, like, kind of like preferring Nickelodeon or Disney Channel to, like, PBS kits, I guess. Kind of like that same thing applied to, like, oh, that country just has a better budget. So those shows always look nicer and stuff like that. So I guess I grew up watching like stuff about latina people but it was more like a latina made content and when it came to like foreign one is like yeah there's dora and there's um i'm drawing a blank here about like tv shows or something like that

i loved the brothers garcia that's a very specific early 2000s show that i loved on nickelodeon is the brothers i was because i I'm only remembering it because the shows about Latin kids and teenagers were like heavily referred to in this paper, but the brothers Garcia was really fun. And then Tyena, did you ever watch Tyena? No, I don't know what this is.

Tyena was like the best. Oh, she was an Afro Latino girl who lived in york and went to like an art high school and she wanted to be a famous singer and it was everyone in middle school was like taina's a hero she had like a pink denim jacket it was very exciting i don't think this show made it here i don't i don't think i had heard of it i wonder how it holds up i just remember thinking taina was the coolest and um she was she also is played by the same actor who plays lindsey lohan's bandmate in freaky friday she plays like the goth girl who's like yeah yeah i really love her i really love her she is amazing yeah kind of on another side so the paper you cited obviously made a ton of amazing points which

extend to the dora movie as well because dora and her family's specific heritage is not identified but as i was looking for a specific review of this movie which is a whole other section that we'll get to in a moment but i was looking for a specific review and i thought it had been published in the la times so i just like googled like la times dora and the lost city of gold review hoping that i would find it i didn't because it turns out the review i was looking for was in the hollywood reporter but what i did find was like several different articles in la times alone about latine writers talking about how it was so meaningful for them to see Dora and the Lost City of Gold just for Latine representation in a movie. So even though it genericizes the culture and basically just says, oh, Dora is obviously Latina because she speaks Spanish and other reasons because like and again there's no specific cultural

things that really get mentioned so there's not a whole lot to go on but despite that there were a lot of people because I don't remember anyone talking about this movie except for me when I saw it in theaters like I don't know if I just like missed the Twitter conversation about it I think maybe just like people my like our age weren't talking about it or what but like it is also the kind of movie where it's like the audience of this movie is a little unclear to me like I guess it yes it's adapting a show about a seven-year-old turning her into a 17-year-old but she still acts like a seven-year-old and it's right for a show-old but she still acts like a seven-year-old and it's for a show that is like low-key not really on as much as it used to be which is a lot of like reboot culture issues where you're like is this for me if so thank you like right it does feel

like a family movie that like it's kind of like yeah if you're a kid who watched the show you'll enjoy it but also if you remember watching the show you'll enjoy it too because it's a little bit grown up yeah but i didn't they i don't know if they market it that way it was a very confusingly made and marketed movie and in regards to tone and audience it's like i guess you would just want to catch everyone yeah but fair i mean i i enjoyed it as an adult and for sure kids probably did too so there was a bunch of fart jokes so i'm sure they loved it an extended poo joke i don't remember i also don't remember people talking about it though right no one was talking about it and if there was any conversation about it when it came out i just kind of missed it because i was the only one of my friends who

saw it in theater like no like no one was talking about it that i was aware of so anyway so i was looking for a specific review and i found all this other writing that had been done about it that I just missed but there was a lot of appreciation for the movie it's Latina family many of the main characters voice actors included are Latin yeah so there's just it just like is a story about a Latina family and they're going on an adventure and there was just a lot of excitement about that as far as representation goes in a Hollywood movie I want to be clear that that paper is written about the animated series that's not a criticism of the film at all but just that that was like a question I had that is something that was like carried over

into the movie but i i mean i totally agree that it's like i don't think it's a bad thing that her going on an adventure isn't inherently connected to her culture that happens in adventure movies more often than not i guess that the cool thing that i don't know if this is what the writers that you were mentioning in the article were talking about but i think it's cool that you have this like latina family at its core which if i were to guess it's probably like a mexican american family just because of the aesthetics of like oh they're like their life in la it feels very kind of like chicano to me i might be wrong but it does feel kind of like that it's very weird that they didn't decide to then set the movie in like Mexico

instead of the Amazon but you know I guess they were still going for that pan-Latine like appeal but regardless of whether or not their specific characters just reference I do understand that is there's something meaningful in the fact that they themselves, at no point in the story, are, like, othered for that. Right. There's no reason to justify them being Latina other than the fact that the IP is. So, I don't know. You get so many stories that feature Latina characters have to justify it in some regard.

Yeah. Sometimes you can be very specific and sometimes you can be very like, oh, look, I'm representing this very specific culture. But it doesn't land the same way because you're still centering the story on whiteness, which is kind of my main complaint about the new West Side Story, for example. It's just like, oh, yeah yeah you can go all in on the puerto rican components of it but this the story still centers itself so much on whiteness that it is kind of a little tiring it was a little tiring for me to watch in some regards yeah well mostly because the movie taunted itself as being a very relevant and modern update if you have to say it yeah it's like okay sure i guess there's no natalie wood and brown phase anymore so points but um that's

a very low bar but in dora there's no need for that you know you you can just have these people exist in their own little adventure movie and it doesn't have to justify itself like oh yeah i don't know it's uh right it's kind of refreshing the depressingly so even if we don't get into the specifics even even when you get into the specifics a lot of of Americans don't care. I saw so many people being like, oh, I didn't even know that Encanto was set in Colombia. It just looked like a generic Latin American country to me. And it's like, well, maybe you are the problem here. Right, like that movie tells you where you are.

Exactly. It's like, maybe if you don't think they all look like mexicans or something like that then you won't have that problem so i don't know i do wish and i always talk about how important it is that we are more specific in our stories like especially when i lived in la it was very easy to get branded as like, oh, a Latino storyteller. And it's like, yeah, I mean, I'm more of a Colombian storyteller, but I guess you could call my stories Latina, even though they tend to be very Colombian in point of view.

So I always appreciate that kind of specificity. But I do recognize that something that Wadora does is also valuable in not having to question the ethnicity of their characters and doing so in a way that is fun and I don't know, doesn't have to deal with baggage that much. Like it just

allows Latino people to exist without having to question their validity to be there at all. Did that have to do with what we were talking about i feel like again i didn't know myself no that's exactly what we were talking about i mean that makes totals it's such a dense complicated but it's like i think for especially for the tone of what this movie is it makes total sense and it probably behooves the story to like not i mean it and that it's i don't know in my mind i'm like okay there's a way to be

specific without centering the story around it but it's i don't know i mean it's like it's not like agent cody banks is traipsing around wherever the fuck he is being like i'm irish like you know like so that was the worst example in the world no i loved it maybe that i don't remember what happens in that movie maybe that is what happens maybe it's no yeah don't you remember that cody banks goes in an extended tirade about a united ireland yeah that's how i how I learned about that conflict. It was through Cody. Cody, oh my God. Okay, so the review that I was trying to find

was a Hollywood Reporter review by critic Todd McCarthy, who did not like the movie. And some of the reasons, I mean, all the reasons he cites are, I would say not valid. I don't agree with his review. But some of them are just like, just fucking gross. Because he's basically saying the movie is too like sanitized and squeaky clean which was confusing for him because dora is too sexy basically like she's aged up to be a teenager so like not people telling on themselves like this i do you remember that review of the little mermaid that was like i want to fuck this mermaid so bad i hated the movie and you're just like, what? Stop. Who is forcing you to admit to this?

Do you know you're writing this down? So I'll share an excerpt just to demonstrate what film writing by some critics still is. So this is what Todd McCarthy said about the movie quote what keeps things alive up to a point is the imperturbable attitude of the titular heroine who is invested with try and stop me spirit by isabella merced who's actually 18 and looks it despite preventative measures. The same goes for Jeff Wahlberg, who's 19. There's a palpable gap. You can't help but notice between the essentially innocent, borderline pubescent nature of the leading characters and the film itself.

And the more confident and mature vibes emanating from the leading actors. The director seems to be trying to keep the hormones at bay, but there are some things you just can't disguise. Perhaps human nature, first and foremost. Dora seems committed to projecting a pre-sexualized version of youth, while throbbing unacknowledged beneath the surface is something a bit more real its presence rigorously ignored end quote is he like in jail that is so gross yeah like dude dora isn't projecting anything you're doing all the projecting i i do like this is so nasty for so many reasons and i also feel like there's the additional racially charged tendency to over

sexualize latina actors and then there also is a part of me that is like someone publishing an l this severe is so bizarre like yeah it was bizarre in 1989 when maybe it was that guy maybe this is just his claim to fame where he's like oh i want to have sex with cartoons but i can't and that makes me mad and i'm a fan now give me my paycheck oh wow wow wow wow wow yeah stop it's absolutely wild that this would get published it's just i'm just horrifying it just kept getting worse it just kept getting worse it's like oh she was she was like 16 just with an adult it would be weird to talk this much about her throbbing under the surface. But we're talking about a character who is 16. Yes. Oh, so.

Jail. Jail. Gross. Jail. Oh, that was brutal. I was going to say, because we have a few more plot things to kind of zoom through, is that the way that Dora was dressed i thought worked for the movie she's you know she she wears a couple different outfits like none of them are drawing

attention to her body and i feel like if this movie was made even 10 years ago it would have been like dora's all grown up and it's like yeah she's all grown up and she's you know wearing a shirt like right it's all good and the fact that we even have to point this out is yeah, she's all grown up and she's, you know, wearing a shirt. Like, right. It's all good. And the fact that we even have to point this out is like, wow, she's dressed appropriately and not over sexualized. But that's an issue that exists in Dora the Explorer canon, because in that show, Dora and Friends, she's like aged up to be 12 or 13. And they change.

They give her like a curvy body shape and like pinkify her or like you know not not the original pink you know like pastelify her or whatever it is and so i did appreciate that at least i i i do appreciate it's not like you know no one's getting a medal about it but like when a franchise or a ip like gets flack for some shit like Dora did in 09 I checked and then course corrects it in future iterations I feel like that is net good

which also makes this writer even more of a pervert because I'm like she's wearing a fucking crew neck t-shirt what is wrong with you if you walk into Dora the Explorer being like god God, I hope it's sexual. It's like. Yeah.

What are you expecting, Todd McCarthy? Like, what are you talking about? Todd. Yeah. What is going on here? Buddy, buddy, buddy. We're worried about you, buddy. That's the nastiest thing I've ever read.

Yeah. But speaking of inserting sexual stuff, not sexual, but like love stuff where it doesn't need to be. I didn't like Marky Mark's nephew and Sammy with the forced love story. It didn't fit. It didn't make sense. The chemistry wasn't there between the characters. And there's already a more interesting thing going on with Sammy and Dora. And that took away from it.

Yeah. Didn't like the shoehorn love story at all. That moment, I think, when they wake up in the box and they're kind of leaning against each other. No, it wasn't there. It was when they were in the museum and they were kind of bantering a little bit. I was like, oh, no, they're going to fall in love. And every time that something came to happen it was like who needed this it's amazing question especially because i kind of love sammy's characterization

yeah it's just kind of like her and dora are kind of very like girl bossy in a way that sometimes feels a little bit uh pandery like in the in that like faux faux feminism of movie studios like to plug, I guess. But it was kind of endearing because I was like, oh, this is kind of how a lot of model UN teenage girls behave.

It's kind of like that girl bossy behavior that is kind of they're projecting it because they're learning about it but they're not like yet in the nuances of it yeah and uh i thought it was very fun it felt very sincere to how high schoolers behave right at least that kind of archetype i also thought it was interesting that and this is maybe kind of corny, but Diego calls Sammy bossy. And she responds by saying, oh, what next?

Are you going to call me shrill or too difficult? And then she alludes to the fact that he has taken a misogyny 101 class, which is pretty funny. I hated that. I thought that was like, I was like, oh, good job. Whatever. It's fine. It's for kids. It's like, it works for the genre.

But I was just like, wow, two white dads really are fucking clapping themselves on the back at home for that. Right. Oh, misogyny 101. Exactly. Yes. That's what it feels like to us but i will say i thought it was since we we see characters say problematic things in movies all the time and it's rare that it ever gets

called out or challenged i like sammy actually challenging that i was like okay that's at least something we don't see and if kids are seeing this movie and they see an example of a character being the recipient of sexism and then that being challenged like that could set an example for a young person watching this it's totally fine i just i just roll my eyes at shit like that but also i'm not you know 10 uh so it's fine sorry i just insulted you for i think that's that was kind of the the scene that made me realize like what I was just said like like you said Jamie feels very like patting like self-congratulatory but at the same time I was like I I do I do think that some high schoolers

speak with that kind of uh thing so I don't know if it was on purpose in that way it was probably not but it worked that way right it was kind of like yeah it is I don't know if it was on purpose in that way it was probably not but it worked that way right it was kind of like yeah it is I don't know like she's she goes to the costume party to the Halloween ball dressed as like Ruth Bader Ginsburg it's like I know I was just like okay first of all she's gonna grow up to be fucking Jen Psaki or like something kind of bleak actually she's gonna grow up to be a centrist Sammy the centrist so real quick back to the wedged in Diego Sammy love story I also did not care for it for a number of reasons not the least of which is that Sammy surprise kisses Diego at the end which I feel like is a new trend of like more

contemporary movies of like now the girl surprise kisses the boy isn't that so subversive isn't that feminism and it's like no no people of any gender should be surprise kissing anybody else of any gender yeah so that was annoying i also kind of thought that maybe they would wedge in a dora and randy, especially because they bonded so much over astronomy. My guess was that it was there and then they wrote it out or something like that because it felt like that was planned because he kept, he was doing that like weird guy

from a Disney Channel show thing where he keep being like, yeah, we have so much in common. I'm like, I hate this. Yeah. I feel like he kept planting like, oh, maybe something flirty is going to happen and it seems like maybe it got scaled back or cut. yeah that meeting scene that like when they meet it definitely feels like

a crush setup and then it was like oh they didn't feel the need to follow up on that they probably it might have been cut in the editing it might have not even been like in the writing right because they shot it that way right because. Because so many movies would be like, oh, well, it's a boy and a girl and they're close to each other and they have one thing in common. So obviously they should kiss at the end. Again, the bar is so low. But the fact that the movie didn't do that,

I was like, okay, point for the movie. Have a point because like the other two, the other two did fall in love. Right. So they cancel each other out. So that's disappointing and then i think jamie you mentioned the more interesting relationship dynamic that's happening here is the one between dora and sammy where it starts out antagonistic and you know sammy is threatened by dora for a specific reason. It does feel a little petty to me. But, you know, Sammy's used to being the smartest person in the room.

And she really likes it that way. So that when Dora comes along and she also knows things, she's like, who is this other person who is smart? There can only be one girl. One smart girl. Kind of how the beginning of that storyline. But it changes quickly enough that i was like all right we got out of trope territory i do think it started in trope territory right yeah i am girl that's smart and more than one smart girl is is poison to me and i'm a bully now you're

like man that's not really how that goes smart girls in high school actually desperately cling to each other because you're not safe you know uh right so um but yeah they become friendly and i appreciate that arc i like that it is kind of an arc like dora's arc is it's like you like you said earlier because it kind of set up as like dora needs to change or something like to fit in and it just becomes an arc about like her learning that you know having friends is good it's just very sweet it's kind of a sweet coming of age adventure movie I guess but it is cool that she has an arc of friendship with this with her cousin and these two kids that it's like she doesn't have to be in a romance with any of them it's just kind of like a like oh having friends is cool and uh it was just very sweet i was

i was very endeared by it maybe i was just a weird kid so no i i also appreciated it so those stories always get to me no same yeah yeah um does anyone have anything else that they want to discuss about dora and the lost city of gold um i just wanted to shout out the other women in dora's family i liked dora's connection with her parents It didn't feel like it leaned too heavy on one parent. I feel like sometimes you get like, dad is the best one and mom is yelling at me or disappears. And like, I appreciate, it seems like there was sort of even parent distribution,

evil and Gloria and Michael Pena are having, having a blast. Michael Pena is like, did you hear I'm Chuckie cheese's favorite actor. Also, I love Scientology, whatever. Like anyways, did you hear i'm chucky cheese's favorite actor also i love scientology whatever like anyways um i wanted to also shout out dora's grandma who is played by um i want to pull her name up because i recognize her she's a character actor who's been in a ton of stuff uh adriana barraza yeah

i remember her most clearly from i mean she works with inoratu a lot she's a mexican actress and she also like i didn't realize this before i was doing research for this episode but she also like developed the um mexican method of method acting like she has a super successful performance school and that she runs in mexico she's like a huge fucking deal and i wish that she was given more to do she's barely in the movie it's basically a cameo for someone as famous as her she's been in huge movies i personally loved her and she's in drag me to hell a movie i love uh she kicks ass in that movie i don't know how that movie ages but I used to really love it guess we'll have to do it on the podcast

honestly I feel like there's so much to talk about and I never want to cover a Justin Long movie for some reason I don't know what it is maybe I just didn't like those commercials he was in but I don't like to look at him but I love Drag Me to Hell I'm being so mean

to all boys today i appreciate you haven't been mean to me no and i and it's not gonna happen because i would never put you in the same category as mark walberg's nephew that's insulting i think the first time i watched it i i thought he was fine i i agree that in the rewatch, I was like a little like, oh, he's not very good, especially because the other three kids are pretty good. But it was kind of like the first time I was just like, oh, he's a very accurate, like straight Latino kid like that, like, you know, doesn't show emotions. And mostly because he he wears a soccer jersey to the Halloween ball as a costume.

And I was like, that's like straight Latino culture right there I've seen that first hand they think that that's like a costume and it's just like no it's not but so I was like oh yeah he's the quintessential like straight Latino

and then in the second time around I was like oh maybe he's he's not quite there yet watch him become the most famous actor in the entire world. And this will aid so poorly. And actually, nepotism is genius. And then in a few years, they'll talk about Jeff Wahlberg's uncle. Yeah. People will be like, do you remember Jeff Wahlberg's uncle?

Hey, you know how we have not been passing the Bechdel test for the past couple minutes? Because we were talking about Jeff. Yeah. Well, what about any scenes in this movie that do pass the Bechdel test? I wrote it down specifically. I don't know if it's the only one, but it's definitely the one that just made me realize. The conversation that passes the Bechdel test is about poop. Yeah. There is a poop conversation that passes. Bechdel test is about poop yeah there is a poop conversation that passes yes there's a full poop conversation there's also between Dora and her

grandmother they talk about high school and being and like Dora feeling lonely and it's an extended scene and I don't think there might be mention of like, oh, Diego said, called me weird. Do you think I'm weird, Grandma? But like, other than that. Yeah, he's not like the topic. Right. It's about Dora's feelings. That's a much better scene to use as an example than the one about the poop hole. No, that's one of my, I think that that's entering the pantheon of fun passes.

Because there's no way around it. That passes with flying yeah brown colors i like saw you hesitating and i was like what is jamie gonna say i got pms i'm being a fucking misandrist i'm talking about poo poo a loose cannon wow much like a loose butthole remember we talked about shrek's loose butthole i was like uh-huh yeah we did talk about god we've talked about we've really just talked a lot in this lifetime uh we gotta stop sometimes people will say it sometimes a listener will be like do you remember when you said this and then they'll say the most fucked up thing i've ever heard i was like no i have no recollection of saying saying that but i uh i believe you oh gosh yeah i think that's

why i can never have my own podcast i can't have so many of the stuff i say out there on the record it's brutal it'll come to haunt me not in like uh old tweets kind of way but in like remember when you said that that was kind of messed up but it's just like like in a very weird way and this was like yeah i i would see i usually don't remember that stuff i don't need to say them to a mic fast forward to me like three years from now being like caitlin i am working with mark walberg's nephew i need you to take down the Dora episode. This has literally already happened multiple times, and I refuse to learn my lesson.

Yeah, we really do dig ourselves into a hole, a poo hole. A poop hole. Okay, and we're back. The movie passes the Bechdel Taz. For sure. Should we kick it to the nipples let's do it so uh i would give this movie i loved it so much and it definitely gets 10 out of 10 on the caitlin rompo meter and even though it is far more self-aware than other movies of this genre and calls out and challenges several of the weaknesses of this genre it still does the things for the most part in its

representation of indigenous people and culture some of the stereotypes that are used the failure to characterize the indigenous characters even a little bit those things are not great on the other hand you have a female protagonist which is rare for this genre you have a teen girl driving the narrative she's comfortable in who she is she's such a likable character the latina latina latinx representation that is again sadly all too rare for a major hollywood movie um and it's just these characters they're living their lives they're going on an adventure. They're doing the things they like to do. Is, again, unfortunately still quite rare. That was exciting to see. So it's complicated. There's a lot of things happening here.

I would ultimately give this movie, I would give it three nipples. It's got many strengths. It's got many strengths it's got many weaknesses i think it's a good stepping stone movie in terms of like maybe the next adventure movie you know we'll be even more self-aware and subscribe to fewer of the tropes will be less directed and written by entirely white guys which i feel like we yes yeah right even when white guys are doing a pretty good job if it's still all white it's not good yeah and they're still kind of doing a bad job so uh this movie this movie again it feels like a stepping stone for progress but all the way there. So three nipples. I will give one to Dora. I will give one to Sammy. And I'll

give my third nipple to the mention of monkey facts, which is not unlike cat facts with Caitlin. But there's a character who I don't even think we talked about. One of the mercenaries, I think his name is Viper. He says something like, monkeys can carry three times their own body weight. That's just a monkey fact. So I was like, wow. That was cute. We're learning so much.

Truly. I'll meet you at three as well. Boy, have we discussed a lot. We've discussed longer than the movie. I think that there is yeah it feels like a stepping stone movie that certainly moved things and moves things in the right direction it also is like something we didn't discuss in this episode there's all like especially when a movie is providing heightened representation for anybody and this applies kind of across the board but because this movie does have such strong latine representation there is always undue

pressure put on those movies that doesn't exist for movies by protagonists and that's not a fair or you know reasonable thing to do and that is always kind of a tricky line to toe, as well. I think this movie is so sweet and fun and does not treat indigenous culture with any of the sensitivity that the politics of this movie seem that you would think like it, right, it's so bizarre. And I, you know, the white guys at the top of the production don't love that but the performances are so fun the movie is a blast i love poophole uh and i'm getting all three of my nipples to fucking so wiper my boyfriend yeah cool jamie cool i'm going to jail i'm like todd i'm like i'm like swiper was throbbing and i was upset by that

listen i'd much rather you talk that way about swiper, who's portrayed by very of age Benicio Del Toro. Yeah, Swiper is he's a grown man. Alright, let's get off this. Jose, what would your nipple rating be? I'm gonna give it three and a half nipples.

Everything that you said, I agree with in that, you know, it has very good female characters around which the story like revolves and i i enjoy that it's just it's just it has a very good cast of characters and like half of it is like female and they're all very good it has that like what i said said about that Latine core cast that doesn't have to justify its own identity in order to be part of the story,

which I always appreciate. That's always fun. And I appreciate that it means well on paper in terms of bridging those gaps between what the adventure genre has been and what it could be. But I also agree that it stumbles near the finish line in terms of uh depicting its indigenous characters as more than

just magical beings that are there for plot reasons it's just right it's a shame because like you said the rest of the movie is very fun it's very entertaining very creative if if all reboots were like this then maybe people wouldn't complain so much about them right yeah so three and a half seems fair and uh i'm gonna give one to dora one to sammy just like you did just because they they deserve them one to eugenio herbes who's always kind of very charming and he was donkey shrek so like i have to pay my respect i did not know that until you mentioned it earlier and uh that's very exciting to me that's that to me i was like he probably has a boat like imagine that's so that's so much money that's wild yeah i can't watch shrek or shrek 2 the ones that i like in english because the the spanish dubbing is so good the latin

american dubbing is amazing i should watch those oh my gosh it's very good antonio banderas is also doing puss in boots and uh i don't know there's something about shrek having this very thick northern mexican accent that it's just a lot of fun hell yeah um and i'm gonna give the half nipple to mark walberg's nephew because we've been very mean to him throughout this and i think he he deserves like he has potential something he's young'll learn. He'll get better. Your nipples. They're your nipples, babe. I'm giving him the half for a reason. Well, Jose, thank you so very much for putting up with us for two and a half hours.

Thank you for having me. I had a lot of fun for most of those two and a half hours. All of them. I was like, whoa, the twist. I was like, which minute sucked? When we talked about our PMS for 45 minutes. That was the highlight. Yeah, of course.

Oh, good. Truly, thank you so much. Everyone should watch Jose's video uh we will include it in the description of this episode it's an excellent watch and yeah tell us what else people can check out of yours tell us where they can follow you on social media all that stuff well uh you can find me on twitter at jose m luna i also have like my youtube channel i guess uh where i occasionally drop some essays if the time allows for it i i just finished one on encanto and its roots in colombian literature i'm very proud of it i think it's my best one yeah i've done three so it's not

a big compliment but yeah yeah I think my YouTube channel is just my name. Nice. Love it. We'll link to that as well. Yeah, your essays are truly so brilliant. Big fan of your work. Thank you for coming by. Thank you. That means a lot. This was, I had a blast. Oh, gosh. Well, folks, there you have it. That was our Unlocked Matreon episode on Dora and the Lost City of Gold with special guest Jose Maria Luna. If you liked it, you should, I don't know, maybe subscribe to our Matreon to hear more episodes like it. Truly, like, not to, we're kind of on a roll recently on the matreon

i feel like we're kind of in this this um it's also the saw episode hello i mean who could forget the saw episode so on the matreon you know not to sell you on it one more time but it is so fun uh it's where we cover popular requests and also like we do themed months what are we calling this month it's just like back to school september yeah back to school september um but we did never been kissed and there's a pitch perfect episode on the way which are have both been forever requests yes and uh we've got an exciting horror lineup you also uh frequently get to vote for movies that we're going to cover on the matrion. Caitlin and I once again, get Bechtel cast unleashed during our birthday months.

We cover the Netflix holiday movies. It's really, you're welcome. It's really a place of chaos and beautiful chaos. Absolutely. And so thank you for listening to this unlocked episode and for more episodes like it you can go to patreon.com slash spectral cast to subscribe you'll also get access to all of those you know the back catalog of episodes over on the matreon uh-huh and then

give us a little you know follow on twitter on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe on your favorite listening platform. Give us a little, you know, rate and review. That helps the show out a lot. Yeah. And tell us about the merch, Jamie. Well, okay, fine. Okay.

You can go. Sorry, I literally was looking at a picture of Brendan Fraser and I got distracted. Oh, wow, I understand. As I want to do. You can go to tpublic.com slash the Bechdel cast for all of your merchandising needs, if those are needs that you have. And with that, why don't we put on our backpacks and get our little monkey sidekicks? Let me get my little map out.

And go on a little adventure? And I promised to be nicer to Mark Wahlberg's nephew this time. Okay. Bye. Bye-bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and I'm the host of On Purpose.

This week, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Andrew Huberman. Dr. Huberman is a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, known for his research on brain function, behavior, and neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to adapt and rewire itself. The expectation on us is not perfection. Being able to toggle between these different states. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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