The Bechdel Cast - Double Indemnity with Anita Sarkeesian

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

This week, femme fatales Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Anita Sarkeesian discuss Double Indemnity while scheming to murder the patriarchy.This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @anitasarkeesian on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white in print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot.

Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast, start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Caitlin. Yes, Jamie? I've got a problem, and it needs solving. Okay.

I only have 90 minutes to record a podcast. Okay, so you mind mine was going to be, whoever hears this, I suppose you'll think it's a confession. I recorded this podcast. Me, Caitlin Durante. I did it for the money and a woman. And I didn't get the money, and I didn't get the woman. Okay, I like that way better.

I like that way better. what is walter neff doing at the beginning of this movie and throughout besides recording a true crime podcast he literally yes i read the same thing i was like wow what's her name i wrote down um who's the whatever the serial person i'm blowing it i'm blowing it this morning oh my gosh i don't remember either why we i feel like everyone i can hear her voice i can hear her cadence it's iconic like i oh my god i was very into it when it came out what it what was it sarah koenig sarah koenig yes yes he Sarah Koenig-ing out at the beginning of the show. Wow. Well, that was one of our best intros.

Perfect. See, this is, and if people are listening right now, this is why we don't record this early in the morning because this is going to be the, you're going to feel us sort of waking up as the podcast proceeds. We're not like Walter Neff recording in the dead of night with an injury. It's a gunshot wound, yeah.

What a gunshot wound. It's 10 AM. I've been up since 7 because I needed to rewatch this movie this morning. Same. So I think that we're doing a really good job so far. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name's Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante,

and this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point, an inspiration for us to get a conversation going. Yes. Jamie, tell me what the Bechdel test is, please. No. Okay. The Bechdel test has many permutations. It's sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test, originally created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel. We require that to pass, you have to have two characters of a marginalized gender with names speaking to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue i think this movie passes which is funny um because i went in thinking there's no way there's

even a second woman in the movie well guess what there is exactly one second woman other woman so egg on my face there's two women in the movie and they talk about checkers yes so if that's why you listen to the podcast i guess you could turn it off now because but stick around because we got a lot of exciting stuff to talk about we're covering a film noir today from 1940? 44. 1944. Yeah. Called Double Indemnity.

And we have an amazing returning guest. Let's get her in the mix. We certainly do. She is a media critic. You remember her from our episode on Point Break. It's Anita Sarkeesian. Hello. Hello. Welcome back.

Welcome back. Okay. Just so everyone knows, I tried to get them to do another surf movie with me so that i only do surf movies on the bechdel cast uh and they were not going for it caitlin like just looked at me being like nobody requests surf movies we should i don't think that's true so please write in and let them know that i'm right. I didn't know about this conversation and I would have made a strong argument for Blue Crush. That movie really gave me some body problems.

Yeah, I forgot about Blue Crush. Oh, how could you forget about Blue Crush? I've never seen Blue Crush. So I like this would be a great opportunity because I'm like, I want to watch all of them now so I will I'll come back and apparently it was formative for a lot of young queers too there's a whole I need to need to get in on

this I remember there was such a frothing culture around Blue Crush because all the girls that I would watch it with were like isn't it amazing that Kate Bosworth has one blue eye and one brown eye we were just like all lusting after her like wow her bikini's so low-cut yeah there's a whole there's a whole thing yeah exactly but we're talking about

double indemnity date we're talking about a different kind of um interestingly exploited female character today it's femme fatale day on the Bechdel cast. It sure is. So, Anita, what is your relationship, history, etc. with this movie, with film noir in general? Nothing. I have no history at all. I chose it or like I, you know, kind of agreed to do it because I've been curious about going back and watching older films. So I was like, why not have an excuse to do it? I sort of regret that choice. So this is going to be a great episode. But I don't I don't know. I didn't know anything about this movie going into it. I loosely knew that it was like kind of quintessential in terms of establishing the femme fatale or film noir ish kind of vibes. So I was curious about that.

But I don't have a long history of like, you know, it's not like I've watched a bunch of noirs. I kind of get the sense of them. I find current or more modern films that pull noir themes really interesting. But that makes it like every time I watch a movie that's like this was the thing that changed everything I always feel a little bit of we will never be able to know what that feels like because I've seen every iteration since then or I've seen every like derivative I've seen everything that is like derivative from the original source and I don't mean that in a disparaging way it's just it's so hard sometimes to put yourself in the mind of the viewer at the time

and the creation process at the time. Right. I'm sure that if I had seen Citizen Kane in whatever, 1941, when it came out, I'd be like, wow, this movie's so cool. Look at how groundbreaking it is. Look at how it changed cinema. But I didn't see it in 1941 I saw it in the mid-2000s and I hate it well that was your first mistake not being alive in 1941

I do want to cover Citizen Kane someday so I can just talk about how it's a turd but that's a that's a different episode edge lord caitlin peeking her little head out but i do think kind of before we get into this a little bit um so i just watched licorice pizza which has a extremely racist uh a couple of moments of like deep racism right yeah and i i was thinking about i don't have anything really insightful to say about this but that it can be very hard for modern progressive viewers to go back and watch older films, right? Because you do have to kind of, in order to do that and to appreciate the craft of the time, we have to acknowledge, sit through, deal with, ignore, like whatever it is that you do when you watch older movies. It's just there, right? And you can't unsee what you know. And I was thinking about what that means

in contemporary films, especially contemporary films that are of a time. So like including pieces that are super racist or sexist in a movie that comes out in 2021 to contextualize the moment that it takes place. Like, right. I have a lot of thoughts about that. And I think that there's something interesting about like kind of me ping ponging back and forth in right now and what I'm watching and seeing

like, cool. I got to like deal with, you know, you got to deal with the, like all the sexist representations and the like light misogyny. That's just like a part of the environment and then also we still have to you know like it's still being justified

as relevant or a part of the craft or a part of the art or whatever yeah right because it's like a period piece right yeah it's not the only you know i'm not like specifically calling out pta but just the you know like tarantino and like they all fucking do that right right oh yeah yeah yeah and i think sometimes like period pieces are used as an excuse to like bring that back in a way of like isn't this funny and you're like it's really not but i i think femme fatale is like such an interesting thing. And I totally agree with what you guys are saying of it's so difficult to watch a movie and put yourself in the like mindset of an audience member at the time. It's like almost impossible unless you're like really, really, really trying to. And that's like part of what's hard about this show sometimes.

Yeah. But that's the thing is like what audience is watching it as well. I think it's another piece to that. Absolutely. Jamie, what's your relationship to double indemnity? I saw this movie in college. I think that like any person that went through a bad film program, like there was a unit on noir. I saw a bunch of them.

I generally do like I like noir and I really like noir parody and comedy. I'm into the vibe of noir because the characters are so clear. So I enjoy watching noir. Also, my friend of the show, a guest on our Gigli episode, Josh Fadum, just observed noirvember uh-huh which is something he does every year for nobody but this year i was paying attention and um so i had noir on the brain anyways so i was excited to revisit this movie because i feel like this movie is often kind of presented as like the blueprint for a lot of noir tropes and particularly like the femme fatale character right and it was kind of interesting to come back to because by coincidence I was working on the uh the Kathy podcast this year and so was

going through the history of like American women's rights And so it's like interesting to have a few things click about like why, why the femme fatale trope tends to pop at certain moments, it makes total sense that it would pop during World War Two, because it's a time where women are taking on men's jobs, quote, unquote, and are presenting a more active threat to the status quo. And so femme fatale is like popping in the 40s and 50s makes total sense anytime that there's like a period of time where uh there's a backlash to a popular feminist movement you get these characters that are like variations on witches and like evil women luring people with sex and i don't know i had had a, and I genuinely like movie wise,

I hear like Walter Neff is such a doofus. Like he got a boner one time and it was ready to just throw his entire life away, which is kind of funny, but I'm excited to talk about this movie. I genuinely enjoyed watching it. And Barbara Stanwyck is such a, such an icon and she's wearing such a

such a bizarre wig it's very distracting the bangs on her bangs are out of control they're like a hard they look like you could like knock on them they're like a perfect cylinder just resting atop her forehead I don't understand how you accomplished that. Unbelievable. But yeah, I generally I mean, there's misogynist tropes abound in this genre. But I think it's like in context, it's it's pretty interesting. And the movies are fun to watch. Yeah. I too saw this movie in college, at least a times and then also in grad school where i did get a master's degree in screenwriting from boston university i hate to mention it but they made you watch it again yeah i mean because i took like enough like film theory or film history

classes that touched on film noir and this is kind of the one of those like quintessential film noir movies it's cited as having set the standard for film noir so you know it's kind of one of the ones to study if you're developing the curriculum for a very standard boring film class uh because they always show the same damn movies over and over again i've seen it several times in school and this is like i feel like the one that they show in school yes yeah which is also why i've seen citizen kane 800 times and i hate it more and more every time i see it anyway i'll stop bringing up citizen kane maybe but yeah so i've seen this movie a number of times usually and i probably like maybe i i saw it once just of my own volition before i saw it for a

class because i was like oh yeah this is one of those like famous movies that's in all the textbooks i have to see it so i can you know be smart and understand references so you could go to party sometimes I just watch things so I can comfortably attend a party same same yeah um I get it yeah but uh I don't I don't hate the movie I like the snappy dialogue you know the aesthetic is fun yeah i like i generally like film noir i like neo-noir especially but well who framed roger rabbit baby i mean come on the noir golden standard i think i'm serious too i think i'm serious i don't think you're wrong yeah we we covered that movie a while back on the matreon so uh if you haven't heard it listeners go check it out but anyway uh should i do the recap and then we'll discuss let's do it okay actually let's take a

quick break first and then we will be right back Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 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. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president.

One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. 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. 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, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So, double indemnity. We meet Walter Neff, played by Fred McMurray. He is an insurance salesman who stumbles into learn is a colleague of Walter Neff's. He confesses that

he murdered someone named Dietrichson. He did it for the money and a woman, but he didn't get either. He mentions a double indemnity and we're like, wow, that's the name of the movie. I was like, I hope he defines that in dialogue at some point. And then he does, which I genuinely needed. thank you walter yes and then he starts to tell the story about how all of this transpired and then we flash back to walter paying mr dietrichson a visit at his los angeles home to talk about his expired car insurance policy. Mr. Dietrichson is not home, but his wife, his wife,

his wife, Mrs. Dietrichson, a.k.a. Phyllis, played by Barbara Stanwyck, is home. She comes out all sexy and not fully clothed. She's got like a towel draped on her. Yeah, they really need to signal to you what's going on right away i did like that they like just like old-timey ways of objectifying a woman are funny where he kept being like her anklet and you're like yeah you're a pervert stop talking about her anklet in that moment too when he first meets her and she was sunbathing he

says i hope there aren't any pigeons like it was these like lines that i was like what the fuck is this comedy like yeah i was like this i would almost rather someone i mean i would rather uh walter neff never speak to me but if he had to i i just roundabout, it's just creepy. He's like, oh, I hope there's no pigeons. Just like, I hope birds aren't shitting on you. Is that what? I guess so. And then right after, the housekeeper says, like, the living room is where they keep the

liquor locked up, which is also a weird thing. And he says, that's all right. I always carry my own keys. Like some of the dialogue in this, I kept being like, what the fuck? I don't even understand it. It's another, I'm adjusting the name of this test. I need to figure it out. But it is an example of if the person, if the actor saying that line wasn't extremely conventionally hot, you'd be like, this guy is weird. Why is he acting like this? Yes, yes yes i think part of it is like the writer's attempt to have like really quippy clever dialogue in a way that might have made more sense to like

1940s audiences but you know many decades later we're like what are you talking about i think it's a combination of that. And a lot of the dialogue has to be euphemism to get past the Hays Code. Like skirt the restrictions of the production code. Right. So I mean, I like it. I think it's just so bizarre to hear characters talk like that to each other and feel like it's just another day. Another talking like a weirdo uh-huh yeah so phyllis dietrichson agrees to chat with walter neff and uh he spends that entire conversation hitting on her in a very 1940s way and then she asks if he handles accident insurance, which he does, and she tells him to come back at a different time when her husband will be home.

Then we see Walter at his office. We meet Keys, who is Walter Neff's colleague. His whole thing is that he's a skeptic and he can always sniff out a fraudulent insurance claim. Because he feels it right here. And he basically points to his and he like basically like points to his like torso it was i was like what are you doing it's like is this a weird dick thing like it was very and i was like oh your heart like your heart and your gut it was so it's like okay buddy

yeah he keeps referring to the little man who lives inside him oh that yes that was the thing yeah you're like is this like an is this a euphemism what's happening here i don't understand he's like i always know when someone's lying to me i can feel it in my dick when my dick starts to throb that's when you know someone's not telling the truth i really like that moment with him i mean that, who is that character? I don't think I've ever seen that character actor before. Edward G. Robinson. Yeah, apparently he was quite famous back in the day, but I don't really know him.

Oh, no. Oh, he named people during the Red Scare. Oh, you little asshole. Boo, fuck him. He named Dalton Trumbo. Wow. Okay, this bitch. Okay.

So, all right. fuck you and your little band yeah go fuck yourself all your digs throbbing then you out good-hearted communists jesus um okay keys the character yes i really enjoyed that scene where kind of like apropos of nothing he just is like yeah i almost got married once didn't work out though like he just starts going off about how he's never been loved in his life and that's why he's so good at insurance i was like oh my god also the reasons he lists for like not going through with that marriage are so wild and again you know, the standards of the time were very different, but he's like,

I found out that she used to dye her hair or that she's been dyeing her hair since she was 16. And also she was married once before. And then he also like makes a reference to how there's like mental illness in her family. So he's like, and then Walter's like, yeah, I get it.

She was a tramp. Everyone in her family was a tramp everyone in her family's a tramp blah blah blah and it's just like yikes your standards are very mean this guy was so dirty at the house of un-american activities committee what a what a piece of shit what an asshole he again, of the time, I'm sure he's like, oh, this is, oh, we don't have time to talk about this today. I'm disappointed,

Edward. Also, RIP, he died like 500 years ago. Fun fact, sometime next year, I'll be releasing a video series and one of the episodes

is about the Hollywood Blacklist. So, no way. Tune into that whenever the fuck that appears. Yeah. Keep your, keep your eyes peeled, listeners.

Please fillet a fish our boy Edward because he fucked up. He fucked up big time. All right. So we've met keys. Then Walter Neff goes back to Phyllis Dietrichson, who tells him that she wants to take out an accident insurance policy on her husband who works a dangerous job in the oil fields but she doesn't want her husband to know about it and walter automatically assumes that it's because she's trying to find a way to get her husband killed so that she can collect on the insurance money but she's like no idk what you're talking about but even so he storms out

but then he's like oh wait a minute though she's so hot i mean she wears an anklet she wears an like i mean he brings it up like four or five times he's like really weird he's like it's really weird he's like yeah the way that anklet was cutting into your leg i'm like no pass okay so he comes back and like i'm just using this as a cue to talk about the like the dialoguey banter right that's very not the way that people talk right and i haven't watched a lot of movies from the 40s but it is very much the sort of stereotype that i think we think of when we think about like older films sure i found it really hard to watch you know and you both expressed that like you enjoyed it and like thought it was kind of a fun thing and for me like it it got really exhausting after a while oh definitely you know like it was just too i was like can y'all just fucking like and again film history like has

changed so much in terms of what we expect of actors and storytelling and all of that but i was just getting really like okay enough already with the performativeness of this conversation right it definitely gave me whiplash after a while because there's that scene where he's like suppose i am speeding and she's like, suppose I give you a ticket. And suppose you leave me off with a warning. And suppose it doesn't take. And I'm just like, ugh. See, that just makes me laugh where they're like flirting.

You're like, this is, I barely recognize this as the English language. Like, what are you guys talking about? And then at the end, they're like, we have a crush on each other. Like, based off of that? Interesting. Okay. So it also reminds me. And like, okay, Joss Whedon's a piece of shit so acknowledging that before i go into this but it reminds me of how like buffy and some of the work that he did in the 90s and 2000s sort of popularized that kind of like

and and i'd say gilmore girls too was kind of popularized that like it feels like a remnant of that time yeah but but kind of normal like that I didn't have a problem with like I liked I didn't like it'll go more girls but so it feels a little bit like that um right I'm just like it's not like we don't do that anymore but it but it's it's modernized in a way that's like our jokes and our communication and our you know like sort of hyper communication of of the the moment. But man, I just, I was really, by the end of it, I was like, can you just stop talking? I'm a sucker for people talking real fast. And so anytime someone's talking real fast, I'm like, Oh yeah. Okay, cool.

What? Huh? Huh? But that's also YouTube life, right? Like the joke about YouTubers is that they all talk super fast because we used to have time constraints. So we're trying to like shove everything in. So I think it's just interesting how like that kind of maybe like ebbed and flowed a little bit in terms of the way that what we accept as like witty dialogue and speed of talking changes or our perception of it in the past changes too, right? And it's all like the mid-Atlantic kind of fake fucking accents and shit where you're like, this is not real.

I mean, there's also like, there's like movie dialogue that you like read it on the page or you hear it and you're like, this is dialogue versus something that feels more realistic and organic and conversational which like also can be very well written but i don't know i i i'm kind of a sucker for dialogue that no one would actually say in real life because it's like very clearly written it's like too

clever and too quick like aaron sorkin like the west wing kind of oh i I know I know yeah that's the flavor I don't like but I'm saying it's that kind of thing where you're like this isn't real but also like you can't like a lot of people really vibe with it right sure yeah yeah yeah I feel like yeah there's probably like a fast-talking genre or like piece of work for every like generation that it's like either yeah you're into it or you're not or right i don't know i i do also want to add that if i literally in my notes i i wrote if he says baby one more time oh my god like i here's the thing is walter neff fred mcmurray like is just so unlikable in every conceivable way there There's nothing about him.

I'm glad you feel that way because I was like, I'm not interested in this man at all. He's, yeah, not for me. I think I would have liked the movie more if I gave any fucks at all about this guy. But he just seemed so unlikable and so uninteresting and such a piece of shit in every way that I don't feel bad that he's being manipulated.

I don't feel bad that he is like, I want you to fail, and I want you to get whatever. And so I think that that, I don't think as an audience member we're supposed to feel that way about him. No, I think the movie, because he was prior to this like a rom-com star, and he almost turned down the role because he's like, this role is going to tarnish my reputation as an America's sweetheart, him and we are meant to be endeared to him. But yeah, again, by like my standards today, I'm just like, ew, quit calling her baby 800 times. Yeah, I didn't really, I don't know what it was.

And I'm like, maybe this is just me being annoying. But I'm like, maybe if there was a different actor in that role. But the other thing is with noir characters in general, I guess I don't understand from a writing perspective why you wouldn't give the audience more information about who Walter Neff is. Or like what, because it just seems like he's living this like stakes-less life. Like he's a single guy. We don't know anything about his family. He seems like he's financially comfortable enough. But we don don't know anything about his family he seems like he's financially comfortable enough but we don't really know anything about him and so it's hard to like

I feel like if you just if they just added one or two details of like and he has a sick cat or like just something to like endear you to him or just to give information but he's just like a guy and so yeah I was like well I don't really care what to give information but he's just like a guy and so yeah i was like well i don't really care what happens to this guy he's just some guy when in the history of film noir did it become kind of attached to the sort of hard-boiled detective because that so this movie is this like femme fatale manipulating this guy right is kind of the vibes that are happening. But in my mind, being very uneducated in this space, I'm like, well, shouldn't he be a little more hard boiled and a little more like gruff? Right? I think that ordinarily, that is the case of like,

there's more gruffness, you'll have a little bit more information about the character, which is kind of just like, well, there's a whole character kind of strikes me as a little bizarre because i'm just like i feel like i don't know who this person is so i can't even like from a like oh i feel bad for this guy like i don't really feel bad for him because he seems to know exactly what's going on outside of the fact that she is manipulated like that's the only thing he doesn't know but everything else there's so many plot developments in this murder plot that are like his idea so i'm like yeah he's gonna get what's coming to him like it's not right she's like oh we should do this or we should do this which she does sometimes she's obviously an active participant in this plot but his whole thing where they're like oh no we actually have to throw your husband off a train and then they'll get twice the money

and i was like okay so he's just like a full-on which collusion like goofus and i don't care what happens to him and i don't think that they and you already said this jamie but they don't do a good enough job of showing that they fucking care about each other and i know that there's the bit there's the bit at the end. Well, we're not there yet. We'll deal with it when whatever. But we're not supposed to think that she really cares that much about him. She's manipulating him and she's going along with it.

And he's in love with her. But they don't do anything to really build that relationship or the emotional stakes of it in any way. But he calls her baby. So that's how we know that he loves her question mark there's those long montages yeah there's all these opportunities and i get like story logic i'm like okay that makes sense but also i wouldn't have been bothered as an audience member when there's just like they'll have one conversation and then there'll be a montage where he's like and then i didn't see her for two weeks and i kind of just went back to what i was doing and i was like well

that's boring that doesn't right i don't really care oh yeah there's a whole conversation to be had about like his motive or lack thereof it's wild his i think his motive is that he's horny like yeah seriously yeah which i mean i've had a horny motive in my day but not sure you know not to this extent doesn't drive you to murder and i've got a personality unlike walter so it's interesting when i have a horny motive yeah right um okay so where did we leave off um oh i like when he goes bowling on the way home sorry i was like that is that is again like just a creepy bizarre thing to do like i think i gotta blow some steam out hey that's character development i yeah he likes bowling alone i also wondered if that was a euphemism for something like if that was understood that if you know if

you go bowling after work it's really like did he go to a bar and get drunk? I don't know. You have a beer and go bowling alone. Yeah, you get drunk at your house and jerk off. Right. Okay, so he's kind of having conflicting thoughts because he's like, I don't want to be involved with her, but she's so hot, so I don't know. And then she pays him a visit and basically confirms that his suspicions were correct about her wanting to have her husband killed. And she reveals that it's because her husband is abusive toward her. Walter and Phyllis kiss. Then Walter is like, you know, you probably won't get away with this. But with my help and know-how as an insurance guy, maybe you will get away with this. But with my help and know-how as an insurance guy, maybe you will get away with it. So then they start to scheme. First, they need to trick Mr. Dietrichson into signing the policy, and they need a witness, which ends up being Dietrichson's daughter from his first marriage Lola so he signs the policy

then Walter's like oh by the way if we do a double indemnity which is when and then we go the title which is when the insurance pays out double on certain accidents for example if someone is killed on a train in which case for this policy they would stand to make $100,000 in the event of Mr. Dietrichson's death. So they're like, let's cash in on that. Which is like a bajillion dollars in 1944 money. Right. Yes. So they arrange for Mr. Dietrichson to take a train on his upcoming trip to Palo Alto. But before that happens, Mr. Dietrichson falls and breaks his leg and to Palo Alto. But before that happens,

Mr. Dietrichson falls and breaks his leg and calls off the trip. So Phyllis is freaking out, but Walter's like, it's cool. We just got to be patient. And then also Walter and Phyllis are having an affair throughout this whole thing and he keeps calling her baby and it's gross.

Yeah, that's how you know that they're in love because they kissed two times and he calls her baby one million times. Yes.'s that's love that's how love works yes so walter tries to take his mind off the whole thing a week or so passes and then one day he gets a call from phyllis saying that her husband is taking the train that night so this is their chance another thing that just i thought was like bizarre and funny when i was reading about the just the train that night so this is their chance another thing that just i thought was like bizarre and fun when i was reading about the just the way that this movie was written because raymond chandler was a co-writer on this was that he like i guess he spent a lot of time in la

trying to like get a feel for but like this this movie a lot of the moments feel like that snl sketch where they can't stop talking about traffic and intersections because there's so many times where the characters are so specific about like what street in L.A. they're going to to like go roller skating. Or it's like, yeah, I'm going to Formosa and Santa Monica. And her house is on Los Feliz Boulevard. I was like, well, this is not that's not what that looks like. Right. I was like, did it look like that? I don't know. But yeah, it is very like this is L.A., but it looks like right it's like i was like did it look like that i don't know but yeah it is very like this is la but it doesn't like i wouldn't put it in an la

category of like if you want to watch movies about la because i didn't feel like la in any way other than the names of streets i just thought it was like funny that they like felt that it almost felt like a self-conscious reflex to be like we're definitely here and we know the names of the streets too right okay so that night walter does a bunch of things to establish his alibi then walter kills mr dietrichson as phyllis drives him to the train station and then walter gets on the train pretending to be mr dietrichson and jumps off the train and fakes the accident. And then they put Mr. Dietrichson's dead body on the tracks. And it seems like everything went according to plan, but Walter can't help but feel something's wrong or that like, you know,

he's going to be found out or something. In the days that follow, the police find Mr. Dietrichson's body. They rule it an accidental death. But then Walter's boss, whose name is Edward Norton, by the way, I also was like, oh, he's pissed that the company is going to have to pay out all the money on Dietrichson's policy. And he's certain the death was not an accident. He thinks it was a suicide. So he calls in Phyllis, who says like, that's ridiculous. My husband didn't die by suicide. And Keyes, who again,

is a skeptic, believes that the death was an accident at first. So it looks like Walter and Phyllis are going to get the $100,000 payout. But then Keys is like, wait a minute. If Mr. Dietrichson knew he had accident insurance, why didn't he do anything when he broke his leg? So then Keys gets to thinking the whole thing was a setup. Meanwhile, Phyllis and Walter are freaking out. The whole situation is tearing their relationship apart. Then the daughter, Lola, pays Walter a visit and tells him that she suspects Phyllis murdered her mother several years back. I like Lola. She's a smart cookie. People got to take Lola more seriously. Oh my god, the amount that she gets gaslit by Walter in this movie, and then he starts dating her, basically, to distract her.

I know. It's really gross. Has it ever stated how old she is? I feel like it's heavily implied that she is a teenager. Like, she's in school. She's going roller skating. She needs permission from her dad to go places. I was really curious about this.

So I found the screenplay that was written in the 40s to see if it said and it does say how old she is she is 19 according to the screenplay that's convenient well right i guess that is i love in creepy movies where they're like hi i'm 18 so this creepy thing that's about to happen is totally legal. Right. And then she turns to the camera. She's like, I'm 18 recently. And like, you're just like, oh, my God. That is interesting that that they felt the need to specify.

And by interesting, I mean weird. Right. Yeah. So either way he I mean, whatever there's I mean, it's still creepy because they start dating and he's 35 and she's 19. And it's under false pretenses. Like there's so much about it. And there's this whole other boyfriend to Zichetti, right, is in the is in the works here. Who's not looking particularly 19 years old to me.

And also speaking of like male toxic behaviors when we meet zaketti he is just like who's this guy you can't what you're with me you can't be with this guy he can't know about me i like and it was just like really aggressive and she's like no no baby i love you and you're like like you just worry for this poor girl and she's been through so much and like the it did make me laugh when the zakedi guy was like i don't have friends i'm like well no shit we can see why yeah yeah you're you're a little abrasive right yeah i don't know i mean that that when he starts dating her i was like this can't be happening and like we've had age gap conversations uh on the show before i don't think we need to get into it today but like this one there's a pretty obvious uh no thank you right so lola thinks that phyllis killed her

father now too so walter is like gaslighting her and distracting her so that she like doesn't tell anyone else about it keys meanwhile is piecing things together more and more. Basically, he has the whole crime figured out, except for who pulled it off. He doesn't yet know that it was Walter. And because Keys is getting so close to the truth, Walter wants to distance himself from Phyllis, especially because he also continues to see Lola. And especially because he finds out that Phyllis has been having an affair with Lola's former boyfriend, Nino Zacchetti. So he does have a friend. Right.

So then Walter goes to confront Phyllis. She shoots him, but he doesn't die right away. And he gets the gun and shoots her and kills her. And then he goes to his office and starts the confession that we saw him recording at the beginning. Except Keyes comes in and overhears. So Walter tries to leave. He wants to escape across the border, but he dies from his gunshot wound before he can even get out of the building. And that's how the movie ends. So let's take a quick 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. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president.

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Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, can we talk about Femme Fatale just for a minute? Oh, yeah. Yes, please. So I dragged Caitlin out to watch Batman Returns, the best movie that's ever been made recently. And when I left the movie, I was thinking about how my feminist analysis

has become much more nuanced and more open to things like Catwoman. Whereas 10 years ago, I would have been like this sexist piece of shit, da da da da da, right? So I was thinking about this with femme fatales, because like, on the surface, and maybe not the surface, but this is kind of what I wanted to chat with you about is like, they seem incredibly sexist representations, right? And Jamie, you started us talking about like, films and and like narrative media often bring out these anxieties that are coming around at the times that they're being created. And so, you know, like it's exhausting to be like this manipulative woman who's just trying to get money and kill her husband.

And like a lot of femme fatales is that kind of like women are sneaky and duplicitous and they use their sexual wiles to get men to do things for them. In your minds, is there any nuance to this? Is there any way in which that is salvageable as not fucked up? I think that it depends. I don't know how you feel, Caitlin, but I don't have a I don't know how you feel Caitlin but I don't have like a hard answer to that I think that the more context I had for why these characters were so popular when they were so popular um kind of clarified how I felt about it because I do think it's like ultimately it is a I think it's like the kind of misogynist trope that is easily reclaimable but was not intended to be reclaimable. It's like very much a clear, like, the most heterosexual white dudes in the world are writing this at a time where women were,

I guess, unusually able to access money and capital and power during World War Two. And so I feel like it's just like calcifying that anxiety and selling it back to men who are feeling the same way. I do think that there is an angle to reclaim the femme fatale that has been kind of reclaimed in some neo-noir movies. And I think I didn't remember this particular detail about this movie, but the fact phyllis you know they include the detail that phyllis is being abused by her husband and so i feel like there's an in right there for like but is that true well we got to get revenge like but that's the thing is she's so manipulative that why would you believe that i had that thought too where i was like is that part of

because when so in addition to like using her sexual wiles and her feminine wiles and her sexuality and exploiting that to deceive and seduce men, the femme fatale archetype also is just like flat out lying and using deceit to get what she wants. Is that the case? Like when she reveals that her husband is abusive, is that actually true? Which very well could be the case. But because we don't see it on screen, we don't see the abuse, it does make you wonder, like, is that part of her deceit? We don't really know for sure. Right. I mean, I guess that I believed it. Maybe I'm a Walter, too. But I believed it because you saw all of the other

behaviors that she was describing in that conversation you did see him like he was drinking a lot during the day he was dismissive of her he was belligerent towards her he was dismissive of his daughter and so because that was sort of where i was going where i was like well you it seems like you know it wasn't like she was like he's this awful piece of shit and then you met this very sweet husband who was very in love with her like right it did seem like he was i mean didn't deserve to be thrown off a train maybe but but i don't know that was where i saw the end for this was um buying into the story of this woman who is unhappy with her wife getting revenge which of course like changes when you find out

that she also killed his wife which is so that's where for me it's like it kind of falls apart where it's like this witchy stereotype where you have no like why why why does she start killing people what is the motivation what does she get out of it who is she like what is her background and all of these things i feel like would make her a much more accessible character but it feels like that information is withheld from you by the writers intentionally so you're just like this woman is evil in a in a vacuum we don't trust her and she's using sexuality to get what she wants i don't know i'm very conflicted about it. Same. Yeah, like it's I do. I do understand why the femme fatale trope has been reclaimed and why it hasn't like disappeared because it's also like I feel like in the 1940s. This is like a kind of an unusual role where it's an active female character. Right. female character right that she is involved like so deeply involved in the plot and she

moves things forward everything is her idea for the most part and it's not like there were a lot of movies at this time where you could just you could see a woman do anything except be mommy or wife right yeah the femme fatale character by nature of the narrative that's being told usually means that that character has way more agency than a lot of female characters that we've seen in like cinema or literature before or since like right and then you could make the argument that it's representation on screen of like a sexually liberated woman and a woman that has sexual autonomy over her own of course it is evil to be sexually liberated but that's that's always where i diverged from a lot of the feminist analysis of this stuff because i was like but is it right like if she's evil and manipulative and

we're supposed to think of her like as a bad you know like as a bad person and because women are evil just because she has like is in tune with her sexuality I don't think that that's a pro for us as a movement right as like feminisms you know in general but I think that there has been a push in feminist film theory specifically to try and kind of wedge in this like sort of positive angle on some of these films that I just don't think works like I don't think that analysis really right because when things that we are hoping to see such as like women having autonomy over their own sexuality when that is being vilified right obviously that's not it's not a plus for us. No, I definitely don't think it's like a movement pushing trope at all. I just understand why people I feel like it almost maybe I'm off here, but I feel like it kind of the impulse to reclaim a sexually liberated woman who's clearly enjoying being evil it like almost scratches the same itch of reclaiming queer coded disney villains where you're like okay this was done with like not a

kind intention to the community like this is like it's clearly vilifying this character but they're having so much fun and it like they're so active that and and also like I feel like it's very important that it's like and this was the most you could get at this time I think that that has a lot to do with it as well yeah a hundred percent whereas like there just weren't options yeah I want to just reiterate and agree with you on that of like marginalized folks have been desperate for representation at all and we take the scraps we can get right and we and we left read and we queer code and we do all kinds of things to feel seen and and uh recognized in a medium in entertainment in general um so yes but also like but also it's a problem um related to this is I think there's also the other piece of this is around complexity and allowing marginalized characters to be evil or to be messy or to be complicated. that right that you like queer folks are always villainized and black folks always die and you

know like we have all these tropes that don't come out of nothing that there is something to be said about the fact that like yes it's kind of cool to be able to see to see women in a character that is more complex than the housewife or the love interest but it's still detrimental right and so holding those two truths in some way i think is what makes these conversations so rich and interesting. Yeah. Right. I totally agree. as the audience could have conflicting feelings about like yes i understand her motive for wanting to get rid of her husband and i see where she's coming from like i would identify with that also but you know murder also isn't good so i don't know but the movie and and many of these

movies just paint the femme fatale character in these very broad strokes of like well no her her motivations aren't complicated her backstory isn't complicated she wants to steal she wants to cheat she wants to right she's evil for the sake of being evil and to me it comes back to intent as far as like the people who were writing these characters, because, you know, the femme fatale character in film noir specifically, because this archetype has existed in literature for centuries. The Bible, yeah. Right, right. But for film noir specifically, like you said, Jamie, it was in response to, like, men's anxieties over, you know, empowered women and sexually liberated women, like the flappers of the 20s

and how men felt threatened by that. Women be voting now. Right. And because in a patriarchal structure that is designed to disempower women in all capacities of their life, including their sexuality, a sexually empowered woman with agency and autonomy is going to be a threat to a lot of individual men and a threat to the larger structure so because because that's the reason that femme fatales were written that way and these like broad strokes of like they're evil because women are scary and i'm i feel threatened by them right right and also contextually to remember the early like the turn of the century was like there was a like one there was the fight for women's right to vote which obviously complicated and i don't want to erase the

racism and everything around that um but also there was a huge like huge battle for birth control and like reproductive rights was happening at the time and there was a huge battle for birth control and reproductive rights was happening at the time. And there was a huge attempt to squash it. I mean, it's so exactly what's happening right now. It's like sexual in nature. So like not even sex toys or birth control, but also like love letters and photos and all of that kind of stuff. I didn't know that. Yeah. through legal means a pushback against the rising tide of women's sexuality and sexual ownership

and you know rights to birth control and all of that that's happening so that is also informing some of what i think we're seeing in the femme fatale as well yeah that makes sense that's really interesting i didn't i wasn't that is such a fucked up thing to do holy shit it is in another one of the episodes coming out and i'm like what is this guy's fucking name i'm totally blanking on it yeah i don't know um jamie you started to touch on something as far as like walter's character goes and how like his motive is so flimsy and yeah to me it like he i'm seeing that that was like written intentionally which i also find confusing maybe in an effort to like just lean into the idea that oh women are so

scary and beware of any woman who is sexually liberated because she's gonna get you and she's gonna kill you i wonder if walter's character was written the way that it was to just further emphasize that because again he doesn't seem to have much of a motive to commit murder it just seems that he's kind of like under the spell of this woman and her quote feminine wiles yeah where you know it's just like this idea that don't be a weak man weak men are tempted by these temptresses and you'll succumb to the temptation right which like yeah furthers the argument that she's literally like a variation on a witch right and like has her anklet has him like doing things he wouldn't normally do i was also reading that they i don't

know just a few things were done in this movie intentionally that i guess i just assumed were not done intentionally including her bad wig they're like we chose a bad billy wilder said that they chose a bad wig on purpose to underscore what a sleazy phony she was and like i know it's like measures were taken to really make you hate phyllis which i think is fun because in 2021 i watch it and i don't i don't hate her and i wonder how if there were women in the audience at this movie because women have always been the majority moviegoers throughout history and I wonder if there were women in the audience at this movie that were like good for her you know right right you know but yeah Walter I mean I feel like it is kind of inherent to the noir genre in a way that's kind of frustrating and

I feel like some neo-noirs have course corrected this because it doesn't need to be this way but like all the characters are kind of mysterious or that's what you're told they're like oh everyone's kind of mysterious you don't know what's going on with anybody you can't trust anybody but then what you lose there is like you don't know anything about anybody so it's really hard to get attached to any particular character because you're like well i guess we'll see what happens but but I don't know what this person's deal is. I would have loved to understand what drove Phyllis to kill his wife. That is such an important piece of context that would have drawn me into that character's story so much more. But they're just like, well, she's evil, so of course she would do this. Yeah, I'm interested in...

So what we've been saying is that neither of them have very good character development right at least to the standards that we would expect of today sure and i think that there is such a reliance on stereotypes of the time so like this guy neff right the actor who plays him uh fred mcmurray like we're like ew you're fucking awful and terrible and I hate you. But he's probably coming in with all of this like goodwill from the audience

that makes them like him more than we have any context for. Right, right. And I know we've covered this, but I'm just thinking about the fact that like there's no character development in this whole fucking movie at all for anybody, right? Like nobody really, you know,

you don't really get their motivations you only get them because of the plot right like the like sure moment to moment plot of it all and and and so what are we bringing as the audience to attach to that also i say this as someone who's like obsessed with character development and if you don't fucking have it in your movie i'm just like get the fuck out of here because like and i do this all the time and it's very important i'm like i don't understand why these people love each other. I have no, you did not give me a reason for it, right? And so in the same way in this, I feel like it didn't matter

because like, what an interesting concept this is. What a wild, like, what interesting lighting choices were made and what, you know, all of that kind of stuff that would suck an audience in at the time. But why do we still hold on to this as the quintessential epic? You know, like you both talked about how you watched it several times in film school, how it's like the movie. And like, this is the thing that we're teaching young filmmakers is really, really important.

Right. You know, it also and this is something we've talked about on the podcast, too. But it's a matter of like, who is designing these curriculums in film schools? Who is curating the lists like, you know, like the best movies of all time lists that this movie is on like every fucking one of like. Who is like members of the Academy? Like all of that. Who are the critics historically who have, know hailed movies like this it's again historically been cishet white men with like curriculum too i feel like there is such a

like copy paste effect where it's like if if and this varies but like if professors were paid you know more for their labor and had time to put together their own curriculum and actually like watch shit and like build their own stuff. I feel like you wouldn't you wouldn't have every single college freshman in a film program watching double indemnity. But it's just like, oh, yeah, I guess this is a movie you watch during the noir section. And so every kid being extorted for money by this big. Anyways, I wish I hadn't gone to college. Waste of time. And so every kid being extorted for money by this big heap. Anyways, I wish I hadn't gone to college. Waste of time.

It's also self-fulfilling, right? Because you were taught that this was really important. Therefore, you're going to teach that it's really important, right? Sure. And I also was thinking about how we often look at film and media in general, music, whatever, from time periods as representative of the time. But they're really not. Like, this is such a good example of that.

Where not, sorry, I'm going to temper that a little bit. Whereas like, film, up until very recently, was not something you could just fucking go do, right? Like, it's not something that you could just like film on your phone and make movies and be like, I have a story to tell and I want to tell it. So we're not getting, we don't have the alternative perspectives of in film media specifically of that time period of all the women who are like, fuck, yeah, we're like taking over and like doing all of this stuff, right? We're only getting the impressions of the dominant powerful in the moment, right? Right.

And I think that I'm just thinking about this now as we're talking but like how that makes us think that this is what the past was right we erase all of the histories of everything else in every other culture and every other like subculture and like groups and that aren't represented in what they were doing and and it makes us in a lot of ways not understand the history of activism not understand the history of uprising uh how change actually happens because we only have these movies to tell us what it was like but not only but you know what i mean like right i mean it's it's like movies like this that like are the status quo they maintain the status quo and then yeah everything else just gets pushed to the side and erased and then we don't learn about them unless we're like we take it upon ourselves to

like right dig and and find this stuff i think that that's that's uh that's an excellent transition into the case that this that double indemnity the book was based on which i did a little bit of light googling on and found it to be pretty interesting i feel like we actually had like a recent-ish conversation about this when we did chicago because it's kind of dealing with the same era so and just kind of like how the adaptation like when men are adapting the ideas of men or adapting the ideas of men it's just this like fucked up game of telephone that ends up with like i have to kill someone because she's got a sexy little anklet and then it's like well let's trace this back to the source of what was actually happening um so this is a screenplay by billy

wilder and raymond chandler there's a bunch of interesting drama that's not relevant to this show that I just enjoyed reading about. So it's a screenplay by them based on a novel called Double Indemnity by an author named James M. Kane, who wrote that book when he was a reporter writing about a double indemnity case that he attended as a reporter in 1927. And so I was like, okay, well, what was that crime? And was James Cain, my little hunch was that James Cain made it sexy for no reason, and that there was probably something going on. Oh, Jamie, did you have a hunch? Do you have a little man living inside you that tells you? I have a little man and I took up my little magnifying glass and said let's go to wikipedia.org and see what's going on here and so that's what i did um so it's a case of a woman named ruth snyder from the late 20s who did do the double indemnity thing and killed her husband, Albert Snyder, and went to jail. It's also a case of how brutalizing marginalized people is always going to get a lot of press

attention and really exploitative press attention because she was eventually killed in the electric chair and they published the photo of her being executed on the front page of the newspaper. And it was one of the most famous pictures of the 1920s. So it was absolutely horrific. The reason she committed the crime was not because she was a witch or a sexy little anklet haver. It was because of, and this actually, I guess I feel darkly vindicated, even though I don't know what, you know, what the writers of the movie thought. But her husband was very physically abusive and emotionally abusive. And he abused her because she had a daughter instead of a son, which gender is a construct and no one has fucking control over that.

He had like pictures of his ex-fiance hanging up around their house and refused to take them down. Like it just sounded like an extremely emotionally and physically volatile, abusive relationship. And so eventually she she double indemnified and she she killed the motherfucker. And I just thought that that was such a, it's frustrating. And I think it's interesting that you can take a story that tragic and upsetting and turn it into, well, of course, she was evil. And we can't even take her at her word that her husband was being abusive because she can't be trusted. And she's, you know, like, you know what, if it is based on

that, I bet you the her husband abusing her is actually real in the movie, but they didn't do any due diligence of making that established, right? Yeah, you you sort of like, brushed upon this, but this idea of sensationalizing marginalized grief and bodies and, and I think that that's a really critical piece of all of this is that like, well, women are dainty and nonviolent and don't do these things. And therefore, holy shit, they did this thing. Isn't that like sensational and cool and interesting and newsworthy? Right. And that is also gender essentialism. Right. We're talking about.

Sure. You know, like all humans are capable of all things. Right. We all have the same. I mean, not all. You know, like all humans are capable of all things. Right. We all have the same. I mean, not all. You know what I mean, generally speaking. But because patriarchy says that women aren't these things, it's really interesting if we imagine women to be all of these, you know, things dictating that women are manipulative and conniving and all of that but right you know that it's just another piece of how why i think these these stories get sensationalized and they still do right sure they still do like we love women as victims we love like brutalized like true crime you know and i'm gonna get into the nightmare that is true crime currently and we love a female villain because it seemed it still seems like something outside of the norm right yeah i i think writers justify continuing to like use the tropes because it's like well it's interesting it's it's cinematic it's these are interesting characters it also interesting. It's cinematic. These are interesting characters.

It also makes me wonder, at least, how much more sexualized and sinister femme fatale characters in film noir would have been during this era if it weren't for the restrictions of the production code? Like, how much worse could it be right yeah i mean i but the answer is the women in the 90s yeah like action hero female 90s action heroes right i i've been re-watching all the terminator movies because we're doing an episode on the terminator franchise on feminist frequency radio you can check out my podcast um and you know terminator 3 had a female terminator

and like there's a scene where she sees a billboard with a woman with larger breasts so then they like pan to her boobs and she makes them bigger so she can like get so she can manipulate the cop into letting her go when she was speeding and you're just like one this is such a product of its time but that's what this would have been It would have been some kind of equivalent to the sexy, you know, hyper-sexualized using feminine wiles to get what you want. Right. That's true. Yeah. Or like basic instinct. Yeah. Where like Sharon Stone's just like, here's my vagina. Now you'll never you won't even notice that i'm a murderer and again it's like it's interesting to me historically that the the femme fatale trope makes that big comeback in the 90s because it's like a

similar era of feminist backlash and so it's like that is when usually this trope pops is when women's rights are being actively set back so So, you know, look out for that. If a femme fatale starts to pop, guess what? We're about to lose some rights, which we're doing anyways. That whole like mid-90s to aughts time period was all the like ironic sexism and ironic racism time period. So it was part of the backlash of like coming off of the 80s, the conservative family values messaging that was being pusheds the conservative family values messaging that was

being pushed by the conservative establishment and then you had all of this like but we're beyond all we're beyond sexism so now you get those carl's jr commercials where women are like eating the burgers and like cum is running down their faces and all that shit it all that all comes out of that moment and that's funny remember this yeah you're like i don't remember this like soup i made a really really early feminist frequency video i'm sure it's embarrassing as fuck now about ironic sexism and how like south park is 100 this and so it all that was when we got all of those female action heroes that like you know the reboot of charlie's angels and um you know like all of that stuff where you're it's they're so cringy and hard to watch but it was women's empowerment the Spice Girls and all

that shit you know girl power girl power oh yeah we said girl power feminism yeah um yeah this is I'm so glad I was really hoping that this would be the way that this episode would go we would just get into it I'm very excited i just feel like this movie has more for us to talk about in terms of the relevance of what this movie means to us today than the like actual content of this movie then versus what's happening yeah it's like yeah i totally agree and i i just want to the last thing i had about femme fatales, I just like, I don't know, it's just such interesting timing, but like how this trope of just like an empowered woman is a dangerous woman. We've had so many conversations about that and how it easily translates to like so many

witch characters, even like recent witch characters. It's just like coding a woman as competent, and therefore evil, and therefore unlovable, and therefore like not the protagonist under any circumstances. Which I don't know, I mean, with the femme fatale, I mean, I would argue that, I don't, I guess like, Walter doesn't feel like the protagonist of this movie to me, because I don't care about him. But maybe that's just personal. But anyways, as far as the femme fatale trope went to, Caitlin, you referenced this earlier, but it goes back to ancient times. Like we are addicted to othering any marginalized person but in in this trope specifically women and the only like growth

in the trope in this era of hollywood is that the femme fatales are more active now there used to be like the earliest examples of the femme fatale trope are like women who are just being told they're evil just because so like you have like your helen of troyes where they're like she's so hot that we had to have a war about it. Like they're completely passive on top of it. So I'm like, I guess I prefer an active femme fatale. But even so, I mean, it's just especially with the context of like the case that trickles down to this movie. It's just like, well, clearly it just couldn't be more obvious that there should not be exclusively men telling this story. Because if you being abused to the

point where her corpse was in the fucking newspaper. That stuff makes me so mad. Just to call out, women who have murdered their partners, mostly male partners, in self-defense or because of abusive relationships or what have you like are rotting in jail like that it's still not and it's disproportionately black and brown women who are incarcerated for it's just like it's yes but no but no phyllis was anklet she was evil she's bad she just kills everybody for reasons but i love watching barbara stanwick so it's hard right oh anyways can we talk a little bit about lola yeah let's talk about lola i don't really know what to make of her because we only really we only get to see her in a few brief scenes we learn that she's dating this guy nino zichetti

who is a real piece of work it's a good character name i have no friend he's an asshole she's in love with him we don't learn her age in the movie but again according to the screenplay she's 19 okay okay uh then basically walter gaslights her and coerces her into a brief relationship which seems to work because she kind of like magically forgets all about her suspicions that her stepmother probably killed her father which she is right about but because she's being manipulated by walter the story has her forget about that right so i mean that to me just this just feels like another just female character in the movie who's not a femme fatale, but who is wildly underwritten and who the story has her make some confusing choices. And again, like, I don't want to, I'm not blaming her for being manipulated and coerced by Walter, but a lot of her choices

and just kind of the way she was characterized didn't track for me. And also because we don't learn anything about her. I think I kind of like half stopped paying attention around this point in the movie. Not intentionally, just in the way that that happens when you're sitting at home. And I totally like I don't think you're wrong, but I did not read it as him manipulating Lola. I just read it as like creepy, like getting away from Phyllis and like because all that stuff was revealed about Nino that like he was just moving in that way but now I'm like oh that makes so much more sense that he was well he literally says like in his

voiceover yeah yeah he's like I couldn't let her tell anyone else about her suspicions you're totally so I took her to the beach and I took her for some French fries. He's like basically saying like I hung out with her to distract her. And then it seems like she might have like developed a crush. It's like it seems like she develops a crush on him or at very least he is presenting himself in a position of authority. And I feel like he's like not just leveraging his age and his gender. He's also leveraging his job over her.

He's like, well, I'm an insurance guy. So he's gaslighting her in the grounds of like, well, I know what I'm talking about. You're just a kid. What do you know? Okay, then was Nino sleeping with Phyllis or was she manipulating him to sort of put a button on this whole murder thing my read was that

that relationship might have been a bit more like mutually consensual but because phyllis is characterized as this like very textbook femme fatale that she was manipulating him and maybe just she was maybe just like setting up a few different fall guys so that she wasn't so culpable but that didn't make sense to me either like her relationship with him I didn't understand why that was happening maybe we missed something and maybe like listeners are like frothing right now they're like it's so obvious but like yeah I sort of was like I just I was like oh I guess by the end of a noir you just have to find out that everybody secretly knew each other the whole time or something like it just felt very like genre-y

i wasn't totally clear on that either yeah but also if this is the blueprint like if this movie is the blueprint right then this movie created some fucked up blueprints you know you're like it's kind of a confusing blueprint but i do i mean lola i feel like there's she's definitely underwritten and it sucks because i feel like the early scenes with lola i was kind of like gently encouraged by because as i said at the beginning i didn't think there was going to be a second woman in the movie so i was like thrilled that i was like oh there's a also that cutting thing where phyllis was like yeah and he just loves his daughter so much i was like phyllis give it a rest i assumed that they were talking about a child and so but they were talking about a 19 year old whatever but i do like that lola like when lola

is introduced i liked how her character was introduced she like pushed back on like her dad was like who are you going to see what are you doing blah blah like doing kind of the stereotypical controlling father thing right and she like lies to his face very calmly she's like i'm this is what i'm doing i'm going to this intersection and like goodbye and i was like oh i like this character she's fun like she's it's i feel like it's unusual especially in 1944 for the first interaction you see with a female character for them to stand up for themselves in some way but then it's like that's slowly and i also like that she is the person that sees through everything that's going on which makes it like more disappointing and shitty to see her talked out of what she knows is the truth for the rest of the movie.

And then she disappears. Right. I was rooting for her. Same. Justice for Lola. And now she's lost all of her parents. And now she's a 19 year old orphan like but i guess in a way she's also presented as an obstacle for walter because she starts having suspicions and he's got to deal with

it so she's under characterized and she's presented as an obstacle the way that many women are in movies right wouldn't it be so cool if she like was the one that many women are in movies. Right. Wouldn't it be so cool if she like was the one that solved it? Right. I was like, that would have been awesome. You know, like if they just did this like spin at the end where she came around and was like, let me tell you, I figured it all out. And now I'm going to extort you all for something, you know? I would have loved that.

Or I wish that she had showed up and killed Phyllis because it's like she and Phyllis had such a terrible relationship. Phyllis literally killed her mother. They didn't want to play Chinese checkers together. Like it would have been cool if Lola came back at the end and like killed them both and then was like, all right, Zakedi, let's, bow you're sort of given on her thing is like, oh, and she'll probably get to date this asshole again. Because Walter tells Zucchetti like, hey, call Lola back. She likes you. I was like, oh, great. What a what a win.

I get to date a man with no friends again. Also, that whole scene. I was like, he's gonna know that you did it. Like that whole scene. I was like, he pops out of the bushes and is like go hang out with Lola and you're like wow you just outed yourself big time yeah like right not a good move they're so bad at planning well there's not a smart guy he's I also don't understand how what Neff does to kill Mr. Dietrichson I think he strangles him but like

wouldn't the autopsy show that he was strangled and not fell off of a train? So their plan is just very, I don't know, it doesn't make any sense. Also, Walter's plan to communicate with Phyllis as they're creating their scheme is for her to go to a shop every day and, quote, be buying things every day at 11 a.m and if he needs to talk to her that day he'll just like show up when it's convenient for him because women be shopping

she has to go be shopping all the time every day and then he'll be like and he might not even show up yeah he went and also part of this is that he's like we have to go to this shop because we can't be seen talking to each other so his idea is to meet in public where people can see them talking to each other but they're like shopping so they're not really talking to each other you know yeah that's really funny and also i like those are really interesting scenes too in terms of the sterleness of it and like the brightness of those shots and like you know like we didn't really talk about any of the visuals in the movie but they're you know anyways whatever right right right i mean

the i feel like that is like a large portion of why these movies are still well regarded as because they look really fucking cool like they're they're the shadow play in this and like yes yeah that's good my favorite line in the movie was when keys said papa has it all figured out i jumped in my seat i was like this guy is weird i like him speaking of keys the one part of the movie that i was like oh this isn't the worst thing i've ever seen is where I think once, maybe even twice, Walter tells Keys, which is a colleague of his, but they're also like close friends. Walter tells Keys that he loves him. And just like a very like, we have a close relationship and it's, we're not led to believe that it's anything more than platonic, but like,

I just really enjoyed seeing like a man tell another man that he loves him because that's not something you see very often and certainly not in this era where you know men are conditioned to think that like even a platonic affection toward another man is gross or something who knows but they were i was like wow they were friends and they loved each other too bad that walter's the most boring man alive and keys uh participated in the red scare but you know they were friends they were friends um the last thing i wanted to mention is something that's very typical of this era which is the representation of people of color in the movie which is that they are only seen very fleetingly and always in like service roles like train porters and you know

wait staff and and things like that um well there was one character i wrote a note being like there's a character from inglewood that kind of looked like he was in brownface and I was like what the fuck is this no I did wonder about that girl girl lapis or something in that early scene yeah yeah yeah there was I was like oh this is not good yeah hard to say but representation of people of color is scarce has always been bad and then as in this era especially is uh i would like to take that on in a future episode as well like we should yeah continue to pursue this conversation for sure absolutely does anyone have anything else they want to talk about regarding double indemnity no when are we gonna do it let's do a double indemnity let's like yeah a little heist crew and kill someone's shitty husband good idea monies what are they gonna do put us in the electric chair and then put it in the newspaper

it wouldn't happen yes that will be our claim to fame feminist podcasters do the ultimate feminist podcasters get the electric chair for thought crimes. Feminist? More like femme fatalinist. Oh, nice. Nice one. Yep. I think we're going to get the electric chair just for that. Not that we should be joking about how awful fucking, what's it called when the state murders you?

State murder? Capital punishment? Yeah, capital punishment? Yeah, capital punishment. This movie does pass the Bechdel test, though. Yes. It does when Lola and Phyllis are talking about how they don't want to play Chinese checkers with each other. Yeah.

Lola says, do you mind if we don't finish this game? It bores me stiff. And then Phyllis says, you got something better to do? And I think those are the only those are the only two that's the only example of an exchange between two women and don't worry they hate each other i mean i guess it does it that conversation is there to establish that they don't like each other but the text itself is like not narratively meaningful so to me it's like a barely pass it's a barely pass but i. So to me, it's like a barely pass. It's a barely pass, but I think it's a funny barely pass

because it's just a hostile exchange between the only two women in the movie. Yay. As far as our nipple scale though, on a scale of zero to five nipples based on how well the movie fares when examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. I'll give it a half nipple for the following reasons.

That we see a woman have more agency than a lot of women have been able to have in movies. Of course, that agency is vilified, and we are not meant to empathize with this character at all. And instead, we are meant to see her as an evil temptress, which is how, unless, you know, there are a few examples of like a subversion of the femme fatale trope that, you know, have happened in more recent films. But especially of this era, there was no nuance, there was no complexity in general to the femme fatale archetype. And even though, like we discussed, there have been maybe some attempts to reclaim the archetype, I don't... It's not in the text of this movie, though.

Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't work for me, especially with the intent of the storytellers and villainizing an empowered and sexually liberated woman. Don't like it. I'll give the movie one half nipple and I'll give it to Lola, who deserved more justice for Lola. I guess I'll give it to Lola who deserved more justice for Lola. I guess I'll give it one question mark.

I do think that this is like the most active female character that you could find in movies at this time, unfortunately. I am a little more pro reclaiming and I think that it has been semi successfully reclaimed in more recent neo-noir efforts simply by giving a woman who does something bad context and motivation which is like I feel like what is really really missing here especially with the context of knowing what the source material is and how it's like Anita was saying, like this, this movie is presenting a reality that we are told existed, but never did. Like no one was ever acting in a void like this, witches are not a thing.

But I do appreciate how active the villainous woman is throughout. And also I Lola, I mean, she has a strong start. And then I feel like she's kind of like neutered by this story, which I found frustrating and unnecessary. Yeah, I mean, like, because of the era, it is extremely white and straight. And, and we didn't really talk about this. But the the whole idea of like, you're kind of told the end at the end that the great tragedy of this story is that it turns out that phyllis could love after all and you're like who gives a shit like it and there's like this last minute production code style like the redemptive power of a love between a man and a woman and blah blah

blah like it's just i guess i'm bumping it down to a half nipple and i'm giving that half nipple to the line. Papa has it all figured out. Beautiful. Anita, how about you? I don't think I can add anything to what y'all said. So I'm just going to piggyback on that. But I just I'm going to give my if I'm going to give my rating to somebody, my non-existent rating, it's going to be to the line. Hope there aren't any pigeons shitting on you while you're sunbathing because I can't get over that oh love it so wait zero nipples is that way you're giving it no i'm i'm i'm just gonna you but i think the half nipple is a good one okay i agree with what both of you said nice well anita thank you so much for joining us and having me thank you come back anytime uh tell us where people can

follow you on social media, plug anything you would like to plug. Yeah, so you can follow me on the social medias at Anita Sarkeesian. And one of the things I do is I run a emotional sport hotline for people who make or play games. It's called the Games and Online Harassment Hotline. So if you need a little emotional sport and you live in the US, you can text us. You can learn more at gameshotline.org. Our agents are trained in understanding internet culture and gaming culture and online harassment as well. So even if you don't play games and you need a little bit of help around some of this stuff, we're here for you. So gameshotlineline.org we're also in the middle of our end of year fundraising campaign for the hotline and everything else that feminist frequency does to

try to end abuse in the video game industry so if you want to pitch in a couple bucks to that uh feel free in addition to your patreon support of the bechtel cast right because yeah there's no we all we just share gotta share. There's no scarcity here. So, or it's all scarce, you know, one or the other. Right? So yeah, you can learn more at gameshotline.org. You can check me out at Anitia Sarkeesian on all the things. Oh, also my podcast, Feminist Frequency Radio.

If you like this, you'll like what we do. Yeah. Hell yeah. Give that a listen, everybody. And you can follow us on Twitter and instagram at bechtel cast and speaking of that patreon aka matreon you can find that at patreon.com slash bechtel cast you get two bonus episodes every month plus access to all of the previously released bonus episodes of which there are over 100 so check it out look at them go really putting in the time you better join and uh if you desire any if you have any merch related needs we've got

you there too you can go to tpublic.com slash the bechdel cast and get all of your oh it's it's guess what's in season right now? Baby Grinch t-shirts. Baby Grinch. There you go. Get your Baby Grinch t-shirts. And I guess now's the time where we shoot each other? Let's shoot each other and kiss. No, no, you push us off a train.

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. We definitely push. But not really. We're going to just pretend. Yeah. I mean, it's a pretty good mystery, right? I mean, I know we're done talking about it, but I'm like mean it's a pretty good mystery right i mean i know we're done talking about it but i'm like that's a pretty good scheme i was like cool i'm on board with this yeah except that they they execute it badly but the execution the idea was

good i maintained the idea was good the execution they clearly were ill-equipped yeah for sure all right y'all thanks so much for having me it's a pleasure talking with both of you the pleasure is all ours bye bye bye k 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 k 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. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology. Swaps of different meds. But by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress,

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