The Bechdel Cast - Election with Natasha Chandel

Episode Date: November 6, 2018

GO VOTE and then listen to our episode on Election with special guest Natasha Chandel but also PLEASE VOTE.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @Natasha_Chandel on Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. People like David Duchovny, Jeff Goldblum, and Kristen Wiig. We're doing all the dessert. We're doing all the dessert. We'll just skip right to it. Our second season is airing right now, so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi 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. or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, 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 Bechdel cast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus.

And my name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our podcast in which we discuss the role of women in famous movies you've seen before. Today's a special one. Ooh. Today's a special one. I mean, you're hearing us on a Tuesdayuesday you don't usually hear us on a tuesday yeah and uh it's it's okay first of all actually i'd like to do a psa right at the tippity okay the tippity top if you're listening to this on election day and you're like oh i'm just kicking back listening to the bachelor cast and you have not yet voted turn us the fuck off or listen to us on the way uh-huhhuh. Sorry, I couched it a little. Yeah. Get on your bird scooter.

Get in your car. Get on your public transit. Kayla knows the youth. Get on your freaking bird, kids. Get on your feet. You know, whatever mode of transit you want. Just get out there and vote. Hope you did your research.

Yeah. Well, okay. Cool. So that aside, welcome to the Bechdelcast. If you're not listening to this on Election Day, sorry for coming in so hot. But the message rings true. You should always vote every day. The next opportunity you have. Yeah, or that. Do it again. of the show we're going to be doing a live Bechtelcast show here in Los Angeles so hopefully

you live here but if not just travel no get with the program no big deal just just you know buy a flight and come on down uh but we're doing a show on Saturday November 10th at 9 p.m at the Ruby this time we'll be covering the fifth element one Ooh, one of my faves. With our guest and dear friend Danielle Radford. Hell yeah. For tickets, go to our website, BechdelCast.com, click on the Live Appearances tab, and we will see you there. It's a small venue, so grab your tickets ASAP. Wow, yes, queen, go off. Whee!

Okay, so this is our podcast about the portrayal of women in movies. We use the Bechdel test as our jumping off point for discussion. Of course, a test invented by cartoonist Alison Bechdel that for our purposes requires that a piece of media has a scene in which two female identifying characters with names talk about something other than a man for two or more lines of dialogue shall we demo it yeah let's demo it hey hey jamie hey caitlin did you vote today yes bitch of course i did well me too wow we're great and we only voted for women and that passes the bechdel test oh oh okay i was like, but what if some, but also this still goes, some female candidates might have some horrible ideas. So it's good to do your research in advance as well. Darn tootin'. What a productive Bechdel test passing conversation. So that's where, but we obviously expand the conversation to cover many different topics

related to how women are portrayed in the movie. Today we've got a great movie and a great guest. Yes, indeed. Let's introduce her. Let's do it. She is a producer, writer, actor, and host of the Kinda Dating podcast, Natasha Shandell. Hello. Hi. Thanks for being here. You guys are so funny. Aw, shucks. I was just listening to you in the office the other day. Aw, I hope I said something half decent. It was an uplifting one. Okay, good. It was an uplifting one, yeah.

Great. Then I take full credit for it. So we're talking about Election, the movie from 99, director Alexander Payne, adapted from a novel by Tom Perota. I used to have a doctor named Dr. Payne. Oh. And then I had a dentist named Dr. Vagenis. That's hilarious. Which is horrible.

Why was my dentist's last name Vagina? We don't know. If Dr. Vagenis gives me a root canal, does that pass the final test? These are the real questions. So, Natasha, tell us about your history, your relationship with this movie. I watched it around when it first came out. I really have a horrible memory, so I won't be the person who ever remembers me watching something in a movie theater. But unless it was Titanic, I 100% remember.

Oh, my gosh. We love Titanic. Yeah, that's the movie you remember watching in a movie theater but um unless it was titanic i 100 remember oh my gosh titanic yeah that's usually remember watching in a theater everything else after that just is gone usually it's 300 episodes usually jamie let's do another and i yeah let's scratch election this is a titanic podcast now usually it's one of us to bring up titanic and our guest is always like oh why are they talking about Titanic? Except that's a movie. No, well I was just gonna say we could bring it back to an election cause really if they were to have voted off

who should have gotten off that fucking boat it would not have been half of those people who actually got off. Can you imagine like what a better world it would be if some of those rich motherfuckers had drowned? Hot take. Yep.

Wow. But. And some working class women had survived. Yes. It would have been great. Anyway. But yes. So I watched Election again around when it first came out.

I thought it was hilarious. I thought Reese Witherspoon was a great antihero. Like it's the kind of characters I like a lot um and i'm still not sure i when i watch it again i'm like do i like her or do i not like her like it's and i love that about her just as an actor and honestly like who thought when that movie came out was it 97 99 that 20 something years or less than 20 years later I feel like it's the exact thing happening. It is.

Or happened in 2016. Yeah, the parallels between this movie and the Clinton-Trump election and campaign are... There's a lot to unpack there because I think that I mean we can get to this in a bit but I think that Tracy Flick

is already partially inspired by Hillary Clinton in this movie. Because this is at the end of the Clinton administration. The public is always already well aware that Hillary Clinton has ambitions beyond, well, what was the quote of, you know, making cookies. Right, right. Also, I have some Wikipedia trivia for us. Hit it. That the novel that this movie is based upon the novel was inspired by two key events the first one was the 92 bush v clinton election campaign this of course being

bill clinton and not hillary but i think that that's when that quote may have first come out though if like that she was not going to be your average first lady if he was elected um and then in that campaign ross perot entered as a third party candidate um which is echoed in the movie by tammy metzler showing up was tammy metzler the literal green party is she like fucking nader that's crazy whoa gary johnson but if you fast forward her now she'd be trump she i sort of thought that i that's what i was a disruptor right like the one who's like don't do she's not i don't care about this you do this don't do yeah i'm gonna drain the swamp i'm gonna get rid of this no more student body yeah whatever i'm so crazy right that's what i think i was thinking along

those lines but that totally makes sense that she i guess in this context would be third party like green party yeah whoa god right this movie is crazy so i really liked it the other thing that the novel was inspired by was a 92 1992 incident at a high school in Wisconsin where a pregnant teenager was elected homecoming queen but the staff announced a different winner and burned the ballots to cover it up. How horrible. Fuck that. That's so crazy. That would so not work in today's social media world. Absolutely. But in 92, I'm so mad for her.

I mean, thankfully, homecoming doesn't define our lives. Yeah. Speak for yourself. Well, we just did Carrie, so. A lot of lives were altered. True. Very true.

Caitlin, what's your history with election? I didn't see it until I think I was in college. So it would have been like the mid 2000s. So not that long after it came out, but certainly not right away. But I remember really enjoying it. But it was one of those movies that I liked, but just was like, okay, I've checked that off my list, move on to the next one on my list, didn't ever go back and revisit it. But I'm kind of bummed that I didn't because upon re-watching it to prep for

this episode i was like oh this is like a really this is a fun movie the tammy character especially i am like so here for and uh yeah i really i enjoy this movie quite a bit i saw this movie yesterday for the first time which listeners of the show will not be shocked to hear i've never i've only seen the movie doubt plus and titanic and titanic plus all the movies we've done here minus the matrix which i didn't actually watch which is so often brought up in our itunes reviews if you're leaving us itunes reviews i encourage you to mention that as a plus as a meta textual thing i saw this movie for the first time yesterday and i I really, really like it. Especially, like, I mean,

there's so many great performances in that, but this is the only movie that I've seen anyways of also Matthew Broderick playing, like, a really despicable guy that you're supposed to hate. But he plays it so, like, I don't know. I really enjoyed his performance especially. And I just want to talk about how Reese Witherspoon, I think it's like she's so she's so talented and she's so interesting where I feel like she's played a character that has kind of the same description every time. But she plays this character so many different ways over the years that it's just like, yeah, like making 50 different recipes out of the same basic ingredients with her.

Including a couple movies that we've covered, which is our most recent episode of Cruel Intentions, where she's like in high school. She's like the virginal. But she's smart. You know, yeah, like very smart, ambitious young woman going to a private school and then getting tricked into having sex with ryan philippe and usually men are like threatened by her yeah yeah and then l woods of course on our bonus matron episode doing legally blonde kind of a variation on this character but also entirely different all the way up to big little lies like that was sort of like a like returning to form a little bit of like that's a more mature version of the characters she got famous for playing.

She's so, she's very interesting to me. Yes, indeed. And this movie's great. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the one thing that really stuck out to me were like there were so many themes that they talked about through it that, you know, even like right off the top through Matthew Broderick's narration, the talk of destiny at first. And then they talked about morals versus ethics, which is a big one. And then just how much is too ambitious? It was like so many things that are so relevant.

And the ending, I think, I know that we haven't even done the recap yet, but the ending of this movie, I watched it four times because it's just like the movie is firing on all cylinders in like the last five minutes where, you know, the whole time you're experiencing the movie through unreliable narrators. But it's like in the last couple of minutes where Matthew Broderick's narration is still so cocky. And then you see like it's so stark at the end that i won i wish i had the time to go back and watch the whole thing over with that in mind of like oh you can't trust a fucking word that comes out of this guy's mouth for a moment but i mean which you know but like i can't wait to watch this movie again it's okay yeah so i'll do the recap let Let's do it. We meet Tracy Flick, played by Reese Witherspoon, of course. She is in high school. She is an overachiever.

She is running for student council president. We meet Mr. McAllister, played by Matthew Broderick. He's a history everyday guy. He likes his wife and he likes his job. He's just a nice kid. Well, it starts out like, it's Matthew Broderick. Yeah. You like him, right?

He's a teacher this time. Yeah. You like that? Probably. But he seems to be perturbed by Tracy Flick. And then in the backstory, we learn that Tracy had a sexual relationship with another teacher, Mr. Novotny who uh got fired and he moves away but he and mr mcallister were best friends locker room talk you get you we got a whole scene of locker room talk here yeah where i will talk about this too but that i think the movies pay so well

and like you start to hate matthew br Bradgett's character in such specific increments where you're given a little bit of like, well, he didn't do anything wrong, but he was complicit as something wrong happened where he's always the moral high ground. Even in that conversation where his best friend's like, I'm having sex with a minor. Cool, right? And then Jim, the Matthew Bradgett character, says, well, that's not ethical. Fucking ethics teacher. He's like, well, that's not ethical, and that's bad, and da-da-da.

But he doesn't really do anything about it. He just kind of stands by as it happens. He's like, just tell me all the details. Please describe it even further. And then I'll go watch my creepy VHS porn. Yeah, exactly. And I'll just tell you that this isn't right but keep going yeah right and picture everything he's like i don't want to hear that but

secretly we're pretty sure he does yeah um and this is one of the reasons this relationship between this teacher and student is one of the reasons that jim mccallister does not like tracy and we'll go into other reasons but so mr m. McAllister doesn't want Tracy to win the student council president, so he approaches Paul, played by Chris Klein. Hubba hubba. Oh, my Klein. What an interesting jock character. I love this movie.

I can't wait to talk about him. Such an interesting. Right. So he's a popular kid. He's a star of the football team. I kind of love him. Such an interesting... Right. So he's a popular kid. He's a star of the football team. I kind of love him. He's dumb as rock. But he's sweet.

He's the sweetest. That's always his character too, right? Yeah. That's kind of his thing. He's so good at it. What's the other... Oh, God. Anyways, I'm going to dig up some other Chris Klein dummy parts.

American Pie. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Big one. Mm-hmm. climb dummy parts. American Pie. Yeah. Yeah. Big one. So Mr. McAllister gets Paul to run an opposing campaign for president and hopes that Paul will beat Tracy Flick. So Paul starts campaigning. And then we meet Paul's sister, Tammy, who is getting broken up with by this girl, Lisa, who then starts to date Paul.

And then to retaliate, Tammy also starts running for student council president. As Donald Trump, sort of. Where she promises, she's like, I don't care. I just want to do it to bother people. And she's literally like Kanye, MAGA hat, like just trolling everyone because she's mad yeah yeah basically yeah yeah because she's running on the platform that student government is stupid and if she wins she will dismantle it it's just an anarchy platform yeah yeah this is giving me chills guys yeah but the people love it the people are like yeah tammy you're cool they love it way more than paul's campaign because he is a terrible public speaker

oh but that's because so hi my name is paul who is that equivalent that's the one i was trying to figure out oh i think that's like ted cruz or something like the guy is like oh i'm supposed to inherit this that's way more like you know he was sort of the nicest bush and then you're like okay and there's even right there's even almost that like please clap moment where no one says that aloud but his like speech ends there are crickets and then mr mcallister has to be like yeah if only we had found out like almost 20 years later that please clap actually came from election and jeb bush loves that movie well fun fact according to according to director alexander payne election is obama's favorite political movie i'm sorry i'm stuck i haven't thought about please clap in a long time

jeb bush implored people to clap for him and that's clap facts with caitlin okay um so people are loving tammy also more than tracy's campaign because she's just very you know bureaucratic by the book she's too prepared yeah yeah so tracy is very frustrated and she rips down all of Paul's campaign posters. And then Tammy sees Tracy throwing them away in a dumpster. But Tammy decides to confess to Tracy's crime. Because that kind of helps her platform, too, of like, yeah, I don't give a fuck. Right. Yeah.

And the parallel to that is Bernie Sanders. We're finding the whole fat podcast five years. I'm just like, I just got to figure out how this is all parallel to everything that's fired up. So meanwhile, Mr. McAllister is falling in love with Mr. Novotny's ex-wife, Linda. Or he thinks he is. He thinks he is. He doesn't know her. They have sex once, but things very quickly fall apart after that whenever Linda tells Jim's wife, Diane, and then he gets kicked out of the house.

And then the next day is election day at the school. The students are casting their votes. The committee is making their count. And then the chairman of this committee, a student named Larry concludes. Feminist icon Larry. Yeah, right. He's like really advocating for Tracy because Tracy. And the truth.

Yeah, the truth. Larry's all about the truth. Because Tracy wins the election by one vote. And Mr. McAllister simply cannot allow this to happen. He goes full Florida, like Florida 2000. Oh man, the hanging Chad. The Chad. He's the Florida. Like Florida 2000. Oh man, the hanging chads. He's the chads. The hanging chads.

He pulls two of those chads off and he throws them away so that it looks like Paul wins the election. Tracy's devastated but Larry, feminist icon, he's suspicious. So, you know, he apparently goes to investigate. The two ballots that were thrown away are discovered.

And then Jim McAllister has to submit his resignation from Carter High. Which I have so many thoughts about. How the exit system for male teachers work at this school, too. Yeah. We'll get into that. Also, the side story about him getting it on with while he's lecturing tracy right uh-huh he's trying to preach morals and ethics meanwhile best friends uh-huh yeah he's trying to woman oh that's so frustrating too it's just this movie is so nuts. So that happens. And then we see something we never see in movies usually where it's like he loses his job.

He loses his wife. And then we kind of flash forward for the end. Right. Because he starts his life over. He moves to New York City. He gets a job at like the Natural History Museum. He is still harboring resentment for Tracy Flick in any but he says he doesn't right he says he doesn't he says his life is awesome and he lives in a basement but he could not be more

clear that he 1500 that was triggering that was a trigger i was like i used to live in new york i was like i remember these days very well um so he still hates tracy and he's got all tracy types yeah even though he would have you believe that his life is great. Yeah. He actually feels bad for her. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. And we'll talk all about that.

But yeah, that's pretty much the end of the film. So let's take a quick break and then we'll come back to discuss. Woo! 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 unhearts 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. 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. I felt too seen. Um, dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case.

So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health

is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case.

Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, there's something wrong with you and it will call you a basket case listen to basket case every tuesday on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back so this story is basically a pathetic man who ruins his life because he resents women and what it boils down to all on women yeah yeah yeah yeah so we see a female high school student who unlike most high school students in movies and certainly many that we've talked about recently she has aspirations beyond wanting to get a boyfriend or beyond wanting to go to prom yeah in fact we don't even know how she feels about prom because she never mentions it but we do know how she feels about student council because the whole movie is about her wanting to win so if we're getting into

the tracy discussion there's there's so much about her that it's like i don't know like unusual and like tricky to unpack in the context of the story or was for me where i would argue almost every character in this movie grows and changes very little in like their situations change but they like i think almost part of the point of the movie is no one really changes yeah where they just kind of continue lying to themselves and others and that's politics, baby. Like, I get it. But Tracy in particular is interesting because we're introduced with kind of a common shorthand to characterize a female character,

which is you put her in a very fucked up, what seems to be a statutory rapey relationship that clearly does, even though it, I think this movie avoids, certainly avoids making it the center of her story, but it clearly affects her a lot. And the way this movie plays that storyline is very bizarre. I mean, in terms of the metaphor, I don't know if that's like a politician that has a sex scandal or what that was supposed to symbolize. But in terms of like in this story, it is an adult and a minor. I was a little confused at why it didn't seem to affect Tracy more. If the story is going to go out of its way to be like, here's a statutory rape that happened. And then it does seem like Tracy, to her credit, but also a little bit to my confusion, continued to do everything in high

school that she was going to do anyways, almost unhindered by this relationship. I thought that was a little weird. I don't know. Yeah, I had a hard time kind of processing this component of the story as well because she as far as we can tell as far as the story presents it she is a willing and consenting participant of this relationship that's that and this is another place where the voiceover where you know the voiceover is biased and not necessarily true but i think movies like do this a lot where she literally says i know what you're thinking you know and it's like yeah i know what i'm thinking you're getting raped by your teacher and movies almost say like by acknowledging it they get a pass but it's like no that's still what's happening in the movie but she says like

i know what you're thinking and basically says i was a fully consenting party don't worry about it but like the breakup sucked but it's like well she almost kind of it seems like the relationship ends because her mother finds out about it and we don't see enough of the mother in this movie either it's very weird yeah so the mother finds out about it in a scene that happens off screen because we only see the aftermath of it, which is Dave Novotny being very broken up over the relationship ending. And that's played for laughs, too. Yeah. We were in love.

Like, that whole thing is played for—I mean, he's supposed to look pathetic, and he's very clearly in context of the story in The Wrong. But it just was weird that it fits the tone of the movie, but him looking pathetic and then being like, okay, you've got to work at a grocery store, because when they bring it back later, it's also played for laughs. Right. I just didn't like that this rape was continually played for laughs and didn't impact the story really that much. Right. And then the way tracy responds to the relationship and the breakup is that oh he had to go and get all mushy like i had to go and fall in love with me

i miss our talks but otherwise like what a loser kind of thing so yeah i feel like that's not necessarily the most realistic way in which that that type of relationship would play out especially as it pertains to how it would affect a teen girl right well so i think the way that they i think yeah my my issue was that they made it seem like she based on her voiceover that that she was consenting and she's like oh he didn't you know he didn't do anything and then clearly in the action you see he convinced her like you know by playing her emotions and manipulating her but then at the scenes when they actually start like progressing and are having sex and the moment when she's about to enter the room she looks scared and she looks

like oh my god i have to do this okay and he kind of has to pull her into the room yeah and then later for her to come back and be like, oh, well, he caught feeling. Right. It was like, huh? I was like, I thought you were confused. That was why I was like, oh, I want to watch the movie over knowing that all the voiceover are lies. Because I guess now understanding that a little better, it's like, oh, all that voiceover was not true necessarily. Because we see her being coerced.

And I think the movie understands that. But it just like it just wasn't clear because it's so early in the movie. And then even at the end, her final scene, though, when she sees the teacher character again, she's like a young politician or something. And she's getting in a car with some senior male politician. And her look is almost like am i fucking him and you're just like wait are you what what is he because it was sort of like the teacher insinuating it in a little bit with that i thought oh i i didn't even thought of that that's totally yeah yeah i don't know that's where I was like, is he trying to say that she's like using somebody again or, you know.

Well, because it seems this is certainly how Jim McAllister perceives her. And I think how you can definitely interpret this as that she'll kind of stop at nothing to get ahead. And if that means, you know, sleeping her way to the top, I feel like the movie is suggesting that that's a definite possibility for her yeah that i mean that side of it i think that there it's not even like that needed to be written out of the story entirely it just felt like that was one of the few subplots of this movie that just like wasn't handled responsibly or satirically enough right there was just something about it that just really bothered me. Because it's not like the teacher she was messing with, like, did he add something to

her life that... I think it's more for Jim than... If that storyline affects Jim more than it does her, because that opens up that guy's ex-wife and sets the precedent that, like, Jim is, like, this complicit kind of two-faced guy. It's just weird that they used her as the catalyst for that like she's the bad one when she was the kid getting right Jim resent I mean and I think that Jim secretly resents Tracy because now he doesn't work with his friend anymore yeah that was oh well that's to me that's the main reason narratively

why this is in the story because he needs a reason i mean it's very clear that he does not respect women and he is very threatened and talks his way around it for so long though he's like he's like i don't blame tracy and then spends the rest of the movie blaming her yeah yeah so to me the reason that this part of the story exists in the movie is that he needs a compelling, I guess, reason that he really actively resents her. And yeah, it motivates him to retaliate. But I feel like by making it a situation where she is the victim of statutory rape is a weird choice. And it's, I mean, like we see in many movies, it is directed by a man,

co-written by two men, and adapted from it is directed by a man co-written by two men and adapted from a novel written by a man so right so we're three degrees of separation away from i mean we're a million degrees because no one was talked to uh not to get too stuck on this point because there's so much to talk about but there was just uh the way that relationship was portrayed there was one scene especially that like made my heart hurt a little bit because I feel like there's like a lot of girls who in high school like even if it's not the extent of that experience there's like a teacher who talks to you some kind of way and goes out of their way to make you feel special and then you look back on it and you're like

wait a second that was you did I have I literally had an art teacher who would always be very complimentary of all the girls. And then after school would be like, you should chug a bottle of cough syrup and like come back tomorrow and tell me what you did. Like just like that was that. And you see, I mean, people wonder why women, particularly young women, have like this eternal fraud syndrome. And I think this is like a very concise, the way that scene plays out, I thought was like effective to the point of being a little painful to watch where, you know, it's like here's this older man who Tracy clearly has a lot of respect for and she's a crush on him, whatever. And he tells her she's smart, she special she's attractive and then it's just

like this coercion thing it's basically the same speech that jack gives rose in titanic where he's like you're the most outstandingly but wonderful but it's not because he means it right right right and they're in love they're they're that's key words it hits the same beats because he's like you're the most a wonderful astounding girl woman i've ever known and then dave novotny is like you're the most uh smart sensitive attractive student person human i've ever met yeah i hate it yeah it's it's just that is so like if there's a one scene in a movie i've seen in the past couple of years that concisely puts like, why do all actually smart, talented women have this kind of fraud syndrome? It's like maybe because men say that just to fuck them.

And then they feel like it's not true because someone just said it so that they could fuck them. I'll just add the tiniest point because, again, I don't want to stay on this too long, I'm sure. But when Jim, Jim McAllister, when he talks about like why he's upset, the first cut is to the Dave guy saying like her pussy gets so wet. And then you're like, oh, wait a minute. Is he talking about this kid? And then with this whole Kavanaugh thing happening, the headline has been, you know,

Trump says it's dangerous to be a young man right now. And I was like, is it dangerous to be a young man right now? I'm like, interesting. Well, welcome to our life for all of time. It's dangerous to be a woman at all times in all of history and eternity. One more point about this, where there is such heavy, and I was annoyed about it until again, the very end, where I'm like, there's so much voiceover in this movie. But voiceover is used to introduce the characters as well. Another movie where that happens that we did not too long ago is royal tenenbaums and there was a tendency in those movies where the male characters were introduced in voiceover with their accomplishments and the women were introduced with their sexual history oh yes and this movie doesn't quite do that it's it was almost an

inversion of it where tracy flick is introduced with her accomplishments and she's introducing herself yes and then there's a sudden flip where it's like, and here's the other stuff. I guess I don't feel any which way about it, but it just reminded me of at least, at the very least, many facets of her life were presented. And it wasn't like, here's the girl and here's who she fucked. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

There are some of that, but it's not exclusively that right um i want to talk a little bit about how jim mcallister views women it is very clear especially as the story goes on that he feels extremely threatened by strong smart ambitious women he says in his voiceover toward the beginning that he does not blame Tracy for what happened with Dave. How could I? Dave was an adult over twice her age. Sure, she got on my nerves once in a while, but I admired, I admired Tracy. I really did. And as he's saying that, he's like throwing away the signatures that she got to be able to campaign for president. And it's obvious that he does not admire her, that he does blame her and resent

her for the situation with Novotny being fired but he places none of the blame on him and he places all of the blame on Tracy yeah I mean Jim the way I interpreted that character was like a demonstration of like here's the most average guy in the world who at the beginning of the movie, you know, he's just, he's average as fuck. He seems relatively content-ish. And then let's peel back every, even in the most average of people is this deep seated hatred of certain people.

And then, I mean, it goes up to a fucking 11 from there but there was it's because he is so average and he hates women and he doesn't think he hates women and that i think is a lot of guys and tracy points that out too right in her voiceover says that i mean i would hate my life if i were. And just like the monotony of what he does all the time. And she and her depiction was like, on every student body, like any team. And yeah, she was like in the front of everything. And, and it's kind of hard to know, I guess, because this was, and because it's so steeped in politics, like the Monica Lewinsky scandal was a few years before this. And so it's almost hard to know exactly how the writers of this movie

want these lines to come off, which is interesting. I mean, I'd be interested in hearing what Alexander Payne thought in 99 versus now, because I think the reading of this movie is very open to interpretation in a good way where you can kind of see what you want in it but they're uh really quick i want to go back to my buddy feminist icon roger ebert who almost always has the worst take and the most stupid like everyone's like he was the best but uh go back and read his stuff he wasn't uh his his summary of the movie is so telling where he gave it a good review but he says here's a movie that's not simply about an obnoxious student yeah but also about an

imperfect teacher a difficult administration and a student body that's mostly just marking time until it can go out into the world and occupy valuable space that is. So all that to say, the reading of this movie in the 20 years after has probably changed a lot. Oh, for sure. Yeah. The next thing I want to say about Jim McAllister and how he views women, specifically Tracy Flick, is that not only does he resent her for, you know, his best friend getting fired, and not only does he feel threatened by her ambitiousness, he has a bunch of sexual fantasies about her. He has a lot of sexual fantasies about a lot of people. Yes.

Every woman who's not his wife. Yeah. Every woman except the woman who loves him. Well, is that anyone else besides Linda? Because I feel, Linda and Tracy? Lindainda tracy and then he watches porn and but and it was also like a teacher student porn yes oh was it i thought it was a football player and cheerleader that they were both students and then he projects dave on oh yeah yeah that's what i thought it was yeah yeah it is mostly tracy and l Linda who he takes stuff out on.

But even based on, there's like a few shots, and I kind of want to compare this shot later on to a shot we see of Tammy versus a shot of Jim because those characters balance each other out in this very bizarre way. But there's a few shots where we see jim's direct viewpoint so you know some some male gazey shit some of it's more obvious where that time you know like you see that shot of like linda's boobs oh yeah he's like hanging a fruit she's framed sexually his wife is not framed sexually right even during sex scenes she's not framed sexually and then anytime jim's voiceover is

going and we get those really unflattering shots of tracy um so the like the visual even the visual language uh is is telling you how jim feels about the women around him yeah and then he's the type of person that after that day that he spends with linda you know he takes her to the mall to go shopping and is like helping her out around her house. He's like driving her back. And then they see like a motel on the side of the road. And he's like, should we get a room? And she's like, that's not funny. So he's like making a sexual advance. She rejects it. And then when he's back home and talking to his wife, she's like, oh, how was your day? His wife. His wife. She's like, how was your day?

And he's like, oh, you know, Linda's great, but she can be a little much sometimes. So he's the type of who, when his advances are rebuffed and rejected by a woman, he- Starts talking shit. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. So he's a feminist icon. I mean, I think that this is the same year american beauty

comes out i'm pretty sure that also came out in 99 there are a few parallel i i like this movie a million times more than i like american beauty i can't stand that movie yeah but there are a few like recognizable qualities in him and then kevin spacey's's character in that movie where the small like micro punishments of the women around them when he feels reduced or rejected or just in that that line about Linda is so great because I'm like oh I can picture almost any guy I know saying something about someone else that way and not even having it barely register oh yeah right without getting personal but my one of my exes who I've often talked about on my podcast crazy one we'll just go with that um he when he was cheating on me he would talk about the girl he was cheating on me

with but he would keep saying like shitty things about her and like always being like she was she was blah blah blah that's probably a telltale sign that someone's cheating on you. And then like, I didn't even know that they were friends. And then when I found out, I was like, huh? And I was like, wait, so all this time. I had to kind of do that. Fuck, man. Well, now you know.

I was trying to throw you off the scent. Sometimes it fucking works. Yeah. Another fun thing happens where later on when Jim McAllister ruins his own life by cheating on his wife, he calls Linda and blames her for ruining his life. So he is the type of person who's not willing to accept he's resenting everyone else for things that he is complicit in or that other things have done. Other people have done wrong. I think almost at the top of that is like any woman exerting power over him, he's going to retaliate against. Because even I mean, part of the reason I thought he didn't he wasn't even being affectionate towards his wife, even though, you know, she certainly didn't do anything wrong, was because she really wanted a baby.

And that, like, almost, like, first of all, that's lazy writing for his wife kind of character. But also just, like, the fact that he wasn't the primary focus of her desire, I think is a pretty clear reason why he'd want to retaliate against her. He wants to be the center of everything. And he's so threatened. And this is like fucking pathetic. He's so threatened by Tracy wanting to be student body president that he rigs an election where there's that line where he's like, theing of Tracy at that moment affected me in a way I can't explain. Who knew how high she'd climb in life? How many people would have to suffer because of her?

I had to stop her now. Like he's so afraid of female power in any way that he and it just gets so pathetic. And I love when he gets stung by a bee. And just like the fact that like he's saying, saying like how many people would she affect in her life? And it's like while, you know, you stay quiet while your best friend was fucking a minor and her life is ruined, his life is ruined, the wife's life is ruined, your wife's life is ruined,

your baby's life is ruined. Paul's life is ruined. Poor Paul. Poor Paul. Well, also his wife never gets pregnant, right? His wife. Not that we see in the story. I think that that's another thing. That she's what? He's imp is ruined. Poor Paul. Poor Paul. Well, also, his wife never gets pregnant, right? His wife. Not that we see in the story. I think that that's another thing.

That she's what? He's impotent. I think that that was like what that message. They were having baby sex every night and he... Yeah, they were trying for a year and yeah. Never conceived. He's an impotent man. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Hey, let's take a quick break and then we'll be back for more. 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 unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

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So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in.

Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to And we're back. I just wanted to read some quick stats about women in politics, and we can you know talk about some more specific characters uh let's just use congress as an example a little microcosm of politics if you will well tell me more about this congress in 2018 the year that we are currently living in unless you are listening to this podcast from you know 2194 because this podcast is gonna last forever and yes and really hold up too yeah this will be the last thing people hear

yeah before they die yeah if you're listening to this podcast you do have seven days to live okay so in 2018 there are 107 women in congress making up only 20 percent of members of congress hot in 1999 the year that this movie comes out there were only 63 women in congress 100 years ago guess how many were women were in congress we couldn't vote so there was one none there was one there was one were in congress we couldn't vote so there was one none there was one there was one in congress when we couldn't fucking vote how did that happen who was that yeah i don't i don't i don't know i need to do more research shake her dead hand but ruckers.edu gave me some some hot info yeah anyway so um all right much like in movies, women are wildly underrepresented in politics, too. Wouldn't you know it?

Except if you're listening to this right now, a record number of women are running for political positions this year, midterms today. Go out and vote right now. Yeah. Also, if you combine movies and politics to things that are so good to women historically. The results are even worse. A quick Google search of political movies will yield results that show nearly every movie in that sort of sub-genre of political movies is about men, except for that Sarah Palin movie, Game Changer, and maybe a few other wild cards here and there. Which freaking is awesome in rules.

I have not seen that movie. I was going to say, the one time where ever Sarah Palin fucking... Literally. She's awesome. Her movie was just about her. I loved her talk show about moose or whatever. It was very ironic. That was literally what it was.

It was like Sarah Palin goes to the woods in French as a moose. Remember when she could have been a heartbeat away from the presidency, whatever. I don't know. That's almost one of those ripple effects things where if you're basing movies on real-life events, it would be really hard to make movies about women. But only if you're making movies about very high-level politicians. Like, where's the hidden figures

of women doing the actual work while Mr. Guy is wearing his Mr. Suit and he's like, that was me. So it's like one of those things where it's like, yeah, it's hard to find, it's like hard to find. You have to really look for those stories. And people should.

But if there were more movies about women in politics, little girls could have seen them and said, hey, I see myself represented on screen. That's going to influence my decision to go into politics. Because there was not the representation. It perpetuates the cycle right and this this movie i mean it's interesting because i mean just based on that ebert review alone i think that people's view of tracy tends to be all over the place and i was sort of having trouble placing how the movie feels about her at times same and i think that that is intentional in a way where i don't even think the movie's totally okay with female power and i think

that the movie wants you to feel like she's kind of annoying and she's overly ambitious i don't read that character that way at all but it seems like just based on the time this movie came out and uh listeners if you have any opinions or more information please let us know but it seems like this character to an extent i mean down to the way she's styled is supposed to be a hillary clinton style character where from so early to her being in the public eye, whether you like her or dislike her, whatever, we're not even going to get into that. But she was portrayed from moment one as a power hungry woman, who whose very existence was emasculating her male counterpart. And like almost no matter what side, whether you were on the left or the right or whatever, that was the general view was that she

was she wanted too much. She was trying to be too powerful. And it seems like that is supposed to be the exact same values that we see in Tracy, even though with the benefit of time, there's so much more there. But it was, I don't know, just seems like a weird inconclusive commentary on something. And I'm like, I don't know how Alexander Payne feels about her. I think he likes her, but thinks she's annoying and should go away. Right. And then, but there's some moments where Tracy expresses different frustrations about, you know, working really hard for something and saying stuff that really resonated with me where she says uh she's

talking about her mom she says she likes to write letters to successful women like elizabeth dole and connie chung and ask them how they got to be where they are and what advice they have for me tracy her daughter nine times out of ten they say you have to hold on to your dreams no matter what the pressures women face mean you have to work twice as hard and you can't let anything or anyone stand in your way so on one hand it's like yeah she's seems like she's willing to kind of like trample on some people to climb her way to the top but and on the other hand she's saying yeah like as a woman she has to work twice as hard gets not nearly as much of the recognition and you know it's always an uphill battle for her well it was also such a mirror again of the 2016 election where it was clearly out of the two final

candidates the more experienced one who had less of a personality but but more, you know what I mean, in terms of a magnanimous kind of thing. Came off as a little bit cold. Yeah, cold and, you know, not as personable the way people perceived it. And then the other person, far less qualified. But this big person who spoke in layman language and used, you know, short words and descriptions for everything that related to a lot of people he reminded me of george w bush a few times where it was like he's simple and he'll do what he's told that's like that's such a big part of elections nowadays right it's like

is it about the quality of the candidate and their policies and their experience or is it personality is this like who do you want to get a beer with yeah like I don't want to get a beer political candidate please give me the best policies right and then do your job don't don't drink with me don't go to the cha-cha lounge with me senators go to work and then Tracy expresses this very sentiment in a fairly long monologue that I will paraphrase. But basically, she's saying, you know, you might think I'm upset that Paul Metzler decided to run. He doesn't have the qualifications that I do. Yeah, it sucks that some people are just handed everything to them and while other people

like me who've worked very very hard for their entire lives you know trying to get what they want blah blah and she's like doesn't bother me at all and obviously it does because every every person who delivers any sort of voiceover narration this movie is not unreliable to themselves yeah yeah uh and that i mean that i'm sure that resonated with all of us. Yeah. Hearing that. And I guess the reason I say it, because it's weird, because stuff like that is so clearly written, where you're like, whoever's writing this story must, you know, feel for Tracy

and at least to some extent understand her. But then where that character is left left like you were saying a little earlier natasha it's like it's a little bit weird where the last line i think we hear her speak is like when she's at college and she's still the implication at the end of like because she is intelligent and has ambitions that she will be alone forever was a weird place to leave that character because that's one of the few moments where you know in the voiceover she's like and it's totally fine and that's the lie but you see reflective in the voiceover and what happens that's what the movie thinks happens to her is that she doesn't really have friends in high school and people point that out

to her a few times and it clearly does affect her in small ways and then we see her flash forward to college and there's that voiceover line if you want to be great you've got to be lonely and we see her alone and it's just like such a weird i was, then how do you feel about this woman movie? Because that is, you know, not necessarily true. It's not, I mean, it seems like it's like this is the truth for this kind of woman. And I mean, my guess would be that the writer, whoever, at what point in the line of men that wrote this movie, that must have been something that felt true to them because it's presented like it's true. Well, can I say, so we've done two episodes of this on our podcast that we did one on

the science of relationships and another one with the author of a book called The Love Gap of Why Smart Women Are Single. That's the one I was listening to. Yeah. Oh, OK, cool. Yeah. And I think in that one she references the psychologist from science of relationships who was on our podcast and they talk about um

their case studies that say and i i'm gonna fuck up the ratio or the percentage but a large percentage like if you ask guys what kind of woman do you want like 80 of them say they want a smart independent ambitious woman who like can think on her own, all that stuff. And I think it's like less than 57% or something like that. 57% of guys actually end up with a dependent woman and they don't actually end up with the independent woman. And so this is a whole book and case study around the fact that like, theoretically you love the idea of this, but when you're actually faced with this person, they make you feel less than,

which is like the Jim McAllister character, right? Like he felt whenever he was around somebody like Tracy, a reminder that he is living this monotonous life when she chose to take steps to, you know. Yeah. And there's a line that he has in the very end

whenever he talks when he he's seeing her in washington dc and he says something like oh i i feel sorry for her she's probably still waking up at 5 a.m every day pursuing her stupid little dreams and it's like and he's like holding a fucking slurpee cup. No disrespect. But, you know, I love Slurpee Nation. But he's out there, you know, denigrating the visual of holding a slurpee cup. That's like a 45-year-old dude living in a basement in New York. But like, you know, he looks so pathetic. And then he throws the slurpee at the limo. He's like, I'm so mad.

Me, me, me. I volunteer. I'm a docent. And he's got this, like, clinically depressed new girlfriend. She's recently out of a relationship. And he, in that shot, I don't know if you noticed, she's talking about something and he stares at her tits. And so he just is so unchanged. It's so like, fuck this this guy but there's millions of him

yeah and we know some of them yeah so as far as tracy goes i liked her as a character quite a bit i identified with her because i feel like i was not exactly like her in high school but i was like way too ambitious and taking things way too seriously and like my thing was like I want to graduate in the top five percent of my class and like I was you know joining I was doing mock trial I was you know playing the sports and doing all the stuff pay for VHS of you doing so I you know related to her and there were some moments in high school where I also like felt like a loner because I was like man no one's taking their studies as serious as me so I I can't let these people slow me down and like in any case this is all to say that um I generally like the

way that she's written and I find her to be, you know, a fairly multi-dimensional, interesting character. For sure. We often don't see that, especially in, you know, kind of teen high school movies like this. There's just a few blind spots. Exactly. Yeah. For sure. One of the blind spots that I don't know if it's a timing thing, but I feel like we're kind of set up like Tracy's mom is going to be an important character in this story.

But then she never really becomes that. Like she only actually speaks in I think like one scene, which is weird because she's introduced in voiceover. It's like, my mom is awesome. She raised me on her own. She contacts powerful women. She's like supports me. She's a paralegal.

You know, we know what she does for a living. And then the lazy writing of like, I know what you're thinking. I grew up without a dad, so I hate men. And it's like, okay, this is horrible writing. Why are we doing this? But then the mom character, there's blind spots there too because the mom gets so mad. She finds out that, you know, like her daughter's being taken advantage of, to say the least, by her own teacher. But then doesn't demand something beyond him being fired.

Like, there's just a few weird, like, if that were, like, a mom that seems as on it as this mom is presented to be, she would be trying to get this dude in fucking jail. He would not be working at a grocery store. Well, maybe she did. She did try to sue Jim. She did.

Oh. At the end, they had, like like the newspaper that said that she, but not Dave, the one who actually assaulted him. Well, maybe it's commentary on how when women come forward about, you know, abuse and assault, there's no consequences. Nothing happens. But I don't think it is active. No, I don't think it's active commentary on that. But definitely. Yeah, it's I don't think it is no I don't think it's active commentary on that but yeah it's weird I used to I when I first watched the movie I'll be honest I didn't like Tracy

when I was young and I didn't know enough and I was like she's just not nice and I like the nice guy and the nice guy should have won and I can't believe and then as I've grown older and become more obviously grown and matured in my own and and I though I've always been ambitious I think the part of her that was very like I would do anything to get there part never related to me and so I think I sort of blacklisted her in that way and this time when I watched her I really appreciated the passion she had and and you know her actually not getting brought down by the stupid teacher who did this horrible thing to her um but to like not have lost all of her zeal for it like i appreciated that part um and like i mean at the end even when she lost for a

second she was like okay like she accepted defeat she cries a lot but you know purple pantsuit the whole bit the world wept it was it was a tough morning for everyone even though she did she won the popular vote but that damn electoral college man that's an excellent point i would i mean for any listener who hasn't seen this movie in a while, particularly since the last election, probably, go back and watch it and see how your opinions of the on the screen. Because when we first are introduced to Tammy Metzler, she and Lisa are kissing. Lisa's not really into it. She leaves. And then we hear Tammy's voiceover, which is that it's not like I'm a lesbian or anything. I'm attracted to the person. It's just that all the people I've ever been attracted to happen to be girls. Yeah, she's struggling with coming out of the closet.

Figuring it out. Yeah, I really liked Tammy. I appreciated her whole, like, anarchy thing, where obviously that doesn't translate well into, like, current politics or, like, our actual situation. But as a high school student body, where what even is, in my school at least, the student body government got nothing accomplished, didn't do anything. It was really just a title and a popularity contest, and that was it. So I like that she recognizes that.

I like that she advocates that I like that she advocates for herself. She stands up for herself. She does call Tracy a cunt. Tammy's kind of a mixed bag. Yeah, I'll be honest. There's, I mean, it is so rare. I mean, especially in a movie at this time to see any queer representation in a teen movie, as we kind of know, based on I mean, a lot of movies we've been doing recently are teen movies of this era and very rarely see a fleshed out queer character who knows something about them other than they're queer. there are some really good moments that she has. And then there's other stuff that it's like, Ooh, really? This is the, I mean, this movie,

first of all, has no recognition of bisexuality. It's a very simplistic view of even, I mean, that line that you just said that like, I fall in love with the person. Yeah. Uh,

could be interpreted to be kind of a forward thinking, you know there's a statement of like not recognizing the binary in that way but the way we're supposed to read it is that she is uh you know strictly attracted to women and just doesn't want to admit it to herself or isn't right. The fact that she only enters the race for revenge against another woman who I don't totally understand. The Lisa character was very confusing to me of like, why is Lisa retaliating against Tammy so hard if we are supposed to believe that she is not queer in any way? Yeah. Yeah. Lisa's motivations are not clear, well-defined, or make sense at all.

Like, I mean, the only thing you hear is Paul's like, and then Lisa just came over and gave me a blowjob. And you're like, huh? Yeah.

I was like, but I mean, the only way I pieced it together was she was using Tammy to get to her brother, but they should have just added some line in that that like,

that's what she was doing and was like, sort of experimenting with her and was like, nah, I'm not really into this. I'm really actually into your brother. But then she gets so into running Paul's campaign. That's the thing. I'm like, maybe there's some political reference I'm not getting in this. Like there was, for every character that confused me, I'm like, maybe this is a reference to a 90s politician that I just like am not as aware of. But the fact that Tammy enters the race as kind of like a Trumpy rogue candidate that's like burn it all down because I want to get revenge against someone.

And I was like, OK, what else do we got, Tammy? Like what else? And we see scenes where she's stalking Lisa. Right. Oh, yeah. She's stalking for love hiding hiding in trash cans the whole fucking montage we've seen a million times i was like okay yeah what else we got tammy and yeah he calls uh i forget if it's uh tracy a bitch lisa a cunt

tracy a cunt lisa a bitch that exchange is made uh and then you're like okay it's not like women aren't allowed to dislike other women what else do we got uh the one scene with Tammy a character I do genuinely like and to seeing like representation and her being there is powerful in itself but the way the movie treats the character and the choices that she makes, I feel like villainizes her in a way that's not necessary. True. The one moment I really liked of hers that to me almost stands in direct opposition to the way we see Jim all the time is that scene where I forget what motivates her leaving the house. I think it's when Tammy finds out she has to go to Catholic school or something. She's going to have to drop out of the election.

And she sees a soccer field full of girls. And she's looking at them. And so it is a gazey shot, but it's not an exploitative shot. Like, she's standing far away and she's looking. And you can tell, like, she's interested and and possibly attracted but it's not creepy right and it's and then you see anytime jim looks at a woman it's very creepy and cropped and whatever and i was like that was my favorite scene with tammy where you saw like that felt like i mean i'd be interested in what our listeners think. That felt like the closest thing to positive, progressive representation of just a girl recognizing her own sexuality and being semi-okay with it.

But I feel like that character is weird in a lot of ways well she's just as kind of it seems as unreliable of a narrator as everyone else where you know she at the end she goes to catholic school and she meets another girl whose name i forget but there's a little all right jennifer juniper right where she's like we're soulmates and we're never going to be apart and we're you know best friends and we love each other and you can kind of imagine that that story will play out a very similar way as her relationship with lisa because she keeps seems like she's kind of chasing after girls who may be open to experimenting or who may be questioning but ultimately end up you know identifying as hetero. And that like lines her up with all the other characters who basically end where they started at the end of the movie, too.

Yeah, where it's like this could have been an opportunity for her to, you know, learn and grow. But she simply does not. The only yeah, the only thing I felt with like the three candidates was the girls all seem angsty. And like the one Paul guy is just so cool and laid back. And he's just like wants to be this cool dude. And like, man, I just I just became homecoming king. And everybody loves me. You know, Lisa went off to find somebody else.

But I guess that's life. Like he's so cool and like the girls are like she's like the angsty lesbian trying to figure her life out and I'm like why is it like her whole thing is like anger but then he also turns to camera at the end and he's like maybe my life

would have been different he's like or maybe I'd be dead why did they choose to break the fourth wall there because he's the only person that does that right yeah and it i don't know if that line even like makes that character there's some like cognitive dissonance there i don't know there's a whole other movie in that line of love it's like is he secretly very deep and like nihilistic and things like that. I totally see your point of Tammy is just as fucked up as anyone in the movie. I guess it's just the main person we have to compare her to is Tracy,

who is not as conniving. She is, I think, just as frustrated and angry. But I think it just gets back to the problem of like well because tammy is the only queer character we see represented everything she does it's almost hard to keep it individual because queer people are never represented and so when you do see like the one queer character doing all these like this petty bullshit you're like oh man yeah yeah that it's dangerous i guess i just like looking at it on the surface and not analyzing her character any deeper than that like what we've just done but just kind of on very surface level like her speech that she gives and then the scene

where she's like praying and saying like hey god i know i don't believe in you but i'm going to catholic school soon. So like, I guess I better practice. And then, you know, her speech is all like, who cares? Like, I don't even want to be running for this. You know, I'm just going to dismantle this institution and like, don't vote. I don't care. And I was just like, oh, she's cool.

You should vote. Right. Don't listen to Tammy. You should vote and you should care counts can we talk about paul where to begin with paul well you can start by uh saying that he unlike many jock football player type characters that we see in teen movies he is not this like gross misogynist toxic masculinity poster child it's a blank slate dude he's he's sweet and he's sensitive

and he like loves his sister and he like is originally opposed to running against tracy and and her and he's like i'm not gonna run against her you know. And he's like, I'm not going to run against her. You know, she's good at that. And I'm not going to, you know, interfere. And there's a few lines where he approaches his sister, Tammy. He says, it's kind of weird that you're running against me. And you haven't told me why you're doing it. But that's OK.

I respect your privacy. And I want you to know whoever wins, you or me, there's no hard feelings. We're still brother and sister. Also, the weird addition, like that weird moment where he's like well you are adopted i was like why is that there that's like i guess that's just another thing we know yeah and then you know when he's praying for her he's asking god to make tammy happier because she's so smart and sensitive and i love her so much like but then also he's clueless because he doesn't seem to realize that his sister is queer and there's like some moments where I was like Paul you missed that and and he's like and I don't know what how Lisa ended up here I mean she got in a fight with

Tammy and next thing I know she's on my dick right I was like Paul read the room yeah so he's just clueless and stupid and then also a line that he delivers i think in voiceover pretty early on in the movie he says you know mr mcallister changed my life and whatever they say he did or didn't do i believe he's a good man so he almost just like sees the good in people to a fault because he's never like it's sort of like that. You know, there's guys out there like this who are, you know, they have a good heart. They mean the best. They're generally respectful of women.

But nothing bad has ever really happened to them. And so they're not going to assume that anyone would do anything against anyone's better interest because they just don't have that experience. Right. I mean, the one thing that he did that was very poignant was at the end when they were voting, he's like, I know everybody says that you should vote for yourself, but I don't think that that's the way things do. So he literally was the one who voted Tracy in. Yes.

She won by Paul's vote. Yep. Oh, he's a good guy. And then he wants to have a carnival that fund-raises for muscular dystrophy at the end. That scene kind of broke my heart, too, of, like, he does end up caring. Like, you know, and that's supposed to be, like, a funny moment where Mr. McAllister's stooge ends up being motivated and does want to make a difference. But you're like, man, that like seems like pretty true to how, you know, like when men usually only choose to support younger versions of themselves and bring them in.

And it just perpetuates this. Oh, God, that whole scene was like, oh, Paul, baby. Paul won't drop the ball. That one of his i loved that oh yeah it's a little defensive but i like it another one was paul metzler you betzler precious but oh one another this is just a thing, and we hardly know anything about this character, but the student who is running for vice president, Jerry, we see representation on screen of a person with a disability. I love Jerry, and he's running un-a-freaking-post. Un-a-post. He cracks jokes.

He's funny. Writes the speech anyways. Yeah. Jerry basically gets a standing O. Yeah. Yeah, because what he says, they're like, I can't stand, but I stand for you. And everyone's like, sorry, Jerry. Another character we see for like two seconds that I was like, ooh, there's a whole other thing in there.

Tammy's mom. There's that scene where the parents find out that she's been election tampering and she's been disrupting. Yeah. You know, coming down the escalator with melania and the whole shit uh but there's a scene with the parents where it seems pretty pointed the mom's sitting there like with a martini i think she's supposed to be like a wine mom who is exhausted with her blowhard husband um and he's you know yelling he's like you suck and you're going to a new school and tammy's mom keeps almost saying

something and then is cut off and then eventually she finally does say something and is you know not a dumb person at all is very well spoken and starts to say make a cogent point and then the dad cuts her off again yeah just like inter. You're going to Sacred Heart or whatever the school is. You're copying a nun! She's like, whoa. Oh, they say something like, yeah, we're going to straighten you out. And then she's like giggling because I don't know if it's because of like. Yeah, right. Like, no one's going to straighten me.

I'm pansexual, you idiot. Good try. And it's like, all right, Tammy. Okay. Does anyone have any other thoughts about the film there's a there's a lot oh just the the last uh a shot i really liked was the shot of the dig at the end where he's like what happens when a man loses everything it's like literally a straight up castration shot um yeah oh i guess the last thing i wanted to say in terms of just

like you know unwrapping a pretty clear commentary is uh the idea of second chances where jim's character at the end you know it's like and then i moved to new york and i got to and it's not perfect clearly his life kind of sucks but you, you know, he's not really punished. He just has to start over. Yeah. That is, I mean, a clear political allegory of like, hey, just I mean, I think applies to what a lot of guys are trying to do after their Me Too moment, too. Like, I just got to go somewhere else or wait a little while and then I can just keep on doing that. You know how Louis Cis ck keeps doing

drop-in sets at the comedy cellar he's addicted to it he won't stop and yeah so that that was like a moment that i think feels like especially timely right now too just like and i just went somewhere else and did the same shit forever yep awesome though i do appreciate the one kid the truth kid who like spits on his larry feminist icon larry larry wants women when jim is like still driving on the streets after all of this has happened he's divorced he lost everything he's in the car and he sees larry and they both just like lock eyes and he's like tries to give him a little smile and Larry's like

I'm like you much like what Rose does to Billy Zane in the end of Titanic where was Billy Zane in this movie? where was the Babadook in this movie? where was Alfred Molina in this movie? you know there's mistakes not everyone's always available but I hope that Where was the Baba Duke in this movie? Where was Alfred Molina in this movie? You know, there's mistakes.

Not everyone's always available, but I hope that... I love Alfred Molina to my dying day. I think Matthew Broderick is so good in this movie. So well cast. Yeah, he's so, so great. This movie was excellently cast. It's like a perfect inversion of who people perceive him to be. Oh, I would be remiss not to just remind everyone, as I do every time we mention Matthew Broderick,ew broderick did hit two women with his car once and killed them both oh

my god i didn't know that about him guys matthew broderick i mean he didn't do it on purpose right but he was in a car with jennifer gray in ireland and uh so just uh whoa yeah enjoy Matthew Broderick. A manslaughterer. It's, you know, but he was Matthew Broderick, so nothing happened. Hmm. Just a fun fact about Matthew Broderick, he killed the lady. Well, that really sucks. Well, to bring that note, yeah. Well, a fun, to uplift our spirits again after hearing that, I just wanted to point out, I don't know if anyone else noticed, but whenever you first are introduced to Paul and he's like tumbling down a mountain as he's skiing,

you see two different shots of what is obviously stock footage of a skier because they're wearing different coats. And then when it cuts to a close on paul he's wearing a different coat from both of the previous two shots so that's so funny i didn't see that i love that that's great continuity and it's clear that they like didn't try to do they didn't do anything to try because they easily just could have taken the one stock footage shot and then match the coat with whatever that person was wearing but it seemed like an almost deliberate joke for like it to be three different coats because those shots are so long that you could have just used the one yeah exactly so anyway and then finally for anyone

who's keeping track of uh the name anagrams of what caitlin dorante anagrams to, relevant to this movie, Caitlin Durante anagrams to run lit candidate if you misspell candidate and only spell it with one D. So for example, you know, if someone's like, hey, I don't know if I should run or not. I would say to you, run lit candidate because you're lit and you're a potential candidate. You should run. In my sub rating, now I'm rating things twice an episode. Okay. And that's a two for me.

A two out of five? Wow, Jamie, harsh. Yeah, that's a stretch. No. Listen, there's been great ones. Thank you. And I hold them to that gold standard. Okay.

I understand. Well, I think this is one of been great ones. Thank you. And I hold them to that gold standard. Okay. I understand. Well, I think this is one of my better ones. So I guess we can disagree from time to time. But yeah, that's the one I got for this one. The last thing I wanted to mention, to this movie's credit, this is one of the few. Because we didn't discuss Jem's wife diane really at all right we're not given much other than her husband's a fucking asshole and she would like a baby and she uses a sex phrase clearly written by a man fill me up for sure what woman in her right

it would it wouldn't happen ever i say that every day what if what if caleb was like i'd like to come out in strong opposition. That's my only sex phrase. It's my campaign slogan, really, for when I, a lit candidate, run. No! Fill me up. The one thing I wanted to say to that point, other than the fact that you just lost my vote is that that this is one of the rare movies where you know linda tells diane your husband and i had sex and diane breaks up with her husband doesn't seem to

actively punish the other woman which i think is usually oh yes so i appreciated that yeah we see them having presumably just interacted and probably not passing the Bechdel test because they're probably talking about Jim. But, yeah, it seems like they are consoling each other. They're, you know, they're crying and comforting each other. And they are placing the blame rightfully on Jim, who I don't know if this happens right before or right after, when he has a conversation with Linda and is like you ruined my life and she's like you like you took advantage of me like and he's like what you took advantage of me you kiss me you hug me and like I think that they should

have acknowledged that they both had a part in it there was one thing I was like Linda was an active participant in that but I think that that also spoke spoke to her not being a very well-written character because she pretty clearly rejects him. And then all of a sudden seems not just on board to have sex with him, but on board to have sex with him in front of her baby. Which is such a leap in the character we're introduced to that it seems like that character was sold out at some point. Right. were introduced to that it seems like that character was sold out at some point right but where linda lands she should definitely own some of the blame but she's right i mean i think she's right to not for like obviously she didn't ruin jim's life but she was an active participant she literally fucked a guy in front of her baby no one should do that yeah with with linda there is no

catalyst for the audience to understand why she suddenly changes her mind about wanting to sleep with Jim. Why would she even invite him over after he hit on her in that way? You would think that that would put an end to that friendship. Well, she said that she's like, I was just lonely and made a mistake. And that's the thing, again, about this moral ethics. It does happen. Totally. again about this moral ethics and like it does happen and totally that's the thing i liked about this like i like in general about this movie so much is i think the overarching message is also

about like how so much everything is gray there isn't so much of like black and white and there is a lot of gray space and some and it does come to moral ethical ambiguity totally like with every character there's like they're all you could see the good side. Then you're like, oh, but you did this shitty thing. And that, literally everybody. Totally. Yeah. Except poor Fill Me Up.

She did nothing wrong. Yeah. Hey, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Women do not interact nearly as much as I was expecting, considering there are a fair number of female identifying characters.

I only clocked one scene where it passes, which is between Tammy and Lisa in the beginning. Whenever they are kissing, Lisa pulls away. She says, I told you. And she's like, what? And she's like, it doesn't feel right told you and she's like what and she's like it doesn't feel right anymore and she's like tammy's like but i love you and then a few seconds later lisa is getting into her car and starting to drive away and tammy's like where are you going and she's like i'm not like you i'm not a insert homophobic slur here cool pass yeah we're not in

love we were just experimenting so nothing is called into question here in terms of hey is this is a man mentioned here like this is about women kissing each other an interesting pass but also did you not have tracy and her mom passing at least once in that scene yeah no because unless i am just misremembering something, but the only scene I noticed where Tracy and her mom interact on screen is after Tracy finds out she loses the election and she's crying. And then her mom comes in and she says stuff to her. Right. She's like, they're there. Lie down.

Take my pill. You know, and then she's like, maybe you needed more posters or you should have taken my suggestions about your speech but tracy never verbally responds anything she's crying yeah bummer yeah i wish that mom i don't understand why that mom character wasn't more present and that was like a weird thing for me so yes this movie does pass the bechdel test but as far as i can tell only in one scene scene, unless I'm, you know, missing something. That's not okay. That's the way the cookie crumbles. We'll take one for $19.99.

Yeah. Now we rate on our nipple scale, where we rate the movie based on its portrayal of women, based on a scale of zero to five nipples. This is another, like, kind of landing right in the middle for me, where to me it's not especially progressive. It's not especially regressive. It has interesting female characters. More time and care was spent to develop them,

certainly more than other similar kind of teen movies especially of this era but also there are choices that were made like the statutory affair that happens between the teacher and the student and yeah i don't know this is just like it's a hard it's a hard this is a hard one this is some of them are very easy and this is a hard one because as you were kind of touching on, Natasha, it's like there's a lot of ambiguity and gray area that is honestly very realistic. I mean, we as people find ourselves having to make difficult decisions and being faced with things that we don't exactly know what the right and moral and ethical thing to do is in the moment and maybe making mistakes here and there. So I think all of those aspects of the film are interesting. Worth noting that this is an extremely white movie.

Yes. That could be maybe explained away, the fact that this takes place in a suburb of Omaha. I'm sure there are people of color oh sure yeah we're everywhere yeah at least the Indians I'm sure we found our way somewhere

over there but yeah every major speaking role in fact maybe even every speaking role period is spoken by a white person. Yes. I do appreciate that there is clear and not coded because if there is queer characters in movies, usually they're just coded that way. But we do see someone who, even though she perhaps is not totally sure how she identifies at this stage in her life.

She is queer. Although, as we discussed, you know, she kind of falls into a sort of tropey character of like kind of the angry lesbian type. So, you know, more care and time could have been spent to develop these characters just a little bit more. Yeah. been spent to develop these characters just a little bit more. Yeah, so overall, this was a very long-winded way to say that I give this movie... I'm gonna give this movie I think two and a half nips. I'll give one to Tracy Flick, I'll give one to Tammy, and I will give my remaining half nipple to Diane, Jim's wife and then ex-wife. Because I feel like we should have.

His wife. Because I feel like we should have learned more about her and more about the mom character. More about many characters. But, you know, you only have so much time in a movie. I'm going to go. I'm very close to wanting to do a three and a half uh for this one Natasha you made a great point at the end for all the like nitpicky things I have about this movie by and large every character in this movie is presented as flawed and that is I in general, a positive in that we have female characters that we know well enough to know that they're flawed.

Usually it's the only thing we know about them or we know nothing at all. So where I do have like certain thoughts of like, I think that Tammy's character could have been handled better. You're totally right. She's a very flawed character, as is the entire main cast. And for any criticism of like everyone, like, it's not just the female identifying characters in this movie that and where they started, everyone's in a vicious cycle that they made themselves. And that's, you know, depressing, but feels real, and at least is uniformly applied to almost every character you know there there are a few misses with i absolutely agree that

the statutory rape storyline is is mishandled and there's i mean i think that there's space inside of it this movie for it to be handled well but it it's not. And then there's a few Uncanny Valley characters like Linda where I could understand where you're coming from, but we just haven't spent enough time with you to understand why these sudden switches were made. And just the, I don't see any reason why Tracy's mom couldn't have been more present. Little stuff like that.

Obviously, it is a very white movie. And there's no reason in a high school setting for their, you know. Although my high school had 99.9% white people in it. So I don't like, not to defend this choice at all. Sure. But it might be a regional thing. Who knows? But also in in movies you can make choices to you know misrepresent things because movies do it all the time right and also it's like how would

it have affected the story negatively like it would yeah it wasn't a you know you could have the movie happen the exact same way and have included people of color at any point but i'll go three three and a half because it's hard to find it's hard to find complicated depictions of women in movies at all and we've got we've got a few here and i really really enjoyed this movie and i'm looking forward to seeing it again and oh also sorry what i was gonna say is not just a complicated woman in 1999 but the kind of character you can keep revisiting and take something new away every time i think that that is something very commonly applied to male characters um i go right to tv but like you know

you're don draper's of like revisiting this guy we all thought was so fucking cool there's not a lot of female characters that are written well enough to be able to go back and have new takeaways. For sure. So I'll go three and a half. I'm going to give two to Tracy Flick. And I give that half to

Diane. And I'm giving the last to that poor baby who had to see Matthew Brodrick have sex. You guys said everything. No. I would give it three. Also because I appreciate that they were telling a female sort of driven story. I appreciate that there were multiple female characters.

I mean, we talked about five or so in it. The reason I wouldn't give it a full five is because they were portrayed to be like the parts of us that could be embraced were sort of underappreciated. And I get it. I mean, as a writer, when you're writing a character, you just got to go like all in. You can't be like, oh, the, you know, the ambitious student and the logline has to be the over ambitious student, the obnoxious student, like it has to do and I get it. But I wish that, you know, if we had the platform, we weren't portrayed as that. Otherwise, I feel like all your points are valid. I'm always an advocate for diversity. That said, I completely get that I'm from Canada. And I think it's a lot more common there to see all sorts of people. But I've learned as I've come to America, that there are cities here where people didn't have people

of color at all, like until college and stuff. So I understand that, and I'm just kidding sometimes, sometimes not, that everybody should have diversity. But it's, you know, back, it was fucking 1999. It's all good. Yeah, so three. I'll give two and a half to Tracy. Just because she's a ball buster. And she, you know, didn't let anybody stop her.

And she had a lot of shit happen to her and she pushed on. She was also a human being who was flawed. And I think there's a lot to take away from her. And fucking Reese Witherspoon plays her. So you have to love her. The other quarters I'll give to Tammy because, like you said, it's great that they had an openly queer character on camera. And her depiction was honest in the beginning of her struggling, you know, and trying to figure it out. Diane, I feel bad for her. I feel bad for her.

And so I don't think the math added up guys don't judge me i'm indian i should have known the math that i didn't i didn't i think that no that tried i'm also half hungover but i'm not i'm just really sleepy well thank you so much for being here thank you for having me uh what would you like to plug where can people find you online um you guys can check out the kind of dating podcast we are everywhere you find podcasts and we're also on youtube uh you can follow us on social media we're at kind of dating across the board um i'm at natasha chandel on facebook and instagram and natasha underscore chandel on twitter because some other bitch took my name i I'm kidding. Unbelievable.

Who never uses Twitter. Give me my handle back. No, I'm kidding. Awesome. You can follow the Bechtel cast on the various platforms on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtel cast. You can write and review us on iTunes. You can subscribe to our Patreon,

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okay goodbye bye bye vote Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese Cyber Monday Okay, we love you so much Okay, goodbye Bye-bye Vote Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist Who on October 16th, 2017 was assassinated Crooks Everywhere unnerves 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. Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. On my podcast, Table for Two, we have unforgettable lunch after unforgettable lunch with the best guest you could possibly ask for. People like Matt Bomer, Emma Roberts, and Colin Jost. Did you say a Caesar salad with lobster? Yeah. Whoa.

Our second season is airing right now, so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi 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.

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