The Bechdel Cast - Frida with Angela Campos

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

This week, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Angela Campos chat about Frida (and of course, Alfred Molina)! Follow Angela at @angelacmps on Instagram! Here are the pieces we referenced: "Frida Kahlo and Questions of Identity" by Tanya Núñez -- https://www.nunez.media/is-frida-kahlo-problematic/  Salma Hayek's NYT op-ed, "Harvey Weinstein Is My Monster Too" -- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/opinion/contributors/salma-hayek-harvey-weinstein.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, Jamie. Hi, Caitlin. Would you draw me like one of your... Frida girls? Self-portraits? Question mark. Well, no. That's not how that works at all.

Okay, yeah, that doesn't make sense. That's not how that works at all. Okay, yeah, that doesn't make sense. That's not how that works. But I appreciate the ask. But you really need to look within, look to your darkest parts. What I should have said is, hey, Caitlin, would you draw me like one of your selves? You know? We'll get there.

We'll continue to navigate. It's a work in progress. Yeah, this joke will kind of coagulate throughout the episode. Yes. In the meantime, welcome to the Bechtel cast. My name's Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. This is our podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechtel test simply as a jumping off point.

And what is that though, I wonder? Well, the Bechdel test is a media metric originally created by queer cartoonist, Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel Wallace test because it was co-created with her friend, Liz Wallace, originally made as a bit as will become actually relevant in today's episode, but was originally created as a bit for her comic collection, Dikes to Watch Out For, and was originally sort of this conversation about how not just women or people of marginalized genders

never talk to each other in movies, but how queer women specifically never get to talk to each other in movies. but how queer women specifically never get to talk to each other in movies. A lot of versions of this test, the one we use, requires that two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue. And it should be, you know, a plot relevant exchange. That would be nice. And we're gonna get into it today. So let's get our guest in here, a long time movie request and it's happening, baby.

It's finally here. Our guest is an art historian and is currently in a PhD program in art and education. So I am not the person with the highest degree. Hey, don't be humble. You used to teach paint night. You are. Yeah, but I only have a master's.

I don't have a PhD. That's true. And you do need a master's to do paint night. You need a PhD to teach paint night classes. True. Sorry, I have completely derailed your introduction, but yes, art historian and in a PhD to teach paint night class. It's true. Sorry, I have completely derailed your introduction. But yes, art historian and in a PhD program in art and education is Angela Campos.

Welcome. Hello and welcome. Hi. I'm very happy to be here. So excited. So happy to have you. I still only have a master's degree too. OK, well, that makes me feel better.

I'm currently in the PhD program. So yeah, it's fine. It's, it's okay. Don't worry. We're in the same. Yeah. I will not be upscaled on my own podcast. No. So we're talking about Frida, the 2002 biopic directed by Julie Taymor starring Salma Hayek and well,, come on, and Alfred Molina. And sorry, Alfred... Of course. Alfred Molina. Now hold the damn phone.

We can't... Let's not bury the leaf. Alfred Molina is in this movie. Sorry to erase a male presence. Well, as we've said many times on this show, and it will be complicated in this movie, if Alfred Molina is speaking, it passes the Pectal Test automatically. Rules be damned. That is con- yes, yes. Well, we haven't brought up Alfred Molina in quite some time. It's because he got married, so I'm moving on.

He's off the market for you, Jamie. Anyways, sorry. So we're talking about Frida and we're curious, Angela, what is your relationship with the movie with Frida Kahlo as an artist and historical figure? Tell us everything. Well, first, I remember watching the movie when I was way too young to be able to watch it. I remember that it was, I don't know if my mom had it on DVD or something, but I remember watching it because especially the scene, I don't want any spoilers yet, but the scene with the sister traumatized me horribly.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. hypnotized me horribly. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I remember tiny parts of the film in my unconscious mind. And I never rewatched it until I started studying art history at 18, 19 years old. So when you're an art historian, especially in Mexico, you're kind of tired of Frida Calo. Well, even if you're a Mexican person, you're kind of tired of Frida Kahlo. Well, even if you're a Mexican person, you're kind of tired of Frida because she has been exploited by the capitalist system in a way that she would have hated being a communist, no? Exactly. Yes.

Yeah. But she's constantly, constantly in our media, in our international propaganda to come to Mexico and the idea people have of Mexico. So as a Mexican, it's kind of annoying. So people tend to put her away and say, ah, if Lohera Frida Kahlo, I don't like her. So, and the taboo in art history, I believe, is to like her. So when I had my 20th century art class,

because you have other artists from 20th century that are important, like Maria Isquierdo, Tina Modotti, who is in the movie, of course, Remedios Baro, Leonora Carrington, all of these women that surrounded the same time and space as Frida Kahlo, tend to be more popular within the art history crowd. But then you realize when I had my art history class for the 20th century, I really found

out the true sense and the true importance of Frida Kahlo. Her paintings are not only this thing of, oh, I'm so sad, I'm so sick, I have a horrible life, which we all complain about constantly. But it's a thing of how she pioneered something in art that is so common nowadays. And maybe that's why we don't notice it or consider it as important because we have normalized it. But she did it first. And it's not about her technique, her aesthetic. It's about that And it's not about her technique, her aesthetic. It's about that innovation that she brought to art history. And I found that out until I started the 20th century in the last semester of my degree.

And it was extremely shocking because I realized my internalized misogyny against Rita Kahlo, my prejudices against her and how stereotypes of her had shaped the image I had of her instead of just letting go and going with the flow and realize myself if I liked her or not, which is something that I also think Salma Hayek said about her, that she didn't like her at first and then she explored her and then she realized that she was amazing. That's what happened to me too. So that's my journey with Priva Kahlo and now I of course love her. And yeah, what about you?

That's so interesting. I mean, that, I feel like that happens a lot where something gets mainstreamified. Yeah, like over, it's like seeing you like Coldplay. You're like, well, sure you do. But everybody does. Everybody does. And everybody when they come to Mexico, I have cousins in Spain and they're like, I want to see Frida. I want to see Frida. And I was like, they behave like Frida and Diego are the Sistine Chapel or something, no? And then I realized they are for people that aren't from here. And we

have normalized going to Bellas Artes and seeing Diego's murals. We have normalized being close to La Casa Azul. We have normalized those things about these great artists, because we have them, at least in Mexico City, I'm being very centralist here, unfortunately, but at least in Mexico City, we have them very close to us. So it's also a thing of re-cherishing what we have in our own art history and realizing it's not just anything that we should skip and consider again, no? It's something that we should maybe explore from other perspectives. LS- Sometimes things are very well known because they are good. Yeah. And it so rarely happens.

But in the case of Frida Kahlo, it's true. Yeah. Jamie, how about you? What's your history? I had not seen this movie before for a silly reason that I will get to, but I was introduced to Frida Kahlo's work through what we're going to talk about today, this

very sort of sanitized image of who she was. I probably was introduced to Frida Kahlo in high school, like on a pair of socks or something. I feel like she's a very frequently and like you were saying, Angela, there's like the fact that her politics mean that she would fucking hate that. But she felt like, yeah, this pantheon of frequently reproduced figures that I actually didn't know much about. You would see her next to like Einstein and like all of these sort of iconic, innovative people just presented without context for monetary gain. That's how I learned who she was. And then I did read the book this movie's based on

in high school, A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera. I read that in high school and like completely fell in love with her. Just out of sight, I have a framed print of the two Fridas. Yeah, the more I learned about her, I mean, she's still to this day, I mean, it's like a travesty that she's presented so simply. And I feel like in this way that is very white feminism driven, completely lacking context, lacking her politics,

lacking her identity and lacking her queerness as well, like which was something I had to learn from a book. It wasn't something that was readily being printed about her when I was in high school. So I've always been fascinated by her. I avoided this movie for years because a college professor who was really mean to me is one of the credited screenwriters. So for one of so Diane Lake, I'm calling your ass out. You were such an asshole to me in 2014. And so I like kind of vowed to never watch this movie due to the transgressions

of one Diane Lake. However, I am very glad that I have finally have caused to watch it because there's so much to talk about. I'm so curious, but I don't know, I am very glad that I have finally have caused to watch it because there's so much to talk about. I'm so curious, but I don't know. I feel like I'm going to figure out how I feel about it in real time. I like Julie Taymor in general. I think she's a very creative director. I was one of the cringe fans of Across the Universe. Me too. Good, good. Yeah, I love her.

I still play it for my students when we see the Vietnam War and stuff. I still play some things because it's amazing. I don't care. It's true. I was like, you had to be there. And if you were there, you understand. Exactly.

Yeah. We'll talk about her a little bit. I also wanted to shout out her funniest credit, which is the Bad Spider-Man musical. Oh yeah, the cursed. That almost kept killing all the Spider-Mans. The musical that shall not be named. Yes. So anyways, I hadn't seen it and I am very glad that I did because it gave me like reason to revisit her life, which I hadn't in a while. to revisit her life, which I hadn't in a while. Caitlin, what is your history with this film and this political figure?

I had seen the movie before, probably about 20 years ago, and I didn't revisit it, although I remember liking it at the time, but enough time had passed that I forgot almost everything you learn in the movie. And then I re-learned much of it by visiting the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City. I went to La Casa Azul and I went with friend of the cast Adriana Ortega, who was on our Ito Mama Tambien episode. Love you Adriana. And who Ortega, who was on our Eat Your Mom, Me, Me, Me episode. Love you, Adriana. And who coincidentally connected us with you, Angela.

She's just the best. Yeah, she is. Yeah, she took me to the museum. And obviously, much of her art is in the museum, as well as different dresses she wore, different outfits she wore throughout her life, different kind of medical apparatus that she wore, different outfits she wore throughout her life, different kind of medical apparatus that she wore. And I was like, oh, right.

She's dealt with chronic pain throughout her life. I also relearned that she was a communist. I relearned that she was bisexual, all this stuff. And I was like, oh, yeah. And then so remembering that, this was about a year ago that I went to the museum and relearned all this information. So I was like, I wonder how much of that is in this biopic. Because I was like, I bet Hollywood is going to like wash a lot of that out.

I thought that her bisexuality would have been sanitized big time. But I mean, there are a lot of aspects of Frida's life, as far as I can tell, that are somewhat erased or scaled back on in this biopic, but it does show more about her than what I would have expected. Because I was like, oh, I bet this movie like capitalism washes her political ideology. I bet it straight washes her queerness, you know, but it does and it doesn't. And we'll talk about that a lot.

But yeah, I really enjoyed going to the museum and learning about it. And then rewatching this movie, I was like, oh my gosh, setting aside things that the movie might again, scale back on or kind of erase about Frida's life. It's a really enjoyable movie. I find it very fun and entertaining and I enjoy it just as a piece of cinema. And then I also, I didn't finish it.

I have about 20 minutes left, but there's a documentary called Frida that came out recently on Prime that takes excerpts from her diary, from letters she wrote, correspondences from other major figures in her life, including Diego Rivera and other friends and lovers of hers and their diaries. And it just has all this sort of like voiceover over photographs of her, video of her, I guess film, film footage of her, obviously her works of art. And so that provides a little bit more context. So I learned some more stuff from that. And yeah, I really appreciate Frida Kahlo as an artist and historical figure and I like the movie a lot, but there's lots to talk about. So let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and get into the recap. I'm Julian Edelman.

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Wow. Listen to Las Colteristas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

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in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and I'm the host of On Purpose. My latest episode is with Jelly Roll. This episode is one of the most honest and raw interviews I've ever had. We go deep into Jelly Roll's life story

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Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. And we're back. We're back. Shall we get into the flim of the movie? I just was like, I'm kind of panicking about, but you know what? I just, I need Diane like to know how I feel. Let's leave it in. Let's leave it in. We could, I could bleep out the name if you wanted to.

I guess that there are four credited writers on this movie and I guess an uncredited script write from Edward Norton, which I don't even know if I want to talk about. I was like, you know, when you learn a fact and you're like, I don't know if I can engage with that fact. Right. Anyways, no, leave it in. Okay, we'll leave it in. Okay, so the movie opens on Frida Kahlo as an older adult near the end of her life. She's in bed, which is being loaded onto a truck. We will find out why because this pays off later in the movie. Then we flashback to 1922 in Mexico City. Frida is a teenager. I think she would have been around 15 years old at the time. Renowned artist Diego Rivera played by a one

Alfred Molina. Alfred Molina. I will say I love Salma Hayek so much. It was so distracting watching her be 15 years old. Yes. Truly. She was doing this, like, I don't know, like taking this childlike stance. Yeah. Just get a different actor.

It's just a couple scenes. And it was in her 30s when she recorded a film. So it's like, yeah, it's a stretch. Very, very movie. It happens all the time, but the cut too is severe. I was like, whoa. Okay, cool. It reminded me of an episode of like, Pen 15, kind of.

It was giving Pen 15. Anyways, so Diego Rivera is at her school painting a nude portrait of a woman with whom he's also having an affair. And Frida and her friends sneak in to watch him work. One of these friends is her boyfriend, Alejandro, aka Alex, played by baby Diego Luna. Love to see him. So Jamie, your lifelong crush is in the movie. And so is yours.

My more recent crush, Diego Luna, is in the movie. So the boys are there. He's Mexico's crush too. Yeah. Oh my God. Mexico's proudest moment. That's another big Caitlin crush. Yeah. They're my boys. Mexico's proudest moment. That's another big Caitlin crush. They're my boys. Okay, so they are together, Frida and Alex.

Then we see Frida's childhood home. We meet her mother, her father, who is a painter and photographer, her sister Christina, played by Mia Maestro, and she's about to get married, so they're gearing up for the wedding. One day, Frieda and Alex are on a bus. This is when she was 18 years old, discussing politics and Marxism.

The bus crashes, leaving Frieda with several serious injuries, many broken bones. Her pelvis was impaled by the handrail of the bus. And she has several operations in this really, I think, cool stop motion animation sequence. Yeah. Every time you see a biopic about an artist and it doesn't even attempt to bring in their craft

into the filmmaking. I was so glad they did that. It looked really cool. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and it was very Julie Taymor coded to like, yes, the whole aesthetic of that, of that scene, because in Across the Universe, for example, she does similar things. And I also love that they use the skulls, the calacas, because of the relationship with Frida's idea of death, but also Mexican typical art. Very cool. So she's in recovery for a long time after the accident. Doctors are uncertain if she'll ever walk again. One day Alex comes in and tells Frida that he's moving to Europe. So they effectively break up and Frida is devastated. And then while she's recuperating,

her parents gift her painting supplies and they install a mirror on the ceiling of her four poster bed so that she can paint self portraits. So she starts painting a lot and eventually she starts walking again and one day she approaches Diego Rivera and shows her paintings to him and wants his professional opinion because she's hoping to make a career out of painting, to make money and help support her family. They have substantial medical bills that have piled up from all of these operations. And Diego Rivera is like, wowie wow, a wuga, you're a great painter,

and your work is very original, and it's terrific. And so he becomes a mentor to her and kind of takes her under his wing. He brings her to a party full of artists and political activists. They're talking about socialism and communism and drinking and stuff that you do at a party. One of those parties. Right? Antonio Banderas is there as David Alfaro Siqueiros. He and Diego are like frenemies. Yeah. I never thought I'd see the day where Alfred Molina and Antonio Banderas got into a physical altercation but today was that day.

By the way, they did Siqueiros a very big favor by casting Antonio Banderas, let me say that. Oh, is he not? Yeah, he didn't look like that. No, not at all. No. I mean, Alfred Molina's casting of Diego Rivera. It was also a favor for Rivera, yes.

The biopic treatment. Everyone's 40% hotter in the biopic, At least. So we're at this party. Ashley Judd is also there playing Tina Modotti who was an Italian-American photographer, model, actor, political activist. She and Frida do a sexy dance and have a little kiss together. Meanwhile, Diego is trying to sleep with Frida. He is a known womanizer and she's like, I'm not gonna sleep with you, dude. And he's like, okay, fair. We'll just be comrades, colleagues and friends, but we'll never sleep with each other. And that gets her horny.

And then they immediately start making out and having sex. I do love that Frieda from the very beginning of this movie is canonically horny, because that also seems to be historically true. Yes, yes. Yes, it is, yes. A very horny person who had many affairs. Truly a murderer's row list of lovers. Extramarital affairs.

Like she had Paul. Yeah. Yeah. Goals, you know? Incredible. Yeah. My goals at least. So time passes.

Frida and Diego fall in love. They get married, though her mother disapproves of the marriage because Diego Rivera is an atheist and a communist. Frida, though her mother disapproves of the marriage because Diego Rivera is an atheist and a communist. Frida also has doubts about her relationship with Diego. We see at the wedding Diego's ex-wife Lupe Marin, played by Valeria Galino, causes a scene. She insults Frida.

Frida gets upset that Diego doesn't defend her. It's day one of them being married and already not off to a great start. Then Frida finds out that Lupe lives right above Diego's apartment with the children they have together, which infuriates Frida at first. But then she and Lupe start hanging out and Lupe teaches Frida how to make her mole recipe. And she tells Frida about Diego Rivera's various infidelities and this pattern of behavior does not change with Frida. No, imagine that, a man not changing. Impossible.

Yeah. Who knew? so Frida finds out about his many affairs often with the models he paints portraits of. there's also a political undercurrent to the film as previously kind of hinted at but Diego has painted a socialist portrait in a government building in Mexico City, but his party thinks he's a traitor because he's like making art for a bourgeois government, so there's like this push and pull there. He's making art for Edward Norton Rockefeller, which was the most

interesting jump scare in this movie for me. We were like, what the hell are you doing here? I had a similar jump scare with Ashley Judd. I was like, huh? What is she doing here? I was expecting an Italian actress or something and then Ashley Judd showed up. Right. Well, isn't Valeria Galino an Italian actress? The one who plays

Lupe Marin, no? Yeah. She probably would have made more sense in that role. Anyway. So that's about to happen where Frida and Diego go to New York for a solo exhibition of Diego's. Diego then paints a mural in the Rockefeller building. Edward Norton is playing like Rockefeller Jr. Frida's voiceover is talking about the class disparity and poverty she sees in New York. This is also highlighted in that documentary I was referencing. The way she talks about New York, the way she talks about like rich Americans especially, she's like these motherfuckers are the most boring losers I've ever met. She talks about like having visited Harlem and how it was such a like beautiful vibrant

neighborhood that reminded her of neighborhoods in Mexico City, like the way she describes New York I found very funny. Anyway, Diego continues to be unfaithful to Frida on this trip, but Frida is also having affairs. We see her with a woman who Diego had also slept with. Then Frida reveals to Diego that she's pregnant, although he expresses concern about her body being able to handle a pregnancy because of the injuries she sustained. And sure enough, she has a miscarriage and is rushed to the hospital. Her miscarriage inspires some of her paintings. It's all obviously very devastating to her also. And it's also

around this time that Frida's mother falls ill and passes away. Diego is still in New York doing this Rockefeller building painting. And he has put Vladimir Lenin into the mural. And some people are like, woohoo, hero. And then all the capitalists are like, boo, take that out of

there. But Diego refuses to compromise his vision. So he's fired from this commission and the painting is destroyed, which enrages Diego. They return home to Mexico, where he feels like restless and creatively unfulfilled and he resents being back in Mexico. He was having a great time in New York. And it's kind of throughout the movie, but it's especially around this point where I'm like, what about Frida's art? Like, we see more of that. Yeah, because he was also very resentful against her because they returned to Mexico because

she was homesick. That was his idea. So he's like, no, this is your fault that we're here. And yeah, she says something along the lines of, I want to return to that artist that you were painting, my gay yes, and not being a pompous guy and broken fitters. Yeah, corporate shill. Yeah, capitalist stooge. I never thought as well, Caitlin, I was curious what others thought about it,

where I feel like we see a lot of Frida's paintings brought to life through these stop motion animations that Salma Hayek is very frequently in, and they're presented, but it's not fully contextualized what is motivating them. And I wish that there was a little more, especially in a biopic about an artist,

to have a fuller idea of what was inspiring these pieces. Cause I loved the visuals of it, but it felt like a little less focused on her art than I would have liked. Yeah, and we'll talk more about it, but it felt like a little less focused on her art than I would have liked. Yeah, and we'll talk more about it, but that was something I definitely noticed throughout the movie. But I also know that like in her lifetime, her art career was not sufficiently like Diego Rivera's art career always got precedence over hers too. I don't know.

Yeah. Right. And this was a systemic issue in Mexican art, yeah. Exactly. My thing is, well, if that was like where his art was always like overshadowing hers, like shouldn't the movie like call more attention to that and like address that? Yeah. Examine the systemic, patriarchal, sexist context for that? Anyway, we'll talk more about it. So then Frida hires her sister Christina, who had recently left her abusive husband, to help out in Diego's studio.

Diego and Christina promptly have sex, which is like the ultimate betrayal to Frida. She I don't know if tolerated was the right word, but she like put up with his infidelities, but this was like the last straw, him sleeping with her sister. So she leaves Diego and she stops talking to her sister for a while. Frieda moves back into the house she grew up in. She cuts off all of her hair, making her the baldest woman in charge. She starts dressing androgynously some of the time, which is something we've seen her do already, different times throughout

the film. It's also clear that she's having trouble supporting herself. She considers selling some of her paintings, but comments are made about how, like, they don't have enough commercial appeal sort of thing. Then Diego approaches Frida asking if she'll house Leon Trotsky, played by Jeffrey Rush, and his wife, Natalia, who have been granted asylum in Mexico after being exiled from the Soviet Union and then from Norway, I think. And Frida agrees. So Trotsky moves in and he takes to Frida immediately. He marvels her paintings. He really likes her and they start having an affair. They also visit some pyramids. Ciltyvacan. visit some pyramids. Yes, where I also went on that same trip to Mexico City and they're stunning. But I was

like, wow, I recognize these places. I went there. And so this affair is ongoing between Frida and Trotsky. Natalia finds out about it. So she and Trotsky move out, which is dangerous for them. And an assassination attempt is made, although Trotsky move out, which is dangerous for them, and an assassination attempt is made, although Trotsky survives it, this one at least. Just a quick note, I found out earlier that the actress who plays Natalia Trotsky's wife and Salma Hayek had worked together in El Callejón de los Milagros, a Mexican movie from 1995 previously. Oh cool!

Yeah, yeah. So in this film, they're enemies, of course, because she ends up hating Frida Callow for sleeping with her husband. But they had previously worked together in a very good Mexican film. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. I'll have to check that one out. So then Frida goes to Paris for an exhibition of hers. And the only people she hates more than Americans are French people, which is, um, that seems to be, you know, the order of operations there.

And she's writing letters to Diego saying that she misses him and she does want to be with him after all, but the next time they see each other, he asks for a divorce. Trotsky is then eventually murdered and the Mexican government thinks that Diego has something to do with it and so they interrogate Frida asking where Diego is, but she won't cooperate, so she's arrested and put in jail, I think is what happens here. Her sister Christina bailes her out and then they make up. Frida's health has started to decline around this point. Some of her toes are amputated after they're

discovered to be gangrenous. And the movie doesn't make this super clear, but I think she's had additional operations and again is suffering from chronic pain. Diego comes back and wants to get married again, and at first Frida's like, I don't need your pity. I don't need you to save me. And he's like, I'm the one who needs saving. So they get married again. And by now it's, I think, 1953. She finally has her first solo exhibition of her paintings in her own country, something that she's been waiting for her whole life, but she's too ill to leave her bed. Because she had her leg amputated too in 1953. Right. Which is like somewhat clear in the movie.

Yeah, because she takes the leg, the prosthetic. Yeah, she's like, give me my leg back. So Diego goes to this exhibition on her behalf. He gives a monologue about her work as an artist. Big movie moment that also happened. Happened in real life where Frida shows up. She has had people carry her in in bed so that she can enjoy the event, but you know, obey the doctor's orders of like not leaving her bed. And then shortly after this, she passes away on July 13th, 1954. So that's the movie. Let's take another quick break

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And we're back. One of the main things that I am curious about, Angela, is as far as what we know about Frida Kahlo's life and art and political positions and all of that, how does it compare to what is shown in the movie and are there important things about Frida that were left out or glossed over in this biopic? I believe generally she was depicted very accurately. Because Alma Hayek was very passionate about this.

She even contacted Dolores Olmedo, who was the last lover and the person who, aside from his kids, held Diego Rivera's inheritance and Frida Kahlo's artwork. So she was a very rich woman and there was a museum that recently closed in the south of Mexico City that had all her collections and stuff. But Salma Hayek contacted this woman and asked her for permission to put Frida's paintings in the film. And Salma Hayek I think was very passionate about this project. So she didn't want to depict Frida Kahlo in a way that wasn't truthful. But again, it has some things that are immediately not true, like the fact that all the dialogue is in English and they try to include some Spanish in their, in a,

sometimes in a forced way and like stereotypical Mexican way, I think. But I think that the spirit of Frida Kahlo is very well represented in terms of her being a rebel. Every time they say she cannot do something, she finds a way or a loophole to do it. The horny aspect that you were mentioning. I think what is very washed down is how violent Diego was towards Frida in his relationship with her because it's still very romantic. I understand that it's from Frida's perspective, which was very romanticized and her idea of him never, she never realized how violent it was, what he did to her, but it could have been more critical in that way because it was terrible. He was a very, very bad man

and not only towards Frida. Earlier on, I mentioned other Mexican female artists from this time, including Maria Izquierdo, who was, if we use intersectionality as a tool for this, we can see that she has a higher level of dissonance than Frida Kahlo because she was a brown woman, for example. She was racialized. And Maria Izirdo wanted to paint murals and she was extremely talented, but she could only paint canvas paintings because Siqueiros and Rivera never let women

have public spaces for muralism. Which is very interesting because there is a book called Eclipse de las Siete Lunas by Dina Comisarenco, a researcher that basically discovered female muralists in Mexico who did paint, but they granted them small spaces. Now, instead of the big place where the president holds his and now hers, because we will now have female president's speeches, they gave them the little building in the little part of town that nobody actually saw.

And this was because of a monopoly that these guys had, these men had in muralism in Mexico. And also it has to do with Diego Rivera's incoherence with his political discourse and his political beliefs because Frida Kahlo was much more coherent than him. She never sold out, let's say. And Diego Rivera was coherent only when he could be kind of dramatic about it, like with the Rockefeller thing. There he decided, no, no, no, I have to follow my ideology and I will never back down. But then why did you go there in the first place? If you're such a communist. Right. It almost felt like a PR thing from his end. Yeah. Yeah. For like deciding halfway

through painting something for Elon Musk, like, actually, I don't like this guy. You're like, well, why are you here? He already paid you. Yeah. So he was kicked out of the Communist Party from Mexico three times because of these incoherences. And Frida was much more strong in this sense too. And I think that all of those little nuances, I mean, it's a film, it's a two hour film, you can really depict them all. But there are little details that I think would enrich this general idea we have of Frida and make her even more of an admirable character. Like we see her when we find out all of these nuances. No?

Mm-hmm. Thank you for contextualizing that better. Because I think that that also speaks to, Caitlin, what you were saying a little earlier about while we see a lot of her work, the context of how welcome women were or were not into art in Mexico and the US at this time isn't fully explored in a way that I feel like would make sense to do in this movie. And I also, I mean, I found a quote from Diego Rivera

because I remember from reading this book all these years ago that the abuse that he subjected to her and others was horrific. And I was like, one of the disappointing elements of the movie, or I think the most disappointing element of the movie to me was kind of making the Hollywood choice to have the action of the movie. We're following Frida's life, but the most important thing we're following according to the movie is her relationship with Diego, which obviously that's complicated because it was one of the most deeply important relationships of her life.

Anyways, here's this quote I found from Rivera that sort of bears this out. He said, If I ever loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her, Frida was only the most obvious victim of this disgusting trait. So he also stated himself. Like, don't do it. Right.

Right, well, one of the things that I thought was interesting, because I went back and fact checked this because I was like, what a weird line of dialogue if this was made up. But he says early in the movie, essentially when he says like, if we get married, it will have to be an open marriage because I can't do anything else. And he says like, Oh yeah, I talked to this doctor and he said, I'm like, I can't do monogamy, which is like the most scumbag thing you could possibly say. And it turns out that actually happened. He, yeah, the real life Diego Rivera talked to some doctor at a party and he was like, yeah, you're diagnosed as always going to cheat.

Well, coming at it from a polyamorous standpoint, like he's clearly someone who is inclined toward polyamory. And it seems as though despite Frida's affairs, it seems like she was only having those because she knew that Diego was in response to. Exactly. So that's what tends to happen when a polyamorous person and a monogamous person get together is that it doesn't quite work. But well, I'm not I'm not trying to like make any sort of disparaging statement towards polyamory for sure. Like Diego Rivera was an abuser and a liar and not honoring the type of relationship your partner wants are two very separate things. And I don't want to conflate ethical non-monogamy with any kind of partner abuse because there was nothing

ethical about what Diego Rivera was doing in his relationship. Yeah, and most relationships at that time in art in Mexico had that. Frida, that's why she's so amazing because she portrayed this personal, very personal pain and suffering and process. But it was a political statement too because she understood power relations and she understood disparity in gender and she understood how hurtful a binary system was, because she was also, like you said, very androgynous in some points of her life. And she understood these things and she depicts them in her art. And this is amazing, at least for me, because it's a very weird thing when the hegemony

at the time was these male artists who painted these murals that represented the official version of Mexico's history and they should be doing things that serve our country, which was Vasconcelos' discourse, the guy that proposed muralism as our national art. And muralism is, it's like Diego Rivera in an art movement, I would say like big in the terms of a big figure, also towering over you all the time, also telling you a version of how you should be, also showcasing everything that is wrong with the system. And he even included Pridaya in one of the paintings, no? But it's always her painting in a private space, in a studio, on canvas, and him painting

in a public space, yeah, with the government and everything, creating a national, basically nationalism, no? Creating our idea of what it is to be Mexican. So it's very interesting for me to see that now, the idea of what it is to be Mexican has more to do with Frida than with Diego, but it isn't surprising because Frida showcases a lot of experiences that unfortunately Mexican women have.

And Carlos Montesibais even said that she was kind of a new version of the Virgin of Guadalupe to us. So she represents Mexico in both the good and bad things, better than Diego Rivera, who was paid to represent Mexico. Nicole Corsette Right. Karla Luzarosa Yeah. Nicole Corsette Right. Right. So he was always beholden to somebody else. I'm curious what you both think about this because going back and sort of reviewing how I think this movie is more

political than I was expecting it to be. Communism was more explicitly addressed than I would have expected in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Especially because Hollywood is so afraid of communism, historically. Right. I mean, whatever. It's very like, one-oh-any kind of stuff. But I felt like the movie kind of implies that Frida comes by her political beliefs via Diego Rivera. And that rubbed me the wrong way because she like

joined the Communist Party when she was a teenager. Like she was really politically active far before she was like romantically attached to Rivera. And I felt like the movie kind of suggested that when she started seeing him after she had like gone through this first recovery, that that was how she arrived at her political beliefs. And I just, it's not true.

I didn't feel that quite so much, especially because we see that scene with her on the bus with Diego Luna's character. That's true. Where they're talking about, he's like, you always read things in the wrong order. You have to read this one guy before you read Marx. You have to read Hegel before Marx.

Right. Yeah, yeah. I guess I just meant like her explicit connection to the party. Yeah. Yeah. And also there were 2,500 students in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, which was at the time the only high school in Mexico. And she was like one of 35 women out of those 2,500 students. And she joined the Cachuchas, which was a group that was highly political. And Alejandro, her boyfriend, was one of the leaders for student autonomy and student movements,

which will eventually have a very dark history in Mexico. So it's very interesting because she was always involved and she always was going to end up being a communist, no? So it isn't related to Diego Rivera, I think, and we shouldn't attribute it to him because also, like I said, he's not a coherent communist at all. He's really bad at being a communist. I do think the movie, after that scene where she is discussing Marxism with Alex, it's almost always us seeing Diego Rivera talk

about his communist ideology. And Frida, we don't see discuss it that much, except for that one scene where they've arrived in New York. She keeps calling it Gringolandia, which is very funny. And she's talking about like income disparity and poverty. But aside from that, her political ideology isn't super clear. And if it comes up in the movie, it's usually in the context of what Diego Rivera is doing or what he's painting

or what he's saying. Yeah. Yeah. And also Frida, when she was buried, well, no, she was not buried. When it was, she was cremated, no? And the ashes are in the Casa Azul. But when she was in her service, or when she died, they carried the communist flag to Bellas Artes, which is like the palace of fine arts in Mexico City. And in her service, the communist flag was carried with her. So she really, really, really believed and cared about communism. And that's what I also find very interesting about how she has been made into a token for feminism. I personally am a feminist and I have been in the feminist intersectional field in Mexico

for more than 10 years, but I always kind of cringed when they said, ah yes, Frida, feminist icon. Because when they do that, they expect then for Frida to be super coherent with feminism. And then they find out about her relationship with Diego Rivera and they cancel her and they're like, oh no, but she allowed herself to be in that relationship and she helped a man like that exist. And it's like, you can expect her to be a communist.

She understood feminist ideas, but she never called herself a feminist because that wasn't even chronologically coherent. And I have seen when I went to the States one time at Barnes and Noble, I saw this set of cards that had like feminist icons and like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Frida Kahlo, Hillary Clinton. And I'm like, what? Right. Like the people you see printed on socks in gentrified areas and you're like, oh. No, she was not. She would die if you put her next to Hillary Clinton.

Oh my God. That's what the American that she was referring to in her diary. Right? So it's no. And I think that's very interesting how they decided to pick and choose which part of her rebellion to take and they chose those feminist traits and whitewash them of course and did all this white feminism that you were mentioning. But they completely left out, not in the movie I'm saying, but in the, in how Frida is treated by the culture in Mexico and the United States

and other countries. Like mainstream feminist movement. Right. And I think that's interesting, yeah. That's like one of the, I feel like, many offshoots of like corporatized feminist discourse that is just like so aggravating where it's like, oh, the idea of being a feminist means that you're a woman who did something successfully.

And like not even connecting it to any, like you're saying, coherent political ideology, like putting those three women next to each other. What do they politically have in common? So disparate. It's really all over the place. Yeah. But I will say, like, I do appreciate that this movie does, I don't know if I'm grading it on a 2002 sliding scale. It was doing more than I expected it to politically, although it does feel like politically, I think it did. Caitlin, I think you were saying,

make it clear that Diego's communist ideals could be showy versus productive. I don't think he's held fully to task for that, but at least it's not presented like they were both, you know, like incredible and politically flawless, right? The other element of Frida's life that I was... Well, I feel like it's complicated by a lot of the production stories around this movie, which we'll get to because Salma Hayek later discusses how just bullied and

harassed she was by Harvey Weinstein before and throughout the production of this movie. She spoke about that during the Me Too movement and has more since. So this, it's, it sucks because I feel like this particular element of the story is kind of tainted by those stories. But Frida's queerness and a willingness to not just reference it in passing, which I was kind of wondering at the beginning where there is one like affair she's had with a woman who I guess has also hooked up with Diego and it's discussed and there's like a little handsiness under the table and I was like, I wonder if that's all the movie is going to do in terms of like referencing that she was famously bisexual or I mean, it sounds like her sexual identity was like very complicated and you know

I doubt she would want to be put in one particular category. STACEY That could possibly be true for her gender identity as well especially because I mean sure I'm speculating here but you know the way she would dress sometimes in men's clothes possible that she was genderqueer before that was ever an expression, or perhaps she just liked to wear men's clothes sometimes. Hard to say, but she definitely didn't shy away from engaging with androgyny... SHANNON COFFEY Totally.

...with her sexuality, her queerness. Which is like why it's kind of like, I mean, going back to like the mainstream discourse around her, it's kind of like as I was reading through, there's been so much written about her, obviously, but sort of like very modern attempts to like retroactively put her in a box and claim her. Or it's like, first of all, you'll never know. And second of all, like that just seems antithetical to what like how she lived her life in general. Anyways, all that to say, I appreciated that they referenced that this fluidity

with her sexuality existed throughout her life. And we see a sex scene with Josephine Baker. And the complicated part of that is that Harvey Weinstein, I guess, insisted on that because he wanted Salma Hayek to appear full frontal nude in the movie because he was angry throughout the production that she looked quote unquote too ugly. So that was like, I know, because at first I was like, oh, wow, I it's so rare to see queer sex scenes in a mainstream movie at all. And then you find out the reason it's there. And so there's that.

It's very sad to find out afterwards. I'll share some of the piece that she wrote in the New York Times. Oh yes, her op-ed. Yes, entitled Harvey Weinstein is My Monster Too. Because this also informs another thing about the movie that I wanna talk about, which is representation of disability. So first I'll start by sharing a quote from this piece

where she talks about her passion for this project and her love of Frida Kahlo. She says quote one of the forces that gave me the determination to pursue my career was the story of Frida Kahlo who In the golden age of the Mexican muralists would do small intimate paintings that everybody looked down on She had the courage to express herself while disregarding skepticism. My greatest ambition was to tell her story. It became my mission to portray the life of this extraordinary artist and to show my native Mexico in a way that combated stereotypes." So again, just showing her appreciation for the subject matter, her passion for the project. It was like one of the main things she wanted to do

in her career as an actor. And so with this project she was passionate about, she took the concept to Harvey Weinstein, who at the time she heard good things about as a film producer, his name came with a level of prestige. You know, he was known to have made excellent films. So she went to him, approached him with a project, and he then started sexually harassing her incessantly. She kept telling him, no, I won't do this. No, I won't do

that. No, no, no. And him being told no enraged him. And they entered a legal battle over the movie where he named all these stipulations that the only way that he would proceed with, you know, producing and financing the movie is if she met these kind of unrealistic criteria on a really short deadline, but she managed to deliver. So the movie went forward into production. And then this is where I'll start quoting from the piece. She says, quote, halfway through shooting,

Harvey turned up on the set and complained about Frida's unibrow. He insisted that I eliminate the limp and berated my performance. He then asked everyone in the room to step out except for me. He told me that the only thing I had going for me was my sex appeal and that there was none of that in this movie. He told me he was going to shut down the film because no one would want to see me in that role. It was soul-crushing because I confessed lost in the fog of a sort of Stockholm syndrome, I wanted him to see me as an artist. Not only as a capable actress, but also as somebody who could identify a compelling story and had the vision to tell in an

original way, which I feel like speaks to something that so many women, and this is me speaking now, I've stopped quoting for a moment to be clear, But you know, it speaks to something that so many women and people of marginalized genders deal with as far as imposter syndrome. And yeah, she goes on to say, quote, I was hoping he would acknowledge me as a producer who on top of delivering his list of demands, shepherded the script and obtain the permits to use the paintings. I had negotiated with the Mexican government and with whomever I had to to get locations that had never been given to anyone in the past, including Frida Kahlo's houses and the mural of Kahlo's husband Diego Rivera among others." So again, she like,

as a producer, did like all these incredible feats to get this movie made. She says, but all of this seemed to have no value. The only thing he noticed was that I was not sexy in the movie. He made me doubt if I was any good as an actress, but he never succeeded in making me think that the film was not worth making. He offered me one option to continue. He would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman, and he demanded full frontal nudity. She goes on to describe the pressure he put on her and director Julie Taymor to include this full frontal nudity sex scene.

They felt they had to concede. He also, I think, threatened to fire Julie Taymor if Salma Hayek didn't comply with including this scene. It just was threats to basically sabotage this entire production she had spent the better part of 10 years trying to make happen. And I mean, I feel like you can attribute so much of how authentic this feels as opposed to other biopics

to the willpower of Salma Hayek and also the fact that she, like you're saying, Kaitlyn, is a really talented producer, which I feel like is such a double standard in Hollywood in general, where when a male actor produces his own work, it's really drawn attention to. But with women, it's almost always minimized. And the things she got permission for are truly impossible in Mexico because Frida and Diego are considered patrimonial artists and getting permits for anything related to them is impossible. So what she did is truly a big feat. Yeah. Before I read this piece, I assumed that they had just built doubles of those sets,

not realizing that they actually like shot on location and use like, La Casa Azul and stuff. Yeah. And then she describes the day that they shot that sex scene. She had a nervous breakdown. She was throwing up. She was shaking uncontrollably because she knew she was conceding to the will of this predator and that's what made her feel so sick. He then tried to sabotage the release of the movie after it was completed. He like didn't want it to be in theaters really. He sabotaged her Oscar campaign almost wholesale. Yep. So, and then the piece concludes with Selma Haig talking about women being devalued and undervalued as artists and filmmakers and she, you know, longs for gender equity in Hollywood. So a piece worth reading if any listeners want to learn more, but truly

sickening to be reminded of all the horrors that Harvey Weinstein put so many people through. I think it's very sad and kind of meta that they're making a film about Frida, but also about her abuser and this horrible person that controlled the art world in Mexico. And I find a lot of parallel lines between Harvey Weinstein's figure and Diego Rivera's figure in the making of the movie and in the story that they're telling. So it's so sad that it's so contradictory, you know, that they're telling this story and then it happens on set. Yeah. Right. All while scaling back the abusive nature of the other person. Like I just wanted to add as a, I guess, like punctuation on that, that Alfred

Molina also did interviews around this time and also before hating Harvey Weinstein before it was cool. Hell yeah. He's a real one. He is. Yeah. But they, he sort of expanded on how Weinstein, when he was not successful in getting Salma Hayek to creatively compromise, started

talking to other actors to see if he could turn them against her, including going over like trying to basically get Alfred Molina on his side and being like, she's one of the best actors in the world. And what do I see on screen? Nothing but Frida. Molina expressed disbelief. Well, that's the whole fucking point, isn't it? He said. Like, which like, yeah. And then sort of subsequently for the amount of time Weinstein had power after that was blackballed by Miramax. Yeah. But I mean, it's just, it's so, I mean,

it's like a story we're very familiar with now, but just hearing how hard Zalma Hayek had to work to even get this in production, because looking at the Frida movies that almost happened and thankfully didn't. One with J.Lo. With J.Lo, but also the biography by Hayden Herrera was first optioned in 1988, and they wanted to have either Meryl Streep or Jessica Lange play Frida.

Are you serious? Madonna almost played Frida. Of course she did. With Robert De Niro starring as Diego Rivera. And you're like, no offense to Robert De Niro, but there's so many reasons for him not to play Diego Rivera. Yeah, so the fact that this movie,

that Salma Hayek's production is the one that prevailed is amazing. Yeah, with a Mexican woman as the lead from Cuázacualcos, Veracruz, who came up through the telenovela system in Mexico and ended up in Hollywood. So that's also something that I found very valuable about. I love Salma Hayek of course. And I think that that's why she's so aware of the fact that what Harvey Weinstein did to her, because it's very common here in Mexico in the telenovela system too. So I don't think unfortunately it was the first time she encountered these predators in her job.

No? Yeah, I read an interview she did in 2021 that sort of followed up on the op-ed you read us passages from Caitlin where yeah, she's she basically confirms that she was like, I don't mean to minimize my experiences with Weinstein. They were very traumatic. But that had already happened to me so frequently that I almost like tried to take it in stride at the time because it was just how I was conditioned to believe things were going to work no matter where I was working or at what level, which is miserable. Yes, indeed.

I wanted to touch on the other thing that the piece alludes to as far as like compromises that she felt she had to make in order to appease this monster of a person as far as the representation of disability where Frida Kahlo dealt with chronic pain. She had many surgeries throughout her life. She had a miscarriage and the movie, you know, examines how this inspires some of her artwork, but it seems like the movie attributes all of this to the bus accident that we see happening on screen. Which isn't true. Yeah. Right. The movie does not mention that she had polio as a child, I believe when she was six years old, which caused leg pain and for her to have a limp

when she walked, even before the bus accident. And I saw criticism that the movie tends to downplay and erase Frida's physical disability. This could be because Frida is played by an able-bodied actor. But I read a piece from a writer who is disabled named Marta Russell, who took issue with the disability erasure, particularly the scene where Frida is doing that seductive dance with Ashley Judd's character. The movie depicts her in, you know, high heels dancing.

There's no visible limp, but the real life Frieda wore several layers of socks on her right shoe that was also like built up to compensate for her smaller limb. Her right leg was, was it her right leg? right? One of her legs was considerably smaller and weaker because of the polio, I believe. Or maybe it was a combination of the polio and the bus accident. There was another thing. There are historians who believe that the polio diagnosis was kind of invented by her family because it was a congenital disease called Spina Bifida, split spine, that her and her siblings all had. She had a little brother that was born and died as a little baby named Guillermo, and they all had this disability.

And what is interesting is that historians that have worked with Frida in their careers have discussed about this topic and said, why would the family decide to say it's polio? And it also has to do with the fact that all the siblings had this diagnosis of spina bifida. And what is interesting about this is that they also propose the idea that Frida didn't only have a miscarriage, she had two abortions. No, and many believe that she did because she was scared of passing down that condition to her children. So it's that's why they tend to believe that if there's like weird thing there that we

don't know about with the way the family said something and then Frida behaved towards it but also Frida had a very big internalized ableist attitude against herself. They say that the way she dressed even the the Juana skirts that she wore and the outfits that she wore especially later on in her life when she encountered the biggest issues and complications, they hid her disability with her leg. So it's very interesting to notice how everything that we know about her disability is kind of contradicting

each other's versions of the facts. And I found that very interesting because it tells you how it's invisibilized, no? Like the movie does. And it's also something that hasn't been researched as other aspects of her life. And we don't know an official version of the facts. So why do I suddenly find out that all of her siblings had this same disease and so on and so forth, no? Right. So even though we might not know exactly what the specifics were of her source of pain and disability, we do know that she did deal with chronic pain and again, walked with a

limp and the movie more or less erases that. It's very inconsistent. But then you find out why. Right. Yeah. Because apparently Harvey Weinstein insisted that was the case. Or to be sexy. Yeah.

And just a fact from what I was saying that I forgot to say, they say that she couldn't walk at three years old, for example. So that's why they believe it's a congenital disease and not so much something she contracted later on. I see. Yeah. It's so, I'm willing to blame this wholesale on, on Harvey Weinstein. Yeah.

But maybe that's just the easiest answer. I do think that this also, like, connecting with what you're both saying, there is such a resistance to depicting, and especially responsibly depicting disability, and then the further back you go, especially if you're doing a historical piece, the harder it is to sort of parse out

how disability was spoken about or not spoken about then versus now. So it's like a very, I mean, as disability advocates know, it's a very, very difficult needle to thread. And it just seems like the only thing that is certain is that because of how this production was being controlled, this was not a production that was going to handle the issue of disability responsibly. Yeah.

It's very sad. It is. Because also Frida didn't, I mean, it's a whole conversation about why would disability make someone vulnerable and this ableist world, how it's built in an ableist manner and everything. But Frida also didn't want to look vulnerable against the world, no? And that's why she herself didn't want to, except in her paintings, of course, but in her... because when you see pictures of her in everyday life, she was performing all the time.

Her outfits, her whole aesthetic, how she dressed, it was like performance art. It reminded me of, I feel like, again, just like how. It was like performance art. It reminded me of, I feel like again, just like how, at least how my art education was, because I was not an art major or anything like that. But I feel like it's often presented in contemporary classes, like Cindy Sherman was the first artist to ever do that. And you're like, but that's so clearly what Frida is doing. Like she presented herself in all these different ways and in characters. It's amazing. And Cindy Sherman does it in her pictures, but Frida Kahlo did it in her everyday life.

And it's very, very interesting because she had a whole persona that she embodied every time that she was out in public or she was having a party in her house. And it had to do with a very particular set of tools that she had developed because of her queerness, because of her disability, because of the challenges she had encountered throughout her life. And I think nowadays, it's one of the most appropriated parts of Frida Kahlo,

that the braids and the ribbon in her hair and the Mexican attire, stereotypically Mexican and all of that. And it's part of what she did to both conceal her insecurities and also showcase herself as whatever she wanted to do. And that was shown in her attire I think. Yeah, this movie does adequately show that Frida Kahlo is really cool but never enough it feels like. I wanted to acknowledge something that I don't know how to address. I was going back in because I've seen it referenced over the years of casting for this movie because Alfred Molina is a white guy, He is of Spanish and Italian descent. And so there has been a fair amount of criticism

around his casting. The complicating factor there is that Salma Hayek directly asked him to play the part and like went to his play and was like, you're the guy. And I guess like you don't say no to Salma Hayek. And I don't know, cause I was looking into Diego Rivera's background and he is also very multicultural, but also very Mexican. So it's just, I mean,

it doesn't seem like if this movie was being made today that Alfred Molina would be the right choice for this part. But yeah, I just saw a lot of conversation around it. Then and now I saw a red carpet interview with him at the premiere of this movie and him addressing the criticism and being like, there's no doubt like I am of Spanish Italian descent. And there are a lot of people in Mexico who were upset that I had been cast and I understand why, which then leads to the question, well, then why did you do it? But I just wanted to acknowledge that as well because it feels like something that's frequently cited in this movie. And

also just throughout Alfred Molina's career, he's been cast. I mean, I think of his role in Indiana Jones as kind of another example of this. Yeah, he's definitely played characters of ethnic backgrounds that are certainly not his own. Yeah, I mean, and I'm the last person to want to bring down the hammer on our boy, but I just want to acknowledge that. I didn't want to seem like I was not willing to engage with that discussion just because it was Alfred Molina.

I relate that also to some recent criticism I have seen against Frida Kahlo herself, that she really portrayed herself as this indigenous Mexican woman, especially towards her adult years. And Las Dos Fridas, of course, has the European Frida and the Mexican Frida depicted there. But her dad was German, no? And her mom was, well, her grandfather from her mom's side was an indigenous man, but her grandmother

from her mom's side was Spanish descent also. And almost all Mexicans, we have this complex mixture of ethnicities and races and backgrounds. So it would be very hard to cast someone that is perfect for Diego Rivera, because our history in Mexico comes from, and I'm not saying that's something good that happened. It's the invasion of Mexico by the Spanish was basically, and the creation of the mestizo race, which is the mixture of indigenous and white Spanish people is basically the rape of thousands of Mexican original community women. But this is something that Frida Kahlo has also been accused of doing, of appropriating cultures that are not hers and stuff like that. And I think

that's a very complex discussion. The other day I was teaching cultural appropriation with my students and they were like, but when, when is it appreciation and when is it appropriation? And they were telling me examples and I was like, it's very hard. We have to contextualize every single example to understand what happens there. No, because some may say Frida doesn't have any right to portray indigenous experiences in her art, but also her grandfather was from indigenous descent. And you know, Alfred Molina, I think, has the same thing. He comes from a Spanish-Italian background. He's not Mexican. Diego Rivera was, but Mexican is not a race or an ethnicity. It's a nationality. So yeah.

And that was why I felt naive when I was looking into this, because I feel like I had seen it presented like you're talking about the same way that I saw a lot of, I feel like it was like 10 years ago or so there was just like this wave of criticism. That's exactly what you're describing about Frida Kahlo and then a piece that I, we can link it in the description of this, but I read a piece by Tanya Nunez, who wrote a whole essay basically saying what you just said, Angela, whereas like, well, it's not that simple. And, you know, even if there were contemporary criticisms, if Frida Kahlo was working today, she wasn't, those weren't the conversations going on

then. And during her lifetime, she was largely not trying to profit off of this. Yeah, she only sold one painting, which was the two Fridas for $250. Right. No, she only had one solo exhibition, which was the one depicted in the movie. The other exhibitions were with other artists, so she didn't really profit. She was Diego's wife most of the time for the public, unfortunately. And it's like a conversation she's mostly having with herself throughout her life and like trying to understand her identity.

And then looking into Diego's background, yeah, it says on scholarly journal Wikipedia, it says Diego was of Spanish, Amerindian, African, Italian, Jewish, Russian, and Portuguese descent. So it's just like, I don't know. Yeah, that's what happens with the American continent. No? Yeah. And I think that's the, I mean, this

is something I have spent a lot of time and effort learning slash unlearning as far as, because I think a lot of white Americans do view being Mexican as a racial identity. Yeah. And I've heard people be like, oh no, he's not white, he's Mexican. It's like, well, that does not preclude him.

Like he could still be a white Mexican. Yeah, I'm white as fuck and I'm Mexican because my dad is from Spain and my mom's family is from Spain too. And I have a Mexican nationality. It doesn't mean anything, no? Right, right. So there's a lot of, I think, still to this day misunderstanding about the difference between like the ethnic and national and racial background of everyone in Latin

America. And there's so much erasure also of Afro Latinx people. Of course. There's so much erasure of indigenous people who were the original inhabitants of what would become known as Latin America. And it's such a fraught history with colonization and the transatlantic slave trade. It has created a lot of confusion for a lot of people. And so it's something that I think we've gotten wrong on the podcast before. For sure.

And it has to do with what Diego Rivera did. He created this Mexican nationalism that makes you believe that we are a race. They said the raza de bronce, the bronze race that comes from that glorious indigenous past from the Mexicas and all of these pre-Hispanic civilizations that emulate how Europe treated the Greeks and the Romans. That's what Vasconcelos and the muralist projected here in Mexico. But at the same time, governments mistreat alive indigenous people who are living in our world today. So it's always an issue. And Diego Rivera was a very big participant in that. And this idea, this stereotype of what it is to be Mexican is also created by our own nationalism and how we portray ourselves to the world. So, yeah.

MS. TANGLE-WEB. MS. I mean, I've spoken to Mexican-American people who are racially white who have said, I'm not white, I'm Mexican. No, we even have a term in Mexico called whitezicans, which are the white Mexicans that are middle high class people that behave like assholes towards everyone and they believe that they're superior and this systemic and super super rooted racism we have in Mexico and classism and everything and there's the white sican label and once I had a student ask me, teacher are you a white sican? And I was like, well yeah I'm white and I'm Mexican, I hope I don't behave like a stereotypical

white sican'm Mexican. I hope I don't behave like a stereotypical white Mexican. But yes. Yeah. Yeah, for people in the US especially, it has. We're just severely undereducated about it. It's embarrassing. Yeah. With regard to just closing the loop on the Alfa Molina thing, it was tricky because it involved digging up 2002 media, which is either hard to find or kind of inscrutable when you read it.

It seems like there are two separate strains of criticism going on, one being that Alfred Molina is white and the other just that he had no connection to Mexican culture. And that because Diego Rivera was such a prominent Mexican figure that they were like, well, why do we have this British guy? Yeah. Yeah. Which is I think a fair criticism. And I also think he gives a great performance cause it's Alfred Molina. He's a star. He's amazing. He's so good. I have something to say about this.

Because there is a part of the film where they, as in Etrotsky and Frida paints it to Frida, there is a woman singing. Do you remember La Llorona? Yes, yes. That woman who appears in the movie, she is created as La Pelona and Death. She plays Death, which we call La Pelona sometimes.

That woman is famous for singing that song. Her name is Chabela Vargas. And Chabela Vargas is from Costa Rica, but she said a famous quote that says, Los Mexicanos nacemos donde nos da la chingada gana. That means Mexicans are born wherever they fucking want. So that is because she is considered Mexican and an icon for Mexican culture, but she wasn't born in Mexico.

And Chabela Vargas, this also related to the queerness of Frida Kahlo depicted in the film. This is a very nice detail, in my opinion, because Chabela Vargas, that old lady that you see in the movie, is actually someone who had a relationship with Frida. Oh. They had a very passionate affair, and Chabela Vargas appears in Frida's movie,

singing to Salma Hayek portraying Frida. Wow. As dead. No. Yeah, yeah. It's incredible, because if you don't know this nice story, you wouldn't know that's another way that they introduced Frida's queerness by bringing one of her, the actual person that she had an affair with into the film.

Yeah. That's so cool. Gosh, that's just like such a W to make a cameo in your lovers biopic, like really good stuff. I didn't know that, that's really cool. Yeah. Well, I think an extension of the conversation of casting in this movie can extend to the crew

as far as like, why did a white woman from the US who is not Mexican or Latina, why was she the one hired to direct this movie? Why was it a majority white writers including Diane Lake? By the way, what was she doing here? Sworn enemy of Jamie. She's my new enemy. Yes. I saw that in IMDB and I read it really quickly and I thought it said Diane Lane. I was like, Oh wow, is Diane Lane a screenwriter? But then it's a slightly different

She's a Frida Kahlo super fan. No, I wish instead it's my sworn enemy who gave me a C because I was late to class too many times. Ah, grow up. You know what? Lateness is just a construct invented by capitalism. Exactly. Lateness is on timeness leaving the body and I just don't care for this. There was one writer, one credited writer, because also it is said that Edward Norton worked on the screenplay but was not credited as a writer for like WGA reasons. But there was one writer of Mexican descent who worked on the screenplay, Gregory Nava, who had worked on a number of movies prior.

He also directed Selena, the JLo Selena movie. Oh, yes. Anyways, from what we can tell, and also it's always so inscrutable because the ways that movie writing credits happen, who knows? But yes, it seems like there was only one Mexican writer involved in the writing of this movie, although there was one famous communist writer involved,

which maybe is attributable to how political this movie did get in the script. I recognized his name and I was like, why? Because I went into a big blacklist research hole and I wonder why. But anyways, he was a screenwriter who was called in and subpoenaed by the House Committee of Un-American Activities. He was a card-carrying communist. And it seems like just generally a real one from what I can tell.

So yeah, and then Diane Link. Boo. And then she worked on it as well. And it's her only screenwriting credit. Her other credit, disrespecting me. I call that a discredit. Yeah. Yeah.

What I was telling Caitlin during the break is that the DP, the cinematographer, uses Rodrigo Prieto, who is an amazing and amazing cinematographer who is Mexican. So, and I also, when I saw the credits, I really saw a balance between male and female crew, which I enjoyed. I don't know their backgrounds, but I don't see that very often. So I was happy about it.

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I mean, especially at the top, it is largely a woman driven movie, as far as the director, half of the writers, Selma Hayek producing. I do feel like when women are producing their own projects, you tend to see more gender parity in The Cruise, which is just another way of saying you have to have representation at every level of production. Of course.

Yeah, we were talking about Rodrigo Prieto, I think, quite a bit earlier this year, because he just had, like, the wildest last year where he was the cinematographer for both Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon, which is just, like, the range. Right. The range this man has.

I mean, his resume is wild. The same year he did Frida, he also did 8 Mile. He's got range. With Emmy Award? He loves to do a totally different movie. Yeah. He also, like I told Caitlin, I'm a Swiftie, so I love him because he directed all of my

favorite videos recently. Really? Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, he works with Taylor. Yeah. Wow. Oh my God. Wait, so many twists and turns.

I knew that like, because he's like Martin Scorsese and Julie Taymor and I think in a ratus go to guy. Like, yeah, yeah. Oh, right. We were talking about it because he shot Wolf of Wall Street in Margot Robbie's first major role and then shot her whatever 10 years later as Barbie as a sorry for shooting you that way and Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah, just sure. Wow.

He literally directed the the cardigan there. Wow. Cardigan, Fortnite. Yeah. She also works with another cinematographer who's a woman, Rina Yang, I think is her name. But she also works with Rodrigo Prieto, so I am very proud of them. Every time, wow, this is a fun, he's a fun recurring Bechtel cast character because every time I learned something new about him, it is completely unexpected and fascinating. And he did a great job with this movie. It looks so cool.

It's beautiful, yeah. Yeah, it's so pretty, the colors. And I just love the idea of him going back to his hotel room at the end of the day of shooting on Frida and answering an email about eight mile. Like- Yeah. He opened up his hotmail.com account in 2002. His 2002 web book or Palm Pilot or whatever the fuck they were using then. So does anyone have anything else to discuss?

I have my notes because I'm a ñona, we say in Spanish, and I take notes of everything when I get excited. Oh, I have pages of notes. You're in good company. Yeah. Just what I think is very nice about the movie is also they don't portray the art as much as we wanted them to do, as Jamie, I think, was mentioning earlier on. But what I like is that they really create these life paintings. And Frida had an aesthetic at the end of her life that came from what we call in Mexico ex votos. Ex votos are

little paintings made in rural Mexico, outside of Mexico City. People are very Catholic, especially in those places. And when something happens to them, they pray for it to get better. Something bad happens, they pray for it to get better. So what they do is that they go to the town's painter and the painter asks them what the event was, who are they praying to, what saint, and who is this being dedicated to, so it has a format. And it's text and image of the event. And then what they do with those little paintings is that they hang them at the church

and after they leave the church and after they have asked for help from the saint, they have to move on and carry on with their lives. And Frida, I think, and this was said by Marta Zamora, who was a biographer of Frida, how Frida took this idea of ex votos and put it in her painting. And I think that's very nice because it's something very niche of Mexico and that most people from other countries don't know. But if they look at the Frida Kahlo painting and they look at an ex-boto, they will see the similarities. And Frida did this to survive basically. She wanted to create these paintings that looked like ex-boto's and she carried out that in her life. She painted all her pain and her

suffering in the canvas and this personal and political intersection that she was so good at depicting and she was the only one at the time that did it as well as that. And then she carried on with her life. So it's amazing because we see her in the movie having fun. I mean, of course, this invisibilization of the disability is not good, but she has fun. We also see her in other aspects, her alcoholism, her addiction to pain pills. But Frida tried to carry on despite all of the things that went on. And I don't think it has to do with this saving grace or trying to get rid of the idea of suffering and pain, but because she was a rebel at the end of the day. Yeah.

I do appreciate the movie contextualizing where some of her inspiration comes from in her paintings, like something will happen, and then you see it inspire one or several of her works of art. My main thing is like, I just feel like the relationship between her and Diego Rivera takes up too much narrative real estate. Which seems to be the through line with how most of the adaptations of her life in fiction, like she's I feel, still too frequently presented as equally built with, because I feel like this movie

is called Frida, but it could easily be called Frida and Diego. And yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. And they wanted to be separated at the end of their, when in their second marriage, they had the house created by Juan O'Gorman in San Angel

that were two houses. Again, gold. Again, gold. Yeah, gold. And she didn't even live there for that long because her dad got sick and she went to La Casa Azul and they lived separate lives at the end. So I don't think they wanted to be seen as an item and they were seen as an item all throughout their relationship. So at least Frida as an art historian, of course, I'm biased,

but I would have liked to see her creative process a bit more. Same, yeah. Like, how did she know which colors to use? How did she decide the size of the painting? How did she come up with the little girl with the skull face, the watermelons, all of those things? How did she decide to do that? I would have liked to see the creative process come to life instead of just being the end

result of the painting. Mm-hmm. Exactly. I agree. I feel like this is something I've noticed in biopics about women, again, specifically, where it's just like there's always less focus on process when the story is about a woman, I think. Because I think about like biopics of the last couple of years, Oppenheimer immediately comes to mind where there are very sort of

like magical, you know, sort of sequences about and then he's scienced or whatever. But there is also sequences where you're explained, this is the process, this is how he gets there. And I feel like even with movies about male artists, there is just inherently more of a focus on process. And I'm not upset that there's a focus on process, but that should be something that is across the board available to any exceptional person. Exactly.

Like why would you not want to know how the sausage is made? And it's not very obvious if you don't know for example that Frida had this obsession with mirrors or with death. It's not very obvious. I mean it's in the film language, you know, that at the beginning she starts looking at herself in the mirror and that's how the movie begins. But she truly had an obsession with looking at herself and with time passing because's how the movie begins. But she truly had an obsession with looking at herself and with time passing because she spent so much time in bed with death. She wanted to die at the end of her life so bad and when she did she was very happy with her last drawing said that. So everything that I think I would have liked to see, how do you become Frida Kahlo as an artist?

Because as a person, I think it's clear, some things missing like we discussed, but as an artist, how did she find that particular aesthetic that is so divisive? Because people either love her or hate her, but it causes an impact. And how did she find that? I would have loved to see that in the movie. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I also in the mainstream feminist capitalistic way, I literally, it was really annoying. I saw like a modern depiction of Frida Kahlo where it's like, Frida Kahlo, queen of the selfie. And you're like, no. Where like, it's like patronizing, right?

Like where, I don't know, all of her work is like, you have to be having three or four conversations that wants to really talk about it and seeing people sort of cherry pick the part of her work that they resonate with and then ignoring the political aspect, ignoring the identity aspect because so much of Frida's work was connected to her connections to Mexico and like understanding what her identity was across time and like

it's just irritating. Only Frida could have done that, like putting such universal feelings like pain, the fear of abandonment, the fear of miscarriage, all of those things she depicted, but intersecting it with politics. She was a genius for that. Yes, it's awesome. And I mean, the fact that so many people can miss it maybe is just like, speaks to how complicated the work is, but it's also like, just read a little bit. I want to share a quote from her. I think this is something she said later in her life, but just kind of tying it back to the things that inspired her art and the movie skimming over her political ideology, not

ignoring it or erasing it, but like again focusing way more on Diego Rivera's politics than Frida's, but she said, quote, I have a great restlessness about my paintings, mainly because I want to make it useful to the revolutionary communist movement. Until now I have managed simply an honest expression of my own self. I must struggle with all my strengths to ensure that the little positive my health allows me to do also benefits the revolution, the only real reason to live." Unquote, obviously translated from Spanish. So she was like, my work means nothing unless I'm moving the communist movement forward is how she felt, I think

later in life, and maybe also earlier. But yeah, I feel like I'm like, can we get a little more sense of that in the movie, please? I think the last thing I had that I just wanted to say like I was glad was reflected in the movie was that even though the movie, as we've all said is sort of unduly focused on Diego as well, I did like that we see that friendship between Frida and Lupe develop and that you get real moments because I feel like, again, I was like a little bit like, oh no, Weinstein production when Lupe makes the scene

at their wedding and you're just like, oh no, Weinstein production when Lupe makes the scene at their wedding. And you're just like, okay, is she just going to be presented as irrational? But I thought that the way that played out for, you know, big Hollywood movie was more nuanced and thoughtful than I thought it would be and seems to be, at least the friendship is like reflective of their actual experience. And then a relationship I wish I had seen more of was between Frida and Christina, because it seems like her relationship with Christina was very dominant in her life. And it is true that Diego had an affair with her sister and but again, I feel like the movie defers to how does Frida feel about that in relation to Diego and doesn't really like it seems like most of the progress in the relationship with her and her

sister takes place off screen, which I don't know, I'm nitpicking at this point, but it would have been nice to see the relationships that we know were very significant to Frida, you know, proportionally reflected in the movie instead of just going back to Diego all the time. Her dad too, because she learned how to position people in a painting from her dad being a photographer. And her dad was a very successful photographer during the Porfiria, which was a dictatorship regime we had before the Mexican Revolution. And after her dad had a lot of problems because of the revolution and the Mexican Revolution. And after her, that had a lot of problems because of the revolution and the Mexican Revolution was based on the freedom, at least one part on

the freedom of indigenous people and their land being returned to them. And while that was happening, Diego Rivera was in Paris learning how to paint. So it's how I would have also like to see the context because Mexico at that time was chaotic as fuck, like very chaotic. We had just gone through a civil war. And I would have liked to see how that context affected Frida and her family being a bourgeois, very high class European who profited from the regime before the revolution, what that did to her life and why that radicalized her into communism too. So I would have liked to see that. She would frequently kind of fudge the year she was born to line up with the year that the revolution started.

1910, yeah. Like connect her identity to like, I am a born revolutionary. Yeah. And that she would kind of erase her background coming from a like well-to-do family. Yeah. Which Diego Rivera was also from a pretty wealthy family as well. Yeah. That's why he could study art, no? And not...

Right. Fuck off to France for a couple of years. Yeah. And even become a soldier in one of the factions of the revolution, yeah. All this to say, I feel like Frida's life deserves a whole series rather than just a two-hour film. So if we ever see any more like kind of biographical stories about her on the screen, it should be a long TV series because there's just so much. Well, speaking to her relationships

with the women in her life that the movie kind of touches on but could have examined more, The Bechdel Test. The movie does pass. I mean, not as much as you would like it to for a biopic about women that had a lot of women who were important in her life. But it does. But then she does talk to Alfred Molina a lot and according to the bylaws of the Bechtel cast, I forgot my own role, you know, people of marginalized genders speaking to Alfred Molina about Alfred Molina is an automatic pass. Yeah.

Yeah. So in that way, it's actually kind of unprecedented. You have converted me to Alfred Molina fans. Well you've joined an elite group because Alfred Molina is a past guest of this show. Yeah. Oh my god. We still don't know how we pulled it off. We don't know but we talked about Aaron Brockovich. Oh I love that movie. He's the best. Wow, that's amazing. You're amazing. A king.

A king. He's amazing. I love to praise this man on our bonus show. But yes, it does pass the Bechdel test. But I do feel like I wish it did more. More, yeah. As far as our metric, the nipple scale, a scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, I'm inclined

to give it maybe like a 3.5. I do wish that, you know, for a movie called Frida that is allegedly about her life and the main thing we know about her life is that she was an artist. Like, you know, as a public figure, if someone's like, who's Frida Kahlo? You're like, oh, an artist. And for us to not see as much as you would think we would about her artistic process, more about her inspirations, so much narrative real estate going to her relationship with Diego Rivera. And yes, that was an important relationship in her life, but I feel like we end up learning more about Diego

Rivera than we do about Frida Kahlo and her backstory and her political ideologies and her identity and all this stuff. So wish the movie had focused a bit more on Frieda. It doesn't feel like too much to ask. It doesn't. But I do appreciate that, again, for a movie from 2002, which was like, you know, a Hollywood produced movie. I assumed that so much of her, especially her queerness and her communist ideology would have been erased or really, really downplayed, maybe only mentioned in passing, but never shown on screen.

But like, you have three different romantic or sexual moments between her and another woman in the movie. One of them carries a lot of baggage because it was basically forced to exist by Harvey Weinstein, but the benefit of it is that you do see this like steamy, perhaps exploitative, but... I know, but it's like knowing that Salma Hayek felt ill the day that happened. Exactly. I just, it, I, ugh, yeah. Harvey Weinstein can't suffer enough as far as I'm concerned. No.

Rot in hell. But the fact that there is, because in 2002 it was very hard to find, even if there were queer characters, we wouldn't see any type of like kissing between two women or kissing between two men or anything like that. It is a relief to see that, I mean, and also with Josephine Baker, which I didn't know, I was like, she also had an affair with Georgia O'Keefe, but I guess the thing where like we've hit the upper limit

of affairs we can show in this movie. But I was like, if they gave Trotsky a steamy kiss and we don't see a queer love scene, I'm gonna like explode. Not that, but like it just, it was very weird seeing Trotsky in a horny context. Oh yeah, I hated that scene. I cringed so hard. It was so weird.

I hated it. It was like, Jeffree Rush, get away from her! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to see that ever. No, it was horrible. Horny Trotsky. No, thank you. Whatever. Good for them. I don't want to see that ever. No, it was horrible. Horny Trotsky.

No, thank you. Whatever. Good for them. I'm happy for them. But I don't want to look at it. No. Right. Anyway, at the end of the day, I mean,

this is a movie about a queer, disabled, communist Latina artist. And the movie's like, yes, that's all here. We're used to crumbs. And this movie gives you more than crumbs. Yeah. And the movie is not criticizing her for any... Because I feel like often when we see marginalized characters,

it's like, I don't know. It's like... This led to their downfall or whatever. Exactly. Or like the movie is encouraging you to not be on their side. And what led to her downfall, we know by what the movie says, is in big part a man, which I think is very accurate. So.

True. Certainly seems that way. Yeah. And they also portrayed the alcoholism part, which I think is very important. They don't say that a lot about Frida. And she was an alcoholic. So it's important to talk about it.

So yeah, I think it portrays the nuances of her life very well, but I think it could do it more, of course. But I am satisfied. I think it's, I watched it as a little girl I shouldn't have. I got scarred for life by seeing Frida's sister betray her in that way. But now as an adult, I think that this is a very good movie, at least to understand how we can start to think about biopics in a way that they actually portray the character in an integral manner and not just pick and choose whatever we want to make them look good. Yeah, I agree.

So you're going three and a half, Caitlin? Yes, I'm going three and a half. I will distribute them between Salma Hayek. I want to give at least one nipple to the wedding toast that Ashley Judd's character gives. Ah, Tina Modotti, yes, yes. I love that so much. If anyone ever asks me to give a toast at their wedding, I'm just going to cite that exact speech. Noted.

Because it's basically, she's just like, I don't believe in marriage. I think it's either delusional or a way to trap women. But if people recognize that and they decide to get married anyway, then good for you. That's pretty cool. And that's how I feel about marriage. So one nipple to the representation of Frida Kahlo having underarm hair. Very good.

That is something you don't see in movies where like there will be a movie either at a time or a place where women would not have removed their body hair. But because it's a movie, it's like, yeah, all these characters in Cold Mountain don't have any body hair. And it's just like, what? Right.

When you see like, I'm trying to think of what there I saw a historical movie recently with nudity and every woman had a wax and you're like what is this? Like what are we doing here? Yeah it feels like such a tiny thing but it is wild how historically recently just like any sort of body hair was just so verboten. There was like that red carpet moment with Julia Roberts like less than 20 years ago where she had armpit hair and it was like a global news story. You're just like grow up. Anyways. And then whatever I have left, I am not really keeping track, but I would certainly want to give some of my nipple-age to Frida Kahlo herself.

Feminist icon. I'm going to do three and a half as well. I think that because you could just as easily call this movie Frida and Diego, sort of takes away a little bit of the focus where you want the movie to be. And I do agree that it seems to be at least as far as biopics go and like how wildly inaccurate biopics tend to be or gloss over entire areas of the subject's identity because of what is considered acceptable to a mainstream audience at the time of production. I think this movie does so much more than I was expecting. And does seem to be like a solid sort of 101

to what Frida's life was sort of in the major beats. But there's no, yeah, I wish that there was more focus on her artwork, her process, and what motivated her art versus this hyper fixation on the relationship with Diego. Cause that can be important in her life and not be the thrust of her life, which it seems like towards the end of her life how she felt as well. Also, huge question of like, would she want her life story be commodified into a movie? Probably not. Maybe not. Made by Hollywood? No, definitely not.

Yes. Made by a sex criminal? No. Multi-millionaire? No. No, definitely not. Yes. Made by a sex criminal? No. Multi-millionaire? No. Right. So it's also talking, I mean, just the darkness in this production.

I hate how it's such a horrible example of how even making art that is more subversive than you're used to seeing required on Selma Hayek's part, the like cooperation with an absolute monster to even make it possible and subsequently erasing all of her amazing production work and all of this stuff and having the release and the awards campaign for this movie to be completely sabotaged basically.

But anyways, I like the movie quite a bit and so I'm going to give one nipple to Frida Kahlo, one nipple to Selma Hayek. I'm going to give, well, one nipple to Alfred Molina. Come on, serious. And I'll give my final half in a showing of waving the little white flag, I'll give the last half to Diane Lake. Whoa, see, I thought you were going to be like, and I'm going to give a pile of shit to Diane Lake. I'm growing up. We'll let bygone speak bygone. Yeah, two hours ago, you were a

different person. Yeah, but she was so wrong to give me a C, come on. Maybe if your class was less boring, I would have showed up on time. Whoa. Maybe if all you did, if she did, okay, now I'm being mean again. All she ever did was talk about how she was a credited writer on Frida. Oh my God.

And I was like, yeah, that came out 15 years ago, lady. What's new? Anyways, all right, sorry. Anyway, Anala, how about you? What say you? I agree with you. I think three and a half is a good rating. My first nipple goes to Salma Hayek too,

because she did this amazing production. And I think I'm very proud that she's my paisana. Then my second one would go to the scene, the sequence that has Chabela Vargas singing La Llorona, Trotsky being assassinated and Frida painting the two Fridas at the same time. I think it's such a good sequence. That was my favorite part of the movie. And the third one I would like to give to Frida as an artist, but also particularly her showing up to the exhibition for the last year. In her bed.

Yeah. It's such a good moment. Yeah. Yeah. And some doctors think that that probably was the thing that ended up killing her going out like that. But I mean, it was worth it, I think, for her. And I think it was such a good moment, both in the movie and in her life.

Yeah. I like the part where she's like, burn this Judas of a body because it like, it betrays me. She was in so much pain. Yeah. She was absolutely suffering. And there are some historians that believe that she committed suicide by taking 11 instead of the seven pills she had prescribed to her because her nurse said that. But we don't know. She died on her own terms and she did everything on her own terms. And I think that's amazing. My half of a star would go to Rodrigo Prieto, he's also my paisano and the cinematography is amazing and he gave us a lot of different movies to talk about in the span of two minutes. So it was great.

Yes. We should, Caitlin, that would be a good idea for the matriarch and just choose two random movies he was a cinematographer for. You could pick almost any genre of movie. Let's do it. Let's do that for December or November. Thank you so much, Angela, for joining us and for lending your expertise. Is there anything you'd like to plug or anything like that? I would like people to look at Tina Modotti's pictures, her photographs.

I would like to plug her even though she's been dead for a few years now because she's portrayed in the movie and her pictures are portrayed for a quick sequence. But I think that it's amazing how she depicted everything, communism and the Mexican revolution and the Mexican working class through her pictures. So look at Tina Maltes pictures. My Instagram account is AngelaCMPS. It's private for now, but I'll make it public for a couple of days if anyone wants to follow me. Act now. Yeah, because if not, my students will find it and I don't want them following me because teenagers in social media are not my favorite thing. So that's about it. Thank you so much for having

me. I could talk to two amazing women for two hours about my favorite topics. So I don't know why I cannot do this every day of my life, but I wish I could. Well, we'll have you back for another movie. Yeah, come back anytime. Whenever you want to have me, I'll come back because I had so much fun. Thank you very much. Oh my gosh. Thank you. We had a blast.

Truly, yeah. And as far as where you can find us, it's on... Same old places. Instagram. It's on the Patreon, aka Matreon, five bucks a month, two bonus episodes every month plus the back catalog. Right now, because it's Oktober, we are doing two scary movies that center women. We did an episode on The Exorcist and we're covering Pearl later in the month.

So yeah, head over there, check that out. You can get our merch at teapublic.com slash The Bechdel Cast. And with that, I'm going to get in bed and then make a bunch of men carry me around in bed. As you should. Yes, go. Everyone deserves that moment. Yep. Bye. Bye. Everyone deserves that moment. Yep. Bye!

Bye! The Bechtel cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan, with vocals by Catherine Voskrasensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus. And a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash Bechtelcast.

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