The Bechdel Cast - Frozen II with Ali Nahdee

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

Follow Caitlin and Jamie into the unknown on this episode about Frozen II with special guest Ali Nahdee, founder of the Aila Test, which examines the representation of Indigenous women in media.More about the Aila Test here!https://the-aila-test.tumblr.com/about (This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @AliNahdee on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology, swaps of different meds, but by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care.

Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar.

Santos! Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. Hi, everybody. Jamie here. Hope everyone is well. So as you know, we here at The Vital Cast are thrilled to bring you movie discussions every week and to continue to keep learning with you and learning from you. But we also often get questions about how to help and contribute outside of the content that our show covers.

So I just wanted to take a second to quickly recommend seeking out projects in your community and getting involved, especially as we approach election season. Ah, we know that it is not safe for everyone to participate IRL in the middle of a pandemic, of course, but it is really all about finding ways that you're able and comfortable to participate. There's been a number of incredible mutual aid organizations that have developed and expanded in recent months. There's an increased need to assist in areas with increasing rates of people experiencing homelessness in the summer heat, ongoing grocery delivery services for folks and seniors unable to get to the store amid the

pandemic. There's local progressive candidates that you can help phone bake for from your own home if you're not comfortable leaving home and on and on and on. It is a very stressful time and it can be difficult to find a place to start, but we encourage you to. So talk with your friends, find mutual aid efforts in your area by checking out mutualaidhub.org and find where you fit. We're always here for support and we love you. So let's do this. Enjoy the show. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked, if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast Okay, Jamie, do you want to start this episode?

I was going to, but then I couldn't remember a line from any of the songs Do you remember any of the songs? Yes, they've been stuck in my head and it's very annoying When the North Wind meets the sea Okay, I've got one i got one i'm this is gonna be good on this episode we are going into the unknown

into the unknown no disrespect to idina menzel they just make her belt so much they make her belt so through so much plot in this movie right truly Olaf doesn't make me laugh but that scene when he just started I'm there with you I'm there with you so this is there with you. So this is Hello, Welcome to the Bechdelcast, everyone. This is a media metric designed by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel that, for our purposes, requires that two people of any marginalized gender who have names speak to each other about something other than a man. And as we just talked about in a Twitter exchange today, they should also both be on screen in general that is helpful if they are on screen yes if it's a disembodied voice perhaps um maybe that doesn't

count sometimes you know i mean it's case to case but generally you know it does seem like in most cases it's the least you could do and ties into the whole idea of visibility involves being visible. I bravely said. Wow. Incredible. Thank you. So today we are covering Frozen 2. We have a wonderful guest with us. She is the founder of the AILA test on Tumblr. It's Ali Nadi. Hello.

Hi. Welcome. How's it going? Good. How are you? Thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you for inviting me. I think it's funny because you guys invited me based on my thread, I think, on Twitter about Pocahontas. And I was like, you know what? I'd rather talk about something I enjoy. I don't enjoy Pocahontas. Frozen 2. So what is your relationship with Frozen 2, with the Frozen franchise, all of that?

So I hated the first movie, which is hilarious. I think it's because I was not in the target audience. You know, it certainly wasn't made for me. But all of my friends really liked it. So I went and saw it and was like, really? This is what you guys were talking about? You know, I wasn't very impressed. So when I found out about a Frozen 2 I was like I don't know if it's going to be any good and then the more information that came out about

Frozen 2 I'm like oh tell me more so then um I saw it and I did not expect to like it as much as I did it easily is probably one of my favorite Disney movies now it's like wow I can't wait to talk about it in this podcast because wow there's just so much to unpack especially with an indigenous lens that I don't think too many people have talked about. Yeah, not from what I found in any like articles written and things like that. So yeah, at best, it's been like a passing reference in reviews, but nothing that was actually really examined. I don't know.

It was kind of like, surprisingly difficult for a movie that came out last year to find like, solid written indigenous perspectives on this movie right and speaking of tell us about the Ayla test so I came up with the Ayla test when I was living overseas so I lived in Finland for about two years from like 2016 to 2018 and around that time was when standing rock was happening and um i was so far away anyways from my family and my friends and everything and from any really indigenous native american person you know because there are indigenous people in finland but you know and i remember watching like people in Finland, but, you know, and I remember watching, like, the live streams and everything that was going on in Standing Rock and feeling, you know,

terrified that this could escalate into, like, a third wounded knee, you know, but also wondering, you know, what can I do? I can't physically be there, and I'm in another country, you know, what can I do? I can't physically be there and I'm in another country. You know, what's something I can do? Because I'm not a teacher. I'm not a historian. I'm not really an activist in that sense. And I remember this film that I watched before I moved to Finland. It was made in 2013. It's called Rhymes for Young Ghouls.

And it was so different from any indigenous movie I had watched before. The main character, played by Davery Jacobs, her name is Ayla. And I just saw so much in that character that I had never seen before in a Native woman on screen. You know, she was played by an Indigenous actress. She was on a reserve, dealt with a period in time in Canada that was very traumatic, that is not discussed at all about residential schools and you know forced assimilation and you know and I went into the film Rhyme Street Young Ghouls expecting her to die really because that's usually what happens to Native women you know that's unfortunate but she survives all of it like all of it it. She's the main character. She wasn't some white guy's girlfriend. She didn't end up raped. She doesn't get killed. I mean,

and she faces some brutality and some really heavy scenes, but she makes it to the end. She survives. And it was just that film really, truly touched me. So when I went to see other movies, you know, other indigenous films, and I specifically was looking for, you know, Native women and their roles in these films, I noticed how many were not like Ayla in those regards. So in order to kind of contribute something you know in light of standing rock it's like you know there's going to be a lot of native people who are going through a really tough time right now maybe this is something fun or something a little lighter that we can kind of talk about because i noticed it hadn't really been discussed in a lot of feminist circles

when it came to film and media representation. So I came up with AILA test and like the Bechdel test because it was inspired by it. She has to be an indigenous woman who is the main character. And by indigenous, I mean, she could be Native American, First Nations, Sami, Maori, Polynesian, Ainu, you know, any of those indigenous groups, but she had to be the main character who wasn't a white guy's girlfriend, just does not fall in love with a white man, and doesn't end up raped or murdered at any point in the story. And by murdered, I also mean like killed or dies, you know, on screen. So, and so many don't pass,

but the ones that do, you know, the test is like, Hey, you know, check out these movies. And you know, the, the test also has its limitations because you can pass the AILA test and be a great character, but you can pass the AILA test and not be a great character either. And there are several characters who don't pass who are like, yikes, but there are several who pass who are actually really awesome. So it's just a conversation starter, not necessarily.

If you don't pass, you fail and you're awful. Right, which is how we approach the Bechdel test as well. I'm so glad that that conversation is being helped along with this test, though. Thank you for inventing it. Oh, thank you. Thank you to Jeff Barnaby for

making the movie and Davery Jacobs for being Ayla, because wow, changed my life. It's on my list of things to watch. Yeah, we should cover it on the show. Come back. Oh, absolutely. And we not long ago learned

of the Ayla test and mentioned it for the first time on a recent episode that we covered on The Witch with guest Janice Schmieding and she had been the one to make us aware of your test. So we were excited to learn about it. The Black Phillip Goat Witch.

Yes, the Vavitch. I saw that movie in Finland and it scared the hell out of me because I lived next door to a cemetery. So I'm like... Oh my gosh. Movie that certainly does not pass the AILA test goodness gracious it is horrifying yeah it is a terrifying one um but yeah um so uh Jamie what

is your relationship with Frozen 2 uh I hadn't seen it yet I mean I came to the Frozen franchise by being a substitute gym teacher which I think I talked about on our last Frozen episode where it was like the only way to get a child to do what you needed them to do was to say that you would play let it go if they did it in in a few span of years um so I yeah I really only know the franchise as it pertains to this show really i didn't see those this movie um when it came out the conversation around this movie i it was like um kind of strange and like i feel like that what i would generally heard was like it's not what you expect and and like and it wasn't what i was expecting either. I, it was, I think the more I researched this movie,

the more I liked it. There was when I, on first viewing, I was kind of confused. I, and I still am confused in some ways, but, um,

I wasn't quite sure what they were trying to do and like what history they were referencing. And once I had a better idea of the history that they were referencing it made way more sense to me I wish the movie did a little more legwork and letting you know what they're talking about uh but I yeah I I don't know it's it's I have so much we have so much to talk about I really hope that my uh insight like my lens into this movie offers some clarification because I knew exactly what they were talking about was just, wow, you know, so I'm excited. Yes, I'm really excited. I mean, I knew nothing about particularly indigenous cultures in this region. I knew less than nothing.

And then the more I found out down to like the very specific reference of a dam being destroyed and like the center of a huge conflict is like a reference based in his it was disney was doing uh better work than i expected them to they they did homework imagine um so i'm excited to talk about it what about you cait? What's your history with this franchise? I saw Frozen 2 in theaters when it came out. I see most Disney movies in theaters, including the live-action reboots,

which are never good, but I keep seeing them anyway. I don't know why. Who knows who likes those movies? It has to be someone. They all make a billion dollars. I guess children. But other than that like i tend to like most disney properties and franchises uh against my sometimes better judgment and against despite knowing how evil of a corporation disney is but when it comes to frozen i can kind of take it or leave it. I wasn't attached to the first one. Yeah. The second

one I liked better, but I felt like the story was pretty muddled. I like the songs though. I like the animation. Overall, I thought it was pretty good. I definitely liked the second one better than the first one. My leagues. My leagues. Yeah. The first one, I mean, and I guess you can refer back to our first episode about it if you're a listener that hasn't heard that one but it's so like feminism 101 of our time that it it was a little bit like all right disney like we're making very very slow progress here aren't we um right they're like what if sisters like each other instead this movie does that in little bits where they're like this time the like male character is obsessed with the idea of marriage

and you're like i don't really know what if if that's a helpful subversion but sure i have a theory have either of you seen um the 90s dub of sailor moon yes yes you know how sailor uranus and sailor neptune were cousins because they couldn't let them be gay yes i think anna and elsa are sisters because in that first movie i'm sorry they were super gay and i'm like i i have two sisters and we don't act like that well there is there was a lot of discussion about elsa's character being kind of queer coded or at least like interpreted as queer by the queer community or at least certain members of the queer community so um and some coverage around i think some of the there's always because it's such a huge franchise there's always a lot of criticism and think pieces surrounding it and there was another influx of think pieces

questioning why they won't explicitly say that elsa is a queer character character in Frozen 2 as well. And they, but yeah, it's kind of the classic Disney, like she's single, she's single. And it's like, can we let her be queer? The answer with Disney as always is no. Yeah. Anyway, well, let's, should we dive into the story and then go from there? Let's do it. All right. So we open on Elsa and Anna as children their father Agnar voiced by Jamie would you do the honors Alfred Molina

my king oh it was very exciting to hear I think he maybe the, like one of the first spoken lines of dialogue after the kids are talking a little and then you hear like, he is not doing a voice. He is just speaking as Alfred Molina. And I was like, oh my God. And then you see, I was kind of a little bumped at the, how they animated him to look, it kind of looks like the, like what,

it's like King does a picture of like what is it like called in video games where it's just like the stock player like if you did google image cartoon king that's kind of what the king was like sure i think he should look like king alfred molina but um but yes it was exciting also he's married to evan rachel wood in this movie which you're like all right right who's like my age she's like a year younger than me or something and alfred molina's in his 60s the magic of animation so king agnar comes in to the children's room and tells them about this enchanted forest whose magic was protected by powerful spirits of air fire water and earth and it was also home to the north aldra people and the girl's grandfather king exactly he had built the north aldra people a dam but then things took a turn between the two groups

and the king's men were attacked or so we are led to believe but a mysterious girl saves young Agnarr during this outbreak of violence and the fighting enraged the spirits which vanished and then a powerful mist covered this forest which has been there ever since and the girls Anna and Elsa are like oh no will the forest ever wake again and the parents are are like, I don't know. And then their mother says, only Atahalan knows, which is a river that is said to hold all the answers to the past. I will say that the children's reaction to this very violent story is a little insensitive. They're like, ha ha, awesome story.

Yeah, that's true. They're like, oh, cool story. And then you're like, was awesome story yeah that's true they're like oh cool story and then it's you're like was that a cool story um for them it was then we cut to elsa and anna as adults and elsa hears this kind of angelic voice singing somewhere in the distance and it seems to be calling to her and she says hmm maybe i should follow it into the uh no i'm gonna stop singing because i truly have the words yes which i cannot do give the people what they want and then there's this um kind of elemental disturbance because Elsa woke up the spirits. I keep wanting to call them the earth, wind and fire and water spirits.

It does. Every time you hear it, you're like, you sort of are feeling like you're watching an episode of avatar, the last airbender. And in this story, Elsa is avatar. Elsa is also the fifth element starring Bruce Willis.

Yes. There's a lot of movies. Multi-pass. Corbin Dallas. So, okay. So the spirits have been awakened and everyone has to evacuate Arendelle, the kingdom where Anna and Elsa live. And then the stone trolls from the first movie

show up and their leader is like, hey, there's some, a wrong from the past has to be corrected. There's some truth that needs to be uncovered about the past. So Elsa is like, okay, we have to go to the Enchanted Forest and find the voice and figure out what happened so she anna christoph and olaf and sven the reindeer spend the reindeer all of her favorite characters um set off toward the forest after a little bit of traveling they come upon what i can only describe as the shimmer from annihilation oh jesus what the you know like the shimmer from the movie annihilation that they have to like pass through yes kind of that's also in this movie yeah and it's this dense mist that they have to pass through to get into the enchanted forest and

once they're inside the spirits show up they start to reveal some clues about the past, some of the memories of the past. Elsa manages to tame a couple of them. And then suddenly a group of Northuldra people and a small number of Arendellian soldiers show up. Including Sterling K. Brown. Oh, my gosh. I had no idea he was the voice of that character until I watched the six-part docu-series on the making of Frozen 2 on Disney+,

which was a waste of time to watch. But it was helpful in that I learned that Sterling K. Brown, one of my crushes, is in this movie. Well, we both have a crush in the movie. that Sterling K. Brown, one of my crushes, is in this movie. Well, we both have a crush in the movie. Yes, we do. Alfred and Sterling.

Oh, cute. So all these people show up, and they've been trapped in this mist the whole time, which we find out has been over 34 years. Right, which I was like, and then I was like, wait, how old are Anna and Elsa? Do we know? Are they over 30 that is that legal in a disney movie i don't think so because the uh the king their dad was a little boy oh okay so they're yeah they're okay classic disney they're like no no no no we can't have a woman over 25 that's the thing is because even canonically in this movie six years have

passed uh because they were repeatedly referencing for reasons that i sort of found to be a bit much but they kept referencing the amount of time between the first frozen movie and the second one which is six years right but somehow elsa and anna are still 20 the same age yes question mark all these people have converged in the mist now and um olaf gives us a nice little recap of the plot of frozen one for for everyone that's it there are multiple points in this movie where i'm like okay you're obsessed with the first movie the first movie was fine i don't want to talk about it let's move on it was like whatever like it's so but then yeah josh gadd has to recap the whole damn thing which i did kind of enjoy that part sterling k brown um reacts very funny when he's like oh no that's pretty cute so then

the north aldra people are like by by the way, we are innocent. We did not initiate this attack. We would have never attacked first. And then a guy who Anna recognizes as Lieutenant Matthias, voiced by Sterling K. Brown, who was their father's guard, says, well, we wouldn't have attacked first either. He wasn't suspicious of the colonizer, really? Exactly. either he wasn't suspicious of the colonizer really exactly that is my favorite okay this movie is very funny to me because they have to go on this and this whole journey to uncover the truth about the past and it's like solved so quickly it's just like just look at the variables

you have indigenous people and you have white colonizers and a wrong was made what do you think happened based on all of history? Well, if the history isn't told. They probably learned a very, you know, whitewashed version of history. So you're right. They're full on. I was hoping, I mean, you know,

it's not going to happen because it's like Disney. But by the end, I'm like, oh, this could be a great chance for Elsa and Anna to become like anti-imperialists and really like be like abolish the monarchy which of course burn down their castle they do the opposite well they kind of do because at the end it's uh two indigenous people uh as the king and the queen so it's like well I mean captain colonizer's in hell mad about that I'm sure I hope so god i hope grandpa's pissed about that now right because is christoph indigenous as well yeah he saw me okay yeah that's what i thought so so then the um the fire spirit

attacks all the people the little charmander yeah i know it is a little charmander they're very cute they act like puppies and then then Anna and Elsa figure out that the girl who saved their father's life in the forest that day many years ago was their mother, who they also discover is Northuldra, which means that Anna and Elsa are half Northuldra. Then a Northuldra woman, Honeymaron, tells Elsa that in addition to air, fire, water, and earth spirits, there is a fifth spirit that acts as a bridge between humans and the magic of nature. The Avatar. Which, yeah. So then Elsa and Anna head north to find the voice that's been singing to Elsa. They come upon a shipwreck, the shipwreck that killed their mother and father. And in it, they find a map to Ahtohallan,

the river that is said to hold all the memories from the past. Because it's real, they discover, not just legend. And they figure out that their mother speculated that Atahalan is the source of Elsa's ice magic so Elsa sets off for Atahalan and not wanting to put her sister in danger she kind of sends Anna and Olaf away on this like ice okay this is one part of the movie where I was like oh my god she sends them down an icy slope at like 500 miles an hour. I was like, she's going to accidentally murder her sister. Putting her in even more danger. Right.

Which also happens in the first movie. She conjures up that giant snowman that almost kills Anna. She's constantly putting her sister in danger. For the big sisterhood franchise, Elsa sometimes really goes in on, I'm like, I am also not a huge Anna fan, but I wouldn't push her down a hill.

A big sister absolutely would. Get out of here. One, two, three. That was, I was like, oh. Intense. And then, spoiler alert, Olaf dies. Not directly because of that, but he dies later. He gets Thanos snapped.

That was such a, I was just like, all right, plot. I guess it is the end of the second act, isn't it? It was so vague. He was like like my flakes my magical flakes i'm flurrying i don't want to go mr star he's like hug me i don't want to go my flakes oh i know it's and i mean we're obviously not the target demo but it just like it couldn't be clearer that there's going to be zero consequence for this so it is kind of funny to watch him go like not my flakes and then his flakes are gone i don't know his flakes are gone he dandruffs into oblivion uh meanwhile um elsa tames the water spirit which comes in the form of a horse and

she rides it to otahalan and then she sees all the answers to the past and discovers that her grandfather, King Colonizer, was like, magic is scary and the Northuldra people follow magic so they can't be trusted. And that he had built this dam that he had given under the pretense of it being like a gift of peace.

He actually built it to weaken their land and that it was him who initiated the attack against the Northuldra people. But Elsa has gone too deep into Ahtohallan, and she starts to freeze. She's able to use her magic to send the memory to Anna. Anna is lost in a cave with Olaf, and then she, upon seeing the memory, knows what she has to do to set things right, which is to break the dam, which will flood Arendelle. And then that's when Olaf dies because Elsa is dying and her magic is fading. Something about his flakes happens.

Something about his flurries. Flurried. And then Anna sings a song that i thought was like very impactful and i liked about how like she is acknowledging the like deep irreparable harm that her ancestors have done she wants to do the next right thing and you're like oh anna's really coming into her own i've been waiting for this character to have like more agency forever this is so exciting and then two seconds later she gets rescued uh but like this stuff I will say though uh not to go too deep but my mom uh passed away in September so that song Anna sings just like hits so hard

you know as far as like doing the next right thing and everything i'm like oh i love this movie but it hurts me it's beautiful yeah it is good yeah that was my favorite song in the movie i think uh show yourself is mine but that was my second favorite i like christoph's like 80 cheesy 80s rock ballad i think that was my favorite it's really it wasn't bad but it was there you know it's like kind of strange much like christoph's entire plot in this movie it's just kind of there i don't know why he necessarily even needs to be there there could be a more pointless song but it is like i don't know i'm just like i like to hear jonathan groff sing i'll take it i guess but it But does it have a place in the movie?

I don't know. Question mark. So then Anna lures the earth giants who are roaming the land toward the dam. And they destroy it, which unfreezes Elsa. Because history has been made right. According to the movie. And this causes all the water to cascade toward Arendelle,

but Elsa manages to kind of get ahead of it and freezes it to save Arendelle because, again, she is the fifth spirit. Fifth element. The fifth element. She is the deus ex machina. the deus ex machina was inside the house the entire time yep and then the mist lifts from the forest and everyone who was trapped inside is now free elsa and anna reunite there's much rejoicing an Anna is made queen of Arendelle and then Elsa decides to join the

Northuldra and look after the forest. And that is the end of the movie. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus

channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the

FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Jay Shetty and welcome to On Purpose. I started this podcast to have real conversations that help you live with more meaning,

whether it's navigating relationships, working on your mental health, or figuring out what you're truly here to do. This week, I welcomed back Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University, known for his insightful work on brain development, neuroplasticity, and the intricate connection between the brain and body.

Letting go and not trying to control everything, but also pushing oneself to be more resilient and tenacious and things of that sort. I feel like all of life is like that. All of life is about, yes, you need to take care of your physiology, you need to get your sleep at night, but it's also okay to get a bad night's sleep

every once in a while. It's okay to not do every protocol. In fact, it's encouraged to not do every protocol. The expectation on us is not perfection, right? It's being able to toggle between these different states. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. And we're back. Ali ali is there anything that jumps out to you right away of like stuff you'd really really like to discuss oh okay so for those of you who cannot see me um i'm anishinaabe and i'm biracial the um reservation my family is from is the Waple Island Reservation in Canada. And my mother is a white woman.

And my father is an Anishinaabe. So I'm biracial. I'm very white passing. was so stunned that Elsa especially suddenly became this character that I personally kind of felt represented by as a white passing assimilated indigenous woman because although my father is you know of a darker hue I guess a darker skin tone than I am. He was assimilated because his mother and his auntie were residential school survivors. So they had their culture denied to them. You know, they couldn't speak their own language. They had no culture. They were taken from their family. And my grandmother and her auntie, her sister, had to actually leave the reservation.

Like, they ran away to Michigan. And that's where we live now. And, you know, she married a white man who was my dad's father. So in order to survive, really, I mean, you have to assimilate, especially back then. You know, this was during World War II. This was, you know, like all throughout. I think Grandma was born in like 1917, I think, and she died in 1990. of you know you cannot really embrace who you are as a native woman because you can be killed you can be imprisoned you know and um i think her name is eduna the elsa's mother

you know that character really truly spoke to me you know as an indigenous woman because the concealed don't feel don't let them know thing that Elsa you know sings about in the first movie isn't just about her magic now it is about her identity and her family and her bloodline and it's like you know her mother knew that kind of pain she must have been going through because she was she couldn't go home you know she may not have ran away from home but she could never return and this was her life now and if the uh arendellian people didn't like the nathaldra people you know she's not going to announce that oh i'm nathaldra she's going to keep that to herself and raise her daughters the best way that she can, you know, and that would be to assimilate,

to look like, you know, the oppressor, I suppose. So Elsa really coming to terms with this, you know, something, it wasn't just the magic. It wasn't just keeping that part hidden inside. It's like, there's something deeper than that. There's something that, you know, I feel out of place. I feel like there's a disconnect. I, you know, I may look like these people and my sister may, you know, be able to live among them a bit easier than I do. But, you know, I feel like something is missing and I want to know what that is and for disney to make it indigenous heritage like oh this is your family history this is your mother's people these are

this is your community and your culture and that sense of belonging and healing you know that's really really powerful and i am you know i white passing. I'm trying to reconnect. I have, I, up until like, I don't know, I want to say a couple years ago, I didn't think I had any surviving relatives on my dad's side. You know, I thought we didn't have any cousins. We didn't have any aunts and uncles you know we had no idea and recently I discovered when I went to uh the reservation for a powwow that there are so many different you know cousins and relatives and stuff like that and they're like oh you know I brought my family tree and they're like oh that guy he's gosh oh that one he's naughty that one's you know

what I mean and I'm like and then they started looking at the family tree and it's like we had common ancestors and common relatives and stuff. So that reconnection to family and to culture, when it has been like forcibly taken away from you and denied to you, I mean, Frozen 2 really spoke to that part, you know, for me anyway. That's amazing. That's amazing. That's great. That's so cool.

I know. I really like this movie. Yeah. I mean, this is honestly giving me a whole new perspective on the themes that this movie is speaking to. I mean, going into this movie, i was honestly confused at the beginning like i understood the choice they were trying to make i was like i don't know you know it's impossible because you know like i've certainly been brought up on such a warped version of history and i'm still in the process of trying to unlearn shit and same not just unlearn stuff but then learn the correct version of you know what

actually happened i mean it's like a really powerful and ambitious theme in this movie to show that to children to show that like the version of history you're presented with is very likely not accurate and that it is like kind of your responsibility in, in a way to, to seek out that truth and to find it. And then on top of that, uh, something that I think I was like in the middle of the movie,

I was like, Whoa, this is like a pretty like bold choice for such a gigantic franchise. The only villain in this movie is their past. Like there is no, and the first one it's who is that guy the like you know what happens Hans right and and so in the first one it's like they are subverting it by the twist and blah blah blah but like in this it's like their heritage and they're like their ties to colonialism is the villain of the movie.

It's like it's an evil that you I guess you sort of see through like the memory of the grandfather. But for the most part, it is just like something that they need to reckon with. And that is I mean, that's holy shit. Yeah. Especially because like when when Anna learns, learns the truth about how her grandfather initiated the attack and that he had built the dam deliberately to oppress the indigenous people and how, you know, and Anna says something like, well, that goes against, like Arendelle might masquerade as this like, you know, righteous place. But like, no, that's not how colonization works. Right. I think it can also be kind of viewed as like a meta commentary on like Disney properties as a whole of like, here is this like magical kingdom that you've always been presented to this like very whitewashed magical place like and what is being erased and what is being mistaught to you because that is i mean that's

been disney's bag for a long fucking time is teaching you and glorifying and making uh making it profitable to to show you false versions of of history usually american history but it's kind of a free-for-all with them I think the thing that actually surprised me um when I first saw Frozen 2 because uh I'll send it to you guys on Twitter it was like my live tweeting responses it's like all right guys I'm watching Frozen 2 for the first time and here's my reaction in real time as I'm watching it you know so when they're singing that one song at the beginning and it's not Thanksgiving but it is Thanksgiving right you know like they're having a harvest feast or whatever and I'm thinking I'm watching it I'm like are they really having Thanksgiving

in Sweden because um you know like because and then at the end of the movie, when they show Captain Colonizer, and he's all like, we're going to invite them in peace. And we're going to see what they're, you know, how many there are and what their strength is. I was like, Thanksgiving, because Thanksgiving was not a happy feast. It was a massacre right of indigenous people so the fact that disney did that i was like wow that never happens and i you know what i mean like never that never happens that was so it was subtle enough where i think a kid may have not quite connected the dots but i did yeah i think one of the i guess okay maybe

i'm like i don't know i'm probably always asking too much of a disney movie i kind of wish that that they had just let if they if we already knew you know and they and the movie goes out of its way to say well there's no one in arendelle right now. It's just, it's empty. It's been evacuated. I kind of wish that they had just flooded it. Is that? Start over, yeah. Symbolically, I'm like, maybe that's a little Game of Thrones of me to want.

But, I mean, it fits. I kind of wish they had just said, you know, fuck it. I think with that one, because a lot of people felt the same way. And I didn't just because I was thinking, you know, problematic element of this movie is that, you know, they blame it all on just this one specific person. Right. You know, and not like an actual government. Like the one guy who wanted to be the colonizer. The people for the most part didn't really seem to know what was happening, you know, because the girls didn't even know who the Nath horrible thing is already dead. He gets killed in the battle anyway. So that part is already avenged. But it's not just that. You have to not only correct history, but put in the work to make sure the harm that's already been done can't be undone, but how you go forward with it is the important part. So you get rid of the dam, which is causing all of this

trauma and all of this destruction to the environment that directly still hurts the indigenous people living on it. And to destroy the dam and then flood out Arendelle and destroy it I feel like maybe the spirits were like you know this is only going to make those people hate us more that their queen just destroyed their home you know so yeah that makes sense yeah that's what I was thinking I'm like I really don't think these people are going to be all that okay with oh but you know the colonialism it's like yeah but now my house is underwater right right like that's gonna make shit worse you know probably and build more tension yeah that makes sense so it's like all right so we're gonna put you on the throne instead and they're gonna love you and then i'm gonna stay here and we're gonna build relations and there

you go happy ending it's very simplified but it's a kid's movie and they handled it a lot better than they did in pocahontas so yeah yeah right god worst movie ever so do you feel overall that the representation of indigenous people and indigenous culture was handled responsibly and respectfully in this film? So disclaimer, the Nathalja people are based off of an existing group of indigenous people, the Sami people. So I'm not Sami, so I can't personally say like, oh, yeah, they did great. I did speak to, I'm going to use his full title here. Okay, so Sami activist and vice president of theos Detenu were this group that were organizing this moratorium in 2017 that opposed the Dano River Fishery Agreement in northern Finland.

So basically the Finnish government was trying to deny salmon fishing rights on Sami territory and he was you know an activist at that time so he was on like a council you know Sami council he also did the voice because Disney did a Sami dub of Frozen 2 and he did yeah he did the voice of the dad Alfred Molina. No way! It's him. What a legacy. But he said, you know, he's biased, of course, because he worked on the film, but he said that the Sami people were very much involved with the representation

of the Nathalja people, and overall, you know, he did like it. I've got other, because I asked other Sami people on the AILA test what they thought about it, and it's been kind of a mixed bag. You know, there's elements that they didn't like so much and then lots that they did. My personal take, you kind of run the risk of when you create a new tribe of people, know what i mean like for example you know there's this one video game i forgot what it's called but they made up a completely different native american tribe

and it's like okay you couldn't just use an existing one to tell your story right but that's because it was set in america frozen not so much it's like oh it's this magical territory and it's not real so we can create people who exist within it and there's enough similarities where you kind of know what we're talking about but you're not doing like the twilight pocahontas thing where you take an existing group of people and being like oh they're magical oh they control the elements and stuff it's like no the kwai luke people do not turn into werewolves you know the sami people do not you know work with giant rock monsters and fire spirits and stuff but the northuldra people can and I like

that the Northuldra people were still just people they just knew how to interact with the land so that I felt was more respectful to what indigenous people are because we're not mythical magical creatures you know what I mean we just have a connection to the land and the territory because it's a part of us it's not just we're not on top land and the territory because it's a part of us. It's not just we're not on top and then the animals are beneath and then, you know, so on and so forth. It's, you know, a web of connection. And we have our place within the ecosystem and within this world.

So that's better than, you know i'm you know and the only person who is is elsa and that that works out because she's just you know special it's not because oh i have this power because i'm nathaldra it's like no it's because you're she's an outlier yeah yeah. Yeah. Hollywood has a long and troubling history of ascribing magic and mysticism to non-white people in a way that has really negative connotations. Yeah. For example, there's the magical Negro trope. There's like the mystic Asian trope. There's like mystic indigenous tropes. There's like all of these things that we've seen again and again in so many different movies so and by and large mad like the the magic is being used to assist a white character or to somehow aid their storyline and to other the non-white character or characters and i think uh the only real complaint that i would have isn't necessarily the Nathalja people. Some people say that they wish that the women would have had a bit more agency, which I think is fair.

Kristoff, who is an indigenous person as well, I feel was kind of a missed opportunity as a Sami character. The Nathalja are based off of the Sami, but Kristoff in the script is described as a Sami boy. As specifically Sami? Okay. based off of the sami but christoph in the script is described as a sami boy as specifically sami okay yeah and it's like they could have done more than just oh he's sami he likes reindeer right okay you know but like i don't expect them to go into like a deep you know like basically turning the sami people into like a costume like they did with Pocahontas essentially but you know it would have been nice when Anna discovers that she's indigenous as well that she and Kristoff could have bonded over something like that you know what I mean like I feel like

that was a missed opportunity where I'm glad that they kind of cut Kristoff out of the movie because it is predominantly Elsa's story as it should be but it's like man they could have really you know talked about this and bonded over that and it's like obviously Anna must have had some insecurities given her last boyfriend and what he tried to do so I don't know if there's any reason to fall in love with someone you know and actually bond enough to marry them it could probably be over that shared experience and you know I think it would have been nice I think for the audience like as well to be kind of reminded that uh christoph is an indigenous person because i think that like there is not a lot of work done to really tell you that and in a movie that is

constantly reminding you what happened in the last movie uh in a way that is is not always helpful that would have been a helpful thing to be reminded of and again yeah like like like you're saying is something that could be you know a very valuable bond for them when there is kind of something left to be desired for like why are we talking about their impending engagement that we know is going to happen at by the end of the movie right so much like that would have been a really good element i guess one one thing that i i would love your perspective on and because i was just sort of hmm i do wish that the north aldrin people that we meet had more to do and had a deeper characterization because for characters that are

introduced and they are i think a 100% played by white actors, which, again, is, I mean, why, right? Especially when they had hired several consultants, Sammy consultants, who maybe they weren't trained actors, but they could go and find some trained actors to cast in those roles. But even on top of that, I think that most of the North Aldrin characters we meet are there in a very surface kind of way

where I felt like for the most part, especially with Ryder and Honeymaron, that they were mostly there to just give information and encouragement to a character that we already know so like Ryder is like what's up oh you have a romantic conflict let me be in a scene about that and then he's in a scene about that and then he's kind of gone and then Honeymaron gives Elsa I think I mean it's a it's a cool scene between the two of them that definitely pushes Elsa's character forward. But I just wish that we knew more about her and that she didn't just exist in proximity to Elsa.

Yeah, I agree. You also see a character whose name is Yelena. She seems to be, I think, the leader. Yeah, the matriarch, I suppose. Yeah, I think she's like, this is a matriarchal society because it seems to be implied that she is the leader. She is voiced by white actor Martha Plimpton. But yeah, she isn't given much to do either,

aside from kind of just delivering some exposition here and there. Because it doesn't, I don't even remember seeing her in the flashback scene so it's not even like you know she was you know specifically shown like um is his name matthias or matthias um matthias matthias it could be anything another character who we learned nothing about that yeah yeah because she isn't shown really in the flashback scene that i remember so it's not like you know they could thing another character who we learned nothing about that yeah yeah because she hasn't shown really in the flashback scene that i remember so it's not like you know they could have drawn back on that and given her a bit more to do yeah couldn't she have been there during that attack that was instigated by the arendellian people and like couldn't she offer some perspective

on it like that kind of thing but yeah we don't see anything yeah I was hoping that I mean again it just seems like a missed opportunity where having those characters there is so much more than your average Disney movie is going to do it's such a valuable opportunity to give them the opportunity to provide their own perspectives in text but most of what we learn has to like appears in like snow flashback and i feel like in a movie where there's a lot of snow flashbacks why not just let them share their own history like why could elena not be more meaningfully involved in in i guess educate like like giving Elsa this education that she, you know, is so desperately wanting. I think they kind of touched on that, like a little bit. And I do appreciate that when Elsa does bond with the Nothalgia people, it is specifically with the North Aldrin people it is specifically with the women you know like at the end she's

holding Honey Maren's hand but she's holding Yelena's hand and you know I think they kind of like gave that impression but I wish they would have given us more yeah yeah it made it more juicy I just but yeah because it's it's I don't think that the North Aldrin characters fall into the Disney tropes that we are, I mean, honestly kind of expecting them to fall into. But there's still, I just wish that, yeah, they had like a fully realized character. And I mean, like none of those three characters really have an arc. They don't, I mean, that we are able to track at least. Right. arc they don't i mean that we are able to track at least right yeah i also wanted to say really quickly because i was looking into the updated uh queer readings of elsa and oh please jennifer lee in fact addressed this because there was i think we talked about this on our first frozen episode

there was a huge fan movement and like a million petitions to explicitly acknowledge Elsa as a queer character it was a gigantic millions of people were involved I remember that I think I think I signed the petition I don't remember uh but in any case it it was such a large response that Jennifer Lee the who wrote and uh co-directed this movie, had to acknowledge it. And so she told a New York Times writer that the reason she doesn't explicitly say that Elsa is a queer character in this movie, and this is wild, she says that she has put every Frozen character

through the Myers-Briggs test, and, quote, it really came out that Elsa is not ready for a relationship unquote so she like galaxy brained of avoiding the fact that disney just does like is is deeply unable to acknowledge any non-heterosexuality but the i was like the myers-briggs. I just was like, my God, Jennifer Lee. Pretty strange. Stretch further.

I wonder if people ship Honeymaron and Elsa because they have a little scene together. You shipped them, yes? Yes, I do. Because they have that tender scene together where they both sing the lullaby and it was really beautiful frozen three let's learn more about honey maron and rider and yelena specific i mean

yeah everyone but i'm like honey maron and yelena i want to know more about them i agree well it would it would seem as though the reason that unlike other dis Disney properties and unlike other Hollywood films in general, the treatment of indigenous people is, again, normally abhorrent. It would seem as though in this movie it is handled more responsibly and respectfully because even unlike the first Frozen movie, the filmmakers of Frozen 2 hired a few Sami people as consultants on the film. We've already heard one of their perspectives, which is wonderful. Yes. It seems by all the accounts that I found, the Sami people found that it was a positive collaboration. They were happy with how the movie turned out

there was some level of dissatisfaction with how indigenous culture was represented in the first frozen movie and um that the sami people felt that there was course correction there and this is relatively new I mean very new for Disney to actually do their homework on portraying cultures that are not straight up dominant white American Disney culture that I think I remember hearing about it most recently in regards to Moana as well there there was an entire advisory council formed to make that movie it seemed like with generally positive results I know that people have notes but like generally positive for a Disney movie and it's so I mean it is still frustrating to see that it's it's mostly you know like white executives that are on the other side of these advisory boards

and the fact that there is still such little progress on um you know making even even though it's a very positive thing that you know frozen two is you know portraying indigenous culture and like really making strides and attempts to course correct on mistakes they've made it's still you know a overwhelmingly white crew on this movie is certainly an overwhelmingly white cast on this movie and it's i mean still work to be done for sure i actually have a quote too so um so slate.com writer i think his name is, I'm going to destroy your name, sir. I'm sorry. It's Inko Kang, I think. Inko Kang.

He compliments and criticizes the film's depiction of reparations, specifically. He said, we have so few fictional portrayals of what post-colonial restitution looks like that we should be careful of how we depict it. But he also said that it's admirable that Buck and Lee even attempted a story like this. And even though it could have used a little more thinking through introducing the concept of nationalist myth-making to children, particularly in a princess movie that the general public has no expectations for, other than to sell even more Elsa and Olaf dolls this holiday season is pretty commendable. And I, yeah, I agree. Yeah. It's like, you know, for sure, you know, it could have used a little

bit more, I guess, thinking through, like you said, but then you have to wonder how many people, probably the higher upsups are like no you don't get to say that no that's way too much you know right we don't want to change anybody's minds we just want to that's too far sell product um let's take another quick break and then we'll come right back Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered there are crooks everywhere you look now the situation is desperate my name is Manuel Delia I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. This summer, the nation watched

as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.

And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange

and violent summer. This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Jay Shetty, and wherever you get your podcasts. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University, known for his insightful work on brain development, neuroplasticity, and the intricate connection between the brain and body. Letting go and not trying to control everything, but also pushing oneself to be more resilient and tenacious and things of that sort. I feel like all of life is like that. All of life is about, yes, you need to take care of your physiology. You need to get your sleep at night, but it's also okay to get a bad night's sleep every once in a while.

It's okay to not do every protocol. In fact, it's encouraged to not do every protocol. The expectation on us is not perfection, right? It's being able to toggle between these different states. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. And we're back i'm i'm curious ali on your take on this which is that so the north aldra people they're

designed to i mean i think they are distinctly not white in their design. Now, we find out that Anna and Elsa are half Northuldra. They look... White. Very, very, very white. And while it is, I think, positive that in the canon now, they are half Northuldra. Children watching this movie know that these characters who they know and love now have the knowledge that they are indigenous. I think, though, it's so helpful to see visibility on screen, especially of main characters, the characters who you have the dolls of, the characters who you have the posters of all that all that for them to you know

like the characters are so designed to look such like western beauty standard blonde blue-eyed very fair skin in their aesthetic and i guess it just would be nice to see more visibility and representation on screen of characters who don't look like that. Right. It's very clear that this was, and I think some of the criticism around this that I think is pretty well placed is that like the decision for Elsa and Anna to have indigenous roots was made between the first and second movies.

This is not in the foundation of this story. Right. It's almost like a retcon in a way yeah yeah because i think i remember i don't know if this is like unfounded or not but i remember there were rumors circulating that originally frozen 2 was supposed to be uh sami centered i guess like the characters were supposed to be sami and then they changed it because i i don't know if it's tumblr so who knows how true it is but uh but i i do remember some discourse surrounding that so i think this was almost like oh well let's try to do that again this time. But you know, how do we do that? And, but at the same time, you know, while I agree, I'm like, you know, we have a billion white princesses, not just in Disney, but in like, all kinds of media. It would be nice to see, you know,

someone who wasn't blonde haired, blue eyed, pale skin. But I don't think I've seen too many stories where the white passing indigenous person, you know, is actually given a story about reconnection and, you know, finding that culture and that identity again. So I do appreciate that. Sure. And you know, there was obviously thought put into it. It wasn't like, Oh, a long time ago, this relative that I don't know was Nathaldra. So I am Nathaldra. She's one 16th Nathaldra. Exactly.

Right. So I do. And I think it's also also you know like with sami people and really you know the arctic region of indigenous peoples there are many different skin tones so there are lots of very fair complected sami people like aslak holmberg you know unless you knew him personally or knew of him you probably just would have assumed he was Finnish just from his complexion and his hair color and whatnot as opposed to Inupiat or Inuit people you know who are very clearly you know a little bit darker but still lighter skin because of the region so I definitely to an extent you know by that the mom I think her name is Iduna. I'm going to pronounce that name wrong.

I think it's Iduna. But the mother, you know, being lighter complected, but still being Nathaldra, but looking a little bit different from the other ones, you know, and then marrying a white man and having biracial children. You know, I can understand why anna and elsa wouldn't look as ethnic also you know not to get too deep because it is disney but genetics sometimes skip like skip a generation well i mean my dad is very dark and me and my sisters are not. And then my sister had her daughter, who is darker than us and is very clearly Indian. And so, like, how did that happen? She's, like, one-eighth and looks more like dad's daughter than we do. Oh, interesting, yeah.

Like, how did that happen? But I think I'd have to watch the movie again to see if there are other Nathalja people of various shades, I guess, and various skin tones, because that also happens too, you know, within the community. days I honestly was um not aware of any history of the Sami people before I started doing the research for this episode and the more I learned the more impressed with the movie I became because I think I was also sort of I'm like are they completely fucking this up or do I just not know enough about the the cultures that they're referencing. But learning about the elements of Sami culture that they're referencing down to, and we referenced this a little bit earlier, but even the presence of a dam, a colonial dam, is, I mean, I couldn't find an explicit, like, you know, someone from the production confirming this, but i'm guessing that it is referencing a

controversy that took place between the sami people and the norwegian government in the late 70s early 80s it's called the alta controversy where basically the norwegian government said we're going to build a hydroelectric power dam like a power plant um that was going to affect um indigenous sami land there was a huge conflict um there was like sustained protest there was violence and the sami people ended up losing that battle that hydroelectric dam exists and i i thought it was really like i learned something which is great and And also just that was more, again, it's just more than I would ever expect from a Disney movie to make such a clear, recent historical reference about, you know, so it isn't like, oh, this is something that happened a long time ago, but it doesn't happen now. They're referencing something that has happened in, you know, the lifespans of most parents who are seeing this movie and seeing that i mean and learning that i thought was i was very impressed i thought it was really uh interesting and then the clear uh

i didn't know that they were clear but it is clear uh references to the mythology connected to these cultures that there is a clear precedent for the horse character like that is rooted in norse mythology and that's you know and ali you probably know more than me because you've spent time in this region uh but like there was a precedent for that the name iduna is like a norse mythological name for the goddess of health. And just there were like details that I, you know, never would have known. But upon investigation that there's also like a mythological precedent. Oh, my God. Word precedent for for the stone giants. That is something that's also present in mythology.

And yeah, especially comparing it to this is like I don't know why I felt the need for the stone giants that is something that's also present in mythology and yeah especially comparing it to this is like i don't know why i felt the need to go down the rabbit hole of what a shitty dumb movie avatar is the james cameron one but especially i liked it i liked it i'll talk about that another time there i i will i promise i was just like researching i don't i don't i couldn't tell you why but i i was researching how much money that production put into really creating deep lore and really doing its homework in pre-production but in the finished product most of it is not there in any way. He should have written books.

Yeah. He should have pulled a Game of Thrones and written science fiction books and then waited until the technology was there. And then he could have made like an HBO CGI anthology series or something. That's what he should have done. There is like a star trek amount of lore connected to that movie but they don't use any of it in the movie it's so frustrating but so much is lost yeah yeah i mean i guess they have 500 movies left to rectify that situation but if we ever live to see them right but i was impressed that frozen 2 um kind of you know in opposition to that does its homework and

you and it's very present and it's plot relevant and it's all I I just I don't know I learned a lot and um also in the music which uh I there's a really good YouTube channel called Sideways. I love Sideways. Yeah, their work is so good. They do videos on usually about music and film and they talk a lot about ethnomusicology and like if a different culture is being represented in a

movie, is it present in the movie? They do a great video on how Avatar kind of does not succeed in that even though they did so much work and then they didn't use any of the work they did. It do a great video on how avatar kind of does not succeed in that even though they did so much work and then they didn't use any of the work they did it's a great video it was yeah and which is another thing that it it seems that frozen 2 was successful at is um researching um sami music and having it present if not completely, but very present in the score, which is great because I love the composers of Frozen. They've e-gotted. They're very impressive. They're cool.

Congratulations to them. Good for them. I've got two points to make based on what you just said. So the first one, the Sami music, I always found that kind of strange um just that well okay when i first saw the first frozen uh i think it's called vuli that opens up you know the na na na hey ya na so that was like my favorite song in the first frozen movie and it's a same yoik so it's an actual traditional method of singing and sometimes to my understanding this is based off of a video that Sophia Yanuk did when she came to Standing Rock in solidarity she sang a yoik and she said that it's vocables. So you don't, you aren't actually singing words,

you're singing sounds and it's about the feelings that you have when you sing. So that way other people can join in and they're not really saying words. They're just joining in with the sound and the music for healing or for, you know, and it was just strange to me that that is a Sami method of singing. They have a Sami character in the movie, but the Northuldra people are the ones singing the Yoik and they're not technically Sami, even though they're based off of the Sami. So it's like, I'm glad they tied it in at least

because they do sing it but i'm like um okay i didn't even make that connection yeah that would make far more sense but since you brought up avatar yes uh i'm just gonna touch on it for a second because it does lead to uh another point in frozen. So when I saw Avatar, I loved it. But there was one scene in the movie where I was like, okay, this scene can go one of two ways. And if it goes one way, I hate this movie from this point on. And I've been enjoying myself for like two hours. And if this happens, I'm going to be angry.

And it didn't. It went that way and i kept loving it it was when the white guy tells uh zoe saldana that you know they sent me to spy on you guys and screw you over and she's like you knew this was gonna happen and then goes to fucking execute him and like freaks out because in any other movie it would have been like no i love him you guys please listen to him he's yeah this and she's like no you're dying now you know what i mean and dale's ex mocking uh he you know survives because he's got plot armor but he has to prove himself before he can show his face again. So at least there's that.

Because if it would have went the other way, I would have been very mad because I'm so used to that narrative of the indigenous woman falls in love with a white guy, betrays her entire nation. And you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, no. So in so in Frozen 2 by comparison there's a scene where Anna and Elsa are talking and Anna said Yelena asked why would the spirits reward Arendelle with a magical queen because our mother saved our father she saved her enemy her good deed was rewarded with you you are a gift and I'm like at first I'm like no not a fan of that mindset you know indigenous women deserve better than loving their enemy for the greater good because loving the enemy has not stopped the enemy from killing us right you know it kind of goes into that Pocahontas romanticized territory a little bit

you know i'm a white savior territory too but you know elsa using her power and privilege to help her community rather than you know make excuses and stuff that's a welcome change but i will say at the beginning of the movie when they're playing you know with the snowmen and whatever and she's like the kissing won't save the forest the fairy queen saves the day right yes kissing did not save the forest her parents loved each other but their love wasn't enough you know it's like racism and colonialism wasn't solved just because he loved one indigenous woman and it stayed you know the forest was still in danger. The environment was still being ruined. The land was going into chaos.

And it doesn't take just loving your enemy to make everything better. You have to do the work. And, you know, the next generation is, you know, you may not have done it and it might not be your fault fault but for the better of the world really you know you have to do something about it because sweeping it under the rugs and ignoring history makes everything worse there was so much that we could go into about how frozen two even goes into environmentalism territories as far as its indigenous representation but how long you guys want to stay here we're we're down to hear whatever you whatever you have like there i i hadn't even made that

connection that is goddamn frozen too the yes that it's building upon clear mistakes that Disney has been huge in perpetuating and then, you know, making an attempt to, to course correct and do that's really impressive. Wow. In the first lines of the movie before Alfred Molina says a word, while kissing is not going to save the forest. Blowing up a dam is princess weeks from the mary sue she did a video on uh

frozen too and she was all like anna said indigenous rights blew up a dam princess is one of our favorite people we just we were just recorded an episode with her last week oh she's awesome yeah i've been following her since like early youtube days really alina pendulum uh what else oh i guess in regards to um in the more i guess uh like basic disney plot that is present in this movie i honestly don't love it all there There's so much. I know that Elsa and Anna, they have to be together because marketing. But every Frozen movie really is just like, Anna, get out of the way.

Because Elsa is the better character. She is always more motivated. She always has a greater mission than Annana and so this this movie does it again where elsa's like bye and then just like tosses on a down a hill and the movie does get better after that but you know whatever uh for for for a franchise that is like sisters sisters sisters they're not together for a lot of this movie and they're but i did appreciate how their missions slowly merged like i thought that that was that was well done and that the way that they basically like receive this accurate history

is different they react they have different where it is both like, you know, they have the holy shit moment of like, this is our family's history. It is not what we've been told, but I did appreciate that they reacted in character, which, which was cool to see.

I, I, I honestly feel like I know that we need Christoph to come back because marketing, but like the whole Christoph plot line, like yeah what was that for yeah i didn't even mention this in the recap but there's a subplot where he is working up the nerve to ask anna to marry him um which is fine it didn't necessarily add anything for me i think they just they, well, we need to, you know, he needs a reason to be here. So let's give him something to do. What kind of, what bothered me a little bit about this

is that every time he is about to ask her, something goes wrong. And I understand that's how storytelling works. You need obstacles. But the thing that goes wrong is always that anna jumps to a weird conclusion that i feel had like potentially kind of something gendered there where it was almost like well she's a woman so she's gonna have a wild overreaction about something where for example like when they first arrive in the forest and he says something like, oh, you know, under different circumstances, this would actually be a really romantic place. And then she says, different circumstances. You mean like if you were here with someone else? Like she has this weird jealousy thing where it's like, what do you where is this coming from, Anna?

Like and this happens a few different times where she has this real, like, and I don't, this is me maybe just, like, being a little cynical here, but I couldn't help but feel that they were, they're like, well, you know, she's, she's overreacting because she's woman or something. I don't know. worked a little bit better if they would have reminded us that you know or if she would have said verbally she's like hey i know i'm acting kind of nuts but my last fiance tried to kill me you know so i am very you know it's like so maybe i'm not you know myself but we're trying to have romantic moments and i'm like oh god what are your motives even though you know so it could have been that's kind of another like missed opportunity too of like like Anna would have very like she it would make sense for that character to have relationship PTSD um right but it's kind of like now we just kind of want jonathan groff to talk to the moose

which is like i guess like it's a reindeer it's a reindeer i'm sorry i kept getting because i have spent too much time in maine i wish i could take back every second um but yeah he like you know it just becomes kind of this like you you know, like him and the reindeer. And that's the plot. And I will say I don't mind that Anna wants a relationship. Like, it doesn't bother me that like, I don't think that both of, you know, that every princess needs to not be in a relationship if that's what they want. It's pretty like established with Anna's character that relationship is part of what her version of fulfillment is i just it's just the way that this plot is written that you're just it's kind of dragging out a kind of a non-conflict because there was no point in the story where i'm like she's gonna say no like i right the stakes are low the stakes are very low and then also the one like problem

they kind of create for um i keep calling him jonathan groff what's his christoph uh is that like he is like concerned and that he is not enough and that like he you know which is like a very real thing to tap into but even and he references that in his song where he's like, ah, am I good enough for her? She's so amazing, all this stuff. But then whatever conclusion he reaches is arrived at off screen. Because he disappears for a huge chunk of the movie. And then he shows up at the end and he's like,

I have resolved my personal demons off screen and I'm ready to get married. And then everything goes fine. It also made me laugh that at the end where either of you, I'm like, maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. But she's like at her like queen coronation ceremony and she's like surprised that he's there i thought that was so weird i think it was that he was dressed up was that okay yeah yeah right because he's like oh you think he would like really be there he's all dressed up but i also like that you know you don't have to assimilate baby i like you like you better in your leather. Oh, yeah. And he's like, ooh.

I think, well, when Kristoff is on screen, especially for whenever he's there in Act 2 and 3, he seems to mostly be saving Anna, who needs to be saved three different times in the movie. And this is something we talk about all the time in movies where women will be damseled and they have to be saved by a man or their love interest or something. And I thought we were past all this with the Frozen franchise, but alas, she has to be saved. The first time when the fire spirit is kind of wreaking havoc and spreading fire around. Kristoff has to grab her and save her.

She's saved a second time when she's luring the earth giants toward the dam and they're throwing their giant boulders. And Kristoff comes riding up on Sven and grabs her and saves her. And then moments later, she's saved a third time when she's yeah escaping and almost falls off the dam and Kristoff and um Matthias has to they both they both um grab her which I found kind of frustrating because it was like that that moment where she's rescued comes right after I thought like the most effective moment for her in the entire movie which is her singing this song like the, about,

you know, wanting to do the next right thing. And then a very kind of lazy choice that is constantly made in Disney movies is made right after this kind of felt like a breakthrough moment. So that was a, I was kind of bummed about that. Yeah. I mean,

I guess there's a little bit of a deviation from what we normally see in that she is the one pushing the story forward and she is the one making the active choices to like destroy the dam and like she's the one who's initiating that action and then you know there's destruction as a result which she needs to be saved from but it's like well if she can do the thing can't she also then like save herself or why why was it written so that she has to be rescued several different times and just the idea that like having a relationship is directly tied to a need to be rescued and that which is inherent to every disney relationship of like she can't be a fully like autonomous capable person and just like happen to want a relationship i don't know yeah true

did you guys know that the film well of course the film is dubbed in sami but have you heard the sami soundtrack for frozen 2 no no it is immaculate and it's on youtube oh okay i'm gonna listen to it right after we're done with this that sounds great yeah it is beautiful um i did want to quickly touch on matthias who again voiced by my crush sterling k brown this feels like a response that the filmmakers got for the first Frozen movie being too white. Too white. So they introduce a black character. My main issue with that character is we just, again, other than the fact that he was present for this event that we already knew about, it just seems like a very, and I mean,

I'm, I'm like beyond thrilled that Sterling K. Brown is a part of this cast, but as far as they wrote his character, it just, it does seem a little lip service-y on the part of the writers because his presence, like if you,

if you remove him from the script, nothing about the story like nothing changes other than he provides a little bit of information when they first meet but i but it's like his presence is not extremely impactful on the story olaf gets more to do than he does right yeah i'm not allowed to talk about olaf but I didn't hate his song. I thought his song was rather cute. I also enjoyed Olaf's song. I thought it was a cute one.

So, you know, there you go. Does anyone have any other thoughts about the movie? I thought that the, I know that I mentioned the environmentalist issues are element of frozen too and that is something that i thought that the spirits were kind of a metaphor for i don't think it was just like a magical you know thing i felt like with the creation of the dam and then the attempted genocide of the Nathalgia people, you know territory and then try to act like you know oh nothing's happening it's all good you know things go bad you know the earth actually physically starts reacting with fracking you know earthquakes happen right with pipelines the water you know is polluted the soil is polluted so i felt that elsa interacting with the spirits wasn't necessarily just you know oh look how magical she is it was healing the

environment that is in chaos because of colonialism and because of the dam and the damage done so you know and like that ties into again you know deforestation and Lapland you know the reindeer dying because of global warming and things like that you know so even that last scene in Frozen 2 when the fog lifts and the reindeer start running you know that's actually pretty impactful when you realize what's going on you know in the arctic right now everything that greta thunberg and aslak holmberg and sofia yanuk and all of them have been really preaching about isn't really preaching because you know they live in the arctic they know what is at stake and the damage that's being done and i don't think disney like maybe i'm giving them too much credit i don't think they wanted to go into fern gully territory where they're literally like oh the erindelians try to chop down the trees and stuff and that's bad it's more like yeah but the magic is out of

whack because of something they did so we have to do the right thing and and the fact that um you know like doing your homework especially in a movie like this is so important and representing indigenous people responsibly because this movie made 1.5 billion. Every child sees this movie at one point. Like it's the highest grossing animated, like completely animated film of all time. I think the Disney remake of the live action reboot of Lion King is, is higher grossing, but it's like half live action half not.

So it is like kind of in a murky area. But like as far as like a fully animated feature, Frozen 2 is the most, the highest grossing. I was truly sad that Frozen 2, especially with how good it was, wasn't nominated for an Academy Award. Yeah. Yeah, that was. But it didn't end at the Spider-Verse win. So there you go. Yes, that was my favorite movie of that year.

I love that movie so much. And just, I mean, I love animation. End of the Spider-Verse should have been a Best Picture nominee, too. It's like people need to, like, especially now that, you know, under the present circumstance, let's say, the amount of animated projects are going way up. It's like people just need to like let go of whatever this like animation is just for is like you can't tell

a sophisticated story with animation like it's just so demonstrably untrue has anyone seen moana i love moana moana should have won. Moana should have won an Academy Award. Absolutely. Zootopia won, which was cute, but Moana, come on. Moana was the better film. It was so good. Moana made me cry like 20 times. No joke.

Oh, my gosh. I'm never not crying during Moana. Every two seconds, yeah. Yeah, does anyone have anything else? Is there anything you want to specifically ask me? Oh, well, what would you recommend? Aside from Rhymes for Young Ghouls, what other, because we're always on the lookout for Indigenous media,

especially when it shows positive representations. Are there any other films that you would recommend so uh the same filmmaker jeff barnaby who did brian's dream ghouls also came out with this awesome uh zombie film it's on shutter it's called blood quantum okay and it is a zombie outbreak on an indian reservation. And the natives are immune to the disease. So they can't turn into zombies, but everybody else does. So it's kind of an allegory about colonialism. Like, should we help you guys again?

Because what happened last time we did? You know what I mean? Right. It's your typical, like, I don't want to say your typical zombie movie, but, you know, just what you expect from a zombie movie but with enough of a original twist where it's so good and it is really really good that's amazing that sounds so good yeah and then there's um so some of them they star indigenous uh actors and characters but they're not all created by indigenous directors i think it's important to specify like because an indigenous film would be you know the indigenous writer director people

behind the camera as much as in front of the camera so jeff barnaby is indigenous of course and that's both of those rhymes for young ghouls and blood quantum are legit indigenous films but films starring indigenous characters like moana uh there's whale rider yes which is i love it yeah i saw that when it came out yeah yeah that's uh maori new zealand indigenous people chris air who is a pretty famous uh native american director did edge of america which is about a native american uh girls basketball team and all of them pass the aila test it's like a whole ensemble you know of indigenous native american girls on this basketball team and they all pass that's awesome and um empire of dirt okay director's not indigenous but it's a movie

about three generations of indigenous women the grandmother the mother the daughter and them coming together and healing together and trying to like become a family again and it's so good it's on amazon prime okay songs my brother taught me the director's also not indigenous but the movie takes place on a reservation and it's very good uh then there's lilo and stitch which yes alisa from gargoyles passes the ala test because she's black indian yes oh wow yeah i love alisa maza anyways from gargoyles just because uh it's not in the past it's not on a reservation it's not in the past. It's not on a reservation. It's not, you know, in the some made up fantasy thing. It's just this badass black native woman living in New York City, interacting with awesome creatures and going on this adventure and just being brave and smart and hot. Top three qualities absolutely and actually hang on is it is it over here

okay this is the sequel to the book but uh rebecca roanhorse wrote she wrote trail of lightning this one is storm of locusts it's the sequel but the main character is a monster hunting navajo woman and post-apocalyptic american southwest fuck yeah wow awesome it is awesome like decolonizing sci-fi it is amazing i'm halfway through it so that's deeply recommend maggie house he is a badass in every single definition of the word oh yeah and as for films that don't pass the test or stories that don't pass the test but are still like worth checking out there's a movie called mayana it's the inuit people meeting the inu people for the first time so there's pre-contact pre-colonial so okay this woman who is kidnapped, basically, by Inuit trappers, I guess. And then, you know, the story is unusual and unorthodox, but it's got enough nuance and complexity where I can overlook the rape scene that happened,

which is handled better than it was in The Revenant, My Leagues. I hated that movie. If you're going to have a bear in your movie, it should be Paddington. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Gosh. Well, yeah, thanks for all these recommendations. Oh, for sure. There's a lot to check out.

I'm so excited. And then, of course, Avatar and Korra, you know, because the Water Tribe are Inuit-inspired, and I really hope they hire an Inuit actress for the live-action series on Netflix. If they don't,'m gonna be furious please can't be shy maland again what a mess so does this movie pass the bechdel test yes a lot a lot a lot the upside of frozen movies is they will never struggle with the Bechdel test. That's true. And it passes the Ayla test.

As it is said, yes. Yes, it does. And then as far as our nipple scale, zero to five nipples based on how the movie fares from an intersectional feminist standpoint um i i think i i think i give this like i'm inclined to take a little nipplage off for the fact that anna has to be saved several times i think there is opportunity to include the north aldra people who are not Anna and Elsa more meaningfully. But the fact that these characters are given this layer of being indigenous, the discovery that they are half Northuldra, is important representation for such a popular lucrative franchise so all the children who saw this now

and especially indigenous children who saw this they have someone and for you as an adult ali like you connected so much with this movie that's why representation is so important so there's you know i think there's some pros and cons. There's some minor weaknesses for this movie, but I think that it does pretty well. I would give this, I think, like four nipples. I think a lot of to the issues that we had with the first Frozen movie that we discussed at length on that episode um i feel like some of those things are still kind of present but i think that they do course correct some of it and the fact that you know it's a story about two sisters who were raised in a european kingdom whose ancestors were colonizers and then them

having to answer to the injustices inflicted by those ancestors on an indigenous population and that's an interesting story but at the same time i can't help but think that when the first frozen movie was being made the creators never had any intention of having anna or elsa be biracial indigenous women, which is why they look so white. But like somewhere along the line, some person at Disney went to the creators of Frozen and said, look, we have a diversity quota to fill. Can you do something about that with the Frozen sequel? And they were like, sure, let's retroactively make the main characters half-indigenous. That should do the trick. And of course, this is me speculating. I couldn't find anything specific about this one way or the

other in my research, but that is what it feels like to me. Even so, I'll give it four nipples because the movie is trying and I'm grading on a curve today so I'll give one to Anna one to Elsa one to Honeymaron and one to Yelena yeah I'm gonna go I'm gonna go with four as well I think yeah it's it's kind of interesting because this I mean, the fact that arguably one of the biggest franchises on the planet prioritized not just representing an indigenous culture, but doing so responsibly. In a franchise that I would not have expected an attempt like this to be made, much less pretty successfully. So I think it is pretty like an outlier in the entire disney catalog um and i want to give credit where credit is due there um but yeah docking for like i guess maybe like 3.75 to 4 this is i mean the nipple scale is the most important thing in the

entire world obviously uh but i'm i'm fluctuating between like a three and a half and a four because we do still have basically that i have like my problems with it are kind of unchanged from the first movie where it's still i mean we still have a an overwhelmingly uh white behind the camera team it is i i think it is still like a very uh positive thing Jennifer Lee is the writer and director of that in animation, a woman, even if it is a, you know, a white lady that still has a lot to learn. And it is in animation, particularly a no small deal, as we learned in our Brave episode, where the female director was kicked off the film. So so I still think that that's very impressive but the

um having white actors voice indigenous characters is i mean in 2019 there's really you don't have a leg to stand on in terms of uh defending that choice that would have been truly just so easy not to make and then and then yeah i mean i guess the the Kristoff storyline is kind of a little bit unnecessary even though I just wish that they had uh I liked what you suggested Ali far more of like Kristoff and Anna connecting on a shared culture versus just like I have to ask her to get married even though she's definitely gonna say yes it's just like why is she so nervous about it? A very basic, like a kind of a weirdly basic plot point in a very complex movie. And then I do wish that the indigenous characters who we meet had more of an arc and had more to do because there was space for that in the movie. But by and large, I was like really really really impressed

with um what this movie pulled off successfully and i guess i guess i'll i'll i'll match it at four three point seven five i feel mean uh i'm horrible now one one two um honey marion one to elena uh one to elsa and then 0.75 to anna because she gets rescued too much yeah i'm gonna have to say four as well just uh the only reason well of course i'm biased because i just i loved it so much but for a lot of the reasons you mentioned um to have sami people as consultants is good but i feel like there should have been more as far as like behind the camera uh and in the voice acting studio for sure but uh overall i think that compared to the likes of pocahontas and other indigenous films. Miles ahead. Yes.

And other indigenous princesses and characters that are in predominantly white studios. No, Frozen 2 certainly wasn't the worst. And it surprised me. It truly surprised me. I didn't expect anything deeper, know but it was wonderful and uh i give it four anna's not getting anything so i'm gonna give it uh elsa elena christoph just because he saw me and then matthias oh yeah nice yeah anna doesn't get anything goodbye nothing for anna well ali thank you so much for for joining us for being here where can people find you online is there anything else you'd like

to plug uh your tumblr for example in which you uh have all the information about the ala test all that stuff yep so the ala test on tumblr and then i'm also ali nadi on twitter thank you so much for having me oh thank you please come back another time like any anytime you want we'd love to have you back this is like this was so much fun yes yeah and if you guys ever do want to do like a pocahontas video i absolutely absolutely recommend Little Red Nacho on Twitter because she is from the tribe. The Mataponi, I think is how you say it, tribe. Oh, wow. The Teppany tribe.

She knows about the actual history and the oral traditions and stuff like that. She'd be a great guest when we do a Pocahontas episode. Absolutely. Thanks for that, Rick. As far as for that, Rek. As far as our stuff,

you can follow us at Bechtelcast on Twitter and Instagram. Sure can. We've got our Patreon, aka Matreon, patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. It's $5 a month and it gets you two bonus episodes every month,

plus access to our entire back catalog. Which is, I think, like 70 episodes now? Yes, yeah. I don't know how time works but it's been it's a lot it's a lot of episodes indeed uh you can grab you can grab some merch if you'd like over at tpublic.com slash the bechdel cast and uh we'll catch you next week gang what is a fun i'm like what's a quote from this movie well after this episode we are about to go back into the unknown yeah

bye bye bye bye bye Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated

crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one womanwoman Wikileaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before,

try to assassinate the president of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeartTrue Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology.

Swaps of different meds, but by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care. Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.