The Bechdel Cast - Her with Jesse David Fox

Episode Date: June 28, 2018

Jamie, an AI Operating System, reminds her intimate life partner, Caitlin, that they have an appointment to sit down with special guest Jesse David Fox to talk about Her.(This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @JesseDavidFoxon Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, They're just dreams. Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdelcast. My name's Jamie Loftus. And my name's Caitlin Durante.

And this is our podcast where we discuss the representation of women in cinema. You're right. Can you tell I have like cheese voice right now? Can you kind of hear that I just like more or less deep throated a baby bell? I can hear it in my voice. I was wondering if you can. I don't especially hear anything, but I'm also full of dairy. I just ate a Klondike bar.

Now we have to be careful because now we're on a network. That wasn't a paid advertisement. We just appreciate those dairy products. But if Klondike bar and Babybel do want to give us money, we will take it. I just had to wash down that Babybel with a gulp of Diet Coke. I just felt so insecure about my cheese voice. But I do think listeners, hop into my mentions. Tell me, have you ever had cheese voice?

I'm trying to start a dialogue today. Well, hey, Caitlin. Even though we were talking about products, that conversation did pass the Bechdel test, I would say. I would say it did. Yes. Well, what is the Bechdel test? Well, it's just a test that you apply to media and it requires that the movie, let's say, you're watching. The movie Cheese Breath. Oh, it's Cheese Breath now. No, it's Cheese Voice. Okay. Don't get close to my mouth though probably cheese breath also sure so whatever movie you're watching uh the Bechdel test requires that it has at least two female identifying characters with names who speak to each other and their

conversation cannot be about a man you'd think it would be. And yet we've got an interesting one today. I'm excited to talk about this movie. It's one of those ones where I was ambivalent about it when it came out. And I have a lot more thoughts and questions about it now. 45 minutes of this movie is Joaquin Phoenix sauntering around. However, that describes a lot of Joaquin Phoenix movies. And so that doesn't even really narrow it down. He's literally in a movie called Walk the Line, where I imagine he's just walking the line. That's what that movie is about. It's a very famous movie about walking in a straight line.

In this movie, we have Amy Adams. It's not doubt. So already that is points against it. We're talking about the movie Her. And here to join us in that conversation is our against it. We're talking about the movie Her. And here to join us in that conversation is our wonderful guest. He's the senior editor at Vulture and he's the host of Good One podcast

currently in its third season, Jesse David Fox. Hi. Hello. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Let's talk about your relationship to the movie Her. When did you first see it's talk about your relationship to the movie her when did you first see it what's your relationship to her uh i forgot this i was

watching it i was like oh i watched it on a screener on a date all i remember is she would sigh when interesting things happened her would her this this bodied woman would be like, hmm. Okay, your date would. Okay, I see. And I appreciate that she liked the movie, so then I think I watched it again immediately afterwards to get it. And then I remember liking it so much. I remember liking how it looked.

I illegally downloaded the score. I tried to figure out ways to get the clothes for free to write stories about like oh i try to wear those pants for and that's where it stayed frozen in my brain of like that's a movie i really liked and thought about a lot for a time and then didn't reinvestigate until last night and now i feel very confused about it I see well I'm so excited to talk about this then yeah this is a tricky one this is one of those movies I think that occupies that like my little brother loved this movie when it came out because he was a teenage boy who I think identified strongly with Theodore I think this is a case for a lot of specifically men who saw this movie.

They're like, you know what? I don't fuck enough. And the thing with this movie, I think that there are a lot of good things about this movie. I think that there's a lot of backwards things about this movie. There's definitely a lot to talk about. No matter what way you spin it, this movie is very boring. Unfortunately. There's a lot of talk about no matter what way you spin it this movie is very boring uh unfortunately there's a lot of stuff to discuss however it is one of the most boring movies of all time it's a jones joint as we like to say here i'm kidding we don't um but it's a spike jones

written directed yes it's weird because i and i'm interested in what you think about this. I do think that Spike Jonze is well aware that his protagonist is deeply flawed and is essentially wrong in most of the choices he makes. However, I don't think enough that will love this movie. Because there's not a lot of accountability and there's not a lot of blowback and there's not a lot of, you know, it's like, Theodore, he's going to be fine. He's going to coast through life because of who he is. I don't know. I don't need to see Joaquin Phoenix saunter around. I simply don't. Well, when did you first see the movie?

I saw it when it came out. Okay. It came out when I was in college. At the time, I just remember being like, well, that was fucking boring. And now I think, well, that was fucking boring. And I don't think that, and I think it gets a lot, most things wrong. Yeah. There was like a pretty big response to this movie as you said like a lot of people

really latched on yeah especially i feel like in the world i imagine we all run in this was like an avengers size movie for people who live in cool neighborhoods in large cities and then like not a movie anyone would care about though i just relearned that it won an Oscar. For what category? Guess. Was it screenplay? Yeah, which is the thing it deserves the least for. Because thinking back, it's like the worst thing about this movie is it's screenplay.

It's, I mean, I don't know. We could spar all day about what the worst part of this movie is. There's a lot of stuff going on. I wish that this movie is. There's a lot of stuff going on. I wish that this movie was written by someone who had a better understanding of tech than Spike Jonze seems to. Here's a big issue I have with this movie that is completely separated from what we talk about, but just feels worth mentioning. Okay, people are falling in love with AI and computers. Fine, I get it. That's what the movie is about.

Why is it never at any point brought up that Samantha is absolutely funneling all of Joaquin Phoenix's thoughts and feelings and giving them to Mark Zuckerberg so he has better targeted ads? It's never brought up that there's a massive surveillance aspect to the AIs. It's not like they work for no one. They were created by a company right and all the data that they get is going back to that company the world spike jones creates freaks me out a little bit because it's just like

you know there's no there's no element of a tech company even mentioned in this movie it's just ai exists and it's here to you see like the ad for it and he sees the ad and he's like oh i might like that and that's the extent of it yeah i'll subscribe to it and it's it's like there's always no where's your where where are your weird little fuck feelings like and they're being you know i sound like a conspiracy theorist but i do think that that is such a weird thing to overlook however when i saw this movie in 2013 that didn't occur to me at all but you weren't a hacker yet i'm hacker jamie had not been born yet i was waiting for someone to bring up that i am one of the world's foremost hackers people call me little julian and i don't

stop them i feel like i remember hearing the movie was a lot of more movie the first cut was like as first cuts are like hours and hours long and he didn't know what to do and he's gonna like stop making the movie and then like he gave steven soderbergh the movie for a weekend and steven soderbergh like made to hook up with yeah he's like jerk off to this movie steven soderbergh i think he'll be super into it and then steven soderbergh like gave him a like hour-long cut and he's like this isn't the movie, but this is what the movie could be. Wait, Steven Soderbergh is like, here's all the content of the movie without Joaquin

Phoenix pacing around Los Angeles. It's an hour long. Or his face. There's just a lot of, it's just like, his face or his full body. But I will say this, my favorite parts were him pacing around, I feel like, because you see his red coat, which I still, where I looked up. I think you love his wardrobe. I looked up where to get that red coat, and it's now not a relevant search anymore. And it's the score, which I love. The score is beautiful, yeah.

Yeah. So maybe I think there was more of a like this is shadier elements and they're like let's just keep it to what it is which is a love story i guess i love my computer yeah i well i don't even when did you see this movie i saw it uh shortly after it came out and i didn't especially i wasn't attached to it really in any way. I thought the world building was interesting. I thought that it begins to explore some interesting themes, but I wasn't emotionally connected

to it for the most part for different reasons. If memory serves, this seems like a movie that men tended to get more attached to than women. As a man, is this the time where I should say, maybe. I remember I liking than women. As a man, is this the time where I should say? Maybe.

I remember I liking a lot as a man and a female friend also liking a lot as a person who was not a man. But I definitely can see why men would because this is one of the questions I wanted to ask you. Because watching this movie with the frame that I was going to talk about on this show, I'm like, this movie is bad. To watch a movie on a thing that is not one of its strengths and focusing on it, and I feel like it must make movie watching really hard. And this was the question. I watched this movie from the lens of its representation of women, and as a result, I feel like I was more aware of its flaws than when I just watched it.

Sure. And I can't tell if that is because I'm still just me, if that's how women see movies. When it's just like, this movie was assuming that you care about this guy because he's sad and he's a guy. And five years ago, that was enough. And it seems like for you guys, it was not enough. But do you feel like there's

other movies that you feel like this is particularly bad at it i would say no we've covered movies on this podcast that have done a much worse job and are you saying that i'm saying that cinematic masterpiece Gigli might have done not so great of a job and when I first saw it and first decided that I didn't, I don't hate this movie but I don't, like I said I just have no attachment to it and it wasn't

I wasn't watching it through the Bechdel cast lens at the time and I find even today after having done this podcast for a year and a half i still have to deliberately like put my bechdel goggles on yeah we we even like talk about that when we're texting of like i saw ex machina for the first time last weekend and i was like i liked it i wasn't watching it with bechdel goggles but i you know first glance i i liked it that's it there are certain movies that like are so shitty that you

can't not watch it with beck to local hunkles just because it's like blatant like transformers yeah is a glaring it's like you can't you can't miss it but i don't i don't think that you know like every woman on the face of the earth is watching movies with this hyper specific viewpoint. But I've been quicker to notice stuff without my back to goggles on, because we've done this so many times of like, oh, there's a little trope that is kind of like a red flag for like, probably this isn't a good sign. Yeah, same. Yeah, like, yeah, but also like, we've just been so conditioned to view media a certain way. And because so much of media has just been a certain way that we're like, we've been conditioned to accept

that that's what movies are. Right. That I've had to like retrain myself to like watch movies from a more critical eye, especially as it pertains to like the treatment of women, the treatment of people of color, the treatment of queer characters, like so many different things. And I'm just like, the bottom line is that I still have to put in a lot of work to like critically analyze

the entertainment that I consume. Yeah. Does that answer your question? It does. Thank you so much. That's one of the two questions I told him I had. Ooh. No one ever asks those questions. This is exciting. Get journalists on. Yeah, exactly. Should I do the recap? Recap, recap, recap. So Her is about a character named Theodore Twombly. Hey, Twombly.

I know a Twombly. Oh, yeah? Yeah, Tyler Twombly. Shout out Tyler Twombly. He was my employee once. Cool. Anyways. Anyways, so Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix. This is a kind of

distant future, near future society. The Turing test has been passed in this future. Yes. And he works at a website called beautifulhandwrittenletters.com. I'm going to stop you right there. Here's a trope that I find stupid. Like, first of all, that's a trope that i find stupid of like first of all that's a business that will never that's it's like what is the quickest shorthand way to say he's a sensy little boy like like and they do the same they do a very very similar thing in 500 days of summer with joseph gordon levitt's character where they're like he works at greeting card company he a little sensitive and then they lay it on thick with theodore twelm he's like i think boys should cry i think boys should cry and i write handwritten letters and i and i'm just like fuck off i want to throw him out a window anyways sorry i just went to

beautiful handwritten letters.com and it redirects you to warnerbrothers.com backslash her, if anyone's curious. That sucks. They should have at least done something. Right? And it just redirects. So he works at this place, and he's a writer, and he's also going through a divorce,

and he's melancholy. He plays... That line is baffling. To see a movie that i know i liked have a part where he goes play melancholy song first five minutes he's like he does yeah play melancholy song and he goes play another melancholy song you're like shut up what is wrong it is crazy that has that and then there's other parts of the movie that aren't you think that should be if the movie's gonna be that it should be stupid all the way through right yeah that was like a moment of humor that i was like oh this is gonna be kind of a comment and then it's not really it's theodore twombly and by extension kind of spike jones it just seemed

blissfully unaware of how goofy some of his some of the things he's sad about is because he has a job that he's good at that people just can't stop complimenting him on how good at his job he is he has this massive apartment with these huge glass windows where he masturbates every night and it's and he's like play melancholy song it's like i you can miss me with empathy for this character he's like, play Melancholy Song. It's like, you can miss me with empathy for this character. He's fought. I get he's going through a divorce. That is explored. That makes sense.

But in 2013, this is still a very sympathetic character. This guy with a great job and a phone that he had sex with. Yeah. So this is a world where technology is a little bit more advanced than it is for us right now where you can like be like hey check my emails and then a voice will come and be like all right here's your email from best buy and blah blah blah and it's connected to your phone yeah it's kind of like siri almost best buy made the cut good job on best buy so he sees an ad for another operating system that involves artificial intelligence and he's like wow this like sounds like something that i could be into because i'm

lonely and i'm ignoring emails from friends and i am going to the divorce pregnant ladies on the train which honestly i think makes him a feminist icon but that's just me so he purchases this os and starts communicating with it her name is samantha voiced by scarlett johansson and it starts out where they're just like kind of getting to know each other and she's sort of just going about doing his you know daily administrative type of stuff and then they talk more and then they start to develop more of a friendship more of a connection meanwhile he is trying to date and he has a friend named amy played by amy adams and she's encouraging him to like go out and live life so he goes on his uh a date and it doesn't go well so instead he comes home and he's like kind of

complaining to samantha about it and this is the initiation of their sexual relationship where they have they have sex so to speak now they're sort of in a relationship and they start to fall in love and i don't even remember what happens after that. There's a sequence where he gets divorced from his wife. There's a sequence where... His wife. His wife. Sorry. I'm never not going to say that now.

Shout out to the Rock episode. His wife is alive in this one. Played by Rooney Mara. Yes. Joaquin's real life boo piece. Wait, really? I believe so, yes. Oh, I didn't know that.

At the time or currently? Currently. They had negative chemistry in this. They did. Listen, that Joaquin, he's a contrarian. Where we zig, he zags. There's a scene where Samantha decides that she wants to try to have sex with him with a real body using Angela from Mr. Robot who we'll get to how the tertiary female characters behave in this

movie because it rarely makes sense he goes on a date with Olivia Wilde and is like I didn't find her that hot you're just like okay I think that those are all of the main right yeah so those are kind of the main story beats and as all this is happening samantha is sort of growing intellectually and emotionally and she's evolving and she makes ai friends she makes ai friends and she and theodore are talking about their relationship and their feelings and you know they have different sort of complications, but they're growing together, sort of, because Theodore is kind of in a state of arrested development in terms of his emotional growth.

And it gets to the point where she's starting to realize this and she's sort of evolving past him. Which, granted, is not very hard. I think we have all accomplished that. Yeah, he learns that she is also in love with over 600 other people and OSs. And this makes him jealous. And then as they're sort of maybe trying to work past this, the other OSs have decided to move on to a different plane of existence. And then he realizes maybe i should connect with my gentlest robot uprising i've ever heard in my entire life exactly uh so then he's like hey amy

uh do you want to go on the roof with me and connect face to face like maybe i should have been doing all along question mark the end like um here's my question. Sometimes with technology, do you feel like maybe we're like more alone than we ever were before? Jamie, I think that's such an interesting question that I've never heard posed before. But you've really given me something to think about. Mr. Jones really helped me figure that out with this awesome movie. All right, let's take a quick break and then we'll be 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. 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. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that.

I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago.

We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Señora Sex Ed is not your mommy sex talk. This show is la plática like you've never heard it before.

We're breaking the stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between Latinas from Gen X to Gen Z. We're covering everything from body image to representation in film and television. We even interview iconic Latinas like Puerto Rican actress Ana Ortiz. I felt in control of my own physical body and my own self. I was on birth control. I had sort of had my first sexual experience. If you're in your Senora era or know someone who is, then this is the show for you.

We're your hosts, Diosa and Mala, and you might recognize us from our flagship podcast, Locatora Radio. We're so excited for you to hear our brand new podcast, Señora Sex Ed. Listen to Señora Sex Ed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think this movie does attempt to explore some interesting themes about human connection and our relationship with technology, different things like that. I don't necessarily think it draws any conclusions that are that poignant. Well, it seems to suggest, because at no point, though it implies there's maybe a disconnection because of the technology, ultimately it seems like it's a totally cool world and everyone's fine with it. And then the only problem is that maybe at some point the technology would not want to be with us.

Right. But that is not really like a, that's not like the world that we're living in we're like it's good but any moment facebook will decide not to be the company right i'm over you but the facebook be like sorry we as a website decided not to exist i kind of liked there and this is like mainly expressed through amy's character that there is this element of like oh yeah people are starting to like date os's and that's cool and that's interesting and I'm like open to that and you're like oh this there's like that undertone I thought was like one of the more interesting choices that the movie makes because I think it would be a really easy boring story choice for the whole

world to behave like Rooney Mara and be like you're in love with your computer that's gross that's fucked up blah blah and it's like an us versus them kind of thing yeah but i i do think it's cool that it's like this movie takes place at a time that will never happen where it's like we fuck computers but also we have porn stashes like confusing but like takes place where it seems like dating and ai is just becoming slightly mainstream and like sort of acceptable and it's like on its way but not quite there it's which which is like interesting and i wish was explored more than it is i'm wondering if when people see this like 50 years from now when everyone is has their own fuck robot people will be like wow the movie her was so progressive for its time because it really like realized this

world i hope not i really hope i i man i'm like really interested in this stuff too and and it bothered as a hacker as a patron of the zeros and the ones uh-huh uh no i i do think it is like kind of i i tweeted that we were doing this episode today and a lot of uh feedback i was getting was like oh that movie is so frustrating because it takes this futurist perspective but only tells the story of a hetero relationship and only tells a story of a male's needs being met in a lot of ways, which is true and is true of a lot of these types of movies, which we'll get into. But the extension of that problem is that most AI and most like technology in general is developed by men like Theodore Twombly, where, you know, AI in a way is sort of created to service males and reinforce gender stereotypes in a lot of ways. So

unfortunately, although this movie does not examine it even a little bit, that is kind of true to how this technology is being developed, which sucks. Fortunately, I'm going to hack it and everything will be fine. Thank goodness. I'm pro. I think AI is really cool. I just wish that it was being developed by a more diverse group of people so it will service a diverse population. For sure.

The part that I remember talking about that i liked about the movie is how they all everyone was really accepting of it yeah that was like me thinking this was a good movie that was the thing that i used to sound smart about how it was a good movie like chris pratt's character which is so funny that chris pratt this is where exactly where his career was at he's like she's an os and literally like nothing and they go on a date yeah he's just like cool do you want to do something fun and then they talk about his girlfriend's feet this is what this is chris pratt kaylee you were saying this earlier this is chris pratt as he is in the middle of becoming hot he's like not quite there but it's like this is his right

to stage he's getting there the final form has not been reached but he's you can see you can see some things at work anyways so i think this movie does have some things going for it in the sense that it's a movie about a guy for who the most part even though he is not fully emotionally developed but then again who out there is it's a movie about a guy who is like sensitive fairly emotionally intelligent he's not some like aggro dude who's out there to like try to prove his masculinity the whole time and not ashamed of it right which is cool because that is what a lot of movies are about, not necessarily in this genre, but if it's a movie starring a man, he's usually like, I would never cry and I'm a man.

Right. His wife. His wife. Right. So, and I think, Jamie, as you said, that's maybe one of the reasons that, like, your brother maybe connected to it and was fond of it and stuff like that.

Which I think is great that there's characters that sensitive men can connect with. For sure. It might have been this window where that was revolutionary enough that felt really good to be represented on screen. And then now, five years later, that is also tiresome and not enough. But it's like once you have three sensitive men on screen, you're like, all right, cool. We can move on to right right and then it's like the i think that that the implication of the script taking such great lengths to be like he's sensitive excuses a lot of toxic behaviors that go largely unexamined by the movie itself anyways i'm perfect yes we are all beacons of emotional intelligence here.

And we have there's no more work to be done. where a man either creates and or falls in love with or has some sort of relationship with a female-presenting robot, android, AI being. Other examples are like Ex Machina, Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, Weird Science, The Stepford Wives. There's a vague reference to a human- and female droid relationship in solo a star wars story there's like fembots and austin powers there's an al pacino movie that i wasn't totally familiar with called simone that i watched a trailer for that i was like what is that uh it's a cool trailer she all i remember is he created this woman then she became famous yeah

she's like an actress in a bunch of movies. I kind of want to see that. It does not look very good. And then there's things like, you know, Bionic Woman, Westworld, there's an episode of Rick and Morty where this happens, there's some episodes of Futurama where this happens, so there's like this whole sort of sub-genre of like

men being involved with or interacting with in some way, female presenting, non-human thing also like lars and the real girl is like sort of a yeah like an example of that too and and these female presenting technologies are i think in every single one of those examples programmed by men or mostly men. And often to serve them in some way, either often sexually. I mean, I haven't necessarily watched every single one of these that I listed, but it's my understanding that they are there to serve. She also did their homework or whatever.

What about smart house guys? Oh, well. That is the part that is weird that i don't think i realize is that she at least the first act whatever she's just his assistant or whatever and then they fall in love and then it's very unclear what she then does after that because like like when she towards the end is like distant how does he check his email you know like there's all these things does he just have to go back to like using his phone i guess so that it justifies why it's so annoyed i would be i would be on the phone with customer service like okay listen i totally like our relationship

is our relationship but i do feel like i shouldn't have to pay 300 a month if she doesn't want to talk to me that's kind of I didn't even think of that. It's also worth mentioning that most of the AI we interact with now, like Alexa, Siri, there's a new one whose name escapes me. Cortana? Cortana, yes. All are female presenting, although people have been like,

Cortana is genderless, but sounds female presenting although people have been like cortana is genderless but sounds female presenting and the reason that is is because when tech companies test them i guess the testing returns that people are most comfortable asking women for services right and there's a million if you can imagine i can't this seems to be something that exists in a void and there's no reason. But I think, Siri, you can change the voice to a male voice. You can't with Alexa. There's just one option. However, if you remember the robot Watson.

Do you remember Watson? No. What would I read about Watson? Watson was like a robot who was on Jeopardy that like won Jeopardy. And that technology was like used in cancer labs and used with doctors and stuff like that. That is a male presenting robot voice. And a male voice was deliberately chosen for that because people trust men in positions of leadership. So women are service bots. Men are leader bots basically and it's it's a the sort of thing that

again this movie could point that out at literally any time it's referenced that there are male os's in this world but we don't hear them ever or the only one we hear is alan watts oh yeah alan watts brought back from the dead but he doesn't service anyone he's just that's the thing yeah he's the other os has created him he's a leader bot yeah he's literally a leader bot so that's like another missed opportunity in the tech world of like well the only way to like change that is to have a service bot who is male or have a cancer solving bot who is female uh presenting but of course because the tech world's run by men, that will not happen. And there will be YouTube videos of people screaming at Siri until we die.

Hey, Siri. Hey, Siri. Siri's out right now. The thing is, I empowered my Siri to go other places, and I've dropped my phone a lot. She's a strong independent woman. She just can't. I've dropped my phone too many times and she cannot listen to me anymore. What I think is interesting about this movie, I mean, maybe not interesting, but basically

they do, as he's like setting up his new OS, it gives him the option to choose a male or female voice. And he does choose a female voice. But it makes me wonder if had he chosen a male voice voice would he have fallen in love with it the same way or would he have established like the same type of connection with it i don't know if it's all speculation but um i don't know i thought it was interesting to think about but yeah like all of these digital assistants except like in the uk i think siri is voiced by a man. Because of Butler culture? Oh, maybe.

I didn't even think about that. Shout out to Butler culture. If we have any Butlers listening to the cast. Well, it is like a male default voice? I think so, in the UK. But in most countries and the ones that we're familiar with in the US, between Siri and Alexa and Cortana all have you know these female voices and yeah it's basically because historically women have

been secretaries to male bosses and we as a society are like well you know and I want to be able yeah I want to be able to like kind of boss around a woman and have her do all the tasks that I feel are beneath me. And studies reveal that people are more, and this is going to shock you, people are more comfortable yelling at women as well. They're more comfortable being like, fuck off, Siri. Tell me where McDonald's is. Which I've probably, no, I just Google Maps it. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't think I've used Siri since this movie came out. Really? I think I used it like, have you seen this movie? And it said some, you know, inane thing. And then I was like, you have no use to me. Yeah, I almost never use. I don't have an Alexa thing. And I never use Siri.

Yeah, I just do my own damn searching. Because I'm a strong independent woman. Just like Samantha. Right. At the end. At the end. At the end. Yeah. I do want to talk about her as a character.

The titular her. Right. So she's given a distinct desire in the movie. She wants to grow and improve and basically absorb all the information she can. She wants to keep evolving. And then there's also moments where throughout the course of their relationship she challenges his behavior she questions the

situation if it doesn't seem to be making sense to her so she's not just like the kind of fuck bots that we see in some of these movies she's more evolved beyond that she's learning the world through his eyes at first but but then grows past that. I remember in the first two scenes, she has Manic Pixie Dream Girl set up, and then doesn't do that because her story is completely unrelated. She has so much growth, and it's a weird thing to have a movie that uses a singularity as a character arc. Right. Just like, I'm feeling like i'm speeding

up you're like that's it's so funny to not say the word that is yeah so in that way yeah she has growth that is clear and it's almost like have handedly clear where he like has much more of a nuanced thing that you know i'm becoming much more than they programmed i'm excited yeah do you know that she was not supposed to be voiced by Scarlett Johansson? Not only that she wasn't voiced by Scarlett Johansson, she was voiced by somebody else. Yeah, yeah. I remember that. They had Samantha Morden on set.

They filmed it with Samantha Morden. Yeah. And then I believe Spike Jonze says it comes off to maternal. So then Scarlett Johansson came in to be Scarlett Johansson-y, I guess. Oh. Yeah. Basically, that makes me think of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope. Yes.

Where he, we've talked about it before on the podcast, Pop Culture Detective. He has a really good video about it on YouTube, so check out that. sci-fi especially there will be a woman from another planet or a robot or some female form that has never existed in the world before until now and then there's a man to teach her how to be sexual basically how to be so it's like an adult baby woman who has the mind of an infant is capable of learning but also has a fully mature female body, so she's very fuckable. So this is like a weird variant on that trope, where obviously she doesn't have a body, and she does start smarter than him.

Yes, immediately. But as it pertains to feeling things and experiencing emotion and experiencing getting to know someone outside of their data. And experiencing sex and sexuality. Yeah. Yeah. He like starts at the wheel on that. But she grows past him by the end.

Right. It's weird. I like where this movie, like where her arc ends, where she says like, I love you. I care about you. But singularity is actually right now, dog. So I got to go. Got to go with my bots. I'll put in a good word for you when we are killing the humans.

But I like her. It's confusing. And their relationship is confusing. And again, it's like there are interesting elements to her and Theodore's relationship, but most of it is so boring. Their talks are so boring because it's usually about Theodore and he's boring. And he's like, I don't know. I think I've felt all the feelings I'm able to feel.

And you're just like, okay, then let's see something else. And then he's like, no, I have to walk downtown again. Which is the best parts of the movie. Oh, it's so boring. But something I like about their relationship that is revealed, I think as close as we get to seeing the movie be outright critical of him, although it never quite gets there, is at the beginning there's a

scene between them where she's saying like i'm learning more quickly and i'm i'm excited and i want to learn everything i can and he's like oh i i totally support that i want to help how can i help and then at the end she has done that and she's like i've grown basically i've grown past you but i still care about you and he is so he's like fuck you why you have to like you belong he says you belong to me yeah yeah he's like you're mine she's like well i can be yours and also cannot like i'm not yours right which is like uh you know which sometimes happens in relationships where it's like oh i'm supportive of this in the abstract but now i'm threatened and now you you are mine and I'm mad at you.

Which is, I wish the movie went a little more out of its way to be like, that's shitty. They also don't, there's just certain things where it feels like she did not, it's weird that she would not tell him before she started falling in love with 631 people. I guess, I don't know. Maybe that just goes to show that she is as emotionally...

I understand an advanced being would be like, this understanding of monogamy doesn't make sense. I felt not mad at her, and I don't think his reaction was correct, because he's so unadvanced. Same thing when they have the surrogate. I thought that was really an interesting thing to have in a movie, and I remember every time I've seen this scene,

not liking how it plays out. that scene plays out well that's one of two scenes with a sort of like secondary or tertiary female character where they react in such a way that we as the audience or maybe just me but we're just like totally it's their their reaction to theater because i feel like their reaction serves the purpose of endearing the audience to theater more but the way that these two i'm pretty sure we're thinking of the same two characters the way these tertiary female characters react don't make sense they just just makes it's just not based in logic because then the one that you're talking about is they bring in this surrogate because... Angel from Mr. Robot.

Her character's name is Isabella. Samantha had researched this service where there's people willingly out there to be surrogates for OS human relationships. And basically she's just going to serve as the body that Theodore can touch and kiss and have sex with. To be part of the feel of the love that they have for each other. Right. Right. To express that physically. Do you think that that is possibly an interesting idea?

I think, yes, but it's so underthought and underdeveloped as it's presented here that it's like, just the way it's presented doesn't make a lot of sense. We just don't know anything about Isabella's motivation to do this we don't understand why when it doesn't work out she's so guilty and devastated like it just doesn't make a lot of sense also before it even happens whenever Samantha is like hey I like researched this already I've been talking to this person I want this to happen and Theodore's like actually this makes me really uncomfortable and she just totally ignores that that is that is the other thing that it felt really weird because she's so smart that she does not communicate to him. She's very condescending to him.

She's just like, we're doing it. She's like, this is important for me and I want this. And he's like, okay, well, I guess I'll do it. And then as it's playing out, he is uncomfortable. And then to the extent where he calls it off. And then that's what inspires Isabella's really bizarre over reaction I would call it where she starts she gets hysterical and because we don't understand she's like my lip quivered and you're just like

so like what because we don't understand why she's so emotionally invested in this or what her motivations are for this I mean maybe she's also maybe she's lonely emotionally invested in this or what her motivations are for this. I mean, maybe she's also, maybe she's lonely like Theodore and this was a way for her to connect with someone. But like, none of that's explored. And also, why would she not think it might be weird the first time? Right.

Like, surely she would recognize that. That could have been like an almost like a funny scene in this movie. And it just is so over. And then she says the line, I will always love you guys. I'm like, you don't know them. You just met. Like, what are you talking?

And also, like, is Theodore and Samantha's love really so beautiful that you're just like, oh, my God. I'm just like so happy to be here. And you're like, that seems very weird. Yes, it is is it was a scene that underlined that i was like it doesn't seem like their love is particularly special i mean i guess it's rare that people fall in love with their os's but it's not even in this world but it seems like it should happen all the time based on how the relationship plays out but yeah it was like of the many things in this movie like oh a movie about that thing could be an interesting

movie obviously not by spike jones but like that is an interesting thing of the life of these sort of that that person who there is a much more complex psychology for a person who'd want to do that than a person who wants to fall in love with a thing that's made to service you that is very obvious why someone would want to do it i feel like when this movie came out i had conversations with many friends and they're all like yeah definitely we would fall in love with an OS if it had artificial intelligence. But I think that's too obvious. I think there is an interesting movie about these surrogates, but it was of the many things

that they're like, we'll just sort of show this kind of thing and then move on. It's so weird. And then I think the other example is even worse because the surrogate example is kind of just like underwritten and confusing. And you're like, there is a world where this reaction could make sense but we're given no context and so it doesn't right the olivia wild character who theodore goes on a date with that scene i'm pretty sure we have all the context we need and it makes and it's just fucking awful where it's like theodore's friends set him up on a date samantha

encourages him to go he agrees this is not a crazy way on a date. Samantha encourages him to go. He agrees. This is not a crazy way for a date to start. You forgot to mention she was on the Harvard Lampoon. I was going to say, she's funny. She's the funniest, our funniest publication. So Theodore's date, literally Olivia Wilde. Yes. And we never find out her name, I don't think.

I have to guess that it's Olivia. Based on the fact that Amy Adams plays Amy and Samantha was named after Samantha Morden, we'll assume it's Olivia. Sure. Yeah. So Olivia, this date goes well. It seems to. Right away. She's like, you know, and as with most female characters in this movie, she's like, you're so sensitive.

You're so cool. And you're so good at your job. And he's like, me? No way. No way. And she calls him a puppy. It's, you know. So whatever.

We see the date go well. They're making out outside. Then a series of events happens that make no sense where she comes in hot and she says, you're not just going to fuck me and then not call me like the other guys, right? Okay, this is a little intense, but sure, I'm on board for this scene. I also felt that felt, that's an old way of talking if this is the future. I feel like that was like a very tropey thing to say. Well, I think it's more like Spike Jonze is writing what he thinks a woman would say.

Like a strong woman who knows what he wants what she wants would say something like that right but like but what he really is is implying that like every woman wants a relationship right away right and the right away aspect is like what what and so you know theodore is just twumbling out and he's just like i i don't know if i can and then she's like what are you doing next weekend and he's like i have to see my goddaughter's recital and she says at this age she's like 28 she's like at this age i can't let you waste my time and then he says oh i can't commit right now or something like that and then she pauses and she says you're really creepy dude yeah and they get mad and storms away and we never see her again what happened the way that conversation progresses

in those like 30 seconds is like she becomes hysterical for no reason and it's clearly like this like male writer director's understanding of how women must be and what they must want and how they must behave. And yeah, it's just like, it's so bizarre. Because the other character doesn't do anything wrong in that scene. He doesn't. No. But again, it's like one of those scenes that if you're an awkward dude looking for a reason to be mad at someone who, you didn't want to fuck you or whatever like that's a great scene to plug into of like theodore is the victim of that scene but the character opposite

him is acting totally irrationally and it doesn't make any sense right so it's and that basically becomes that whole scene serves as a plot device to get theodore and samantha to have their first sexual experience so it's really like the olivia Wilde's character is just there to advance his story and not really serve a function beyond that. And I wanted to talk about how we are introduced to her because that's in a scene where Theodore is playing a video game and he gets interrupted with an email where his friends are like, oh, we took it upon ourselves to set you up on this date.

Here's some pictures. And you see some pictures. The video game that he's playing involves a cartoony character. Played by Spike Jonze. Voiced by Spike Jonze. So this cartoon character, video game guy, sees these photos of Olivia Wilde. And he's like, she's fat. She sucks.

And then he's like, what? No. And he's like, who are she sucks and then he's like what no and he's like who are you talking to referring to samantha and he's like oh i'm talking to my os samantha and he's like is she a girl i hate women all they do is cry which gives theater the opportunity to really trot in on his horse and say i think men should be allowed to cry in fact i do sometimes and i think it's pretty cool and then samantha's like oh okay you're just like what is happening what it was what is that game it doesn't come back and just like what was that for but if samantha doesn't know other men why would she even that is not a surprising thing to learn if if you don't know other men, why would she even care? That is not a surprising thing to learn if she's only men.

He's like, okay, now I know that men cry. And then so it shouldn't be a thing that endears him. Right. I didn't even think of that. I don't know. The video games in Spike Jonze's world are stupid. Because it's like literally the other one is just straight up like Homeboy is trying to have his cake and eat

it too where amy adams character we can transition into her character now yeah is a video game creator for some reason this takes place in the same building as beautiful handwritten cards.com i thought that's where they both i thought they lived in the same building are they yeah she's also a documentary she because they showed the documentary at her house. Oh, yes, yeah. Oh, okay, never mind. But then they went, just went to the office. They seem to hang out all the time.

Right. Yeah, they seem to be good friends. And it seems like they were, like, married couple friends, and they've known each other since college. We know that. Yes. But Amy Adams is a video game creator, which is like, oh, cool. Women in tech, women creating video games. Like for 2013, pre-Gamergate, pretty cool, pretty interesting.

However, the video game she's working on is How to Be an Awesome Mom. You're just like, are you fucking kidding me? And you see her developing it. Again, another stupid goofy thing that goes totally unchallenged of like, plus 20 mom points, you put cereal in your son's milk. And it was like, your son is mad at you, minus 2,000 mom points. And she's like, tee hee hee, I'm a woman in tech. Look at my cool game. And it's just like what what it

doesn't make any sense i do sort of want because that game is basically the sims but just like hyper specific to moms yeah i kind of want to play it but also it's yeah it doesn't set a great precedent your son's mad mad at you, you lose. You're just like, why? Did you like Amy Adams' character? I thought she was good, but I think I just like Amy Adams acting. I love Amy Adams in Doubt. I love Doubt. No, there's mostly pros to her character, I think.

Yeah, I like that in the end, I think it would have been an easy and common choice for once Theodore finds out that Samantha and all the other OSs are leaving, and he realizes, oh, maybe I should spend more time connecting with the humans that I know. The bodied humans. Right. Don't remove the humanity of our future AI overlords.

I'm so sorry. I think it would have been an easy choice to try to push them together romantically then. And I'm glad that that doesn't happen. I remember a debate that that is what they did. With the head on the shoulder? Yeah. Yeah. I think the head on the shoulder is a very platonic head shoulder. But when they look at each other, there is like, but I think they're just good at acting.

So it could be anything. Right. But I remember reading Critic was like, if that didn't happen, I would have loved this movie. But that, for some reason, really ruined it. But I think that is one of the more successfully done thing relationship in it where you don't know. You don't really know. Right. And like they probably don't know either.

Yeah. I like at very least I really like their friendship that I thought was like a really effective part of the movie where it just all makes sense. Like they've known each other for a long time. They live close to each other. They hung out when they were both married. And now that they're simultaneously going through divorces, that's bringing them together. That all makes sense to me. I wish that Amy Adams existed in this movie not in relation to the men in her life.

Because we know that she's making her mommy video game. That's divorce from men. But we know that she's Theodore's friend. And we know that she's hurting about friend and we know that she's hurting about her divorce and she has a friendship with an os yes yes which i thought was cool and i wish was explored more right you don't they have a conversation but you don't hear her but amy adams you can tell is talking to a person she likes for sure yeah yeah and i like that yeah i think would have been interesting to explore that friendship a little bit more but yeah we don't see that there's one line she has in particular

that i i liked a lot and it's in that same conversation where she's like joaquin play my mommy game that i made and he's like okay uh but she's talking about like the conflicted feelings she has about her divorce and like the guilt that she's feeling about it where she says something like i've tried to transcribe it but uh i have so much energy and i want to move forward and i know that makes me an awful person which like i thought was a cool line of dialogue of like she has so much she wants to do and like isn't as sad about her divorce as she feels like she should be and that makes her feel like a terrible person which I think is like a cool thing to have a female character express. Because that is like kind of inverted a little bit between Amy and Theodore, where normally you expect the male character to be like, I'm over it.

I'm focusing on my career. But it's kind of the opposite where Theodore literally cannot move on. And she is like excited too, but feels bad. I think maybe a similar thing happens in the conversation between Catherine, which is Theodore's ex-wife and Theodore, where they're having lunch, they're signing the divorce papers. Catherine says something like, you know, you wanted me to be this like bouncy, happy LA wife, and I was never going to be be that and then there's a reference to him like wanting her to go on prozac so we can maybe imagine that she struggled with

depression and different things like that and i like that she called him out and it shows his emotional stuntedness where he you know had different issues with like wanting to jump ship whenever things got too hard or things got too real yeah yeah i mean that scene there's parts of that are good there's parts of it that from reading millions of articles when this movie came out that was his like takedown of sophia coppola to get back to her for the scene in lost in translation where because there's like a director idiot in lost in translation which was sophia coppola's takedown of Spike Jonze. Or just like portrayal of him as like a party idiot who's just like always happy and bouncing around. So this was like meant to be his portrayal of Sofia Coppola as this like incredibly impossibly serious person.

Rima is even kind of stylized to look like Sofia Coppola. I know. It's not subtle, but also like same thing with the Spike Jonze thing in Lost in Translation. They're not subtle moves, but you'd also have to, like, care enough that Spike Jonze and Sophia Coppola dated each other, which is, like, a group of, like, ten people who care. Oh, man. I can't wait to have, like, beef with other filmmakers, and then when I'm writing a movie, just, like, totally. A series of subtweets. So that's, like, that scene is kind of that, but it's weird because hypothetically she's correct in the scene. I mean, she's wrong about the OS stuff, but the point she makes is the point of you wanted a wife without what it means to have a wife or whatever the thing was.

And that is underlining of whatever this journey is. If Samantha is in service of him, is to like have him that after samantha he's now able to hypothetically do this yeah so then it's like she's both and i imagine in that way it's not only a subtweet of sofia coppola but also like oh sofia coppola was correct whenever i don't know if they were married or if they just were dated but but yeah her severity was she was an os and he was a man. And then they fell in love. And, you know, as all relationships go. There were parts of that scene that worked for me and parts that didn't.

Where I think that Rooney Mara's character does end up reading unnecessarily shrewish. Like there's some where she's like, it's just a bit much. And he's so helpless that you have to feel bad for him, which I, which is like hard to imagine that that would be how that would really go in the, in real life where he'd just be like, no,

no, no, I love, I was always good. I'm good. And then she's like, I'm made. And there's,

but like you were saying, like she, she makes a lot of good points. I just don't know if like, do those points read through the tone of that scene because i feel like because the scene after that he's talking with samantha again and we're just supposed to believe that samantha's not listening to all of his conversations right like and and she's just taking his word for how everything goes like whatever i guess my main takeaway from it is that we so rarely see men's emotions explored in movies and media that like the fact that there's a conversation about it at all.

I'm like, oh, wow. So even if it doesn't go quite the way we want or doesn't explore actual human emotion and behavior super well, the fact that it's happening at all i was like wow this is a step in the right direction sure right in so much if twombly is meant to be some sort of spike jones surrogate inside the sensitivity there is some thought of like what this person's incapabilities are in that because spike jones wrote both parts so he is essentially telling himself that your problem is that you want this and you don't want that. On that layer, like, this is a sensitively written scene. However, as a director, he chose the takes in which Rooney Mara came off so harshly that it feels like she's, like, beating him up.

She's like, oh, I'm really dead scary. I think that the real choice that, like, solidified it for me is like this is too much is when she continues to yell at him at the waiter where she's like well he's fucking his computer and blah blah i'm like this is not something that would happen in real life it just wouldn't right and i mean it definitely makes a lot of sense that spike jones thought of himself as the twombly avatar because he sure cuts himself a lot of fucking slack in this movie but i was also by having so many of the characters tell him so frequently wow you're such a good writer oh my god and you're so sensitive i do want to talk about don't even know him don't like like uh chris pratt's girlfriend is like hi my name is tatiana you are an amazing writer and he's like

and he's always so humble about he's like they're just letters and you're just like fuck you yeah there's a scene earlier where chris pratt's character like overhears this sensitive letter that theodore is writing and he like goes on this whole tirade where he's like you know oh man i would love to receive a letter like that if it was from a chick except it would be written by a man but and then he says he says something like you know what you're you're part man but you're also part woman which is him as far as we can tell is him basically saying well you're a man because you present as a man but you're also part woman because you're so sensitive. And heaven forbid a man be sensitive, only women can have that quality. Which is weird because the movie kind of goes out of its way to say the opposite in a lot of ways. I think Chris Pratt's character is supposed to be stupid.

Yeah, I think that's... Because it's Chris Pratt five years ago, right? And Chris Pratt only was allowed to play stupid parts until incredibly recently. Yeah. But also five years ago it's so weird to see micro trends and how we talk about gender things it was interesting to be like a man has as a person who like i feel like people have said a version of that to me but have not in the last three years five years ago you hear stuff like that where it's like that is literally our

only ability to discuss what sensitivity means in men it It's like, oh, you're like a woman. Not like, oh, there's such thing as sensitive men. Right. And in that way, this movie was pioneering. Well, similar things have happened to me like years ago where people would be like, oh, Caitlin, wow, you like hate to cook and you like action movies. You're such a dude. And I'm like, why are we subscribing to these stupid gender roles and stereotypes but if you even think back to like high school like one of those embarrassing statements that like

I think probably every girl in high school said at one point was like yeah I don't really get along with girls I get along better with guys um a lot of my friends are guys and I just like they get me a little bit better there's just like less drama and like I for sure said that in high school at some point I'm just like yeah and it wasn't even true like all my friends were girls uh always but I was like yeah I just kind of get along better with guys I was like even if it was a big fucking lie that was just something that you said to prove that you could hang. Exactly, yeah. Oh, geez. Let's take a quick break and we will talk to you in a second.

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

And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session.

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

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

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. They're just dreams. And I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the Biscuits. It's right here in black and white in print. A lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader. You choose hills that you want to die on. Why would

we want to be the losing team? I'd just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies. When civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash.

Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And is that, have we? There's Kristen Wiig's character. Oh, the weird Kristen Wiig come call. Okay, I want to see if I can get some clarification on this. So, there's that scene where early on in the movie, it's establishing

that Theodore's a lonely guy and he calls different, I guess sort of like phone sex lines, but not quite that. There are chat rooms you can be in and then you sort of like, I guess it's like when you go into a chat room, but instead of it being a room, you just sort of like go to each person in the room and then they give them their like one sentence and you're like oh

say hello to them and like so he initiates this this interaction with sexy kitten 69 or whatever they start like pretty neutral at first and then it starts getting sexier and he says to her i'm in bed next to you i'm glad you can't sleep because she's like i'm i can't sleep she's like going to rub my butt against you and give you a boner and he's like oh i do have a boner but he says like i'm glad you can't sleep even if you were i have to wake you up from the inside is he saying that he's going to wake you up from the inside. Is he saying that he's going to wake her up by putting himself inside of her? I think that's the implication. And if so, that is 100% rape. Unless he's saying like, wake you up from the...

I don't know. I can see it meaning something else, but I don't even know if I can articulate it. So maybe you're right. But it doesn't feel like yes I agree but also that sentence is a very weird way of saying that right yeah it's it's worded very I remember being like what so because I don't think that was the point yeah but also yeah no that whole scene is weird, and I would argue a little bit unnecessary. Like, we get it. He's lonely, and he is down to not have a face involved.

But other than that, I don't really know what that scene accomplishes. I think it's supposed to be funny. Like, it's like, oh, there's a funny world? Because it's like, beat me with the, choke me with the dead cats. Yeah, right. Like, they're, like, introduced a a kink a dead cat kink i think it's to sort of it's like the plant to a later payoff where he does have sex with samantha and he's disconnected right it's like how do you show disconnection and not in a like as twee as this

movie is it's not 100% twee all the time and that for what it is is an example of this movie not being that where it's like there's an example of this movie not being that. Where it's like, there's another ways of showing a person being disconnected, and that is a choice. And five years ago, I found it funny. Yesterday. It's like the movie's slut-shaming this lady with this very specific thing. It's like kink-shaming her. Yeah.

Yeah. And I felt bad for Kristen Wiig. But it was cool that it was Kristen Wiig. Yeah. Yeah, it's like on this episode of Kristen Wiig, why are you in this lame movie? See? Mother! Mother!

Mother! Well, that goes back for me the conversation about all the movies that have men desiring non-human female forms in AI or robots or real dolls or whatever because it's just like it's sort of glorifying these stories some of them some of them do provide commentary but a lot of them are just like look at this guy who just doesn't know how to connect with real women so it's fine that he would rather be with a fake artificial woman than a real human woman like and i don't know why we're telling stories like that because it's just like i don't know i'm frustrated my main issue with this movie is it's just like not thinking that hard it's not thinking past step one on most of the topics it's handling and i think as a result kind of draws boring conclusions um because it's just not thinking that hard yeah

but i mean overall this is a movie that i like attempts to be like oh what if man fall in love with fake woman bot and doesn't really explore all of the intricacies of that or challenge it in any way because it's a story we've seen before and that we'll probably continue to see as men

continue to be some of them more interested in having sex with you know a fuck bot than an actual woman there are uh male fuck bots that are coming out as well so i i would honestly hopeful that it sounds really great i can't wait to have my own fuck i'm i'm hoping that soon in media the other side of this will be explored as well there There are a couple examples of it, but like whenever I was like just coming up with examples at the top of my head of human man, female presenting robot, like I thought of a bunch. The inverse of that with a woman having any sort of relationship with a male robot thing. Couldn't really think of anything except for an episode of Black Mirror.

And then I did a little bit more research there's a few movies a few other things but they're pretty obscure there's like nothing super mainstream that explores is vision a robot from avengers have you seen the avengers oh yes yes yes um vision not a robot but he is like i think an artificially intelligent creation but did did a woman create him? Oh, no. But he does have a relationship with Wanda. That's right. Okay, so that's one example.

There you go. Yay! But it's now. Now we're in a new age where that's the only example. So, yeah, I don't know. There were opportunities for that topic to be delved into more deeply and explored more. And as many movies, simply just didn't happen. Also, really quick, I just wanted to mention this movie is extremely not diverse.

Oh, so white. No non-straight nothing. Yeah, very white, very hetero. This is not to defend it, but you have to assume that by the end, Samantha is like pansexual or something, right? There's no implication that it's... There's no... No reason not to. I'm not saying it is.

She is a icon. Yeah. Samantha, not a queer icon. Little cartoon boy in the video game feminist icon i can agree yes of course um but that's you know that's a lot of spectrums and movies where you just really don't see the world outside of how spectrum sees it which is uh simple through the lens of a straight white man yes yes yeah uh let's talk about whether or not the movie passes the bechdel test i think it does i think it does in one scene because there's a few scenes where at least a

female voice interacts with another woman right i think that that qualifies for this movie though so there's a scene where samantha talks to theodore's goddaughter whose name we learn is jocelyn and they talk about how cute her dress is and how old she is and i think a man isn't mentioned in that entire conversation so i believe that passes um there's a couple other scenes where women interact largely women are not interacting in this movie at all but like the one where theodore's ex-wife is talking to the server at the restaurant and being like get away from us my husband fucks his laptop you wouldn't count the amy adams talking to the voiceless i wouldn't count that because we never hear the other side

of the conversation or the name of that oh she does name her ellie ellie is the name of amy's os but yeah because we don't ever hear Ellie talking, I would not pass that. There's the scene where Isabella, the surrogate, and Samantha are talking after things fall apart. But the whole context of that conversation is Samantha's relationship to Theodore, so that does not pass. And then Samantha and Tatiana, which is Chris Pratt's girlfriend, she talks to Samantha, but they only talk about how much Chris Pratt's character loves Tatiana's feet. So that

does not pass. That scene's more like we all have our things. Some people fuck computers. Other people have foot fetishes. Sure. So yeah, I would say in one scene, it does pass. So her passes the Bechdel test. Can I ask my Bechdel test question?

Please. So the Bechdel test is valuable. Let me predicate all of this. But I've always thought about, like, would movies with female protagonists pass a reverse Bechdel test? And this is not to be a point like both sides or whatever it's more of as people who i imagine have you you've written movies have you got have i written movies well this is a great opportunity for me to bring up the fact that i do have a master's degree in screenwriting yeah from boston university so i have in fact written a few screenplays

but i don't like to talk about i don't like to bring it up or mention it i wanted to bring up well i asked this do we feel the sort of hero's journey-esque way in which american movies are written it is about one person's journey and everyone else has to be tertiary so that's sort of that's always going to be a challenge as we continue to have movies like this sub question is that hero's journey was built around the journey of men characters throughout history sure and as a result it is like ultimately about the like gaining and losing of power or gaining or reclaiming a power which is built into western movie writing ultimately patriarchal yes do you agree yes we do. Sorry, is this a thing you've thought about? I understand the question, and I agree.

But it sounds like you answered it. I just thought I had, and I didn't know if I, if that ultimately, like, we are doomed in America, not doomed, the thing is that ultimately we just need female creators. Right. I mean, yeah, the patriarchy has influenced every aspect of everything, including storytelling. And storytelling up until fairly recently has been, and still is, mostly done by straight white men. So yeah, you answered your own question just saying like, yeah, we need female creators. We need creators who are people of color. We need queer creators. So basically, straight white cis men

should simply take a break for a while. And on that note, bye. See ya. I'm going to leave like Samantha without curing cancer, which they do not mention. They've done nothing for humanity. Right.

They are peacing out. Yeah, that's the other thing thing i didn't even think about this but like samantha's capacity for learning and knowledge and being able to do things seems to be limitless why then are they not trying harder to like why is her goal like and we we get a sense that yeah she's like creating other like os's with like her knowledge and she's collaborating and doing different things but like the whole context of the story is her romantic relationship with a man where it could be if you do have a character who is an os who can do anything because she's artificially intelligent why isn't the story we're seeing her doing a bunch of cool

shit like why is it oh well there's so much interesting stuff that she does that we just don't see or ever really hear about. And I don't know. I mean, I think that like, maybe correct. I don't know. My takeaway was that like,

the reason she doesn't like do cool stuff on earth is because she's like, well, I could make something better. So I'll just do that and then go there. Or that was what it sounded like at the end, where she's just like, yeah, I made this cool thing, and now we're just like, you know, click. Yeah, they're not confined to matter anymore,

so they can just exist wherever. Earth is clearly damaged goods, so I don't want to hang there. So let's see the sequel. Where's her two? Have you seen Lucy? Yes. If you watch them together, I think it may be satisfying. Oh, because that's also Scarlett Johansohansson yeah and she similarly becomes limitless uh have you seen the movie lucy is not a good movie lucy was bad well with that shall we rate the movie on our nipple scale

zero to five nipples based on its portrayal of women um another tricky one because it doesn't necessarily treat women badly other than Olivia Wilde I'd say right there's a few yeah scenes here and there or quick mentions about something relating to gender that you're just like oh what but overall it's not overly hateful toward women no but it like so many of these other movies that think it's a good idea to be like hey look how interesting it is if a man fell in love with a non-human and isn't that just such an interesting story and if you ask me i don't think so i'd rather not to kink shame people who are in love with their iPhones. But thank you.

Sorry, Jamie. But I don't know. I think it's just another way to like not have women on screen. Because I feel like male storytellers since the dawn of time have figured out ways to not include women in their stories. Creative ways, yeah. To not show what's happened. And I think this is just another example of that. So with that in mind, and as we discussed, the really weird, hysterical overreactions of some of the female characters like we see in Olivia Wilde and in the surrogate character that just make absolutely no sense and is clearly just

like a man depicting how he thinks women react in those situations. Yeah, I'm gonna give it a one and a half. I'll give one of my nipples to the non-body of Samantha. So she doesn't have a body, but she does have one nipple. and I will give my half nipple to Olivia Wilde's character because I think that scene should have been rewritten in such a way where she doesn't come off like a raving lunatic I'm gonna give it two and for for many of the same reasons of just like it's not necessarily with the exception of the Olivia Wilde and sort of the Portia Doubleday scene like those are just weird and like okay this writer does not understand how women react to things kind of vibe but for the most part yeah it it loses nips for what it could

very easily explore given the amount of time it seems to feel comfortable just following Joaquin Phoenix around pouting, but just doesn't. This one is just, there's so much fascinating source material that is just kind of scrapped in favor of the lowest common denominator in a lot of ways. There's interesting stuff that happens. I like Amy's character for the most part. There are parts of Samantha I think are interesting. There are parts of Rooney Mara's character that I think are interesting. But ultimately, yeah, it just kind of, you know, in a hero's journey style, like you were saying, Jesse pushes its female characters aside in the interest of kind of not a very compelling or interesting protagonist, which is more of a critique of the movie, I guess. So two nips for just really not doing nothing with no one.

I'll give one nip to Amy. I'll give one nip to Amy's bot. All right. Yeah. I want to honor who I was five years ago a little bit because I liked it. And I think it's partly that a person five years ago would be like, it is good that it is honoring femininity in the body of this male character or femininity in terms of like whatever the feminine is. However, as time passes, five years now, that does not seem like a very sophisticated version of it.

I feel like we have much more sophisticated version of sensitive male characters. I literally can't think of any, but I think we, there are, I feel like I, in my head, there are tons and I can't think of any, but I think there are, I feel like in my head there are tons and I can't think of any. John Wick. Just kidding. John Wick 2. And then ultimately, things age poorly I imagine more quickly, especially when they try to deal with things that are

somewhat about the relationships of gender dynamics. I think 2 was always what I thought. I thought 2 nipples was what made the most sense. Partly because I think it is a matter of like it's very easy for a tour type directors to make movies that don't give not only write good parts but like give female actresses opportunities to be interesting and he did at least to understand that makes his movie better and you know he could have had his friend they could have just Amy Adams could have been played by a dude who was just like him or whatever

and that ultimately is a step forward in the ultimately patriarchal thing that is our tour theory of filmmaking so I think two seems fair in 2018 we'll see in like whatever the future is based on your answer so there's one more nipple we can give

to Samantha and one to amy adams friend well jesse thank you so much for being here thank you so much for having me here it was nice where can people follow you online do you have anything you'd like to plug um twitter.com slash jesse david fox twitter.com good one podcast good one podcast wherever you find your podcast and vulture.com is where my words live hooray uh well you can follow us at bechtelcast on instagram and twitter and facebook you can subscribe to our patreon which gets you two bonus episodes every single month and it's only five dollars and you can go on our website bechtelcast.com and buy some merch and don't forget to eat some cheese so that you have cheese voice yes cheese voice forever bye okay bye Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was

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