The Bechdel Cast - Matilda with Jess Murwin

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

On this episode, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Jess Murwin discuss Matilda while enjoying some chocolate cake.This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow on @_rad_babe_ on Instagram. You should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. Jamie. Caitlin.

Eat this chocolate cake right now. I noticed that you stole my cake from earlier and now you have to eat this whole giant chocolate cake because I'm mean. Honestly, I would gladly eat the chocolate cake. And in fact, I wish you'd thought through this punishment more because it seems like I win. Yeah. Well, now I'm rethinking it and I feel like I should just invite you over to eat some cake with me and like have a nice time together. Yeah, should we just like hang out? Yeah, let's do that.

See, this is how the conflict should have resolved in that scene. That's good screenwriting. Absolutely, yeah. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamieie loftus my name is caitlin durante and this is our show in which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the bechdel test as a jumping off point it just is there to initiate a larger conversation we have yeah but jamie tell me yeah what is it what is the bechdel test i can you keep eating your cake i'll let you know

what it is okay nom nom nom the bechdel disgusting uh the bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test there's many versions of it here's the one that we use we require that there be two characters of a marginalized gender with names who speak to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue and the the exchange should be meaningful in some way ideally yeah so so no hey can i take your order yes i will have the cake unless it's important plot cake in which case so you know it's complicated right every plot cake it counts if it's just cake it doesn't count every exchange is worth a close examination which is why we talk about

the movies for longer than the movie's runtime. Almost every time. Yeah, true. Should we bring on our returning guest? Yes, we have a much requested episode today. We've been getting requests for this movie for years and we were simply waiting for the right time, the right place, the right guest. And here they are. And the time is now. Our guests, they are a non-binary mixed race Mi'kmaq artist, curator, and educator. Their work focuses on reclaiming narrative space and fusing genre with social justice and holding space collaboration. And you know them from our episode on Rhymes for Young Ghouls. It's Jess Merwin. Hello. Welcome back. Let's get sticky.

This movie is very sticky. So many textures. So many gooey, gooey textures. I forgot that John Lovitz has like a cameo as the let's get sticky guy from the TV show they watch also like there's a magazine at one point that Zinni is holding with like like let's get sticky and John Lovitz on the cover so I'm like is this game show in world like a big thing like a big deal oh and like I bet interesting you know choice. I kind of want to watch. I know that there's a lot of telegraphing of like television is the root of all evil in this movie, which, you know, agree to disagree.

But as I was as that show was playing, I was like, honestly, I would watch that show. That's I watched The Masked Singer. Like I would watch that show that's i watched the masked singer like i would watch that show for sure um have you heard about this new reality television competition program that's called the activist oh my god yes that is a show i will not watch and how it's a fucking horrendous disaster piece of shit yeah but i kind of want to watch it for similar reasons of being like oh this is a bad idea but like i like i can't not watch i cannot watch i feel like reality tv always has its uh finger on the pulse of late stage capitalism uh because that is like the most late stage capitalism i was like oh wow okay so yeah we're

just doing this it that yeah that's that's gonna be a bleak one who is like i i forget who was like on the i feel like usher is a judge usher what yeah i wonder if he's going to be like, okay, here's, I can only contribute ush bucks to, uh, to this. Interesting. Oh my goodness. Yeah. You know, famous, famous. Philanthropist. Dancing and singing sensation.

Philanthropist. Usher. Yeah. I, I don't know. I don't know. Like I, you know, I, I saw a post, I think it was a friend of the show, Janice Meeting, who was like posting about it. And I was just like, this, this is such, this is like a nightmare that I would have. You know, like, right.

So, you know, it's like, I feel the same way about Let's Get Sticky. Let's Get Sticky. Yeah. yeah well uh should we get sticky by diving into jess what is your relationship with this movie um oh boy so you know uh matilda was like a very treasured film like when i was growing up it was one of the ones that we had on vhs definitely And that and like the Lindsay Lohan parent trap were on like constant rotation in my head, like house with like my little sister. And you know,

it was really funny cause I hadn't seen it in a really long time. And then we were talking about like coming back on the show and I was like trying to like think of movies. And I saw that like Matilda was now on Canadian Netflix. I was like, Oh my God, we should do Matilda. And it was literally the first time that I'd watched it probably in like 20 years and all of a sudden had this like epiphany moment was like oh my god I think this movie's why I'm gay like like oh this is my root um because and we'll get i'm sure we'll talk more about that but like

rediscovering this film as an adult in the last you know month or so has been uh a real trip it's got me really re-evaluating a lot of things about myself oh my gosh in a positive way like i'm like i was gonna say i hope in a good way yeah yeah you I'm like, oh, maybe this is where I learn things. Because, like, again, you know, there is a lot of, like, messaging in this film about how television is bad. But I also feel like, at least for our generation, like, I was really raised by TV. Like, you know, so I'm like, oh, maybe I was also a bookish kid who didn't really have friends. I was also a kid who had, you know, abusive parents who didn't understand me. I was like, Oh, maybe, maybe this is Matilda is the reason. Matilda is

like why I became an educator or like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. So I so it's very near and dear to my heart in in a lot of ways. But yeah, that's that's sort of my history with it was like, loved as a kid, didn't see it for a real long time watched it again and was like now i'm reformulating my personality around this movie and so much is coming into focus indeed indeed uh jamie what's your relationship with matilda i can't believe i'm saying this but i have never seen this movie before which is so bizarre to me because it's like i'm in the right age range to have seen it like i think everyone i know has seen it i think that it had to do with my mom didn't like rolled i don't know i feel like there's over the years on this show i've just discovered all of these bizarre rules that my

mom imposed on our media diets just based on her personal preferences where she's like i don't like real doll adaptations they're gross and therefore i think it was just she was like these movies are too sticky and you can't watch them i mean let's get sticky well i wasn't allowed to watch um charlie and the chocolate factory either and so and i don't even think it was allowed it's just like it wasn't allowed to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory either. And I don't even think it was allowed. It's just like it wasn't around. It wasn't available because my mom thought it was gross. So I'd never seen this movie before.

And oh, my gosh, I wish I had seen it because it would have made me so happy. I really, really loved it. I mean, there's plenty to talk about, but there's also so much joy in this movie and like you could just tell in the production of the movie as well it was just such a great i watched the movie three times to prepare which was not necessary but i just was enjoying it so much and then i was like having a tough couple weeks and I kept coming back to it because it made me feel good about the world. And so, yeah. And also, I feel like we should, I mean, we at the Bechdel cast have an extreme Mara Wilson bias because Mara Wilson is a friend of the cast.

So also, you know, we're always tipping the scales in Mara's favor. That's true. Check out the episode we recorded on Elf a couple years ago featuring Mara. So yeah, this was my first time seeing it and seeing it and seeing it and it makes me so happy to watch. So I'm so glad we get to talk about it. What about you, Caitlin? Yay. My relationship is fairly limited, actually. I had seen it as a kid. I of times for whatever VHS that teaser was on. I don't remember which movie it was. So I've seen the trailer a million times. But I'd only seen this movie probably once or twice as a kid.

And it was so long ago that I might as well not have really seen it. But then I did kind of take it upon myself to watch it as an adult within the past year, because I figured we'd cover it at some point soon. And I was like, oh, I should like reacquaint myself with this movie. And I did. And I was, yeah, was yeah like pleasantly surprised by how sweet and compelling it is and how there's a lot to talk about as per always with every movie absolutely and it's like it's one of those things that like Jamie you mentioned too like there's a lot to talk about just in the film itself but like also behind the scenes as well like and a lot of like context sort of stuff that like you know on the surface it's like oh this is like a beloved children's film but there's actually there's so much there and there was so much going on to even like bring it into existence

like have it exist as a film yeah it's pretty cool i was really surprised you guys hadn't done it yet right um so i'm super happy that like we get a chance to chat about it. Because it's one of the few, or I don't have, like, the best. I'd have to, like, do a thorough study on this. But I feel like so many movies, like, kids' movies, like, family-oriented movies from this era and, like, a little earlier, like, the 80s and 90s were focused on little boys and it feels like this is one of the few from that era that features a little girl so and they still I mean they still skew very heavily on like when they do focus on little girls it's usually little white girls but I'm like the the movies that

come to mind from this era i feel let me know if i'm missing anything but it's like matilda harriet the spy yeah uh a little princess yeah uh lindsay low and parent trap is that it yeah is there yeah definitely i mean if you include all the amazing mary-kate and ashley movies oh that's true they're oeuvre uh then there's 500 movies. Oh, that's true. They're oeuvre. Then there's 500 movies about girlhood. That's very true. But it's really interesting in terms of that, because I still feel like

to a certain degree, that's still the case. I think it's changing, but I think about the young people in my life, nieces and nephews, and friends of kids and things like that and like if I'm looking to like give them any kind of media whether it's a book or a movie or something like that like a lot of times it's really like I don't know I feel really hard pressed

to find like stories that are about like little girls that aren't like princesses yeah or aren't white or aren't sort of you you know, like upper middle class. And so, you know, there's like certain ways that that like, you know, and we'll get into it. Like there's certain ways that like I think there's, you know, playing to criticize with Matilda. But like I also think that there's like certain ways that it sticks out as like being so unique just because.

Sticks out? Sticky? Sticky! Sorry. It's stickies in your memory um whoever like listens to this episode and tallies up how many times we say stick or sticky or make reference to like it's get sticky like should win some kind of prize a big bottle of goo yeah we'll mail you a big bottle of goo yeah um you're welcome yeah um but like yeah like i think we would tell this sort of like still sticks out like in the landscape of like children's media

because of that like she's not a princess and like there's like some good values that are still sort of like in the film that like make it really worthwhile to still show to young people totally yeah yeah i think it for the most part it holds up in way more ways than i was expecting it to i mean just even the core message that there's a little girl who is smart and the fact that she's smart makes her more compassionate instead of less i feel like you see the opposite message telegraphed a lot and yeah they're i just love her i know and and all the messages sort of about like chosen family um you know all the messages too around like having like a strong sense of like justice um i think are like really really

interesting yeah because like even before matilda really gets like a hold of her powers you know she's like telling her dad you know like you're a crook you're doing the wrong thing the cops are like watching the house like paul rubens is outside peewee is outside dad and he's being a camera bro like he's like but like yeah so so like you know there's like there's things like that that i think are really cool you know to like teach kids it's like yeah if you feel like something is wrong it's probably wrong you know like right and you have a right to sort of say that. And with Miss Honey's storyline is like so much of her story progressing is dependent on her believing Matilda and taking her seriously, right? Like where for a little while she doesn't believe Matilda, she's sort of like, okay, pats her on the head and it's like, you know, sends her on her way yes much like the song sends her on her way uh and but

then when she believes matilda and does realize you know that she's right she does have these powers and that ends up setting miss honey free as well yeah i like the damn movie it's nice yeah yeah let's take a quick break and then come right back to recap it hey everybody this is matt rogers and bowen yang we've got some exciting news for you you know we're always bringing you the best guests right well this week we're taking it to the next level the one the only katherine han is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself.

Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind.

Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music and I just was like, who is this person?

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Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so here is the story of matilda we open on a newborn baby as well as voiceover from danny devito but this is danny devito the narrator not danny devito the character they're two different things but danny devito is talking about uh how everyone is born but some people are born special then we meet danny devito the character aka harry wormwood not confusing at all not confusing at all but iconic like opening shot like the introduction to harry wormwood is like just make grimacing at a bunch of babies you know like you do totally normal for an adult man just to like be making that face at a bunch of newborns yep

yeah and then he sees his daughter and he's like i guess I also love, like, the whole sort of, like, there are two genders. Pink babies and blue babies. I mean, unfortunately, something that so many people still subscribe to. There's a store for babies down the street from me that's literally called the Pink and the Blue. No! How embarrassing for them. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so we meet Harry Wormwood and his wife, Zinnia, played by Rhea Perlman. They take home their newborn daughter, Matilda, who they barely pay attention to because they're selfish and they're not nice people and also rhea perlman's outfits are really good oh the oh though i mean actually all like the everyone's outfit in this movie i feel like the like the wormwoods even though you know they're mean mean mean their outfits are the ones that i want the most i don't want the good guys outfits no they're like miss honey for all of her virtues, essentially just wears beige the whole movie.

Yeah. I'm just like, oh, the virtuous must wear beige. No, let the virtuous wear Rhea Perlman's outfit. Yes. Like her bingo jacket, her jacket that's got bingos and rhinestones on the back. I'm like, I want that jacket. Where is that jacket?

I hope that someone's taking good care of that jacket i hope rhea pearlman still wears it i hope she does too apparently she went to like uh when her and daniel you know we're starting to work on the movie apparently she went to las vegas to like buy all these clothes and it was like part of her like personal wardrobe that she wore on set wow so i was so i really do hope that like she does have that jacket and breaks it out for special occasions because it is oh so perfect i forgot that she and danny devito got divorced and then i remembered and then it made me frown but i didn't even know they were married until oh no i was like reading about this movie they're iconically

married i guess i had no idea about Danny DeVito's personal life, nor did I really know who Rhea Perlman was. You're wrong. My bad. I stand for one as like as as a comedy icon, as a fashion icon. But yeah, apparently they're still very good friends. Apparently they like good have stayed very close so that like makes me happy that kind of makes up for the fact that they separated yeah

i just want them to be happy they seem like such i've not heard i i hope that i haven't missed something but i've never heard a bad word about either of them they both seem so lovely no and that's something maybe like i don't know what we should let caitlin maybe finish the recap but that's something we should definitely talk about because i feel like danny devito uh shall we say almost like unproblematic king like i feel like i don't know unproblematic king short king hopefully the list goes on hopefully this uh episode ages well in that regard because as of this recording unproblematic king who seems to be beloved by all but we've been fooled before yes that's true that's true but he just like got banned from twitter like two weeks ago for supporting like nabisco workers being on strike so like i love him oh my god i didn't know

that i know right like danny and he was like openly calling like openly being like yeah america's pretty racist like before it was like okay to be woke he was like yeah this is a pretty racist country wow so you know woke king add it to the list we'll see if he's a sticky king oh once we get to the end of this recap i'm gonna hazard a guess and say he is a sticky king. Sticky king. Okay, so Matilda gets a bit older. She develops a lot of exceptional skills. She's very independent. She can cook for herself at a very young age. She's very good at reading by age four.

And then she starts going to the library every day and reads tons and tons of books. Then she gets a little older, six and a half, and becomes Mara Wilson. She wants to go to school, but her parents refuse to send her to school, which I'm pretty sure is illegal. She then starts to retaliate against her dad. She pulls a lot of hair-based pranks basically switches some bottles around so that he accidentally bleaches his hair then she super glues his hat to his head i didn't realize that they were all hair-based pranks yeah good hair pranks yeah good hair pranks but like i don't think she really like pranks her mom like i don't think she really

pranks in it it's mostly like directed at her dad which that is maybe something worth discussing later on but as far as like the child abuse that matilda is the survivor of it does mostly seem to be at the hand of her dad where even though her mom is extremely neglectful and you know not a great parent and not nice or affectionate toward matilda and like certainly turning her head the other way i mean because she's aware that abuse is happening yes yeah for sure she's enabling that situation to go on you know but there were a few there were several scenes where like she's like okay i'm leaving the house six-year-old matilda to go play bingo if you want some chicken nuggets, they're in the microwave.

Like she seems a bit more pleasant, at least. So yeah, I guess Matilda spares her from hair-based pranks. Hair-based pranks. Then one night, Harry rips up Matilda's library book and forces her to watch TV. And then the TV explodes. And it seems like maybe it was just a coincidence or maybe she made the TV explode with her mind. We don't know. Makes you think. Is it a Carrie situation? Wow. is it a carrie situation wow this is i didn't even think of that but this is kind of like

the family friendly comedy version of carrie yeah yeah and but like fire starter there's a lot of like abused kids develop telekinetic power stories out there you know like it's a popular trope but like if only carrie had a stronger inherent sense of justice uh things maybe things would have gone a little different or at least there was like more sort of like hamming it up you know there's just more hamming it up and carrie pratt falls you know we've always said about carrie here at the back to look as not sticky enough i was was just going to say, the main problem with Carrie,

not enough stickiness. I don't know. It gets pretty sticky. It sounds like it's not a sticky movie, but just not quite where we need it to be. I mean, she gets blood dumped on her at prom. That's pretty sticky. That's pretty sticky. Pretty sticky. Could be

stickier, though. Could be stickier. Could be stickier. It's true. Could be stickier. That's pretty sticky. That's pretty sticky. It's pretty sticky. Could be stickier, though. Could be stickier. Could be stickier. It's true. Could be stickier. That's my impression of a Hollywood executive justifying their presence. I don't know. Do we think it's sticky enough? Maybe we should reshoot it.

That's me working at Marvel. Sticky enough? I don't know. Anyways, that will be $1 million, please. Yeah, I think this ending is really touching, but it would be better if she could get gacked. You know? Slime.

What if everyone got just slimed at the end of Avengers Endgame? I'm just spitballing here. That would be $1 million. Oh, goodness. I might actually go see those movies then. Right? I feel like I would be way more engaged in the lore if they just slimed characters at moments that i was supposed to be paying attention

and then i'm like oh i'm back you know yeah i'm in i mean spider-man is is pretty sticky so spider-man also sticky it works for me that's why maybe that's why we're drawn to the spider-man movies over the other ones or is it because of alfred melina is doc something to consider alfred melina could have been harry wormwood he yeah could have been harry wormwood danny devito does a fantastic job but i could also picture alfred melina in that role at the very least alfred should be doing the voiceover so it's a separate voice then it's less confusing yeah right no absolutely it's true okay so the next day agatha trunchbull played by pam ferris she's the principal of crunchham hall elementary school she buys a car from harry wormwood and she also tells him about all the disciplinary action she takes against

children at her school. So based on this, Harry decides to send Matilda to this school. That looks like a prison for children. Yes, exactly. So Matilda goes to her first day of school, where she meets a new friend, Lavender, and where she watches Principal Trunchbull terrorize the small children, including flinging a tiny, adorable little girl around by her pigtails and then tossing her over a fence. The practical effects in this movie are very impressive and make me miss practical effects. Although it sounds like the actor who played Miss Trunchbull got extremely injured. She got injured.

By the climactic scene. Yes. And I think that little girl, not as badly injured as you might think. She got injured? She cut her finger on something. That's not good. But that was like, wait. She got flung over her my god it uh it apparently it required stitches so it wasn't like it wasn't a huge deal

but it wasn't like a no big deal kind of thing okay so maybe maybe i'll think on that apparently too it was like the little girl who actually did all ended up doing all the stunts because they had somebody there to do stunts for her and one thing i was reading was talking about how she loved like she was nine and like being in that harness and getting like flung around was so much fun uh that she was like no i'll do i'll do my own stunts wow that's so cool a regular tom cruise absolutely okay so then matilda meets her teacher miss honey played by m beth davids who is basically wearing a burlap sack because she's one of the good guys and she is very sweet and nice a huge juxtaposition against Trunchbull. Miss Honey sees how brilliant Matilda is. For example, Matilda can multiply big numbers in her head. And she's like, wow, this student is brilliant. She goes to Principal Trunchbull and to Matilda's

family to advocate for her education. But they don't want to hear about it. Then we get the cake scene where Trench Bull makes a student named Bruce Bogtrotter eat an entire chocolate cake while the whole school watches. And we'll talk about that. My nightmare. My nightmare. I know. I was like, God, yeah, we'll just have that. My nightmare. My nightmare. I know. I was like, God, yeah, well, we'll just have to unpack that later.

Team Brucie. I know. Yeah. Then Trenchbull comes into Matilda's class, terrorizes the students as usual. And then Matilda seems to use telekinesis to fling a newt onto her, then tries to demonstrate these telekinetic powers to Miss Honey, but they don't work when she's put on the spot. Then Miss Honey invites Matilda over to her house and tells this story about how her parents died when she was young and she was raised by her aunt, who is, big twist, Trunchbull.

I didn't see that coming. I truly didn't. Really? That's so interesting. I think because I had seen this movie so much as a kid, I'm like, uh-oh, the big reveal. But that's very interesting that you didn't see it coming, Jamie. We'll have to talk more about sort of untrunchbull. Well, not much is foreshadowed. didn't see it coming jamie we'll have to like talk more about sort of untrenchable well not

much is foreshadowed there is a like some voiceover where danny devito is like miss honey harbors this dark secret but she doesn't let it affect her love of teaching or something like that i just thought that she had been a student of miss trench balls like i thought that it was clear that they like knew each other but I didn't I didn't pick up on the family connection so that was a very effective twist for me that makes a lot of sense because there is that one moment where I think Miss Honey goes to like Trenchpels office when she's like I think Matilda might be happier in an older class and like they're talking at that point and like Trench Bull's being like creepily familiar.

Calling her like, yeah, like Jen. Yeah. Right. So that was like that was always what I thought kind of gave it away. But again, like I can't put myself in the position of like just seeing it for the first time. So that's really interesting. Like, yeah, cool. So, yeah, so we get that reveal.

And then we also learn that like Trench Bull now lives in Miss Honey's childhood home and Miss Honey lives in this little cottage now. And then they go to Trunchbull's house when she's not there to take back Miss Honey's childhood treasures, particularly a doll of hers, Lissy doll, which I learned is the first name of Roald's widow lissy is her name yeah we also have to talk about roll doll because he's got there's yeah there's a ton of shit going on there anti-semitic yeah yeah his his friend even the way his friends described him made me think he was like a man baby edgelord like you read things that people like literally yeah they're like oh yeah roldal was like my best friend for 40 years but he was terrible you know you're like what like listening to or like reading accounts of people who knew him you're just like wow i'm so glad that he wasn't alive when the internet existed like it he would have been a nightmare yeah yep imagine the tweets he would have sent good lord oh my god the opposite of danny

devito's twitter presence would be roald dahl's twitter presence yeah no 100 yeah uh so then trench bull comes back home when miss honey and matilda are still there and then there's a big there's this big game of like cat and mouse where she is chasing them around and then Matilda and Miss Honey finally escape. Matilda starts to then practice her telekinesis powers and she gets really good at them. So one night she goes back to Trenchbull's house and uses her powers to rescue Miss Honey's doll and to terrorize Trenchbull. But then Trenchbull figures out that it was Matilda who did this because she finds her hair ribbon that she left behind. So then the next day at school, Trenchbull tries to punish Matilda, but she again uses her powers to make Trenchbull think

that Miss Honey's dead dad's ghost is haunting her. Dead dad who Trenchbowl might have killed. Murdered, yes. Might have murdered, yeah. Almost certainly murdered. Probably did murder. Or it was an owl, maybe. Oh, okay, the staircase. We're back, we're back.

Wow. Oh my gosh gosh Caitlin and I used to talk about the staircase on Matreon episodes for I forget why

we originally started doing it but the owl theory not the first time the owl theory has been explored on this show absolutely

absolutely you know Miss Trunchbull deserves a fair trial we shouldn't use her queerness against her. Yeah, exactly. Could have been an owl. Could have been an owl.

Could have been an owl. Could have been. Okay, so Matilda is terrorizing her. And then Matilda and the other students run Trunchbull out of the school, out of the town. She's never seen or heard from again. And so Miss Honey moves back into her childhood home. Matilda visits her often. And then Miss Honey adopts Matilda when her parents announce that they're moving to Guam. And Matilda's like, well, I don't want to go. I want to stay here with Miss

Honey here. I already have the adoption papers. All you have to do is sign them. So her parents are like, sounds good to me. And then they they leave and then matilda and miss honey live happily ever after together as a loving family and that is the end of the movie let's take another quick break and then we'll come back to discuss hey everybody this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level.

The one, the only, Catherine Han is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you.

Oh, my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke.

What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music

and I just was like, who is this person? I gotta hawk this slalom, Luge.

I'm not hawk this slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said

it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes.

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Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 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. And we're back. Woo. Where shall we start? There are so many places. Well, I kind of wanted to just, I like to look at the film as like what's what are its intentions what is it doing since so many children's movies have some sort of like moral moral at the end of the story kind of

thing for me i think as far as like execution there's things to be discussed but as far as intention it seems to me that the message of this movie is like the celebration of a little girl reading and learning and getting an education and how important that is and how i think that's generally a really positive thing to have in a children's movie it's a really great thing for little girls to see watching this movie for little kids of all genders to see i bet a lot of children saw themselves in matilda and like appreciated her thirst for learning so that is obviously something that's uh largely at play in this movie there's some i guess baggage that comes with that where there's like weird like kind of classism and elitism stuff tied to this which we can get into but as far as like what the movie

i think is trying to do i appreciated the the efforts and i i almost wish that I had grown up more with this movie and did watch it more as a kid because I think I would have benefited from the message of like it's really important for little girls to learn and have a thirst for knowledge and a curiosity about the world I totally agree I mean I feel like Matilda and Harriet the Spy kind of go together in my head of like movies that have this inherent message that encouraged young kids in the 90s, particularly girls to trust their instincts, to be curious, and that there is a purpose and meaning to like seeking knowledge and not taking, you know, adults at their word. And just a lot, I totally agree that this movie seems to come from a very good place. And in the process, I mean, like we're going to inevitably talk about

uses tropes and stereotyping to get to the good place it's trying to get to. I feel like we have, it's kind of a rare movie in that regard where I don't feel completely like as confident in most children's media that it has such a strong core message, which makes it like interesting and frustrating that it uses the tropes that it does to accomplish a good message, because it ends up, you know, kind of weighing it down in this interesting way. But I still like I can't in good faith, like write this movie off entirely. And

don't think I ever could, because it's so it is coming from this, this very beautiful, encouraging place that I think, you know, Jess, you were alluding to this earlier, like that there's still not a lot of movies that have core messages like this that are that are this popular and this memorable, although apparently not in that. I didn't realize this movie like flopped at the box office. I always assumed it was a huge hit, but it I guess it like it was in its VHS era that it like became huge because I viewed this as like a ridiculously successful movie, which I guess it wasn't. Yeah, that's what was really surprising. You know, I think that it was much more successful on a critical level, perhaps than like at a box office level.

But but just, you know, coming into it to what you're both are saying, like like and I think Harriet the Spy is also a really good example of this it's also it's not just like you know like trust your instincts and things like that but it's also like you are the author like you have control in your world you have autonomy like I think they're I mean I don't think that

even for stories that you know are geared towards, older women or older, like, people of, like, that aren't cis male. Like, I don't think there are a lot of stories that sort of give that same sort of message of, like, autonomy. Like, both in Harriet the Spy and in Matilda, you know, it's sort of like these young girls who are in this position that, you know, things are going on that affect them that they don't have control over. But we still see them taking steps and taking measures and like being active. And that's a little bit the thing of like when Harry yells at Matilda and sort of like when a person is bad, you know, instead of saying like when a parent or when an adult is bad and like in giving matilda that key of sort of saying when a person is bad he allows her to have that autonomy of sort of saying like oh okay well i can then make choices i don't have to be just passive and have

things happen to me in this story you know like so often you know you guys talk about it on the show all the time you know we sort of get these protagonists that like, things happen to them, and then another thing happens to them, and then another thing happens to them, but they're not really choosing at any point in time. And yet, here we have this story of this young girl, you know, we see her from literally like, being born up into the age of like, six and a half, you know and being very very active yeah and i think so much of that too you know in terms of like how this adaptation was done has to really do with the fact that there were like a lot of women a lot of parents a lot of like people involved that like were invested in young women that sounds like a weird way of putting it but like both Danny DeVito and Real Pearlman as well as uh Robin Spicord and Nicholas Kazan who were the the screen the couple

who wrote the screenplay Zoe Kazan's parents I didn't realize yeah both both of those like uh both of those couples came to the book through their daughters and I think that that like shows in the way that the film it did get adapted and the think that that like shows in the way that the film did get adapted and the choices that were made you know the things that were changed there were a lot of male characters that are in the book that don't appear in the movie like the majority of the cast is female you know it is really like this story that is like very much focused on empowering Matilda you know within her. And I think that that is because, you know, like I said, you know, they're coming to this story.

The book came out, I think at the end of the eighties, 88, 89, you know, so they're coming to as parents themselves being like, oh, you know, my daughters can see themselves in this book. You know, how do we recreate that? And Robin Seacourt is, as you probably know too, was like super involved in Little Women just before this as an adaptation. So it's, like, it's also, you know,

a lot of, like, the feminist stuff that happened in, like, the 1994 Little Women, you know, like, that's also a little bit of her, like, influence in there, you know, like. So I think that that's, like, kind of why the story ends up getting crafted that way. Mara Wilson's mom also was, like, a really big driving force in getting this movie made. Because when you're a kid actor, of course, you know, it's like you have your agent and then your parents, hopefully, are making decisions that are in your best interest. and Mara was starting to become like had been in a couple of things and was starting to like

become famous or more famous uh as a child performer and they were being sent tons and tons of scripts all the time you know for these like cute little girl parts um but Susie Wilson her mom uh had read Matilda with all of her kids, was a huge proponent of like reading the book, even like at like, uh, Mara's school, like in the library to kids and stuff like that. Um, so when this script came up, you know, it was like Mara Wilson, I think described as sort of like her mom, like left on it was like this one you know and was like very present on set and the film was dedicated to her because unfortunately she passed away shortly

after well it was in post-production wrapped yeah yeah so like she had just like a such a huge effect um and yet she's not necessarily one of the like credited names that we think of in in terms of like this film yeah but yeah you know and I think that like because like you know as a working artist like I think a lot about the intention that goes into things when we're making things right like filmmaking is is such a team sport and I think so often you know we're sort of like especially since sort of like this era of like auteur directors and like it's all about sort of like the person sort of like this era of like auteur directors and like it's all about sort of like the person who's like got that director credit and who's at the head of it but

so often I think that there's like all these other influences that are coming into that story that are important to acknowledge because we don't make things in a vacuum right right so it's it's just as much about the who's introducing the idea to who are you talking about the idea with you know who are you who's helping you with like the design of the film who's you know doing all these sort of things yeah but yeah i think i think that's sort of like laid a pretty good groundwork for the for how the film turns out absolutely and by all the accounts i read about the production it seemed like everyone had a ball danny devito was an angel good and responsible director right yeah and the kids had fun and the adult actors had fun and yeah that it was like a very pleasant uh experience

for everyone involved as far as i could tell yeah yeah even like uh jamie you mentioned pam ferris who uh played agatha trenchpole uh even though she had gotten injured and doing a couple of the stunts and things like that like she i was watching an interview where she was talking about it and she's like you know i was like trying to stay away from the kids and i was trying to like not have fun because it was like i was supposed to be there as like the trench bull and the super intimidating presence and she was like after two or three days like she's like the kids would come up to me and put their like little hands in mine and i couldn't help it like you know just be like totally won over and totally sweet and like Pam Ferris is such a a far cry away from like the trench bowl it's really it's really quite funny

having seen her in other work and being like oh my god I can't believe that's the same person I know I forgot that she was Aunt Marge as well in the Harryter series oh yeah because i feel like she we only encounter her as someone who like she's very typecast as villainous and then yeah i we might have watched the same the same interview because i was just like she's so sweet like what a yeah oh love her she was in call the midwife too uh she plays us uh none in that um and call the midwife is you know whatever like it's about sisters religious sisters who are midwives in like london around the second world war i think and like you know spoiler alert i guess for call the midwife fans but like when her character dies on call the midwife like there's people who've written entire blogs about like how crushed they were about that like you know she was like she is

this like british character actor who's just like so beloved in so many ways but i feel like here in north america we're like trench bull right where do you think she knows alfred melina another british character actor i want to say i want to say yes yes i wonder if they have any like overlap maybe they met at the theater who knows could be very possible because pam ferris has done a lot of theater it's true i love the idea of pam ferris like trying to go method on set and then like that lasting for a couple days and then she was just like so won over by all the sweet kids and she was like well never mind going method is actually an incredible waste of time usually yeah yeah exactly like she's not leaving dead rats for like the crew to find or anything she's just

like yeah like they're these kids are smart they can uh they can act that's why they're here yeah yeah yeah 100 right there was a little okay so one of the first things that jumped out to me which is like partially based on like personal experience it's like the concept of whatever the concept of genius is fake yeah and that i always think is such an interesting i almost wish that it had been phrased a little different because I think that it's phrased that way in service of saying Matilda is special but what makes her special isn't the fact that she's a genius what makes her special is that she is compassionate and uses uses her natural abilities to help other people and to like pursue justice I feel like that that i don't know that i feel like i just have uh mensa ptsd and so i was just like no not the word genius with children

it's that's a dark road to go down absolutely and also that joke that harry wormwood makes about moby dick i was like that was the there were a few moments where you're like oh my gosh that is such a 90s children's movie moment where he like kind of implied like he thinks that Moby Dick is about sex or something like yeah like Moby what yeah iconic bizarre children's joke from the 90s no absolutely uh well I mean we can talk a bit i mean i think it it's interesting to sort of look at uh you know bringing up the idea of genius bringing up sort of like the idea of exceptionalism and how like that comes into like the class conversation that we could have in matilda um yeah because i also as much as i love and that's not even like too strong a word as much as I love like Harry and Zinnia Wormwood like despite their horribleness they are so like spot on the way that they're

characterized is like you know we get that sort of first line at the very beginning where it's like they live in a nice neighborhood they have very very nice things. They're not very nice people. You know, we're set up to sort of understand them as being villainous based on their values. And when we take a look at what those values are, you know, they love money. They love consumerism. They love TV. They love sticky stuff. They love sticky stuff. They eat microwave dinners in front of

the tv every night like that's their family time you know and i feel like characterizing this like also the fact that like uh harry wormwood is like a used car salesman who's like buying and selling like stolen cars um you know i feel like if they poor, then they'd be considered white trash, you know? And I think that, like, I'm not entirely sure what we're supposed to take away from that, you know, because, and also that characterization of white trash is, like, garbage. And, you know, I hope that I don't offend anybody by using that term, but, like... Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. But, like, it's sort of like this idea uh that even

though they're you know they've achieved a certain level of like status and wealth they're lacking middle class values which would make them part of like the in-group of their peers like you know no other homes even in that neighborhood but like when they're doing like that shot of like the car pulling in look like their home you know yeah they've got like lawn ornaments and it's like very retro looking you know so even as the villains though they're they're placed as sort of like very outside of their peer group to say like or like when they go to the fancy restaurant too you know and there's all sorts of buffoonery that kind of goes along, you know, and Zinnia as they're going in, it's like, take your hat off. Like we're in a nice place. Take your hat off. You know, there's this desire to

be acceptable, but they perpetually miss the mark. And talking about sort of like what middle class values mean in like this sort of sense, it's like-working self-discipline thriftiness like honesty white able-bodied protestant like uh respectable conformism patriotism yeah exactly patriotism you know they're fleeing to guam but the guam is a u.s territory the fbi can get you there like but like that yeah like i feel like they don't know that and like the reason that this matters i think in the film comes back to sort of this idea of, like, why, you know, why are we calling Matilda a genius? Like, why are we putting that out there? Like, it's because there's, like, certain, like, social markers, certain cues that I think we're setting up from the very beginning about, like, who you should like and why you should like them. And you shouldn't like the warm words because they chafe against middle class values before we even

know that they are terrible people right you know what i mean yeah there's i was a little i feel like there's some dissonance with the way the wormwoods are characterized because on one hand you know that they're villainous because they're selfish and they neglect and abuse their daughter and harry is very unethical in the way that he conducts his business and and i feel like part of his villainy there is that he is not like taking from the rich he's taking from people who have less money than it yeah he's exploiting exactly and so there's all these things that like us watching this movie are like yes clear signals clear markers that he's a villain but then there's this other component that kind of comes into this like classism elitist thing and it's like kind of education based where the movie subscribes to this thing where people

who are highly educated and who have a job that requires a lot of education equals good right um this is most clearly demonstrated with miss honey yeah with her kind of job and position and her just sort of valuing getting an education getting a higher education she even has this little monologue where she's like you know if you were get sick, the doctor you go to would have gone to college. If you get sued for selling a faulty car, the lawyer you hire would have gone to college, aka like, quote unquote, important people with quote unquote, important jobs go to college versus people who don't go to college and who have a job that does not require a college education equals bad according to the movie

such as Matilda's parents like again her dad is like a car salesman who says he didn't go to college her mother plays bingo all day she says she didn't go to college um there's the lunch lady who is presented in such a way and she has such a small part in the movie, but she's presented in such a way that like the movie wants you to think she's grotesque because she's absolutely working class person, working class older woman, like, yeah, right. And this movie has an issue with older women that we'll get to. For sure. Right. The exception here is Miss Trunchbull, who would have to be highly educated to be a school principal.

In theory. I don't understand how she takes over Crunchin Hall. I think that that's specifically vague. But because the way she conducts her like professional life she doesn't seem to care about education she does not even though she's the principal of the school she's more concerned about abusing children yeah and terrorizing children than she is about children having an education so the the movie is subscribed to this thing where it's like if you see the value in education which like kind of in theory or just like inherently like obviously education is good and in learning things is good.

But this idea that like you have to go to college to be worth anything is classist and elitist. Big time. And it would be somewhat not completely at all, but it would be somewhat of a different discussion if the concept of higher education weren't inherently tied to money and tied to class. And there are all these, I mean, well-documented, we can't possibly cover them all here, but issues with access to higher education and who it's available to versus who it isn't. And so, yeah, I kind of like, it's so cooked into the story that I couldn't really think of a way to fully remove it.

But I thought it was like, it's such an important choice in terms of the movie working, where I feel like a lot of the classism and elitism could have been removed for me if that idea was just sort of simplified to like in curiosity about the world around yeah totally but because they take it a step further and say that if you do not pursue higher education or if you're not highly educated you must be an

incurious villain that like yeah like evil right abusive etc absolutely which it would have satisfied me if the Wormwood parents were just incurious people but it isn't it's tied to class and it's tied to I think going back to what you were saying just about how they're kind of characterized as uh visually as like quote unquote white trash it seems like their intellectual in curiosity is tied to class. It's tied to their appearance. And it's saying people like this, you know, people like this aren't worth as much as people like,

you know, Miss Honey. And I think the visual language of the film can't be, you know, overlooked because it is a children's film, you know, so there is like a lot of simplification of the narrative that ends up

being transmitted on a visual level because, you know, it's sometimes it's easier to communicate those ideas of like, you know, this is, you know, good and this is bad. That's also, you know, like in Caitlyn, you can probably speak to this from like a screenwriting level, you know, you have to have tension in script, you have to have like the white hat and the black hat you know like but i think the way that people are stylized in this film you know and even just to talk about fatness a little bit which which i'm sure we'll get to but yeah it's relying on really really tired tropes you know like and we made the joke sort of about like you know miss honey who wears beige the whole movie she's wearing essentially like a potato sack um you know in the book there's a lot more context given around that about the fact that like um miss trenchpole is like garnishing her wages and that she's actually quite poor and that's why

she's living in a farmer's shed wow okay you know the cottage that we see in the film is quite lovely like i would love to live in that little cottage full-on like instagram cottage core like yeah you know it's gorgeous um but like uh in in the book she's living in a farmer's shed for a dollar a week or like a pound a week um because of course she works at trenchpole school so trenchpole controls how much money she gets paid and so she's you know so there's like there is like a you know if her parents was very plain in in terms of like the book it was you know it was kind of explained by that you know by her appearance was very plain in in terms of like the book it was you know it was kind of explained by that you know by the fact that she didn't have access to funds

where we don't get that context in the film so miss honey is just presented as like this paradigm of like goodness and it's like she's well educated she comes from an affluent background you know she's soft-spoken she's feminine she's you know and and and you know this isn't not not to dismiss that character because i i think miss honey uh as we talked about a little bit earlier you know plays this really important role you know and her liberation is part of matilda's story as well um and also the way that she relates her own experiences with trauma and abuse to matilda i think is very critical to helping Matilda. But yeah, like we're sort of, you know, that moment where she's sitting in the woman's living room and she's giving them that speech about education.

And they, you know, like I think Zinnia has like curlers in and like Harry's like he's trying to re-dye his hair after it's been bleached and he should have kept they're watching a fight on t you know what it was iconic but yeah you know like there's this like very stark contrast again she's like a thing that's out of place right in the wormwood setting the same way that like matilda is out of place in that setting yeah but it's i think that it's made less stark because of of who miss honey is yeah yeah and there's a line of dialogue from matilda's mom that i feel like could effectively transition us into the conversation about appearance and fatness and femininity and and that kind of stuff where um her mom says a girl does not get anywhere by acting intelligent you chose books she's talking to miss honey you chose books i

chose looks so let's talk about the way people look and like and as zinnia is saying that though we're supposed to be laughing because we can see how zinnia looks you know and like and then there's a couple of moments like that in the film specifically about looks like there's another line trunchbull says at one point you know like i can take a joke as well as the next fat person right where we're supposed to be where we're we're supposed to be laughing at the character and not with them specifically right yeah i mean caitlin you were alluding to this a couple minutes ago but how or maybe maybe it was you just like how appearance is so emphasized in children's media because of the audience and how like it these very deliberate choices really make a big

difference in just forming children's views of the world. And so you can see in really all of Roald Dahl's work and just an aside there, Roald Dahl, not just a deeply unpleasant person, but a deeply anti-Semitic person, very pro-vaccines. So I guess that's good. But certainly a very like... But also like hugely misogynistic as well like uh yeah incredibly racist like if we're gonna dive into roald alford for a moment like yeah i think we should because it's like i mean his views are subtly

accessible here i think absolutely and and like and i think that it's important context to like have this information in terms of even looking at like other of his works that have been adapted you know because he's looked at as being this really beloved children's author you know like uh he's on all these lists of like you know most beloved uk children's authors of all time you know like most beloved this than that and the other thing. And yet, yeah, he's a highly unpleasant person, incredibly anti-Semitic, incredibly misogynistic. He also wrote pornographic books for adults. Whoa, I did not know this. Yeah.

Oh, did you not know? That's like, I feel like I remember I learned that when I was a teenager and I was like, wow. Yeah. Him and Shel Silverstein were like writing making mint like writing like books for kids and but also writing a lot of like pornographic books for adults interesting yeah and there's nothing with writing pornography like right no you know like there's nothing wrong with writing erotica uh it's a good way of expressing your creativity and horniness but um i write it via text message to people yeah all the time you know what text messages are kind of like the new one pages or like single sheets wow sexting what is

a sext but a log line for a porn film it's a pitch it is it's like an elevator pitch. It's like, hey, check these out. Yeah. You know, and like, you know, people used to write love letters. Sexting is just like today's love letter, you know? Yeah. But like, just the fact that like, even people who've read his like erotica are like, yeah, whoa, like, this is very misogynistic i mean that's a good that's a good indicator because there's a lot of you know and his i mean his racism like is present in charlie

and the chocolate factory repeatedly like the characters of the oompa loompas are deeply rooted in his own racism and there's i think other examples in his work were race it's so as we're talking about this it reminds me of the conversation that was taking place around dr seuss's work last year as well where it's like there are all of these men like men who wrote children's books and are deeply influential and they're and i mean i and also not men because we can bring jk rowling into that conversation as well sure where you know on a closer look not only were their politics god-awful and their prejudices god-awful it it is also present in their work in ways that are like hard to kind of grapple with right yeah it doesn't

seem like there's been quite as big a conversation around Roald Dahl I don't know why that is yeah maybe because he's dead I don't know I I mean and it's very interesting to look at because I think that like oftentimes when the you know when we talk to you about like yeah like like Roald Dahl's a really excellent example we haven't really he hasn't really had like his reckoning sort of i guess in terms of like social media but i think it's because a lot of people don't really know i guess about his anti-semitism and and like misogyny and racism or like you know it always comes back to this thing you know and i talk about this a lot because oftentimes people will be like, as like an indigenous person, people will be like, oh, yeah, well, it was okay that we like treated Indians like we did at such and such a time because, you know, that was just the culture. And unfortunately, that's always patently wrong.

You know, like when there is discrimination and prejudice and bigotry, you you know that is happening at any point in time it's not so much that that was the culture as the powers that be within the culture like us as individuals were willing to permit it because it wasn't going to lose us social capital you know we knew we knew when like song of the south came out in the 40s, that it was incredibly racist film, you know? But we weren't, we as in like white and white passing people, weren't willing to get up in arms enough about it until it was like Disney Plus. Like it was like, oh, and you know,

we're going to keep this one in the Disney vault. And then people were like, oh yeah, that was a really racist film. It was like, but we knew that at the time you know we right we know it we know that kind of stuff at the time and we and we still sort of like let it go anyway you know and i think that we have to sort of understand it much more on a human level as opposed to sort of being like oh well that was just okay at the time it's like no we made it okay you know and the same thing was rolled out i feel like there are people you know as much as like what he said is horrendous and i i don't want to repeat some of the anti-semitic marks that he he made you know here i think there were a lot of people who probably agreed with him or at least like didn't disagree strongly you know? Yeah. Right. Or we're just complicit. I mean, yeah. Intolerance has been tolerated

for much of, I mean, people called out D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation in 1915 for being racist. When it was coming out. Yeah. Yeah. But like not enough people took him to task and then he just kept making movies. And yeah. yeah i think that i mean what what you just said that so beautifully jess of inherently tying it to social capital does seem to be the big thing where it's like yeah people are not like people didn't just wake up to the injustices of the world five or six years ago which i feel like is sometimes how it's characterized. Yeah. Obviously, that's not true.

But now, I mean, at least at present, in some cases, still not all cases, there is a risk of losing social capital if you are intolerant publicly. Yeah. Yeah. So people who perhaps in another setting would have been apathetic or ambiguous you know do feel perhaps a little bit more pushed to at least not comment or or or to do so like in a very like in a way that's not going to lose some social capital and like i'm not trying to like point any fingers with that like i said like i think that it's important that we understand it on a human level and that also means like for ourselves um you know even though i grew up knowing that like my grandmother was migma i was also taught like some pretty horrendous shitty stuff about

native people through like the education system and i definitely have like fucked up and racist when racism like is uh applicable like to other groups and other situations that i am not like directly a part of like but like you take responsibility for that and then you try and do the best that you can but this podcast is not about me let's get sticky um let's get sticky let's get sticky the last thing i wanted to say about rolled doll and then let's get the fuck out of rolled doll land because it is so depressing there the the last thing and i think this ties to social capital and capital capital is i didn't this news went right over my head but in december of 2020 roald dahl's family slash estate issued an apology for his anti-semitic comments i think it was very interesting that they only chose to like 30 years after it happened first of all all, waited 30 years, which many I mean, it sounds like there were many

Jewish groups that said, like, okay, cool, but why the 30 years? And what I think that that is inherently tied to is the conversation that was taking a place around Dr. Seuss around that same time. Yeah, there is kind of I mean, and while I want to believe and I have no reason to not believe that Roald Dahl's descendants do not hold the anti-semitic feelings that their grandfather did it doesn't feel it comes off as very disingenuine because it feels like damage control because the Roald Dahl estate received reportedly potentially as much as one billion dollars from netflix yep to license his catalog to adapt over the next you know decade or or whatever it is so it's you know it's it's like okay that is situations like that are so are so frustrating because of course an acknowledgement of the

inherent harm that those comments made towards the jewish community like that absolutely is worth saying but it doesn't feel like it's being done for the right reasons at all it sounds like it's to preserve the estate's capital and i feel like we're seeing a lot of that right now yes and i don't it's it's like i don't know what alternative to suggest. Like, I'm not unhappy that the estate is acknowledging it, but it just doesn't. And also I was like, but what about the misogyny and the racism?

Not that? No, no, we're not gonna talk about that, Jamie. Like one issue at a time. We'll circle back. Until we get threatened for something else and no and and and you're totally right you know you're totally right and and it's sort of like especially like looking at what this film is about and about having a sense of justice and how like standing up for what you believe in and standing up for people you care about on the one hand and then on the other hand being a total an absolute corporate shill like yeah and i mean

you know allegedly allegedly allegedly i guess like i don't have any kind of association with the doll family i'm sure they're all lovely you know we're not trying to to tar them all with the same cancel the dolls no no But yeah, but it's, it's, I think that like, I would encourage people to be very, to be very skeptical of the, when these kinds of moves happen because of what's going on behind it, you know? And like, they're getting like reportedly a billion dollars from Netflix, but like Roald Dahl also already came from a very affluent family. They have had this, like, very successful publishing arm, you know, of his estate as well. Like, it's also, like, a billion dollars going to people who are not poor either, you know?

Like, that's the thing, too, with, like, these literary adaptations. Like, something to keep in mind as well is that, like yeah no it's nice that like the books that we love as children are being adapted and things like that but like if it's just like more money going into line the pockets of people who are already wealthy why not go to an independent bookstore like why not take a chance on like a first-time author you know of color like why right why why why invest so much money in adapting books by a misogynist racist anti-semite and instead invest that money like not and this isn't the point but like that have also been adapted that have already been already been adapted to death are you like do you really think you're gonna make a better matilda than this you probably not like no the so sorry sorry to derail the conversation around

visual representations I just think that yeah that Roald Dahl's background is important to and prejudices are important to understand and leading with that discussion right so let's talk about it sure yeah because his I mean his misogyny although I mean, to be fair, I don't think I read this book. I read a few other Roald Dahl's books as a kid, but I don't think I did read Matilda. So I'm not sure how much of this is canon to the book and adapted from that, or if it's more cinematic, like adaptation choices. But what we see here, similar to the like, higher education people equals good, people who've not gone to college equals bad, we have a, and this is worth unpacking, because I'm going to kind of probably oversimplify this here, just to start with, but there's this idea of like, women and like female presenting characters with more feminine features slash like who more closely adhere to western beauty standards thin women i mean thin like thinness as virtue yeah equals nice and good which again is embodied in the miss honey character predominantly and then

women with more masculine features slash women who don't adhere to western beauty standards equals mean evil bad embodied by principal trench bull um i think there's also a conversation to be had about how that character is possibly another example of a queer coded villain oh 100 100 oh yeah yeah so yeah yeah i mean i know butches that in the right light you're like full trunchbull i would even argue that the name trunchbull is like homophobic like you know what like come on like cut her some slack god yeah yeah yeah no so trench bull trench bull is definitely a queer coded villain i mean whatever with gator but like honestly you see the trench bull and you're like okay you know i know what's going on and and what's so sad about that in so many ways is the fact that like, one, this idea of creating queer villains is not a new idea.

You know, like this is like Disney playbook, you know, this is something that we've been doing in popular media for a really, really long time. Um, and I think that like, uh,

in the unfortunate case of Miss Trenchbowl, and again, like I feel like I'm in this episode, I'm coming across, like I sympathize with the villains a lot in this piece. And I really like, maybe that's like some of my own issues and empathy or whatever. But like, I really feel bad in some ways for the way that like Miss Trenchbowl is represented, because I think that she's othered not only in like the masculinity of her body. So to say things like they intentionally darkened Pam Ferris's like mustache as an example you know

when they put her in this very boxy outfit and they gave her like a false end to her nose to make her nose more prominent and uh they did all these things to make to make her appear more masculine on purpose and like that plus her size sort of like takes her out of this realm of femininity and like her kind of interest too as far as like olympic shot putting and like right which is like extremely fucking cool yeah yeah yeah and if you look at the athletes that perform in those those uh that perform that perform it's not a performance if you look at the athletes that compete in those categories they're built like a brick shithouse because they have to be a performance if you look at the athletes that compete in those categories they're built like a brick shithouse because they have to be like right if you're gonna like

pick up a super heavy weight and like hurl it across you're not gonna be built like a gymnast is going to be you know very petite and like you don't have a ballet ballerina's body no but that's like inherent to the sport it's like so uh exactly right you know and and you know one thing that i don't i don't feel like we talk about enough in terms of like body positivity and things like that is the fact that like different bodies are good at different things you know and and miss frenchwell is like a former athlete like it makes sense that she looks the way that she looks and yet that's used to demonize her in such a poignant sort of way and like part of that is the way that like fatness is represented in this film and to talk a little

bit about that as like because i think trench bowl is like not only the like antithesis of miss honey in terms of like you know good and evil it's like even just like their characteristics you know French bull is large and expansive and loud and and masculine all these sort of different things and she hates children you know but I think specifically because of her fatness like it's worth noting the way that in our culture fatness tends to be portrayed and also tends to like affect gender so what I mean by that uh and you know looking specifically at this film fatness tends to either for men tends to feminize them you know we've seen that in like expressions like oh he's got man boobs or whatever so a fat man is looked at as being more vulnerable more feminine weak-willed you know and we see

that a little bit in the way that, like, it's not, I think, a coincidence that the kid that Trenchbowl picks on is a fat kid. Yeah, that's, like, a whole other conversation. Yeah, right. You know, whereas, like, I think for women, and, like, even though I am non-binary, I was raised, or I was like assigned female at birth. There's a lot of ways in which like being fat and being assigned female at birth or presumed female, or being female, ends up removing you a little bit from femininity, or at least it used to. Like, to give an example, there was this ad campaign that was really very controversial a couple of years ago in the States and in Canada,

that was supposed to be targeting like childhood obesity. And it was like, it's really hard to be a little girl when you aren't. And it was a picture of a girl who was fat. And like, that was like the line that was like over her fat body, like, it's hard to be a little girl when you're not. Like, when you're not little? When you're not little. Oh, my God. That was the implication. Yeah.

And for a long time, that was true. Like, for example, when I was growing up, like, we didn't shop at the mall or anything. Like, you know, we relied on, like, thrift stores and, like, hand-me-downs and stuff because we were like lower middle class and I used to like wear my dad's like some of my dad's old clothes and stuff to school because anything that was like handed down that was sort of girly or anything that we like my mom got that was like sort of like what were girly like styles and size like were sized so small for somebody that was like it would have never fit my body so automatically you know you're getting made fun of at school because like one you're fat but also like you're wearing your dad's clothes to school because like literally there

weren't clothes to fit you and I think that like there are some more like size inclusive brands and things like that and that's why like when we're talking about fat liberation like clothing does play a part in that yeah because you have to wear clothes in society um unfortunately we live in a society yeah exactly and people are going to judge a 12 year old wearing like their middle-aged dad's like business casual clothes uh a lot harsher you know than they are like another 12 year old that's like fitting in with like what people are wearing so uh you know and it used to be the same i mean and i still think it is largely the same unfortunately for folks you know who are my size and larger you know there still is very few choices that we have when it comes to clothing and things like that. And so there is this, like, if you can't find gender affirming clothing, then like already

your gender identity and how you affirm that is like, sort of skewed, you know, in a way. And I think with Trenchbowl as well, like, she's not dainty. She's not like, she doesn't have these traditionally feminine qualities, a lot of which are related to size, you know? When we talk about fatphobia, you know, it's important to recognize, like, the gendered elements of that, and as well as, like, the racial elements of that. A lot of fatphobia is anchored in racism, you know? It's anchored in this idea that like white virginal like you know what is it like anglo-saxon protestant like yeah bodies were supposed to look a certain way and that became the ideal that yeah people in society women specifically were expected to adhere to jamie

you um a recent episode of act cast yeah dove into that as far as like diet culture and beauty standards and body size standards really well. So if anyone hasn't listened to that already, check that out. But yeah, it's grounded in a very colonialist Western. I mean, we talk about the Western beauty standard all the time. And it's very much rooted in colonialism and racism. And it's a zero sum game for everybody, because it's rooted in like, everyone's bodies are being controlled. And so it's like, even if you're, you know, if you do look like Miss Honey, let's say, that is still the result of the demands and pressures of the society that you're living in yeah so it's yeah the the book that i would uh recommend to

everybody listening uh is fearing the black body by sabrina strings which is just such an incredible comprehensive look at how fat people are othered and also uh how specifically uh non-white fat people are extremely othered um and have been yeah and how it's just it's a yet another systemic issue that can be traced right back to colonialism absolutely and and like and i i second jamie's uh recommendation on that book it's such a fantastic book and and, I feel like it's a book that I will continue to go back to and, like, reference. Because, yeah, you know, there's a lot of stuff that we can all learn. What I was going to say in addition to that, too, is, like you said, it's a zero-sum game. Everybody loses.

And fatness and, like, queerness, the way that those two things interact as well in terms of villainy like i said is to just sort of render this body monstrous you know like there are distinct moments in the film where trench bull is like portrayed as being almost like animalistic like i think about like when she's like sniffing like the ribbon that she finds yeah um you You know, it's like, yeah. Or when she's like chasing Matilda and Miss Honey through the house, which is still such like, even now, it's still like such a terrifying scene to me.

Yeah. She's like sniffing the air and she's like, and she's like breathing heavily and like visibly perspiring, you know, and it's like this very animal sort of thing and the way that her the camera treats her body at many points and i feel like we're we're constantly seeing her from like up angles we're seeing like her like fish eye lenses like like yeah unflattering lenses she's shot very very differently than anyone else in the movie even the other villains because it's like you don't really see those applied to to matilda's parents even though i think that they are also not through fatness but they're they're also physically othered um big time yeah especially i think like especially i

think harry i think it's sort of like the taller woman shorter man sort of thing that's like that's at play with like yeah and like sort of stereotypes around like masculinity i think also come into play a lot with uh harry and i think that that's maybe why matilda plays the pranks that she does on her dad is because he is so invested in this like masculine idea of his appearance you know he says to his son at one point like you know i'm not selling a car i'm selling me you know like right and so i think that like that's another sort of line in the film where I feel like we're supposed to be laughing at the character because he's like, you know, he but like i think that it's definitely like something that exists culturally so i think that there's like a lot of different like ways that people's bodies are used in this film and i also think like i think about like the fat characters that

i had growing up as a kid it was like miss trench bowl uh that one chicken from that uh like from chicken run oh no not even from chicken run from uh i was gonna say like uh disney that one chicken from that from Chicken Run? Oh no, not even from Chicken Run from the like Disney Robin Hood where they're like foxes I know exactly who you're talking about Yes, she's like made Marians and she's Scottish and she's like

I think she's called Mrs. Cluck Madam Cluck, Lady Cluck, I don't know Mrs. Chicken, I don't know mrs chicken i don't know anyway she was fat uh also there is uh ursula ursula yeah you know we're not getting like there's not like you know it's not like we get like a broad great spectrum you know um so yeah so when you do see like this like particularly unflattering portrayal of like a fat character you know like that's what I mean.

Like, I think my empathy really, like, kicks in and is like, oh, poor Miss Trenchbowl, you're so awful. Also, I don't know, like, one thing, and this is sort of a side sort of note, but, like, Trenchbowl says at one point that, like, she's like, she hates children. And she's like, I'm glad I would never was one. And that just makes me think that like, maybe Trenchpole had like a really traumatic upbringing and she didn't go to therapy. And like, that's why she behaves the way that she does. Right. You know, and we don't get any insight into how that's something I didn't even that didn't

even click for me as like, we get in extreme insight into how Matilda and Miss Honey were raised. But we get no insight into the people we're being told are the villains we have no insight into why they behave the way they behave with the parents or with miss trunchbull no and and like not to excuse like villainous behavior not to excuse like people who are abusive absolutely not no and not to make excuses for them but i would argue that you know here in 2021 we're pretty well aware of the fact that, like, sometimes people who are abusive or violent, you know, sometimes people who are not great parents are the way that they are because of the fact that, you know, they didn't have great role models and experienced abuse or experienced trauma themselves like hurt people hurt people because nothing happens in a vacuum and it would have

been interesting to explore yeah why these villainous characters are the way they are but the movie doesn't have any interest in exploring that. And especially when it queer codes them. Like that's why that's what it really bothers me is sort of like the fact that like, you know, here we have a queer coded villain who is like violent and abusive and we have no context for why. So then it's just like, oh, queer women specifically are just violent and abusive and that end of story which is like

not not nothing you know like it's yeah it's not a helpful narrative to perpetuate no it did make me laugh when miss trench bull comes into the class i think the second time she like oversees miss honey's class and the little girl who she had formerly thrown around by her pigtails was like yeah we learned how to spell difficulty via a song that miss honey taught us mrs d mrs i mrs ffi mrs c mrs u mrs lty and then trench bull is like why are all these women married there i think that but but like why are why are all these women married? But like, why are all these women married? Legit. Fair question.

And that's like another reason. So here, okay, just as like a quick summary, I keep referring to Trenchbull as a queer coded character. Here are the reasons. That is one of the reasons. In the book, although I don't think it's made as explicit in the movie, she hates long hair. That's why she throws the girl around by her pigtails is because she hates long hair okay um like i said they darkened pam ferris's mustache specifically for

like the trench pole and of course we associate facial hair with like certain types of gender expression sure you know it's the fact that there are no love interests in this movie and we didn't bring that up in terms of like something that's kind of crazy about kids films but there's always love interests in kids films but this film has no love interests yeah so i think i love it right it's so good i'm so happy that matilda didn't get like a boy that she was sweet on that made me so happy or that honestly i thought that miss honey that was the most remarkable avoidance of that trope because i the second i saw miss honey i was like oh my god

they're gonna marry her off to some weirdo like yeah to paul rubens or something she's gonna marry a cop lana del rey style this is a nightmare uh But Miss Honey, I thought it was like, because I feel like, and I'm trying to think of who I'm thinking of here, but because I feel like we've seen so many Miss Honey characters in children's media who always are like, that is how the traditionally

Western beauty standards feminine woman, that's how her story ends it's like a bit but where it's like there's so much of miss honey's story as it's presented in the movie is almost like a a cinderella-y story except it ends with her asserting herself confronting her past and adopting a child to raise as a single parent which is like that is awesome that like i was blown away by that creative choice and like you know and and that idea of sort of like even after like even in the like after the you know when we're getting into like you know after trench bull leaves you know and miss honey's living her life and until it's coming to his like there's no

man at that point even that's like brought into the picture it's like no no no she decided to be a single parent she was like no i got daddy bucks i'm good like don't even worry about like ush bucks yeah because her dad's usher and i think if they had married her off we wouldn't have had those moments jamie i really think that there would have been like instead of her standing up for Usher. Usher. And I think if they had married her off, we wouldn't have had those moments, Jamie. I really think that there would have been like, instead of her standing up for herself and asserting herself, I really think it would have been the man being like, well, gosh darn it, you can't let your aunt treat you like that, you know? Jennifer, how could you let yourself be treated this way for so long? And you're like, get out of here there yeah but then but then it's it's uh it's such a double-edged thing because as it it feels so pointed when that

same choice is applied to miss trenchpole because it's done so without context and we don't have any context for who she is exactly right and because she's also like the older spinster and i hate to use that word but like she's like the older unmarried woman i feel like there's also like the older spinster, and I hate to use that word, but like, she's like the older unmarried woman. I feel like there's also always a connotation like that. Like, and, and again,

I hope this is changing, but I feel like for a really long time, it's like, Oh, the older unmarried woman, you know, it's like, well,

you know, you guys might not be able to see, but I'm raising, the people on the podcast can't see it all, but I'm like doing like the waggly eyebrows sort of thing, you know, you guys might not be able to see, but I'm raising the people on the podcast can't see it all. But I'm like doing like the waggly eyebrows sort of thing, you know, like. Yeah, there would have definitely been like a folksy old saying that we had for that on the East Coast. Like, oh, you know, she's a little lightener loafers. Meaningful glance.

Like, yeah. I heard she's more of a cat person if you know what i mean nudge nudge wink wink except that we do see um trunchbull kick a cat across the yard yeah she's actually not much of a cat person she's not much of a cat person that that scene is still so upsetting to me that and the newt scene, the cruelty to animals. Yeah. Yeah. Really bad.

I want to go back to the way fatness is treated in the movie as it relates to Bruce Bogtrotter. Brucie. Played by Jimmy Carrs. Who's a doctor now. Who's a doctor now. Oh, my gosh. I have some quotes to share. Yeah.

Oh. a doctor now who's a doctor now oh my gosh i have some quotes to share yeah oh okay i found this oral history that is specific to the cake eating scene in the movie there's like a long oral history from newsweek no kidding i didn't know that yes by zach skonfeld we'll link it in the description but it's a long oral history about one scene in the movie anyway love it so a bunch of people are interviewed uh i have a couple disturbing quotes from danny devito who's uh maybe this makes him perhaps not the woke king we thought he was maybe oh no well because he says um in in an earlier quote he's just talking about the child actor, Jimmy saying, oh, you know, he was so cool. He's an orthopedic doctor now.

I don't know exactly if he's a surgeon or just a bone guy. So there's that one. The second quote is him saying, it's really funny. Cause like Danny DeVito, cause like the reason I knew that kid is now a doctor was cause there's another quote, another thing that I read that Danny DeVito because like the reason I knew that kid is now a doctor was because there's another quote another thing that I read that Danny DeVito was like yeah that kid he's some kind of some kind of doctor now maybe an osteopath I don't know I feel like you could yeah you could like hear him saying that in his voice he's like I don't know it's some kind of bone guy I don't know yeah but I love that Danny DeVito like knows he's some kind of bone guy he's like an uncle who's trying to remember some kind of like cousin's boyfriend's roommate or something you know like

yeah i don't need to know i don't i don't need danny devito to know more about medicine than that that's fine that's good well listen to this second quote because there's a lot to unpack here. Embracing. So Danny DeVito says about the actor who eats the cake in the movie, quote, Jimmy's looking amazing. He's grown into a fine young man. He was a little chub chub when I knew him. Now he's a strapping young gentleman

and a doctor, not doctor, doctor, is how it's quoted danny devito can't not talk like a newsies character he's a doctor and then the final part of this is of his quote is oh i need bone doctors man i'm the original guy in need of bone doctors. Unquote. Okay, and I'm back. And I'm back.

That second quote was not great, but the third one, I'm back. So... How is Danny DeVito a native auntie? Like, how did that happen? I don't know. Oh my God. That's amazing. I bring up this quote because of the way he's talking about Jimmy Carr's calling him.

When he was a kid. Yeah. Yes. So what happens in the movie is Principal Trunchbull calls an assembly so that the whole school can watch her fat shame a child because she suspects him of eating a piece of her chocolate cake um which is it's never terribly clear if he did or if he didn't he says like it's better than my mom's but he's also but like i don't know if that's just like something a kid would say you know right right so right we're not even sure if he is like guilty of this non-crime. Or this nom-nom crime.

Oh, whoa. Let's get sticky. Sticky alert. Yes. Slurp. Sluice. So she calls him on stage and is like, here, eat this piece of cake. And then he does kind of reluctantly and then she like summons the cook of the school who brings out the rest of this enormous cake and then trench bull forces bruce bogtrotter to eat the whole thing in front of the school so the fact that it's like a fat kid who stole the cake to begin with who is made a spectacle of basically who is publicly shamed for deeply humiliated yeah an eating thing and the whole thing being framed as being disgusting like i have to skip over this scene because it is it's gross the way in which like the costuming they put like all this like smeared

chocolate all over him and his face and uh the the angles that they're shooting this kid with and just the the kind of grotesqueness of it all is basically using cinematic language communicating to the audience saying basically like when fat people eat it's gross and it's shameful and this is how you should feel when you watch that and it's just so horrendously fat phobic and toxic and and they do the same thing with trench bull there's a there's a point when uh trench bull's eating a piece of chocolate cake at her house i think when yeah yeah and then we're there where they do like a sort of similar sort of callback and it's a lot of mouth sounds for no reason and a very tight angle for no reason you know yeah but this scene is like this scene in particular has been written about by a lot of like uh fat academics and artists

like because this is our trauma this is our collective trauma um for folks who can't see me on the podcast i am a fat person i'm very happy calling myself that that is like being called a little chub chub by danny devito is now my dream um and putting it on my bucket list but like you know uh this is like this is part of our collective trauma because like um we have this association first first and foremost you know we have this idea within our culture that you are ultimately the person who determines what your body looks like which is not true um our bodies are they estimate probably 80 to 85 percent you know the way that we look is determined by our genetics so what does your family look like what did your ancestors look like um 15 is like variable sort of like health

outcomes but a lot of that is also like tied to class tied to ability you know like uh do you have chronic illness do you suffer from like depression things like that can you afford what was that article about that woman who spends like so many thousands of dollars every month on like smoothie like health food smoothies yeah shit like that yeah right oh absolutely you know and like for indigenous people as well like you know when if you want to talk about like spending thousands of dollars at the grocery store, like there is an overwhelming occupation. And you'll see this a lot on reserves here, at least in Canada. Like there's a lot of government messaging about how Indigenous folks like, oh, you need to make healthier eating choices and you need to do this, and you need to do that. But, like, I've been in fly-in communities in northern Quebec here

where buying, like, it's, to buy, like, a two-liter of milk is, like, 15 bucks, you know? Oh, my God. To buy, like, a thing of, like, asparagus, it's, like, 12 bucks, you know? If you're trying to feed your family you know you have to make certain choices about like the food that you can even have access to like fresh produce like getting fresh produce up north can be challenging at times you know and it's not even just up north like I'm from eastern Canada the last time I lived in eastern Canada I lived in our a city you know, like a city with public transport and universities and like a real city, like a real, you know.

And like there was still like the winter before I moved to Montreal, cauliflower to get ahead of cauliflower. It was like eight bucks, you know, like and that's like that's, you know, that isn't in a remote area. That's just like being on the east coast the price of living is very very expensive and so like i hate the term food desert because again like all of this is very intentional you know people can grow cauliflower in a lot of places like there could be you know different projects and things like that but especially like a lot of indigenous people you know would love to like connect with like getting traditional food. But a lot of that is made so difficult and so expensive that, you know, at the end of the day, it's sort of like,

we'll make healthier choices. It's like, well, I can't afford to, I am making the best choices that I can afford to, to feed my family, you know you know and factory farming is awful and there's a lot of arguments around like you know eating specific diets and different you know to do different things you know lower cholesterol or less meat intake because of the effect on the planet but for so many so many people that decision is like again like having enough food yeah right you know right and having access big time and it that is like one of the many things that this movie does that feels it almost feels like it's interacting with the point we were talking about earlier where it was like the the kind of you see where they're going with it but it's inherently like misrepresenting issues around education and oversimplifying it of yeah and i feel like the way that this movie

treats food like you were describing just as like this is an individual decision as opposed to all of these factors and then on top of that who gives a shit it's none of your business absolutely yeah you know and and like and even just like the portraying it as like oh you know he can eat all of this cake because he's a fat kid like that was like always like the jump that i sort of yeah would make in my brain of like and it's like no like the human stomach no matter what size your body is is about the same like it's about you know it's it's gonna be your little like your little pouch you know it's not it's not that big cannot fit an entire chocolate cake that's like i don't know 20 inches in diameter that thing was enormous and like tall

like and very sticky um so sticky i would also like again sort of with like trunchbull you know and broadcasting things via people's names miss honey broadcasting things via people's names wormwood which is a poison broadcasting things via people's names i feel like bog trotter is also like a fat name um like for lack of like a better term for it like and and it's it's sort of this like it's it's because of sort of like the like oh sounds that you end up getting i don't know it's like the roundness of an oh i don't know bog trotter you wouldn't call a thin character bog trotter yeah i see what you're saying it almost sounds like because i i wish i had written them down because trench bull comes up with several just iconic insults that she calls the children.

The one I remember is she calls them something something piss worms or something. Yeah, that rocks. Wow. But Bog Trotter almost sounds like one of the insults that she would hurl at a child. Sure. And then, like, right, by contrast, Miss Honey is called miss honey because she's sweet and pleasant it's like swan being your last name and you being like beautiful right it's like it's like that yeah that extreme like i understand why roald dahl makes those choices because it's

whatever he's telegraphing things in simple terms because he's a children's author but he's telegraphing things that are broad stereotypes so he's using his his tools for evil i don't like it and then we talk about how bruce's story plays out because that scene takes place and then it kind of ends as this like spartacus yeah style ending um let's let's unpack that i'm i'm curious of what you both thought of how that scene kind of resolves right because instead of any and again this is a room full of children who you know are perhaps not the most equipped to advocate for their peers against a tyrannical principle but uh it's also a movie and like whatever you can suspend your disbelief for things but rather than anyone being like no bruce stop you don't have to do this thing that's clearly like making you ill and causing you pain and is humiliating you and all this stuff.

Matilda's like, you can do it. Keep eating. Yeah. Right. Which you're like, Oh, she's trying.

She's trying, but like, yeah. Like she's egging him on in support and almost like encouraging him to finish the cake. My read on it was she was encouraging him to finish the cake out of spite for miss trunchbull right so it's like there's no like malice in her intent but as far as like the implications of what she's cheering him on for is uh not very productive we'll say no no and it's, I mean, I'm sure we've all eaten things out of spite for some,

but, you know, that's common, right? I do it at least once a day. Right? You know, but like, yeah, it is really weird. And I never, like, as a fat kid and as a fat adult, I never look at that scene and at the end, like, feel like, woo, you know yeah good we won right right right it was like everyone loses yeah so it's it's like really it's really really tricky and it's nice

i'm so on the one hand i am so happy for matilda that she stands up and like supports one of her peers and like and some of the scenes i love most of the movie is like um the scenes between like the friends when you start to realize that like her and hortensia and lavender and bruce like hang out you know and i love that and i i love that matilda would feel like she's standing up for somebody. But yeah. It's not. I do want to touch on Lavender really quick because she is one of the few non-white characters in the entire movie played by Kiami Duvall. She is, I think, the only BIPOC character who has any lines of dialogue. There are others in background shots who are like kids who are like extras in the classroom.

But she's, I think, the only one who has lines of dialogue. Even so, though, she has very little narrative significance to the point where if you noticed she's barely mentioned in the recap because you could essentially write her out of the movie and the story would not really change at all i think that's absolutely true i love that she's there she's the cutest child i've ever seen she really is and i i just wanted more for her because she is present but not in a meaningful way. And that's extremely noticeable in a movie that is predominantly white, which is, ones that have like stood the test of time and that we like still watch and remember and like talk about are so, so, so white. Yes. It's just another unfortunate example of there being very few people of color in the movie and the one that has a name and any lines of dialogue still doesn't contribute to this story isn't allowed

to contribute to the story in any meaningful way absolutely it does feel like symbolic diversity over anything you know yeah like yeah which feels very of its time but also you know how how much of that has actually been resolved in modern media exactly no 100 and it's it's so unfortunate because like i said you know some of my favorite moments in the film are moments between lavender and matilda like i really love for example when um that last sort of rampage that trenchpole goes on and she like matilda then like saves lavender by like lifting her up and putting her on the pipe and then bringing her down safely you know and there's another moment too where like uh when uh the newt and she knows that lavender put the newt in the water and lavender's like well thank you for not telling and matilda's like best friends don't tell you know yeah those moments are really really nice and i i always in watching this film

as much as i enjoy it always wish that there were more yeah of those kind of moments because right like i think it's also just like nice nice friendships you know just and there's room for it in the movie it feels like it's and i i feel like it's almost like lavender's character is put aside in favor of focusing on the relationship between matilda and miss honey but i feel like it would have been a powerful choice to have Matilda strongly connect and learn about her connection with a kid her own age too. Especially because it's set up in the movie that she doesn't have friends,

people her age that she talks to because again, her really awful parents are depriving her of opportunities to connect with children her own age so yeah i almost would have rather this story unfold in such a way that sure miss honey can be a character she can be a positive influence in matilda's life but i'd kind of rather see a story about matilda meeting like a best friend and developing that friendship and the hijinks that they get into together oh totally or even just like including Lavender in the Miss Honey storyline where it

seems like she is also has you know she's also being abused at this school by Miss Trench Bull we have to assume there's a larger context for that how did she end up at this school what like what is her yeah what is her family like like it there's it would it would help the story yeah no absolutely and sort of like yeah like what's her home life like like that's always the big question i have is like part of trench bulls like over the top punishments is like the idea that like parents would never believe children you know so then it's like oh oh, okay, well, then, like, what's, is Lavender also in a situation where, like, she needs to be rescued? Like, you know?

And, you know, you start to sort of wonder about those kind of things. I think it could also be interesting for Matilda to, like, meet a family that's, like, functional and, like, healthy, has, like, healthy relationship dynamics and sort of like be able to sort of realize like, which I think she does. Like, I think she's very well aware of the fact that like her home life is not ideal, but like it might sort of like take that contrast of like being like, oh, you know, like I could maybe ask for something better for myself. Jamie, I know that you have a hard out soon. The last thing I wanted to bring up very quickly is just a shout out to this movie for not being copaganda because the FBI agents in this movie are like

treated as kind of being, you know, bumbling fools. And the funniest part of the movie to me is when, so like these FBI agents are tailing Mr. Wormwood because he is like buying and selling stolen car parts and stuff. Why the FBI is involved? Not sure. guys that are outside watching you all the time are obviously cops and her mom's like no they're speedboat salesmen um and then at one point matilda comes home and the two agents one of which is paul rubens um are in the house and like her mom is kind of flirting with them and then matilda takes one look at them and just like deadpan is like they're cops and it's the funniest part of the movie and i just like laugh off um and then danny devito comes in and calls them surfer dudes and male strippers which is like but again that's sort of like confronting his like his like picture of like

his own masculinity right like right you know he's anti-surfer he's anti-surfer dude he's anti-surfer dudes and male strippers surfer dude masculinity we gotta talk about it um we've already covered point break um that's surfer dude cops too yeah oh my god damn it but yeah this movie is uh not pro-cop which is saying a lot for a movie from the 90s. I want to believe that's the inner Danny DeVito to the movie. I do too. I do too. And I also love that, like, you know, in my head canon of like what happens to Matilda later is she flourishes as a

bicon and is like, you know, totally at protests with a sign that's like a cab you know like mara wilson rules i mean because that's who she is too like that's what she's doing in real life exactly similar i imagine i would hope a similar trajectory it's like mario wilson but if she still had magical powers yeah exactly yeah which she might you know't know. We'll have to ask her. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? For sure. Yes.

All the time. Lots, lots, lots. Between a lot of different combinations of characters. As far as our nipple scale, zero to five nipples based on how the movie fares looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens this one is tricky because while it's doing some good things as far as it's kind of like themes and more like the moral statement the movie is making and and how so many people just took positive messaging away from the movie. It is kind of overshadowed by the fact that a lot of the ways in which that messaging gets across is relying on harmful, fatphobic, classist, elitist, homophobic tropes. Yep. classist elitist homophobic tropes yep with that in mind i feel like i to me it's gonna have to be one of those like split down the middle movies where like it's doing good stuff but by way of

bad stuff so i think i can only give it two and a half nipples i do we didn't touch on this really but i do love the kind of theme or like the interpretation of like the chosen family narrative and like that thing is is really sweet i love just again how like valuing a little girl learning and um you know just like having a thirst for knowledge is something i think is important to see, especially when the movie is directed at children. But yeah, it's a lot of like of the time 90s era problematic stuff. Mara Wilson, one to Pam Ferris, and one to the poor cat who is kicked by Trunchbull. Looks like flea. Looks like flea.

Does, does look like flea. It hit, it hit. And does have eight nipples. There, I brought cat facts back. A very special appearance by cat facts. I'll, I'll, I'll meet you at two and a half. I think that there's this movie. I mean, it's like it's tough because it like we've talked about this whole episode.

There is a lot of heart and I think good intent at the core of this movie. And that really does make a ton of difference. However, I mean, starting from the person who wrote the story, to whom there's a ton of baggage attached, and his prejudice is kind of being difficult to remove, and impossible in some ways to remove from his own material is basically impossible and so we see these homophobic tendencies that you know are also inherent to the 90s like the homophobia the fat

phobia the symbolic inclusion of people of color but the characters could be cut out easily and don't have stories of their own. And so while I love Matilda and I do love the message at the core of her and Miss Honey's relationship and story of chosen family, of adults listening to and taking children seriously, which is just always a message I respond really strongly to. And everyone's life improving as a result of listening to children and taking them seriously there's so much good and then the tools used to arrive at that very good conclusion are just very loaded and very harmful um in in many ways so anyways so two and a half i will give one to matilda i will give one to the bingo jacket and i will give the last half to lavender yay um i i'm right there with you uh with both of you as much as i love this film and as much as i sort of joked at the beginning that like i i feel like it is very informed of like the, the person that I have become, like, a lot of the stuff that I take, like, as good from the film is stuff that, like, I'm bringing to it now and not, like, stuff that's necessarily in there. And we do that a lot as, you know, I think as, like like queer and gender diverse people, you know, for a really

long time, stories weren't made about us. And so, you know, when we get like a queer villain, like Trenchbowl, and we get like a queer story like this, because I still think Matilda, like, Zinnia is basically in drag the whole time. There are like no male love interests, like, this is a very queer story and but like that wasn't put there i don't think intentionally i think that is like interpretation coming like after the fact um sure and yeah the chosen family side of things is is wonderful and i would say to anybody who might be out there and feeling like they are not appreciated by their family or they are not being loved and nurtured in the way that they need to be that like

sometimes the people you are related to can't do that for you and you can find other people who uh who will love you and appreciate you like those people are out there and you should never hesitate to seek out your chosen family because yeah you know like you deserve that you deserve to be loved and nurtured um so two and a half nipples I will give oh man now I just want nipples on the bingo jacket somewhere so I feel like you know what I feel like i will give a nipple to mara wilson because not only is she incredible in this movie not only is she incredible now but she was also like in the process of losing her mom during this whole thing as a you know and as a kid i can't imagine what kind of like stress that is so huge one nipple uh for Mara um I will give my other nipple to Pam Ferris as well

uh she's amazing and she did such a fantastic job in this film just being such a a hammy camp villain I hope there's somebody out there who does trunchbull drag I'm gonna look it up I bet there is I'm gonna I'm gonna look it up and if not i am going to i am gonna it's it's your time to shine exactly um and then my last half nipple um my last half nipple has to go that bingo jacket i'm gonna recreate that bingo jacket i know i feel like there should be we have to contact superyaki stat yeah there should be repros of of the bingo jacket or we should have like a like a crafter noon like remake the bingo that would be so fun oh my gosh this is the first time i'm hearing this expression crafter noon yes and it's changed my life yeah imagine the

time we're going to save absolutely crafternoons are great well jess thank you so much for coming back and for this wonderful discussion that was a pleasure where can people follow your stuff check out your stuff online support you etc um so uh the best way the best place to find me is at rad babe on instagram and it's like underscore rad underscore babe underscore anyway if you search jess merrill and you'll find me on instagram um i didn't think about the branding when i chose the name um okay uh and i'm i'm always out there in the world doing doing queer, doing indigiqueer stuff, doing fat stuff, doing movie stuff. So that's the best way to find me and to follow me. Black and Indigenous Solidarity Project, especially for street-involved folks, is doing a fundraiser. You can check them out on Facebook

at The Cedar Tea Project if you're looking for something to support. I also have their information up on my Instagram. That's how you can find me. I have a film that I made, a documentary called Love is the First Sacred Lesson, that is going to be playing in some film festivals this fall

so keep an eye out for that congratulations I'm very excited because it takes so long to make films and then you're like I don't really want to have anything to do with it anymore so put it out in the world no

this film is really really close to my heart in a lot a lot of ways so i'm excited for people to see it amazing wonderful oh thank you so much for being here again yeah whenever you want to come back bring us another movie and we'll talk more oh absolutely and you guys you know come to montreal now that like things are opening up a little bit i know it's like well crafter dude baby yes absolutely uh and we'll eat bagels and uh you know speak french bonjour bonjour caitlin and i are always doing that so it's just gonna be another day for us right it's gonna be amazing you can find us on twitter and instagram at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon.

It's $5 a month. It gets you access to two bonus episodes every month, plus the entire back catalog, which is over 100 bonus episodes at this point. So there's lots of stuff to go through. It's a good time to join. You can also get our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast

follow your heart do it or don't do it we won't know either way but if you want some stuff that's where you can get some stuff and with that seems like we've gotten pretty adequately sticky this episode I'm extremely sticky I'm very sticky never been

stickier sticky with discourse that is wow woo okay bye bye bye hey everybody this is Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang we've got some exciting news for you you know we're always bringing you the best

guests right well this week we're taking it to the next level the one the only Catherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and

of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one

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