The Bechdel Cast - One Battle After Another with Jess, the PrideBrarian

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

On this one episode after another, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Jess, the PrideBrarian discuss One Battle After Another (2025)! Here's the article we mention, "One Fetish After Another" by Brooke Obie -- https://blackgirlwatching.substack.com/p/one-battle-after-another-review  Follow Jess on Instagram at @thepridebrarian and YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@PrideBrary See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Attention, Bechdelcast, listeners.

We are going on tour. And we know we've been on tour many times over the years. But guess what? This is a very, very, very special tour that can only happen one time because it is our 10-year anniversary. Oh, my God. We are doing a 10-year. Whoops, we didn't dismantle the patriarchy anniversary tour. Oh, we're so excited. Yeah, we want to really ring this anniversary in in style. So throughout the next year, we will be traveling around the U.S. and Canada doing our 10-year anniversary celebration show. and we are starting. We are kicking it off in the Northeast this October. With shows in New York City ever heard of it on October 12th, Baltimore, October 15th, Philadelphia, October 17th, State College, October 18th, Pittsburgh, October 19th, and Boston, October 21st.

We are really going to go big, and because it's so close to Halloween, we would highly encourage you to dress up as your favorite movie character. We certainly will be doing so. And it's just going to be a big celebration. I'm so damn excited. You can buy tickets at Linktree slash Bechtelcast. All of our ticket links are listed there. We will see you there, Northeast, and see you rest of the U.S. and also Canada very soon.

See you there. The Becdellcast. Jamie, Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction. Caitlin, I've been drinking Mike's Heart Lemonade. for 4,000 years. You cannot expect me to remember a sequence of three things. Well, then how do I know that you are who you say you are? Oh, my God.

Well, maybe let's make a little misogynate. Maybe we, isn't it wild in that moment that it's a little misogynist comment that ends up getting him out of the jam? Right. Yeah. You know, I kind of forgot about that. I remembered having a giggle of my first watch at him not remembering. But anyways, yeah, we actually should have a secret password for the podcast. Oh, yeah.

What if one of us is an imposter? That's true. I mean, I guess, yeah, we could answer so many embarrassing questions about the other, though, that I feel like we would be able to figure it out pretty quickly. For sure, for sure. Yeah. Well, welcome to the Bechtel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus.

My name is Caitlin Durante. this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechtel test simply as a jumping off point. And, Jamie, what on earth is that? Well, the Bechtel Test is a media metric created by a friend of the show, Friend of the Pod. We've met her two whole times, Alice and Bechtel, who originally made the Bechtel as just a one-off joke in her wonderful comics collection, Dikes to Watch. for that was at the time about how specifically the queer community did not have explicit representation on screen and would look to sort of shipping characters in order to create representation and has since sort of been adapted into a far more mainstream media metric.

The version that we use, there's many versions of the test, the version we use requires that two characters with names of a marginalized gender speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two meaningful lines of dialogue. It is our favorite way to figure out if people actually listen to the show or not, because we only really talk about it for about 30 seconds at the end of every episode. But it's a good North Star. It's a good North Star to talk about representation and intersectionality. Absolutely.

And today we have an episode on one battle after another, the movie that was the talk of the town last year. And we have an incredible guest joining us. She analyzes representation in media. She is a three-time Emmy-nominated TV producer. It's Jess, aka the Priybriarian. Hello. Hello and welcome.

Hi, guys. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much for being here. I'm so nervous and excited to be here. Oh, my gosh. Well, truly, like, your work is so incredible and so thorough and so succinct. Like, as we were talking about you coming in the show, it was like, wow, she can put into four sentences when it takes us three hours to articulate. So we're very happy to have you.

I appreciate that. I will admit, though, it takes me a while to write down everything and then edit it into those few sentences. But, you know, we'll see how this goes. Like, I am pretty, pretty, what is the word? I talk a lot. We'll say that. then this is going to be perfect. Yes, indeed.

Tell us a little bit about your history. I mean, I know it just came out last year, but what is your history with one battle? Yeah, so last year I was obsessed with sinners, and I saw it maybe three or four times in the movies, and I was like, this movie is going to win Best Picture. And then I started to hear about one battle after another,

and I was like, okay, well, you know, maybe I should I should check this out. It had prominent black female characters and I was like, okay, you know, I can watch this. Let's see, let's see how this goes. And I was with my boyfriend and he's like, I don't want to see this movie. I was like, oh, you know, let's let's give it a shot. Let's, let's see if it has any substance to it. And I guess I wish I would have listened to him because it's just not it's not my favorite and I rewatched it for this podcast

and I tried to go in with an objective lens you know to just analyze it and see if there was you know anything there and nope again it was just not not a great watch so

I hope I'm not putting down any of your if it was one of your favorite movies but you know we'll see. I mean we are here We are here to set aside any enjoyment of the movie we might have had, and we're here to really have some discourse about it. We come to this place for discourse. For discourse.

Nice. Fighting words. Jamie, what about you? What's your relationship with it? I guess I'm assuming we all have like a similar, like we all, we all saw it last year when it came out. Yeah, I was looking, I was sort of. reflecting on, I remember this is like one of many movies I have left with my partner and

immediately gotten into an argument because he was like, I don't know, I liked it. And I was like, but what about this? And I like a number of PTA's movies. I think probably my favorite is Phantom Thread, which we still have been covered on the show. I really love that movie. I was curious how he, like what the story was going to be, how he's going to tackle it. And I, I, I, I, left feeling pretty frustrated, even though, like, craftsmanship-wise, it's, like, a very thrilling movie. It's very well-made. Like, it's very well-acted. I'm not arguing that part of it. But just in terms of, like, you know, who he chooses to focus on and the tropes that he utilizes to continue to focus on the DiCaprio character was frustrating when I first saw it. And especially when you're

watching it not to be thrilled or to get through a movie. plane ride or whatever the case may be. It gets more frustrating. I mean, my, my real, like, thing I was clenching my fists about when we left that first viewing was that Regina Hall's character, Deandra, just, like, he gives her nothing. And it makes me so, like, I, we're, we're big Regina Hall. A little wasted opportunity. Yeah, I mean, like, truly.

I'm very excited to get into it because this, for me, kind of boils down to, like, who is making movies about revolutionaries and who they're going to be inclined to focus on because I feel like for me, with the exception of Chase Infinity's character, there's so many supporting characters that are 20 times more interesting than the two white guys that end up sort of pushing the narrative or don't even end up pushing the narrative, but are at the center of the story. But I think the Regina Hall character was just like so egregious to me. I was like, she, he didn't let her do anything?

No, and do we even know how things turn out for her? I feel like she's just kind of written out of the story and we don't know anything. And it's like, how do you not end that arc? We had, you know, perfidia, we know how she betrays the revolution. You never get to see, I think her name's Deirdre. Yeah, in the movie. You don't get to see her make that choice. And it's left up to interpretation.

I'm like, that's not, if you're going to have one character kind of betray, you need that character, the other one to kind of show the other side of it, the one that is actually, because Deidre definitely felt like the actual revolutionary. Yes, the only one who sees it through. Exactly. Who wouldn't rat out her friend. Yes, thank you. So it's like, it would have been great to see that on screen, but we're robbed of it. Totally. Yeah, so I found it frustrating. This was my first time returning to it since that first viewing. I have a lot of thoughts. But I think for me, like, especially doing some deep dive into what the feminist community's reception of this movie was, what the leftist community's reception of this movie was, and specifically what the black feminist community's reception of this movie was, there's like so, there's so much to take in. And I feel like the question that I was trying to like get to the core.

of on this last viewing was like, what does the French 75 stand for? And I am frustratingly unable to answer that question. Right. It's really vague. Yeah. And I think intentionally so, and I'm very excited to talk about it. Yeah. Caitlin, what's your, what's your history with this movie? Same thing. I saw it in theaters the one time. And I will admit that because I was not watching it through any sort of critical or analytical lens. I enjoyed it, but I was also aware of and participating in the criticism, especially of the movie's treatment of the black women characters. Yeah.

That was present from like the very onset of the movie's release. So yeah. I was aware of that going in. And to your point, Jamie, like you said, it's well acted. It looks good. It was filmed in VistaVision. I don't really even know what that means, but I guess that's significant. And the performances, I mean, like, especially the women's performances in this movie are amazing.

It's just like, I just wish that they had better thoughtful material to go off. Yeah. It feels like everybody was on their A-game with the craftsmanship of movie making and the moving image. but like the writing is where the writing and messaging is where it fell off. And just because you have, you know, nice cinematography and great acting, that does not make a good story. That does not a good movie make. Exactly. Yes. Right. But it gives us a lot to talk about and I'm excited to dive in.

Shall we take a quick break and then come back for the recap? Let's do it. I-Hard Radio. is throwing it back. To the days of huge hits. And unforgettable anthems. A nonstop stream of the biggest and best. Drake, Rihanna, Beyonce, Katie Gaga, the weekend.

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And here is the recap of one battle after another. We meet Profidia Beverly Hills, played by Taiana Taylor, and Pat, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. They are a couple, and they are both members of an anti-fascist militant resistance group called the French 75. Other members include DeAndra, played by Regina Hall, a character named Jungle Pussy played by the rapper

of the same name. Jungle Pussy, yeah. Again, wish she had had more to do and the fact that we learn that she's dead via a joke later in the movie doesn't sit well with me. It's so gross, yeah. I was also very happy to see her in the movie.

I remember that got a huge pop in my theater because we're like, wait, wait! Yeah, so the group breaks into an immigration detention Center at the U.S.-Mexico border to liberate the 300 or so people who have been detained there. One of the military officials stationed there is Captain Stephen Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn, who perfidia approaches, gun pointed at him, she's berating him, and then she tells him to get it up, aka get a boner, and he does. Then the group gets away after successfully completing their mission.

Prophidia and Bob are all horny about it. So basically everyone is aroused in some capacity. Not us, though. Not us. No. We're just like, wow. So many, so many gross-looking men in a row. And it's like, this is like the first five to ten minutes of the movie.

And it just already is making a cringe. I was not expecting to see Sean Penn's boner, like close up of his boner within the first few minutes. You're just like, we paid to see that, is the LRMA thing. Yeah. And again, it's like, as we'll be talking about throughout the episode, I'm sure, like, if you're looking for some insight into perfidia here, don't hold your breath. Yeah. Yeah, this is definitely. where my red flags were going up. And again, like five minutes into the movie, it's like,

okay, please, please don't make her this stereotype, this, this, what's called the Jezebel stereotype. I was like, it's 2025, have we not move past these things? And as you said, Jamie, like, there's not much there. And it's very, very frustrating and very, very, for me, watching it degrading to see a black woman like just be treated in this way. And she's such a good actress. So to to see not only that play out on screen, but then to get awarded as such just tells me as someone in the industry that, again, our stories are just not what matters. Our stories are, it feels like our story, black women's stories are always there. to be a side character in someone else's story.

And a lot of the times stereotypes are used as shorthand because we are not made to be a full human being in stories. We're there to be the McGuffin. Like in this, both Prophidia and her daughter are just there to be fought over by these two white main characters. And I really, I know that we're only just starting the movie, but like I really, really hoped that that wouldn't be the case. And again, this is just another form of disappointment from this industry for me.

Absolutely. And so much of, I don't know, I mean, there was so much discourse around this movie, which we are continuing the grand tradition of here. And I'm very happy we are. But I think what I found so consistently frustrating in, like, the stereotypes being presented are so unchallenged that I don't think that I've seen some kind of attempts to argue that it's like an attempt to subvert but it's but I think the fact that we have no insight into perfidia I mean that that is kind of like all you need to know about where this movie's priorities lie I don't

have an issue with the fact that you know whatever it's like I'm not going to police the morality of a person who doesn't exist and be like why did she rat was this blah blah what does I mean I think how that relates to, like, who that character seems to be referencing is worth discussing, because people have, and Teyana Taylor said that she pulled from Asada Shakur, who is not a rat, even remotely. That was her whole, the point of her fleeing. She was famously not a rat. Yes.

I don't have issues with, like, perfidia, you know, ratting people out. I have issues with having no idea why that is. Like, it's, if you're, if you're going to write a character that makes the choices that perfidia does, like, I feel like it is like your responsibility as a writer to give us some insight, or you're just perpetuating the stereotype, which is what he's doing. I don't think he had in his mind to make her a character. Like, that wasn't even a thought in his head. He's like, this is what she is.

She's hot. They want her. And that's it. But that thought process is what, like, we should be trying to, to flip her. around in this industry. Like my whole thing is, is representation. And I think that if we had better representation for marginalized characters on screen, that would, it's a, it's a tool in order to help us be seen as more human in our society. But roles, movies like this continue to perpetuate that we are not human, that our stories don't matter. And, and like you were saying, you, you wanted

to know her story. But the stopping of that is just a very, very old practice within Hollywood. And not to go to media theory, but like, there's a name for it called symbolic annihilation in which either you don't show marginalized characters or you show them in a stereotypical way. And the point is to reduce their power within society.

And so the more you don't show us as human, the more our quote unquote power is reduced. And that's what that felt like. And that that's where that degrading feeling that I was like, here we go again. I don't understand why you couldn't just, she's in the movie, Prophidia's in the movie for like less than 15 minutes of a three hour movie.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And she is the catalyst for the entire story. And we know nothing about her. Right. How does that happen? Truly. The one little glimpse of backstory we get for her is something her mother says, which is that she comes from three generations of revolutionaries,

which also even more begs the question, why does she rat? If she comes from a long lineage of revolutionaries and she should know better. But yeah, to your point, Jess, this is a conversation we've had on the podcast over the years of either, yeah, movies, pretending that marginalized people simply just don't exist. This comes up whenever we talk about like the versions of New York City where only white people live. Or it's the inclusion of marginalized people, but they are there to be a stereotype. They are there to be the butt of a joke.

Or in the case of this movie, pretty consistently, their set dressing. There's so many extended sequins. where people of color are just meant to set a scene for like DiCaprio to walk through essentially. Yeah. Like the entire, I know we've kind of gone off of the recap, but like the entire. Classic us. Sequence of him going with his, the sensei. Yes, the whole del Toro sequence.

And that could have been such, honestly, like, I would have loved to just see a movie about his character. And the real revolutionary, like, it almost is like a movie within a movie. It's like, we're watching Leonardo flop around on screen. And it's like, no, I want the actual revolutionary movie that's over there. He has built this like whole sanctuary for undocumented migrants in his community that he's like, offering safe. Cool as a cucumber the whole time, like, in a way that. And I know that, like, I'm sure, or I guess I want to believe that that is intentional where we can't see, you know, DiCaprio complete a phone call. He can't do fucking anything.

And then you are watching Benitez-Del Toro's character just hypercompetently cool as a cucumber knows exactly what to do. But again, it's like, who is our focus with, who are our priorities with, and whose community do we get to know? And it's certainly not the senseys. Exactly. In any case, we've met the French 75. We also see them do a series of other acts of revolutionary violence. You might even call them one battle after another, which they say out loud in the movie.

Always fun. And we're cheering. And Lockjaw observes perfidia from afar and starts mass. It seems that his previous interaction with perfidia has either unlocked a fetish for him or maybe he already had it in the sense that he fetishizes black women, but he has his attention on perfidia. And then one day he approaches her and tells her that he will let her keep doing what she's doing as a member of this resistance group if she, she meets up with him so that he can basically indulge his fetish. And she does. They have some sort of sexual encounter.

It's not totally clear everything they get up to. But we cut to several months later and perfidia is pregnant. She's pregnant. She is, sorry, I'm so sorry, she is pregnant. The baby is born. her name is Charlene and Profidia seems to be experiencing postpartum

depression which is also something that barely gets explored very glazed over although that was something that because another very valid critique of this movie was how unwilling

PTA was to acknowledge it as a political film in interviews which we can talk about makes no sense. I'm like, then why fucking do it, man? Whatever, we'll get there. But yeah, he does explicitly say that perfidia is struggling with postpartum,

which is an interesting thing to confirm for, again, just like a script that has no curiosity about how that experience. Like, it's so invested in portraying Pat slash Bob's confusion and the fact that he is a good father capital G capital F that like it's completely disinterested and her experience with what he says himself is postpartum depression yeah it's very frustrating yeah so she's dealing with that and she also insists on continuing her work with the french 75 even though pat is like um we have a baby to take care of and she's like i don't care about all that and then she participated in a bank robbery that goes wrong and she is arrested.

And while she's in custody, Lockjaw pays her a visit and says that he can help her avoid prison if she names names. While that's happening, Pat has to flee. He has to take the baby somewhere and lay low. A fellow comrade named Howard Somerville gives Pat an envelope full of information that he needs to memorize and then destroy, as well as a set of trust devices, which they're hard to explain, but basically if your device is near another person's device, they will kind of activate each other, and it's a sign that you can trust whoever other person

has that device. I forgot to look into if these things are real or if it's Deus X. It's like a little plot machine. I genuinely don't know. I forgot to look it out. I don't know either. Yeah. It's a fun idea, but it seems... I mean, I guess the movie does bear out that it is ill-advised and maybe just sounds cool versus is helpful. Right. Anyway, Pat and Charlene are given new identities.

They are now Bob and Willa Ferguson, and they drive off into the night. Meanwhile, Perfidia has ratted out her friends. some of whom are hunted down and killed. And in exchange for this, she is put in witness protection. A little like, I guess, PTA Easter egg that I thought was fun, and I think maybe all directors should do this, is in that perfidia rats out her friend's montage where we see a lot of the French 75 agents or members, I guess, get killed.

He kills off the protagonist of his last movie, Alonaheim, which maybe directors should just do that at the beginning. You should just kill off the protagonist of the previous movie. Which I fucking hated licorice pizza. I also did not like licorice pizza, but I just think as a rule of practice, I thought that was kind of funny. That he was like, oh, you liked her? Well, she's not in this one.

Especially because that actor is a Zionist. Oh, I did not know that the Heim sisters were. I don't know about all. of them, but at least Alana has been vocally supportive of Israel. Well, and that won't be the last mention of Zionism in this episode, unfortunately. Nope. Nope. God.

Okay, so Lockjaw goes to visit Perfidia in witness protection and, like, rekindle whatever they had going on, but she has fled to Mexico, and this really hurts Lockjaw's little feelings. And then we cut to 16 years later. We meet a teenage Willa, played by Chase Infinity. She is studying... Is that really her name? Yeah. Chase Infinity?

Yeah, that's her... Sounds like a bank. I know. But it is her government name. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. Sorry.

But yeah, she's studying some type of martial art with Sergio St. Carlos, aka. S. Sensei, played by Benicio del Toro. Meanwhile, Lockjaw has been invited to be considered for membership in something called the Christmas Adventures Club, which made me burst out laughing in the theater. And I was like, oh, wait, that's, that is what it's called. Okay.

I will say that's the only thing that I took from this movie. I now call all white supremacists Christmas Adventures. So it's, I mean, I think it's fitting because, yes, they are this like alt-right white supremacy hate group. It's like super secretive and exclusive. And the members of the group ask lockjaw several questions, including has he ever engaged in an interracial relationship? And he says, no, no way. And then they tell him that they're going to investigate his path to make sure he meets their standards for membership. But obviously, Lockjaw did engage in an interracial relationship with perfidia.

And he also knows that she got pregnant and had a baby right around the time that they were engaging in this relationship. And uh-oh, what if he's the father? So he has some of his military buddy. he's abduct Howard Somerville, the guy who helped Bob and Willa get away all of those years ago. And also he's abducted while he's basically recording a podcast. He is independently podcasting when abducted by the feds. I thought he was broadcasting to the network or whatever. And I was like, why is he saying all this?

And that makes more sense now that it's a podcast. It might be a live broadcast. I'm not entirely sure. but I like to think he was podcasting. Yeah, you know. A fellow podcast. Podcasters have their place in the road. I'm just kidding.

We don't know. Revolutionary to podcast, pipeline. Yeah, we're really doing the good work here. So Somerville gives up information about Bob and Willa and where they live, which is a sanctuary city called Bacton Cross, which I believe. which I believe is in California, or it's not a real place, but it's like set in, I think, like, Northern California, question. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure like every Paul Thomas Anderson movie, basically, is it somewhere

in the San Fernando Valley. Okay, so Lockjaw heads to Backen Cross with an army of basically ICE agents because he is using the deportation of undocumented immigrants. who are living and working in Backton Cross as a cover for this personal mission of his to track down Bob and Willa. Meanwhile, Willa goes to a high school dance and Lockjaw is on his way to kidnap her,

but DeAndra, the Regina Hall character, gets to her first to help her get away, and DeAndra's trust device activates Willa's device, so even though Willa doesn't know DeAndra, She knows to trust her and she agrees to go with her. Meanwhile, a member of the resistance calls Bob to alert him of what's going on. And she's speaking in code. And he needs to speak in code back to confirm that he is who he says he is.

But he's high and it's been 84 years since he memorized all of that information. So he has trouble remembering. And he definitely doesn't remember at all where the rendezvous point is. And they refuse to tell him unless he can remember a particular line of code. He's just so incompetent. Yeah. I did laugh at the part where he says he has fried his brain from abusing drugs and alcohol. But yeah, he is very incompetent.

Mm-hmm. and he goes to Sensei for help they're running around they're trying to dodge this ice raid that's happening slash the military presence that's all over the city and again this is like

essentially used by the movie and very like I mean it the the way that the scene is set is definitely convincing but it's it's like so as we're watching the sensei take Bob through this sequence it is like unquestionably

set dressing of an act of horrific state violence to get us from point A to point B for Bob. And I was also, I mean, I think the first time I saw it in the theater, I didn't think too much about it because it is, it is very like propulsive and exciting to like watch these like long shots. But I was also, I'm curious what you both think or like if there's something I'm missing of like, I know that like Bob is, I sort of, I wrote. it in my notes is like he's like the wringo of the French 75 like he was there as well but he's like no one's favorite member so I understand why you know the sensei would know who he is and have some reverence for that but I was in the middle of what the sensei is doing which is seems like

consequential to hundreds of people why is he prioritizing Bob Bob why is he getting arrested for Bob. Because Bob's the main character. Exactly. Exactly. It's like, and I felt silly for not, like, thinking harder about that the first time because you're like, well, yeah, I guess this is what's happening. But on the rewatcher, like, he's, he is like protecting so many people and he's going to take the fall for Bob. Come on. Yeah. He should have been like, sorry, Bob, I've got bigger fish to fry. Or even to say, like, this is as far as I can take you or something. But that's the, that's kind of the sacrifice of marginalized characters. Their lives are on the line, but we got to help Bob.

But they're there to serve the white protagonist. Yeah. So who cares about if they're going to die or get deported or if children are going to be separated from their families? Don't think about that. Think about Bob getting his cell phone thing to work. You know, that's what's important. And I think that's the tricky thing about this movie being a well-made and well-pressed. performed movie is that like I didn't think about that until my second viewing like that's I don't know

that's also perhaps a skill issue on my it and I don't think so you know you're watching a movie for the first time everything is coming at you it's all new information that you know it's hard to process super thoroughly on the first watch and there's so much going on that like there were things that I miss like the layers of, I guess, the audacity of this movie, just like how much it pushes people to the side for these two men to just, like, it's almost like we're watching people's lives get disrupted and ruined for their own narrative. And that's frustrating to me. Yes, which is, I, and I love a 40-hour recap, but it's like, there's just so much going on here. where I feel as if, and I think, like, sure, fair enough, but I was thinking about it in the context of this movie of, like, how it is, like, to me, at least, like, clearly, like, part of what PTA is trying to say here is that the, the white protagonist of this movie, including DiCaprio, are ineffectual, they're constantly in the way, and they're acting selfishly. Obviously, Sean Penn is like the most egregious example of that he's literally Mr. White supremacy.

But that, you know, DiCaprio is like, cannot get out of his own way, can't do anything, can't really be of assistance to anyone and has to stumble his way to the finish line. And it's like, okay, that that is like, I guess a true and valid point that so many like white men, even in these contexts are like not helpful. And they're like not helpful to the cause. they're not helpful to themselves. But I feel like he accomplishes making that point by ignoring so many other perspectives and underwriting so many other characters to be like, look at this character.

He's such a, like, he's such a fool. It's like, well, sure. But what else do you got? And I feel like the answer is maybe not very much. Interesting. Totally. I thought it was like an interesting perspective because I didn't think of it that way. Like I thought it was more like, this is his self-insert character.

And like, this is what I would be doing during the revolution. And yes, Paul may not be helpful, but he's still the main character of it. And it felt like this, his name is Paul, Paul Thomas Anderson. Yes. Knowing that he does have like a black wife and all that kind of stuff, it felt like his like, I don't want to say manifesto, but like his kind of gift to the revolution. Like this is my art. I'm going to make it about the revolution, quote unquote,

and this is what I have to say about it. Like that's what I thought it was, but I guess that is a valid point that he may have been trying to say that these white dudes are getting in the way. But if he is saying that, then I don't think he did a great job of, displaying that, like if that was his intent. Totally.

Because still in the end, you know, Sean Penn's character does die, but like Leonardo is, he continues to be the hero, even though his daughter does help out and stuff like that. It is solely from his perspective of winning the day. So I agree. And I also feel like,

like the ending of this movie, frustrated me the first time I saw it and really frustrated me this time. Because like you're saying, just like it is, it does seem like a movie that he, I mean, he has enough in common with the DiCaprio character that you have to wonder. There's references to Maya Rudolph's family that I didn't pick up on in the first viewing where he calls, like, Perfidia's mother is called Grandma Minnie and Maya Rudolph's mother was like the iconic singer Minnie Ripperton. Like there's references like scattered throughout and

he is the white father to a biracial child, you know, so it's like, clearly he, these, things were on his mind. And also, I didn't realize in the, like, inspiration, it's not an adaptation. I don't know what it is. But like, in the Thomas Pynchon novel, this movie is like pulling from, perfidia is not a black character. She's a white woman. So like, these are choices that he's intentionally making. But I totally agree, just like that, you know, the DiCaprio character especially doesn't really end up having to take a lot of consequence or even questioning about his, like you would think. You would. think at the end that like Chase Infinity's character would have a lot of reason to be very upset with them. But she's sort of like I love, but the thing that bothers me about the ending is that it seems like PTA being like, maybe the kids will figure it out. And you're like, no, man, your generation still holds all the institutional power. You can't just be like best of luck to my kids. Like, no, no. Fascinating. I did not know that about the original novel. I do wonder like how different perfidia's character is from the novel, and maybe you two might have that answer, but like,

were the traits of like just being hypersexualized the same as in the novel as they were in the movie, or were those traits given to profidia in the movie? And I don't know which is worse, because if it is the same as in the novel, then you put a black woman into that and made her that stereotype or Thomas Thomas Anderson What's his name? Paul Thomas Anderson Oh Paul Thomas oh yes

Okay there's also Thomas Pinchin There's too much Thomas going on Love Tom's or it's that There weren't those traits in the novel And I'm going to forget his name Paul Thomas Anderson then gave her those traits willingly And that's scary because that means that you did that consciously

and I really don't know which is worse. Yeah. I can't speak to how the Perfidia counterpart character in the book is characterized. I haven't read the book, although I did a little bit of reading on the differences between the book in the movie. And like you said, Jamie, you can barely call it an adaptation because there's so much of it that Paul Thomas Anderson invented. on his own. He pulls different things from the book, but there's a lot that he either omits or changes. So it seems like most of the, like the skeleton of the story is similar, but most of the character specifics are very much Paul Thomas Anderson's.

Gotcha. Okay. So that's not great. Yeah. I was like, there's not a good answer. And I guess, yeah, like either way, you're right. Like, either way the outcome is the same. You get a very, very hypersexualized black woman that plays into a stereotype that, like, we have just seen, you know, I'm going to go into it. Like, that is a story that has just been passed down since slavery. And it is so ingrained in our society that he just might not even know that that is a stereotype that he was playing into if he put her into that situation. or if he didn't, then he was doing it. I don't know if malicious is the word, but it felt malicious. But that Jezebel stereotype, which is the hypersexualized black woman,

she is promiscuous to a fault. And it was a story that slave masters kind of told themselves that black people had, sorry, that black people had larger sex organs. and that made them more promiscuous so that when selling men, they could say, look at his large sex order. He can produce a lot more slaves for you going forward. And for women, we got,

I can't even say the short end of the stick because we're talking about slavery, but like for women, it was more, it gave slave masters an excuse to use sexual violence against us. We were the temperatures, that were seducing them. And they had no power over us.

And so they just had to lie with us. But it was that psychological story that allowed them to have the excuse to feel like they were constantly in the right. I feel like that's a, I always bring it up. But like Tana Hossicoats has a great passage in his book, The Message that says that, like if you're going to do such plunders against other human beings, you have to tell yourself

a story in order to coax your own guilt. And that is what that Jezebel stereotype is. And look how it is 400 years later and we are still using it. And so that is the, the, again, going back to symbolic annihilation, that is the harm that we have been enduring for 400 years in that. That is the, the, the, narrative violence we have been enduring based on that stereotype. And that's, that's, I, I have to express like, I think people don't understand like how powerful the media is and how powerful representation is because it's not just what we're seeing on screen. We don't just intake a movie and then that's it. It stays with us. And if we're perpetuating these things over and over again, it gets ingrained in us. And these stereotypes just cause real world harm. And in this

case, for this specific stereotype, it, like, there's no correlation between watching something and then someone doing violence. But there is correlation. I read a study on it. When people see these over sexualized images, then we do have a psychological tolerance for them. Absolutely. Like when it happens to women in our real lives. And I just want to express that when I saw this movie, that is what I got from it. I know that it is beautifully shot. I know that it is like a lot of artistry went into it, but a cherry on top of a shitcake is still a shit cake.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the, one of the many insidious things about media tropes is that tropes beget more tropes. So, you know, the filmmakers who perpetuate tropes watched it happen in the media that they consumed as a younger person. And then they're like, oh, well, that's just what, that's what black people are like. That's what black women are like. So I'll put it in my movie as well. Exactly. it's all so frustrating to me because first of all just thank you for for that analysis of the jesible character which is so clearly where perfidia is coming from and it just gets back to i feel like who gets to tell stories about revolution because pta seems to sort of want to but also very much not want to in this story where as you were describing you know like all of the trojointed

that come with the Jezebel trope and how extremely harmful it is, shades of that appear in what Sean Penn's character says at the end of the movie when he's describing his relationship with perfidia and basically saying that she assaulted him and that he has no choice but to have sex with her. He also calls her like a witch and a warrior and talks about her in these very mystical terms when he is in the car, when he's kidnapped, Chase Infinity, right? And so it's like, again, you're, it, I feel like the shortest version of saying it is like,

PTA is not the person to be making a cogent film about black revolutionaries. Who would have thought? Yeah, who could have said? What? And like, we'll get back to this, but like all of this happening in the same year that sinners came out and getting some awards that sinners,

you know, I think we agree, probably deserved more is so frustrating. But he knows enough about the way he's characterizing perfidia to put those words into the mouth of the worst guy in the movie. But he doesn't know or care enough. I don't mean to just let him off. Like doesn't care enough to actually give us insight into perfidia and not play into those tropes.

So that's what is like, he's, I do think that the fact that he puts this Jezebel trope language into the mouth of the villain means he does know what he's doing. So why the fuck didn't he write a character? Like it's just, it's so infuriating. And I do. I think that's a really good point. And, you know, I don't want to take away us writing stories about people from different groups and stuff like that. Like, you totally can write a story about others, but you need to do your due diligence and it feels like he stayed very much on the surface. I don't know if it's out of fear or like you said, out of a lack of caring, but like not diving deeper was a bigger disservice to the people you were supposedly trying to tell the story about. Right. Right. Super, super frustrating.

Yeah. The example I always go back to is Sophia Coppola directing the beguiled and there is there is a black enslaved character that she just completely omits because she's like, well, I don't know how to write that. So that character just isn't in my movie anymore. Wow. Yeah. See, but then that sounds ridiculous to me because it's like, so because you felt yourself incompetent, which, okay, that's a cell phone, but like, because you felt not up to the task, then we've lost that representation for good then. So what did that accomplish other than making yourself feel better about it? Right, right.

And if you have to omit characters because you don't feel equipped to tell their story, then maybe you shouldn't be the one making that movie. Exactly. Or just getting back to your point, because have you been talking about this for 10 years? And can you believe no one's ever listened to us? But like that, you know, what that also says is that you haven't done your due diligence. It doesn't mean to erase the parts of a story and the people that populate that story that make you uncomfortable or you feel like you don't fully understand. That means that maybe this is not something you should be taking on all by yourself.

And I do think that there is value in the fact that PTA can get a massive budget and eyes on his story. stories, so it then becomes kind of like your responsibility as a filmmaker and as a writer to do right by the story you're telling. Yeah, and it's not, it's, I guess I shouldn't say it like that, but like, I was going to say it's not that hard because we have Google, you could just literally look up what stereotypes are for each marginalized group and then just to avoid them. I don't know why. And maybe it comes back to him trying to subvert things, but then you didn't do a job subverting it because, and subversion is very, very difficult when it comes to stereotypes because you first have to perpetuate that stereotype, so you're already feeding back into it and then subvert it.

But you're still showing it. So I'm not really for the subversion of stereotypes anymore, like anymore as we're feeding the machine that we're trying to get rid of, you know. Yeah, it reminds me of like when like a satirical film will be like, see, look at this trope, but then they just still do it because they're presenting it. They're like, well, we know it's a trope, but here it is. And you're like, here it is. So what's what's the point? Yeah. This is also, I'm worried I'm going to forget to mention it later, but this was like one of the, I think, because I didn't know anything about this movie going into it except this is like a filming detail, but I think it's. worth mentioning because I find it.

So, especially in a movie that it's just like absurd that anyone would be like, well, I don't want to talk about the politics of it. It's like, well, then make a different movie. Make liquor. Make licorice pizza too or whatever. But like, but that in the shooting of this movie, there was a sequence.

I don't know what sequence was shot in Sacramento on location. And there were unhoused encampments that were fully swept to make room for the filming of certain sequences in one battle after another. Are you kidding me?

I'm not. Because I remember, shout out to We The Unhoushous that we talked about that on that show, like that Hollywood productions, especially in California and New York, will very frequently have no issue with not just presenting really insidious stereotypes around unhoused people,

but also literally displace unhoused people to tell those stories. And so in a movie that is so clearly at least in a surface way touching on displacement to displace people in service of doing that like that that that was just like one of the things that I remember that was like what I took into the theater being like because I just that's so vile to me and that and that's you know that's the film industry and city governments working like that it takes more than Warner brothers wanting a sweep to happen to make it happen but I just it's still just very especially with what this movie appears to want you to think it's doing is very gross. It's like performative activism. Like the movie wants you to make it feel like it's for revolution while literally feeding into the establishment that stops us from progressing as a society.

Absolutely. I did not know that. That makes me hate this more. It really, it really pisses me off. Yeah. No, it's infuriating. Yeah. Well, I guess back to the recap.

Oh, God. We're still recap. Oh, my God. We're in like minute four of the movie. We're about halfway through, I think. We're at the part where Sensei is helping Bob get to the rendezvous point, except that Bob still doesn't know where that is, so he keeps calling the, like, resistance hotline.

And after several conversations, he is finally able to get the rendezvous point, which is a place called Sisters of the Brave Beard. So Bob sets off toward that place. He's like following a group of skateboarding parkour guys who are like jumping from rooftop to rooftop. And Bob falls off a roof and gets caught and arrested by the police. He gets teased. I did like the Teas moment. The DeCaprio getting teased moment.

Yeah. I was for it. Yeah. Meanwhile, Willa and Deandra are also making their way to, the rendezvous point. Willa has a secret cell phone, which her father didn't know about. He doesn't let her have a phone because it can be traced. I also did love that. I think that was my favorite detail in the movie where it's like I know that he's updating this story from I think like the 60s and 70s into the modern era. And like I think that the way this movie, I don't know, I really

like paying attention to how a movie works its way around the existence of phones. And I think this movie threads that needle wall because of course she has a secret phone what the hell do you mean she's a teenage yeah she's a teen girl yeah um yeah the original the the book like the present of the story takes place in like Reagan era 80s and then like the flashbacks or whatever it's like washed up hippies yeah the 60s and 70s got um anyway so she has a secret cell phone which the military does trace because one of her friends gives up her number. So there's there's a lot of rats among among these characters. And can we talk about that really quick? Like the only LGBT character or outwardly LGBT character rats their friend out.

Yeah. And it's like this is kind of a problem with tokenism, like where you only have one character representing an entire group of people. That's the only image that people who don't interact with the LGBT community get of our community and because I am I am bisexual and all that kind of stuff. But like that also pissed me off because it's like really it could have been there were three friend characters and you picked the only one, the only representation that we had and gave it to and made them a again which is it does play into another stereotype that LGBT people in media are usually villains and stuff like that. That's an old stereotype that we're kind of getting out of these days.

But here again, this movie just loves its stereotypes that, of course, that would happen. And I feel like it, Paul Thomas Anderson, I feel like we've been bouncing back and forth in whether he knows or not. And I'm getting into the camp that he knows because it's too many times that he uses very, very specific stereotypes for marginalized characters. He knows they exist. And I don't know if he cares. And so to me, this movie then doesn't become, well, it was never going to be.

I mean, a movie is not going to be like a revolutionary catalysts or anything like that. But it felt like that's what it was trying to be. Or, you know, it cannot, it cannot throw so many marginalized people under the bus. and expect us to then want to go out and incite revolution. Thank you, yes. Yeah, that was a wild one to me where it's like, I guess in that specific case, I like could not discern of like just because there's like outside of Chase Infinity, so few young people get any sort of meaningful screen time.

And I'm like, even if it wasn't necessarily explicitly intended, it looks really bad. It looks quite bad for the movie. Because like just the perspectives for a movie that at its end says like, the kids have got this probably, hopefully, I'm going to stay home and smoke weed and wait for my daughter to get home. Like for a movie to end on that note and have really like only interest in a single character that is sort of being presented as. the next generation is a choice for sure. Also, to go back to the queer character who rats out Willa, the way they are talked about by the protagonist of this movie, Bob, where it seems like Bob, like, sure, I might be an anti-fascist revolutionary,

but things are too woke these days. And I can't catch up. I can't understand. What does non-binary mean? Oh, you're triggered. you little snowflake. I will say there are some aging, some aging leftists that have that.

Fair, fair. But I feel like in this movie, that characteristic of Bob is presented as, it's definitely framed as a joke. Like, we're meant to like, ha, ha, ha, ha. That's funny.

Well, yeah, there's, like, the moment where the guy who needs to know, like, what the password has or whatever is, like, getting, like, it felt like a very kind of cheap shot of like, I'm triggered by the tone of your voice. You're violating my safe space. Yeah.

Right. And that he's, Bob is calling that person an ablest slur. He's saying, you're ridiculous, you snowflake. And I think that we're supposed to like be endeared to Bob with the way that he's responding to that stuff. Yeah. I agree. And I also think that he's like in the form of that character on the phone, who is kind of

being annoying. I think he's kind of like creating a straw man. because I'm like, I was sort of frustrated with how organized leftists were presented in certain moments where, I don't know. I mean, there's like a lot of ways to look at it. But I felt like, yeah, that phone operator in particular was sort of like a snowflake straw man who I don't really think exists in the world in quite that way. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

We should hope. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Willa's phone is tracked, and so the military have a sense of where she's headed. Meanwhile, Willa and Deandra arrive at Sisters of the Brave Beaver, which turns out to be a convent full of nuns who grow weed. Fun.

Fun. And is that name like a euphemism? I was curious about that. I think for sure, right? Like, yeah. Beaver, come on. everything in this movie is very on the nose. Yeah, that feels like in the same camp as the like the white supremacist Christmas Club or whatever.

You're just like, sure, I guess that's what we're calling. And we also learn at some point that Willa thinks her mom was a hero and that she is dead and Lockjaw killed her. She doesn't know that her mom ratted out her friends and then ditched everyone. and soon Willa learns the truth and then has to grapple with that information, another thread that gets mostly dropped, I would say. Yeah, her relationship to her mom in general. I also like with Willa, I feel like there are certain Mary Sue tropes that are avoided with her. I agree.

That I appreciated. But I think especially, like, I mean, it just goes to the fact that every opportunity that Willa has to develop a bond with another woman. or even just like her conception of her mom. It's kind of interrupted by either her father adoptive or biological in every single possible opportunity. Because I was wondering, because we don't really get a ton of time with her and Bob at the top of the movie, she seems to have very strong feelings about ratting out revolutionaries.

And I was like, was she raised with an idea around revolutionaries and that ratting is bad. Like what is her? I thought she was, I guess, being kept at arm's length from revolutionary activity altogether for her own safety. Like I just had a lot of questions around it that again, like you're saying, Caitlin, are kind of not, are just like not under explored. Yeah. Because I was like, wow, she really was like betrayed to find out that her mother had ratted her friends out, which is like, of course there's plenty of people that feel that. But I just was like, I wanted more into her conception of her mother. But it also like emphasizes the fact that what we know about perfidia is only shaped by

Lockjaw and Bob. And she never really gets the chance to talk to DeAndra long enough. Yeah. And I would say that like I think again that's by design because I don't think Willa is supposed to be. I don't think she's supposed to be a character. I'll say. Like I think kind of like I was saying earlier on, I think both she and her mom are just mcuffins for what the two white protagonists want. And other than that, like, I do appreciate that

they gave her, you know, some things to do, but her character as a whole is kind of what each scene, kind of what each scene needs. Like, and that's why it's inconsistent. And I'm not sure who said it, But by the end of it, because she is our only teen next generation character, and because we don't know anything about her upbringing, we don't know what she feels about the revolution, it being random for her to be mad that her mom's a rat. Like, we don't know why she wants to be, why she wants to pick up the baton and move forward for the next generation. There's just like nothing there. we have to assume everything about this character rather than it being fleshed out in the story, which is, again, a lot of narrative baggage is put onto Prophidia and Willa. Instead of them being a part of the story, they are just cogs.

And it's like, okay, we need you to be this right now type of thing. I hope that makes sense. No, definitely. I think I was impressed after the first watch that Willis, is presented as more than just like a typical damsel in distress who can't do anything and has to wait until the white man protagonist saves her but that's not enough yeah you also have to characterize that character it's just more than we're used to it's just so unfortunate yeah yes okay so okay so I swear the movie is it's also a long movie so it is very long as three hours but we're nearing

the end. So we cut back to the Christmas Adventurers Club, who after digging into Lockjaw's past, have discovered a claim that he is the father of a mixed race child. And they know that he is currently in Backton Cross attempting to find this child, aka Willa Ferguson. So they send one of their members, this guy named Tim, to go after Lockjaw and eliminate him since he lied and betrayed the Christmas club and is making a fool of them or whatever. Then we cut back to Bob, who is like being processed after his arrest, but one of the people who is interacting with him seems to be an associate of Sensei's, and she helps him escape. Actually, two people end up helping him escape.

And then Sensei picks Bob up, and they continue on toward the rendezvous. V-Vos point, Sensei's mission to help the undocumented migrants that he is like providing safety for be damned. Who cares about them? He's got Bob to help. But Benicio del Toro is cooking so hard

in this sequence that I neglected to question why he was doing what he was doing. He's like, I've had a few small beers and we're like, ha ha ha, ha, exactly. Such a great character. So good. So, so good. I really quick I this was just like something that I remembered thinking and then forgot to look up when I saw it in theaters the Christmas club guy I was like he looks so familiar who is this who is this who is this man oh the guy from scandal it's literally the president from scandal yeah yeah I like shouted in the middle of watching I was like scandal guy right um anyways yeah it's talking about that that sequence. The fact that

Del Toro, Gierre del Tormo, no, so bad with names. Benicio del Toro. Benicio del Toro. Like his network goes into hospitals and I just found that so much more fascinating than the movie

that we got. His web of, it's almost like the underground railroad where he has so many people moving and so many different intricacies within And we talked about the skateboarders and now the hospital. Like how much work that, how much work, how much trust that he has to have in the community is so very interesting to get around the system that is that is oppressing them.

Yeah. Which like, again, when you think about it more, because I kind of forgot how I hate that I have like Madam Webbraim where I'm like his web connects them all. the same thing. We're so sick. But I forgot how much his web connects them all, but like how robust this. I mean, because I think as it's presented

in the movie, it's almost like his web extends to whatever the narrative needs to get him out of a jam. But again, it's so impressive. And like you just want a whole movie with him because why would this character go down for the Ringo of the French 75. It doesn't make sense.

Truly. Okay, so meanwhile, Lockjaw has figured out where Willa is. He raids the Covent. Sorry, he, not the Covent. The Covent. He raids the convent. I always mix those two words up. He raids the convent and abducts Willa.

He has a paternity test kit briefcase with him to determine whether or not she is. is his biological child and it turns out she is so lockjaw basically needs to get rid of her he turns her over to a bounty hunter that he has hired to murder her but this bounty hunter refuses to kill children or minors so i think trafficking in some pretty insidious native stereotypes in yes pursuit of doing that yeah right And then, yeah, so Lockjaw pays him to take Willa to someone who will kill her. Meanwhile, Bob has stolen a car and he's tracking Lockjaw around, chasing everyone.

Then Tim, the Christmas adventurer guy, pulls up beside Lockjaw and shoots him in the head, his car care careens off the road. Bob approaches and finds the vehicle, freaks out because he thinks Willa is inside, but discovers that she's not there. So he keeps looking for her. Meanwhile, the bounty hunter takes Willa to some house where she will be killed,

but then he has a change of heart and decides to set Willa free. There's a shootout and all of the men are killed. Willa escapes in the bounty hunter's car, but oh no she's being followed by Tim Mr. Christmas, who I think intends to kill her as well. And then Bob is following both of them. Willa outsmarts Tim and shoots and kills him.

Bob arrives on the scene and his and Willa's trust devices are activated. And so father and son, sorry, father and son. This is not a movie about. No, this is actually for once a movie about fathers and father. so used to saying fathers and sons. So father and daughter reunite and drive off. But wait, somehow Lockjaw survived both being shot in the head and what appeared to be a fatal car crash. And so we cut to, I think, one of the most unnecessary scenes in any movie ever because let him just die when he gets shot.

Oh, I guess I'll be, I'll have the dissenting opinion here. I really loved to watch him think he got what he wanted and then die in the most embarrassing way possible. He deserved a more violent death than that, but I liked that they hit the nail on like, and even the white supremacists don't fuck with this guy. Like, I don't know. I guess I do like that. That is kind of satisfying, but I'm like, the movie's already. He could have died earlier.

Two and a half hours long. Wrap it up. Anyway, but he's being interviewed again by the Christmas. adventurers who ask him if he had a romantic relationship with perfidia Beverly Hills. He tells them something that we alluded to earlier, which is that she drugged and raped him, and he's accepted into the club, or so he thinks, because he's escorted to his new office, but it's a trap and he's locked inside, and a poisonous gas is released into the room, killing him. It reminded me of that scene in Goodfellas.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, the Joe Pesci? Yes, where Joe Pesci walks into the room and they're immediately because he also, I think he was a rat, right? I forget why they off him. He's, it reminded me of that where he's like, he, he, he, yay, best day ever. And then he's killed immediately. Right.

Oh, my gosh. I don't remember if Joe Pesci is a rat. Ray Liotta's character is definitely a rat. That's the whole thing. Oh, maybe that's what I was confusing. Either way, they off Joe Pashy, I think, in a similar fashion. I don't know. I don't know why I'm a sucker for like a bad character going in and being like

do do do do to do and then just immediately getting whacked. I guess I love to see it. I don't know why. That is fun. Anyway, we cut back to Bob and Willa. He gives her a heartfelt letter from her mom expressing a desire to possibly reconnect one day. And then the movie ends with Willa heading to a. protest in Oakland for, I think, the, like, ice equivalent of this movie doing another mass

abduction of migrant people, and she's going to protest that. Alone. Alone. Yeah. Why is he not going with her? Truly. But that's, oh, that's like the whole thesis issue where it's like, best of luck, kids. And it reminded me, I know we have to go to a break, but it reminded me so much. And maybe this, I hope that this is like not too out of pocket and random feeling. But just I get so frustrated by that message and that kind of messaging in general. It feels so like a refusal to engage with your generation's contribution to the problem.

And it reminds me a lot of, I feel like I first, the first time I really connected for me was in the early 2010s when gun violence and schools had. such a sharp uptick and that it seemed like a lot of the press messaging at that time was like very understandably behind student groups that wanted gun law to be reformed and to be fixed and to make it impossible for this to happen. But it was more like, oh, the kids have got it. Like Gen Z is going to save us all and that kind of messaging versus anyone with actual institutional power or even proximity to it putting something on the line to do. it. And it seems like in the closing shot of this movie, we're literally told, uh, well, DiCaprio's done his part and now he can just chill and watch his Roku while his daughter

puts her body on the line. It just feels like a very evasive, uh, way to end this story. Very much so. And I think that's a problem with kind of what we're going through right now in the world and, and protests and stuff like that. I feel. like a lot of, we don't learn from the generation before us. Like Perfidia says in her letter, she's like, we failed. And it's like, okay, but how did you fail? How did you succeed? Like, where did you? A history can be very much a roadmap to how things could either progress or regress now. And like looking back at the civil rights movement, they weren't just out in the streets. They were protesting in all kinds of different ways. And I feel like it can't just be the

performative going to like a no Kings march. Exactly. And like, and I went to that and I'm like, oh, we're not doing anything. The, like the march on Washington, the famous one, It wasn't just the March on Washington. It was the March on Washington for jobs and freedom. There was a specific goal. And I feel like every time we go out now, it's just, well, I don't like this thing. And it's like, okay, sure. We have to be more specific, though.

What are we going to do about it? Yes. What is your goal? A protest is just like acting if it does not have a goal. And I feel like that's this movie. Its goal is to feel like it's doing something. without doing it at all. Definitely.

You know what it would have been for, I just had this thought, but I was like, just to give this movie a little more, because I feel like a movie that presents this many massive topics and really only touches many of them on the surface, like needs a less, like the ending to this movie,

just like based on the conversation we've had so far, feels too, like, concise and to like, literally, I mean, even the choice of like the Tom Petty, like she was an American girl, just feels so like I feel like this, I feel like we needed something more ambiguous here. I'm like even a scene where not to argue to make the movie longer, but a scene that I really wanted that the scripts seemed to not want us to have was a longer period of time, a chance for Willa to talk to Deandra. And it's like, have Willa visit Deandra in jail or give us some insight into what happened to Deandra. Because Deandra is, from what I can tell, the character who can actually help Willa become an effective revolutionary. But for whatever reason, like, it has to be vague and optimistic and unspecific.

When it's like, I think that the character who has these answers for her and they're difficult answers, but like she was just kind of written out of the movie 45 minutes ago. Right. And talk about like another movie that I would have loved. to see. I would have loved to see it from DeAndra's perspective. Because, you know, all revolutions, I mean, they're circles. That's what a revolution is. So it's like they have their time when they start and they come back and, you know, it's like a merry-go-round. That's when the next generation kind of hops on and takes over. But like it would have been nice to see, because it seemed like she was at least one of the leaders within the group, see this leader in their heyday and to see it fall and to

hopefully see it pick back up. Like, it feels like there were just, that is a whole other movie within this. That could have been just so very interesting. But because it wasn't, this, the movie that we got was not interested in delving into what real revolutionary like practices are. Right. We got the surface level. We can't have DeAndra come back because then we'd have to talk about those things.

And I don't want to talk about those things. I want the happy ending and all that jazz. Yeah. On that note, let's take another quick break. And then we'll come back to keep discussing. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Hello.

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Right on your screen. Cheers. Open the free IHard Radio app. Search video podcasts and tap watch. Hey there, everybody. Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes here from the Amy and T.J. podcast. A lot of times, the story of the day is what we're all talking about. And yes, sometimes it's Love Island.

And sometimes it's Serena Robes. Coming back to the U.S. Open. Sometimes it's obsession, Odyssey and Spider-Man making box office history. Oh, yeah, House of the Dragon finale, we were there for it. And yes, whether or not Bryce is finally going to ask Trinity to be his girlfriend, we want to know. Yes, these things matter. Of course, we're not suggesting that the Love Island reunion, which is at 9 o'clock Eastern on Monday, August 31st, is as important as the war in Iran. But hopefully, Rose, people get our point.

So join us every day on the Amy and T.J. Podcast where we're talking about what you're talking about. Listen to Amy and T.J. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. We've already been discussing a lot of things throughout the recap. What else would you like to either touch on or expand on? Expand on. Yeah, we went through a lot.

Oh, I think it's just like, I just feel like stories, they are how we communicate with each other and how we express, you know, how we feel about the world around us and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, how we make sense of the world. Yes. And it feels like when we keep telling the same stories, if they're going to be a tool in helping us progress, if we keep telling the same stories, then we're going to stay in the same place. where it's like we're running in place. And seeing this, seeing sinners and then seeing this movie in the same, same category for best picture just tells me that. And maybe this, I hope this is not too pessimistic, but like it feels like we don't want to move forward, at least with like storytelling and stuff.

And I would love to hear with you guys think, like, I just think stories are so powerful. And that's why I do what I do and break them down so much. obsess over them. But it's like going back to slavery, look how that one story has traveled over four centuries for us to be here talking about it in this movie. Like, that's a great power, and we just have to be more responsible with it.

So that's what I got to say. Sorry. No, no. It seems especially Hollywood, financed and distributed movies are going to typically uphold the status quo, the status quo being patriarchy, white supremacy, etc. Because it's a capitalist industry. And so there can't be anything, there can't be any stories that are too radical or revolutionary

within the Hollywood system. Right. Or they don't get the financing. I mean, I think the only outlier, or not the, only but one of the outliers that I feel like we or that I think about who is also constantly undermined by that exact same system is Boots Riley right like who makes explicitly political films that I mean I think even we haven't covered we even covered his most recent film yet because we usually will give it a year or so before before covering a recent movie but like I Love Boosters

you know was not given the same promotional put that other movies around that time were made. And I think that, again, it's like, clearly Boots Riley's audience is there, but filmmakers who want to make explicitly political movies and want to budget, it's always going to be a huge complication because, like, who's holding the purse strings and where do their interests lie, I guess. Yeah. Especially with a production that is willing to, again, like, sweep unhoused encampments

in order to make this very kind of surface level political story. Right. To that point, and we touched on this a little bit already, but during the awards cycle that this movie was very present in, the Oscars, the BAFTAs, the AFI Awards, all of these, you know, prestigious awards, Paul Thomas Anderson, like, insisted on staying like neutral slash, a political slash silent despite having made a film that for all its shortcomings does have a noticeable political undercurrent and maybe even an overcurrent but like and we have and we'll talk more about the ways in which this again fall short but there's no doubt that there's a political stance to some degree in this movie but he's just like no no no I can't even talk about

that. What? I'm not political. He complied with the president of the Berlin Film Festival who told the participants to stay out of politics. Then at the BAFTAs, he dodged a question about whether or not high-profile filmmakers should speak on politics. He's just, he's like, I can't talk about that. And also because I think that would introduce questions about his collaborators and him that would probably be very difficult for him to answer with any honesty because we have Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead who is famously holds pro-Israel Zionist standpoints. He is working with Leonardo DiCaprio who wants to seem to look more progressive than he is by taking this part because he has a massive stake in Israeli hotels and you know we could get into the Sean Penn of it all

where Sean Penn has been extensively incredibly accused of abusing women and other people. Like there is just kind of no end to, I was like disappointed but not surprised that he didn't open himself up to that kind of criticism because the work will not hold if he opens himself up to that kind of criticism. At a time where that kind of political bravery is like so needed. This is like the same. I mean, as we're recording this, there's like a big conversation around. Mark Ruffalo right now, who has been very politically courageous. But around the time of this same award cycle, Javier Bardem was extremely outspoken about Palestine in like the same award ceremonies that Paul Tom has interested is just sitting there

with his hands folded. It's, yeah, I don't know. I wasn't surprised to see it, but it is so frustrating. I'm like, why did you make, I do. want more political blockbuster movies to be coming out, but I just don't, I don't understand why you would make this movie and then refuse to acknowledge that it is obviously political. Well, it's almost like, you know, he has that privilege to do so. You know, when, sorry that I keep bringing up sinners, but like, also an inherently

political film. Unfortunately, Ryan Cougler can't avoid those questions. questions. Thomas Anderson can. And like, we were saying how it's because where the bag come from, where the money comes from and all that kind of stuff. And, and I appreciate that Ryan Klugler is building his own, you know, within this industry, like his own path and his own production company and stuff like that where he can fund his own movies so that he doesn't have to be beholden to those same, I hate to say it, like Zionism. viewpoints where it's like you have to say what we want you to say or you have to ignore what we want you to ignore so that we can keep the status quo and I feel like art is inherently like it has

always been political and has always been like the voice of you know I don't want to say it like it's it has been like a catalyst for like revolution and stuff but it has most definitely been a it's a tool it's like it's a tool yes yeah because like you know if we go back to the civil rights movement Martin Luther King and Malcolm X

learned from James Baldwin James Baldwin was not like the big activist out in the street he was just an author and had the mind and you learn from his art you learn from his books and then the revolutionaries can go out there and take that with them when they're out in the streets.

I see that in sinners when you have a story like one battle after another, which refuses both to engage with its political messaging within the story. And then Paul Thomas Anderson not engaging it with it outside of the story. Well, then what is this? It doesn't feel like a piece of art. It feels like someone trying to sell me something. excuse the SpongeBob reference, but like that's what I feel. Spongeb references welcome.

Yeah. This is a safe space for Spongebob fans. No, I totally see what you're saying. It's so I think that like the Oscars and the award conversation with these two films in the same year is very relevant. And I suspect and I saw other people sort of speculating similarly that this movie getting more just in terms of like awards hardware at the Oscars than sinners is not going to be something that ages particularly well. It just isn't. And that like with as you're talking about

Ryan Coogler building up his own ability to finance his own work on this scale, it reminds me a lot of how we've seen historically, but I think specifically in the last couple of years, how that seems that is sort of one of the things that enables artists, entertainers in general to speak in a politically liberated way. I think a lot about like, I feel like I'm constantly citing Ms. Rachel in this conversation, but it's true. She's awesome. She's amazing. And she is very politically concise and clear about where she stands. And I think that a lot of the reason she's able to do that, that I wish people talked about more, is because she owns her work.

She licenses it out to Netflix. Netflix can't tell her to shut up. No one can tell her to shut up because she owns it. And as artists and as entertainers, I think that that's like something that is really difficult to achieve, but important to like support and empower when someone does achieve it. Because otherwise you kind of end up, you know, there are certain filmmakers that I think end up kind of making stuff

that feels pretty muzzled. And you're like, and who fucking knows what they actually? actually think. You know, like, it's like what we know for sure is they've agreed to play ball. And then that that work that comes out is what's going to have the cultural impact. And it's like every that one battle after another is an example of that. Where I think it's, you know, based on who PTA works with and comments he's made in the past. And I mean, it, it seems clear that he has no issue taking money from Zionist institutions. but yeah like that I don't know I really admire and I worry about like us culturally putting so much on Ryan Ku Klukler's shoulders because he is doing so much right too and it's that's a lot of pressure and I appreciate you saying that because it shouldn't just be on and a lot of times with marginalized groups it all is on just like one person to like get us through everything but I I wholeheartedly agree with like the age of the internet you

you can find your audience, you can, and if you have a big enough audience, they can back your projects. And it's like when I, when I first started, not when I first started, but like, Hollywood has always been gay kept. And that's just how the industry was. And for a long time, it was just like straight white dudes who could make the movie star in the movies and have their stories told and all that kind of stuff. But now it's, I won't say it's perfect, but But like at least, you know, sometimes we harp on technology, but the great thing about the internet is that the gate is open and we only have to step through it to just to continue to tell our stories. And like you said, Ms. Rachel, nobody can tell her what the fuck to say.

And they want, they want so hard to shut her up. And she just keeps standing with Palestine. She keeps standing with black children, any, all of all colors. And I, I, I, I, like wholeheartedly like I'm just like do your thing girls because I sorry I'm kind of like just fan girling over Miss Rachel but like because no she's not beholden to anyone she can do and say what she wants and she is putting out good into the world for our kids and kids media and I wholeheartedly think that you know a lot of our this has nothing to do with one bad but a lot of our children's media is getting infantilized and that we no longer, like, in the days of, like, Mr. Rogers and Arthur and all those kinds of things that kids learned and kids learned to be emotionally intelligent and all those kinds of things and can take that with them into the world. Kids media is just not, at least mainstream media, is getting dumber and dumber on purpose so that they're less equipped to go out into the world.

and she's combating that and I appreciate that. That's my soapbox for Miss Rachel. No, 100%. And it's well deserved. 100%. And I mean, and then you have someone like Paul Thomas Anderson who is beholden to the Hollywood system and seems perfectly fine with that. It seems comfortable with that. That's the other thing.

Yeah. Because as we also already touched on, he has presented this group of, you know, the French 75. they are doing revolutionary violence. And I do think there is value in presenting revolutionary violence as a legitimate approach to toppling fascism. Yes. And that's the only one's going to get done. In a movie of this scale. Yeah.

Absolutely. So I think there is value in that. However, as we already talked about, it is almost there to serve more as like world building and backdrop and set dressing than actual. showing anything meaningful about how revolutionary violence works, what it can achieve anything like that. And what that community looks like. Because I think we get a lot of, and again, like through underdeveloped characters, because I think about like all of the women, most often black women who are introduced, who we don't

really get to know throughout. I'm thinking of all of the nuns. I'm thinking of in the flashback sequences, jungle pussy seems to be perfidia's best friend, but we only get a couple of lines of dialogue from her. And then we find out she's dead from the Christmas club later. Like there's all of these revolutionary characters. And we see, you know, something that is basically true, which is that when there are revolutionary groups, that there is always an interest from a white supremacist state to undermine them, to infiltrate them, to turn them against each. other by any means necessary. I think that that's like a valid point to make, but I don't think that we got really a chance to see the value of what they had. I think you need to see the value

of like the community and the organizing that they had in order to understand what's really lost. We're told that this revolutionary movement was lost and that it ultimately was undermined by a fascist state and failed. But I don't think that we spent enough time seeing what they were doing and why they were doing it. Although I agree with you, Caitlin, I think that, like, showing revolutionary tactics as valid and effective is very important. And I wish we had just, for so many reasons, I wish we had spent more time there. Because it felt like the interest of the movie was with the system which undermined them

rather than the revolution itself. Right. I was going to recommend a movie with the caveat that I haven't seen it since it came out a few years ago. but I remember being quite affected by it. And it actually does focus on characters who are doing revolutionary violence. And that is what the story is about. Is the movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Oh, yes.

By friend of the cast, Issa Maze. Oh, my gosh. It was a producer on that movie. No kidding. Shout out of Issa. I want to rewatch the movie. But I remember, again, I was like, whoa. Like, this is the type of art that could inspire people.

to do revolution and how to blow up a pipeline isn't getting the budget or push that movies like one battle is I feel like it probably flew under most people's radar yeah yeah I gotta check that out I would say another is which this movie actually shows both the the activism and also the the infiltration and how dismantling our community how that happens is Judas and the Black Messiah about Fred Hampton. Yeah. Like, I remember watching the, yeah, oh gosh, if you guys, if I did it. Do you want to come back?

Come back. I would love to because I just remember watching that and being like, there it is. That is what we are missing right now as we make our movements. Like, we're all in our corners. And Fred Hampton just did a great job of showing us that we have so much more in common than we have differences. And our real enemy is those people at the top that are continuing trying to divide us. I'm trying to remember there's this one scene from it where he goes into, I think he goes into a white supremacist bar. And it just brings everyone together.

And I think that's, I know I'm not painting it as great as it is in the movie. But like, I would really hope that if that movie is seen, that that's what we could take away from what we need to do today. And it also shows how easy it is and how fragile everything is and how, how, you know, quickly that hope could be snuffed out. No, absolutely. Yeah, that's, I'm like, that's a good reminder for us to cover that movie because I feel like it's not talked about enough. And it's like, I remember the director of that movie. I think his name, let me just double check. Yes. Shaka King was a student of Spike Lee's. And so it's like another kind of like, okay, so in order to have these stories told effectively, it's not out of the question that a director of any race could tell a story like this effectively, but we should be having more. more generationally, more black directors telling these stories. I mean, one battle after another is unfortunately a great example of how a white director can with it out of, it seems like, at least in some part, due to a lack of curiosity or thought outside of his own experience.

Absolutely. And just a total lack of understanding and empathy for the people of color and women within the story. because if you had that empathy, then Profidia would not be a cartoon character as she, like, turned out to be. Like, so cartoonishly horny that she wants to have sex next to a bomb that's about to go off? Like, what are you talking about? It's so cringeworthy. Like, just that whole 15-minute sequence, I'm just like, I know you can't see my face, but I'm giving it. the most disgusted look.

And I also don't think that that takes away from like how impressive Tiana Taylor's performance is with what she's given too. Because it's like she commits. I found a great piece about this movie on the substack of Brooke Obie, aka Black Girl Watching entitled One Fetish After Another, PTA exploits Black Women and Avert's Revolution. It's behind a paywall. I think it's well worth the subscription fee to read her work, but I wanted to pull a few quotes from it. Brooke writes, quotes.

Anderson isn't commenting on the white male fetatization of black women. He's directly participating in it. His camera leers on Taylor's body just as Lockjaw does because the audience only sees her through the lens of the white men who fetish fetishize her. Celebrating their successful liberation of the camp, Perfidia makes out with Pat in the backseat of the getaway car. She breaks away from the kiss only to ask Jungle Pussy and Deandra, do you think he likes Black girls? They laugh as he yells, of course I like Black girls. That's why I'm here. One can assume his attraction to Black girls is what earns him the moniker ghetto Pat. Like most insufferable swirl couples, you know, the French 75 insists that interracial

relationships with white people are the revolution. Race is imperative to the lust all of the characters portrayed in sexual relationships feel for each other. The piece goes on to say, perfidia seems to feel the same about whiteness, naming herself after a city, parentheses, Beverly Hills, famous for all the promise that white Americanness can hold, fame, wealth, power. But mutually lusting across racial lines doesn't make perfidia and her fetishizers equal. There was a huge power imbalance along racial and gender lines that perfidia seems to ignore because Anderson ignores it in the writing of the script, let alone the character. And then skipping ahead a little bit, just this last quote here. Perfidia's mother appears briefly to lecture Pat about being wrong for her daughter, who comes from a whole line of revolutionaries.

What does that legacy mean to perfidia? How does she reconcile the ancestral tradition with her own fetishizing of whiteness? Why is she trying to feel like fictional white male drug lord Tony Montana if she's got a revolutionary lineage to draw from? When all of her fucking leads to pregnancy, she chooses to have the baby at the height of her activism. Why? We'll never know, because Anderson isn't interested in perfidia as a character, but black women revolution. as caricature, unquote. Not to poke a tiny, tiny, tiny hole in that, which I think is very valid. And also speaks to how to the side the politics of this movie are.

I think the reason that she has the baby, and this is like in an aside that I didn't notice in my first viewing, and I don't think is made clear, it seems like part of what the French 75 is fighting against in that opening sequence is the fact that abortion has been made illegal again. So I think that there's a possibility that she has the child theoretically because she doesn't have the option to not have the child. I don't I miss that. I mean, I very much agree with the majority of that. But I wanted to mention that because I had it in my notes as well of like this is again another massive issue that is referenced but completely unexplored. So I think that it's very possible, you know, in this movie is under exploration and kind of

kind of in curiosity about postpartum, that she never wanted to be a mother and that this was something that was essentially forced upon her in so many ways because of the political reality that this story has, but also doesn't engage with to the point where, like, I fully missed that until this feeling, yeah. I mean, either way, her relationship to motherhood and whether or not she wanted to be a mother, is still something that the movie doesn't touch on at all. No idea. Yeah.

Because it just doesn't seem to care. Yeah. To find out. Definitely not. I have to read that. That was very, very, uh, well said. We will include the link in the show notes. But yeah, it's an excellent read.

I recommend shelling out $8 and reading it. Um, I wanted to touch on really quickly. We talked about this, with this movie, uh, A lot of key players who are pretty undeniably Zionist. There's also the Sean Penn of it all. We've talked about it in other episodes, so we don't need to get too much into it. But he has been credibly accused in the past of domestic abuse, of assaulting people of just general anger issues that has made him a difficult sell for me to want to. I'm not showing him for his movies.

and I found relevant to our show, something I hadn't seen before, but I guess in 2022, for whatever reason, he decided I'm going to make some annoying comments about masculinity. Oh, yes, I saw this too. Let's all get mad together about whatever the hell people is talking about here. So he makes two sets of comments, but they're basically the same thing. He says, I am in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized. I don't think that being a brute or having insensitivity or disrespect for women is anything to do with masculinity or ever did. But I don't think that in order to be fair to women, we should become them.

Which doesn't just have a strong whiff of transphobia attached to it. It also is just so, I don't know, maybe he's well used in this character who I'm sure would agree with what Sean Penn is saying here. It doesn't seem like he was acting at all now. It doesn't seem like he was acting. And if you also needed a reminder that Sean Penn's a fucking, like at best a fucking asshole, there's your reminder for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Does anyone have anything else they want to talk about? Hmm. I think we've at least touched on everything that. I mean, I could talk about this movie for another two hours, but it's a rich text on it. Yeah. Yes. I will say, like, I do think there is a pattern that we're kind of missing when it comes to what is awarded and what is not, since it was such a big story with the Oscars and stuff like that. 13 nominations, as many as Titanic got, right?

Yeah, I think so. I think 12 or 13 was Titanic. Yeah, something like that. It feels like always coming back. to the two juggernauts that were there. It was one battle after another and sinners. And I think that the reason why sinners, as fantastic as that movie was, it did not take home the big prize because of its lack of whiteness within the movie. And it's something that I call like the white anchor. Like if a movie is about people of color, then it is usually pushed to the side and called

like a black movie or a Latino movie or an Asian movie. And it's not for the quote unquote mainstream, though, unless it has that one character that white people can kind of latch onto. Sitter has only had the white supremacists and nobody wants to feel like they're a white supremacist even though, you know, got a few in this country. Yeah. Yeah. But. But one battle after another, though it should be, it really, really should have been a black movie. It should have been about these black female revolutionaries. They had to slot in Leonardo DiCaprio's character. They had to slot in Sean Penn's character so that, okay, now this movie has mainstream appeal in the eyes of Hollywood.

But if you look at its competitor with the all-black cast, how far that movie reached, it shows that you don't need that, that our stories can be universal, that it shouldn't matter who the protagonist is on screen. You should be able to relate to them. Just as, as, you know, growing up, I didn't see a lot of black main characters on screen, but I was able to relate to them, and it should go the other direction. I hope that makes sense. Absolutely. I mean, I think that so like basically Ryan Cougler's entire filmography and many other movies kind of bear this out is that when there's Hollywood conversations around like you're saying, Jess, how it's like in any like, I feel like cogent telling of one

battle after another, at best the two people who are the protagonists of this story are side characters fully and that the story should be around the black revolutionary women who are sort of very much intentionally kept at arm's length. But all of Rehanko's movies, including especially sinners, is proof that when people say that like, oh, well, you need a famous white actor in your movie, they're talking about in order to get money, not in order to get an audience because the audience was there for sinners, a hundred trillion percent. I'm pretty sure it made a lot more money than one battle at the box office. It did. It outperformed one battle by about $150 million at the box office. And centers had a lower budget, which means it made even more of a profit than one battle after

another. Yeah. So it's like I very much encourage our listeners, and I'm sure we're preaching to the choir. But like, you know, when those narratives show up of like, I feel like it almost always has more to do with who's financing the movies versus then who's actually seeing. We're just dying for for new stories to be told, it feels like. Yeah. And that very much proves it. There are so many unique and fascinating artists out there and who deserve to have their stories, you know, up on the big screen or or in books or wherever they would like to, you know, tell their story. But it just shows that when those stories are out there, they are universal.

for sure. Well, the movie does pass the bechal test. It does. It certainly could pass more. It's certainly, as we've spent the last two hours extrapolating on, it should have passed a lot more than it did, but it does technically pass the bechthal test at various points in the movie. Imperfect metric. Yes. But the perfect metric, of course, is the Bechtelcast nipple scale.

Iconic. Yes. where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. For this, I'm going to give it... I'll give it 1.5 for a couple of things. Again, I do think that there is value in a mainstream studio movie to show revolutionary violence and not demonize it.

And I do appreciate that Willa is not a typical damsel in distress. She more or less saves herself, which kind of renders Bob's whole story. In her. Kind of pointless. Like she would have been fine without him. So why are we following him the entire time? The world may never know. You know what?

I'm going to go down to one nipple because of that. There are a few small things that are lightly interesting about it to me. But by and large, it like whiffs on so many opportunities. Its representation of black women particularly is appalling. So one nipple. I'll give it to Chase Infinity. I'll go one and a half. I think.

Because I agree with what you're saying, Caitlin, I think that I'm going out the extra half because the perform, like any revolutionary, anything, even though I think we've been talking about for a while now how this movie's conception of revolution is, I think, intentionally quite vague. Yeah.

And like PTA's refusal to expand on any of the topics that the movie lightly touches on, sort of bears that out, that this movie is not trying to be revolutionary. and that its creators are not really willing to put anything on the line to defend what they may or may not have been trying to say with it. So it feels like there's just all kinds of stolen valor going on there, right? But I do think that the, and there's a piece I really enjoyed from friend of the cast,

Angelica, Jade Bastion, that kind of makes this point more, I mean, she's just like an amazing writer, so she's going to make it better than I ever could. But that the performances from specifically the black actresses in this movie are so strong and give dimension to characters that are not written to have the dimension that you feel when you're watching the performances and that that should not be a position that three incredible black actresses should be put into and especially and I again I will harp on Regina Hall because I'm just I'm still I will never get over how underutilized she is in this movie so the rest I think we we've

discussed, yeah, so I'll go one to half. I'm going to give one to Regina Hall, and then I'll give the other half to Chase Infinity, because, you know, if nothing else, this movie will hopefully launch a cool career for her. She seems great. Mm-hmm. Yes. Jess, how about you? Yeah, and just to piggyback off of what you just said, Jamie, like, I realize, you know, because there's so little representation in Hollywood for, you know, black actresses, they have to be. I have to, you know, to take, you know, these roles. There's, how else are they going to build their career and how else are they going to, you know, get that bag and be seen, you know?

Like, these are the roles provided. So there is no, no guilt on their part. So my half of a nipple goes to the actresses, the actors, the, the grips, the lighting director, all those people that worked on the film. that did their very best to give it a nice wrapping on the outside, but I can't give it more than half a nipple for the just blatant uses of very, very dangerous stereotypes and that were not only harmful, but awarded. And they've got, they, they have enough awards. They can get, they don't get any nipples. Totally fair. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This has been

such a wonderful conversation. Thank you. Please come back anytime. Come back anytime. With a movie you love next time, too. We won't torture you again. I will, I promise. I love films, so I

don't like shitting on it so very much, but this one was this one was wow. This one deserves the shit. And I really appreciate you guys and the work that you guys are doing.

So I appreciate you having me. Thank you. Likewise. Thank you so much. much for all of your work and for hanging with us. This was so much fun. It was. And speaking of your work, tell us more about it. Plug anything you want to plug. Oh, thank you. You know, I talk representation in media on my YouTube channel called Privy, and it's different social media handles all Prigary. So you can find me on there, and we just love breaking down

how important representation is and how it connects to the world around us as you saw, kind of like what we just did in this episode. So come check me up. Please do. Check us out on Instagram at Bechtelcast as well as our Patreon, aka Matrion. That's the best way to support the show. We do two bonus episodes every month on a genius theme that Jamie and I cook up. And often our listeners help.

So yes, if you want to directly support the show, that is truly the way to do it. And you get access to a backlog of, I think, going on 300 episodes. You can also check us out on tour. We are in the midst right now of our 10-year anniversary tour. You can check us out in October across the East Coast. So if you live basically anywhere in Pennsylvania, as well as Baltimore, Boston, or New York, come check us out and we will be continuing that tour throughout the year. So if you're in another region, patience, patience.

We're working on it. Indeed. You can get tickets to those shows at Linktree slash Bechtelcast. And with that, I don't know, should we all go and have a few small beers? Let's do it. I need a drink. Bye. Bye.

I see it. The Bechtelcast is a production of IHeartMedia. hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtenen. And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them? That's me.

And our logo and merch and all of our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus, ever heard of her? Oh my God. And our theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan. With vocals by Catherine Voskrasinski. Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only, Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree slash Bechtelcast.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.