The Bechdel Cast - Pan's Labyrinth with Aristotle Acevedo

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

Caitlin, Jamie, and our very own Bechdel Cast producer, Aristotle Acevedo, venture into the labyrinth of the Faun to analyze Pan's Labyrinth.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @aristacos on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that?

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality,

cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast or wherever you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. friends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the Bechdel cast welcome to the Bechdel cast my name is Jamie Loftus my name is Caitlin Durante Jamie do you want to come down into my labyrinth with me no sounds scary don't like that initiation um well wait i actually have a question this is a movie right so if there's a labyrinth it's probably a really drawn out metaphor for a womb is it not perhaps there's a vagina in the floor and we've got to climb in

this happens in i would say 40 of movies well remember the the floor vagina from mother exclamation point right the floor vagina i haven't thought about that in forever it happens so much male auteurs they're at it it again. At least this is a great movie. But I was like, there it is. I forgot the last time I watched Pan's Labyrinth. I didn't know about the cultural sensation that is floor vagina. Or vagina head. Vaginas come in many forms.

We have two floor vaginas this month alone. I mean, The Descent. Yeah. Cave vagina. Shocking. vaginas come in many forms we have two floor vaginas this month alone i mean the descent yeah cave vagina shocking wow um anyway here we are yes sure i well is are there two doug jones in your floor vagina i guess i'll come in as long as he's there as long as he's there. As long as he's there. Feel safe. So this is the Bechdelcast. Welcome. We are a movie podcast in which we analyze popular films, usually sometimes unpopular. I don't know. In any case, we analyze films. Influential, for better or worse.

Influential films through an intersectional feminist lens and we use the Bechdel test simply as a way to inspire a larger conversation about representation inclusivity intersectionality and what Jamie what is it what's the Bechdel oh the Bechdel test well it is a media metric invented by Alison Bechtel, sometimes called the Bechtel-Wallace test that requires, for our purposes, there's different variants of the test, but for our test, it requires that there are two people of a marginalized gender with names talking to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue. That's all it takes. Shouldn't be that awfully hard. You can talk about Floor Vagina.

You cannot talk about Doug Jones. Sometimes it's hard. But we will get. I mean it's you know. This movie passes. It does. The podcast is over. You can stop listening.

There's nothing left to discuss done um but that is that is the Bechdel test uh but we use it as a jumping off point for a larger discussion indeed and I'm so excited about our discussion today I'm so excited about our guest today you already know him you already love him because he's our producer he's our dear friend you remember him from the pacific rim episode he's the sweetest he's simply the best he's an uncle now he's and he's del toro's number one fan is the credit that he wanted it's a credit currently being sported on his very shirt courtesy of a gift that i bravely gave him brave very brave it's aristotle acevedo hello happy to be back oh we're so happy to have you we've missed you so much it has been far too long i know it really has

well because someone was just asking about you and because of how you record in the quarantine where it's just a very bare bones operation with me and jamie um but we still need you aristotle and that's why you're here we do and we've been we've been i mean this works out on so many levels because you are number one del toro head and uh people have been requesting pan's labyrinth for so long i imagine it's pretty high up there what's your like history with this movie and i guess with the del toro fandom at large i remembered this the other day and it may date me a bit but i still remember seeing the poster for the first time right here at the alhambra renaissance when i was just a kid and seeing it and thinking like what the fuck a movie called pan's labyrinth and you're not

gonna have peter pan in it that's so dumb like i was so mad that they took peter pan's name did it but you know i was a foolish child that knew nothing and then uh i don't remember the first time i saw it but i remember really being blown away and immediately remembering that moment thinking wow what that was what a stupid thing oh that's the best jam what about you? What's your history with it? I remember seeing this movie for the first time after school at my aunt's house because she had like movie channels and we did not have movie channels. This was at my now Trump supporting aunt's house. We've simply fallen out of touch. But I did. aunt's house we've simply fallen out of touch uh but i did there was a point in time where she had

the channel show time and i wanted to watch a cool movie so i watched it and i loved it i definitely i don't know i was probably in like middle school-ish if it was like shortly after this movie came out i didn't know who del toro was at this time, but it was my first Del Toro movie. And so I held it very close to my heart. And it holds up. It's so good. It does. Yeah.

What about you, Kay? I was in college when it came out, and I think I saw it somewhere around that time, maybe like a year or two after 06 when it came out. It was 06. Okay, yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And I was like, oh, my God, maybe like a year or two after 06 when it came out i was 06 okay yeah right yeah yeah yes and i was like oh my god this movie is so good and i wish i had spent my life watching it more frequently

because i think i've only seen it i think i watch it once every like four years or so so i've seen it like three or four times in the past but every time i watched it i'm like oh my this is incredible i love this movie it's so the story is so well crafted it's beautiful the animatronics of it all the doug jones of it all that i this is the first time i've seen this movie since like american fascism really ramped up so yeah same whole new vibe going on with this with this viewing oh how nothing has changed yeah truly like yes this is basically you know 1944 franco's spain all over again this was also i think the just to expose uh some of the huge gaps in the american public education system slash education system at large um i think that this movie was the first

any in-depth look i had at francoist spain at all like I think I had it referenced in school, but it certainly was never something that I learned extensively about. Like Pan's Labyrinth was truly what I was like, oh, I should find out what is supposed to be happening in this movie. Cause I just, it was very glossed over at school for me anyways. I didn't even, it didn't even get covered in any history class I ever took or anything like that.

Del Toro is the only reason I honestly know that it happened and know who Franco is. But even for this, I tried to do a little bit of research and it is so complicated. I can't even pretend to understand what. For context corner, I was like, all right, we got to do a breakdown of Franco as Spain. And then I was just like, I don't think I'm equipped to do this just read the Wikipedia page everyone like it is it is incredibly dense um and I think I think it's also just like incredible writing on del Toro's part that it's like he's able to present everything in a very historically accurate way in a way that isn't like completely overwhelming or like if you don't fully understand the context it doesn't extremely

hinder your viewing of the movie but if you do know the context it enriches it i'm always really impressed when people can write like that it's a miracle it's incredible yeah yes but also in doing some of the research i did a little research i read i read some essays wow brad uh you know i have some books uh on del toro specifically one of them kind of referenced uh kind of his inaccuracy in the spanish civil war and that there's still a lot of sugarcoating that happens that spain itself is still kind of reconciling with that the resistance was actually somewhat puppeted by communist russia at the time and kind of use them and deceive them to even ensure franco's victory uh and like it's a whole very weird and that you know, the Francoist regime was as brutal as depicted in the movie, but that

the resistance was also sometimes equally as brutal. Like they were also indiscriminately just murdering priests, anyone related to the church before. And it was kind of like a back and forth of those kinds of things. I was like, ah, shit. Holy shit. I really was hoping for a good versus evil. And I think it still was because Franco was evil.

Eviler, yeah. Right. The greater of two evils. Wow, I didn't realize that. Man, history is bleak. And that too is like, oh, this is so much. Like, I truly can't even pretend to. Like, that's just kind of A scratch of what I read.

So if I'm totally wrong, I'm sorry. That's fascinating. Well, should we talk about the movie? I guess so. All right. So the recap goes as follows. I left some stuff out just because it's such a rich story with a lot of moving parts. So my recap isn't necessarily going to do this a huge amount of justice. I just recommend that

everyone watch this movie because it's so terrific. It's streaming on Netflix as we speak, or at least I hope it still is at the time of this release. But yeah, just watch the movie because my recap kind of skims over some stuff. But in any case, we get some text on the screen at the very beginning to provide some historical context. It is Spain in 1944. It's a few years after the Spanish Civil War. And we learned that a group of like guerrilla rebel soldiers are hiding in the mountains fighting against the fascist regime. Then we get a little bit of a fairy tale introduction where once upon a time, there was a princess who lived in the underworld, but she escaped to the human world, kind of forgot her identity, eventually died there.

She became mortal and died there. But her father, the king of the underworld, knew her soul would one day return. So that's the kind of fairy tale backstory we need to know. Princess Moana? Moana! It's like, ooh, interesting. Yeah, I'm like, okay, all my favorite princesses are named Moana? Moana. It's like, ooh, interesting. Yeah. Makes you think. Okay.

All my favorite princesses are named Moana. So then we're back in 1944 Spain. We meet Ophelia. She's 10 years old. She loves fairy tales. And she is traveling with her mother, who is undoubtedly pregnant. She is pregnant with a confirmed greg with with a confirmed greg who is a is a greg that's giving her problems a problematic greg

she's late in her problematic pregnancy pregnancy yes in the third trimester of the pregnancy. So anyway, Ophelia and her mother are traveling to the countryside. Along the way, Ophelia sees this large insect that she thinks might be a fairy. And she also sees an entrance to this old labyrinth made of stone near the house where she and her mother will be living in and this is also where olivia's new stepfather captain vidal has set up this base camp because he is in the military of the aforementioned fascist government searching for the aforementioned rebels who are hiding in the nearby mountains and the captain i feel like embodies again in like a good way but but because i feel like this movie has i he's like patriarchy the character yeah he's like an embodiment of toxic masculinity and fascist ideology. Everything that's wrong, that's him. That's his character. Yes. But also we're seeing it through her,

like a child dies. So it makes like, I mean, he's just, he's a villain. He's simply a villain. One of the best movie villains, I think. And I think if this movie were less well-written, he could easily come off as like one of these very cartoony villains and he is he's extremely evil he's horrible it works for the story though I mean it definitely works it works for the story especially because it is like this is a fair

a dark grim fairy tale yeah and he's very he's like borderline cartoonishly evil but then you like remember like well there were like fascist assholes who were not unlike this guy in real life. Fascist assholes. And also worth the note that Hispanic culture in general is very patriarchy, male dominant, like man is the man, ruler over everything. Like the language in itself is also completely binary and male is the dominant to the point where he i mean i don't know he does so many cartoonishly evil things but when he like goes to his dying wife's side and is like if it comes down to it save greg and then he just like leaves you You're like, geez, man.

Damn. Leave the room at least. She might have heard that. Yeah, she's right there. She can hear you. She's right there, sir. So he's completely awful. And so this is kind of who Ophelia is up against.

We also meet Mercedes. She is a housekeeper. and we meet a doctor. They both kind of tend to the captain and his people, but we get a reveal that they are both secretly a part of this resistance and they've been helping the rebels, sneaking food and supplies to them. Then on Ophelia's, I think it's her first night there, the insect slash fairy shows up and beckons Ophelia to follow it into the labyrinth. And there she meets a faun who thinks that Ophelia is the princess from the fairy tale in the beginning and he has been like awaiting her return and as you said jamie uh the princess's name is moana but with two n's with two n's

so the faun gives ophelia three tasks to complete by the next full moon. The first task is to feed these magic stones to a giant toad who lives in a nearby tree, who's been kind of like wreaking havoc on this tree. And she has to retrieve the key from inside the toad, which she successfully does. I love the toad, which she successfully does. I love the toad scene. So scary. I never remember what happens to the toad.

It basically just barfs up all of its guts and then its skin shell just sort of deflates like a balloon. Oh my. There's a lot of really horror imagery, like graphic violence and just like really scary stuff it usually happens pretty quick yeah and you don't actually get a lot of views of yeah like the scene where he smashes a face in with the bottle right the bottle uh and you you don't actually see his face you kind of get a moment of it being smashed in but it's not like other gory movies where it's like we're gonna

give you the full look into his bleeding skull like kind of it's a very quick thing most of the time that's still the worst one for me that one's really bad yeah yeah but uh i was reading that del toro based that off of something that actually happened. I think I can find that quote right now. I was just reading it. Yeah. Ugh, awful. Okay, so she's got the key from the toad.

Meanwhile, Vidal is getting closer to the rebels in the mountains. One of them is Mercedes' brother. Also, Ophelia's mother is her her difficult pregnancies is getting worse um she's having pain and bleeding then the fawn shows up and he's like ophelia you haven't done your next task yet you have to go into this dangerous place take the key with you you'll see this feast laid out before you but don't eat or drink anything. That's very important. So she goes into this place and there's this scary creature, the pale man, also Doug Jones. She sneaks past it and uses the key to retrieve this dagger,

but the feast is very tempting and she is a child with not much willpower so she eats a couple grapes and it awakens the pale man who has eyeballs in his hands it's very scary and it kills two of the fawn's little like fairy friends but ophelia manages to escape and the fawn shows up again and he's like um you ate the things that i told you not to eat you're not worthy you're never allowed to come back into the labyrinth again you can't be the princess and then right after this ophelia's mother dies during childbirth the baby survived the greg does survive his name is greg canonically I believe he's credited as Greg. Yeah.

Baby Greg. So meanwhile, Vidal is like figuring out that the doctor and Mercedes have been helping the rebellion. So Mercedes makes a run for it and takes Ophelia with her. But Vidal catches them trying to leave. And then he's about to interrogate mercedes but she fights back stabs him a couple times and then runs away the greatest scene oh so cathartic it's fun but then vidal's army surrounds her as she's running away but the gorillas are hiding nearby and they like sniper shoot the bad guys. Meanwhile, the faun comes back to Ophelia and he's like, okay, you know what? I decided to give you one more chance for your last task. You have to come

to the labyrinth and bring your baby brother, Greg, and you have to do everything I say without question. So Ophelia snatches the baby from Vidal's office, but she gives Vidal this strong sedative and he's trying to chase after her through the labyrinth. And then Ophelia comes upon the opening of the underworld and the faun is like, okay, you have to sacrifice your baby brother because we need the blood of an innocent to open the portal to the underworld. And she's like, um, fuck no, dude dude this is a baby i'm not gonna hurt it just then vidal shows up takes the baby and shoots ophelia and then the tears just start bursting from your head and then that's how that works yeah Yeah. And then when Vidal emerges from the labyrinth, the rebels have him surrounded and they kill him in another very cathartic scene. And then we cut back to Ophelia, who is dying. her refusal to hurt her brother and sacrifice herself instead opens the portal to the underworld

where she is revived and she reunites with her true mother and father, the king and queen of the underworld. And then kind of the last little bit of the movie is she leaves kind of like hints of her herself on earth like a little flower and that so you're saying that she dies and doesn't fall asleep right because i was just worried that you were going to be bringing that energy and onto the cast you know what i've i gave this a lot of thought she definitely doesn't fall i mean she's only with dead people but mean, you could say the same thing for, well, what happens in Titanic? You know what, Jamie? I think, well, here's the thing. James Cameron, if you read his script, he leaves it intentionally ambiguous in the Titanic screenplay.

Whereas Guillermo del Toro has stated pretty definitively that the fairy tale aspect of this movie is real and that she does in fact die at the end and go into the underworld and that's all real so point James Cameron and Guillermo del Toro are friends. So it's conceivable that del Toro saw the end of Titanic and was like, Oh my God, I love this beautiful climactic ending scene in certainly heaven. Let me, let me draw from this for, for my own movie.

James Cameron is my friend. I'm also like that, which led me down a whole other rabbit hole of like, what are those conversations? I feel like those must be some of like the weirdest conversations between two people you could ever find. Like I would love to just hack in

and see what those guys are talking about in the emails. Well, Zoom bomb them del toro's got navi jpegs in his gmail for sure okay well counter counterpoint yeah del toro saw the end of titanic he read the screenplay and he's just like i don't like how ambiguous this is i think that james cameron really left it open to interpretation so much so that some really brilliant people out there easily interpret the end of titanic as a dream so i want to make sure my ending is a little bit more concrete. Counter, counter, counterpoint. Del Toro, it's, you know, the heaven in Pan's Labyrinth,

or the, you know, the underworld, is a beautiful shimmering gold, which I think is a direct reference to the heaven that is painted at the end of Titanic, where the room is more luminescent, and the lighting is different and you look up to the sky and it's so beautiful and you're like wow that must be what heaven is like a place full of dead people that you knew and but isn't that also what dreams are like

every time I dream it's full of all the dead people I know my dreams are not like that I'll tell you oh that's okay that's a great counter counter counter counterpoint is that dreams are not like that i'll tell you oh that's okay that's a great counter counter counter counterpoint is that dreams are usually terrifying i had a dream last night that adam sandler kept mailing bras that weren't my size to my house weird that's not heaven at all that's hell was there gold in the background golden light there was no gold he was sending it through amazon so it wasn't even ethical he was sending me the wrong size bra to my house over and over and over and over and over and i don't want to know what that dream means but i did have it well i can see that we'll never agree on this so i have somewhat of a

counterpoint here that that is an odd thing i encountered in the research in this in the essay i'm probably going to be referring to a lot that i was surprised to read because it's kind of a not a harsh criticism but a little bit it's a bit of a criticism on which i was uh i was happy to read and it's exactly that that the writer criticizes, is that he is one of the most vocal directors when it comes to his own films and loves to explain every bit of it. But that then doesn't allow for your interpretation of it. He is actively directing everyone's view of how he wants his movies to be, which is kind of what you want to do. But he's very heavily influencing everyone that loves him and now you can't find a flaw in it because he told you what to look for uh opposed to being a little more you know critical of like well actually i don't think it means that you know just because you

say it means that you're still you still might be blind to what you're subconsciously doing here that's interesting though because i think that in this movie that's why i like was kind of going back and forth about like okay is it real is this like just ophelia's coping mechanism for two for like dealing with living in this like fascist household or is this are there actually like fairy tale elements happening in her to her like in reality because i think the movie gives you enough clues for both sides of the argument that it is still open to interpretation um so i don't even know if i agree with that criticism because even though like del toro is like yes here's what i here's my intention or here's how i read my own movie

but i think he still like gives you enough of enough opportunities to interpret it a number of different other ways oh yeah especially for the blurring of those worlds yeah I kind of like I mean I kind of like that kind of thesis I mean we've kind of been talking about this an unusual amount lately but we also talked about it in our episode about a girl walks home alone at night where, um, Ana Lui Amirpour was very resistant to have her movie labeled as any specific type of movie.

It sounds like to come from the opposite side of where Del Toro is coming, where Del Toro is possibly being overly specific about like no i didn't mean this i meant this where she was like i'm not going to tell you what anything means and i don't want you to put any label on this movie even if it makes it sound better or whatever so i think that's it's interesting yeah i guess different directors make different choices yes um we got take a quick break, but then we'll come right back for more. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life.

It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120.

She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything?

You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. your podcasts. I felt too seen. Um, dragged. I'm NK and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable.

It was just very big sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we have emerged back out of the labyrinth and out of the womb. Walked up that long staircase. Yeah. Oh, I wish I lived down there. Anyway, that design is so, yeah.

I mean, it's so beautiful. Yeah. Where should we start? Where do we, I mean, a few things that I, I never really noticed or kind of

was really impressed by watching this movie with our lens in mind something that jumped out to me i'll just jump in here uh women and blood which i never really picked up on because there are bloods of all genders still in this movie. All people have blood. Everyone has blood. And that's just a fact. Unless of course I did just watch every twilight movie. So not always some people drink it anyways. But just the relationship between women and blood I thought was really

interesting. And I'm pretty sure I like where most of it goes. I mean, I think it's very rare that you see a difficult pregnancy. Sorry, pardon my French. Yeah, what did you say? A difficult pregnancy on screen, which is weird because they're incredibly common and kind of the complications that come with pregnancy even a metaphor a metaphor pregnancy like this very clearly is I thought was was cool and that you see kind of the gorier I I thought it was kind of cool to see that I also

felt like there were connections between um and again, sometimes I'm like, OK, a man writing the story of three women. Of course, there's just going to be a little bit too much vaginal fixation. And I don't think that this movie is really an exception to that. But it's such a good movie that I'm like, well, but like even at the end, I felt like Del Toro. And please jump in if you're like you're reading into this it's not a vagina thing but even at the end where it's like Ophelia's blood that it that activates the floor vagina and stuff like that where it felt and I was able to find a few readings of this that also referenced this so I'm like okay I don't feel completely off base but just kind of the

symbolism of blood in a woman's life where ophelia obviously like that never reaches menstruating age but her you know blood at the end kind of activates this big um change in the in the mythos of this world or like there's pregnancy blood we see there's you know injury blood we see there's just i don't know women and blood it had me thinking i see your point that didn't even occur to me and that almost feels like the type of like deep read, like over analytical kind of thing whenever like, I don't know, there are different movies where there will be like a mountain and people will be like, that's a phallus. That's a penis. Are you suggesting this is not a floor vagina, though? I don't know. I mean. The floor vagina, I didn't think about. I didn't consider that because I just saw it for a labyrinth. But I do think that is a valid point to make is the floor vagina.

But he also has very explicitly said that the tree is over their ovaries or a uterus. It did that. That tree did look like a uterus. I'm going to defend my floor vagina and like whatever women's blood thing i mean i don't i and i don't even think this is like a misstep for this movie but it was just something that stood out to me in this and even the like many of the hallways we see her walking through uh you know there's a fallopian vibe going on to them yeah i mean and it and it makes sense where there's i mean so much of the movie hinges on this pregnancy that is difficult and full of trials and so that is true yeah yeah and i guess the the tunnel that she goes into to find the frog that could be seen as vaginal opening to the uterus because so much of it is uh so much of

it seems to be about discovering yourself and growing up and coming to maturity so that the floor vagina makes a lot of sense now the you know the blood going into the floor vagina being a period and thus reaching maturity and finding yourself in the underworld i don't know yeah i guess i'm not totally sold on the on the period metaphor at the end i just the relating like women and blood to a pregnancy or just vaginal blood at all you would really not see in a big movie like this very often but you see it pretty frequently in this movie mostly via um Ophelia's mom yeah I guess I didn't give it much thought prior to this that's right yeah it was um I truly couldn't stop thinking about it in this one where I'm like what they me, it's a floor vagina and a vagina hallway. One of the first things I wanted to bring up

was that this is a hero's journey style narrative where a girl is the hero, which is pretty unique. It's not often done. Female characters rarely get to be the hero in a hero's journey story another example off the top of my head is another again another character named moana but like disney's moana is one of only a few other like popular media heroes journey stories i guess the new star wars movie like the newest trilogy they're a fair amount but just definitely not becoming more popular definitely not parody and there it's only been in i think pretty recent years that filmmakers are like yeah i would argue

hunger games as well like sure even even the wizard of oz i mean they definitely exist and have existed but just definitely not not to the same extent yeah for sure so i think that is cool for sure um and also i mean i guess worth mentioning in the case of this movie that she doesn't survive the hero's journey which is i mean it fits again it like fits the story perfectly but it's very sad or i mean does because she dies and gets reborn in underworld heaven isn't that surviving i i mean it definitely is in a way um but i mean in terms of does she get to ever speak to Mercedes again stuff like that I feel like

yeah it's very sad it's so sad she reached the goal that she was reaching for but because I do still like to think that it is ambiguous that was just her in her head and now she's happily

living that fantasy in the afterlife but was it real i would like to guess but also i don't know i know i want it to be real um i also like if we're uh just in the way that i don't know there's a number of between our three main female characters everyone has a different dynamic and a different type of relationship which is really cool um and you kind of get these three very different types of women and they have very different responses to the like very oppressive force that's on top of them right where you have you have Carmen, who is, I mean, and Carmen is very fascinating to me,

and I love her so much, because she is the most deferential to the patriarchy, but I feel like a lesser movie would make you feel like, and, you know, look what happened to her. But you know exactly why she is making the choices that she's making it's made very clear even when it sucks and it's upsetting and you can tell that she is not always thrilled to have to make them but with her it's this I don't know like something I never really gave a lot of thought to but kind of like

towing that line of like she's trying to you know like there's a class thing at play for her as well which I feel like is symbolized through when Ophelia gets the dress all fucked up and Carmen's really upset because that symbolizes a higher class status and it seems like the trade-off for that is her having to put up with some of the most horrifying sexism of all time yeah but it also the movie doesn't i don't know i mean she does die right so but i but i did feel like the movie didn't think less of her for making those choices which yeah made me yeah i really love her and even though you know it's like she's not the like rebel of the story but her narrative is no less important or valuable and and that is yeah i think really beautiful We've talked about this from time to time on the podcast about how women, not to the same extent in contemporary times, but definitely in decades past and centuries past and millennia past, where women have been at such a major disadvantage in life where they basically have to make huge sacrifices to survive and it felt to me like she was a widow her fought her husband her husband died do they say he died in the war i

think so so he probably he died in the in the you know spanish civil war he turns out to have a great beard i always forget what he looks like at the end. I was like, whoa, cool beard. Yeah, he's more or less Santa Claus. And so he died, what I'm guessing was quite a while ago. Her mother had to take over his business as a tailor in the shop. It was wartime. She was struggling. And then this distinguished military man comes

along and probably like, I don't know the circumstances of their marriage, but she probably just saw him as like, well, he can provide for me and my daughter. Right. So I will marry him because what are my choices? Which I feel like is like illustrated really clearly in that scene where ophelia doesn't understand why her mother felt that she had to get married again yeah and her mom says i was alone too long and then it's it's so sad because i feel like you weren't alone i was right there but just there's there's a level that ophelia doesn't yet understand of like what it takes to survive under I mean almost every kind of oppression you can imagine for sure yeah so this was like a choice of survival she had to make uh by marrying Vidal and then and then he turns out to be a horrible abusive piece of shit that is unfortunately the case all too often but yeah again it's like what choice did she have if she was going to provide for herself

and her daughter so um yeah i i thought that was an interesting exploration i wonder if that could have been dived into just a little bit more. I don't know if there was necessarily space or need for it, but I kind of, she was the character, the female character to me that felt if, if anyone could have gotten a little bit more development, it could have been Ophelia's mom. But yeah, I still, I think it was still interesting the way that she, her kind of circumstances were presented to us i think she

also plays she's kind of used as the perfect example of how all women at that time were just like you're just shoved down to nothing like you're just constantly got in shit after shit after shit there's no easy way out yeah and so she I think, unfortunately, has to die to prove that point. You're like, nope, you're just not going to get anything. And then we're just going to kill you. And that's that. Yeah, I was feeling that way on this feud as well, where it's like they're whatever they're these three women and girls are representing kind of like three different ways to approach

this oppressive force. And what are the outcomes where she's very deferential to it and i feel like like you're just saying aristotle like the movie doesn't want you to really take away like well you should just be passive to the worst person in the entire world and you'll you'll get out just fine where and and i think it's like really telling that i don't know. I mean, I always am like, does Ophelia have to die? But that Mercedes is the sole character to kind of get out and be able to continue on in this version of the world and how it's like someone who is from a lower class and is expected to be deferential to the same person,

but finds a way to navigate around that and kind of rebel and push anyways, and to have that character be the one who survives and goes on. It's like the metaphor isn't a softball. It's like, I get it, but I like that. Yet there's still, again, I'm going to that yeah yet there's still again i'm gonna keep referencing the same there's a book that i have it's a great book yeah what is it i love it it's called the devil's backbone of pan's labyrinth studies in the horror film and they're about

these two specific films the quest for meaning in pan's labyrinth by romana cortes cortes i don't know is the the one that's a little bit more critical and she does also point out that even this happy sad ending is still a huge sugar coating of the situation because franco continued to rule for years after to like 1975 yeah so like there isn't even in that little bit of hope that like there is no happy ending for them it's fucked and that gets mentioned too where i think it's mercedes talking to her brother or different rebels are talking to each other and they'll say like even if we can like kill vidal they're just gonna send another one and if we kill him they're gonna send another one so yeah it's just like dr ferrer in

reality like mercedes survives to the end of this movie but like but who knows what happens there's no guarantee that in like a year she might not have been killed by the fascist regime yes yeah so yeah i was i was kind of like i i like that they at least reference that but like i i also see her criticism that that kind of is like we i mean in any time like one character represents i mean i think that that's the downside of having like mr patriarchy as your villain of like well once you've killed mr fascism uh mr fascism hyphen patriarchy joy can spread across the land again when of course it's not never one person and yeah yet he's still such you're saying really he's like a perfect villain

because he's so brutal and evil and there's no way to sympathize with him really but you also understand why i mean you don't understand like it know, sympathetically, but he is just a disgusting product of the time with major daddy issues. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to talk about his daddy issues. The daddy issues in this movie are running rampant. There's an exchange I really like between Vidal and the doctor character who the doctor is tending to one of the rebels that the Fasci guys have captured. They're torturing him to get him to talk. And the doctor comes in to tend to him after he's been tortured. And the rebel guy is like, please kill me. And so the doctor complies as like, yes, this is like we have to make sure you can't.

They don't get any more information out of you. And then Vidal comes in and he's like, you disobeyed me. Why did you do that? Why didn't you just obey me? And the doctor is like, well, to obey someone without question is something that only someone like you can do and not me which is like what fascism is is you know just like obeying without question and then that ties back in the end in a really cool thematic way where the faun is like okay ophelia i need you to just bring your brother. Don't ask questions. And then when he's like, we need to like spill his blood for this whole thing to work. Yeah.

You can't like, don't question it. And she's just like, no, like I'm not some like patsy. I'm not some, or that's not the right word, but I'm not some just like follower. Oh, she had said that though. Like a newsie I'm not a fucking sheep I'm not a fucking patsy and that's rewarded

because she's like well then she you know she sacrifices herself and you know I don't know the moral of the story is just don't follow orders without questioning them because then you become a fascist the end

yeah I think it's like Ophelia I don't know Aracel I'm really because you are so much more entrenched in the discourse around this movie than we are Ophelia I

it makes me sad that Ophelia dies but I it does I mean if we're going with the read where she dies I think that that makes like a kind of interesting complex point where like you have one character who defers to the oppressive force and it kills them you have one character who pushes against the oppressive force and it kills them you have one character who pushes against the oppressive force and survives for now and then you have ophelia who pushes against the oppressive force and loses and just i don't know seeing all those different kind like it doesn't necessarily mean that there's one way to go against an oppressive force that's going to be a win it just means that you know you have to do it it shows the weight of the oppression of like this is such a massive massive front of

evil yeah it's just hard to get around but another a weird thing is the fun gas litophilia right oh for sure because that's what that's that's that's the weird thing that I still kind of have some trouble understanding why, I suppose. Like, was the eating of the grapes, saying you'll never see me again, but then coming back for a second chance, part of the test? Or is that just like, is all of this one long gaslight? And the other problem in this story, really, as the number one self-proclaimed Guillermo fan, I also have to bring up a lot of the hiccups. But the odd thing in this story is that it's about Princess Moana running away from a patriarchy into a human, evil, very oppressive patriarchy to want to return back to the original patriarchy so there's never really a freedom that she gets there's a happier ending but it's she still goes from patriarchy to patriarchy right it makes you wonder why she ran away from the underworld in

the first place like i'd imagine it was out of curiosity. Right. But. That is, I hadn't even considered it from that angle. I'm like, yeah, she is like, it is another daddy, daddy zone. Yeah. But a nicer daddy this time. Yeah, well, I was like, is it like,

I mean, it's not like the little mermaid where she's like, I fell in love with a man from above. So I have to go up there. I have to see a plot witch and then, you know, get some legs and then become a human. It's nothing like, I fell in love with a man from above, so I have to go up there. I have to see a plot witch and then get some legs and then become a human. It's nothing like, yeah, I guess we don't know why she ran away. Or that part of the story doesn't apply to her. I was kind of struggling with that too,

where she gets to the labyrinth and then the faun is like, you're the main character in the story. But then it's like, well, then why doesn't she know about anything that happens to the labyrinth and then the faun is like you're the main character in the story but then it's like well then why doesn't she know about anything that happens to the character before because she loses her memory as soon as she comes so she forgets why the first patriarchy is bad so the ending of the movie is she's gonna go back and then find out soon i mean patriarchy bad but they never also explicitly say bad so i like what wait truly i just imagine like the kind of situation of like i want to live amongst the humans to see what it's like but then i want to be where the people are exactly and uh the other kind of she's a child so you can't fault her for it but the other odd thing about

the situation is that the world is so oppressive she would rather leave you know what i mean that kind of feels like a in the current situation it feels a little bit like i hate both of the candidates so i'm not gonna vote oh so i'm just gonna to vote. Ooh, so I'm just going to... Like, I'm out of here. I'm moving to Canada. Moving to... She's literally moving to Canada. She's moving to Canada. Yeah.

Wow. And I'm like, she's a child, so of course that's the option we'd all take. At least she can't vote. Yeah, that makes sense. It's always... I mean, I guess the other way that I saw to read that happening was like, whatever, if you're going from like,

she pushed against the oppressive force, it lost her her life, but then it kind of also won her this immortality that's implied of like almost like a martyr for the cause kind of immortality so even though she's physically dead maybe i don't know it's like her her death meant something in the human world and it impacted people in the human world which is i mean yeah i don't know that's the positive spin i can see on that but it also could be seen as moving

to canada i had not considered the martyr i saw i saw it more as like another victim of the franco regime but the martyrdom of it is oh my that changes everything i hope hopefully i'm like you would hope right that like mercedes survives and hopefully she survives long enough to tell the other rebels about this like little girl who wouldn't listen to the captain and like had this big imagination and lost her whole family and gave her life up because she wouldn't capitulate or whatever I hope I mean I hope because otherwise it's, God, life is so meaningless. And on that note, let's take a quick break and then come back for more discussion. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16, 2017, was murdered.

There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours.

BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it.

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

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm N.K., and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying, and I was inconsolable.

It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed,

we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Just really quick stuff. I mean, this was kind of like, I guess, the 101 of why Ophelia is such a cool character. But just so it's all said.

Yeah, put it out there. She's a little rebellious kid. She doesn't wear fancy dresses that like exactly like the Alice in Wonderland dress because I'm sure a reason uh when you tell her to I like that she has this really rebellious spirit but it doesn't like it doesn't mean that she's a bad kid I feel like a lot of times you see that in movies where it's like you just need to learn to be good where she knows that her mom is wrong. She doesn't understand why her mom is making the decision or wrong by her view. Right. Yeah. She doesn't understand why her mom is making the decisions that she's for each other that doesn't come apart, even though they are being true to what they think is right in very different ways.

Which is something you don't usually get in a story like this where it's like, I mean, I guess I'm just in this headspace because we are talking about the Little Mermaid a lot. But like Ariel disobeys her dad and he's like see ya you suck you're bad and i feel like that happens in stories with young rebellious protagonists and a lot their parents are like no i don't see it your way i was never a child i'm gonna destroy your room full of a little weird your labyrinth but in this i like that there are so many shades of gray to the mother-daughter relationship even though you don't see them together that that much but even that moment where i don't know my favorite moment they have together on this watch is like when she's in the bathtub and she's just disobeyed for the five millionth time

and her mom comes in and is like well we're very disappointed and you were really frustrated and the captain is more disappointed than me see ya and i was like okay that's like a really lovely oh and then ophelia like gives this little smirk like ha ha i'm glad i disappointed him because i hate him she knew and and i and also that's like indicating to her that her mom is not actually that disappointed in her and is just like which is lovely i like i like that yeah i also like the relationship dynamics between the three of them the three the three main female protagonists being the mom mercedes and ophelia because you have the mom who's like struggling and trying to do the best for her mother i mean for her daughter but then ophelia also goes to

mercedes i have to say uh with um well i guess the things that she can't talk about with her mother and i appreciate that being there in the movie because that i feel like that never that doesn't come up often with a child talking to an adult about kind of grown-up things i guess or things like this is how i feel because they have to talk they're the only two that can talk to each other really about like i'm in this secret rebellion and it's like i met a faun though at a lot of points to mercedes listens but it's also kind of like magic isn't real right yeah but i think that's also just from coming from being hardened from living in a fascist regime perhaps what i

like that mercedes does that uh ophelia's mom doesn't is that yeah like it is definitely clear from the beginning that mercedes is like okay this is like a kid thing and it's an imagination thing. But she doesn't try to really take that from Ophelia because it seems like, I mean, Mercedes especially's like oh my gosh this kid has such a wild imagination and has so much going on in their inner life that at least doesn't it's a projection of living in a fascist regime but it's at least fun and it's hers and so she doesn't try to be like this is fake i think she's just like okay don't like don't take things too far i don't know yeah and she also says like she feels like a cool aunt for right talk to especially because she says like no i don't believe in those things now but i did when i was you're right you know i did when i was a kid so it's like she's

letting ophelia having it and like not telling her not to believe in those things. Whereas her mom is like, you need to stop reading so many fairy tales. There is no magic. And so her mom is sort of forcing her own little bit of oppression on Ophelia. Whereas Mercedes is like, yeah, believe in whatever you want to believe in if it helps you cope with these awful times. And going off that, that i mean it's like aristotle you were saying earlier that the fawn is like an asshole for sure like he's definitely

gaslighting and confusing her constantly and like the goal of what he actually wants is never clear and if if that is kind of like her projection of the world she's around where like it's this inner labyrinth that she has to navigate that's full of male figures that she's kind of afraid of that are giving her that's like i don't know just like providing endless confusion and a lack of clarity i'm like oh maybe that that's what it is i am always i guess just using this lens going in it i guess i never really thought very hard about how like the mythical creature she encounters the fairies are coded female or they they use she pronoun but but you don't really know yeah you don't i mean other than their protectors but like you don't really know much about them but

like the two characters you get to know in the labyrinth are too kind of deceptive and then in the in the second villain what do we what the pale man's case um is like terrifying a little more on the nose too but that that also i think blends nicely in with it's like these are things that she's projecting the pale man is my doll because i i hadn't realized how close those scenes were but the big dinner scene yeah it's almost right before the pale man scene and they are exactly mirrored right so the pale man's cave that is a little more catholic churchy yeah which carambo has said it's supposed to represent the catholic church yes yeah that scene is a criticism of that institution right i don't know if i even made that connection every time i watch this movie

i'm just like so dazzled by like the visuals and i'm i'm always like oh right there's also like symbolism and stuff that i keep forgetting to pay attention to i watched it twice for this and both times by the end i was like fuck i wasn't even like thinking of like research I was just watching the shit right I know I watched it once for fun because I knew I wasn't going to be able to focus because it's so good and I haven't seen it in years and then the second time for analysis and I still didn't

pick up everything it's just so rich but yeah it's like if I mean has Del Toro said explicitly that the creatures she comes across in the labyrinth are just her interpretation of what's going on in front of her? I don't think he said that, though. I do like that. But he did say that, like, the pale man is a, like, reflection of Vidal in a, like, as above, so below type of way.

Got it. Can we talk about Mercedes? Yeah. So one of the bigger cathartic moments or storylines for me was with her where basically what happens is that Vidal underestimates her because she is a woman, because there's that scene where he's about to interrogate and torture her after he's figured out that she's working with the rebellion and he sends like the his like second in command guy away and the guy's like are you sure like don't you want me to be here and he's like for

god's sake she's just a woman you You know, like what could possibly happen? She's not going to do anything to me. Right. And that's like what kills him. Exactly. Yes. And he's like, you found my weakness. It's pride.

Ha ha ha. And then two seconds later, she stabs him in the back. She jokers him. I forgot that she jokers him. I was like, oh, no no don't joker him it also looks like she stabs him in the heart and i'm like how did he not die from that wound i don't know he's a super super villain yeah i know there's certain moments where i i'm like i he's he gets injured so many times he's like Rasputin grade like number of attempts made on his life before he finally dies

yeah but so yeah she's basically just like it's because I'm a woman that you never suspected me like this is how I got away with it I was invisible to you and then she cuts up his face tells him you won't be the first pig I gutted and we're just like woo go yeah i didn't remember that part of the movie i guess i had just kind of forgotten that since the last time i watched it and maybe it's a little just like i don't know just like kind of surface level

like woo feminism go but it worked on me i was like hell yeah mercedes like the best yeah but then it's the thing that's sad about it is that she she does i mean i'm glad that she i mean of any character in the whole movie she well yeah she like her getting the killing blow on him and that second scene where he's like you know trying to do the honorable soldier thing and be like tell my greg like what time it was when i died and she's like greg won't even know your name was greg and then she killed him and like that is like so what made me sad on the second watch for this recording was she says explicitly like motherfucker don't touch the girl but then he uh he does he killed he kills her yeah but then he's killed for that but it's like he still kills her

i know he didn't i just am like why didn't that fascist learn something because they don't have the capacity to learn on many cases and i like that they give um that del toro gives mercedes an inner life as well because i feel like sometimes with like rebel characters all you know about them is like they are fighting for the right thing and you don't and i mean honestly like mercedes being a a member of the underclass on top of being underestimated as a woman on top of having a huge heart and sense of direction is enough but I like that we also see that she is doing this for her family and she's like I like that you kind of get to know some people in in her world as well because I always kind of forget that you meet her brother and you get to

like get some insight into why she does what she does um and that they're kind of working together and i just i like that i like that you get that background for her i think in uh watching it that scene is awesome but in also true horror fashion i myself asking, why didn't you kill him then? Like, you had your chance. You could have killed the villain right then and there. Why did you do that? Especially in reference to gutting a pig, which you get more grotesque with it. You would slice the throat open, thus killing the pig, killing the man.

So I was like, you had it right there. And they're going to try to kill her either way. So she might as well just finish the job. I think it also, though, speaks to the huge gap in capacity for violence. Whereas he would have no trouble doing that. But she is like, I'm not an evil person like you are. I wouldn't cut someone's throat like that. Yeah, she's probably like, I wouldn't stoop to murder maybe but it's just like when he yeah brutally kills an entire family for nothing

right it's like sometime like considering the circumstances i don't know slit his throat like he was incapacitated he was injured enough that she probably could have done it oh yeah then you get into a whole the whole whole, like, spiral of, then that changes the movie. Then you've got to write it differently. So, like, how would Ophelia have survived? Or how, you know, how would this change? And I, you know, I just want to see, what does that look like?

We need some alternate endings. Speaking of spiral, the Moana spiral from Disney's Moana is also on the faun's head. There's, like, all this spiral imagery across both movies. There's a conspiracy. I was like, it was about to be like, and that is the work of the Illuminati. And for the next 45 minutes,

I would like to take you. Starting with Jay-Z and Beyonce at the top. Let's work our way down the Illuminati pyramid. So they're obviously in control of the app. Yeah, a lot of, I mean, there's honestly, this movie is so dense that there were some images and references where I'm like, I know that this probably means something,

but there's only so much time. This was the first viewing of this movie that i saw the captain's constant razor blading of his face to have some significance of like he he has this obsession with control and order but also and and you know is down to use violence to achieve kind of arbitrary order of his choosing. So I was like, okay, I get it that time, del Toro. I see you, I see you. I used to just think this guy grows a beard really fast, but I was wrong. I was just like, what could that mean?

He beards fast. I love the moment where he holds the blade to the mirror and cuts his own throat because like yeah i feel like that's the moment where you've already seen him do all these obscene acts of violence yeah but that's when you're like oh he like he loves this like he this is what he wants yeah he's just so obsessed with death and dying and like wanting to go out in a blaze of glory and it's there and it's subtle but i would i do want to know more about the daddy issues yeah okay so let's talk about this so this sort of i found this really interesting because i mean jamie we've also talked a lot about how like so many movies just kind of boil down to like a father-son relationship,

or that's always some undertone or overtone in a lot of movies. So here I appreciate that we get an exploration of how that kind of obsessiveness with like my father and my son can be really toxic and that it can stem from a really kind of morbid place that has nothing to do with familial love and it has everything to do with just like... Just like societal roles and expectations and all this. Yeah.

So Vidal is obsessed with his father, we come to learn, which we learn because he keeps his broken watch with him. And then we find out the backstory of this watch where his father died heroically in battle. And as he was dying, he smashed the face of the watch so that his son would know the exact time he died. Because that's how a brave man dies, according to this guy. I was was like this is my first time hearing this but i'll i'll go with it that's also such an oh an odd thing for you to want your kids like i want them to know that time not that i loved him or that i can't but the time when it seems like this time has actually been very traumatizing for him to know all this time. Right.

And here's something I don't get. So maybe you can help me understand this. So we find out this backstory. And then the guy at dinner is like, Vidal, is that true? And he's like, no, that's nonsense. My father didn't even own a watch, even though we've seen said watch with the smashed face of it many times because he's constantly looking at it and like fiddling with it so i was confused as to why he would deny that same that that's kind of why

it made it so curious to me because he's so obviously obsessed with it but then why would he deny it yeah i i don't know if it was more of his like pride or he's like i'm i don't have feelings i don't keep my daddy's broken watch with me and I don't put it under my pillow when I sleep. Like I kind of, it was easiest for me to read that as he was lying. Cause otherwise it does kind of muddle that. But yeah, I was a little confused about that as well.

But why would he lie? I think it has to do somewhat with a, like having to live under that shadow because that officer was just like your father was such an incredible soldier yeah undertone that you'll never be able to live up to uh and so he's like him that's you know he didn't have a watch him but yeah uh one of the other like visual things that Guillermo has noted that I don't think I ever would have understood otherwise was that the entire movie lives alone in what I think is the mill or whatever that giant room is. But that giant mill symbolizes a giant broken clock because the background is all cogs and machines that are not moving so he is so obsessed he's literally you know cocooned himself inside of a broken clock that's all he lives for is smashing that clock and to die yes i read that too yeah that i was like well i guess i have to watch the movie again fine um what i found funny about

this whole watch thing is that basically the same exact thing happens in Pulp Fiction when Christopher Walken comes in and he's like hey Bruce Willis's character as a kid your daddy kept this watch up his butthole for two years so that I could then give it to you and it's like okay like I don't know what it is but like just a little bit more about this like kind of father-son obsession thing where then we learn before the baby is before baby greg is born they don't know the sex of the baby but he just keeps assuming it's a boy you know biologically male i'm like annoyed that he was right about that but it is a Greg everyone everyone I mean so does um Carmen and uh Ophelia also takes this at face value as well so I yeah it would be interesting if they turned out to not be right but um I guess it it serves the story that it is like a male baby because then he can continue to be obsessed with it and it does make that

moment at the end with uh like you mentioned jamie where mercedes is like your son isn't even gonna know your name bang you're dead greg senior bye greg yeah and then you would you would think best case scenario and again because uh we're talking about such a violent period of time we don't know but ideally uh baby greg would be brought up by by rebels and would be kind of right you know that makes that's another way in which ophelia's sacrifice would not have been in vain that she is inadvertently getting you know her her little brother uh a better life um at least spiritually and probably in every way than he would have had if he had stayed with the captain yes i had a quick thing i wanted to address here that um that i mean it's it's kind of service but i just wanted to

i guess just even reference it because it seems like del Toro is kind of unambiguously referencing told and written by men that features a young girl going into a tunnel and learning a thing or two about a thing or two, and then coming out on the other side in one way. So I just wanted to reference the other movies, some of which we've covered that take this same tack. So obviously it seems like at least the popular genesis of it is Alice in Wonderland where a young girl falls into

a floor vagina and meets a bunch of men that don't like her. And also in that case, a mean queen. And you know she comes out we've covered coralline yes that is another another vagina that pops up swallows her up she learns a lot about her her role in the world and her feelings about her parents she's popped out of the vagina go back in the world rebirth this also. This also happens in Spirited Away,

a movie I have not seen in many years, so I can't speak to the specifics of it, but it's much the same. Young girl tumbles into a natural vagina, pops out changed, and then Pan's Labyrinth, where this is the floor vagina approach, where she goes down a series of tunnels, meets a series of foes.

And then, I mean, I think the most tragic example where she doesn't survive in the traditional sense, but her memory survives and she kind of graduates into, she's not even going to move out of the floor vagina. She's just going to live there. Yeah, goes deeper down into it i also wanted to uh back up my my little uh journey to womanhood metaphor not because not just because there is such a huge precedent for it sure in uh fiction from male auteurs that are generally very very loved so again i'm not like dumping on it, but it is a thing. I did a little bit of research on like the faun and Pan. The faun and the mythological creature of Pan traditionally is like a very sexual character.

So if we're reading that, you know, Pan is presenting himself in his little goat legs to Ophelia, saying a series of things to her that are very confusing, giving her a bunch of what seems to her like random goals that she doesn't fully understand. I feel like that does lend itself to the read of like, she is on this journey towards figuring out what womanhood is to her because literally the sex god shows up and she's like i don't know what this guy's talking about because she's 10 so that's my little rant on girls in holes we love to toss a girl into a hole in popular culture we just love it i was worried about that too because it's called Pan's Labyrinth

in the English translation of the title, but not in the Spanish one. It just translates to the labyrinth of the faun or the faun's labyrinth. But I guess because Pan was a more recognizable thing than a faun, which for me, that wasn't true. I was like, I don't know what pan i had to certainly misled some of us right yeah it's not peter pan so what the hell so yeah so what's the point

i unclear but uh del toro has said that even though this english translation of the title identifies the faun as pan that the faun is not pan in the movie and has said quote if he was pan the girl would be in deep shit um and he's very clearly stated that it is not pan but nonetheless the faun is also closely the faun is still deceptive and like there's some sex stuff with the fun yeah and then i but then i also found aristotle i would love your take on this if you look at the i mean aside from the fact that the poster is not about peter pan um every poster i was able to find for this movie is a gaping vagina and there's just no way around it like the marketing of this movie was a lot of pussy but I was able to find a quote from del toro that kind of pushes against that reading I guess it just is really this is a case study and

like I mean he's saying it's not there, but I can't stop seeing it. Where he was asked in an interview with Filter Mag, the question was, so often in fairy tale analysis, there's a tendency to read any story of a young girl as a psychosexual parable, but this film it doesn't at all i consciously avoided it not out of prudishness but out of the same reason why i tried to avoid the myth of vampire vampirism in chronos blah blah blah blah stuff about chronos in pan's labyrinth i knew the psychosexual angle was really tired it felt very 1980s for me and i felt this was a movie about a girl who was on the threshold of making a choice where she could cease to be a girl but it was not about sexual identity which i don't even think pushes back against how i feel that much because it doesn't seem like a sexual identity thing as much as it is of like figuring out how you can survive as a woman in this world i don't know yeah because there's nothing inherently sexual

in any of this it's all very much about it it does it but that's also wild hand to say because everything's a uterus in this movie like i i have a confusing brag i have theion Blu-ray. Wow. That is literally a vagina, Aristotle. Yes. I did not even see that until you brought it up. I mean, I recognize the like, it's a beautiful artwork by Becky Cloonan. I wanted the poster so bad. Of course, it sold out in seconds. But it's similar as the regular poster where it's kind of the tree but

it's also kind of the fawn's head it all looks like a uterus but that is she is coming out of a vagina a like the you know the it's right there it scrambles my brain i don't think that there's anything wrong with this but it is always weird to me when a male filmmaker is like it's not that i'm like but do you are you looking at it like i'm looking at it like it's just i don't know it is definitely an interpretation thing but and it also is a a set design thing but because we know del toro is so involved in the process it's kind of not like well he just showed up and there were all these vaginas in the floor like he i don't know and i i feel like this also kind of goes back to the the essay that i mentioned initially that he's trying to influence your view of it with what his intention is but that doesn't

mean that that's still not there because he's still a man raised in a extremely patriarchal society so that of course he has major blind spots that he just can't see i think and we all kind of have that yeah we all have major blind spot you just cannot see because you don't know that they're there that's why i really appreciated this critical essay of him because you know it does kind of make me appreciate him more while also recognizing, you know, not perfect. I love the hell out of this movie. And there is a vagina on every poster. And both of those things can be true. Well, I'm also disturbed at this trend of it being, I mean, the suggestion that it is.

Is it? Can there be a psychosexual interpretation of this movie about a 10 year old girl like why is that even entering the conversation for like the film critics and in like the filmmakers who were like yeah let me put all this vagina imagery into a movie about a 10 year old like i don't i hate it i agree but i also feel like it's a valid question to ask because it does happen it is that right it's yeah it's not so much the the questioning of it but it's more like why is this imagery that we yeah that we would see in a movie about a 10 year old girl who is like about to start to come of age kind of thing you know

like i just it feels weird it's uncomfortable it sucks that it even has to enter the conversation yes that's that's what i mean i feel like i would appreciate it more if he was more direct and i was like yes it's about becoming a woman she's never sexualized we don't you know sex is never brought up but you know people grow up it has to happen right yeah and i think i would appreciate that way more than like no no no that's not it it seems like a little yeah this answer it i had to read it like a few different times because it's like i feel like that is almost that conversation is telling because it's conflating coming of age with sex which is you know a part of coming of age is navigating your feelings around

sex but it's not the only thing that happens right come of age so much happens but the idea that like you're reducing coming of age to like when losing your period or what like having sex for the first time it's and it's also that's also like obviously a very like cis-normative thing where it's like, well, you're a woman as soon as you get your period. And it's like, no. No, I went back to school the next day and I didn't know what cunnilingus was for five years still. So I would say that so little of my life had changed other than.

Wait, I feel like we've talked about this. I just was like, I think I shit myself. My mom's like, you didn't. And just was like i think i shit myself my mom's like you didn't and i was like all right moving on yeah i guess i mean if there is going to be so much vagina and uterus imagery and like i would rather there be injury vaginal blood like for a movie that doesn't really deal in sex very much i feel like it's disingenuous to imply like i mean on his end of like it doesn't have a lot to do with sex but it does have a lot to do with like women's bodies or like cis women in a way that isn't exploitative but it is very present i don't know it's confusing to talk about right and where i come down on the whole thing is like, if you're going to throw a bunch of all this imagery into your movie, then make the protagonist an adult woman and not a 10 year old girl, I guess.

And then also, like, what does a cis man know about a maturing female body? And why is there that obsession with it? Call Bo Burnham up. Let's get Bo Burnham on the horn and as much as I love eighth grade and as much as I love P.N. Slauberinth it is it really makes you question like why this is such a prevalent or really like why it is such a prevalent story tell like why is it such a pervasive cultural story for a man to write a story about a little girl falling into a vagina and learning something and why why is it always a cis man telling that story i just i mean again i love this movie to death but it's like worth bringing up and i feel like we had not as in

depth but like a similar ish conversation in coralline of like, why is Neil Gaiman just like tossing this little girl into a vagina to learn a lesson? Why is it? Why? It just, it just happens a lot. Yeah. So the,

the moral of the story is I would appreciate more coming of age stories for little girls and more heroes journey narratives about girls and women that are actually written and made by women but that said this movie fucking rocks it does i wouldn't change a thing and it's it's complicated okay this movie is the greatest and and it's also weird, but that's the beauty. There it is. Yeah. King of the weirdos. Truly, yeah.

He's, man. I also realized halfway through that we acknowledged the shirt that I'm wearing, but didn't specifically say that it's a shirt that you got me that says directed by Guillermo del Toro. Yes. Send us a picture of yourself wearing it, if you would Aristotle, and then we'll post it on our Instagram.

Will do. Will do. Do you have a favorite del Toro movie at present slash has it ever changed? I do. And it was going to be something, I don't know if we're wrapping now, because I was going to recommend Pan's's labyrinth objectively good film oscar-winning beautiful gorgeous movie the devil's backbone is his other i believe he has three movies in spanish objectively his best movies uh the other ones are great and fun but those are like truly the best most meaningful i guess except for cronos cronos is good but it's a little more cool than meaningful but devil's backbone my favorite movie i have a tattoo right here on my arm of once again the ah shit it's gone but the criterion collection cover and that's kind of

the other side of little boys in a boy's home during the spanish war pans is post this is during and i read that del torre says that pan's labyrinth is the sort of like spiritual or thematic sequel to the devil's backbone even though they're not necessarily like narratively sequels they're like kind of spiritually companion films yeah in the sense that they both take place during the spanish war but there's also i like to think that he has created a universe that he hasn't touched since of you know a very dark sad grim world with a lighter side of the things that we consider dark like you know the the beautiful note always of pan's labyrinth is there's all these scary things happening in the fantasy world, but none of them are as dark or as horrifying as what's happening in our world that actually happened. None of it is as evil as that. And it's kind of the same thing with Devil's Backbone, where it's a ghost story, but the ghost isn't the problem.

It's the men in the movie. Yeah. And it's a much smaller, more intimate movie. I feel like that doesn't make sense. But if you see it, you get it. Yeah, I got to watch it. That, unfortunately, I don't think it's streaming anywhere. It's almost never anywhere.

That's why I had to buy the Blu-ray. But it's worth it. Okay. And then Pacific Rim, which we've done before, too. And that's more of like a big, dumb, fun movie. We're going to get to Shape of Water at some point because Gavin talked about the Doug Jones fish. We didn't even talk about Doug Jones.

We didn't know. King Doug Jones. He learned Spanish for this movie. They didn't use his voice, but he did learn. They didn't use his voice, but he did learn't use his voice but they did uh he did learn spanish for it but it wasn't good enough so they dubbed it over with a spanish-speaking actor's voice sorry doug but doug jones rocks i found out that he and it's too bad because this is a cultural image that has been taken by the alt-right which i didn't learn until i was like

this is fun and then everyone was like, not anymore. But do you remember that McDonald's mascot from the 80s that was called Mac Tonight? And it's just a mascot with a huge crescent moon for a head? Yes. That's Doug Jones. Wait, wait. For McDonald's? Because I'm thinking of Jay Leno, right?

Or Conan. One of them also had a moon headed uh mascot maybe they were copying it or maybe the other way around but yeah mac tonight was uh i don't know before my time but uh he was a guy with a big crescent moon and it was about getting food at mcdonald's late at night i see it now he's alt-right now the alt-right I don't even want to know what they've done with Mac tonight but apparently they took him he's gone but he's Doug Jones back in the day that was an early Doug Jones gig guy with a big he loves a big prosthetic he sure does well he can't even with the huge ass moon head. He's like, I'll do it. Jamie, would you agree

Alfred Molina should have been in this movie? Yeah. He is part Spanish. He is an actor of Spanish descent. Yeah. He is bilingual. But then I do feel like if he was in this movie, he would have been playing someone really terrible

and I'm almost glad he's not in it because I don't want to see him be a bad guy. I think he would have made a great Dr. Ferrerio. Ooh, good call. Yeah, he would have fit in this world, too. I don't even know what I'm saying when I'm saying that, but he fits in a fantasy movie. Yeah.

And he fits in a period piece. In many ways, Pan's Labyrinth is a period piece. Yes, indeed. Oh, thanks for the excuse to go to Alfred Molina's Wikipedia today. What was he doing this year? Well, maybe he was offered a role in Turn It Down. Instead, he might have been doing something like The Da Vinci Code. I hope that's not true.

That would be such a bummer if he was like, no can do, Guillermo. I got a sweet gig in the Da Vinci Code. I don't know. This movie is so goddamn good. It's not even worth noting. You just want to throw it out there

that Enrico Lupi, who plays the king father character, is also in The Devil's Backbone and in Kronos. He's another of Guillermo's frequenters until he passed. Well, and also the woman who plays Mercedes is, I recognized her from E2 Mama Tambien. Yes. Yes, she is. Which I think is the only other movie I've seen her in. Wait, let me make.

More great connections guillermo alfonso quiroon uh in your reto three best friends alfonso quiroon helped produce this movie yeah yeah i didn't realize that until uh researching for they know he was involved in it and that there was also i read on the scholarly journal wikipedia.org, that there was like some disagreement about whether or that Inaratu said that he viewed Pan's Labyrinth as a truly Catholic film. And then del Toro was like, no, no. Which it seems like it's kind of his thing. He's like, that read is is no is a no for me which is so hard to like i don't understand how he can say that when he's so obsessed with catholic imagery like that's just so his jam and he was raised catholic and he kind of hates it i guess but

you can't ignore that it's there well that's what i kind of yeah sometimes i mean and also i have i'm like i am i'm like i guess if i were if i were making something on such a large scale i bet i would have some control issues with it as well of like no that wasn't what i was saying i was saying this but but even so it's like when you're able to make something on such a big scale it's like it's cool that people can see different stuff in it and like see parts of them i don't know and also just like it's to be definitively like it's not about catholic like i guess that almost like implies that you have more control over what you're putting out subconsciously than you

actually do i don't know hmm wow art is complicated what is art does anyone have any final thoughts about the film he needs to make more Spanish speaking movies hasn't done so in a long time yeah what was the last one it was Pans and then he went to do more Hellboys

and then Pacific Rim Shape of Water Crimson Peak oh I always forget that was him and then didn't he burn a couple years And then Pacific Rim, April Water, Crimson Peak. Oh, I always forget that was him. And then didn't he burn a couple years doing like almost doing Hobbit and then not doing Hobbit? Yes. Yeah.

Well, this movie does pass the Bechdel test between Ophelia and her mother, Carmen, between Ophelia and Mercedes. As far as our nipple scale, zero to five nipples based on an examination through an intersectional feminist lens. This one is tricky for me. Hard. Because on one hand, you have this like, again, a hero's journey narrative

that is led by a woman, three women really. I mean, especially, and then two women or two female characters emerge as like, the most heroic characters of the film between Ophelia and Mercedes. And then I like that it's a fairy tale narrative that is about a female character but it is not like a princess having to get rescued and falling in love with a prince because like i think disney uh and you know other entities have kind of conditioned us to think oh fairy tale that's probably about a princess falling in love with a prince so but i still like that you have like all that, like you have like an evil stepfather this time.

Right. Inversions, all that good shit. A lot of the components are there. A lot of the conventions are there, but it subverts a lot of that stuff, you know, by being critical of fascism. And, you know, so, you know, it's just the characters, I mean, between, again, Ophelia and Mercedes, especially, it's two female characters with a ton of agency who are driving the narrative. But then you have the whole, and again, I don't know if it's just how my brain works, where I am not good at picking up on symbolism, and I am not good at picking up on symbolism and I am not good at picking up on visual metaphors.

It didn't even occur to me all of the, and I know it's right there, but just all of the vagina and the blood and what that might mean and what is the obsession with so many male auteurs telling stories about girls going into what could be interpreted as a vagina hole and and then having an adventure there um and like what are the implications of all of that i don't know how to make sense of that i'm like reminded of my days

in film school brag where i would take like film studies class that had these like interpretations that i'm just like what are you talking about that's not there i don't see that at all and then i'm like well maybe it is there i don't know i don't know again i just don't know how to read things that are not extremely explicit uh i guess so why are you roasting yourself right now I don't know I was like I'm gonna let her finish but stop roasting yourself everything that it seems like I understood came from reading Guillermo's words

yeah and then also realizing he just has a certain language where some of those things are kind of repeated throughout all of his movies yeah I guess like knowing you're knowing his entire catalog definitely helps. Sure. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. He loves, he loves asymmetrical circle things. Yeah. The Moana spiral. It's there. The Moana spiral. Which is also probably, like, symbolism that it refers to something that I don't know about. Yeah, that one I'm like, not smart enough, don't know.

So with all of that in mind, I don't know what to rate this. I really love this movie on a like, just purely like, I love watching this movie. I'd give it a million nipples on our nipple scale. I don't know i guess it would be like a 3.75 or a four it still rates really highly based on the the characters and what they do and the various kind of thematic things i don't know what is everyone else gonna do i'm gonna kaylen uh i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna do 3.75 i think between that yeah because i mean there is so much being done here in the fantasy genre that you don't get to see very much you get to also like i feel like we hit on it here and

there but like the commentary being made on class here even though i didn't realize when aristotle you brought up it's kind of at the expense of historical accuracy but i really like the commentary being made on class here and the trauma that can come with trying to get out of the class that you were born in um in order to survive and the sacrifices that come with that like i feel like del toro is really good at having those conversations a lot of the time and has a way of i mean just based on the stuff of his i've seen he seems to be like a champion of the working person. I'm very critical of the upper class, which a lot of movies aren't.

Where it's like, this is a movie about a princess and it is about how the monarchy, who are these people that they're in charge of? We don't care. So in addition to three female protagonists that all are very different and have very different fates, it makes me sad that the female hero's journey results in most likely her death. But it makes sense in the story.

And I feel like that ties into other commentary that he's making. So it works for me. It makes sense. Yeah, the vagina metaphor, I mean, is, I think I got more. It doesn't really bother me. It bothered me more when I found out that he's like, no, it isn't. I'm like, come on. So maybe that was me just being a little like, but she's walking into a vagina Guillermo and that's okay but just like

don't be like it comes off a little fawn like no no no don't question it right so so that I mean it also is like kind of and and he's interestingly he like is very clearly inspired by another narrative that uses this exact convention of tossing a girl in a hole to learn a lesson he is openly admitted to that but maybe doesn't i don't know i thought that that was interesting um i'm gonna go 3.75 because that's just what i'm doing today yeah i love this movie so much it will always be my first del toro my fave del toro and doug jones forever that is what i have to say yeah 3.75 and i'll give one to each of the main three characters and i'll give my last 0.75 to the fairy that gets her head bitten off.

I was also thinking three and a half, but I do kind of want to give it four. Do it. Because I think under a critical lens, there's lots of faults and lots of things that could be improved upon or made clearer. But I think overall net good, it's a movie about two women more than all three but two women being rebellious in the face of extreme oppression and i think that is it you know it's not a children's movie but it can at least be hopeful and a good lesson taught yeah

so net good for sure not good yeah i would say four though that also feels a little like a little bit much right that's okay i think i'll settle on a 3.75 because i think there's still room to maybe give mercedes a little bit more characterization i think there's room to have given the mother a little bit more characterization and more fully explain kind of like why she made some of the choices she's made and yeah it just could have gone a little bit further I think with some of the characterization so I'll land on a 3.75 and all mine all my nipples how many nipples does a Doug Jones fawn have? Oh. I was just thinking. I was like, he must have four. Right?

Well, if a fawn is a part goat, right? Goats, I believe, have- Do you know off the top of your head? I think they have like a four udder situation, much like a cow. Okay. So that's my guess. I don't know. I really hate that this has become a part of my personality that I just know.

Knowing how many nipples different creatures have. I don't. I want to really. And you know what? This ends today. Wow. They never talked to me about. No more cat facts?

Yeah. No more cat facts. I'm moving on to something else. What? I don't know. But anyway. Let's say toad facts. Toad facts. I give my nipples to the toad. yes feminist icon queer icon the toad the toad watching the toad deflate never doesn't make me

laugh when the toad is just like i'm a balloon goodbye i love it i'll give my 3.75 nipples you know what i'll give them to the pale all of them to the pale man whoa yeah we never what was the pale man's real story sure he has murals of him torturing children hanging up in his little cave but like who painted them did he commission someone yeah yeah he's got a whole smorgasbord of food that he that you're not allowed to eat what is that is that class commentary that only the rich are allowed to eat the luxurious food also shout out to the production designer of this movie for for so many reasons right but mostly because i'm like those grapes did look good so tasty usually when someone like eats the forbidden fruit i'm like that doesn't even look like you must be so hungry but the grapes you're like those grapes are gigantic

though not to get back into it but that also was a little bit of a a question for me was we know that she's rebellious so that's our understanding of why she does it. Purely out of rebellion because she is so rebellious. That she disobeys what the faun tells her, eats the grapes. But there's also no reason, like she is proven to be a very strong character. And, you know, never do we learn that she likes sweets or fruits or anything. We never, there's no like, you missed your meal. There was no real reason for her to have any strong feeling towards those grapes.

Right. Like she could have easily gone out of there. But for some reason we get the temptation and she fails at that temptation. I was kind of wondering that too. Because the other comparable story thing, I was like, oh, it's like when other comparable like story thing i was like oh it's like when aladdin takes the lamp but you also know why he wants to take the lamp and that's kind of like set into his character when you know him of like well he survives by taking like he has to he has to steal to survive this is built into his character where yeah it's not totally clear why she eats the

grape other than the big old grape because it just looks so tasty well there is that scene where like she's sent to bed without dinner but that happens several days before this so it's not as though she's like hungry right i don't think she's still hungry from that right i don't know that's a really good point yeah i'm not sure well guillermo answered that question what are we supposed to say about that, sir? We won't ask you about vaginas ever again. We promise. Well, Aristotle, it's been such a delight to have you here.

Thanks for coming on the cast. It's been a pleasure. It's just nice to have you back. I know. We lower the embargo on men, and then you come on for an episode, and then we raise the gate back up. I appreciate it. Yes, thank you.

Of course. Where can people follow you online and check out anything you'd like to plug? Ari's Tacos on everything except for TikTok, you know, because who knows? Why make the account if it's not going to be there? Hell yeah. Ari's Tacos on everything. But I also want to shout out DSA and Waterdrop and Streetwatch and all those organizations and being involved with those and finding your local version of that because they're

happening everywhere. And though not always perfect organizations, they are doing net good yes and the work that you know other people should be doing and blatantly aren't so mutual aid is the way the light the direction can i also just say aristotle that you posted some videos i think in in July, about how to reduce your single-use plastic waste. And I really took it to heart. And I'm taking a lot of measures to very drastically reduce the single-use plastic in my life. Awesome. Thanks for that.

Yes, I got a lot of good response from those videos, but I just hated doing it. I was like, I hate having this camera on me and just talking into it, so I'm just going to stop. Well, it worked. It worked. You are legally obligated to start a YouTube channel. Well, speaking of YouTube, we do have a channel channel but we don't post anything of it but instead don't and don't expect that to start sorry but you can follow us on twitter and instagram at bechtel cast you can subscribe to our patreon aka matreon it's five dollars a month

it gets you access to two bonus episodes every single month plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes and that's at patreon.com slash bectlecast with that shall we shall we go back down to uh into the floor vagina like a pretty here i'm pretty hungry if you guys want to see if we can swipe something from the pale man yes let's do it all right bye bye bye daphne caruana galicia was a maltese investigative journalist who on october 16 2017 was assassinated crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one woman wiki leaks she exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. We'll see you next time.