The Bechdel Cast - Raw with Vanessa Guerrero

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

This week, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest sink their teeth into a cannibalistic discussion about Raw.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @nessguerrero 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.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast so caitlin we're basically podcast sisters right oh yeah of course okay so uh i can tell you anything right yeah that's what podcast sisters are to each other okay so i have to tell you that

the other night uh when you gave me that brazilian i did eat your finger are we still cool i do remember my finger getting cut off i know you like came to and you're like is she eating my finger and i was like you're dreaming but i did do it and i just kind of wanted to like check in to your well are you feeling about that i'm glad you felt comfortable enough divulging that to me sisters right yeah yeah of course yeah now's my turn to tell you that i i didn't eat your finger but i ate the finger and other body parts of a lot of people you know what i actually forgive you because that makes me feel better about what i did which is not comparatively as i think we're good our mom probably did it i'm assuming it's somewhere in the bloodline. Like, I'm not even worried about it. Yeah.

Love you. Love you too, Jamie. Enjoy jail. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante, and this is our show in which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply is a jumping off point. That being, of course, a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test, that requires, for our purposes, two people of any marginalized gender with names have to speak to each other about something other than a man ideally that conversation is meaningful to the narrative right which you would think would be hard to do for many movies it is hard to do but guess what baby today we are covering a movie

where it is not hard to do because there is so much to talk about in this movie between characters who are not men and they're doing all manner of fucked up fucked up stuff i am so excited to be where first of all i wanted to just give us kind of uh a little ribbon and say the movie today is from France it is a cinematic movie so I felt like a genius watching this movie because we are socially conditioned to think that French equals cool sophisticated yeah I felt very chic today as I was preparing for this episode, and I could not be more excited to talk about the movie. It is 2016's Raw, directed by Julia Ducournau, and we have an incredible returning guest who brought this movie to us,

and I could not be more grateful. Yay! Yes, she is a host of kicking and screaming podcast she will soon be on behind the monsters on shutter and you remember her from our episodes on made in manhattan and atomic blonde it's vanessa guerrero welcome back welcome back thank you for freaking us this movie. Thank you for watching this movie because pitching to people a movie that is like 99 minutes of cannibalism isn't the easiest thing to do in the world. And the fact that we're all like this hype to talk about it, I am thrilled. So excited. I also would argue that when a woman eats another woman's finger, that does pass the Bechdel test.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, that is an intimate communication of the mind and body. I mean, it's kind of transcends the Bechdel cast in many ways. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So let's talk. Let's get into it. it's a pretty recent movie it came out five years ago uh vanessa what is your connection to this movie how did it come into

your life um so the way i have a lot of fondness for this movie because it also kind of started with like my relationship and my husband who i'm like married to now so it's one of like the weirder first few dates movies but basically when we had met I was working on an article about uh sex and horror and how for some people it's kind of an entryway into like safely figuring out for themselves like something off kilter that they might be into and uh at the time we met his friends and he came over and recommended a movie called um southbound and it's an anthology series but one of it includes like a medical horror moment um and it has a lot of like specifically it's like a lot of like sound and sensation and i proceeded to get too breathy on a couch next to a man

that I just brought into my house for the first time that we were definitely not dating. Like embarrassingly breathy about it. Literally blushing talking about it now. And he was super chill about it. I was just like, that's weird. I just learned something that I like right there. And immediately he was like, have you seen the movie raw because he's basically like knocking on people's doors

being like this is my lord and savior Julia Dick or no and he was like this is also like perfect for the piece that you're working on and so he'd been waiting forever to watch it with me and we finally watched it together and then the entire time I kept looking at him and I was like this is the closest thing that has ever felt both terrifying and right to like my experiences with sexual awakening especially like growing up in a very repressed household and school system so like this became so valuable like the last time I felt like this watching a movie was american psycho when i was like oh this is what it looks like when a woman does something terrifying this is what it looks like when a woman like examines something like this and like this where the intimacies change

based on who's behind the camera the last time i felt that way was like seeing mary herron do something and now i'm just like all about whatever julia decor no does she could she could just do like a weird tick tock accidentally and i'm like perfect art cinema yeah we were talking about the new movie of hers that is either already has come out depending on when this episode drops or is about to come it's like the release is like right around this time uh we're not sure of the pronunciation it could be we kept saying titanic titanic titan titan yeah we're not exactly sure but it is her new movie and it looks pretty cool it really does yeah yeah this this movie is uh i just i'm so thrilled about it I had never I had heard of this movie I had heard of Julia Ducournau and it was just like not something that I and this is I feel like especially in the past year or so this has been like changing pretty rapidly but I never thought

of myself as a horror fan or someone who is naturally drawn to horror. But seeing a movie like this, it is absolutely a horror movie. But it's also like a coming of age movie, which is very much something that I'll give almost any coming of age movie a fair shot. And I was pleasantly taken off guard by how much I loved this movie from almost every alec i'm just i'm so excited to talk about it i'm so glad that it exists and i'm so glad that directors like julia ducournau are working at such a high level i wish that like this had i was happy that i mean this movie is pretty accessible like you can watch it for free a number of places. Tubi, I believe, is one of the ones. Yeah.

Yeah. I was I for one was a Tubi head for this. I watched five Tide commercials in a row and then continue to watch Raw. Whatever. By any means. But I hope that this as time goes on becomes like a horror classic that is like not out of left field to say that you've seen because I just thought it was wonderful so absolutely and like you Vanessa for bringing it I truly can't thank you enough it's so good I also love that you specifically brought like coming of age because

horror is such a perfect vehicle for that like you've seen it used with both like um I mean as literal as like werewolf stuff where it's like suddenly I'm getting hair everywhere and it's awkward to like more horrifying visceral things. And I feel like we have this collective amnesia about how awful and gross and terrifying but also exhilarating puberty was. And oftentimes when we like examine it, it's usually with like a ukulele and like butterfly kisses and it's it's something that kind of takes away this like feral nature that we all kind of adopt as we're learning all of the weird things our bodies do and how we want to like interact with other people and i feel like there truly should be more horror coming of age things because I cannot tell you how many times I'd like pull down my pants or look in the mirror and be like, what is happening as a teenager? And it's

the scariest thing I'd ever seen. My life was a horror movie once a month when I got my period because I've never been in more pain than every time I get my period yeah so I grew up I didn't get sex ed in school and so I thought I was shitting myself for a while because it feels like you do because your internal organs are just like flexing and unflexing if you pull down your pants and it's brown I just felt like it was unreasonable i'm like that's so bizarre because i don't remember shitting myself but i guess that that's just what's been happening they don't prepare us for clots no they don't at all prepare you for blood clots or the fact that some days you might just have a jellyfish in your panties like they're

like oh it's just like a little bit of blood every month. And we are all wholly unprepared for the first time it gets gnarly. And also, it's like, if you don't have someone on the ground to let you know what's going on, all you see on TV is it's blue. It's not even the color is wrong. They dump weird blue stuff onto pads. And it's like, in what world is this helpful to anyone? This Kool-Aid jammer fell into your panties. What do you do?

Kool-Aid jammer. Not to pull out the Kool-Aid jammer reference. But that was at 13. I knew more about Kool-Aid jammers than I did about my own body. Oh, good grief. I had seen this movie before a couple years ago uh i remember it it has gotten kind of more and more buzz since it came out so i wanted to say i saw it in like end of 2017 2018 ish okay i was surprised by how much i remember it because usually if i see a movie once and then a

few years pass it's i might as well have never seen the movie because I simply remember nothing. But as I was rewatching it for this episode, I was like, oh yeah, and I remember that. And I remember that. It's like so much had made an impression that I was like, oh, cool. There's a lot of perspectives you don't see enough of so that when you do see it, it's just in your brain forever. Yeah, it really like leaves a lasting impression. So yeah, I was excited to rewatch it for this. And yeah, we've got a lot to talk about. By that same token, though, Jamie, we were talking about this where we're like, I like

kind of don't I didn't write down any notes for this because I'm just like, yeah, it was good. It was handled well. End of note. and it really is it's like I feel like it's rare to find a movie that so like sucks you in yeah that I found it hard to like pause to take notes because I was like I don't really want I don't really want to I'm having too much fun it's very fluid there aren't really any moments that like slow down or like maybe that the pacing is like, oh, here I can look at my phone for a second.

Right. Because I think this is just another benefit of having a woman behind the camera. The main character is always looked at with curiosity instead of judgment or like, what is this small, delicate creature to where it feels like a very intense nature documentary about a person yeah yeah oh my gosh i felt like there was a lot of camera choices that

were so i mean were so like every time you see justine she's hunched over and if she's like she looks like she's the subject of a nature documentary the entire movie it's yeah the first time you see like alexis in the intro and she like runs into the street and you know causes the car accident she sprints like a dog or an animal that's like running into traffic she's like on all fours and it's so deliberate like it feels like the way an animal hunts for something. And you see her from far away. And it does have that far enough removed thing to where by stripping all of these characters of humanity and treating them like animals, it just makes it feel all the more human.

Mm-hmm. It was, yeah. This movie in particular just feels like you can just feel that it is like women perceiving other women yes like in a way that it doesn't feel like it's bopping you over the head with a mallet but it just like intuitively feels that way like if i saw this movie knew nothing about it would be like this movie had to have been made by someone who intuitively understood justine's experience and like where she would be coming from because i don't know like you can just feel it i had that thought when i watched the uh peeing standing up scene yeah oh my gosh yeah because i knew never in

a million years would a dude ever include something like that and that's like a very specific kind of camaraderie that would be considered gross that like men would be like, that's too gross. And they don't really understand how down to be disgusting. We are like, quote, unquote, disgusting. But like, I also like deeply like as somebody that like has a vagina wanted to learn how to pee standing up so bad when I because I was like, it's cool. Like anyone with a penis can just like run off and then like piss in the bushes and then come back and keep playing I want to pee standing up so like when I saw that scene it felt so close to like similar experiences of like other girls being

like you want to see what this does that it like I was like I've never seen anything like this that scene I really enjoyed that scene and I thought that the way that it like I was like I've never seen anything like this that scene I really enjoyed that scene and I thought that the way that it was shot was perfect is like I don't know I mean for a movie that is about cannibalism it feels bizarre to be like oh you know it didn't feel exploitatively shot at all but it really didn't like it was yeah it felt like you got what you needed there which is the sisterhood and also just like how many people are you going to be that comfortable enough around to be like let's pee standing up even though exactly it's gonna be messy like I don't know I every time I pee it sounds like a helicopter is landing and it's like

all over the place but I certainly did try at different points in my life I never realized how powerful my stream is until I pee outside like I'm so used to hearing it in the bowl and then the first time it hits dirt I'm like I'm doing that you're just like wow I'm so let's bring that strength to other areas of my body and life we're gonna get those muscles everywhere because my god, that's forceful. I'm just like, this could knock someone out. But I don't know. Who knows?

Wow. Anyways, what were we talking about? I just got so excited about talking about peeing outside. Forceful pees. Yeah. Love a good forceful pee. Let me just gnaw on the recap chomp in baby take a little bite out of the recap shall we wow look at her go um so the movie starts on an open road where we see a woman running into the road and seems to be deliberately causing a car to crash into a tree,

and then we see her approach the crash. And then it cuts to a young woman, Justine. She's dining with her parents. We learn that they are all strict vegetarians. Then they drop her off at her first day of veterinary school and the first night there she and the other like freshman students get hazed by the upperclassmen and they're brought to this big party there she meets her roommate adrian adrian adrian i don't know the french france there i i was i it made me laugh a little bit and we talked about we we recorded an episode earlier today about revenge of the nerds so there's been this like related but deeply unrelated through line of hazing to what we've been talking about all day yeah but i just thought it was so like not unbelievable because it's like i certainly haven't been to veterinary school but i was like wow is hazing that intense among

vets fuck yeah seems intense where i was just like i don't know anything about the world so i'm just gonna have to believe you i guess right i know i i was looking for, I literally, I was seeking out vet insight because I was just like, is it that intense there? Like, are you, are y'all okay? Should I bring my cocker spaniel to the likes of you if you're dumping blood on each other? Like, we don't know. Yeah. Hard to say. Yeah. Could not speak from experience, believe it or not. wait caitlin are you not a vet you've misrepresented yourself to me i did not go to a french veterinary school this is the foremost french veterinary feminist podcast so that's interesting i don't have a master's degree in veterinary studies from france university where you can only work on french horses and french dogs yes very

very they're wearing hats it's nice um okay so justine's older sister alex also goes to this school she's an upperclassman or an upperclass woman i did write that in my recap, by the way, in case anyone was curious. That was brave of you to say. Thank you. They catch up with each other. We find out that their parents also went to this vet school. They kind of don't totally see eye to eye on things, but they're excited to see each other. And then Justine starts classes uh the hazing continues throughout the week they all have to eat a raw rabbit kidney as part of their hazing like are the vets of the world doing this i like it's not it didn't bump me at all i was i'm just genuinely curious if there's hazing in veterinary school. Vets sound off in the comments. I didn't go to

college. So that's what I'm assuming all college is like. I went to loser college. And so I don't know. Anyway, so she's presented with having to eat this raw rabbit kidney. And Justine is like, I can't eat that. I'm a vegetarian. But her sister is like, no, just eat it. Be cool. So Justine does. Then she seems to have a reaction to having eaten the rabbit kidney. She develops a severe rash all over her body. She goes to see a doctor about it who tells her it's probably food poisoning and that she should fast for a day but justine's like well except i'm very hungry and then we see her steal a burger patty from the dining hall and we're like wait a minute isn't she a vegetarian what's going on and then her roommate

adrian takes justine off campus to like eat her first meat meal. On the way, they see the scene of that car accident from the beginning of the movie. Yeah. They pass that and then they get their food and Justine... Good gas station food representation. I feel like there's not enough gas station food in movies for how prevalent it is in the real world. I mean, as a frequenter of both sheets and wawas in my days in Pennsylvania. Wow. Yeah. Mare of Easttown over here. Hitting up the wawa. I grew up in mostly sheets territory. So I've been to many more sheets than wawas, but Vanessa,

what was your, what was your go to gas station food growing up? Man, I didn't really experience like full on gas state, like actual like meal meals that weren't chip bags until I was like an adult in Los Angeles. But many of the ones by my high school would do like literally open any chip and you can just dump it under the

chili and cheese thing oh yes yes and so those with hot cheetos and pickled jalapenos and then a bunch of chili and cheese and then i would just eat it with chopsticks and now i wonder why i have ulcers all the time oh i'm sure this is completely unrelated no that's completely unrelated it has to be but it was like the popular like get that and then walk home from school. And then because we also like went to a private school, we were like dying to eat garbage by the time school got out. So then we would just like double down on those. Hell yeah. Jamie, what's your go to meal or experience?

It's improved over time but in uh at least in i don't even know if it's all of new england but there's cumberland farms is the gas station of note and you go to cumbies you get a slushy you get uh they have really good hot dogs which is like part part of my early adoption to hot dogs was cumbies hot dogs they actually kept them sort of hot which felt very chic and novel because they did cost 79 cents so love cumbie's food to this day i was getting like a lot of like they because i feel like gas stations in the last 10 years have been trying to like make their food at least appear more healthy because now when i go to cumbies when i visit home they're like would you like a grilled chicken wrap i was like there's no

way there's no way but it's like hot dog i was like i don't come here for the grilled chicken wrap but i appreciate a for effort anyways anyway gas station hot dogs and raw. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Same thing. So we see her hungrily eat a bunch of meat. And then later back at her dorm, we see her eat some raw chicken. And we're like, wow, something's really happening to Justine. And then she coughs up a bunch of her own hair that she chewed on, which was gross. God, that scene. I loved it. The audio mixing on that scene

had me skin crawling the entire time yeah i love it there's a i got really into this not into but i read a book about it's i guess it's a type of like ulcer tumor like thing i'm not a doctor called a teratoma that can form inside of people i read a memoir of someone who had something like this that her body just started acting ways that she didn't recognize and it's just this kind of like it sounds like a horror movie it is a combination of like hair and half-grown teeth and just like my aunt had one of those yes yeah like and it's like it was filled with teeth yeah it's a hairball full of teeth that grows inside of people and it's like it is i don't know it's very it's very visually fascinating but it also is like so under

discussed that when it happens to someone they're like this doesn't sound real like how is what yeah it reminded me of that. Teratomas. If you want to fun, Google rabbit hole. Wow. Is your, did,

did it work out okay for your aunt and it got like removed and everything? Yeah. She got that one removed. And then I was just like obsessed with teratomas for, I didn't know that's what, but like the idea of like hair and stuff like that growing and like, and nails, that scene,

especially yes. Nails. And then I had, um, I had a pe teacher where she grew an extra row of teeth in her mouth she said that that i can't remember she said that her doctor said it was like she had like a pregnancy or something and like the extra hormones uh went a little crazy before like she like lost the baby without realizing that she did because she like

wasn't even trying to get pregnant and so she just like had a quick influx of hormones and then she just woke up one day and found like three little teeth coming out of like the bottom of her mouth like behind her bottom jaw and the second i heard that i like checked my mouth in the mirror every day and i was just like do i have teeth now and like you never really think about how much body horror happens just because of hormones right like it's just uh i love body horror so much and it's there couldn't be more grounds for it to exist like it is such a real thing it's wow yeah my birth control makes my mouth bleed spontaneously oh my gosh oh oh love that didn't know that it was a thing until one day i just tasted copper

and they're like yeah some people's progesterone birth control just makes their mouth their gums just start bleeding bleeding uh my birth control made my libido go away for like five years so that was that was body horror that is body i've ever heard it bodies are horrible yeah and that is where rock comes in oh does it want to tell you that right from just pulling a hairball like it's a shower in your throat oh my god yeah everyone listening google teratoma if you want to have some wild dreams for the next two to three months pass hard pass for me um okay so then justine hangs out with her sister alex they bond a bit this is when we get i think the peeing standing up scene alex also gives justine a bikini wax which goes wrong scissors have to be involved and then there's a mishap

with the scissors which leads to one of of Alex's fingers getting cut off. Alex passes out. And as Justine waits for the paramedics to arrive, she starts to lick the blood off of the severed finger. And then whoops-a-daisy, she eats the finger. Also, the music that's happening in this scene is mesmerizing. Yeah. Yeah. The score for this movie is so good oh yeah there's an actual sex scene later and it's not played the same like it was it was weirdly sensual the way she like shot the eating of the finger more than like actual sex scenes later to where it was like, this is the awakening moment.

This is the moment like in most movies where a girl was like, I feel tingles and now it's this, except she's eating a finger. That feeling when you eat a finger for the first time, you know, who can relate that? Yeah. That whole scene,

the way that that scene is executed on every level was like in the hands of someone less competent would have been so i mean i guess it still is campy in a way but it doesn't feel like you're so like you know that she's probably going to eat the finger but it still feels so shocking when she does it because the actress is doing such an incredible job the direction is so good the reaction when the sister wakes up is so fucked like it's just so good the score like yeah yeah i was literally like pulling my sheets the entire time because i knew it was gonna happen but like she very much does the thing where it's like taking the little bites and like the little tastes before and you're like i know she's gonna fucking do it but when oh the tension i know it's so good oh it's so good so yeah then then alex wakes up and sees justine eating her finger and gives her this like what

the fuck are you doing look and then we cut to the hospital. The parents have shown up. Alex is taken care of. And then she blames her missing finger on their dog, Quickie, having eaten it, even though she knows it was Justine. Because Alex has a secret of her own. I know. At first, I was like, Alex, you're just going to kill a dog over this? That's mean. But then she has her reasons it's because she's protecting this family secret where she has also developed a taste for human flesh it turns out she was the woman at the

beginning of the movie who had caused that car crash because she does this again and brings justine with her and she she causes another car to crash and then kind of goes over to eat the people. But Justine's like, no, this is not what I want for myself. And she storms off. But then she notices how hungry and or horny, but mostly hungry. She is for her roommate, Adrian. And later at a party, she's making out with this guy. She bites part of his lip off. He freaks out about it. And then she hooks up with Adrian. And the whole time she's trying to bite at him and eat him. And he's like, stop that. So then she bites her own arm and draws blood by gnawing on her own arm. Then Justine goes to this party and she gets really drunk. And she kind of again, like surprise kisses slash bites, surprise bites a few people. And then Alex finds

her and takes her out of the situation and then the next day at class everyone's looking at justine all weird and it turns out the night before someone had taken a video of alex kind of taunting a very drunk justine with a cadaver that's one way to describe that video that that video is so dark and again so well composed because it's so fucked up to watch right because alex is basically like here eat it eat the dead body and justine who is like kind of too drunk to really do anything is still like trying to like lunge at it and bite it and like eat it but she's like just way too drunk yeah to do anything but there's a whole crowd of people watching this and now everyone thinks that

justine is a is a freak so she confronts alex about having done this to her and they get in this big fight on campus they're biting at each other alex bites a chunk out of justine's face but eventually they stop fighting and then they kind of make up and alex tends to justine's face bite and then the next morning justine wakes up in bed with adrian who turns out to be dead a huge chunk of his leg has been eaten. That reveal was also so devastating. You really, you can guess that Adrian's probably fucked, but I was still holding out hope for him.

Yeah. It's really gross to look at. Really gross. And it turns out he was spiked in the abdomen by a ski pool and then eaten and justine at first thinks that she did it but apparently it was alex who had stabbed him and eaten him was it alex's fault their hunger for human flesh is something their mother passed down to them because he opens his shirt and reveals a bunch of scarring from when their mother had eaten chunks out of him.

And he's like, don't worry, Justine. I'm sure you'll find a solution to your cannibal problem. The end. Cut to title. Amazing ending because the dad's literally just sitting there like kind of calm looking like, yeah, I love your mother. So she could just take hunks out of me whenever she wants, I guess. Yeah. So let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss.

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like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. And we're back. So is this like a reverse twilight situation what's going on here i was truly shocked at the reveal at the end that again yeah the first time i watched it i did not see like so stark a reveal made yeah and realizing how much it had been like seated in the beginning with their like yeah interpersonal family relationships and you just kind of like view it as like i don't know their parents that are kind of intense i guess and it tracks the entire time but it like side swipes you to where it's just like oh we all have to do this she did it i did it we just have to do this in order to become like a fully formed adult we have to go through this period it makes me wonder like would they have ever developed this hunger for human flesh had they not eaten the rabbit

kidney in which case why do their parents insist on sending their daughters to this place where they know they'll eat this and then like that's like a hazing technique yeah and then they'll develop these cannibalistic tendencies i did have some questions walking away from the movie sure but i do feel like i mean something that i because when when this movie ended it was like okay this is the kind of movie where like you have to just like go to the source and figure out okay what was the writer director thinking when she made this yeah what has she publicly said this movie is about I'm just I was so curious about her perspective on it and I know that all of us

have spent some time I mean I think I've probably spent the least out of everybody but but I as I was watching interviews with her about this movie I really appreciated and thought it was very fucking cool how she would engage with questions like that to an extent yeah but would not give the yes or no answers that she was being asked. And as that kind of pertains to gender, it like challenged some stuff that I had gone into these interviews kind of assuming that she was trying to say. And I felt very challenged by Julia Ducarno of how she responded to those questions. Because I don't know, I felt a little silly by the end where she was asked you know like is this a women's horror movie essentially and which is like if

you flip that question for almost any profession it's uh pretty insulting yeah right and I was just like oh yeah how many times have any of us been asked like so what is it like to be a woman comedy and you're like well that's a, I object to the premise of the question. And I realized that I was sort of asking myself that question as a viewer of a horror movie. And she was sort of like, well, I don't really want to say either way. I don't think that people ask this question to men.

I think that the protagonist of this movie could be a man, potentially, and the movie could play out the same way. But this is the movie I wrote. So interpret it as you will. And I don't know. I just thought her attitude toward, I think, the very 2016 and current questions that are asked of filmmakers who are not white guys was very like punk rock and cool. I loved it yeah it's something i love too because like i feel like in horror especially when like marginalized people do manage to like obtain the funding that they want to make something oftentimes if you're like if

you're a woman or you're queer or you're trans or you're poc you're kind of expected to like sell your tragedy once you get the foot in the door and you can't just tell a story yeah to where it's just like i'm gonna tell a horror story but it's like because horror is such a good vehicle for empathy it's gonna be like i want you to like see what my experience is but half the time that isn't even the stories they're trying to sell it's the stories that they're being asked to sell and right because if you go back to the 80s and 90s in the early 2000s you have these examples of like i've brought her up before but mary heron working on american psycho or you have pet cemetery you have like slumber party massacre where they're like just directed by women that want to tell stories and there's almost this like sinister turn by like

men in horror that hold the keys to the money to where it's like oh i'm implying that i want to like encourage more voices but it's only a certain kind and like i want you to reaffirm that i'm a great human and i'm like i'm giving you these the money but it's only to be like look how great of a human I am I'm letting women tell their stories but it's only like the stories I want them to tell but only if they're talking about the worst thing that's ever happened to them yep yeah I totally agree with you and and that's something that I feel like I've I've been trying to like check and challenge and myself as a viewer too where it's like yeah is wouldn't it just be the actual equal approach would be like here is money to make the movie you want to make like exactly it doesn't need to be

a one-to-one analogy for something you have lived through like that is such an absurd qualifier if that were true sci-fi wouldn't exist like just most horror movies wouldn't exist and yeah yeah i don't know julia ducarna put me in my place and i loved every second of it it was great she also speaks to how she's not like i'm a female director making female movies she's like i'm a filmmaker making movies that could speak to any audience member and she's like i don't want to genderize my audience or my movies and then she kind of equates people's tendency to like put female directors into boxes like that and say like oh well you're a woman and you're making movies for women and only women are going to connect to this because women's can only

like woman things yeah and she like equates it to like how ridiculous it is for like razors marketed to women have to be pink and have to like cost more and like pens that are marketed to women that are pink and like she's like no like i'm. I'm just making a movie that happens to focus on a woman and be about that young woman's experience. But it's a movie that literally any audience member could see and see humanity in and be compelled by in some way yeah and like I noticed a lot of the criticism for raw usually for men um were critiques that I see only when it's a woman directing because I see men do the same thing and they're usually praised for it there was a lot where it's like oh it felt like hyper stylized for no reason it felt like you know very like colorful and poppy for no reason and that's like something that you hear them say to like Sofia Coppola or it's like why is it so femme because it's pretty and i love self-indulgence in filmmakers i love it when you give me something that might be like a little bit

unaccessible or like you know very flashy for the sake of flashy because you get to you you're behind the helm but when it's like david lynch making something an eternity long or like Gaspar Noah making something that looks the same fucking way. They're geniuses. But for women, it's like too stylish. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then also people were saying like, oh, it's so nice to have a woman director brought to this genre because it adds like a softness to the industry.

And she was like like what are you talking about have you even seen my movie like who's causing this movie soft toilet paper is soft i'm not soft this is a direct quote from her which is amazing that's an amazing one like t-shirt when she's so good i love her yeah i really appreciated how like and and also this is like an unfair thing like if she were a male director this would not be a problem that she would be having like there wouldn't be yeah this level of loaded question lodged to her every which way about what she's making and so yeah i mean i i hate that she has to do it, but she navigates these questions and issues I thought like so in a way that made me want to be better. Like she's just awesome.

She's intimidatingly French. Yes. I was like, even though I know, like, I don't think I actually saw an interview where she was smoking a cigarette, but I felt like spiritually she was smoking a cigarette. Yeah. Every time I saw her her like long drags and like yeah yeah there's so many points in this movie in which oftentimes i call something ugly and people think it's a negative but like i love a lot of ugly things like my favorite show as a kid was courage the cowardly dog because all the characters were like pretty ugly and misshapen looking. Yes. Such a massive fan of it. So I like anything that's kind of ugly. And I feel like puberty tends to like, we brought it up earlier, have such a lens to it that when she shows those ugly moments, I have more of a wistful romance for my childhood than if I had watched something like The Sandlot. For sure. To where I remember the last time I was free enough

and felt safe enough to explore these things. Because there's a specific scene that felt like a literal one-to-one of a childhood experience I had. And I know it wasn't on purpose. It was just a very fun coincidence. It's that scene where she's covered in blue paint and the guy that she's making out with is covered in yellow paint and they're essentially doing like the seven minutes in heaven and they're like don't come out until you're green yeah and the guy runs

out screaming so because i had like a very religious upbringing i did everything very differently and it was also like measured with like excitement for the new but also like this weird sense of like guilt and mourning for like what I deemed the quote unquote innocent parts of me because again I was like reckoning with that and I remembered there was a class in bible class where we came in and there was three lumps of play-doh on the desk and he started the class by saying like you know you're getting older and you're getting urges and even if you're like not acting on them when you have a partner and you like mush the two play-dohs together and it was like purple and yellow he was like you like mix your colors in

each other but when you separate you leave little bits of color in each other and then eventually you start to lose your original color as you end up with your person oh my god that's so shamey and so it was like let's say like you like end up with blue and then you've got all these bits in you and like a lot of the kids in class because like galaxy brain it's galaxy brain terrifying projection yeah it's massive shame projection and like a lot of the i was mostly there because my parents had no idea what the school's deal was they were just like it's a private school and we're from a developing nation so it feels like it's a good deal and a lot of them were kids who's like parents very much like believed that kind of thing and so they were very much like yes of course

and i got this terrifying like intrusive thought the entire time where i was like i want to be a rainbow i want all the colors i want to mix with all the colors but I shouldn't because that's bad and the next weekend I was at a pool party and I noticed that there was this new kid in school that was staring at my chest but I liked it and we were alone in the pool later because everyone went inside and he was like can I like touch him and I was like sure and and he was like, can I like touch him? And I was like, sure. And then he was like, can we like make out? Maybe I can see him.

And I was like, you know what? I'm good. And then I left because I'd gotten exactly what I wanted. Because I was like, I just want to like see what this is like. And if that's cool, then I'm done. And he was utterly flabbergasted. And then in my mind, I just went on this mission where it's like, I'm going to get the experience that I want. And he was utterly flabbergasted. And then in my mind, I just went on this mission where it's like, I'm going to get the experience that I want.

And if I don't want it and then I'm fucking walking away. And it was just the rest of high school. The amount of stuff that I did because I was curious before I actually had a first kiss. I like never I was talking to my husband about it, but I was like, I had most things that you would like try much later before I even let someone kiss me on the mouth because I was just curious. And like I saw that there. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like this movie speaks to a lot of that just like coming of age curiosity and that's what i like really and especially like after hearing the director speak about it it was like oh yeah this is a very skillfully told like body horror coming of age

movie that yes there is a woman at the center of but like there's no mission statement related to the gender of the protagonist it just like i don't know like i just thought it was so because it felt like at its core the more i watched it and the more i was sitting with it it was like whatever this is a character who is going back and forth with a very 18 year old problem which is like who is the image that i have constructed of myself and who am I becoming and like where am I like what directions am I being pulled in and what compromises am I willing to make as I become an adult and like what am I actually very naive about that I'm afraid to admit and how does that relate to my family and how I grew up and just all this shit that is very universal. And to see that I,

it made me just, I don't know, like think about how rarely we see a very universal message channeled through a woman as a protagonist, which I feel like might be some of the cognitive dissonance I was experiencing of like, well, surely she must be trying to say something about woman.

And when, what, what happened to woman when woman become woman. But it's like, no, it's a very human experience. But I feel like we're conditioned to see these very human relatable heroes or I mean, whatever, Justine's not a hero necessarily, but the person at the center of the story as usually men, and we're kind of expected to meet them where they're at with their experience and the opposite is kind of rarely asked of people but it's it's it's easy to do with this movie yeah it's it's one of those things where it's so much better to aim for specificity than trying to please everyone and automatic like be for everyone for the sake of being for everyone instead of like telling as specific as of a story as you want i for how

much i disagree with like many many many reviews all of his horror reviews and his thoughts on the lake house which were mostly positive which was bizarre there's a roger eber review that like lives in my brain all the time and it was a review for broke back mountain and he was talking about why telling a specific story will resonate with more people because you are telling something that is detailed and authentic versus something that's like trying to be for every experience even ones you don't fucking know and he was like a lot of filmmakers try and like tell a queer story by being like here's a little bit for everyone even though i don't actually know the experience and then it doesn't even like land with queer people and so it's just like vague it's just vague

and he's like brokeback mountain was such a specific story about these two people but he's like you're watching like straight guys call people that they haven't called in years as like the ones that got away you're watching like women do the same thing and it's like because it was so specific it resonated harder with like the idea of lost love that everyone knows versus something that's just like i don't know what what do analytics say everyone will like right right right oh that is yeah also hate to hand it to him but that right that hit because he's got a lot of opinions i do not agree with oh yeah but but i yeah you're you're totally i mean i feel like this movie kind of does scratch that same it is like if if justine's story was less specific the story wouldn't yeah work the way that it does yeah which speaking of scratching itches the sound design oh my god oh oh my god that rash that she develops in like the scene where it's like getting peeled off like

it's a lot i i i also really i wanted to just kind of shout out the scene between her and the doctor who is smoking at the appointment which i was like hilarious i was hilarious to me because i am such an american doofus that I'm like, is this a joke? Or like, is this just what French doctors are like? I don't know. But that scene I thought was so that was like one of the scenes where it's like, oh, there was points were made in that scene, but it wasn't in a way that was, I don't know, that felt preachy or overwritten or anything like that.

But the scene where Justine is going to get her rash looked at after it breaks out and she goes to a doctor or a nurse and has it looked at, she's not diagnosed correctly. They have a conversation and they have basically a conversation about how women are not taken seriously by doctors and specifically fat women in the context of the conversation and it seems like justine's takeaway from that conversation is like well this is a broken system so this is not where i'm gonna get the answers that i need yeah and i thought that the way that julia i mean i would be curious what need yeah and I thought that the way that Julia I mean I would be curious what other listeners think I thought that the way that Julia Ducournau

like illustrated that point by the doctor saying that she had had a fat woman as a patient who had been repeatedly not just misdiagnosed but like refused medical care yeah based on a like an issue that had nothing to do with the size of her body and having that be sort of a wake-up call for justine of like well this isn't a system that's going to serve me or like treat me fairly basically right i just i yeah i thought that was like such a cool effective way to make that point it's truly mind-blowing like some people i think I like blew a few minds when I told a few friends that there's a weight limit for plan b

oh I did not realize that either yep it's only effective up until I think 250 pounds and then like I saw that scene and I've like watched it I watched it with my husband and I brought it up to him and he's like seen it himself. I'm like, it took me a very long time to get diagnosed with a combination of like endometriosis and PCOS because I would go to the doctors all the time and they're just like, well, you're fat, lose weight. And that's why you're having a bad period. And I'm like, this feels significantly worse than what you're describing. I'm like this. This feels like I need some medical intervention soon because I'm like now dealing with chronic anemia and it wasn't until an ER doctor was like have you never been tested for either of these things like has nobody ever considered it I'm like I've never even heard of it I've been having these symptoms since I was like 11 years old and I

think I was like 19 at the time and it was like the first time I gained diagnosis and now to this day I will like go to doctors and get the same answer and I'm like no actually I have these two things and my ovaries look like a bunch of grape clusters so if we can get that taken care of and they're just like no

no it's fat to where I was just like oh it just doesn't work it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. I did a lot of research on this topic for a podcast that I have abandoned, Sludge, an American healthcare story. It ended. You don't need to be so mean to yourself about it.

No, I abandoned it because I- It's on hiatus. It's on hiatus. Yeah, we'll say that. But yeah, I started to examine all the ways in which particularly marginalized people have been completely failed by the American healthcare system on the basis that they are fat or they are trans or they are a person of color or any number of things yeah it's a real bias that a lot of health care professionals harbor yeah and people die as a result so right absolutely and that doesn't even like begin to bring in the insurance component

of it and how discriminatory that is on top of everything like it's even if you can find a doctor who's going to give you a proper diagnosis can you will you be quote-unquote allowed to have the issue treated and i mean justine's character is a cis white girl from a family of veterinary doctors like she is very privileged. And even so, I mean, it was like the frustration and futility of that scene, just like, I don't know, it really hit for me because it was just like, oh, this is just a zero sum game where even though Justine is talking to a doctor

who fully was outraged and recognized, like why would a fat woman be refused medical treatment like that's absolutely ridiculous but even so the doctor who is saying that is also dismissing justine's concerns that she has about her own body and is misdiagnosing her so it's like well even the doctor that quote unquote gets it is fucking up and not listening to their patient and taking their issue seriously so like yeah who the fuck do you turn to in that scene justine does not get diagnosed with cannibalism nope and that's fucked up we need to start letting smoking doctors tell us where cannibals is it's also like why she runs into

alexis's arms yeah for sure you're gonna go to anyone that's like hey this is what i think is going on with you and you're like i guess you know more than me i don't know yeah that scene i thought like that scene was so i just have never seen a scene like that before that made a very legitimate and impactful point about something and also advance the protagonist's story in doing so it feels weirdly rare that that happens in the way that it does in this movie yeah no deeply so i hadn't like already in a series of things that i hadn't quite seen anything like it was yet another one and especially that in her diet her dynamic with her roommate is another one that I keep bringing up American

Psycho but like I love it when women shoot men the way men shoot women because it feels so fucking rare that you're just like, I have stumbled upon something. Cause you never see them shot in like the same, like slow pan down examinations. And like the best part is every time you watch Justine watching him, she looks like Jack Torrance in the shining. Yeah. She's got like eyes low and she's just like kind of scoping him out.

And nose starts bleeding yes yeah like very intently looking at him and then like the possessiveness that she gets between like her and her sister about him to where she doesn't even like register any information it's like don't fucking talk to him i called him it's mine now like it's always interesting when you get to see like the lens of objectivity moved in a different direction. Right. Oh, I just thought of this. And it might be because we talked about this also on the other episode we did with you recently, Vanessa, where we talked about the kill your gays trope. Yep.

But I was like, oh, wait a minute. That does happen in this movie, too, because even though Adrianrian and justine have sex he identifies as gay and he like tells her several times yeah so he's kind of as far as i could tell he's the only identifiably queer character in the movie with any kind of narrative significance and he also dies at the end so part of it fell out very like i watched that scene a few times and then the thing that i found the most interesting about it is it made me think about puberty and that very scary moment that i think everyone has either like experienced or is afraid to admit that they've experienced in which they turned someone into an object,

not even object, into a tool for exploration and don't really give any regard to how that person is affected by that. To where it's just like, I'm going to engage in something really intense with you and then i'm gonna disappear completely because that was my intent the entire time and i just wanted to see what that felt like or like i want you because i decided i want you even though he's mostly just the one time he was into it was because he was like kind of fucked up and horny

and like not into her the entire time but like she decided that he was something that she wanted so she was going to take it anyway and it's this very uncomfortable but human look into like the inherent selfishness that springs up during puberty that we kind of either learned or reel in or let it spin out of control in terrifying ways and become awful adults yeah that's a great way to put it yeah i i had that sort of bookmarked as just something that i wanted to to talk about because yeah adrian is the only identifiably queer character i do feel like the writing takes care to tell us who he is. He certainly has a lot like his his impact on the plot extends beyond his sexuality by a lot because he is.

Yeah. You know, to an extent, the only person who is like, quote unquote, on to her and like, but also very much cares about her and is, is trying like, yeah, I was kind of, I was kind of stuck on his character because it didn't feel like a cut and dry, kill your gaze trope. Sure. But he is certain. I mean,

he's a queer character who is dead by the end of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's definitely one where like, I keep wondering to myself, like, is it deliberate?

Is it deliberate? And what is that deliberate action trying to say? Because there's so many elements to this that are like thoughtful enough that I'm like, either this was like something included and that was just like the trajectory for him or there was a deliberate reason for that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I also had i was just like i'm not sure i'm not sure exactly what the intent is here nothing struck me as so like oh my god i can't believe the director made this choice and i'm offended by it or anything like that it was more just like oh i did notice that but it's quizzical yeah i just it's like i wonder how much yeah like like you're saying how much thought and like what the decision making was behind that because i felt like ultimately what was important about

adrian's character was that he which we see in that awful scene where justine realizes that he's dead and he's not just her the person closest to her who isn't a cannibal that's like laying next to her and it felt like the most impactful thing about his character was that he was someone who was close to her who gave a shit about her and like cared about her and it felt it felt like the significance of his character was you know just unrelated to his identity it was like this is the person who matters to me the most who is not my family and a cannibal like yeah and so you feel you like feel that loss when she and also the i mean the performance from um garance marie very french very french but like her performance in that scene i thought was just so like gut

wrenchingly awful when you realize that he's dead and she thinks that she's done it and like all this shit and yeah i just i i ended that character's arc with with just question marks i don't know i think this could be this is just this is a new thought that I'm just having right now, but I've been trying to figure out what his character reminds me of and what it echoes of, and it kind of reminds, in terms of when I've felt like that, he reminds me of any time I've told a man that I've been wholly uninterested in him, but I was kind to him, and that was a green light enough.

Oh, yeah. Like, it makes me think of every time I've been like, there is no sexual appeal here. You're a friend and roommate, or you're a schoolmate or coworker that I'm kind of nice to, but me looking out for you, no matter how much I say I'm not interested in you,

is the green light to be like but we're into each other right you mean as far as like how justine like she's the one who's like oh i've i've got this green light is that what you mean yeah because i noticed like even after they have sex he's like i'm fucking gay yeah and even before that everyone else is telling her like she knew that and she knew that and everyone else is telling her like she knew that and she knew that and everyone else is telling her like this will not end the way you want it to with him like because she looks at him very like dreamy eyed and even when she he first pulls her into the bathroom he has made it so fucking clear i am gay i do not want you this way we are friends but when he first

pulls into the bathroom he's trying to show her a video of her on the phone that like uncomfortable video but she literally looks at him and smiles and even raises an eyebrow and is like what are you doing yeah and is like oh maybe he's trying again and it's like he has made it so clear to you that he's not into you but she's still like maybe now the entire time also just emblematic of the confusing nature of coming of age sexually and how we like to say as someone who has been in love with a gay man before you're just like oh yep no he told you he told you like stop yeah stop i've definitely had a like a boyfriend who's been like i'm fucking gay and i'm like does this mean we're not going to prom and it's not registering oh glad that's such a universal experience yep yeah and and that is like that is a i mean i

guess even that conversation alone is like that is such a messy aspect of being for both of them of like yeah being a young person figuring your sexuality out and like Adrian does have it figured out and he's clear and also like Justine is like but like you know and it's I don't know I mean again i want to know what our listeners think as well it's a pretty like gutsy dynamic for the writer to take on yeah because it's i mean just based on the last two minutes of discussion it is like certainly a thing that happens and exists and can be confusing to navigate you know like some whatever like in the situation in my personal experience we were able to get through it it's all good we're still friends it's like fine and

then other situations end differently it's a real life dynamic that exists but it's not one that i've seen attempted in movies very often and i kind of get why because it's a like risky messy thing to attempt in a story right it's a fucking minefield that yeah doesn't really have enough discussion or examination to like figure out how to approach and what those dynamics are because i can i feel like anyone that's ever been in that situation it's like the first time you truly realize what a big spectrum gender and sexuality is to where you're just like I don't know where my rigidity is and I'm still figuring it out and maybe it's like kind of solidly somewhere but I'm still not sure and the language doesn't exist for it and my birds and the bees conversation is so heteronormative and

for baby making that I have literally no guide for this like i remember sitting down with my mother and being like were you at all prepared for two of your daughters to be queer when you're giving us the sex talk and she's like i just learned about dental dams from your 33 year old sister a year ago i was not fucking ready for any of that nothing prepared me for it and so when that's like one of your first formative romances and society isn't advanced enough to help you navigate it everyone is messy and everyone makes the wrong choice well that's what's so cool to me about this movie or at least one of the things where the character that we are watching and identifying with because she's the protagonist yeah is someone who is like fucking up a lot

and like making mistakes and like not behaving very well to the point where she's eating people but yeah this movie has us rooting for a cannibal. Like that's like the writing. If you as a writer can get us to root for a cannibal, like you're a good writer. Period. Especially because like the cannibalism can easily be seen as an allegory for things that are perhaps more relatable to your average person who isn't engaging in cannibalism. Yeah. Where, you know, a lot of people have discussed how this movie is allegorical for, you know, just a coming of age sexual awakening, just the kind of general idea of discovering your identity.

Some people are even like, it's about experimenting with drugs. Probably other things that you could see it as an allegory for. To me, the main one was like the coming into your own as a sexual person and like starting to mature sexually and the whole kind of like sexual metaphor, where that is a messy thing to navigate as basically any person, especially because of the culture we live in and how we are all products of our environments and how culture does not adequately prepare really anyone to especially like when we were coming of age sexually and everyone in generations before us like yeah the boomers were not ready i mean it's like vanessa you just like said it very good it's like the boomers were not ready uh to have no conversations no right so it's just yeah it's a very interesting thing to

explore so it's not as though like the movie isn't being like the movie we're not like oh wow look at justine what a model character what a role model i can look up to kind of thing in that way. But it's more just like, let's examine how messy and complicated and often confusing and sometimes shameful this process is for everybody. And especially because, again, our culture where sex is still kind of taboo, especially in certain contexts. And rape culture is still pervasive. And a lot of people's understanding of consent is still pretty murky. And there's very little emphasis on female pleasure and women's sexual autonomy. And any sex that isn't cis hetero sex has historically been demonized. And people are shamed for having kinks and just like all this stuff that makes navigating your own sexuality a difficult and again messy thing that again a lot of people are conditioned to feel shame about and cultural expectations make

it so a lot of people like we see Justine doing in the movie, fuck up and make mistakes and push other people's boundaries and comfort levels. And yeah, so I just think that it's really cool that this movie explores this awakening process for this young woman, and that you can see it in all these allegorical and symbolic ways and yeah yeah i mean the idea of shame where i was just thinking about like i was trying to just like think through i was like okay why cannibalism for this story specifically and i feel like shame is the key there where there's so few things that to everyone essentially is like you would be ashamed if you ate another person. Like, yeah, that would be a universal feeling of shame minus a very, very, very, very, very small fraction of people who exist. And I liked how it's like, not liked, I mean, it's very difficult to watch,

but how it's in the context of a coming of age story. It's like, how can you make anyone watching this movie evoke the feeling of shame? And it's like, oh, yeah, like evoking the feeling of doing the most shameful thing that no person is ever supposed to do. Of course, that's going to like bring a universality to this character that is like such a smart use of the idea of cannibalism. Like, it's just so good. It's so smart. Because it's one of like the last taboos. It is.

It's one of like the last things.os it is it's one of like the last things it's like we don't talk about this and if we do like the person choice we like looked at a certain type of way like sex is far from like the last one but it certainly still is one and by like merging the two and like piggybacking it together you end up i was gonna say odd but i'm not gonna say odd um it's fucking beautiful that a movie about cannibalism makes me like feel a little bit more in awe of humanity by the end of it towards like oh this is such a collective experience we pretend isn't real that we're all like completely united by that by the end of it i'm just like humans are something else i would recommend if you haven't already read it vanessa and listeners um there's a guardian interview with uh the director julia du corneau entitled cannibalism is part of humanity

because i'm so excited to read that she rocks this is what her whole thing she's like yeah i made this movie because like cannibalism is extremely a part of humanity and that's what i'm going for like with this movie i desperately want to know her thoughts on like meat consumption and farming now that is i'd be hilarious if she is like a like militant vegan right where she's like it's not we're not that far from it like i i desperately like want to know where she thinks because she shows it in the movie as well like where do those lines blur for her yeah right uh let's take another quick break and then we will come right back. So y'all, this is Questlove and I'm here to tell you about a new podcast I've been working on with the Story Pirates and John Glickman called Historical Records. It's a family-friendly

podcast. Yeah, you heard that right. A podcast for all ages. One you can listen to and enjoy with your kids starting on September 27th. I'm going to toss it over to the host of Historical Records, Nimany, to tell you all about it. Make sure you check it out. Hey, y'all. Are you ready for an explosive new podcast that brings together hip-hop and history? My name is Nimany, and I'm the host of Historical Records, a brand-new podcast for kids and families that proves in order to make history, you have to make some noise.

Flash, slam, another one gone. Bash, bam, another one gone. The crack of the bat and another one gone. The tip of the cap, there's another one gone. And the best part? I make this show entirely by myself. Impressive, right? Okay, okay. Maybe I get a little bit of help from my sidekick, Tina the Raccoon.

Every week on Historical Records, join me, Nimity, and Tina the Raccoon as we learn about the unsung heroes of the past and turn their history into hip-hop. Listen to historical records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

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There are two other things that stuck out to me about this movie. I guess I'll go for the more obscure one first. Maybe this is like it hit for me personally. I don't know. But the ending of the movie took me off guard plot wise because it is such a good ending to the movie to be like, oh, this is like the idea that it's like this isn't your specifically fault. This is something that was passed down to you. And I'm sure like you can make the argument for like a generation like it's a generational trauma in this family that women eat people um or the or even just the offspring this bloodline

eats people we don't know because the the two siblings in this family are girls it could it could be you don't know sure sure but it is this generational inherited trauma. And so in a way, it's like Justine can feel relief that it's like, this is not an individual shame or flaw. It is coming from somewhere. There's a context for it. And I thought that was cool. But then also the idea of like the last line of the movie is her father basically saying, but you're smart, you'll figure it out. And so it's like,

now there's this context for this huge, like shame and humiliation and sadness in her life. And she's also being told by the person providing that context, who she loves and trusts, uh, good fucking luck. Like, you know,

I, I just thought that was such a, just again, just like a very human frustration and experience to be like, oh, no, no, no. Our whole family's fucked up. But like, I don't know. Like, good luck. Hope you figure that out. Like, I just I loved it. Maybe it'll be you.

Right. Like, maybe you'll be the one to resolve. Jen or like, who knows how far back this goes like you would assume further and he's like no justine you're a smart kid good luck you whatever oh brutal it made me think of every time an older cousin would like note something fucked up in our family and then be like but we're betting on you kid and i'm like that's a lot of weird bloodlines to depend on me to rectify it's a lot of pressure you're like oh yeah i've got like taking a jet like it just felt so like in and out and in of like oh this is a generational issue

it's not an individual problem but then her dad is also taking the extra step to make it an individual problem for her and say so you should probably figure this out or this is just gonna keep happening it's such a i don't know it's like every family has their version of whatever that is it's also like this terrifying moment when you find out this very intimate thing about like your parents relationship dynamic yeah because like her mom is so aloof the entire time that i'm sure in her mind that she's like the colder one that leaves a lot of things up to dad and then finding out that dad is just kind of a midnight snack for mom sometimes like yeah it's that moment where you're like oh there's just stuff behind the curtains the entire time that i haven't been privy to because everyone decided that i couldn't handle it right

yeah i do i think it's kind of interesting the choice to really not include her mom very much in the movie and then the reveal it comes from the dad and like there's another earlier conversation where she talks to her dad outside the hospital after she's eaten her sister's finger and i guess that like more effectively sets up this big reveal that it's like and it was her mother who is response like she passed down the cannibalism gene whatever but um yeah it definitely made the reveal more shocking because i guess we don't like don't really know that much about her mom if anything yeah so at first i was sort of like what is that but then also it's like oh it's good i mean they have to withhold that from you and then in red and then when you walk it back the second time you're like

oh that was like absolutely the right choice and you understand it back the second time, you're like, oh, that was like absolutely the right choice. And you understand it watching the second time. It makes me want a like prequel to Raw that we where we focus on her mom and like. I want to focus on her mom. And I'm also like fascinated by the dad because I feel like the dad could be such a fascinating exploration into like kink as well yeah yeah yeah to where it's like what what in him that like because he was like i pursued her and then we finally kissed and then you find out that that scar on his lip came from their first kiss in which she bit him but he was like i want more i i know this and i want more and i want to be around for more so i'm like what in him

was like not only like this is something that i can like love her in spite of it to have a relationship that long and have it be like something that happened that young in adolescence it can't be in spite of he's there has to be an additional appeal he's got to be into it yes yeah you're not in a relationship for decades for nothing getting eaten actively eaten by your spouse if you're not kind of like this is hot right um another just like familial relationship thing i wanted to talk about was the relationship between the two sisters. Yes. Yes. That was the other thing. Yeah. Yeah. Where I'm realizing like how rare it is to see a relationship dynamic between two sisters be at the center of a movie. And it was just like first just like refreshing to see that because of the lack of that relationship dynamic that we don't

get that much of. And then on top of that, I just thought it was really well written. It felt like a very authentic dynamic to me where sometimes we see them getting along and bonding and getting closer. And then other times we see that they're pissing each other off the like kind of older sister thing of like her being overly critical of her younger sister is something that like i very tragically identified with because i'm like oops this reminds me of all the times that i was really critical and mean to my younger sister sorry about my brother the whole movie too yes like because it really like it's i this again felt like i god damn it roger ebert like i i feel like it connects back to what you were saying earlier

vanessa of like the specificity of this is a relationship between sisters and the fact that it doesn't shy away and vagify that relationship strengthens the universal connection that people are going to take away from it because i was thinking about my little brother when i was watching this and it was like well obviously like we're not you know like both like let's pee together. Because that's just not what our relationship is. But the dynamics and the, you know, fierce loyalty that many people feel towards their siblings. And the, like, that's such a, like, Justine fucks up so bad.

And Alex welcomes her back. And Alex murders Justine's best friend and like yeah you know that's an individual journey of can i forgive and forget but like the whole like concept of like the thing that binds them and the reason that they're fucking up is this generational problem that they both have and they are both individuals they have different personalities they have this very sibling-y dynamic but they're kind of like haunted by this same generational issue in different ways and it seems like that's that and also like the just intense bond that a lot of siblings have is what makes them able to forgive each other and navigate things.

I just, I thought it was so, again, just like making cannibalism the generational trauma is such a weird, cool, creative decision. Yeah. Right down to like, I really love the detail of when they're saying bye to each other when Alex is in jail and Alex flips off justine and you see the stump of her finger and then justine like pushes the scar like against the window and it's so intimate and that they're like having this little interaction even if it's like uncomfortable and they're leaving but also that they're deliberately like showing each other like

you did this to me haha right that i think only exists the amount of times i've like waxed poetic with my brother about the like dangerous shit that they used to do with my tiny young body because they were like 10 years older than me and they would like stuff me into toy boxes and push me down the stairs or like let's go sledding oops vanessa slid into the road and then now we're like ha ha ha you almost killed me and i'm like yeah because we're weird children around each other yeah we're so fucked up we like love each other fiercely and put each other through the ringer because like we're getting our baby brains cooked up into adult brains and then just acting out on each other because we in our heads default to like they're going to be there forever they can't un-sibling me so they will be far more forgiving of my worst

moments than anyone else but instead that means we put each other through more hell than we put anyone else through right like yeah the the highs are higher the lows are lower and it's just so siblings like siblings are inherently fucked up and the way they treat each other throughout their lives like show me a healthy sibling dynamic you just like it doesn't exist and then birth order makes hierarchy yeah oh yeah yeah that's just built in so you just have this little caste system coded into you in your house where it's just like all right louise got cheerios before me so that clearly means fuck me i guess this is why i was like god the idea of parenting is so stressful because it's just a small perceived slight that sends your children on a careening like freight train of emotional distress because it's

like well but yeah i mean it was and and the betrayals that alex and justine make to each other are severe but again i feel like it just like speaks to the writing of the movie that i never questioned why would they still defend each other in this situation like it's so obvious why they would and it doesn't mean that it's morally right or that it's what but it's like of course they're going to be there for each other who else are they going to talk to about this awful thing that exists in both of them and who else do you have that kind of intense bond and loyalty and love for in their life like it's them so yeah again it's like another thing that i feel like is not really explored in many movies this effectively yeah for sure it's it usually far more traveling pantsy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Love that as an adjective. Traveling pantsy. Love it.

Traveling pantsy. Does anyone have anything else they want to talk about? I do want to say the soundtrack is amazing. Yeah. So good. Yes. Great soundtrack. Great score.

The music is incredible i wanted to share a quote from julia from this guardian article slash interview that i referenced before in which she says quote i didn't want to glamorize anything especially with the girl's bodies a body is a body in every every movie we see, women have to be beautiful and fit or whatever the hell, and they have to fit a certain box. And no, women fart, poop, pee, burp. This is why you can relate to them because they are not these heavenly creatures. They are real people with real feelings. And when they go down, they go down. This is something we don't see enough of.

Always in movies when people cry, they cry like this. And then apparently she, Julia, mimes a sorrowful weep. Saying, like St. Mary crying, we're all equals with our bodies, so fuck off. Amazing. I love her. Oh my God. like that she rules wonderful that said like i wish that there was like more it's it's interesting for a movie that acknowledges medical issues as it pertains to the fatness and the size of your body it is like still

very a very like generally white thin movie which again i wonder what the because it seems like julia decurno is very aware of these issues and very conscious and feel strongly about them so i do wonder like kind of what the casting stuff is it does seem like particularly with the lead this is like a long-standing working relationship between the actress and the director but i mean that was like kind of the only thing in this like the only thing in this movie that i was like is this a france thing like i but there's diversity in france like that it's not a france thing yeah yeah so i was curious about that and i and i'm i'm really curious to see more of what julia ducournau does and how she like what do you do after raw like that's get a get pregnant by a car

i'm so excited to see it is that what titanic is about so the premise is a young girl who gets into a horrific car accident and instead of like you know growing closer to her parents and seeking comfort there um she has like this crazy scar on her head and instead uh becomes obsessed with cars with a desire to romance them um becomes an erotic car dancer and gets pregnant by one, and then breaks the law and has to run on the lam by dressing up as a prepubescent boy and convincing a man that she is his long-lost son. Like, she takes big swings. And people love this movie.

Like, all the early reviews of this movie were like, wow, she pulled it off. I'm like, she did? That concept? How? That concept. How do you execute that? Yet here we are talking about a movie in which a girl plucks fat from a lip out of her teeth and eats it. And we're like, remember when we all got our periods

so now i'm like i have to see whatever this is right uh by the way the actor who plays adrian is arab yes but i think he's the one completely i mean it's not it's not i'm not saying it's a completely white cast, but it is a close to completely white cast. Yeah, that is true. But just wanted to acknowledge that. Yeah. Does anyone have anything else to mention? I'm also sorry.

I I'm on the Wikipedia because I've been trying to not spoil Titanan for myself like even pre knowing we were doing raw for this episode it just the premise was so intriguing to me that i'm like i don't want to know anything i just want to see it but i'm on the wikipedia page so turn off the podcast but garance marillier who played Justine, is credited on the Wikipedia page for Titane as a character named Justine. What? So this might be an expanded universe thing? I don't know. The Julia Ducournau extended universe?

How fucking cool would that be if this is like her building out an auteur freaky universe oh i would be so excited i'm very excited to see this movie now sorry i i didn't mean to like spoil that but yeah she's credited as justine again what oh i'm gonna look out for that i'm gonna look out for that that's so exciting i'm very thrilled okay so that was all i had to say about this movie i love it so much yeah the movie of course passes the bechdel test justine talks to alex quite a lot as well as to her mother and many if not most of those conversations pass. They do talk about Adrienne sometimes, but they're mostly talking about vet school and eating people. Cannibalism.

So it passes. As far as our nipple scale, zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I would give this like a four and a half. I think there's just like a few little things that pinged for me that we mentioned throughout the episode. But by and large, I appreciate a movie that is not afraid to explore via cannibalism slash cannibalism as a metaphor. A movie that is not afraid to explore parts of her life and body and sexuality that feel extremely authentic to that experience.

Even if a lot of what she's doing is like fucking up and making mistakes and like being gross and like surprise biting people and you know stuff like that uh because even though that behavior is not biting that's a new one um because even though that behavior is not okay and kissing and biting people without their consent and pushing people past their comfort level are all wrong we relate to the humanity of her experience yeah in a way that most movies don't even attempt to do or couldn't do because they're made by people who simply don't understand so it's just very refreshing to to watch a movie written and directed by a woman that is not afraid to explore the messier side of life and cannibalism yeah the messy side of cannibalism that's a good that's a good elevator pitch for this as a like a rom-com

cannibalism it gets messy uh oh what a great tagline um so yeah i think the there's a lot of cool things happening in the movie as far as like what it's examining and you know different interpretations as far as like symbolic allegorical stuff. And I think it's really cool. And I will give the movie four and a half nipples. I'll give one to Julia Ducournau, one to each Justine, Alex and their mother. And then I'll give my half nipple to the poor dog Quickie who had to be put down.

I'm really sad about that. Poor Quickie. I was sad about Quickie too. Forgot. Although it led to one of my favorite interactions, which was her reading the text from Quickie and not even responding to the dog dying and immediately going, why does my sister have your number? Yeah.

Loved it. This movie is wonderful. Okay okay i'll meet you at four and a half it's like the rare one that it's like it extremely passes the vectal test and it's also like very near a movie that is like i just would watch this a million times i want to show this movie to everybody i am very excited to preach the gospel of julia ducarneau i wish i mean there are certain things that i just was like curious about i wish we explored a little more i do wish that there was more diversity in terms of race and body in the movie but this movie fucking rocks like it's just so good.

And I feel like it's for so many reasons that we've described. I think it is so wonderful and cool and should not feel this rare or unique to find a woman at the center of a story who is very, you know, specific in her experience. Like in this, like is very, like she couldn't be anyone else but who she

is she's not a like you know focus tested vaguified protagonist that i think we see very very often when we see female protagonists right now i think that like it would be whatever however you feel about it it's like it would be naive to say that black widow wasn't focus tested to relate to as many people as humanly possible this is a character who is who she is but because of how skillful and thoughtful and risky and cool the writing is anyone can put themselves in her place because what she's feeling is becoming an adult struggling with her relationship with her family and like we've all done eating a person here and there so it's great i just i'm so excited about this movie i'm so happy that it's in my life now uh four and a

half nipples i'm gonna give all of them to juliaournau. I'm so excited to see her next movie. Vanessa, what say you? I'm also going to do the four and a half because I love this movie. I love this movie and I am so happy that it exists and just exists as like a testament to like why you want to diversify who's behind the lens because the stories are just more interesting and the perspectives are rare the half star is for pretty much the same reasons as y'all and that um i would like especially like to see both more diversity and body diversity because like if you're going to mention like a fat person and a fat person's plight i'd like to see one right it's it's chekhov's fat person at this point like let let me let me have one um but at the same time it's such a concise well-told story that doesn't really waste

any time but like luxuriates where it needs to and i love this movie and i love how specific and odd and real this character is which by way, if that's the kind of character that interests you, on HBO Max soon is a movie called We're All Going to the World's Fair that has a teenage girl that is the closest to any teenager that I've ever felt familiarity with. I feel more like her than any glistening hair teen in anything that's ever existed,

and it's one of my favorite horror movies of last year. I literally cried because I was just so excited that something like it existed, anything that's ever existed and it's one of my favorite horror movies of last year um i literally cried because i was just so excited that something like it existed and that's how i felt the first time i saw raw so like definitely four and a half stars hell yes love it so yay vanessa thank you for joining us truly like time triple thank you for bringing us one of our new favorite movies thank you i love being on here. Y'all are amazing. You are.

Tell us where people can check out your stuff. You can find me. I recently changed my Twitter handle, so you can find me under N-E-S-S Guerrero on Twitter and S-N-E-S Guerrero on Instagram. And starting October 27th, you can find me on Shudder's Behind the Monsters. Yeah, I think that's about it amazing

thank you again for being here come back anytime oh I have a podcast oh my god I'm so sorry I was like wait hold on I'm literally about to edit right now I have a podcast it's called Kicking and Screaming you can find it under KickScreamPod and it's where I specifically talk about horror and martial arts because they're my two

favorite genres and I think they're very frequently discredited and are also one of the few industries in which marginalized people can get their foot in the door so i love talking about it and if you like about those like those genres definitely check it out when you get a chance yes absolutely you can follow us on twitter and instagram at bechtel cast you can subscribe to our matreon at patreon.com slash bechtel cast where you get two bonus episodes every month plus access to the back catalog and that is five dollars a month uh you can also get our merch on teepublic.com at teepublic.com slash the Bechdel cast for all of your merchandising needs. And if we don't see you on the merch store, well, we're going to eat you. Yeah.

Bye. Bye. Hey, y'all. Niminy here. Yeah. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. in your life excited about history by tuning in to Historical Records. Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017,

was assassinated. Crooks everywhere 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. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. your podcast. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.