The Bechdel Cast - Sausage Party

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

HOT DOG! Jamie’s first book Raw Dog: A Naked History of Hot Dogs comes out on May 23rd, and to celebrate Caitlin and Jamie are revisiting feminist masterpiece Sausage Party.  Pre order Jamie’s book here, and check out tour dates in a city near you starting May 22! https://linktr.ee/jamierawdog?fbclid=PAAaZ5jnn1dincNfd5DAF57ASyqDi4zJs12pyHwKjE1DChmg5XpEqx8rrFZ9g  For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Oh gosh. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. Okay. Yeah ready to party. Ready to sausage party. Yes i am because today is my shameless plugging day today is the day where we are doing a movie that is technically about hot dogs but is also i don't know i don't know uh but we're uh celebrating the release of raw dog my first book when you're hearing this it will be

out uh you should definitely go buy it at your local bookstore don't no amazon fuckery please i'll accept a barnes and noble but only if you're in a difficult like only if you're not near an independent bookstore which you probably are so go get uh it's my book about the history of hot dogs and a road trip i took in 2021 trying hot dogs across the country it is about leftist politics it is about workers rights it is about the history of like how American jingoism is connected to the hot dog it's about following people around in the wienermobile it's about uh falling in love with Joey Chestnut but also it's complicated and i don't really fuck with him but i do have a crush on him gross problematic fave joey chestnut and my king takara kobayashi

as well as all of the uh kind of twisted bizarre um it well this is actually maybe where it overlaps with sausage party which we're talking about today which mercifully does not come up in the book i did not uh there there was there was no space and i didn't want to no i just didn't want to um but in professional hot dog eating there's a lot of historical issues regarding racism and gender discrimination within that sport yes it's a sport no i will not be taking questions or arguments about it it is a sport and that is something that has in common with the movie we're discussing today so shameless plug oh you mean sexism and racism and yes all of those things yeah but one thing it doesn't have that sausage party does is bad writing it's a good book you should buy it uh and i or or if you're not in a position to buy

it um i will link in this episode of different ways to request that it be brought to your local library that's also a great way there's also an audio book that's narrated by me they're like hey podcaster get in that booth and i did and uh my audio engineer's name was tim and he was a vegan and he was like oh my god oh gee whiz we really learned from each other that week he's from new zealand kind of iconic and he's like i can't do a new zealand accent but he was like this country's so fucked and i was like that's right tim that's right and that's an example of something that did not pass the bechdel test me and tim shooting the shit yeah was it pleasant yes of course but

did not pass and which what a wonderful transition to our show and what it's about so this is the bechdel cast hello my name is caitlin dorante my name is jamie loftus author of raw dog out now and this is our show where we analyze movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the bechtel it was a weird way to say that the bechtel using the bechtel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate a far larger conversation about representation and such. In Flim, the Bechdel test being a mediometric, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test, that first appeared in Alison Bechdel, queer icon, queer cartoonist, Alison Bechdel's comic, Dykes to Watch Out For,

originally intended just as sort of like a one-off joke. It was a bit, but it has since been used as this media metric. There are many versions of it. The one that we use is this. Two characters of a marginalized gender must have names. Those characters have to talk to each other about something other than a man and we particularly enjoy it when it is a narratively meaningful conversation and not just a hi hot dog number one hello yeah also i resent the aggressive gendering of the hot dog expanded universe hot dogs are look they're beautiful they're they don't know gender and this is i mean it caitlin no i love the i love these damn things i love to eat hot dogs when they're

ethically produced i'm smiling and they don't know gender they transcend gender and class that's the whole point of a hot dog they're for everybody but why according to this movie rogan god we'll talk about it well i actually i have a lot of hot dog gendering thoughts which we'll get around to but um but yes this movie i mean for its many flaws it does pass the bechdel test not in ways i particularly like oh it's heinous but yeah but that's why we talk about all the time it Oh, it's heinous. Yeah. But that's why we talk about it all the time. It's a flawed metric. It was created as a bit. Yes. But there's plenty to talk about.

And boy, oh boy, this movie came out in 2016, but it really feels like it came out in 2004. Correct. It has like huge 2004 vibes. Truly. But it was a, I kind of forgot, we were talking about this earlier. I forgot that Sausage Party was apparently a huge hit. Yes, it was a box office smash hit. It was for a while the highest grossing R-rated movie ever until.

That is really such a bummer. sorry okay i made some stuff up it was the highest grossing r-rated animated film not r-rated film in general but which r-rated animated film because it grossed 141 million dollars at the box office against a budget of 19 million dollars which is a low budget for an animated feature and we'll go into how that happened later the the budget on this movie is low for a animated and then god i have a lot of feelings on animation labor um yeah we'll get to it animators are treated so horribly and people across the spectrum in terms of jobs in animation are just treated terribly and this also it also feels like it ties into um conversations that have gone on in the last couple of years around effects workers in

marvel movies where that's constantly been like people working overtime and then not just being worked to death and you know the whole ethos is like you should be lucky to work on a marvel movie and it's like go fuck yourself um yes but yeah sausage party big hit and i'm realizing caitlin i first of all i appreciate that you were willing to do a hot dog themed movie to line up with oh yeah this was my idea sorry dog which is which raw dog out now i will say i thought this was the only movie about hot dogs but shows what i fucking know because my friend mitch last night gave me a dvd for something called hot dog the movie that came out in 1984 well i haven't read the synopsis yet okay i've been it's definitely share it now well of course i can let me get the sticker off hold on okay there's a booklet inside i'm gonna just read the beginning good snowballs and powder

bunnies the sex tactic slapstick slalom of hot dog the movie what hot dog so i'm not even following slalom i think it's a skiing movie is also what's confusing is the whole thing appears to take place at a let's find out hot dog the movie is this is the supreme bacchanalian ski movie blowout toward which all previous bacchanalian ski movie blowouts has led and from which all subsequent bacchanalian ski movie blowouts have since proceeded backward upside down and drunkenly spinning through the air between snow capped jumping off points. Hitting theaters in early 1984 at the ascending peak of post-Porky's teen sex comedy mania. Oh boy.

Hot Dog's protagonists may not have been in high school or college, but the movie's ski lodge setting and R-rated raunch landed it squarely in the canon of high 80s adolescent anarchy farces let me just keep um so this is like a bio a biography of the movie more than a synopsis i'm under i'm realizing this is this is a movie about skiing why is it called hot dog the movie um wait hang on i'm getting pissed off i'm getting pissed off let's google it yeah when is when do the hot dogs come are the skiers like are the wait it's about the film stars patrick hauser as harkin banks a young and ambitious freestyle skier from bonner's ferry idaho who's determined to prove himself in the freestyle skiing competition at Squaw Valley. Along the way, he teams with a...

There's no hot dogs in this movie. Yeah, it's just about... It's a teen sex comedy about freestyle skiers. Well, that has nothing to do with hot dogs, and I'm pissed. Apparently, this movie made its budget back 11 times. Not that anyone's ever heard of it. And hopefully, that's what will happen to the movie we're discussing as uh today as well uh sausage party caitlin dorante what's your history

with this movie i did not see it in theaters but i did see it shortly after it came out because there was a lot of buzz about this movie not only was it a box office hit it was critically well received it has 82 on rotten tomatoes which is unexplainable i remember being shocked by that at the time too because this was shortly before the bechdel cast began yes this came out the summer before so i saw it sometime later in 2016 and remember thinking and this was before i was like like you said this was before we started the bechtel cast so even though like representation was on my mind when i was watching movies you know we didn't have quite the the nuanced takes that we do now but you don't need a nuanced view of cinema to realize that i would say that this is one of the worst movies i've ever seen from a storytelling point of view and from a representation point

of view like it's just abysmal in every imaginable way it's a really it's and it's interesting to read back the good reviews of this movie because there is sort of a lot of like, and I do think it has to do with how beloved Seth Rogen is by pop culture and by the general culture in general. Jamie, come on. We're doing great. We're not mocking Seth Rogen fans. Like, I've enjoyed a lot of Seth Rogen over the years, although I did used to say i would deport him to canada which was not nice of me but no i mean it's like i've enjoyed a lot of seth rogan's work this is just really not i don't know i i felt a sort of like in reading a lot of reviews a lot of bending over backwards to make this movie okay because Seth Rogen made it and like all these

beloved comedians of this era yeah made it and I I do wonder what how this movie would be received if it came out now and also like reading about the ostensible like intentions that the writers had like where they were like it's this is something that we'll get into but it just like never ever ever ever ever works when someone's like this movie is equal opportunity offensive no one is safe from my pen and it's just like well that completely ignores any dynamics of like privilege or who gets to make most movies so that does not work and it's just like I I was reading in the like reviews of this that I don't know like the closest I could say to something positive about this movie is that it's attempting to say something about faith I don't think it successfully does I understand that it's attempting to yeah um but everything else is just like presenting

very broad stereotypes in a way that is not presenting the i was not seeing the commentary that was implied in some of these reviews i'm like commenting on what exactly exactly what does bill hater playing a native character in the most broadly offensive way possible on multiple levels what is that what is that saying about anything yeah the critical consensus on rotten tomatoes is which again rotten tomatoes is like a shitty metric yeah but but people consult it like i i go on rotten tomatoes to be like should i see this movie? I don't know. Sure. But the critic consensus is Sausage Party is definitely offensive.

I agree with that. But backs up its enthusiastic profanity with an impressively high laugh to gag ratio. I do not agree with that because I did not laugh fucking once. No, it's all puns. Yeah, like it's all bad. And I love a pun, but none of these puns are good I don't love a pun and then then the final part of this is so it's you know it backs up the enthusiastic profanity with an impressively high laugh to gag ratio and a surprisingly thought-provoking storyline also no I like truly the no no like this is i i went to uh letterboxd on this one as well

just to get a i love letterboxd reviews a lot oh they're great the top review is i'm only four minutes into this but i think this is the most evil movie i've ever seen and i hard agree with that and this is why we need better movies about hot dogs and i would i'm i'm you know i'm not even throwing my hat in the ring i am the fucking ring i'm gonna make a hot dog movie that doesn't suck ass this is my history with this movie is that i saw it similar shortly after it came out because but i remember like seeing it with a friend that we were watching it again we hadn't started the battle cast but it doesn't mean we weren't feminists or like didn't have a brain right um that like i saw it because i thought i would be a like really upset and annoyed by it and so we watched it kind of as like a joke yeah and you know sure enough i fucking hated it uh i may have written about it at the time this was back when i

was doing a lot of like writing i mean i was like a full-time writer on various websites wow brag thank you uh but yeah i'm pretty sure i wrote an essay about it for paste at the time not about sausage party in particular but like this like man-child comedy that i think has since this is kind of like as far as i can tell at least in the hugely popular sense kind of the tail end of it yeah and and it had a fucking run i would say that this like style of broadly offensive humor that employs all of these fucking tropes that says it's saying something but it's not and it's pretty fucking evil is they it had a good like decade-long kind of chokehold on comedy for sure in movies and it was like the judd apatow era well it's like yeah and it's

like that's the thing that's fascinating frustrating whatever about it is like even judd apatow and seth rogan don't do shit like this anymore because i don't think they get away with it yeah um and i know seth has seth rogan not been like oops I made some stuff back in the day that I can't really vouch for anymore did that happen yes definitely yeah he did so yeah I think it is kind of interesting that in the last two years it appears this like started in 2021 Seth Rogen has attempted to sort of address past offensive, both like content in movies and treatment of people. Yeah. If not from him specifically

by a production that he was involved with or in charge of. So examples would include Emma Watson in This Is The End, Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up. And I'm also seeing an incident regarding a child actor in Good Boys, a movie I did not see, having their skin darkened. Oh, yeah. So there was this sort of, I don't want to be too reductive and say apology tour. Like, but a series of like, this is such a, I don't know.

I, but there, okay. In any case, my opinion is that Sausage Party is too recent to be doing, but it does feel like this, all that to say sausage party feels like arriving at the tail end of this style of comedy being extremely mainstream popular yeah and it still has a long way to go but there was kind of like a cultural turning point like right around this time where media and especially comedy wasn't so reliant on reductive stereotypes and tropes and punching down humor, which we've talked about many times on the show, that became way less popular right around this time. Yes. And this, it's because the Bechtel cat no I'm kidding yeah

no we fixed the world you're welcome everybody no but I do think it like has I mean whatever we're not historians or anthropologists but this comes out you know the summer before the 2016 election which I feel like was a marked kind of a huge shift in demanding better representation for sure in movies was that successful uh still tbd working on it work in progress but i do i do take a little bit of comfort in watching this movie that was a hit in 2016 and feeling pretty confident that it probably couldn't even get greenlit right now. So that makes me feel a little better. But yeah, I saw this movie as a joke. I have not thought of it since really, I mean, to the point where I literally wrote a book about hot dogs and didn't even think to include it. Right. Yeah, it has no lasting legacy,

which is comforting. No. And I don't think, I think especially because of the style of humor being so broad and I think evil, as well as the labor issues that sort of stuck to this movie for several years. I know that there's been interest in a sequel from Seth Rogen, I just personally I don't see it happening however Caitlin in October 2022 Sausage Party Foodtopia a sequel series based on the film was greenlit from Amazon Studios so well you know uh look at look at God um which is what this movie it says it's about but it's not yeah should we get into it this movie really is viscerally upsetting yeah and it's there's so many like i mean this is true of a lot of there's like a lot of performers i genuinely enjoy in this movie and i'm just like people that are too good for that. Why is Selma Hayek in this? Oh, God.

I mean, we'll get into it. I mean, I at very least hope that people will some. I don't even know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm so like, oh, I don't know. Yeah. Why did they?

I just feel deflated. Same. Well, let's take a quick break and regroup. Yes. And then we'll come back for a recap that will just upset us again. Same. Well, let's take a quick break and regroup. Yes. And then we'll come back for a recap that will just upset us again. Great. So we'll be right back. Hey, everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know, we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week, we're taking it to the next level. The one,

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

in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke.

What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Lugie. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it.

It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Santer. 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. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

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To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. And we're back. We're back. All right. Can I just quickly read off the cast for this movie, please? Okay. It really is all...

Okay. movie please okay it really is all okay seth rogan michael cera kristin wick edward norton question mark david krumholtz huge betrayal salma hayek bill hater i think comes out the worst yeah out of the whole cast and that's saying something yep cra Robinson, Nick Kroll, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Anders Holm, Danny McBride, how dare he, Paul Rudd. It's just come on. Come on. All of you. All of you.

Shame. Shame on you. Except for, I would say, Salma Hayek. Everyone else, shame on you. Yeah, but but also her character we'll get there okay i don't know i don't know i hope they paid her a lot of money but also oh my god they probably didn't what they they probably didn't why would why would you do this how i i can't imagine outside of money you You know, I just don't know.

I just don't know. I was thinking about this the other day when I was watching a video of Bill Nighy. Oh, king. Who describes walking around the set of Pirates of the Caribbean when he was playing Davy Jones, just saying, the money, the money, the money. I was like, I hope. Oh, wow. Oh, he's the best of him okay okay sausage party so most of the movie takes place at a grocery store called shop wells we meet a few hot dogs in a pack frank

voiced by seth rogan get it as well as a hot dog haha his name's frank hilarious i'm laughing already wait but do the buns have tits this is so upsetting gender essentialism with hot dogs like oh oh oh that's nasty there's a whole spiel i have that's fucking filthy another hot dog is carl voiced by jonah hill and barry voiced by michael cera these hot dogs along with all of the other food and condiments and household products in this grocery store are sentient and their goal is to be selected by people who the food thinks are gods okay so quick energy i'm gonna try to try my best to enjoy this episode more by interjecting with hot dog facts i love please that you can are you about to tell me that hot dogs are now sentient yes no i will say that there is not that i think that anyone who was writing this movie was thinking a thought the entire time.

Correct. But there is a weird precedent for like picturing like hot dogs specifically, but also a lot of food of just like anthropomorphizing food in a way that is like begging you to eat it in a way that's kind of nasty. And there's one particular hot dog statue that is, I've seen it across the country. I want, I don't know. I didn't, this was not an international project, so I can only speak to the U.S. So if you're a listener outside of the U.S. that has seen this hot dog statue, please let me know.

It's so gross. It is a, it's, first of all, it's huge. It's like six feet tall. And it's, it sort of is anthropomorphized in the Mickeykey mouse way that um that these hot dogs are they got the white gloves they got the little legs yeah whatever you gotta make them look like something and i feel like the mickey mouse method is most common but this hot dog is slouching over he's holding um i say he because it seems like that's what again the gender essentialism of hot dogs. People love to gender hot dogs as men and more specifically. Horny men.

Penises. Okay, whatever. But the hot dog is slouched over. He's also got teeth. I hate that. I mean, so does Frank. And you're like, you could have a whole thing that there's this amazing video from this YouTuber named Mike's mike where he breaks down everything about the movie cars that is like body horror um and you could have a very similar video about this but the hot dog statue's holding ketchup in one hand mustard in another

squeezing it all over on himself and licking his teeth like he's dressing himself to be eaten by you but he also looks like he's kind of in pain oh no it's disgusting and it's so big and then i looked it up online it costs like twelve hundred dollars i'm like why would you buy this yeah why would this be in your house oh so this is they wanted to put that on the cover of my book and i was like no you can't you can't do that you can't do that i'm gonna send you a picture please it's so nasty. So this is like just a piece of like decorative art question mark that you can buy and have in your house? No. So it's used mostly. I mean, I guess you could, but it's used mostly in hot dog restaurants.

Oh, I see. But true. I mean, this thing is being sold for $2,000 on eBay and it's disgusting. It's so gross and then in chicago what is more common practice is they will break off the arm holding the ketchup bottle oh because chicago hot dogs are all about mustard they're all no they're it's well they're they they're all about a lot of things but they're more about like no ketchup i see okay are you seeing this oh my god it's thank you it's even worse than i was picturing in my head the face is really troubling it's perverse also he's like wearing

sneakers and socks and has teeth and i'm just like this is too far is it wait i'm the one i'm seeing he's like licking his lips yes so he has a tongue yes i've seen variants that have teeth there's a few different variants on this but and then there's also one that's wrapped in an american flag because this is so you know the hot dog is so tied into american jingoism even though it's not an american dish. It's fucking Greek and Polish. But whatever. All right. Sorry.

Sausage party. So, yeah. We meet all these hot dogs. Also, these hot dogs are not being refrigerated. They're just on a regular ass shelf. Nasty. Next to buns. I would rather they refrigerate the buns.

That's fine. Right. You can do that. You can. Yeah. They last longer,. That's fine. Yeah, right. You can do that. You can, yeah. They last longer, probably. Sheesh. But yeah, no, there's just like room temperature hot dogs and we're supposed to be rooting for them. Yeah, right.

Okay. So the whole thing is that all the food reveres humans as gods and they they want to be taken out of the store to the quote-unquote great beyond because the food does not know that its purpose is to be eaten they think that they're going to be taken out of the store and it's going to be this wonderful paradise because the movie is an allegory for religion and the food believes this dogma about the great beyond basically being heaven all this stuff yes this is like the beginning of this movie's attempt to make comment on faith that i feel was not very well done but you can tell they're attempting it yes right yeah so the main thing with the hot dogs who again are coded as men and we'll talk all about the coding and the

gender essentialism of all of this but the hot dogs who are men are excited the main thing that they're excited about is that they will be put inside the hot dog buns who are coded as women and and also coded as sentient vaginas right because and here's what happens is that the complicated stuff the hot dogs being put inside hot dog buns is this very nuanced subtle metaphor for heterosex you probably didn't know that until i explained it because it's just so subtle really subtle and it's like let's yeah let's it's it's really hetero and it's also very uh everything in this on this shelf is uh cis hetero i'm like correct they're fucking hot dogs stop it stop it what uh yeah the the senti and i will say that the design i mean whatever animation wise the character design

of the hot dogs i'm not super upset i don't love to see teeth inside of a hot dog but i guess it's scarier if there's no teeth if we're anthropomorphic whatever the buns oh no inexcusable bad bad bad they're all because i feel like there's all these jokes that have ableist coding to them of like a smooshed bun or like a hot dog that isn't like the correct quote-unquote shape or size or whatever which is not just ableist coded very very clearly right it's also like but the regular buns don't look like hot dog buns because regular hot dog buns don't have titties and a big old butt like we taught and like hot dog clothes are not like famously curvy like what are you talking about and i hate their sideways mouth the side the vertical mouth oh my god

they don't have that's so okay why does seth rogan hot dog have teeth chris and mcbun no teeth sideways mouth no teeth the characterways mouth, no teeth. The character design in this movie is just, I hate it. Yeah, the vagina buns, I have really, it's so hard to look at. Yeah. And you're just like, but vaginas are literally beautiful. Wow. Why would you do that? And also, it's like's like i don't like it's just all like

the fact that i mean we've talked about this in animation before where anything remotely woman coded um and like we've been talking about this since the ghostbusters episode where it's like male coded animated characters can look like anything women have to have a fucking huge like have to have like distinct boobs and butt which is obviously like not knocking anyone who has boobs and butt like whatever how dare you so i have boobs and a butt what are you saying jamie i have a butt i technically have boobs it's fine like it's fine it's bodies but like you know we can't look like anything right we it's it's a very specific like western beauty standards body shape and size that is ascribed to female characters in animation but caitlin why why for a hot dog bun the hot dog is well

the hot dog but even by the this movie's logic the hot dog is clearly supposed to be penis coated right it's a sentient dick and it's horny because that's how we essentialize male sexuality right the bun is vagina but vaginas don't have boobs it's kind of if that would mean you're so sick if that was happening i just don't know like i just don't like yeah vaginas don't have but they don't have an ass they don't they don't have titties not to be a woman in stem but they don't but it's like it's so perverse to me that like even just making the character a sentient vagina was not horny enough. They also had to give the vagina boobs and a butt.

It doesn't make sense. No. And it looks horrible. It looks like shit. It's so gross. Not knocking the animators. I'm sure that the creatives insisted on this. Yeah.

The animators aren't designing the characters. No. So whoever was responsible for character design really needs to i'm like really i this movie is like truly chaotic evil on every level and these things are sort of like occurring to me as we go like wow they really put boobs and a butt on a vagina yes that is correct we're never gonna be any free this is just like a nightmare yeah okay so the main bun character who we meet and follow throughout the movie is brenda voiced by kristin wig she is frank's girlfriend i love kristin wig same and the following day is the 4th of July, which means that it's pretty likely that the hot dogs and buns will be taken out of the store to the great beyond.

And Frank and Brenda will finally get to have sex. Yeah. Sure enough, Frank's pack of hot dogs and Brenda's pack of buns are selected from the shelf and put into a cart by one of the quote-unquote gods aka a woman but before this happens they have some sort of sexual contact they've touched tips yeah which is later used and i saw reviews of this movie that were like this is the commentary on christian values and you're like shut up they're like the that they touch tips they touch fingertips right but it's like a sexually coded like yeah whatever touch tips fine which is then used for the rest when things go wrong in the movie as as time goes on brenda thinks that this is because she had any sort of pre-marital or like pre-whatever

yeah she thinks she's being punished by the gods for having pre-marital sexual contact with Frank which I guess you could argue comes around in the end but not in a very satisfying way and it and also just like the way that they're and again i i know that this was argued as commentary but it just it didn't work for me where at the beginning the hot dogs are just like we want to fucking fucking fuck and then the bun ladies are like we want to be loved we went to love i wrote it down it's we want to love and hug and feel and share vibes. Because women be having emotions and men only want to have sex. Ha ha ha. I mean, I want to love and feel and share too.

But people of all genders want to love and feel and share. And also people of all genders want to fuck. This movie is so essential. It's so boring. I hate it. It sucks. Sorry. Okay, so Frank and Brenda have been put in a cart yeah

but there's this jar of honey mustard that had been purchased by mistake and gets returned to the store so he went out into the quote-unquote great beyond or the like unknown area beyond the store daniel bright how could you and then the honey mustard ends up in this woman's cart with Frank and Brenda. And the honey mustard tells everyone what he has discovered about what actually happens in the great beyond. It is a hellscape where food is eaten. So chaos ensues upon hearing this news and a bunch of food goes flying out of the cart, including Frank and Brenda, because they've gotten loose from their packaging.

The store closes shortly thereafter, and Frank and Brenda, who are now just sort of like loose in the store, they set off to find other packages that they can sneak into in the hopes that they will still be chosen and taken to the great beyond. Although Frank is now skeptical and wants more information because what if the honey mustard was right? And the honey mustard tells him to go see a bottle of fire water. Yes. go see a bottle of fire water yes um and also we haven't brought up because i don't know why this like truly writing wise if even if we're just looking at this as writers i don't know why the character of douche that's right oh yeah the big bad of this movie is called douche i don't know why there's like randomly a villain like there it's not even necessary to the shitty story that's being told for there to be this villain right like the crisis of faith and

the quest is enough you don't need uh yeah the villain of the movie is named douche yes uh yeah and you're never gonna he's about to come up which'm like, do they even sell those at the grocery store? I don't know. But also, it's such a clear indication that this movie was written by men and all the major creative decision makers of this movie were men. Because like, and not to make sweeping generalizations here, but I have never known a person who has a vagina to ever use a douche in my entire life. And maybe that's just something that people tend to keep private. But also like me and my friends talk about this stuff all the time. And like, you learn at an early age, if you have a vagina, that douching is not

good for you. It's like it can cause yeast infections and like... My mom taught me that. not good for you. It's like it can cause yeast infections and like my mom. Yeah, like that's something you learn early on. And it's like advised that you don't do it. And so no one I know with a vagina has ever used a douche. But the guys who wrote this movie were like, Oh, what's a product that a woman would buy? A douche? I have unfortunately unfortunately i do have some information on this um from women's health.gov about douching so douching is not necessarily uncommon i will agree with you i have never known i've never i mean i've never used one and i don't know anyone who has because my mom told me when i was young that it is like you're saying like okay here's some information on douching yes so everyone knows

this is from the government can we trust them douching is washing or cleaning out the vagina with water or other mixtures of fluids in the united states almost one in five women 15 to 44 years old again the definition of a woman being very narrow there because it's the fucking government um but almost one in five 15 to 44 years old douche doctors recommend that you do not douche douching can lead to many health problems including problems getting pregnant douching is also linked to vaginal infections and sexually transmitted infections so and i maybe it's a generational thing where it's like maybe just people in our generation sort of learned that it was not healthy.

But again, it's like Seth Rogen is like 10 years old. Like it's just it is like a lazy and the way that the character it's so clear why they name that because douche is also like shorthand for an asshole. Right. Which is, you know, it happens all the time where anything vaguely feminine like why is it like michael cera says this at one point because he's in this movie um where it's like you know if you're you're anything like feminine coded there's like a strong meaning to it that's why i'm very pro asshole it always works as an insult you mean yes yeah same same it's a great equalizer i've replaced almost everything with like asshole or shithead or something just like very neutral

because poopoo and that's why we're so sophisticated um but there's like michael sarah's michael sarah's character refers to himself as a pussy at one point which is a classic example of like a vagina being weak you're just like sure but the same with like douche equals bad because reasons and the nick kroll character is like a gym bro who i think like you know would have this would have douche attributed to him basically right but it's just like i mean not that the rest of this movie i thought that that was like especially not just like more lazy like whatever but also just like weird writing because i don't think this movie even needs a villain i don't get it right also i did not even know what that was supposed to be until the douche identifies

himself as a douche because i thought like douches aren't packaged that way so i was like is that like a toilet brush and it's like toilet brush container that's what i thought it was at first because like i like i don't think their packet douches are packaged that way even it's in like a summer's eve box and it's discreet anyway so i'm about yeah i'm about to introduce the douche character but before that brenda and frank who again are just like loose and roaming through the store team up with a few other items that also flew out of the cart a lavash named kareem abdul lavash voiced by david krumholtz aka bernard the elf from the santa claus another massive betrayal huge and this is again i'm like i didn't find any um information

on why this choice was made i don't know if you did but the fact that like david krumholtz is playing a character who is definitely coded as being Middle Eastern and Muslim, which David Krumholtz is not. Correct. But David Krumholtz is a Jewish man. But the Jewish character. It's by Edward Norton. A.K.A. Sammy Bagel Jr., who is a bagel. But Edward Norton's not Jewish.

It's voiced by Edward Norton, like doing a Woody Allen impression the whole time. And if you're wondering if heinous stereotypes are employed here for both characters. Yeah. I mean, it's truly from what I can tell is that the hot dogs are kind of coded as Protestant. Christian white guys.

Yeah. And the buns are presented as Christian white girls. And then everyone else in the movie is, I guess with the exception of douche, is like pretty heavily stereotyped, like a heavily stereotyped culture. Right. So, yeah, basically, I mean mean and we'll get to this in more detail but the movie codes most of the food in particular ways often ascribing a particular race ethnicity and or religion to several different food items and with that comes this just a whole slew of reductive and

harmful portrayals of marginalized communities so that's what we're working with yes i mean that is most of what the movie relies on and we again it's like kayla and i discussed this before we started recording where it's like we will make note of like where these characters appear but i don't even like we don't really want to harp on how deeply because it's like because to describe the ways in which the offensive things are happening is just like upsetting to do and i don't even want to like repeat it so yeah it's a it's a waste of air but it is worth mentioning what is being done because this was a successful movie fairly recently. It's such a bummer. Kroll becomes a villain because he wants revenge against Frank and Brenda for getting him thrown away and damaged after that cart disaster. So now there's this random villain. Frank, Brenda,

and the others make their way through the store. They pass through the liquor aisle because Frank wants to talk to this bottle of fire water, who is an indigenous coded character voiced by Bill Hader. Yikes. Who seems to know things about the great beyond and how it might not be all that it's cracked up to be. And Firewater tells Frank that he and a few other non-perishable items in the store, who don't worry, are also all wildly stereotyped. For sure. They invented the idea of the great beyond in order to keep the food happy and unaware of their impending doom. However, they note that it's been distorted along the way.

But if Frank wants proof of this, he should go to the dark aisle beyond the ice. Meanwhile, Brenda and the others get tricked by a bottle of tequila who is trying to lead them to the douche, but a hard taco shell, Teresa del Taco, voiced by Selma Hayek, saves them. The douche is trying to attack them,

but Brenda and the others get away. Okay. Then, this movie is so evil. It's horrid. It's so evil. There's horrid. So evil. There was a really good, I thought, piece in Salon by Nico Lange when this movie first came out that unpacks in particular how infuriating it is that Salma Hayek's character is written the way she is. Not only because it's like racism and cultural stereotypes on top of sexism.

Like it's just like a two punch. And Salma Hayek has been so historically outspoken about how frustrating it is to be a Latin actor and be treated like this repeatedly. I mean, Salma Hayek, a Oscar nominated actor for playing Frida that has to take parts like this and so I just wanted to share a quick quote from Salma Hayek yeah because I love Salma Hayek and I just really oh god she says I had things said to me that you would not believe a studio executive once informed Hayek that she would be a much bigger star had she been born in the United States he allegedly told her the moment you open your mouth you remind everyone of their maid and there was another time i mean it's and she's been again she's been very outspoken about this over the years and still has to take fucking parts like

this which i think is a systemic failure for sure another example she gave over the years was um when she was almost in and it wasn't specific about what movie but she was almost in, and it wasn't specific about what movie, but she was almost the lead in a sci-fi film that was being directed by a white guy. But then the executives overruled her casting and forced the director to drop Salma Hayek because they said, a Mexican in space? Then another movie that isn't even good.

You remember that movie, Grown Ups? It was like an Adam Sandler movie. like isn't even good that you remember that movie grown-ups it's like an adam sandler movie i didn't see it i didn't see it either but yeah i know of it it's very an adam sandler movie but some hayek i guess plays his wife in in that movie and he had to fight for her to get that part like it's just like she's oscar nominated like it's she's unbelievably talented like there's no you don't need us to tell you salma hayek is fucking awesome but like yeah the way she's treated it in particular where i i'm just like this is just fucking unacceptable and also salma hayek is a good like comedic actor too like definitely but they're just like oh i hate it i hate it and she's one of the few actors who is cast as like her own race where there's many where that is not the

case because it's mostly white actors voicing non-white coded characters. I think with the exception of Craig Robinson and Salma Hayek that is the case. Right. Bill Hader as Firewater is it felt like it was pulling from like the animated Peter Pan from the 1950s portrayal of indigenous Americans. For sure. Voiced by a white guy. Bill Hader also voices Tequila and El Guaco. Yes. Which are Mexican coded characters. Yeah. And also coded as being predatory. Yeah. And in addition to this is also pointed out in Nico Lang's article that we will link is casting the only indigenous coded character as fire water.

As a bottle of liquor? Yeah, it's like, I think pretty clearly mocking alcoholism in Indigenous communities, which is a topic we've discussed in other episodes. And like, it's just cruel. Like, it's just, it truly blows my mind that any of this was argued as commentary. Like that is, you're just doing the thing. It's such punching down humor dialed up. In a way that is like worse than the 1950s.

Like what they're, it's a lot. I mean, yeah, it just really. All right. So back to the movie uh we then cut to the other hot dogs who remained in the package and went home with that like woman shopper and at the woman's house barry watches in horror as food is peeled and chopped up and boiled and melted and eaten. Carl is sliced in half, but Barry survives and escapes. Back in the store, Brenda and the others link back up with Frank, but none of them want to go with him to the Dark Isle because they still believe in the great

beyond. So Frank has to head to the to the dark aisle alone back outside of the store barry the hot dog manages to stow away in some dude's car he thinks he's headed back to shop wells but they end up at this guy's apartment where this guy proceeds to do bath salts i think this is the james franco character yes and also about i mean not but like this movie is already so dated where it's like god i don't know like bath salts no longer really a subject of discussion right it really puts this movie in a particular time in history the two outside of just being straight up, the two things that felt the most dated to me were the references to bath salts and also like the gym bro humor, which is I think it was just like done to death and people are fucking tired of it and know it like because that's every everything that comes out of douche's mouth is like don't fucking love it bro and you're like right god don't i don't know if that's just because i'm swiping left on hundreds of men who seem to fit this description on bumble and shit like that but i feel like that caricature of

a man is still very much a thing it didn't that didn't even feel that dated to me so damn idk yeah yeah it's worse than we feared um anyway because this dude is on bath salts he and barry can understand each other because the drugs enable him to like see if this fourth dimension where he can see the sentient food and so they talk and the guy promises to return barry to the grocery store back at the store brenda sammy and ravash finally make it to their respective aisles and part ways meanwhile frank reaches the dark aisle which is full of knives and cookware and a cookbook that shows all of these recipes for preparing food which is proof that people eat food and that the great beyond is a myth. But when Frank shows this to all the other food in the store over a video monitor and loudspeaker, he's like, here's the truth.

And if you don't believe it, you're a fool. And the food feels insulted. And they're like, um, this sounds like another theory. And I choose to believe the more pleasant thing. So none of the other food gets on board with him. Right. Which is another sort of like, I don't know. I guess if you're listening, you feel however you want.

But I was like, this is like sort of another like swipe that is at all religions so broadly as to mean nothing and also in kind of a way that feels very i can't like so like 2016 was a little too late to still be attempting this but like suggesting like atheism is the only method the only way to like to freedom of your mind which just feels a little um right what's his name bill who's the guy oh my god bill bill bill fucking the guy on tv caitlin he's not a science guy no i don't i think he's respectful of other people's religions i hope hope. No, I'm thinking of Bill, not Bill Nighy. That's what comes up in my Google because I Google him all the time. He's on HBO. Bill Maher.

Bill Maher. Oh my God. Bill Maher. Who's just like a kind of like fucking asshole. Yeah. Who has contempt for anyone that has any sort of faith. That's not to say that faith, that religion cannot be extremely repressive. Obviously we know that,

but it's like, it just feels like this, again, just a very overly simplistic, like, well, if you didn't believe in anything, maybe your life wouldn't suck so much.

You're like, well, that feels a little, a little broad to me. Definitely. Yes. Peace. This film, it's almost as if this film lacks nuance i

know i know i'm just like we're wasting our time like yeah what are we even doing buy jamie's book bye see ya please buy my book please buy my book it's nothing like this oh my god no there's there's lots more to discuss and the movie's almost over so yes uh barry shows up after frank has tried to give this speech about what everyone should believe or should not believe and barry's like no you can't tell people that they're fools if they don't believe you we have to do it a different way so then they shoot all of the people in the store with toothpicks covered in bath salts and because bath salts allow the people and food to understand each other the people it's like is the bath salts like a metaphor for like empathy i don't think they thought about it that

hard i don't know you're right you right. You're right. You're right. But because the people are on bath salts, they start freaking out and destroying the food, which allows the food to see how evil and vicious the humans are that they thought were gods, but they realize are actually monsters. And they realize that Frank was right. So the food fights back against the people but this is when the douche shows back up and puts himself up a store employee's butt and is like puppeting the store employee around while he's holding a gun and trying to shoot the food but i was so checked out by this point i was like sure i was watching it at like two times speed by this point and i i feel like i missed some stuff because i was like i just need this to end as quickly as possible i watched it

twice to prepare but yeah the second time i watched it on 1.75 because i'm just like this it doesn't make a difference it's not like i'm ignoring something there's nothing to take no um anyway okay so the the villains are trying to kill the food but frank and brenda and barry defeat the bad guys and they save the food in the store and then the movie ends with an orgy where all the food is having sex with each other and then there's another final beat where the bottle of fire water is like by the way none of us are real we're a cartoon invented by seth rogan so it tries to have this like clever meta ending but it also falls completely flat and sucks the end and it's also weird that the only they're like which yeah which is like a very easy way to be like yeah

it was about nothing right it was about nothing because it was like even with the ending again just like shitty writing where like the ending being like oh now everyone's like having this big food orgy and it's like not the rigid hetero like but but it's still like anytime there's queer sex it's heavily commented on and then they even make brenda bunsen feminist icon you know sit next to frank the hot dog after and say like well some like basically say that the the queer sexual experiences were okay but the best sex was with frank the hot dog like i just like penis hot dog did you pick that up on that though we're like we do get it like uh again this is a victory for nobody because again with salma harak playing a taco that is yeah both racist and sexist vaginas have certainly been referred to as tacos and it's all like you don't need me to explain this to you you've lived i've been alive in the world

unfortunately but like but at the end they do have okay let's start there let's start let's start there yeah well let's take a quick break first and then oh god all right we'll be right Please buy Raw Dog. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level.

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

I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song?

Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Ludi. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous.

Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career,

you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.

And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, 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. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Okay, and we're back. And we're back. Seth Rogen says raw dog, and I was like, this is bad press. That's blasphemy. We've reclaimed raw dog.

We've taken it away from him. It's not Frank the Hot Dog anymore. But let's start with the story between Brenda and, what is Salma Hayek's character's name? Teresa. And just to contextualize this a bit more before we dive in, which we've already mostly done, but just to make it clear that like the hot dogs are all coded as men and more specifically penises because there's all these jokes and even like a whole storyline about how Barry the hot dog like feels insecure because he's not as long as the other hot dogs but he is girthy and like all

this stuff and then the hot dog buns are coded as women slash vaginas but again like the vagina buns also have boobs point is it's very gender essentialist and reductive. And it's basically just saying like... And Brenda Bunsen says, I'm so tight. Like, it's just like... Right. All of these like attempts at jokes of how ha ha ha bun equals vagina, hot dog equals penis, which is like the easiest and most unoriginal joke in the world and yet the whole movie hinges on this very lazy obvious joke as if it's some brilliant bit of comedy that no one's ever thought

of before and then on top of that penis equals man always man yeah vagina equals always like it's very cis normative as well and it's right so not only is it reducing people to their genitals in a way that means oh like men have dicks and because of that they're so fucking horny and all they want to do is fuck all the time and reduces women to vaginas and also like they have feelings because they have vaginas and it's very transphobic and yeah just like reducing people to genitals and saying that only you know to be a man means you have this genitalia to be a woman means you have this genitalia there's no room for anyone on the gender or like intersex spectrum just like it's just so rigid and binary and unfortunately it's really

difficult to discuss this movie without that constantly being the case so we apologize if if we sound like we it's just really it's really hard to talk about this movie without feeling like you're aligning with that obviously that is not how we align but they but this is just like the the interior logic of the movie is so fucked and assumes so much that it's uh it's just like it's very difficult to have this right conversation yes please buy raw dog um but okay so we have Teresa Del Taco yes okay Del Taco is uh you know if you live in the U.S., you probably know, an American fast food. Chain. American. But it's like Americanized Mexican food.

So already. Yeah. Lazy. But Teresa is, I mean, she's a queer character who is immediately interested in brenda and like it's like implied that that's why theresa helps the gang is because she has a thing for brenda we see a lot of very like again you're like what are we doing here from theresa's perspective we see her constantly looking at brenda's butt like yeah objectifying her i feel like this move and and then there is like a scene where again it's just like not like brenda is i think like

a queer character because she says when she and theresa go their separate ways like basically says like i'm interested um but but this religion we believe in it would be against god right to have which i think is like again the attempt that this movie is making to be like religion is so oppressive and then at the end it comes around and everyone has a big orgy and you know theresa and brenda do have sex or it's implied that everyone kind of has sex with everyone. But I do think like the way that queerness is treated in this movie is obviously bad. Oh, for sure. To the point where there's a broad stereotype that isn't even like current.

I'm like, how old are you people like we're there but like the entire fruit section of the grocery store is queer coded and mostly queer coded as men yeah gay men and yeah so just again because this movie is so gender essentialist there is no real in between in terms of the gender spectrum and we see queer men even though it's i feel like this was a time where it was like well any representation you should be thrilled that we included this i'm acknowledging you exist and that's good enough where there's already i mean it's so unshocking that they were working on this movie since 2008 because this feels more 2008 than 2016 for sure but that was when it was released so you know fuck you but uh the like there's a fair

amount of no homoing oh definitely hot dogs so much but then when there are queer men they're treated differently from queer women which i know again is essentialist but it's something we've talked about before where when they're queer women it's very like oh ooh, this is sexy. This is leering. This is blah, blah, blah. And then when it's queer men, it's like funny. And like it's, I don't even really know what word to describe how, because at the end, Sammy Bagel Jr. and Kareem Abdul-Lavash. Hilarious, by the way. Have sex. The bagel says he has a boner i'm like well i understand

why you haven't attempted to show it because what does that even mean what does that mean would that look like yeah doesn't make sense um but those characters are so offensive and like okay so anyways i thought it was interesting that brenda and and Teresa are like acknowledged to be queer by the plot but like it's just so everything is so halfway because even like their interest in each other is still treated in a clearly written by straight men perspective lazy yeah mostly played as a joke nothing interesting or meaningful being done with it yeah so yeah which is also what happens with uh and again we touched on this and it's not worth going into the details the specific examples because they're so upsetting but just the racism, xenophobia, anti-Islam, anti-Semitic also.

Like, and it's so... Well, that, yeah, that's the one that we talked about this a little bit as well, where that's, I think, the one... I'm curious what our Jewish listeners think. But that feels like the only subject on which this group of writers has any leeway on because the story and the original like concept of this movie is by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Jonah Hill, who are all Jewish writers. And, you know, I, I still think this movie sucks no matter what. But I do want to acknowledge that there is a pretty well-storied history of Jewish writers

poking at tropes surrounding Jewish characters and also surrounding Nazism, which this movie also does. There is precedent for that. It's obviously done way better by artists like Mel Brooks. I don't know where to land on that because I'm not Jewish and I don't want to I mean we talked about this on the um Borat episode as well yes yes on the mate is that a matrion episode gosh I've lost all track of what is where uh yes I think that was when we covered uh borat borat 2 on the matreon where it is iconically we did that icon i mean feminist masterpiece meant it was said um but in any case i uh yeah i don't want to you know come down on the side of like jewish writers cannot make any

commentary on jewish history in the form of a comedy. There's plenty of it. I just personally don't think anything is well done in this movie. Right. But that's the one thing that I'm like, well, I don't really feel qualified to have a take on on that. I feel the same. However, we would be curious to know what our Jewish listeners think. I mean, it's just like, I just can't believe anyone liked this movie. It's so confusing to me. I wanted to quote a Lindy West piece that's also mentioned in this Nico Lang piece. You gotta love Lindy West. She said this back in 2012, where basically in the press tour for this movie, as we've alluded to um the writers would say like oh this is equal opportunity like offensiveness like we know that it's broad stereotypes like but it's with everyone i think that that and that's sort of where they're poking at jewish

stereotypes come in where they're like we're doing it, too. So it's cool if we do it to everybody. So that is sort of the acknowledged ethos of how this movie was put together. It's like, we're not exempt, so you're not exempt. So this is from a Lindy West essay for Jezebel in 2012. She says, quote, the problem is that all people are not equal in positions of power, which is true, because it's like these guys are making the movie like there there is one listed producer who is a woman, Megan Ellison, who is if I were to guess what is probably involved mostly in the in the animated portion because she works at Annapurna where the animation took place which we'll get to in a second it doesn't seem like there were any women that had any say in you know how this was made nor were there any Muslim writers nor were there uh any Mexican writers nor were there indigenous writers nor were there black writers and on and on and on and on and on it was just these guys so that logic does not it doesn't hold up it doesn't work work and and if they were

actually like poking fun at everyone because these these filmmakers are only poking fun at already marginalized people and not like commenting on fucking billionaires and racists and like people who should actually be which is like criticized for their behavior and not that that's the duty of any like of all movies sure you can have movies that are not like you know explicitly anti-capitalist and all this stuff and this movie is trying to say something about religion but it's just yeah like as far as the stereotypes are deployed it seems like just for shock value like definitely it has nothing to really do with the larger plot which is like basically incoherent to me it's just like it's mean and it's lazy and it's and it's it's a bit evil definitely and i uh read god i read i read

an example again an example that um so evan goldberg and seth rogan also said that they consulted friends to make sure their equal opportunity offensiveness wasn't just plain offensive gerard carmichael who is not in this movie, but he's in Neighbors, another Seth Rogen joint of this era. Gerard Carmichael told BuzzFeed that Goldberg would come to him to vet the movie's more problematic content. Is this racist? Goldberg inquired on more than one occasion. And then Nico Lange says, in an industry where people of color continue to be stereotyped and shut out, it seems that if Goldberg had to ask, he already knew knew the answer which i think is an excellent point and probably very true um i don't even want to say what it was going to be but the craig robinson character who is called mr grits yeah which jesus christ was

originally going to be even more offensive and there the the original version of the craig robinson character which was just explicitly anti-black, like tested very, very poorly. And there was at the movie's original premiere, someone, I guess, confronted Seth Rogen about it and was like, you can't fucking do this, dude. Like, this is disgusting. But that's the only change that I saw an example of being changed. Everything else stayed as is which again it's like what if someone hadn't said something and it's like and and then that would just be out in the world I mean not that what is out not that Mr. Grits is doing anything like it's just uh I mean lavash

like all of the every character fucking fire water every mean, it's like there's no there's no except for this character, which makes a ton of sense. Like, no, no, it's heinous because you brought up Lindy West, who is an activist against fat shaming and fat phobia. And so just famously one of my favorite writers. Oh, she's terrific. It just reminded me of how much fat shaming there is in this movie, where like the other food characters are fat shaming Brenda the bun. Another character, I forget who it is, but says that people like humans are to blame for getting fat because of all the all the food they consume just like all this like horrible fat phobic rhetoric yeah it's just bullshit like everything like basically every

word in this movie is bullshit and all and also like it upholds well obviously it upholds all of like all of everything but even in a way that like i don't understand because it's it's like this is a movie written by jewish writers who are going with their ethos of what they say they're doing we're not exempt either but the main character seems like he's coded as like a white christian so it's like right so it seems like oh well the white christian hero fucking cis hot dog guy is still the most curious of everyone and like finds the truth and unites every culture and it's like that's like what is what are you doing that's that's all movies like that's like fucking i i i don't i don't know i'd like it obviously this movie makes no sense.

Well, to piggyback on that, there's classic sexism happening with that too. Because again, Frank is this character who's like, wait a minute. I'm a skeptic now. I have to seek the truth. He literally Bill Maher. Yeah. He sets out to make the documentary religious. and he's like, what's going on? But Brenda, his girlfriend, refuses to listen to Frank about the possibility that the great beyond might not be real.

And yes, he is being very condescending and patronizing while he talks about it. But one of the few female characters in the movie is presented as being irrational and overly driven by her emotions. And again, he's interested in seeking the truth. She's not, she's just like, I'm going to, you know, blindly follow what I already believe. I'm not going to interrogate anything. And then she tries to like make him jealous when he's like, well, I can't even have a rational conversation with you she's like oh yeah well i'm gonna go fuck a pickle and it's just like well it's like also that they're this like because they're like still in their package that's supposed to be this really like uh sophisticated metaphor for virginity but it's still more like so but you know by the hot dog

bun blah blah blah like it's still more emphasized in the female coded uh like it's more important that the buns are never been used than the hot dogs which is ridiculous yeah yeah it is gross also there's all this like male gaze animation slash cinematography again oh my god the shot where douche is talking about like i can't wait to get inside this woman guarantee these writers do not know how any of this would actually go but there's this like leering shot of like a cartoon woman's vagina and you're just like why yeah why why why we already have like oh in case the vagina buns that also have boobs and butts weren't enough for you like got you got you yeah yeah so that's gross uh i want to talk about the production and animation yes specifically the way that animators were treated on this movie i'm pulling from a couple different sources one is a Washington Post piece one is a Screen Rant

piece so there was this Q&A published on an animation news website called Cartoon Brew Cartoon Brew Rocks and so there's a Q&A with the two directors of this movie, Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon. And the comments section of this Q&A basically turned into the animators commenting anonymously, complaining about the working conditions on the movie. And so like, that's kind of how this information came to be public information. So the animators complained about director Greg Tiernan, who runs the animation company Nitrogen, who handled the animation for Sausage Party. He runs it with his wife, Nicole Stinn. Also, unfortunately, we do have to claim that sausage party is shrekian in that

conrad vernon one of the co-directors on feminist masterpiece shrek 2 wow yeah really quite shrekian sorry to sorry to interrupt your very important discussion of labor rights, but that's also true. It's important to know when a Shrek... When Shreks go wrong. Okay. No, but this is a very fascinating thing that has... I feel like it's a more popular discussion now. This seems like a more early example of it.

Yeah. Yes. So the animators were complaining that Mr. Greg would have enraged outbursts. They, there was a lot of micromanagement of the animators and most despicably, a lot of labor that went unpaid because animators were forced to work overtime and would not be

paid for it yes um i'll quote an excerpt from the washington post piece uh the production costs were kept low because greg would demand people work overtime for free if you wouldn't work late for free your work would be assigned to someone who would stay late or come in on the weekend. Some artists were even threatened with termination for not staying late to hit a deadline, unquote. So basically, animators, if they wanted to keep their job, were forced to work overtime for free. If they refused, they would potentially be fired many animators who worked on the movie were not credited as having worked on the movie because many of them quit because of the horrible working conditions um before the movie was finished and anyone who quit was not credited

even though they worked on the movie for like over a year also uh when animators tried to quit and like put in their notice executives at nitrogen would threaten to damage their reputations which like is a pretty big deal because like getting blacklisted in this industry is a real concern like if you get blacklisted like it is... It could fuck your career and they know that. Permanently, yes. So the animators were just like treated horribly. And because the animation was happening in Vancouver and Nitrogen is a Vancouver-based company, which is like outside of the jurisdiction and protections of the Animation Guild in the US,

they like weren't protected um i did read that eventually when anna perna which was like the production company that financed the movie yeah learned about all of this like labor mistreatment they stepped in they made sure the animators were paid for their overtime and they were like they made sure that the animators were being fed because a lot of them had to work these late hours in an area that was like difficult to like get food and so they like unless they brought their own food they would have to work with like no access to food and like it's it's pretty standard for like especially on like film sets for the production of the movie to feed the cast and crew like it's not right people's responsibility who work on a on a production

to feed themselves so this is so like this is i've uh i'm very i am i don't because you said you remember hearing about this at the time i didn't know about this at the time just because I I love I mean I work in animation I love animation and this is so this is like so I mean labor disputes are typical across entertainment across everywhere but like in animation specifically it is like improved so little over the years that I'm glad that there was a settlement but I'm also like there is no excuse for someone as powerful as this group of filmmakers to accept making this a non-union project like that is absolutely unacceptable you can't treat your workers that way and the reason you do is to save money and to mistreat them because like you're saying like at this this happens this this has happened on animation

shows that i've worked on and i've only ever worked as a writer but even so it's like there's just still such an issue with how animation is treated within entertainment not that there aren't major labor issues in live action as well but the unions in live action tend to be a little stronger where you have SAG that represents animation performers as well, but not as often. The WGA who are, it seems about to strike and I'm very thrilled. But the WGA still doesn't recognize most animation writers as writers that deserve union protections. Ridic like i i love to fucking run my mouth about this but i've worked on six television shows but i'm not in the wga because i write in animation it's ridiculous and like some are fucking high budget like

why does writing on star trek not qualify you for the wga it's fucking ridiculous and it's there is very in in animators especially i mean this goes back to like walt disney union busting animators like during the production of like pinocchio like this has been going back this has been going on in animation forever harkening back to the pinocchio wars sorry oh my god i still have ptsd from the pinocchio Wars sorry oh my god I still have PTSD from the Pinocchio Wars um but like there there's you know animators have had to repeatedly strike and still have I would say generally less protections than their live action counterparts um which is ridiculous especially because animation has grown only more popular and more widely like every audience um it's it's like it was like oh you make kiddie tv like you don't does which is also ridiculous but now it's like there's animation across the board there's no reason that they shouldn't be treated equally it pisses me off

and i'm glad that they got a settlement but it's just like it's so transparent where and this we like sort of talked about this a little earlier but how I think that like a similar dispute that you see right now is going on with the effects workers who work on Marvel movies where there's only so many production houses that do this they're desperate to stay in the good favor of disney and marvel it's always fucking disney with this stuff they want to stay in the good graces of these huge contracts and so they'll work people to death and then like there this was an issue with a director i generally like but taika waititi when the, I didn't see it, when his last Marvel movie came out, he was like making fun of how the effects looked in interviews, which prompted employees

to be like, you didn't like, Marvel did not give us the money or the time to finish this fucking movie. How dare you? Like, it's ridiculous. That movie sucked. Thor Love and Thunder was like I did not see it I I I mean I guess it's like I was like oh well you can't always trust Rotten Tomatoes but I did trust Rotten Tomatoes on that one and I didn't see it yeah but yeah it's just animation and effects

workers are historically treated like shit and it's so like there's no there's no excuse for anyone to do it but particularly people who are this powerful and have have access to the resources. It's not like we're an indie company and like we can only give you this much, which isn't acceptable either. But at least there's some context for it. There's no reason that this that a production of this level needed to mistreat their workers so much um and that sucks because then everyone had to work on sausage party like okay well if you want to read more about labor rights in the meatpacking industry and also uh then you should pick up a new book it It's out now. It's called Raw Dog.

I learned a lot about how meatpacking employees as well as animals are severely mistreated in the process where most grocery store hot dogs like Frank are made. Also do some discussion of vegan hot dogs, of kosher hot dogs. There's so the world of hot dogs is expansive. It vast it's vast it's effing vast and much you might even say and much like the animation workers rights have not improved by very much over the last 100 years so that's fucking sick uh we love that we love that do you have anything else you want to say about sausage party no me either it passes it passes the vectal test but it doesn't matter it doesn't matter and i give it no and the way women interact with the with each other which is not often because again there's only really two there's one major female character in bre Brenda, and then there's a more minor character in Teresa.

Yeah. Other than that, any female coded characters have like maybe a line or two. And even that's rare. So most of the characters we meet are male coded. So there's really very little interaction between women. Although Brenda and Teresa do pass the bechdel test because they talk about their sexual urges for each other so right i mean sure it counts it counts but but the way that

women or like female coded characters interact with each other outside of that is like a lot of like the buns will be calling each other disparaging like sexist words like oh you bitch oh you skank stuff like that yeah and then we've referenced this but the i guess the only other thing i have to say is the ableism that's present in the michael cera character and also that they suggest uh that he is disabled in some way and that the only way that he could find a partner is to find another disabled partner, which is how that plays out in the end, which is just, I mean, like, it feels worth it.

I don't even want to get into it really because it's just so fucked and ugly. And this movie is, I agree with Letterboxd, this movie is evil. I don't want to say another word about this movie no nipples done no I would say negative five nipples and it's like especially I'll meet you there thanks negative five this movie is evil the last thing I'll say about it is it's especially frustrating to me when there there's a movie that's attempting to make commentary on some kind of like societal or cultural thing because it is attempting to say things like

having blind faith in a deity can be dangerous or which sure attaching shame to sexuality and making people feel shame if they have sex like, quote unquote, out of wedlock, or if they have sexual feelings toward someone of their same gender, the way that a lot of religions do, you know, saying that that's wrong, or taking a religious text and distorting it to push your own agenda of prejudice and oppression that's bad yeah i agree with those things but for the movie to try to make those claims and then turn around and put every reductive trope in existence into the movie and punch down to so many groups of marginalized people do you even hear yourself no sausage party anyway this movie sucks i hate it negative five nipples and buy jamie's book please buy my book raw dog by jamie latches we're gonna put uh we'll we'll put the link for where you can buy it uh i

prefer to use bookshop.org that will automatically link you to the closest independent bookstore that you can order it from and have it shipped from that is carrying the book. And please tell your friends. It's really helpful and I'm very proud of it. And also, if you live in the cities, let's see if I remember, of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, Portland, Oregon, Boston, Brooklyn, and Chicago, and somewhere in Connecticut called the Mark Twain House. Those are the eight places I will be going to promote the book. There will be events and we will link tickets as well because i will be leaving this week so please um please come out indeed and all the regular stuff you can follow us on twitter and instagram you can go to our patreon aka matreon and get access to two bonus episodes every month, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes.

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