The Bechdel Cast - Secretary with Ashley Ray

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Please step into our office as Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Ashley Ray examine Secretary. Content warning: self harm, physical and sexual assault.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @theashleyray on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and I'm the host of On Purpose. This week, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Andrew Huberman. Dr. Huberman is a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine,

known for his research on brain function, behavior, and neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to adapt and rewire itself. The expectation on us is not perfection, it's being able to toggle between these different states. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. that's guaranteed to light up your day. Check out our recent episode with dancer, actress, and host of Dancing with the Stars, Julianne Hough,

revealing the healing journey behind her new novel, Everything We Never Knew. I am showing up for my younger self, and it is becoming a ripple effect energetically in my life, and that's why I feel so safe now. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, everyone. Before the episode starts, we just wanted to do some quick content warnings. We want to be better about doing those moving forward. So just to let you know, in the discussion, we talk about self-harm as well as physical and sexual assault. And now here's the episode. On the Bechdel cast, 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. Jamie, do you want to start this one? No, I don't know what to say.

Okay, me either. Oh, here's something. Okay. Ready? Oh, oh, Jamie, I hate the way you sniffle. You're always sniffling. Okay, let's have sex. Wow.

Welcome to the Bechdel cast. An iconic intro. Oh, the icon. We've not passed the Vectel test? It did. Well, but welcome anyways. That's literally just something that happens in the movie. That was a, that was just, that was a direct quote. A reenactment.

Yeah. A dramatic reenactment. A dramatic reenactment. Sniff. So today's movie, okay, wait, where are we? This is the Bechdel cast. Welcome. Sure is. My name is Caitlin Durante.

My name is Jamie Loftus. And this is a podcast about the representation of women in movies, as well as just an overall examination of film through an intersectional feminist lens. We use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion, that being a media metric invented by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test, that requires that two female identifying

or non-male genders characters with names talk to each other about something other than a man such as just now when you heard that I sniffed and then Caitlin and I mutually decided to have sex. That actually is more than, we did more than what the movie does.

We actually gave consent. We had a discussion about it there was yes there was consent discussed almost instinctually like that's just like what one would do right not to toot our own real consent heads i love consent so today's movie is secretary and we have a guest who we are very excited about. She's amazing. She's the best. Writer, comedian, Ashley Rae. Hi, I'm so happy to be here. I'm so excited to talk about this movie specifically. Ooh.

Yeah. Oh. Yeah. My gosh, there's so much to talk about. So much. This movie has meant so much to me, and I haven't watched it in a long time. But watching it again, it just reaffirmed how much it it just imprinted on me as a child did you see it when it first came out like what's your full

history yeah yeah it came out in 2000 uh that is when I was like 10 years old uh but I got a laptop when I was like 12 I went to this school where they gave everyone a laptop in sixth grade, which is a stupid thing to do. Uh, and I would just like make live journal accounts and download movies. Like there were live journal accounts where people would just like share indie movies. And that's how I would like watch like French lesbian films.

And then someone put up secretary. And I, I remember the day being like that poster it's like iconic with like the stockings and her bent over and I was like this is something I've gotta see and I downloaded it on my laptop and I I just remember watching it with headphones and being like I cannot let my mom know this is happening. So that's like, that's that age when you're like figuring out weird kinks, I feel like,

or at least like, you know, yeah. And, and I now realize probably 98% of my kinks were inspired by this movie, which is bad, probably horrible. The point is that it happened.

Exactly. I wonder, I mean, I feel like I would be such a different person if I had access to a laptop at 12 years old. Yeah, I don't know why anyone thought that was a good idea. My school still does it to this day. All sixth graders, you get a laptop, you get to keep it until you like graduate. I watched so I watched like Pink Fl flamingos and just horrible movies at a really young age oh my god and this is this is probably why i like came out as like queer and poly by the time i was 17 i was like been there done it i've seen it james bader showed me how

uh now it's just unlearning it's a lot of unlearning right all the damage all the movies do to us as young people yeah um wow i didn't own a laptop until i was uh well into my 20s so whoa yeah i didn't get one till college that seems like a healthy age those seem those are healthy ages yeah yeah like by then you're just like oh porn is such an exciting luxury. It becomes a luxury thing because you don't have to watch it on a desktop anymore. But then that kind of comes all the way around. And then later in your life, you're like, I can watch, you know, once you live on your own, you can watch porn on a desktop again. Yeah. Big screen. And then it's a different kind of luxury. Yeah, exactly. Jamie, what about you? What's your relationship

with this movie? I'd never seen this movie. I've known about it for a long time. And I have a feeling that if I had seen it, when I was in like middle school, high school, it I would have really, really loved it. And it would have had like a real effect on me. But I didn't I don't know, I just missed it. And I started hearing more about it I think it was like when the Fifty Shades movies were coming up this movie was coming up over and over and over as like this is the alternative if you think Fifty Shades sucks you just got to go back and watch Secretary so that was kind of like where I was that was like my point of entry because we've covered Fifty

Shades on this show and in retrospect i'm not i'm not totally i'm like i see what people are saying but i'm like maybe they should have it's definitely a better written movie and well so every movie is a better written movie than 50 shades of gray and it's definitely very a very well acted movie too but then but on the relationship level i was like i don't i don't quite see it i'm excited to talk about it he's like the original mr gray like they even have the same name yeah it took this was the watch where i was like oh my mind blown wow wow connecting the pieces it embarrassingly took me until 75 into the movie to be like oh my god she's calling him mr gray for an hour and a half i've heard this before i've seen this before

but this time it's with maggie gyllenhaal and i'm like i mean i also like dakota johnson i but it's just she wasn't set up for success in that franchise she was not anyways caitlin what's your what's your history with this movie? I didn't see it right away because it came out in 2002, right? I probably didn't see it until I think I saw it when I was working as an assistant. I've talked about this job before on the podcast because it traumatized me. I was working as an assistant to a literary manager in New York who was extremely verbally and emotionally abusive to me. And I guess I was just like watching media in which other people are verbally and emotionally abused by their boss. I guess just to relate or have something to relate to.

Not sure exactly I didn't connect very much with the movie at that point and then re-watching it there's a lot I struggled with I tried to because I worked as a secretary every summer for like four summers

at the comptroller's office and I was like the assistant comptroller's office and i was like the assistant comptroller secretary and it was it was i couldn't i mean just based on my own experience i couldn't plug myself in because i was like i just me and scott this just didn't exist with us yeah just uh i was a church secretary uh from like eighth grade throughout high school i wasn't like religious but they paid me ten dollars an hour it was just a really good gig and it yeah, it was hard, you know, as it was hard to see myself in that role necessarily. But I did understand a lot of her duties as as a secretary, I did have to use a typewriter. I related to that too. Well, you got the full typewriter treatment. Yeah, they it was

a pretty old church. And they were were just like this is how we do baptism certificates get used to it classy i like it um so anyway yeah i um i i don't like this movie i'll just come out and say it but uh but i yeah i don't i don't have any of the attachment to it or any of like the nostalgia or anything so i was coming in it with pretty fresh eyes um but there's a lot to discuss yeah there is so there's so much to talk i mean it's i i guess like i was kind of assuming i was like oh this is like probably one of those like cut and dry deals where it's like well it was like written by men about women and so you know there's just gonna be uh it's kind of a non-starter to an extent in most cases uh but this is not the case for this movie it's there's so many there's so many

layers it's very it was really interesting researching like the two female writers that like shaped this story very differently including the screenwriter who's like really fixated on like women with mental illness and punishing them, but being like, but it was good for her. Like she's, she's got a whole, it's such a hyper specific vibe.

But when I was looking at her list of works, I'm like, whoa, that is really the theme. Yeah. It's, it's this weird thing where the character, she is,

she's dealing with mental illness. She's fresh out of an institution in a hospital, but they also treat her like this newborn baby, like in a pool who like knows nothing and is so naive. And it's just like, oh my God, what is a man? And then she's just like a perfect baby for James Spader to just like imprint on. But at the same time, they're like, well, no, see, she to just like imprint on but at the same time they're like well no see she's just like so brilliant and complex because she has mental illness and she could just like understand him right and it just like wants to have it both ways and it's like wait is she this like innocent

child who knows nothing or is she this like super genius like person who can read his mind like what what is she supposed to be they pick and choose and i feel like that especially when i was younger that those types of characters were so appealing to me because they were like parts of me like when you're 12 or 13 like you want to be perceived kind of in both of those ways like and so making an adult character that way is a choice that is gonna appeal to that is is she an adult is because that's great question the bedroom look at her bed let's start is she an adult is it's like black swan it's like she's like stickers everywhere like what age is she if someone told me she was like 18 i'd be like i could see it like what what age is she? If someone told me she was like 18, I'd be like, I could see it.

Like what age is she? It's really confusing. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be like she is maybe like, yeah, like a really young adult. And maybe she just has her like kid room and she's fresh out of high school. Or if they were like going for a black swan kind of thing where they're like no she's definitely too old for this but we're just gonna trap her here to send to say something but i wasn't sure what what right i don't know like no idea the closest thing to any kind of indication is when she's talking to peter who she knew in high school who she like ends up dating for a little while and

and then being engaged to but she's like you're so different from how you were in high school and it seems like but how long ago was that yeah but how long we don't know also she has she's in the bathtub at one point and she like has this very like childlike snow globe that apparently is like part of her like she has all over that she's like no i'm over this snow globe and then she like throws it away i'm pretty sure there's like a rubber ducky in there like i just so much of that made it uncomfortable and it's like if they had just firmly kind of like aged her up like have her just once refer to dropping out of college or something i would have at least i feel like it would have made the dynamic a little better but this whole first part

of the movie you're like okay so she she is a child who's jealous of her sister's wedding like right there was like there i feel like they wanted you to look at her as a baby to some but but if that's true then it kind of makes the whole thing a little more sinister there were a few of those moments though where it was like again i was like if i saw this when i was 13 i would have been like holy shit like just like symbolism moments when she takes the snow globe and she's like fuck the snow globe oh yeah that that one got me that was the moment when i was i was like but yeah that girl when she threw that snow globe i was like i'm in i'm in this is me this is my lifestyle now it's i mean

and and i i will say watching it now i did hate it i saw every problem but i also did see this way where i was like 13 or you know whatever and i. And I was like, oh my God, of course I thought this was the sexiest thing in the world. Like him just telling her what to eat for dinner and how, of course I'd be like, oh my God, that's so hot that someone would like take the time and care to do that. You know, I was a latchkey kid. I had to feed myself. So that obviously super hot to me. Sure. And it's just, you know, know the i feel like it just sexualizes things in this kind of non-sexy way where you're like okay i guess i can work with this even though i'm still really not clear on who this woman is or what exactly she wants or why she has decided this

lifestyle speaks to her right there's a lot to latch on to with lee which is like part of i don't know it was i was so in and out because it's like yeah that not watching it now the problems are very clear but it also is like it's very like of its time in a lot of ways and I don't know what about that yeah the that masturbation scene oh very early 2000s this like this like just visually trippy like as all girls know the way we masturbate is we like envision a flower opening and we're sitting in the middle of it uh and then the boy that we have a crush on appears and like washes our hair of course that's how girls masturbate it's very mtv2 visuals just like fireworks yeah weird like green screen stuff

happening but then again i was just like okay so she's like 14 years old like that was another thing where you're like okay she's a baby she's i think she's probably legally an adult but either way the the age gap between her and mr gray is pretty substantial yeah and that's the other that's enough this is a I hate James Spader I hate him so much that words cannot describe how much I think he is the worst yeah I don't know how he gets I just I hate him so much but anyway that's neither here nor there if it was I've heard he's a very like not nice person oh really he's a jerk yeah oh i thought do you just dislike him as a performer i just hate him because i hate his him as an actor i think i just the the roles he tends at least of the ones i've seen that he's in i i find him loathsome like

he's in that movie crash like the horny car crash movie I found him really creepy in that movie. I found him really creepy in Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Like everything he's in. And then this movie, like everything he's in that I've seen, I just, I find him really awful. I feel like this is his last like hot movie. This is the last time we saw like a hot James Spader. So maybe we celebrate it for that. Sure.

Alone. And only that. that's so long yeah he's like i gotta go be an avengers age of ultron now yeah the blacklist needs me he had a show called like the blacklist right it ran for like 10 years or something like yeah he's been on so many things for 10 years that i didn't know existed he well he was on the office too right like yeah after people stopped watching oh that's a good name yeah he was on boston legal my mom watched the hat he's been on my mom loved boston legal he gets a lot of work and i just don't know why i don't i don't get it not here for james spader i think he's still kind of like

riding that, his first wave of success, because he was the sexy guy in so many movies, and now he's just kind of set for life? That's my guess. I mean, Secretary, yeah, it's an ode to sexiness. Yeah. I feel like it enriches the experience if you knew.

Because if i just saw james spader i'm like that's the guy like yeah but because you know like he has this icon like sex icon status yeah which i don't get just to be mr gray like at no point in the movie is he an interesting or charismatic character no like she's just like he's so complex i can see why he's hurting and then james spader just looks like constipated and he's then he's just like i gotta go just knock out some push-ups and that's him the entire movie it's just like he's running on a treadmill yeah i gotta take care of my orchids yeah but like where's your personality bro oh yeah oh yeah he keeps like he's like vagina symbol in

his like office and then you have to water it you know he's a good guy because he can handle the vagina flowers and not everybody can do that feminist icon yeah they like kind of set this thing up in the beginning where like it seems like he has a dom there's like this ex-woman who comes in and like stomps all over his stuff and i was like oh good i'm gonna love it if like he gets it handed to him but then in the end she's like no he is a genius and he slipped through my fingers and i just wish i had been as smart as you lee to capture him and it's like wait so wait you were like so angry and came into his office because this guy who we've literally never heard say anything smart is just so brilliant that you like you just had to storm down there to yell at him to sign divorce papers. What?

Yeah. Right. Because he's like he's a genius at what? What? At lawyer? He doesn't even seem like a good lawyer, by the way. No. All the case notes we heard yeah there's like one time where he's just like i told you to send the notes on the case

house and it just sounds like something like like a writer was like this is how lawyers talk we'll just have him say it through the door just he can ad lib spader will fill it in don't even worry he knows the law he was on boston legal right there the thing i will say about i mean there's a lot of things to say about james paynter but i was struck maybe it's like my tv but i had to like turn up the volume and turn down the volume so much watching this movie because he speaks like in a whisper the whole kept like cranking my roku to 80 and then like slamming it back down it was so hard to hear him that was a question i actually was going to ask does it count as passing the

bechdel test if you can't hear the man if you if he's just whispering technically does it count is maggie jillenhall just talking to herself like right because he'll be like miss holloway step into my office he's so quiet there were pivotal scenes i had to watch like three or four times because i'm like i just i can't hear him my roku's at a hundred i can't hear him there's so just i i think all the scenes where he's supposed to be and it's interesting because you know i think it would be better if we saw lee actually consent to a lot of this or like approach it with any sort of like passion or excitement. Like,

Oh, you know, but we really just see her like headphones on, like listening to one tape about being a sub, like being a dom. Right. But most of it is just James Spader's character being like, you do this,

you sniffle too much. And I think you need to stop touching your hair. And he's just projecting all of these things onto her and it's just so uncomfortable and it's like if you would have just given some of that agency to lee's character it would have been a little better right because his character just isn't interesting enough to carry it and the whole time he's just like i think you'd be happier if you just kept your shoes on under your desk. And then we're supposed to be like, holy shit,

he totally gets this girl's self esteem and what she needs. Yeah. Yeah. She broke the snow globe. So, well, before we get too far into it, let's do the recap and then we'll,

and then we'll really just let loose. We'll, we'll loosen up as she is told she needs to do by mr gray loosen up we'll take it be wrong we'll drink a hot chocolate do everything because she's not old enough to have an adult beverage okay actually let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back and do the recap. 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. 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. 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. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago

when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground.

Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life.

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

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

You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not not hurting people there's nothing dangerous about what you're doing they're just dreams dream sequence is a new horror thriller from blumhouse television iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the movie is we open on Lee Holloway. That's Maggie Gyllenhaal's character. We see her doing, you know, some office assistant type work. You know, there's papers, there's stapling.

She's getting coffee. But while she's doing all this, she's wearing this kind of bondage device that suspends and outstretches her arms to either side. This is an iconic intro scene, I feel like. It'll be remembered throughout her career. It is really cool as a scene. Visually, yeah. It really puts you into the world. Because it does.

I mean, it's not until the midpoint of the movie. Hello, screenwriting degree. That they enter into any sort of like dom sub relationship. So it takes a while to get there. But this gives you a nice little, you know, foreshadowing of what's to come. Yeah. And she's also like smiling while she's doing it. So you're in on it. Like there's these two moments in the beginning when she kind of smirks. And at the very end, when she looks right at the camera where she's like just so you know i'm into this and i think that's what we're supposed to take from it but i wasn't exactly sure yeah i also had a discussion about that i was like oh okay she's breaking the fourth wall to be like hey i know i never said it but

i'm cool with it don't ask me for consent i'm not the one who needs to approve these activities lady like don't look at us like she also stares at the camera and breaks the fourth wall at the very end a la judy dench and cats like i really thought she was like about to start singing about how cats are not dogs at the end of this movie and uh yeah she also just looks kind of angry like at the end when she stares at us like at the beginning it's it's like this kind of like funny knowing smirk like oh you're judging me but i'm enjoying this and at the end it's like she's she's angry at us i don't know like i don't know what assumption she thinks i'm making but at the end i was mostly just like so you went through all of that so that you could just be like a housewife is that was that the goal here right wasn't that the not what you wanted yeah like you

i'm confused but you're different from your sister in her marriage because you guys are into roaches in your bed that is so like early 2000s movie though i feel like where it's like oh i'm not like the other girls but i want all the exact same things with the other girls but i want my wedding dress to be black and we're gonna have sex right oh my god we're gonna have sex against a tree would it really hit for me when i was 12 i was like well honestly i was gonna say when i was a kid i watched that scene and i i was not at an age where i fully understood how sex worked but i just remember being like the tree is a big part of this like trees and sex go together uh i do love having sex on camping trips now all the time and i didn't realize like oh the tree is hurting her back like that's what it is but i was just like no i think you need a tree involved in this sex act that's how it goes

yeah she just wanted to get her back fucked up against some tree bark because right because she fell in love with the world's most complicated man oh he's so interesting um he's not like the others okay so we see this opening scene and then we cut to six months earlier. Lee has just been released after having been institutionalized. She's back home. Things are difficult. Her parents are fighting. Her dad is abusive toward her mother. He's also an alcoholic.

And we see her inflicting self-harm. And then we learned that she has a history of doing this. Then one day, she sees an ad in the paper advertising for a secretary job at a lawyer's office. Can we just say how she finds it, though? Because I feel like it's not like she's just going through the paper looking for a job. She's like throwing out her kit of like tools she used to harm herself. She goes to the trash can, throws it out, turns around, and then she's like, I can't do it. And she goes to get it back out. And then she sees this ad to the trash can throws it out turns around and then she's like i can't do it and she goes to get it back out and then she sees this ad in the trash like this like it's supposed

to be some sort of like divine intervention like she's meant to be this guy's like sub slave because also she does eventually throw them out but only after like james spader says it's okay and it's like why couldn't that moment have come earlier for her why couldn't she it's like couldn't she have just thrown it out then and then been like oh an ad to be a secretary okay yeah yeah i felt that that whole i mean once it gets to like that james spader scene which i like know it's weird because it's like i know that that scene is kind of like iconic in its own right but it's like he's just like don't do that ever again and she's like oh that's what i didn't occur to me to not do this

i just need to stop i was doing it again and then i was like i never thought don't don't do it don't do it what oh see like the hospital and my family were like maybe do it like it's like it's just so absurd my mom was like locking the knives away like but you know if you want one just come get me and i'll and i'll get it out for you like i i feel so i felt i felt for lee's mom i felt like the movie really was not very nice to her at every turn and like the i mean the first time you see her she is being abused by her husband and then really every other time she crops up like she's made to look kind of dumb and overbearing and like you never really get any closure with her with her or the family and it's it's kind of interesting because the first half of the film

to me felt so kind of surreal and comedic like all the stuff with the sister's wedding it feels like a joke all the stuff honestly with like her dad being an alcoholic it feels like this caricature of an alcoholic where he's like stumbling around downtown wandering into phone booths and it's just like okay is is this supposed to be like kind of a funny like over the top suburb yeah like like play like we're making fun of suburbia and like the drunk alcoholic parents who like you know and is is are we supposed to be like oh they're in on it this is kind of like a pro prozac nation moment but then it makes you feel bad for the mom because you're like oh no she's dealing with this abuse and wait can we take these characters seriously

but then they're like no no this is james spader is way more interesting like what we're all here for spader we're not here for these for this family very confused by this movie tonally like i don't really it's a comedy it's like yeah it's marketed as a comedy and i don't i'm not seeing that much humor in it or maybe it's just so subtle that i'm not picking up on it i don't know and then at the and then at the end it's like phew like you're just like what is happening once once the like the wedding dress is on you're like this movie has switched it turned into a julia roberts lost right yeah it's like an snm julia roberts moment you have like the press apparently with nothing else to report it's just like outside of his office for days yeah like reporting on this woman who you would think like like a doctor would

just come in i don't know why the press was like no we need to publish her insane love letter right now like run it verbatim them off yeah like did it and also that's the thing did he tip them off because he did tip off he tips off the boyfriend yeah was he like let's let's get peter in here let's get the family let's get some press in here like i i honestly think he's just standing at his creepy masturbation window and i think he was just like i'm just gonna see where this goes i'm just gonna sleep on the floor till this all blows over like i guess is how he like punishes himself like oh no right the most privileged punishment of all time. He's like, I'm going to sleep on the floor of my lawyer mansion.

Yeah. While Lee is like sitting in her piss for like five days in a row because he doesn't want to use his words and say, yeah, I like you too. Remember, that's what starts all of it is that he cannot say back. I like you too. Yeah. She's like pouring her heart out. And then he's just like stay there

until i come back until i come back and then he just stands outside the window and he's like i like you too mrs holloway i've like done what maggie gyllenhaal does in that like extended scene emotionally a lot i've sat in my piss emotionally waiting for someone to say they like me back for many times physically it would be a first i also think she would have uh pooped herself too first if she's there for like three days yeah it was also her wedding day yeah when he like picks her up we're getting so ahead of ourselves but when he like picks her up and like sweeps her off her feet and carries her out of the office like that wedding dress should be like brown and yellow yeah from all her piss and shit why is he touching it it's like kind of a break in his

character this guy who doesn't want to touch worms he's all all of a sudden he's all over this like piss dress right maybe that's part of his kink i washed it with my boyfriend and we were just like openly laughing once it hit the end room it was like oh that's so and then we're just like she's rewarded with a bath and then she's like locked in a room and she's like and that's when i felt so beautiful and you're like huh also is that that like weird grass table which to me seems like a place where you kill animals i don't know why someone would just have this like weird fake grass bed uh thing why does he have that and then she's like laying there and she's like she's like not this is the first time i ever felt whole and i was like oh i didn't know you didn't feel whole this is the first time i'm like hearing this was an issue for you throughout the film right oh gosh it's like would have been

nice to know how you were feeling about anything unfortunately we never learned that much about her character oops no oh maggie okay so um she sees the ad in the paper for the the lawyer secretary job she goes in to apply to the office and then we meet the lawyer mr e edward gray that's james spader's character he interviews her on the spot it's a very inappropriate and weird interview uh we can talk about that he immediately is just like let me just make sure this girl does not know boundaries he's just straight off the bat like let me just make sure i can manipulate this girl who does not know what is appropriate or isn't appropriate right yes and he he gives her the job so she starts working for him he's mostly a bastard uh he makes her do inappropriate things like go

through the dumpster he throws away donuts that she gave him as a gift uh he leers at her body inappropriately i was having some uh real like uh fraud complex moments uh during like her early times in that job where it's like it is so clear to the viewer that he is not hiring her because she's going to be good at the job. He's kind of hiring her because she's going to be bad at the job. And then when she's bad at the job, which he knew she would be, he like punishes her relentlessly, which feels like every early job I ever had. Exactly. It reminded me of just every abusive boss who's just like this has too much sugar not enough sugar

like oh my gosh I don't like the way that you type this oh actually I wanted like this much space on the left and you're just like oh you're just a jerk but she's supposed to be she's supposed to be this naive child and that's why she falls for it like any I think any adult woman would have been like

no you can't ask me if i'm pregnant would have just stormed out of there but she's like oh my gosh uh yeah i guess like this is cool and just you know and i think he knows that and that's why the entire dynamic just feels like it's set up so gross because she doesn't even come into the job with any sort of like equal footing. Totally. Which is the main reason I have a real problem with this movie is that we are meant to be rooting for this relationship in which a man is exploiting this imbalance of power that he has in this relationship with this woman. So what follows that is one day at work, her dad calls her and he had left Lee and her mother. He seems to be hitting rock bottom.

And this upsets Lee and she self harms again at the office. And Mr. Gray sees her doing this. Yes, because she does it in the middle of the waiting room, by the way, just like at her desk in the middle of the waiting room by the way just like at her desk in the middle of the waiting room where anyone could have walked into the office right just yeah there was a few i mean i don't know as like a former self-harmer myself it's like we go to the bathroom yeah it's like it was and that was one of the tonal moments where it was weird because we also see like the weird moments where he's like popping around the corner and just like

peeking at her right it's like weird but then there's this moment where she's like i have to self-harm and obviously she would go to the bathroom like we saw her like do this privately before but we know he's like gonna be peeking and they set it up just to make it so obvious and it's like like it just felt kind of comical the way that he just immediately is just like and then she sees and it's like oh my gosh i didn't even consider that he could have been standing there and she seemed so shocked and it's like yeah girl you're in the middle of your office like someone could have just walked they make her so baby yeah yeah it's just frustrating right so after he sees this um he starts to really lay into her um yelling at her

for typing errors telling her that the way she dresses is disgusting like she's sniffling she's fiddling with her hair she does this weird thing with her tongue and she seems to make an active attempt to fix these things and then he asks her about a recent date that we saw her on with this guy peter who she knew from high school which is a date that takes place at a laundromat where they're drinking wine i don't know if this is a thing or not but that sounds fun that's what we i know i thought that was cool and i mean i i don't know if this is just a Midwest thing, but in the Midwest, all my white friends loved going on dates to the laundromat. So I just, I was like, yeah, I was like, I guess this is a thing in places where there

are lots of white people where they also have like bars too. But I was like, I'd be into this. And also like, it's just creepy that he also uses that laundromat because he's supposed to be this like big time lawyer and i'm like you don't have like a really fancy dry cleaner you're also using the like the dating laundromat and then he's in a home he'd have an yeah wouldn't he have like an in-home or like pickup or something but no he's also just like going to the town laundromat and dinner night place and then he sees them and gets like super creepy he's like peeking behind the washers again so if if you don't find james spader

attractive in this movie which i don't really those shots are so alarming yeah he's going nowhere sir what are you doing i don't know how the steve the buscemi test applies here exactly but it's like to me i feel like he's sort of for some he's the buscemi yeah for me for sure on account of how much i hate james spader but um so anyway he's like hey that date that you were on what was that all about did you have sex you know you can you can tell me about your problems also don't ever hurt yourself again don't cut yourself again and she says okay yes i won't um and then she makes another typing error. And he calls her into his office, instructs her to bend over on his desk and read the letter. And while she does this, he slaps her butt repeatedly. And we'll talk all about this.

But this kind of initiates the beginning of a dom-sub relationship between them. He starts to tell her what to eat he has her crawl around the office on all fours we see him strapping a saddle to her the saddle shot yeah can we do that where where did that come from is that why he has the fake grass bed i needed more answers there oh sure maybe i was like okay this is kind of awesome but also like where does he keep that it's a really small office no it's a huge it's for like not a pony he also i believe there was also hay like this was a very it was on a platform with hay yeah there was hay and carrots this was like not just your you know i have this saddle hanging. This was like a well thought out, like a photo shoot almost.

He's very inconsistent with like sometimes he's like, oh, I just I just want it right now. But then other times it's like, no, this would have taken a lot of planning. You would have had to decide this a couple of days ago in advance. Yeah. And so for him to be so wishy waswashy at points when it's like no the the amount of probably just preparation involved in this relationship so far like i'm sorry for you to now say that you never had feelings for this girl like i'm sorry but you're in a relationship you made a bed of hay for her yeah if you're making a bed of hay you're in a relationship okay go ahead and put a term on it because that's your girlfriend.

That's a commitment. That's a commitment. After this, though, something kind of changes and he loses. He seems to lose interest and he stops engaging in their BDSM relationship, much to her disappointment. Meanwhile, she has been dating Peter. She wants him to spank her. He doesn't get they have boring sex she's very dissatisfied poor peter he does that thing with his hand poor peter yeah he has this claw hand that he does when he has sex so there where he doesn't touch her he just yeah he's just like just like the the like hovering or he's just like

like oh sweetie and then he just she like she like turns around like and does the like spank me move and he's just like get a condom right like he's just as like he's just a character you feel so bad for and she does like briefly date some like other people in a montage which i i feel like the movie would have been better if we'd actually seen her go on these like bad S&M dates and like seen that experience but like very quickly they're just like yeah she tried like throwing tomatoes at somebody and she did this and anyway that didn't work

so she must be in love with James Spader so let's move on right it's like they look like the lamest like S&M dates you could go on like I think she just probably picked the wrong people off of Craigslist in the early 2000s yeah the newspaper yeah i guess if you're putting your snm ads in the newspaper you're gonna get some some misses yeah right so then at work lee puts a worm in a letter to Mr. Gray to try to reinitiate their BDSM relationship. And it works sort of in that there's like another encounter, but Mr. Gray feels guilty

about his behavior and he thinks there's something wrong with him and he wants to sever ties with Lee. So he fires her and she is devastated that's when she tries these other dom sub relationships with other men none of them work out she gets engaged to Peter because she doesn't know what else to do but on their wedding day she runs away a la Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride to Mr. Gray. And she's like, I love you. I want to be with you. I want to make love.

And he's like, put your hands on the desk, plant both feet on the floor, and don't move until I come back. She takes that note very seriously. She does not move. She doesn't move. He does different things to test her, I guess. Like we said, he tells Peter where where she is she urinates in the wedding dress he sends like everyone he sends the entire cast of the movie right yeah basically

everyone we've seen up until this point like comes in to have like a little monologue with her where they all talk about him it's never like hey lee are you like hungry or like no one brings her a snack her mom brings her four peas but that's it mom like brings her some peas but most of them are just like he is brilliant isn't he oh my gosh the worm trick was so smart and it's just like is anyone like a therapist kind of talks to her and then the only person who really gets through to her is her dad who's like reading the bible right i was honestly kind of confused i was like is she hallucinating news because she's so hungry and tired but then i was like no these people are really here i think where i got confused i'm like how did mr gray get his ex-wife to participate in this like she and

compliment him and did he call his ex-wife before he called the press or did he call the press first what i guess that i guess their divorce has since has been settled off screen yeah so you seem very upset in the beginning and now she's gone full circle to yes he's a genius and somehow he slipped through my hands she's like i was just showing too much agency personality etc i was just you know an actual person a few times and that didn't click for him uh but you were just a perfect just blank tablet of a human right for him to imprint on so those so those people were actually there she gets like 500 copies of codependency no more she reads none of them and then and then he finally comes back after i believe three days of her not sleeping not eating

or drinking water presumably pissing and shitting herself and then he comes back he swoops her off her feet he takes her home he gives her a bath um and then they become a couple yeah they get married they fuck on a tree goes off to work they fuck on a tree. He goes off to work. They fuck on a tree. He, you know, he keeps being a lawyer. She, we're not sure what she does with her life. I guess she's not a secretary anymore because she's not going to the office. Right. Does she just stay at home? We don't really know.

Actually, by the end of the movie, the one thing we know about her, that she is a secretary, we don't even know that anymore. Right. We actually end the movie knowing less about her than we started with. That is true. We don't even know her job. She like, like this.

Yeah. This is pretty disempowering. In a way, equally aimless as when she began, but well, yay. Like this was supposed to be a very happy ending. Yeah.

Well, that's the movie. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back for more discussion. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16, 2017 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

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This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer.

This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not.

What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing they're just dreams dream sequence is a new horror thriller from blumhouse television iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back cool um okay so i really quickly i think wanted to start with talking about the source material for this movie sure um caitlin you read the story yes i did bravely i did as well i don't make a

habit of reading but it was only like 15 pages long. I did not read this. Once I saw that it was very short, I was like, all right, I'll do it. I can manage this. So this movie is adapted from a short story that is, I mean, the framework is similar, but it plays out really, really differently. It's by Mary Gateskill, who I think I had read stuff of hers before, maybe in high school or college. She's like a famous, mostly short story writer. And this was from a collection she wrote back in 1988 called Bad Behavior.

And it is different. It is. So I think most notable ways in which the source material is different it is so the i think most notable ways in which the source material is different from the film is that there's no mention of any of her self-harm behavior in the story there's only a brief mention that her mom had taken her to a psychiatrist one time but aside from that the self-harm aspect of her character seems to be specific to the movie in the scene in which which the movie would have you believe is the beginning of their dom sub relationship we will talk about how how it's just as an assault with no prior understanding on her part of what was going to happen. No consent given on her part.

Right. During that scene in the short story, the character whose name is not Lee, I think her name is Debbie in the short story. But anyway, that character. There were no Debbie's in 2002. That character is crying the whole time and she just seems much more traumatized by the events of that in the short story uh the story ends with the lee character deciding not to show up to work anymore and she's the one who effectively ends

their relationship they don't get together at the end he runs for mayor of their town and she uh judges she's like this town is so shitty what kind of idiot would run for mayor of such a shitty town and then that's pretty much how the story ends that's very different it's so different i i thought it was like a good story i i felt like it was, I mean, it's very like late 80s, but it felt like, oh, this was like kind of this like slice of this young woman's life. She had like a traumatic work experience and there wasn't really any like infrastructure for her to like process or report it. So she just like took herself out of the situation

and then looked back on it thinking that he sucked and was a loser which which is like a relatable experience i didn't dislike the story yeah i don't know mary gates girl i mean i guess that there's not too much worth discussing about her here because the movie has kind of very little to do with what she wrote yeah i feel like the story sounds so much better like the the whole aspect of the self-harm and the mental illness just the way it's used here is only used to take away her agency it's only used to make her seem so childish and it's it's kind of used to make it oh, this is the reason that she is this way. They use it as an excuse like, oh, the only reason that she would be into like subdom stuff is because she's the kind of person who self harms.

Right. Which obviously is a really like dangerous stereotype for the BDSM community. But also it's just like, like, no, she could just like love this type of stuff and want to be in this relationship. But instead you want to tie it to her mental illness. And that makes me go, oh, well, then he's taking advantage of that. Like, you guys should have just listened to Mary here, because obviously she accounted for that way back in 1988. Come on. issues are depicted. And this isn't to say that people who have or have had self-harm tendencies can't get into BDSM and use that as a coping strategy in a healthy way. I read some anecdotes from people who took that approach and it seemed to work out great for them. So I don't have a problem with the movie showing that as a general thing what i do

find troublesome is this character mr gray who is an abuser seems to somehow cure lee of her mental illness by simply telling her not to have a mental illness anymore i was i was bummed for mary and i like on reading this i was like kind of even more confused with some of the choices that the movie made because i assumed uh i was like oh well okay i knew going in that the ending was very different in the movie than it is in the book but i'm like maybe they just chose you know a bad in for a happy ending like if she I would almost be a little more like oh this was done with good intent uh if it was like oh it just didn't adapt well and then the studio made us change the ending and so it comes off not very well but that's not even the case and I have a quote from Mary Gatesgill, who is like, she's really interesting.

She's got, you can look up her takes on Me Too. They're all over the place. Because she's all about the gray area of sexual interactions, which doesn't translate well to that conversation. Even if it turns out, you know, often well in her work. But anyways, she was asked about this movie because it's so different and she was like pretty,

I don't know, very chill about it. She said that the film was, quote, the pretty woman version, very heavy on the charm and a little too nice. But the bottom line is

that if a film adaptation is made, you get some money and exposure and people can make up their minds from there so she very much like okay it's kind of like i got a check she got a paycheck yeah and then distanced herself from yeah i like that she says the movie is charming because like where where is that charm i didn't i know like her takes are all over the place uh just like this is pretty woman like where like where is where is lee coming back to be like i own this there's never that moment she comes back and she's like yeah she comes and she's like i love you and i'm gonna sit here and do this

but it's only after she bears her soul to the press and they like put out her statement about how she's the only person who understands him and he's so complicated that he's like reads it and it's like you know what okay fine i'll go back in there and get her like i was gonna just like see how long she'd do this and have fun with it but now i guess i'll take it seriously like that that wasn't romantic it's not like mr gray has like such a trust of the local press uh he trusted more than women he's allegedly in love with yeah um so mary gayskill writes the story it eventually gets um picked up by this director steven Shainberg. I was not aware of this person. I had never heard of him, and I looked up his other stuff, and I had not heard of any of it.

I don't know who this man is. For some reason, I thought it was Steven Soderbergh who directed this, and then I was like, oh, wait, no, I read that wrong. That doesn't say Soderbergh. That says something else. It's like one of those, you're like, Steve Stevenbergh, like say Soderbergh that's like Steve it's like one of those you're like Steve Stevenberg like Steve Soderbergh like he had a he had another he I think he only made one other movie after Secretary and it also had like pretty mixed reviews but like some big names attached to it it seems like he just he just kind of makes these like boring middle of the lane like white like artsy movies with with couples that fight okay yeah it's like i i couldn't quite figure out what his deal was other than i believe he oh no he wasn't nepotism i really can't make heads or

tails of his life in that case uh but the the i think the screenwriter of this movie is pretty interesting and she has like a lot of pretty well-known work she's like originally a playwright named aaron crescida wilson uh other stuff she's written include the i think the girl on the train is probably her most famous other adaptation okay and then there was a movie named chloe that i definitely saw it is not oh yeah it's not good it's uh julianne morley of neeson and amanda cyfree i totally forgot about that movie i like cut it out of my memory it's a mess she is interesting to me because i feel like i haven't re-watched ch Chloe in a long time but I feel like this particular writer is drawn to a very particular type of female protagonist that

we've talked about before but it's or we were talking about earlier but it's like she is drawn to like an upwardly mobile white lady with mental illness but then kind of uses that framing device to just punish the character relentlessly throughout the work and i'm i'm sure i'm oversimplifying the girl on the train a little bit um but i did not like that movie uh wasn't a fan and it's it's like brutal uh she's interesting and so i looking up, this was her first screenplay. And she's written, I guess, like 20 plays. I'm not, I don't know. It's like good for her, all power to her.

But she did an interview when she first wrote this movie where they were basically asking her like, oh, have you ever been a secretary? Or have you ever been in a BDSM situation? And her answer is so weird. Okay, so here it is. She says, I have had many instances of sexual harassment in jobs I've had in the past, but I was young and didn't know what I was being sexually harassed. In these instances, I had absolutely no sexual attraction to the harassers. So it was confusing to me. I thought I had been hired because these men liked my work not my ass you see i went to girls schools for much of my education so i came

from a very sheltered and also wonderful environment where i was seen for my personality my intelligence and my talent when it came to work i was not accustomed to being seen as a sexual object it took me years after college to finally understand that i was being harassed i had never thought of myself as particularly hot so i was always shocked when I realized that was going on. I have worked with men I was attracted to, and this can be very invigorating and exciting, especially if it is never consummated. But that is a consensual and more adult situation. This film's situation borders on sexual harassment, definitely. But I think it ceases to be harassment when the

submissive starts to like it and actually ask for it so it's like i'm like really with her at the beginning of this yeah that took some turns and then at the end you're just like wait why didn't no why didn't attractive people can sexually harass in the workplace. That's, oh, there were so many. I was like, I'm with you. I'm with you. And then I was just like, no. And also there is like a moment in the movie where they like kind of joke about sexual harassment. Her sisters, when they're by the pool, like one of them is like, oh, you should like sue your boss for sexual harassment.

And then like Lee is just like, huh huh at least my boss is sexy he's the best in the world right okay so that i feel like that is there i feel like that's the movie attempting to show the distinction between like actual abuse and bdsm the the movie's saying these are two different things i feel like this is also why we see Lee's father being physically abusive to the mother that's saying like that's what abuse is what we're seeing in this relationship between Lee and Mr. Gray this is different this is a consensual BDSM relationship however this is my whole thing with this movie and we already hinted at it but like the relationship between the two characters starts as him being verbally and emotionally abusive toward her in the workplace this is followed by the scene in which he has her bend over the desk and repeatedly

spank her she did not know this was going to happen. She did not give consent to this. In addition, there's also a major imbalance of power in that he is her boss and she is his subordinate. There's also seemingly no one else there. Yeah. Also, I don't think we mentioned that the very first time she goes in for the interview, there's a woman, his old secretary, who's leaving and crying.

And they also cut to that clip at the end which is a little like yeah yeah we get it we get she got fired and she's also crying we know the reference we get it yeah but it's like they clearly established like he is an abusive boss like even outside of bdsm he's not a good boss right like the thing with this movie and Jamie you had mentioned this at the top of the episode but like this movie is widely considered within the BDSM community to be more like accurate and responsible in its depiction of BDSM relationships more so than like Fifty Shades of Grey at least five years ago right because the thing with Fifty Shades of Grey. At least five years ago. Right. Because the thing with Fifty Shades of Grey is that it, and we talked about this on that episode,

but it conflates very concerning behavior like a man stalking a woman as like being part of the kink aspect of their relationship. And it's like, no, this is romantic what he's doing. Him stalking her is actually very romantic. And it's also just like poorly written. So no one likes it. But with Secretary, I'm just like, what? But there's an assault. He assaults her because like the whole thing with BDSM, if done right and portrayed accurately,

it's all about consent. It's all about negotiation. It's all about knowing each other's boundaries and limits. It's all about safety. And none of that gets established in this movie they don't talk about their relationship he there's no safe words established in fact he never uses the terms we don't actually even know if he is well versed in like bdsm right like the woman in the beginning comes in and she looks at Lee and says sub which is like okay so she knows about it and then we see like Lee you know she's at the diner like listening to a book on tape or whatever about subdom relationships but all we ever hear from him is that he's like ashamed of this inherent nature that he has right like is this just is he an inherently bad guy who likes to harm people whether they're just his secretary or they're his partner because he's he's engaging in it without

any consent yeah or without at least a conversation there's never a moment where he's like hey i'm into this lifestyle or hey you know he just is full of shame about it so it's very much like i i don't even know if we can consider him someone who is into bdsm because they never even say that about his character like we don't even know that he that he like uses those ideas of consent that are in the bdsm community because he just seems like a creep who would probably be a jerk to anyone who worked in his office right it's i felt like there there was a moment when like he experiences the shame about like the kind of sex he likes to have where you're like oh like maybe the movie is gonna make a like an interesting point about that because that's something that happens and like you know it there are cases of people who are so

ashamed of what they want in sex that they won't educate themselves because they don't want to acknowledge that part of themselves but that but it but that you know that does not happen it just kind of drops he doesn't learn a thing yeah he could i mean if he has money for a horse saddle i have to imagine he could pick up a book on bdsm or safe words or just like a book on tape on like, you know, just being like, so can I spank you? I feel like library cards are free. Yeah, I feel like he definitely has access to those resources. So just they're afraid to ever like just jump into the BDSM conversation.

And in the end, that makes it so much more sinister and just so much more confusing about what Lee is actually signing up for. Right. I'm curious, Ashley, maybe you will have some insight into this of because it, and I've read like a number of like pieces that are sort of like, Oh,

I recognize that a secretary has equal, if not worse issues than 50 shades of gray i just like it more and i'm like more attached to it and my guess is because it was the only even semi-mainstream movie that dealt with this at the time okay i think that's it it's like i mean even watching it now i was a little like wow this came out so long ago i mean like 20 years now and almost yeah i mean at the time it was like so shocking that poster is so shocking you're like wow i've never seen a film just kind of talk about even just self-harm i think for me that was such a shocking thing like mental health and that just being something that like a woman can have those issues and you can talk about it in a movie uh you know

I feel like this was that time period of like really like quirky cute manic pixie dream girls who were all like you know playing ukuleles and then there was this like dark girl who was like hurting herself and dealing with mental health issues and like issues of self-esteem. And obviously that resonated for someone like me who listened to Tori Amos. So I, I was like in a prime position to love this movie and, you know, I, I still think it, it does deserve some credit for doing a lot before anyone else did it. Sure. Yeah. But I mean, it also still does so much wrong. Like you know and i think we can say like yeah it's great and i i can you know proudly proudly say like yeah i tried to spank myself with a hairbrush because i saw it in this movie and you know i'm into that like okay thank i i

owe that to secretary but at the same time j James Spader is creepy and this movie could be better written. Sure. Two things can be true. Yeah. Yeah. I like, I think that it is like definitely good that people are able to like discover stuff or feel even somewhat seen in a movie like this.

I just was really, I don't know because i and i also think that the other thing is that it's like it is just a better crafted movie than 50 shades of gray no one wants to watch 50 shades of gray because it's like a shitty movie even though it is you know we talked about it in another episode and there there's just not the bandwidth to handle it now but there are at least some basic bdsm dynamics introduced in 50 shades of gray whether they are actually abided by by the couple uh doesn't always happen but you are introduced to the just consent and uh you know what's her name what whoever an Anastasia. It's so embarrassing. Oh, it's so bad.

Anastasia gets an opportunity. And I guess opportunity is like an overstatement. But like she gets to say, here are my boundaries. Here's what I won't do. And they do that little negotiation. And they have some aftercare with each other. And they cuddle after stuff. And it's just like, it's very like 101.

But at least it's there. Yeah. Because with Lee, there is nothing. I mean, she doesn't even read. She doesn't listen to that book on tape until after he has ended their relationship. She doesn't go out with other people who are into this lifestyle until after the relationship. So she gets into it not even knowing what it is, apparently. Like, she's doing these things.

She's, like, happy to crawl on the floor and all this stuff, but she actually has no idea what she's engaging with until later. And she's just being, like, physically and emotionally abused by this guy because it seems like, mr gray that it is just as much of a 24 7 emotional consumption as it like there just are no lines yeah she's given no information and because we're introduced to her as kind of this childlike character you kind of assume well she is not going to be given the agency to figure out she doesn't really have anyone else to talk to in her life because her family is framed as being so, I don't know.

They're like a joke. Yeah, the family, her sister is a character. I don't know why the sister is not like a friend or someone she can relate to. I don't know why she doesn't have friends or just any sort of female character where she can be like, I have these feelings about this situation or this boy. That never happens. We only really. I feel so much for her mom.

Yeah. All we really know is that Mr. Gray is better than this other guy who is boring. So that is why Mr. Gray is good. Which poor, poor Peter. Peter's nice he cares about her he respects her maybe he's really bad at sex but at least he treats

her well he could learn and maybe you know he just wants to get married and have kids you know you can teach someone to spank you can it's really easy to do yeah I feel like he would have been game if she'd been like hey so i realized i'm into bdsm and i want to explore this and if she had used the language with him

okay but instead he was just like on tape yeah i feel like he would have been like i'm game to try this and figure it out for you he seems so in love with her and then instead he's just like i didn't actually like how they have him confront her in that situation because they tried to kind of paint him as the abuser like he's the only person who manages to push her out of that chair and he's like i don't care if you want to stay here i'm gonna push you and like physically violate you and that's like a clear moment when they have a man like defy her physical agency and she yells like no and like runs to the chair. And I'm just like, wait, no.

That's so out of character for him. Yeah. Like, first of all, like that's out of character. He's never been this aggressive person. Like, why would he all of a sudden just like grab her and do this? But also he's the good guy. Like, come on like how are you gonna paint him as the one who's like actually now abusive and going against her wishes when all he has done is just been like i will only touch

you with my pinky and you can keep all your clothes on and whatever you would like uh we do this the way that you want to do it like come on there was also like i felt like a kind of subtle like dumping on peter class wise as well like i think that they were first of all being like peter isn't something enough for her and i think that like you know sexually masculine is a part of that and then they're also like subtly dumping on him for working at jc penny all the time they like anytime he comes up they're like and he proposed to me in the basement of jc pin like they're just which is a good line yeah but that was a good moment i love that scene when they're just sitting there and she's like yeah i guess i'll marry you okay okay but they're also kind

of being like oh this guy is like he doesn't fuck hard enough and he's poor you're like he's the nicest person in the movie he just is so sweet and nice he gives her rides when the like when she's like oh this wedding sucks he's there to be like hey yeah do you need anything like he just is so sweet and the movie is like yeah but no mr gray is the is this just really complex guy and she gets him and i i just i still don't know what we're supposed to like about the guy truly and contrasting that with like and we like said this a little earlier too but like how her turning point as like a character is when he just suggests that she should no longer self-harm so it's also like oh if you have a crush that will cure your mental illness like there's just all sorts of bizarre messages being

bandied about he has a Polaroid camera she has no more problems okay the Polaroid camera thing I watched this movie with a person that I am dating, which was interesting because I forced them to watch it, and the whole time I was just like, keep in mind this is the most informative movie to my sexual awakening in my life,

so just keep that in mind the whole time. And we got into a fight over the Polaroid scene because I swore there were pictures of multiple girls in that book, and he had Polaroids of his his ex and like other secretaries. He does. And then he burns it. Yeah. Right.

And I was like, this shows us, this is a history of abuse is a pattern. Like this has nothing to do with Lee. This is just this guy doing this. But my partner was like, no, those were all photos of Lee.

So just on the record, let's all tell that person they were wrong. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that also is like more of and again just like demonizing i mean everyone is kind of demonized in this movie but like it demonizes the bdsm community by being like yeah they keep things like serial killers like he's has this like serial killer scrapbook of like women he's upset like it's just and he keeps their their photos in his beautiful orchid garden and like like bdsm people are just inherent monsters who can't control themselves except through push-ups and treadmills he is so sweaty in that treadmill scene oh my gosh i know well like they voluntarily flash back to

that shot a second time i was like i did not want to see that again also they also they have her flash back to it but it's not the part when she was there and i was like how did how did she know he was running that hard then how did she see it that is such a heartbreaking scene too and that like when she her so her father is sick she's really upset about it she's like not able to communicate with her mother and her siblings and so she goes to him for like emotional support she kind of has no reason being as romantically naive as she is and also as like manipulative like she has no reason to believe that he won't you know be nice to her but then he makes it clear right away like i don't you know that like i don't do emotions yeah and it's the hot and the cold

it's that classic just like you know he he made her feel so special made her feel so like oh i'm gonna fix you and i see everything that's wrong with you and special made her feel so like oh i'm gonna fix you and i see everything that's wrong with you and then the second she's like oh i actually need your emotional support he's like i'll read the files in the morning get out of here right and then he just sits on his bed and like looks out a window like uh how dare she expect me to show the emotions that i promised her i'd show right especially when he's like you can talk to me about your problems yeah he like that's the whole opening of their relationship is him being like yeah we can be intimate and you can talk to me and then when she's actually like

my dad which i don't i like that they never in the end like give us closure on the family thing in terms of the dad's like sickness like for all Like, for all we know, she's, like, fucking on this tree, and her dad is just dead in a ditch somewhere. We have no idea. Like, he, yeah, we don't find out if her mom ever, like, gets out of that relationship. And also, and then it kind of, like, I just think that that, like, shot of abuse at the beginning

ends up being so gratuitous because it is never revisited other than like her pot like possibly i could see being like oh i don't you know like you were saying caitlin like this is abuse this is an abuse but then don't bring the dad back at the end when she's pissing herself as like a good like as the best guy of all yeah the one who like understands her like this dad who's abusive is the one who's like i have the bible verse you need and she's like thank you daddy which felt gross that was that felt like an illegal use of daddy in that scene i think they should cut it from the film in the future strike

it from the record i also like with with her mom i can't help but feel because her mom is is painted as being very submissive also and the fact that she seems to have nothing better to do than wait outside of Lee's work for hours on end like we're just waiting for her to be done to pick her up and I mean we don't really know anything about her except that again she's she just seems to be depicted as this very submissive person and I feel like the movie is like wanting you to think this is the way not to be submissive because Lee is doing it right and I think there's like there's like I can see a read of this movie in all of the defenses of this movie that I've read of because people love to write about how secretary is better than Fifty Shades of Grey. So I was reading several of those pieces and a lot

of them were making the argument that Lee she's given agency she eventually starts consenting and initiating some of these dom sub interactions with with Mr. Gray. People have written about how she, as she's becoming more submissive to him, she's actually becoming more dominant in her own life and that she's empowered. And I can see parts of that. I think her mother character is like written the way she is so that there's like this stark contrast of like here's the bad way to be submissive and here's the good way to be submissive i don't really i don't know how i feel about that necessarily i don't like it that does make sense to me though i mean especially i guess that like i mean every

movie you have to take the time it came out as context but i feel like maybe especially with a movie like this where this was the option for a semi-mainstream bdsm movie and then also there are just so few movies about women being remotely sexually empowered even if if you look at the text carefully like are they really but i feel like this movie was very much framed and you were supposed to think right that she was very sexually empowered and sometimes that is enough if there's not you know other options right so i mean the fact that you see female masturbation you see female orgasm female pleasure i feel like she only reaches orgasm when she is masturbating and not in anything that she's doing with mr gray yeah no no that's true yeah i mean we really only see them have sex like when they are on the tree yeah that's the only time

right uh the other time is just like him sure like going over every scar one by one because she's finally found someone so smart that he can understand her scars uh that is such a i remember that like not not as sexualized but like i remember a very similar scene on degrassi which was like oh like in 2002 I was very on the Degrassi train and there was there was a girl like a character who self-harmed and then it was I believe Ellie it was Ellie Stacey Farber uh currently on Grace and Frankie we love her she's great a star she's great and she was the hot topic girl too but she there was like you know that i feel like it is like almost a tropey moment where it's like when the person who's self-harming finds someone who accepts them

they touch your scars and you're like wow i finally have found love and i am beautiful and it's corny but it's also potent in a way like in this movie it didn't really hit for me because i don't value like their relationship is so dark and fucked up but in other situations i've been like that's nice it worked it worked for me and degrassi anyways yeah degrassi definitely pulled it off better than this movie did they could have taken some notes i think because i don't know in this scene i i mean even when he first notices her scars because he notices them before he even tells her the whole like stop doing that or catches her trying it uh she's like setting a

rat trap and he's being mean about it and then like her her like dress comes up and he sees it so to me it's like already he is it's not something where he's like oh i want to understand this about her it's like he's gonna use it against her it's something that he's like, oh, I want to understand this about her. It's like he's going to use it against her. It's something that he's like, oh, this is another way where I can control her and change her and fix her versus like, oh, I want to understand what causes her to do this. Right.

I mean, I don't think he ever asked. I don't think he ever was like, so what's the whole deal? They know nothing about each other. And that scene where they're finally like having a tender like kissing moment after he has bathed her she's like who are you where did you grow up where were you born what are your interests they don't know anything about each other he gives the most boring answer

he's like des moines iowa i mean shout out to Des Moines and our Des Moines listeners but uh who knew that Des Moines Iowa was like making the most complicated men of all time like somewhere in a cornfield they are just cranking out these just complex beasts who cannot be understood with our our simple female. He has no story. I feel for Lee. I'm very curious of what does this relationship look like for Lee down the line a little bit?

When she genuinely does come into her own a little more and matures more. I don't see this relationship maybe lasting forever. what happens when lee wants kids like she having kids with this guy he's like i've got orchids i'm i'm good i don't need yeah children i have orchids in my creepy album like and maybe a horse he might have a horse or at least the parts to have one.

He's got the accessories. Everything but the horse. Just horsing accessories. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, like with this character, especially like it's very romantic. And I feel like where this movie very suddenly pivots into like rom-com territory at the end like you're supposed to believe i guess that she changed him which is just like never an idea that serves anybody as like yeah he treated every other person he's ever been in a relationship with like absolute garbage deeply hurt them ruin their lives in some cases but he was just waiting for the girl that would pee pee poo poo for a whole week at his desk on tv for the media and that like made him fall in love with her like it's just so many levels of it

you're just like come on like who oh god and and i know because i was such an impressionable like 12 year old i would have been like wow so so that's what we're gonna do okay like i can't say that i can't say that's not how i've dated my entire life i can't say that this movie didn't have that impact where i just want someone who's gonna tell me what to eat for dinner and to carry me and feed me carrots i think think that's just like what I want. And that is because of secretary. But I don't know, it's just I think it's a little dangerous now when I look back, like, yes, it was like one of the first movies to do that. But for that same reason, like I as like a young queer, I put so much into it. Like I was so like, oh, this is this is what,

you know, my experience should be like. And oh, I need to find, so it's going to be tough to find someone who gets me because as a woman who's into this lifestyle, I'm just hard to understand. And I have to deal with someone who's hard to understand. And that is something that takes so long to unlearn. Like, no, you don't have to deal with men like this. You don't have to deal with anyone like this actually you can find people who know about consent and use their words and speak at a reasonable volume like life can be easy audibly like my office oh god he says so many like pivotal lines of the movie so quietly that makes a

lot of sense though like and and again if this is the only movie of its kind like where else do you really have to turn for media to like it was like this in the l word that's like i think all we had which i had to revisit the l word yeah well i like what i find uh i think there's some pretty problematic shit in that show I rewatch it once a year it does not age well it's just as problematic as Secretary in terms of just I don't know I guess it was like this sexy period of time

when everyone was just like oh we're hot sex positivity you don't need to say yes verbally because we just see it in your eyes and now we're at a point where like no no you could you should use the words you should actually have the character the words because if if i mean if like the and this kind of we've kind of been saying this for the whole episode but like if you switched the dynamic even two percent so that

it's not this perfectly calibrated like these two people meeting at each meeting each other at the exact right time and this like it would be like a like a hollywood reporter article about workplace abuse like it just i don't know it's such a bummer because you you do have to imagine for every person who saw themselves in Lee in a very like genuinely felt way, you had some fucking creepy dude that felt like validated by Mr. Gray of like, yeah, you know what? Actually, probably when I treat people that way, I'm changing their life and making their life way better. Yeah. And also, I think it shows those men kind of who to target i mean i think this movie is mostly about how mr gray selects his victims it's like how he puts his secretaries through this test like very quickly find someone who doesn't understand boundaries by asking them

inappropriate questions in an interview uh look and see if they self-harm because that's something you can use uh is there anything else where they play with their hair they're insecure that you can use against them i mean it's it's kind of dangerous in this way where i i kind of think mostly we know nothing about lee but we know a lot about how he chooses victims and why he chose lee yeah and then and then it's supposed to by the end you're like no but she's changed and now he is changed but then but and then it's supposed to by the end, you're like, no, but she's changed. And now he is changed. But then but then, Ashley, it's like you were saying, we know less about them at the end than we did at the beginning. And it's just kind of confusing. I will say, though, I love Maggie Gyllenhaal in this movie. I just generally love her so much. She can make a not great movie much better and this

was kind of like a turning point in her career in a way that i always find kind of like interesting slash frustrating of like this was her i don't know i feel like there is like this very trackable trend of mostly prior to this like maggie gyllenhaal had been in a lot but she would mostly play like somebody's daughter or like she's like a very side character she was not a leading lady and and i feel like there this happens a lot where you have to do like the sex role and once you do the sex role well you have become a legitimized actor like as a as a woman you mean like as a yeah i think i mean i think we've seen it a million times in like sunny please stop sunny you gotta stop sorry sunny stop i don't i can't speak to what just happened

bad dog sunny at it again bad dog sunny doesn't like when uh women speak for too long uh but all i have to say like uh i i feel like you know like it's very trackable and i mean and maggie gyllenhaal is like 23 24 when she films this so it's not quite as egregious but you know it's like when a disney star or a nickelodeon star graduates out of playing kid roles and does an adult role it's always like a zero to 100 like the most adult role they could possibly play and this is kind of that moment for maggie gyllenhaal and she's a great i mean she's a she's so talented and it like in spite of everything i still think she gives a really good performance i just wish that that didn't necessarily have to happen to for her to be in other stuff yeah and at least she does sell that that look at the end that that breaking the fourth

wall like that is entirely just maggie being like i did what i could to save this movie. Don't put it on me. And then she says, a cat is not a dog. I, yeah, yeah. Maybe that's like the best read of that end moment is that's Maggie Gyllenhaal talking to the audience being like, listen,

there's only so many ways to get ahead. And I promise to be a subversive in the future. Please just give me a chance. Yeah. I'll, I'll do the deuce someday. It'll be great. Yes,

she will do the deuce. At least for me. Now I see this movie as like her movie. I see it as like a thing that made her, it helped her career. And it's great when you look at sort of what she's done as an actress. But if I were to like teach a class on sexuality and good representations of BDSM, I would not include it.

No. No. I mean, I appreciate media that attempts to normalize things that are widely misunderstood by you know the general population as like BDSM still is I think but like with Secretary we weren't there with it being represented responsibly on the grounds especially again that like there is a full-on assault that happens and it is framed by the movie as no this is just the start of this dom sub relationship right and it's like no that is not what happens that's just a girl who got spanked and did not know what a sub dom relationship even was yet right right and did not consent to it again like nothing about what he was going to do had

been previously discussed or agreed upon and the power dynamic of like i mean you know it's not like a manufactured bdsm power dynamic it is a real power dynamic he controls her income and takes it away and like there's just so much actually fucked up stuff happening oh my god i forgot about the most annoying part is like her mom take like picks her up and waits outside the office for her to get off work all the time and then finally one day james spader's character is like you're gonna walk home from now on by yourself and she does it and she's like i felt like i was walking for the first time and i was like like you know yeah you needed a man to tell you you could go on a walk right like yes she needed this man to tell her to do so many

things and it's like not that like i don't know like you know it just doesn't work it just doesn't work and it never and just like the the very specific detail of she has just gotten out of like an extended stay in the hospital for self-harm like that is never really referenced again it's just kind of used as this convenient like there's a whole other set of like you're going through a lot when you get out of a situation like that but she doesn't seem to really yeah at least on screen doesn't seem to process it at all it never seems to click it's never like her parents are like i mean her parents seem cool that the newspapers are there when she's having what could be described as a mental breakdown, but they don't call in her old therapist.

They're not like, hey, maybe we should, like, call her old hospital and see if they can get someone over here. Right. It's very confusing. Because at the beginning, he's seen as saying, he, like, says to her, like, if you ever need help with anything, like, call me. I'll do my best to help you. Yeah. Like.

Where'd he go yeah and then he doesn't and then we don't see him yeah they just like bring in all these people who are like maybe you should read about feminism dummy which is like a weird way for the book to be like i bet feminists have a problem with this movie and it's like uh i thought that was a very kind of like funny 2002 passive-aggressive like ah this woman with a middle part and like is giving a lot of books she doesn't get it she's just angry she's so mad and we don't know why and there i mean and she's in it for all of two i mean literally two scenes she's in the scene where she stomps on the jacket and then uh she shows up at the end to say he was actually a

genius the whole time um and what her name is trisha is that right um that sounds about right but even she i mean that is such a quickly written like shrew shrew shrew scene that she is there to sort of impart maybe she's the only person to use bdsm like vocabulary in the entire movie and then we're like but we hate her but she's gone but she also thinks he's a genius but who even is she and i think it would have been cool if she had like if she had been his Dom if we'd actually seen like that's like why they got divorced or like he at least had been in a BDSM

relationship before and maybe some of his difficulties with Lee yeah with Lee is like now that he's in the Dom position he feels bad about torturing like if there was any sort of context like that we could have maybe felt bad for mr gray or like seen where he was coming from but instead it's just like

why why are you so upset with this thing that you have done before wait why are you upset that you're into bdsm like why do you have all of these why did you have you invested so much money though then why are you putting horse saddles cost so much money there are a lot of money and it looks like a nice one and he has a whole grass bed table that and like also that bathtub was very nice and i guess above his office so he does he live oh oh did he take her all the way home i don't know he just carries her upstairs that's true he does just pick her upstairs yeah that makes me laugh it's i mean that dress should be covered in poop and yeah it should just be a more to do they start framing her letters with like spelling mistakes and like put them along the wall like a sexy right bank wall

or something homage yeah which i was just like do people not come into your office often that you two can just like hang your kinks on the wall does he have any clients um yeah well i mean i'm pulling from again our favorite scholarly journal, Wikipedia, here. But the director, Steven Sheinberg, had said that he wanted to make this movie because he wanted to show that BDSM relationships can be normal. And that he was inspired by the film My Beautiful Laundrette, which he felt normalized gay relationships for audiences in the 80s so he made this movie with the intention of normalizing bdsm relationships and culture um did he do it well um not necessarily failed i at least appreciate knowing that he that is what he wanted to do right because there's also a read of this movie where i i could be like maybe that's not what he wanted to do so i guess of the options i'm glad he at least was trying but he did fail

yeah i mean i guess like that final shot where it like pans out and it's like look at that these bdsm freaks could just be any couple in your neighborhood you wouldn't know like oh they just they blend in i guess is like yeah anybody could be into this sure but they wouldn't be like these people probably because they they misrepresented the whole community yeah but you know that you're probably just like a like a normal woman in your mid-twenties who likes to get spanked, and you're okay just claiming that for yourself. Right, right, right. Well, is there anything else that we haven't hit on yet? I think that's all I had. That's all I wanted to touch on.

That's all my points. We got into all of it, I feel like. Yeah, we really once again, it is an episode the length of the movie. As all of ours? Well, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Oh,

I forgot to check. I think it does between her and her mother, although her mother isn't specifically given a first name. I think her mother is a present enough character in this story that I would count that yeah I wasn't sure about that because I was like technically is this scene about the abusive dad but then I guess they don't really say anything really there's a couple scenes where like they're in the car together and her mom says something like i'm so proud of you for like putting yourself out in the world and going out and getting a job and that's stuff like that so there's there's a couple scenes like that she lee also talks to the paralegal woman who i believe is not named we never learned her name oh yeah yeah but she says what even is a paralegal? And then the paralegal says, and then leaves. Also, the paralegal hears her masturbating in the bathroom later.

Yes. Yep. The paralegal is used to disempower Lee even more. Or not the character, but the fact that he's like, oh, I hire someone to actually do the work I need. And then I have the person that I'm emotionally abusing on my payroll. So he doesn't do any work. And then I have like the person that I'm emotionally abusing on my payroll. Yeah. So he doesn't do any work. Also, quick shout out.

Lee's mom is played by Leslie Ann Warren, a.k.a. Miss Scarlet in Clue. So. Oh, she's kind of she's she's blonde in this movie. So it's hard to write. I wouldn't have made that that connection. Hmm. But, you know, she's got range. She's got range. She's got range.

True. Well, as far as our nipple scale in which we examine how the movie fares, looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens. Oh, boy. Again, the movie shows abuse and assault, but it does not frame what happens in the movie as abuse or assault. Instead, it conflates it with what BDSM is. dsm relationship like consent communication safety establishing boundaries establishing trust aftercare she would have learned this in the book on tape yeah right yeah and then she would have looked back and been like oh oh my gosh oh gosh there wasn't any of that i this was actually very

harmful i should run away and not ever talk to this guy again. That should be the movie. It's just like her listening to the book on tape and being like, oh, oh my gosh, this guy has horrible dynamics. Just horrible. Oh, wow. And then just she meets a nice guy on Craigslist and then they're happy. Yeah, right. And then she can go and enter into a respectful and mutually consensual BDSM relationship if that's what she's into.

But the movie really does, I think it does a huge disservice to BDSM and its community. I think that even though, at least perhaps not so much anymore, now that we as a just like our cultural climate of having a better understanding of consent, even in within the past few years, that has shifted. And I would be curious to know how people who had originally defended this movie, if they would still feel the same way about it. But in any case, I think this movie does a huge disservice to BDSM relationships because of all the stuff it completely overlooks.

There is very easily a way in which you can show an empowered female character with agency who is a sub in a dom-sub relationship, because if you understand anything about dom-sub relationships, you know that it's actually the sub who holds much of the power in the relationship because it's the sub who sets all the boundaries and parameters. It's the sub's needs and wants and curiosities that are being fulfilled by the Dom. But that doesn't get explored really at all in the movie because we never see Mr. Gray listening to what Lee wants or needs. We don't see really any communication between them at all except him being verbally and emotionally abusive toward her. For sure. I think that their relationship

makes no sense. They don't know anything about each other it's just the whole thing is very very icky to me i'm gonna give it one nipple just for the fact that it does attempt to normalize bdsm yeah culture but uh again again like i don't it doesn't even do better than than 50 shades of gray at least 50 shades of gray talks about consent even if it is horribly written this did make me want to try to watch 50 shades of gray again and i just really wanted to quickly i googled the cursed phrase where is 50 shades of gray streaming and i found this incredible clickbait piece that someone had really put artistry into because it said it was basically all it needed to say was 50 shades of gray is not currently streaming in

the u.s but it was somehow 14 paragraphs long because i'm sure that like i've had those jobs like you're kind of being paid by the word and so she really just like made or i don't know what the gent but like they they just made a meal of. And so they said like viewers in the UK may be able to watch the first installment of this titillating saga on Netflix. However, if you live in the U S of a, you may need to go somewhere else to find your SNM. And then it said in parentheses, streaming and movies. That's clever.

I like that. Wow. I actually really like that the new s and you know everyone's got their their new snm snm parentheses streaming and movies i was like oh pulitzer yeah incredible yeah i just i guess i just long for the movie and i'm sure it's out there so listeners if you have any suggestions on, on movies that tackle BDSM that are actually responsible and not centered around abuse and assault, let us know,

but it's, it's not here with secretaries. So yeah, one nipple. Um, and I guess I'll give it to, I'll give it to her mom who I feel was robbed by this story um i'll arbitrarily give it one and a half i don't really know why i appreciate that i appreciate that in its time this movie was the

only of its kind at least uh that was semi-ish mainstream indie darling like i i do appreciate that element of its history i am glad that you know there was at least a somewhat honest attempt even though it is so messy like the thing that is most frustrating to me and also it is i mean we haven't even it's like the whitest movie of all time i don't know that we yeah ever i mean yeah that that wasn't even worth bringing up to me i was just like this is just not a movie that black people even want to be involved with i think i even i feel like there may have been a background character and they probably were like i'm gonna opt out no thank you just you guys got my scene i Please cut my scene. Just please. It's good.

This is all you. This is all you. But it's like, even on top of that, I feel like in Leigh's life and in her orbit, there were so many opportunities for her to, like, speak to and, like, advance her own story of maturity if she had just been comfortable talking to women that were already around her, instead of like putting all her eggs in the James Spader basket where they're like,

it could be a totally different movie. If she talks to Tricia and like seeks out Tricia's guidance or advice, which apparently she was very willing to give the whole movie, which we didn't know. There's this whole cat. There's this whole like catalog of resources and people that she could track down and talk to which i think would have been kind of more interesting to me it's like if she realizes at the midpoint like oh this is not good this is not what i thought it was how do i fix this and then she can like

find other people who have had this experience and figure out how to like get shit on track or like get some sort of revenge and then like there's so many ways i could see it going if she or if she had just been you know able to talk with her mom or her sister and they hadn't been painted as like these like don't be this person this person is bad and submissive in the wrong way like you were saying c. Right. So it feels like there's a lot of missed opportunities. The relationship is just generally really bad. It's not fair to the BDSM community. If Fifty Shades of Grey is doing better, that's just really bleak.

That's bleak as fuck. Yeah. But I appreciate its place in history, and I'm glad that movies have continued to do better. I hope that they, I mean, I hope that,

you know, don't stop at 50 shades, please. But I'll give it a nipple and a half, which might be too much, but I'll give one to Maggie Gyllenhaal and then I will give the other half to Tricia. Okay.

But in the first scene we see her in, not the second. Oh, when she's trampling the coat. Yeah. I found her confusing in the second scene. Okay. But in the first scene we see her in, not the second. Oh, when she's trampling the coat? Yeah. I found her confusing in the second scene. Yeah. Ashley, what about you?

You know what? I'm going to give it two nipples. I am because it's the reason why I like being spanked and I like when people tell me what to eat for dinner, so I owe it that. That's probably the only two good things that came out of this movie uh in history um but yeah I I do think it it tries to to get people comfortable with an idea they hadn't been comfortable with and I do think that it came at this time when every mainstream kind of woman in a movie was so quirky and like carefree and like romantic

and sweet and it crushed that idea which I really appreciate uh so I'm gonna give it to and you know what I'm gonna give them both to Peter he deserves it poor Peter he did I he just deserves it I hope Peter went on to like really find someone who could give him the love he deserved yeah just in super vanilla just like the most vanilla missionary person who just like maybe the most boring life of all time and loved every second of it yeah I'd rather watch that movie than watch any like moment of like James Bader and Lee trying to like have a life together. Yeah. You're like,

Oh God, it just makes me depressed to think about. Yeah. Oh, well, Peter always asks for consent. I know. And they're like,

what a loser. You're like, no, Peter's ahead of his time. Oh, stupid Peter. He's like asking if it's okay to get a condom and like spank you first like oh man peter's the only one in the 21st century they don't even know it i did i did

laugh at the joke after peter and lee have had sex and he's like i didn't hurt you did i and she's like yeah no she's very upset that was a good like i did not hurt her buddy you don't even know ashley thank you so much for being here this is so much fun this is so much fun this is my favorite movie to talk about uh it was everything i wanted it to be hell yeah um where can people follow your stuff what would you like yeah just at the ashley on Twitter, Instagram, everything. I write reviews for 90 Day Fiance and I May Destroy You on the AV Club and Vulture. Go check those out. Just follow me on Twitter. That's where I post everything at the Ashley Ray.

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Miss Holloway, please step into my office. Okay, bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths 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,

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The expectation on us is not perfection, it's being able to toggle between these different states. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. Hey fam, I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day.

Check out our recent episode with dancer, actress and host of Dancing with the Stars, Julianne Hough, revealing the healing journey behind her new novel, Everything We Never Knew. I am showing up for my younger self and it is becoming a ripple effect energetically in my life. And that's why I feel so safe now. I'm showing up for my younger self and it is becoming a ripple effect energetically in my life. And that's why I feel so safe now. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.