The Bechdel Cast - Space Jam with Princess Weekes

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Welcome to the Space Jam (Bechdel Cast), it's your chance, do your dance (listen to special guest Princess Weekes) at the Space Jam!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @WeekesPrincess on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Everybody get up, it's time to cast now. We got a podcast going down. Welcome to the Bechdel cast.

It's your chance, hear some rants on the bechtel cast all right all right all right we have to keep going oh oh come on and cast and welcome to the cast come on and cast if you wanna caitlin jock jams dorante thank you i love a good jock jam oh so good if i'm having trouble getting started in the morning i find a spotify list of jock jams and i get to it it's very effective it's it's we've been waiting for this day has been a long time coming it's space jam day a space jam day on the bank so cast we've been talking about covering it forever we were originally going to wait until the sequel came out yeah but the sequel is just i mean maybe it's coming but and now who knows you know where the product i it simply couldn't wait a moment longer true um this is the bechdel cast our

feminist movie podcast in which we examine film through an intersectional feminist lens inspired by the Bechdel test but we we do a far deeper dive yeah good grief what's the Bechdel test Jamie well uh if if if you recall it is a media metric invented by Alison Bechdel sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace test uh she's a queer cartoonist who invented this media metric that requires that two uh female identifying characters that have names talk to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue female characters or just anyone of a marginalized gender right i mean her original but the version we use anyone of a marginalized gender speaking to each other about something other than you know let's say for this movie gender right i mean her original but the version we use anyone of a marginalized gender speaking

to each other about something other than you know let's say for this movie bugs bunny uh spoiler alert most movies don't pass and this movie doesn't pass no yep right up front i know i was like well i feel like we always go go like, do a big drum roll at the end. But now as time goes on. Does it matter that much? It doesn't. Like most likely no. Most likely no. True. Okay. So that's the podcast today. Like we said, we're covering Space Jam.

We have a wonderful guest. She is a writer for the Mary Sue. She is the co-host of PBS's It's Lit. She has a great YouTube channel. It's Princess Weeks. It's time to slam and welcome to the jam. I have been waiting for this. I feel like to be able to cover Space Jam on the Breckdale cast is like my purpose in life. Like, I feel like Killmonger in Black Panther is like, I've been training my whole life for this. Your hero's journey has led to this. Here we are. This is the final challenge. It's finally here and it's so funny

that you bring up that this movie fails the bechdel test because the first thing i wrote in my notes is like the only terrible things about space jam are that it doesn't pass the bechdel test and it opens with an r kelly song like those are those to me are like the unforgivable sins of this movie that i love so much i'm like I started watching it and then it was like oh oh no right yeah and the other things as well I'm so there's this is a not I mean I guess not even surprisingly this is a dense text all said and done yeah I was truly I feel like as time goes on i'm always it's always the movies i expect to not have a ton of notes for that i have like seven pages of notes for yeah and then other

like we the vavich i'm like i have 14 words about this movie what is there to say and yet our episode on that was five hours over an hour and a half yeah yeah it's like i do i want to live deliciously absolutely but let's talk about capitalism and space jam like what is that exactly oh it is so i mean there's so but like the layers of marketing i mean this movie is marketing but the sub marketing levels of this movie goes so deep it was it made me uncomfortable but then i also was like but it's still space jam right so how uncomfortable could i get it's the inception of like vanity projects because everyone's like oh because i was like looking at the old reviews and

they're like what two weird concepts to mash together i'm like no it's perfect because you're getting two very popular things to meet where they should never meet and and yet it made millions it just worked in a way that people have been trying to emulate since it's so i feel like if things had gone even a little bit differently this movie could have been a total disaster like if michael jordan's career had gone a little differently if the plot had i mean the plot is nonsense what even is the plot it's such a finely tuned like it it i i'm so happy that it came together the way it did because it could have been such a disaster well because it's it's adapted from two two Nike commercials from the early 90s.

What else is there? Like, that's Hasbro's whole ploy was, like, let's make toys and turn them into TV shows and space shows. And I'm like, we can go beyond. We can take sneakers and the hip-hop community's love of Looney Tunes and really fine-tune that machine. Into a multi-million dollar operation i and i do appreciate that this movie like it does not go halfway in telling you exactly what it is because well on the poster bugs bunny is first build in the credits he is second build but the fact that these are the two main cast members and there is you know they eventually credit the voice actor voicing Bugs Bunny.

But it is Bugs Bunny who is sharing the it's I mean, it's a big swing. Yeah, it's great. It's like when the Downton Abbey movie like didn't put the cast in the trailer. They just put the names of the characters from Downton Abbey. They're like Robert Crawley. Just like you sons of but I was there. They were like, Robert Crawley. And I was just like, you sons of... But I was there. I was like, I will see Mrs. Hughes.

I want to know what she's doing. It's a miracle that this movie isn't the worst movie of all time. But it's so good. I'm very excited to talk about it. And I'm so excited that you're here to talk about it with us, Princess. Yes. Well, what's your relationship with it what's your history with it for me all right so I was four years old when Space Jam came out and I have loved it ever since I've always

been obsessed with Lola Bunny I she's an icon to me and I just I just love it it's my every time I'm sad or have like a really bad depressive episode because I deal with a lot of that I put on Space Jam or just listen to the soundtrack and it like soothes me it's like being swaddled by a film and like when I was re-watching it I really had to like turn I was like all right princess you have to like forget that you're in love with this product forget just take off my nostalgia goggles and put on my like feminist Bechdel goggles and like and I always had to be like you know I have notes I have notes on that but overall I just I love this movie I think it's it's a black film in a lot of ways from like the soundtrack and the music

choices and just how you have Michael and like his beautifully melanated family and um and also like even though he's not in it a lot his encouraging father who's like yeah you can go to school you can be whatever you want to be I just think that like you know if you're gonna do like marketing vanity project the movie those little bits of inclusion that are like in the weird uh subtext of the film are like make it worth watching even with the critique lens on yeah uh jamie what about what about you what's your history with it i also was i think for when this movie came out i love i really liked this movie growing up i've i'd seen it a lot and then And then I remember I watched it with my cousins. My mom was so militant about certain cartoons. And if a cartoon was too sexy, I couldn't look at it.

So I would have to watch Space Jam at my cousin's house because there was too much rabbit cleavage to watch it at my i can't really like track the logic but that was i think what it was it was like the bunnies were too horny and so i couldn't watch it at home but i could watch with my cousins because horny bunnies were okay at their house okay so i watched it a lot on and off in secret growing up but i haven't seen it in a long long time like at least since high school i think and so it was really fun to rediscover it because since then i like know a lot more about animation history and i'm like way more like i have a little bit better of a framework about like the history of Looney Tunes but at the time I was just like I want to see the sexy

rabbits and they're kind of forbidden so now you know I'm an adult I can watch sexy rabbits whenever I want and so that's exciting for me um but yeah it was so it was kind of funny to it was when I think Caitlin and I we were texting about this where it was like if someone had asked me two days ago to recap the plot of space jam i would have gotten it completely wrong like i was like mon stars versus michael jordan which is basically it but there's also a lot of other stuff going on um yeah i love it what about you, Caitlin? I was 10 when this came out. So I was, I think, like the target demo. I loved it. I saw it starting at age 10, watched it a ton, but probably haven't seen it since I was 11 or 12. So there was like a year or two that I was like watching it constantly. And then I guess I felt that I had grown out of it and then stopped watching it. So I haven't seen it in well over two decades. And I really there's I remembered almost nothing except there. There was one shot where as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, yeah, that it had been like burned into my memory forever. And it's when Michael Jordan, when he first arrives in Looney Tunes land,

they're doing a medical examination of him. And one of the Looney Tunes looks into his ear, and then you cut to an animated shot of the inside of his ear, and there's a paper clip in there. And that always haunted me as a child and I saw it again I thought about that shot when I was watching it as well because I was like you know Michael Jordan is very like scrupulous about his image and I'm like I'm honestly surprised it got past his PR team to be like my the inside of Michael's ears has paper clips in them I was like he I guess that he was

okay with that right a lot of the people in this movie really let themselves be really silly in it, which surprised me. I was like, wow, Charles Barkley really got into this performance. Charles Barkley, his physical acting, pretending to forget basketball, is really convincing. Yeah. So is Patrick Ewing's whole, like, can't do, like, they do a really good job for non-comedic actors I'm like was Bill Murray giving you all tips on set because you guys were really doing quality yeah quality vaudeville right there yeah it was really that every I mean in like I mean athlete acting can be so all over the place but it's like pretty consistently on point in this movie like it's michael jordan kills it

charles barkley is like i might disagree with that michael jordan is a little clunky because i was watching him like he is he is wooden but when like he actually is having fun you can tell because i just feel like if i compare this to like the best the best i've ever done with this kind of concept is like still who framed roger rabbit and like yeah that was like acting with the cartoons and like oh yeah michael jordan is acting at the cartoons and so but you know what i expected a lot worse to be quite frank re-watching it yeah i was like i guess i guess in the framework of athletes acting i just like i wasn't expecting like andy circus green screen performance here i was just like i was like if the eyeline is hitting and there's like sort i was like wow

amazing good the bar is low yes but it's funny because i've watched space jam so many times in my 20s but the last huge time i watched it was for like my 21st birthday I was like I just wanted to get pizza and drinks and watch Space Jam and Men in Black back to back like I was like that's my idea like a perfect birthday and it was an excellent 21st birthday I was like this is it and it went very well what a great double feature yeah truly should I do the recap uh yeah let's do it get into it okay we'll get into this this this uh classic hero's journey narrative uh a tale as old as time in which cartoon characters are about to be forced into amusement park servitude by aliens from outer space and then they recruit michael jordan to help them play basketball because if they win they will not be abducted by aliens so

that why and why did they almost get abducted by aliens well capitalism right like they're like well they're the way that bugs bunny like recaps their plight to michael jordan once he gets into the looney tunes world you're like that is kind of really bizarre he's like well they were they were small so we were like we could probably do this but then it turned out they got big so now we're scared like he also explains the stakes to michael jordan he's like we're gonna be basically abducted into slavery in which we will have to do stand-up comedy every night and tell the same jokes over and over again gasp

and then we'll have a next flick special that no one watches because kind of gas people have dropped hers and everyone will be like well that's actual content not this looney tunes thing again oh good grief okay anyway so the story opens with michael jordan as a child he's very good at basketball and he's like i'm gonna play in college and then i'm gonna be in the nba and then uh his dad is like do whatever you want you can do it and then kind of like the michael jordan legend right like that was how i learned about the michael jordan legend was as portrayed at the beginning of Space Jam. With 100% accuracy.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened. And then we cut to a five minute montage of him in the NBA, like under the credits, the opening credits. It is very long, especially because the last dance just came out. I'm like, yeah, I know. I know this. Right. And I know what happens after. Have either of you seen it?

I haven't had a chance to see it. I haven't finished it, but I started it. I paused to watch this. I'm like, I don't want it to ruin my interpretation of Space Jam to know about Michael Jordan's gambling habits. Well, I mean, it's a very generous documentary towards him, but it's really good. And the behind the scenes taste you get at the production of space jam is really fun oh yeah fun all very pro

space jam the documentary thank goodness right um so anyway we he as an adult he's in the nba until he announces his retirement from basketball to play professional baseball. Meanwhile, in outer space, the head of an amusement park called Moron Mountain, a character voiced by Danny DeVito. Yep. Excellent. Wayne Knight and Danny DeVito in the same movie? My God. How did we get so lucky?

How could we be so lucky? He says, what is his character's name? It's Hammer Smack or something. Mr. Sledgehammer? That's what I called him. I was like, David DeVito, the creature. Couldn't tell you. Wait, now I need to know.

Let me look it up. Mr. Swackhammer. Okay. Mr. Swackhammer. He's in the movie very little there's at one point he's getting a massage at the basketball game which i remember very clearly being like oh yeah the villain is getting a a topless massage at the basketball game yeah he's in it for like five minutes maybe but um but so is lilla bunny Right. And yet everyone hated her.

But Mr. Whatever-His-Name-Is is like, we need new attractions at this amusement park. We need something wacky, something loony. We need the Looney Tunes. You're like, sure. Sure. Trademark Incorporated. Now back on Earth, Michael Jordan is playing playing baseball he's not great at it he strikes out during his game and then this guy stan aka wayne knight is like the team's publicist and he's like michael let me know anything i can do to make you happy i'll do

i'll give you rides to places i'll do do your laundry. He's just there to support Michael. His name is literally, yes, he's Stan, and he is a Michael Jordan Stan. Stan. Wow. We have no choice but to Stan. Also, this just occurred to me, but I think this is a rare example of a white character who only exists in the story to serve a black character because normally

it is the opposite space jam is woke ish um so meanwhile the moron mountain aliens arrive at in looney tune world to try to abduct bugs bunny and his friends and bugs bunny like, you can't just do that. You have to give us a chance to defend ourselves. And the aliens are like, yeah, of course. We're reasonable. We'll do that. And then the Looney Tunes decide that they should challenge them

to a game of basketball. As you do. And even though every Looney tune is like what's basketball and then bugs bunny shows them a black and white video of basketball in the 1950s and they're like okay we get it i know we're not up to that part yet but it's so funny because they're like these are like tiny guys and then when they do like the sizes for the loons he's like at three foot four and i'm just like y'all are not stunted out here like calm down bugs like if you think of a live action reboot if you think of a rabbit that is three foot four that is a gigantic rabbit that's a hair that's a hair at this point it's just like all right big it's too big but even donnie relatively speaking in terms of relatively speaking in terms of basketball players

three foot two or whatever is still very short but the whole logic behind the looney tunes wanting to play basketball is that they look at the aliens and they're like well they're so short and flimsy and small let's play basketball against them because we're sure to win right and then that is the moment when you realize that an eighth grader wrote this screenplay no there's it is very funny to me that there are four credited writers on the screenplay like it takes four men to do it's a really long commercial everybody we needed four people uh there i loved okay a plot point that i forgot at the beginning is when the aliens get i forgot how they get big and it's because they steal talent which is stored in a Spalding branded basketball.

And then the alien brings the basketball back into the stands. And it's like, I did it. I took their talent. It's like a weird thing. So it's like the scouts of this corporation take these mostly black players steal their talent so that they can get other corporations and it's like wow it's like it's like it's like you don't know if it's like high brilliance or like high ridiculousness it's like yeah and this evil corporation is going to take all of their talent so that they can abuse other people and absorb more of it and it's like it

is the nba like is it i'm it's so hard to tell what is completely sneaky brilliance and what is just a total mistake of like well how are we going to get them big okay they steal talent okay so of the nba players who get their talent stolen from them are charles barkley patrick ewing and then three other people who i have no idea who they are but if it were 1996 you would know we would probably know sean bradley larry johnson and mugsy bogues mugsy bogues i know just because he's like one of the little little players that like was really popular then and like as a and I knew it wasn't a real Knicks game because I couldn't or maybe

I was looking for Spike Lee because he's always at New York Knicks game and I was like he maybe was like you can't put me in Space Jam and I was like did anyone ask him because what a cameo that would have been if like he's the one I know it's like he should have been the one that like is like where

the everybody loves raymond wife is i'm like that should have been spike lee's role he should have been there just being like man what's going on here the that moment with her is also so like i think it's it's definitely supposed to be funny but but it's very jarring. Her moment of like, because she's the one sitting next to the aliens when they steal the talent, right? And then she's like, I think someone's masturbating under their coat. And her husband's like, shut up.

And you're like, okay. Her husband, her husband, played by Dan Castellaneta, who's famous for voicing a bunch of Simpsons characters, including like Homer, Krusty, Barney, etc. So, you know, it was nice to see his face on screen for once, I guess. He also filled in for Robin Williams in the Aladdin television show and in Aladdin, The Return of Jafar before Robin Williams came back for Aladdin and the King of Thieves. Because I'm also an Aladdin expert.

So you get two things I can do for you. Well, I forgot that, yeah, he didn't come back. I wonder if Robin Williams also kept his talent in a basketball. Oh, or a lamp. What? Personally, even though I'm not good at basketball i keep my talent in a basketball just because it's a useful receptacle to keep the talent keeps it fresh yeah um okay so then the looney tunes and the aliens start i guess like they're kind of practicing for their upcoming game. But the aliens, using the talent that they stole from the NBA players, transform into these giant athletic mon-stars.

So the Looney Tunes abduct Michael Jordan while he's playing golf with Bill Murray and Larry Bird. And they bring him to Looney Tunes land my favorite part is when like after he gets absorbed in the hole and like Bill Murray's like what kind of camera is that he's like don't point it at me I'm just like the talent which is the closest thing we get to them reacting at the sudden disappearance of Michael Jordan. They're just like, huh, wonder where he went. Maybe the camera had something to do with it. And then similarly, when Michael Jordan shows up in Looney Tunes land, he's like, what's going on here?

Like, like no reactions from these people. It's confusing. I was trying to justify that too i was like well we already know canonically in the movie he's a big looney tunes fan because he turns it on for his kids and he goes see and then he leaves yeah so you're like okay so he wouldn't well you know he's not we don't have time the movie is only 70 minutes long right which what a length of time that a movie could be it's like man i miss those days this is in two hours and 45 minutes and that's including like the longest

credit sequence and the longest closing credit like two five minute credit sequences at the beginning and end i love it um okay so then bugs is like hey michael jordan you have to help us and then they hold tryouts for the tune squad basketball team and all the looney tunes are terrible until lola bunny shows up to try out for the team shout out to a queen and she's really good at basketball and bugs bunny is like hubba hubba who's that and we just have to breeze right past this for now because there's so so so much to unpack that we'll get into later yeah but then the tunes um there's a scene where they have to go and pick up michael's basketball gear from his house which is a scene I guess we needed um and then

you know I was like I like you know sure sure they have to do this great well I will say this about this scene so I had the Space Jam video game for PlayStation and this is like a thing that you do in the game so this is like to me it like, this is just a sequence to like have the kids be with the Looney Tunes at the same time. It's our target demographic and they should maybe get one moment of glory. It's very, I remember watching, I'm like, so, not to jump ahead, I'm like,

so it takes 50 minutes for them to actually start playing basketball. There's so much set up in this movie and i'm like i don't i didn't remember it taking this long for us to get to the to the to the basketball bits yeah it's also yeah once we got to the basketball game i'm like there has to be more than one basketball game but it's just the one just the one just the one there this the pacing in this movie is truly wild like i but uh act one is 50 minutes long there's no act two and then act three is like 30 minutes long it took me it wasn't until michael jordan in another brilliant acting moment turned to the clock and he was like

there's 10 seconds left i was like wait a second is this the climax of the movie wait and he says it so because he's like you know in a green screen room and who who would have prepared him for this moment he doesn't say it with that much urgency he's like there's 10 seconds yeah because he's a terrible actor yeah he just is great there's 10 seconds left i was like oh my god the movie's almost over i didn't realize i thought there was a second game i was wrong i forgot well that brings us to the beginning of the game where the the toon squad is ready to play the game begins lola made the team off screen she right there's a whole thing to talk about there no one else tried out uh right um the monstars are beating the looney tunes pretty badly for like the first half of the game then during halftime stan who has showed up wayne knight and he spies

on the monstars and he's like oh they're winning because they stole the talent from these NBA players. Of course. So that's a discovery. He also accepts this very passively. He's like, oh. So that's what happened. So that's what happened. Yeah.

Well, I guess I better go tell Michael Jordan that this is what's happening. And then he tells Michael Jordan and Michael Jordan's like, oh. Oh, so that's what happened to those guys. I guess we'll just have to go from there. The humans are very passive in this movie. They're just like, okay, well, let's think of a solution.

There's not a moment of like, what? Right. So they start playing again, and the Looney Tunes are able to catch up in the score. And now they're only two points behind. But Michael Jordan says to the owner of the of moron mountain who has been getting a massage presumably this whole time yes says that if the looney tunes if the tunes squad wins then the monsters have to give their talent back to the nba players but if the monsters win they can have michael jordan for moron mountain um so the stakes

have been heightened they heighten the stakes very loud and there's Mountain. So the stakes have been heightened. They heightened the stakes very loud. And there's 10 seconds left. The stakes go from nothing to everything. Michael Jordan risks indentured servitude to save the Looney Tunes. To save the Looney Tunes. Single tear runs down your ear. You're like, that's right, Michael. Or as they keep referring to it in the movie slavery slavery yeah um so

okay um so then they play the last 10 seconds oh um a lot of people have gotten injured so they need a fifth player yeah uh lola bunny has required rescuing we'll get to that right yeah bunny gets squished and then and then kissed wayne knight has been squished and then inflated and now all michael jordan has to do is make his arm really long right but first uh bill murray shows up again oh thank god and basically thank goodness um he's there to deus ex machina the plot this doesn't do much for high like changing the stakes but he does show up just as a the fifth body that they needed yes it just feels good and also he has a line we're like oh yeah they just dropped me in here like i have connections i was just like it's like i know the producer i love him so much so it's the last 10 seconds michael jordan outstretches his arm all cartoonishly

and they in a shot no child will ever forget like it's not i mean it's i guess it's technically body horror but for me it wasn't i'm like yeah that's like superhero shit yep um so he scores the game winning point so the toon squad wins the monstars have to give their stolen power back um but not before they kick their boss's ass and then michael jordan brings the nba players their talent back he quits baseball and returns to basketball and that is the story so they're here michael jordan gives the nba players their talent back and i mean it's all the hero's journey beat by beat i mean nothing about it joseph campbell could say anything about let's take a quick break and then we will come right back to discuss. 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,

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Okay. Well, where to start? Oh, boy. Yeah. Princess, kick it off. No, before we get into the Bec Deli parts, I wanted to say what's interesting is that these are why Michael why michael jordan quit basketball to play baseball in real life is because his father had died three months prior and his father had played minor league uh i believe minor league baseball and that was like a whole way of him being able to

like be close to him and be like pay tribute to him i mean he was also terrible at it and i appreciate that the movie shows that like he's really bad but people just like him so much they're like good job michael i mean you failed but like you look so good doing it and i just i watching that part again like that opening sequence is like really sad and touching in retrospect that he chose to like immortalize like his father's legacy in like a film for children that he probably made to show his own children so i just think that's kind of like had like a little bit of sweetness to um why he probably chose to make such a weird film when he absolutely did not have to make this movie no so i learned um when i was watching the last dance that because I was I I didn't know.

I mean, I knew a lot, I guess, like what I had absorbed through cultural osmosis about Michael Jordan's career. But I didn't know, like linear, like, you know, the exact timeline until I watched the documentary. And Space Jam comes at a like really interesting time in his career because I was like why besides money which we know Michael Jordan is like yeah he has a lot of it and besides legacy I was like is there any other reason that he did this movie and I guess a part of it is that Warner Brothers like provided him like he had a lot of stipulations in his contract of like shooting can't take up too much of his time because he was like retraining as he was shooting this movie so warner brothers like provided him with his own like private basketball court to use throughout production

of this movie and like i i guess that i don't know that the documentary would have you believe that this having this private space and having this very flexible schedule was part of what allowed him to make a huge comeback. Because he was like this movie was shooting as he was kind of like relaunching his basketball career, which is interesting. I don't know. There wasn't a negative word said about Space Jam. And it sounds like everyone had the time of their lives and it was good bonding for everybody. It's just so wholesome. Michael and Bugs are best friends to this day. Yes, of course. Michael Jordan's reputation, you could think that he could have been, I mean, they could probably, they might not have said it, but he could have been a real diva on set. But it sounds like that wasn't the case. And to like have it pull in so many other really famous and like in their prime

NBA players to be like, do you want to just be silly in like a children's movie for like a whole like 20 minutes? I was like, it's, it's's that's one of the things i like about this movie it doesn't take itself too seriously and like a lot of the things that were like are weird about it i was like as a kid i remember thinking like oh yeah like i totally believe the looney tunes just live like a billion feet below ground like right and also like i don't know i think about like hell right it's also like implied that they live in hell right which means more on mountain is more on mountain heaven then and i just can't help but wonder like if that if i said if something happened to me and like i got like i was pulled from the bechdel cast and it's

like oh you need to help the looney tunes like you know win an anime contest a part of me would be like what the hell is going on but a part of me would be like what the hell is going on but a part of me was like this is kind of awesome so i think i will do this roll with it it's like if this is a fever dream i don't want to be awakened from it the looney tunes they like came into michael's life at a pivotal moment in his life and he's like all right you know everything happens for a reason so here i am i it's very the secret the way he approaches the plot of this movie it's like i manifested this so let's just let it happen i i mean so i guess one of the more fun and bizarre and princess you've already like we've sort of been

talking about it already is the fact that this movie which it never I don't know I'd never framed it this way in my head but the more I was reading about production and then just watching it you're like this is a 75 minute commercial like this is top to bottom a very effective and entertaining marketing ploy for so many things that I almost lost count it's like relaunching the Looney Tunes into like the popular zeitgeist. It is a commercial for Michael Jordan's comeback. It's a commercial for the NBA. It's a commercial for 500 different brands

that they mentioned. It's like, it's a commercial for so many things to the point where the director, Joe Pitka, he's only directed two movies ever and then he's directed 500 commercials. He's a commercial director who has like all, he's only directed commercials and music videos. So he's like a marketing guru.

He's not necessarily like your traditional auteur filmmaker. He had previously made commercials with Michael Jordan. He had directed a number of Michael Jackson music videos. Like, he was an iconic marketer. And the fact that he's hired for this is like, well, this movie is like, is selling you a lot of stuff all at once. And people bought all of it. Like, there's a line where like Stan goes to mike he's like you know put on your hands like your nikes get your gatorade you know eat your weed yeah and i'm just like i know and

we'll get back and i'm just like and it came out so weirdly organically but as an adult i'm like oh that's so funny but as a kid i would like yeah yeah yeah yeah do the thing and i've never eaten before in my life but i know i've seen him on boxes of weedies so i'm like oh yeah like he of course he would eat cereal with your face on it yeah and it's like in retrospect wayne knight is just listing off various michael jordan endorsement deals you're like oh this was a business thing and then they're also like you know if we're putting like you know the looney tunes versus disney cartoons looney tunes are far sillier and far more aware like self-aware that they are cartoon characters that are owned by a company but it's also very on display in this movie because there's that like shot where daffy duck is showing that he has like a warner brothers tattoo on his ass and then he kisses it

because he's like i love being property of the warner brothers company you're just like this movie is so weird because it is so flagrantly pro-capitalism but it also seems to be making fun of it and critiquing it in moments but then you're like but is it i don't know i don't know it's weirdly pro-union like they bring up so much i like he's like it's like we're having a cartoon union members discussion about what's going to happen. And I'm like, wow. Like, wait, they have a union meeting in hell where they live? There's also a moment where Bugs says something like, hey, you know, all the like posters and lunchboxes and stuffed animals that have our faces on them have we ever seen any money from that and daffy's like yeah not a cent we're getting screwed i was like oh my gosh these but i love the warner brothers the ass tattoo i did

not remember the ass tattoo shot and it really stuck with me this time around. And even to get into Looney Tunes hell, you have to pass through a Warner Brothers logo. Right. So branded on top of branded on top of branded. It's wild. And it's a commercial for University of North Carolina. Yeah, those shorts. I wash them after every game.

And Michael's dad is like, like wow that's a good school at the very beginning so yeah get a good education there son there are so many elements of essentially 1996 on display in this but it's just like a period of such flagrant spending and capitalism and like glorifying that uh in a way that the movie is oh like i think that maybe that's what hits a little different for me like looking back on it is most movies that are really glorifying capitalism don't seem quite as aware of it as this movie repeatedly references that it is very aware that it is selling you something and they'll break the fourth wall to sell you something they'll have an ass tattoo to sell you something and so it's like everyone is so aware of what

they're doing because they're commercial directors like it's just I don't know it's fascinating there's nothing else like it that's this popular or long and has been so successful like I also that like space jam is like a black movie because i feel like it does tap into that like hip-hop culture loves looney tunes like jay-z wrote a whole bugs bunny rap and helped curate the soundtrack for this movie and like that is like it's everyone loves it in that sense but like i think like the black community and like the hip-hop community really latched on to the aesthetics of this like space i'm like i'll see like bugs bunny hoodies taz like daffy like those characters are very much tied to that and i think that even by like just putting michael jordan in a production of that just kind of shows how

michael jordan the public figure had sort of been elevated to this place of like success because I can't because even now I'm like you know the next time they made this kind of like crossover Louis Vuitton movie it was like with like Brendan Fraser at like the end of his career and it didn't go well at all yeah and it's like and it's like you really can't imagine someone besides like a Beyonce with her now with her Disney stuff being like a black celebrity being attached to like such a brand this popular because like it's a risk for Warner Brothers too to be like yeah we're gonna make this a movie where like most of the people who are actually people in this are like black people

and like the black actors are hold most of the power yeah um and and influence and like you were saying caitlin like that wayne knight is completely his plot is completely subservient and dependent on whatever it is michael jordan is doing if michael jordan is dragged to hell by cartoons wayne knight must go to hell to rescue him like yeah and then we've got like bill murray who's just like can i be in the nba too like that's his whole thing and then he's like is it because i'm white and they're like and then george like larry's white he's like larry's not white larry is clear very funny the and and even like bill murray seems to sort of be playing himself where like his whole persona is that i just show up i'm just around i'm at your wedding i'm at your house and so he's

sort of like i'm at space jam i'm in the movie playing myself why i don't know so he's like also just doing bill murray and doesn't he also play himself in zombie land i feel like there are several movies where he plays himself but i'll say he did a much better like when i remember in zombie land there's a line where they're like they ask him like do you regret anything and he says garfield i'm like that's right because he knows space jam is like up there in like the top 10 of what he's done no regrets truly it is so i mean and and it's it's good to have bill murray in the mix for the green screen scenes too because i feel like i found out that the the people who are playing the monsters for for michael jordan to play against were people from groundlings they just

put groundlings people in green screen suits and they're like run play basketball with michael jordan and then so like a bunch of improv heads from the 90s were just running around like with Michael Jordan in Burbank yeah this is just something that happened they were the stand-ins for the Looney Tunes and then they hired pro basketball players to be to like be the stand-ins for the Monstars yeah the Monstars Yeah, but for like Lola Bunny was like a groundling in a green screen suit. And then Michael Jordan had to be like,

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or wherever you stream podcasts. And we're back. And we had just mentioned Lola Bunny. Which is a good transition to talk about the weird place that Lola occupies as the token chick who was invented to be

the new token Looney Tunes chick and how as someone who's always really attached and love that character i'm really interested to see what you guys have to have to say about her because i i'm very well endeared to her oh and i was i mentioned i want to say this so the biggest reason why i love lola besides all the things that I think are like you know can be problematic about her is that there is something about seeing the only other good player on this basketball team is a female character because the WNBA had just formed in 1996 the year this movie came out and they wouldn't play another game until next year the year after this and like you get the scene

with like Charles Barkley like going up against those women and they like dominate him and they're like you're a scrub get out of here and like Lola's like the most competent player on the team but yet whenever I read like critiques of her they're always like she's too sexy and i just don't know i guess it's because i don't really look at her and sexualize her instantly that i always was like is that really like a problem with like her or is it just like that a lot of men of that age will just assign sex to boobs and then it's just like okay we're gonna go from there but i would love to hear what you guys think about it because i know it's like one of those hashtag things i i am also very attached to lola because it's like and it's weird because i i feel like in like re-watching it for this

recording i'm realizing that i projected things onto Lola that maybe weren't actually there. Because she's on screen for a total of five minutes. She doesn't come in until almost 40 minutes into the movie. So I think that because she is the female character who is active, I projected so much onto her that is sort of there, but also kind of isn't. I view her to be like really important in this moment where like you're saying princess like women's athletics are actually being televised at this point and they're actually like being spotlighted but there's still a lot of like there was like a controversy around this time where uh when like men were narrating stuff going

narrating i don't know how sports work but like narrating i think yeah commentating during the olympics like they would only refer to women just using their first names and kind of infantilizing them and commenting on their bodies all the time so it was like women were actually being shown but they still weren't being treated with respect and it feels like Lola kind of exists in that same space where she is like a gifted basketball player she knows this she is active in like asserting this for herself but she's still presented so sexually and I don't like it's hard because it's like i that's not her fault it it

fucks with my head right because it's like this is a female character who is created by 500 men and and conceived for this movie she did not exist in looney tunes canon prior to this movie right she was created to be on this basketball team. So anything, so this is like, there's no prior canon for her. So she's very much a product of this exact time. And I do feel like I like,

I watched her introduction scene like four or five times just to, just to catch everything. And I don't know. I feel like there are it has a lot of like 1990s like feminism about it because I feel like she is saying one thing and then like she's doing another thing or she's like there's that moment where she walks in and she's like I want to try out for the basketball team look what i can do but then the way that she's animated is like she's moving in a way to like titillate other characters it's just so

it's really confusing you can tell that they're very much pulling from jessica rabbit um to like you know with this movie format i don't oh i love her so much i love her so hard lola bunny is the megan fox of looney tunes to me because there's that element of like it's like the thing of like framing versus action yes yes and then at the same time i think of like you know what the thing that bugs me because i remember one reviewer kept on like she's got bunny boobs and I just kept thinking like why are you guys so weird about sexy female animals I don't understand it because like like as someone who like I remember watching like the Lion King 2 Simba's Prime thing and like Kovu is kind of hot for like a lion but I don't like sexualize him like in gargoyles you have goliath who is like a male anthropomorphic lizard person in a loincloth but that doesn't distract you from like all the other things that

that character does it's like obviously a hottie but like here to do gargoyle things and the thing about lola i think you hit on so well is that she is kind of like that girl power like don't call me doll thing but she also has to be an object of the lust for Bugs which is weird because you can tell she's like oh you're cute but you called me a name that I don't like so I have to like disrespect you to your face and then he's like I'm into it which makes me respect bugs a little bit but it is that but it is weird because then later on she's the only character you see not get injured on screen yes okay yeah which bothers me more than her being rescued but yeah the way that cartoon violence is dealt with in this movie and the way that the female characters are designed

we've talked about this with animated movies before where it's like the way that male identified cartoons can be designed almost in any way and they can look super goofy or they can be really tall really short there's any amount of body diversity that can exist within male coded cartoons but when it's a female coded cartoon that is not the case it looks like a sexualized human woman period yeah and the violence is much the same like she's she's not squished in the way like she's not treated the same rules of gravity don't apply to her it's there's really nothing she's not loony it's a matter of like yeah like the the same rules don't apply to her i actually okay i kind of want to like take the few beats that she has

in this movie, just sort of like beat by beat, examine them. Because like you said, Jamie, she shows up in the movie about 40 minutes in for the first time, because all the Looney Tunes are in a gym. There's so much plot. Yeah, there's so much plot. There's so much exposition before this. They're in a gym preparing for the game like they're all playing they're all proving to be very bad at basketball and michael jordan says has anyone around here played basketball before and then lola bunny shows up and she says i have bugs bunny is immediately attracted to her he has like hearts in his eyes i have a lot to say about that too because Bugs Bunny is not like a hyper like sexual creature history right like but Bugs Bunny wasn't like testosterone-y like super hetero over-masculinized

before this movie it's just so 1990s anyways sorry right so so he's patronizing and sexist to her uh because he says something like want to play a little one-on-one doll basically being like want to go fuck me right now please doll please doll and she's like um i'm about to just dominate your ass right yes for the culture because yeah she's infuriated by this suggestion of his and her like you know fire springs up in her eyes well she says she's infuriated but then the way she's framed implies that she is not infuriated it's so confusing right it is like Megan Fox is the perfect comparison of like like on paper what Michaela Banks says is very oh cool this is a motivated female character but then the way you see her

doesn't back that up it's so confusing there's like an identical moment in the first transformers movie where like her sexist boyfriend megan fox's sexist boyfriend says something like get in the car little bunny i think he calls her a bunny yeah and then she says like i can't tell you how much i'm not your little bunny so maybe a reference to space jam there you go but you know transformers and space jam alike proceed to really over sexualize her the rest of the time and you know there's a we can talk about her character design more but um back to back to the story beats. So she dominates him in basketball, proves to be the only good tune player. She leaves. Bugs says, oh, she's obviously nuts about me. And then Michael Jordan, on the on the other hand, is like, that girl's got some skills. Feminist icon Michael Jordan recognizing a woman's talent.

Wow. That girl has skills. Incredible. Oscar worthy. Wow wow that girl has skills right no second incredible oscar has skills so she's only on screen in this scene for probably like 20 seconds and then tweety bird also says she's hot and also tweety doesn't have sex tweety doesn't believe in sex please i was so disgusted by that i was like he's a sexless character you're just like why is tweedy horny i didn't like asexual icon tweedy bird did not need to be dragged into this like just like just like let him be let them be whatever that is of all the weird things that happened in that scene that is the worst part for me is tweety bird going whoa she is hot you're like tweet this is let's not i fretted better from you i thought you were an ally so then um as i think jamie it was you who mentioned that she off screen gets a spot on the basketball team we don't see

this this has never made clear that she like officially makes the team because the focus of the scene quickly shifts back to you know Bugs Bunny's sexual attraction to her rather than her basketball skills although I do feel like in an inadvertent way I will give the movie a little credit by saying you know she has to be infinitely more skilled to be on the team than her male counterparts who do not know how to play basketball at all at all at all but that falls into the there's this trope and i don't know what it's called but it's basically when any narrative will have one main female character she's surrounded by more or less only other men what is it yeah the smurfette principle yes yes yes yes so she's shown

to be super competent she is usually very conventionally attractive um but ultimately never gets to do that much except you know maybe have a few kick-ass cool lady moments and then the rest of the movie will be about someone else like she falls squarely into that for me and that's even in that like i feel like there's a million versions of the like lola bunny entrance moment when she you know like bugs bunny is clearly not expecting her to be good at basketball and then every you know like man on the court has to be like whoa she did thing like yeah which happens all I feel like it's most common in like action movies where it's like what that McSweeney's article we can't stop citing for 500 years where it's like I am woman and i kick and then when when she kicks everyone goes oh my

god she made a kick and i guess she hangs out with us now because she made a kick yeah but mostly she'll just be you know a love interest yes but she's a really good basketball player i know and it's a weird thing because like when i think about the mostly male critics I've heard like scathe Lola they'll be like she's just an excessive character that like doesn't fit into the movie and I'm like she's on screen for five minutes yet you have whole think pieces about how she ruined Space Jam for you or like how she ruined Bugs Bunny and it's like I think it's fair to critique as Jamie points out like how they use lola to sexualize bugs in a way that like i think he only had one other girlfriend before named honey bunny

who basically just looks exactly like bugs bunny but in drag but like overall he's always like playing the seductress or something like in his own self as like a wacky character and the only way they knew how to introduce a female character was to be like well she has to date somebody um right and so you have this catch-22 where like you can't spend a lot of time on this character that no one came to see but you have to do enough to establish their presence and because they have chosen to make lola the girlfriend they have to spend one of her five minutes of fame in having a scene in which she gets rescued by bugs which wouldn't even bother me as much because we'll get to in a second it wouldn't even bother me as much if she had a wacky moment anywhere in between that yeah right yeah where it's like she is set up in this huge way where you hope

that you're gonna get some sort of b plot with her that is not the love story but she doesn't get that you know most of the things that happen with her seem to happen off screen and then yeah you get this big moment at the end where she has to be rescued by bugs that was the moment where i realized like oh the rules of gravity that apply to the looney tunes are not extended to her for some reason and then she has to go over to bugs and say you're the nicest guy i've ever met and now i give you the kiss that you've earned by being squished and then she kisses him and it's it's just like yeah she deserved a better landing point than that because we i do appreciate that at very least you get to see her like be very skilled she contributes a lot

to the game she's like a big reason of why they catch up she's like the second best player on the team after michael jordan so that's not nothing yeah maybe she's even better than michael jordan idk right i mean she canK she could jump much higher than him because she is a bunny but you're right especially because we established that they don't hurt for a long time so it's not as if her getting squished

would matter because she's going to be fine because she's a cartoon character and that's there's a lot of things that I don't really have issues with with lola but that is the that is literally the only thing that i hate about how her characters conceive is like and even the rescuing i don't i wouldn't mind because i don't think that being rescued one time inherently invalidates like a female character's agency but it's like it's

because there is nothing else that shows that she has the same versatility of her. Because they harmed the grandma. They harmed the grandma. Oh, we have no issue harming older women. Yeah, and like, you know, the witch was in there that she would absolutely get her ass kicked. But it's like, Lola's like the hottie. So she can't even like have like a weird boob like a clamp like Jessica Rabbitica rabbit did in that one scene it's like it's like nope yeah and even the way she's like introduced in the game small forward standing at a scintillating

three foot two like you're just like the heartthrob of the hoops i like i want to give the movie credit and be like they're commenting on how commentators treat female athletes but absolutely there's no way that's the truth. That's just how people were commenting on female athletes at this time. Right. And the same thing with her. I mean, granted, iconic. Did I Google Lola Bunny crop top just to see if there's some available in my area today?

Yes. Yeah. But her uniform is, let's say, perhaps different from everyone else's. And like the reasons are. And it's it is like that thing where I'm like, I love the uniform. I want it. But it's there for a very specific reason. I like a lot of 90s female heroes that we were kind of brought up with. There's some real good at the core.

And then the way the plot treats this character is generally not fair. I don't blame like Lola Bunny for any way that she's treated. It's the characters around her and the way that the story treats her. That is my issue. And I was looking up because this is, I mean, I feel like, you know, creating a new canon Looney Tunes character is a huge opportunity. They've existed since the 1930s. Like this is like over 60 years into a very, you know, the Looney Tunes have I mean, we can brush on it, but a very sordid history.

And and there's you know, there's like this fame, these famous 11 racist Looney Tunes cartoons that have been buried, but then they were like, we're going to release it on DVD. And then everyone was like, don't do that. And then they said, okay. But, but the Looney Tunes have this whole like history going back all this time. So introducing a new character is a huge opportunity to make a statement and like do something new and different. And it doesn't really go that far. Especially when like the most recognizable and familiar Looney Tunes characters are all male. Yeah.

There aren't many female Looney Tunes, period. Like I think even with Tiny Toons, when they had that show, they only had like like i think one or two female characters and it was like a female elmer fudd type and then like another like proto lola bunny type it goes back to like those uh anita sarkisian videos from 10 years ago where it's like just making the missus version of an existing male character right throw a bow on her head and now she's uh now we have another character and which was like uh you know bugs bunny's original girlfriend at least lola bunny is an original character and then i did a little bit of reason because i was like what has lola done since space jam this is a topic that i'm excited to get into because i have like i'm very so i'm very new to this i did not know a ton about the second

iteration of lola bunny but it is fascinating and very telling where so she is brought back in 2012 in a big way for the looney tune show this time she's voiced by kristin wigg and her character is somehow stripped of agency significantly significantly 1996 yeah where i'll just read off her character description as opposed to her personality in space jam she is portrayed as a scatterbrained indecisive gabby young rabbit who tends to obsess over bugs whom she refers to as bun bun she is very dedicated to achieving goals but oftentimes tends to forget what she was doing like it's just she is portrayed as being obsessed with bugs and he has no interest in her and he tells her to go away all the time it like what it oh my god i can't even tell you how this inferior me because i would see male critics that hated lola bunny and space jam be like the

loo toon show fixed Lola they finally made her loony and so I went to go watch and this is why I don't trust people who don't like Lola for like that are men sometimes because I'm just like I can't trust you because your opinions are whack because then I go to like watch this show and I'm excited I'm like okay Lola and then she's like obsessed with Bugs Bunny and so I was like so was this the problem that you had with Lola that like she's the one who doesn't really care about Bugs until like he does something for her that should make her care because you guys seem to be totally fine with her just being like completely obsessive with him and like oh well now she's wacky I hated it and I hated how I saw so many people be like ah finally because for me in between

that period there were these comics with Lola Bunny, where she was like a pizza delivery girl, which is like really weird, but I have one of them somewhere. And she got to be basically like a mischievous, like, bunny who was trying to trick people. Like, I think she delivers some pizzas and they don't want to tip her and she was like oh i want to torture you until you tip me and i'm just like worker rights yes tip your delivery person but like i was like okay so when they bring back lola that's how she's gonna be that she's gonna be like an actual demoted yeah she's gonna be like a zany character that like is on the level of bugs and then they just made her an obsessive girlfriend who like broke down Bugs until he liked her. And I'm like, that's the kind of female, that's usually like the opposite of the Smurfette. There's always like the Smurfette character

that everyone wants to date. And then like the loser girl usually has pigtails that like really wants to date the lead character. And they're like, not you childhood friend. I want the other one. i was just like this is not how you revamp a character that was kind of very male gazey this is not the way to do it right it's it is i mean and it speaks to a lot of i mean issues at large but also specifically in animation where it is just it is still so cishet white male dominated in so many ways that it and it has improved over time but the fact that like 16 years after this movie came out that this character could somehow be forced backwards speaks to how there has not been a ton of progress in the animation space of how like really any non-SizHet White

Meryl coded character is treated and it has possibly slid backwards in a lot of ways. I was so disappointed to learn that. I'd never seen that 2012 Looney Tunes iteration. Well, I would argue that that evolution of her character that we see over the years is hinted at by the end of Space Jam. And again, this is not a critique of her character so much as it is a critique of how the movie frames and treats her. But in the game, we don't see her play that much because there's, you know, they have to give screen time to all the Looney Tunes and see all the little things that they get into but there will be a few cutaways to you know her dribbling or making shots and stuff and then there's one moment in particular where one of

the mon stars is like try to get by me doll and then she does get past him using her basketball skills and she scores and then she says don't ever call me doll which is the same exact thing that you know bugs bunny did to her except she's about to fall in love with him because the next thing that happens is like right the he saves her and then she's so enamored uh by being rescued and she's like that's the nicest thing that ever that anyone's ever done for me she kisses him and then a little bit later in the movie he surprised he surprise kisses her but she's all like hubba hubba i'm your girlfriend now yeah uh i mean for me that's like 1990s feminism is just catchphrase feminism it's just repeating an aphorism that sounds empowering

but actually isn't and then going and then kissing the male lead and going to the next scene well right but that like even over the course of those few scenes like it feels to me like her character gets demoted because like again the focus shifts away from her basketball skills to being rescued by a male character kissing him he's kissing her the focus shifts to like their romance and that's the last we see of her like because even to do it like my it's weird because i'm like i also really like them together just because i feel like i'm just a child and i'm just like they're cute but i do like the one part in between that is like after she like dunks on the monster guy buzz comes up to her and is like nice shot and they high five and i'm just like and i'm just like and i'm just like andks on the monster guy buzz comes up to her and is like nice shot and they high five

and i'm just like and i'm just like and i'm just like and that is the moment where he respects women and then i was like by doing the bare minimum like in between like in between he was like all right i read bell hooks in between what happened and i recognize that i respect you and it's like so funny it's it it i like it's yeah it's so 90s in the way it addresses like progress of yeah very bare minimum and very catchphrasey and i think it also says a lot and contextualizes Lola a lot when you're also considering that this movie is a commercial and not you know necessary I mean there it is very artful it is there's a lot of amazing art involved but it was you know art wasn't the top priority in the production of this movie it was it was marketing and so I feel like it says a lot about the marketing of this time too in the way that Lola is presented maybe if you're making an art house bugs bunny film which god willing I would

love to see uh but like you know Lola is created from character design to character choices to every way she's presented is marketing and so this also speaks to like what needed to appear on merchandise to sell at this time and you know it it was titties it was rabbit titties you know they they did the thing and it's weird because it's too the other thing i think is interesting is that like i found that like when i would talk to my female friends at that age group that loved lola they just they loved her because she was a girl and they liked seeing a girl that environment and i like as much as i i totally agree about like we should absolutely critique girl power feminism because it was like marketed so heavily i like how just feminism is now it's like it's just very

easy people will be like empowerment pew pew pew and it's like yes i'll give you money now but i think what was always really telling for me like even within that realm of critique that the boys only ever saw her as sexual that i knew and the girls were like i like having a cool girl that plays basketball in this movie and her being hot was just kind of like, oh, well, female characters are supposed to be hot in animation. And I think it's kind of that catch-22 because now as an adult, I'm sitting here like, I really like this character. I wish she hadn't been Michaela in Transformers where like she's clearly supposed to be empowered. And I always say this, as a black feminist, I don't care that she's a love interest of bugs or that like that's part of her character because it's like you know daisy's a daisy is also a feminist queen and she's often with daffy but i think that it's the fact that they clearly were afraid to go all out with her

character they were clearly afraid to like make her be ugly and they also didn't want to give her too much screen time because she's also hashtag a like new kid on the block so it's like you don't want to take away too much attention from like the true star of this movie daffy duck um who is my who remains unmatched he has the best bars um but it's like it puts it puts us in a place where like we have to extra critique things that were always supposed to like be for us but we're like made by a committee of like men right right what do what do girls want and how can we just make boys tolerate it and then you get lola bunny yeah a super competent female athlete who also can be like a love interest which i think is also an interesting thing in the context of like

female sports because female athletes are so hyper masculinized in real life compared to like lola who is like hyper sexualized and it's it's weird it's not anything that's just interesting for me to see sure but then you still have to make sure that we have a silhouette of her going like to the side so that you can see that she's got like bunny titties and like bunny booty and i'm like cat facts is about to pay off finally after all these years here it is if lola bunny was animated to be and designed to be anatomically correct oh my god she would have six titties ten titties ten titties yes that crop top would have been lit that would have been thrilling if they were like we have this ten titty rabbit who's entering and she's amazing at basketball i mean can you imagine how like how thrilling it would have been to be like this rabbit is not just a gifted basketball

player she has 10 rabbit titties like she what can't she do right i love that well here's some some thoughts from space jam animation director tony servone said that lola was intended originally to be more of a tomboy but the production team feared that she would appear too masculine so the animators emphasized her feminine attributes quote unquote i think that in that quote the use of the word tomboy is very loaded i feel like when when men in the 90s use the word tomboy it the definition is a little skewed and there's like a little bit of subtext to it and it has more to do with like by tomboy we mean not sexualized like as opposed to the actual like use of the word in the 1990s right they're like she would have looked like tatum o'neill instead of like you know

kim possible they were like yeah we were going to give her like a baseball cap that goes backwards you know she's gonna have like a little like a like a like a um band-aid across her eye just like yeah i'm hardcore and then uh going at that we we've talked about it a little bit, but just it is kind of frustrating where it seems like the 1990s treatment on Bugs Bunny is also frustrating to me because Bugs Bunny is, I think, kind of was in retrospect considered to be at certain points pretty like progressive character in terms of like a cartoon character that played around with gender quite a bit and was not disempowered for playing around with gender and so there was like there's a number of classic Bugs Bunny cartoons where he's in drag and he's basically a very empowered character in drag he's not the butt of a joke he is like using it like just because and he looks hot and it's exciting and there's like that whole wayne's world quote of like were you ever like titillated by like

what is the what is the quote i think it's uh yeah it's garth did you ever find bugs bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played a girl bunny like it was iconic that this character played around with gender it even gets mentioned in um the documentary Disclosure about like how trans people saw that representation on screen and to some degree and in some cases like felt empowered by that and so for the 1990s like relaunch of Bugs Bunny to be the opposite of that and to be so intensely heterosexual coded to the point where he like it is is like kind of selling that character out in in a kind of bummer way where it's like there's already so much established canon that this is like a gender

non-conforming character and then again, kind of like rolled that back much like they did with Lola Bunny later on. Like it would have been so much fun if they had done like a Jesse James thing from Pokemon. And like, I know there's like another new Leetoon show where Lola is more like bugs in terms that she's more of a mischievous character than like boy crazy.

Yeah, so i'm gonna go watch that later and it's like the same voice actress from is that like the hbo max like the new one i think so it looks that's what it looks like or let me see i have the wikipedia's in front of me so i don't know why i'm like i don't know it came out oh yeah it came out from like um 2015 to 2020 i had never heard of it um But apparently she's a lot more like, she has more toon qualities and she's more designed to be like, she's more boxy in design. So she looks more like a toon. But she's got more of the autonomy and agency she had from Space Jam. Does she have

10 titties though? She doesn't have 10 titties though. But it was funny because i was like when i was watching it i was thinking this is the first time i've ever seen bugs and daffy wear pants i was like usually they're just out to the out and about um but uh this time they had to wear uh pants uh but i would love for them to have lola play with gender too like it'd be so cool if they went out on a date but both in drag yeah Warner Brothers hire me I'm giving you free ideas for Space Jam 2 but yeah I I agree and I think it's also I think the thing about Bugs in that iteration what I've kind of noticed from what I think a lot of like cishet men feel about Bugs is that they like that he's like he's like an ultimate male type

you know like he's smart he's clever yeah a situation like and I think that a lot of people a lot of dudes I saw were like there's no way that Bugs would be like whipped by some girl and I'm just like I don't know why you care so much dude like I mean like i don't i just it's so it's but i also agree it's weird that they like picked bugs to be the one to have a girlfriend when daffy is thirsty every day and would that boy love to have a sip of water i think daffy was like canonically the horniest and so like i don't know yeah i yeah bring in daphne duck daphne wow more free material right all this free material or just stop like girlifying existing male characters and create a female character for once but that is sometimes too much to ask

and so i'll stop asking we'll just start creating there's also i mean there are it is very worth mentioning that uh there are several women appearing in the live action section of the space jam michael jordan has a his wife played by theresa randall he has his mother, and he has his daughter. So they all appear and... Wait, do we meet his mother? Or we meet someone's mother. I think that woman is like their housekeeper. I thought that she was like...

Oh, I assumed that she was his mother. Oh, that's on me. Okay, I know. She's the one who's like making dinner for them as they're getting home. Yeah. I also assumed that was like a housekeeper, but I,

I, they don't specify, they don't make it clear. So that's, yeah, I guess we just really don't get a look into what's going on there, but there are, there are a few female characters that,

that are mostly at the beginning of the movie with Michael Jordan. And then they come, they come back at the end. I mean, I wish that they had gotten more screen time. They're based on, obviously, Michael Jordan's real family and people in his life, but they're not given much to do in this case.

Too much to ask. Another thing that's too much to ask. Because Michael Jordan's dragged to hell. Right. There's also that scene where, after the NBA players have lost their talent, they are being sort of like medically and psychologically evaluated. Um,

and there's a scene where Charles Barkley goes to play basketball with a bunch of women and, um, cause the, and he plays against them and he doesn't have his talent anymore. So he can't play. They like embarrass him on the court that kind of thing and later when he's talking to it right i like it but then when he's talking to

like a psychologist later he says something like and then this girl five foot nothing blocked my shot and the whole implication of that scene was even a bunch of girls could beat Charles Barkley so it's still it's sexist is what is happening there I agree I mean I was I guess reading that scene a little generously of him saying like I'm one of the best basketball players in the world why did a bunch of 12 year olds beat me but I do agree that there is like a gendered element to it as well it is very satisfying to see them beat him at basketball and i think it's i think i thought about that the same way you did jamie because they show they show them being very vigorous players like the little bit that you see before charles

barkley like when he's watching them they're like really like going at it and i'm like oh so these are like good street ballers you know and i and i definitely thought he was just like, she's so timey. She's so small. I don't understand. And then the psychologist is talking to Patrick Ewing and he's like, are you having trouble performing anywhere else in your life? Basically, like, does your dick still work?

Which is like, it's like, psychiatrist, relax. But then also Patrick Ewing's like, um, yes, my dick works. It's like, psychiatrists, relax. But then also Patrick Ewing's like, um, yes, my dick works. It's like, no. Yeah, that's a very different movie. He's like, I would actually like to talk to a doctor about that,

but thank you. And there's a part where Charles Barkley, he's praying, he's like, I'll never sleep with Madonna. I'll never go out with Madonna again. And I remember, which is how i learned that that even happened i was like what and and moby's like muggsy's like you think i'm trying to disrespect my mama and he's like i didn't say that you didn't he's like but i love my mama it's such a weird sequence like the sports side is very i mean in in the real and the animated

world the sports world is hyper masculine and i've in and like not very attempting to question that and i feel like it's very of its time in that way where like the masculinity of professional sports is not really called into question in any way besides Lola Bunny in this movie, which I was not extremely surprised by. I honestly wasn't, like, I mean, because I'd seen it and also because it's 1996, I wasn't expecting this movie to challenge that very much, especially because it's a movie that is, like, starring Michael Jordan, who is, like, so of this, like, hyper disciplined sports moment and so yeah well that brings me to

talking about the monstars and there is like a masculinity component to it but i also can't help but feel and and princess tell me your thoughts on this but the monsters are coated black right they definitely get more like stereotypical urban aesthetics and like how their mouths are designed like they get the kind of like um I always call them the milk the like minstrel outline of when you like hyper like line the lips to make them look darker and like some of them start using kind of aav like language except for the one that stole the talent from a white guy who just becomes like a dopey white dude um like the charles barkley one like they all like you literally you heard the dream team but we're the mean team what's the like who you guys

didn't sound like that before you had this talent right yeah so they definitely urbanized them because i think that they like the audience can like understand the codification of that of like now they're dangerous because before they were like nebbish and tiny but now they're like big urban you know street ballers so now we gotta be afraid and they also become kind of hot not gonna lie that green one i was like he's kind of cute and that's my favorite color and i was like that's a good shade of green on him i was like i was in for it but i'm trash so which it is i mean like and and this is because we're talking about space jam primarily like i won't get too into this but given the history of looney tunes and race i mean it goes back to

the early 1930s so for our listeners feel free to look it up and and do the math on how they've treated but there's been a number of deeply racist Looney Tunes cartoons that have been buried. And so for, you know, just seeing the evolution there in character design and in seeing that early Looney Tunes animators like Chuck Jones, who I get is like,

Oh, I guess along with Tex Avery, like the iconic Looney Tunes guy hated space jam and had a lot of issues with it. It speaks to the, I guess, just like the slow update of a franchise and like calls into question, is it possible to effectively update a franchise

that was started so long ago? And like, what are the, I guess, stumbling blocks in attempting to do that? And I feel like some of those are kind of really pushed against in Space Jam. And it's also interesting because like, as you kind of touch on, like, Looney Tunes design, just like Mickey Mouse is like rooted in minstrelsy. So you basically have these two kind of like two kinds of black codifications combating each other, featuring like the biggest black athlete at the time featuring in it and it's this weird hodgepodge of like how at that time black at that time in like in the 90s was kind of like the pinnacle of like black urban cool really being elevated in

like mainstream pop culture which is why i think those choices were made and like why Bugs Bunny himself is so popular in so many different like places is because he also can like adapt that coolness because like Mickey Mouse was never cool but like Bugs Bunny very much has yeah but Bugs always had like a swagger about him and I feel like that comes from them very much emulating the popular culture and vibe of an era and that usually is a black vibe you know and even like even with the drag culture like you know a lot of that comes from like black queer environments and like so i think even in space jam they can't help but like, all right, well, they're not going to be scary if they're not a little bit black coded. Yeah.

Yikes. Oh, boy. Oof. I wanted to bring up Wayne Knight's character is constantly fat shamed. Basically every moment that he is on screen, he is made to seem just like this bumbling,y clumsy like doof the giant fart joke is like even as a kid i found it uncomfortable i was like this is weird and this is even like a little like i mean this is a little bit a side comment but the fact that even somehow wayne knight is subject to the same gravity laws as cartoons and still Lola Bunny

isn't is very strange like he can be squished yeah he can be squished but Lola Bunny can't be squished why Michael Jordan gets turned into a basketball and bounced around by the Monstars like halfway through the movie what but Lola Bunny can't have like she's just too delicate and too feminine to have any sort of cartoon i'm not that i'm advocating for like violence to be done against her but like that's the whole thing about looney tunes it's cartoon violence and gags physical gags is inherent to looney tunes and they don't feature any women right and it's like she's an athlete like she would be used to getting hurt and i mean like again it's like it's like they half get it you know they half are like we need to have a care of female character that does the thing but then they forget like female

characters train they get hurt they get more injuries like lola bunny was a cheerleader she would have gotten more you know injuries than any of these basketball players because chilean's the most dangerous sport around and it's like it's just like it's so frustrating because like and you're totally right about way night which is weird because it's like, it's so frustrating because like, and you're totally right about Way Knight, which is weird because it's like, Elmer Fudd is not skinny. Like there's so many like fat characters and like differently abled. There's Porky Pig! Porky Pig is right there!

He's even coming into the defense. He's just like doing like, you know, I'm just like, dishonor. And then I wanted to bring up something that you discussed princess in a mary sue piece that you wrote about space jam merch uh care to talk about that yeah so like i tend to only want to buy space jam merchandise with lola on it and so frequently she's left out or she's like pictured not in costume or like she's like i remember like forever 21 was having like a huge space jam collection i was like yes i'm about to just have like you know number 10 lola buddy crop tops all day i was like that would be obvious to have for a site

that is mostly frequented by women and femme folk and other people who are femme presenting and yet everything was like taz da Daffy, Bugs, Michael Jordan and I'm like but the second best player on the tune squad is Lola Bunny so where is she there's so little merch to the point where like I was looking this up merchandise that features her from this era is like worth a lot of money because they didn't make a lot of it and those that did became very you know valued by certain types myself included and like there isn't a lot of merch of her from like that era where she's like in her outfit and even now if you try to find like lola bunny like pins or anything like that they're all very hyper sexualized and you really can't find

anything it's really upsetting because i do genuinely love that character i i think i went to like some uh fan con and i had someone draw like a little bit of fan art of her because i'm like i want to be able to own one piece of non-sexy lola Bunny fan art in my lifetime um but yeah she doesn't get a lot of merchandise and even when even when she was in other things like Baby Looney Tunes or Lunatics Unleashed which was like this weird futuristic show that featured like Lexi Bunny who was like the future version of Lola there wasn't a lot of merch for her there either because just traditionally people don't make a lot of merch for girls when it comes to those kind of toys and when you know well only boys play with toys didn't you know exactly and so like it doesn't surprise me but it upsets me deeply

because i love really it's just like a really frustrating double-edged sword too because we like it is pretty clear that Lola Bunny was created to be merchandised and then for her to not be merchandised when she was created to be merchandised is like well then why are we doing this like if you're not going to merchandise her then why were all those very specific decisions made it's just like it's very confusing that and like the picture that you presented in that piece that you wrote had it was like a glass like a drinking glass it had lola bunny off to the side in like plain clothes not in her uniform even though she's the only looney tune who's any good at basketball right like why would she not be in uniform like front and

center it reminds me of like when you get like mulan merchandise and she's never in her warrior outfit which she wears the majority of the movie why do i have all these long-haired mulan dolls that's not what she looks like like it it's it's absurd and and i don't even know why they put her in that outfit because that's not an iconic outfit her uniform is the iconic outfit that she wears that Jamie herself even had to try and like where is it I I would wear it in the house like it's a cute it's a look and yet they don't market that at all oh it's yeah it's so frustrating like even today when i went on etsy and searched lola bunny i hesitate to share with you the results i found because it was mostly uh porny thing t-shirts of yeah bugs bunny having sex with lola bunny on a shirt which is was not what i wanted

i was hoping more for just a shirt uh just a regular shirt with no sex happening on it harder to find than you would think uh so there's that i lost the thread a little bit earlier i was um when we were talking about looney tunes history i also wanted to quickly bring up a character who's very majorly sidelined in this era of looney tunes and has been off and on sidelined and regarded in a number of ways and that is speedy gonzalez who is on the team at different points i don't know if you ever really get to hear him speak at length at all in this movie but that's like another example of a looney tunes character who is built on racist stereotypes who's like i guess whose significance has been kind of argued back and forth over the years

because speedy gonzalez is a character who has been reclaimed in many ways but also um you know criticized rightfully so in many ways to the point where there was a feature film starring speedy gonzalez in production as recently as 2016 and it it's just with a franchise that goes back this far the process of claiming and disclaiming a character goes back so much and in the 90s at this point speedy gonzalez i think that they, the franchise didn't know how to handle him or what to do with him. So they were like, well, he's here, but he's not speaking. So is that okay? Like, it's just such a bizarre moment for this franchise in 1996 with the changes they choose to make. And then the things that are left over from 50 years ago that they don't quite know what to do with.

And so they just sort of do nothing meanwhile like the like the date rapey peppy lapu can still have like two speaking lines it's like cancel pepe like so why why yeah the fact that he got a line right after the lola bunny scene you're just like this is unjust right and it's like this is gross i don't yeah i don't i hate him so much it's just like he's such an annoying character funny thing i heard is that in france his dub voice is in Italian. Oh, that's funny. That's so funny. The shame.

They're like, we do not claim Pepe. Yeah, he is not ours. We will not stand for this slander. I love it. But I will say, after watching Knives Out, Foghorn Leghorn's voice was so funny to me because all i could hear was like and chris evans going like what is this uh csi kfc and i just oh my gosh good time foghorn leghorn who uh i don't know if i've ever mentioned this on the

pod before probably we've it's existed long enough but my high school my first boyfriend ever we broke up he broke up with me for the saxophone and then years later i saw him again and he was exactly the same but the one difference was that he had a bicep tattoo of foghorn leghorn and that was the one different thing about him and that i have no update on him since then he got a foghorn leghorn tattoo and um so you know i guess still culturally relevant in the last 10 years it was such a huge tattoo i'll never get over the shock of being like oh no one's expecting a full bicep foghorn like the end that's bonkers incredible well you sound like you dodged a bullet by getting broken up with i was gonna say this like you don't need that i don't i didn't it

turns out i didn't need that in my life um but there it is um there's another okay we talked about this on our um who framed roger rabbit episode that's on the matreon um yes but there's a moment and this is i feel like very common in specifically movies that combine live action and animated stuff but i think this is also just a general animated trope where a male character will kiss another male character and it's meant to be this like haha isn't isn't it so funny and wacky that i'm kissing you but then the recipient of the kiss while understandably is not happy it should be because it is a surprise kiss that they did not consent to is usually instead played as like a queer phobic like oh no i just got kissed by a man but is it okay because it's

a cartoon and it's just like this weird thing that happens in this movie when bugs kisses michael jordan upon like immediately upon seeing him because he's like if I wasn't real could I do this and then just lays lays one on him he's like um I don't know and they're like why why is this here yeah it's weird I thought of Who from Roger Rabbit as soon as I saw it again because I was just like yeah they do that a lot because even at the end when uh i forget the the male character's name but when he kisses roger back it's supposed to be this moment of like roger's like what just happened like it's like it's like oh that isn't fun i shouldn't be surprised kissing people um but yeah it's just it's a very interesting thing that is so part of like that era and like so part of like what people didn't really

understand about like that being a thing that you shouldn't do and it's only ever framed as doing a thing that you shouldn't do when it's two men you know it's never ever like if it's like a same-sex thing it's like surprise kiss like you know or like if it's two women it's like surprise kiss you know but like when it's two minutes like yikes because bugs surprise kisses lola at the end and she's like hubba hubba showing like and it's like no you didn't you didn't consent to that kiss does oh i have a question yeah when lola kisses bugs does that also count as a surprise kiss i feel like that could easily be classified as a surprise kiss yes because they're in the middle of a basketball game there's no kissing in basketball

you put that romance on the on the side yeah so just all the kissing in this movie shouldn't have happened because it's it's three surprise kisses in a row i mean the thing is like i have no that i like i there's a lot of ways to come at it and i and we've almost been talking to for two hours so i won't go which is longer than the movie but there is like i i don't want to completely say that lola bunny should be desexualized because i feel like there is like princess was saying earlier there's a lot of desexualization because I feel like there is like Princess was saying earlier there's a lot of desexualization of female athletes that is equally sexist and like if you are an athletic femme you

can't be a sexual being as well and that's an equally unfair thing to have forced upon you of like totally if you are athletic it's inherent that that is all you can be it sounds so complicated but you just need to strike the same balance that you would for most male characters right and that's all you would need to do um but this movie it uh doesn't quite do that yeah i mean it's not so much that like if the fact that she is written primarily to be a new love interest of bugs bunny like that is not i don't love that but the fact that she is written primarily to be a new love interest of Bugs Bunny, like that is not, I don't love that. But the fact that they end up in a romantic relationship together, like whatever, I'm fine with that.

Like if they like each other, if they admire each other's basketball skills, whatever, fine. It's more that the nature of the kissing, which is just like three non-consensual kisses, is what I take most issue with. But, you know, that still. Well, that brings me to a quote from another Mary Sue piece from Maddie Myers entitled Hey Space Jam 2 Give Lola Bunny the Respect She Deserves This Time. Word. this time word says quote the way she is in lola bunny uh was framed taught kid me a pretty

depressing lesson about what it takes to be accepted by a group of guys if you're lucky and if you're hot enough maybe you'll get to date one of them unfortunately i know that's a lesson that i internalized very early on in my life the idea that male male validation was the only thing that really mattered as opposed to winning games and excelling at my chosen hobbies it's a lesson that took me years to unlearn unquote so that's kind of the whole thing with uh with lola bunny again like as a character isolating her character is like she's a great character a lot of young girls saw her and looked up to her and and found a lot of value in her

character rightfully so like she was the only good basketball player on the team aside from michael jordan but the way that she is framed by the story like the story doesn't like her and and then she's her character suffers as a result so and i agree i did hear that for space jam 2 that they have brought in some wmba players so i'm hoping that that means yeah i was i remember hearing something about that so i'm like hopefully and lebron james has been very good about supporting female athletes so i feel like he definitely wouldn't want to produce a movie that was like token woman in this era like i don't think i think that absolutely if they don't do lola right in space jam 2 it's gonna be like it's gonna break my heart so bad like that'll be that'll be ruining my childhood i wonder if she'll get the

oh my gosh i don't even remember her name which tells you how important this character is but the one female character in the toy story franchise oh bo peep oh yeah when they got when they made her like xena yeah and toy story 4 she i wonder if she'll if like lola bunny will get the bo peep in toy story 4 treatment we'll find out i guess whenever that movie comes out she can keep the crop top but i just want her to have like some real shorts this time like some like you know knee high knee length yeah i think we need to we need we need her to have like knee length shorts knee length jeans like that and 10 titties yes and 10 just all in one crop top yeah eight of them are exposed um two of them are covered up at the top i mean yeah i i hope that the 2021 question mark um iteration of lola bunny is you know i i i feel

like at this point yeah with with leBron involved and with how far, hopefully we have come since 1996, that there will be more to see and more for Lola to do and reclaim. And I mean, it is interesting. This, this, this franchise is like entering its 90th year and it's still evolving, which is pretty,

I mean, there's not a lot of franchises that you can follow for that long and track growth. So I'm excited to see what she does next. Exactly. And yet, and somehow we managed to talk nearly two hours about a 77 minute movie. That is the power of Space Jam that it has capitalist messages, anti-capitalist messages. It's pro-union. It's like weirdly 90s girl power, but also reinforces

90s sexism. All in just under 90 minutes. They don't make them like that anymore. Well, it does not, we said already, does not pass the bechdel test two characters two female characters don't interact at all well i don't think michael jordan's his wife and his daughter his daughter and his daughter interact but it is not shockingly only about michael jordan yeah right yes i forgot about that and yeah very brief moment there um and then i think like

his wife and his housekeeper or his mother we're not sure um i think also interact with each other but we i don't know do we know any of their names no i don't i think like is her name sheila i feel like they say her name once but i don't remember and i think they said and i think they said the other woman's name too but it was funny because when that scene happened i was like will this be the scene and it's not but it's about food but it's about food and all i could hear is women be cooking because she's making she's like making something with like uh collard greens and something and i'm just like that does sound good women be cooking it's yeah unfortunately on the live action side there's there's not much happening for women and on the animated side it's complicated yes are we are we

at the nipple scale are we there yeah should we rate it on 10 rabbit nipples? I'm kidding. Just five. I'm going to give this like a half nipple. Well, maybe I'll give it one nipple. For Lola Bunny, is she very tokenized? Is she hypersexualized? Is any of that her fault? No. But, you know, she's at the mercy of these four male screenwriters, whoever the hell.

We've got a Leo. We've got a Steve, a Timothy, and a Herschel, who wrote this movie and had an opportunity to introduce an interesting female Looney Tunes character into the canon. And they did to some extent because Lola is awesome. Again, if you just isolate her but the the movie the way she is framed all the more that she gets to do in the movie all the more screen time she has doesn't do her any justice and then just like with Charles Barkley's comment of like and I was beaten by a bunch of girls like I don't this movie doesn't respect women um the fact that it's a of the live action characters that it's a

predominantly black cast is worth noting that's not common for a hugely mainstream movie as this was that made over 200 million dollars at the box office and this whole franchise including merchandising which again does not include l Bunny enough, is estimated to have made something like six billion dollars since the movie was released. That's a lot of crop tops. Right. So, you know, there's pros and there's cons. But, you know, from the lens of intersectional feminism, I can't say that it does very well. So one nipple and I'll give it to Lola Bunny.

Okay, this is maybe overly generous. I'm cutting this movie breaks. Maybe it doesn't necessarily deserve. But I'm going to go for one and a half. And maybe I almost want to give it a two because I feel like we've touched on this throughout the episode the fact that there is a female athlete icon at least for young girls to project onto was not a small thing at this time is she hypersexualized yes is is she not on screen enough absolutely not but i do feel like a female athlete who is extremely competent and is confident in spite of the fact that that is really only appears in one

scene it seems like the cultural legacy of this movie it doesn't feel like there was just one scene because um like girls of this generation projected so much onto her because what else was there at this time to project onto you had basically disney princesses who were like had really no agency that much at all because it mulan hasn't come out at this point so i so i i i'm being overly generous to it but i feel like lola Bunny does bring a lot to the table. Having a predominantly black live action cast was a huge thing at this time. And I just I mean, maybe I'm giving it extra points for nostalgia. It doesn't deserve, but I'm going to give it one and a half.

It's also worth mentioning that there is there are predominantly, predominantly as usual white men behind the camera for this movie. But there is a black writer credited on this movie. Oh, where are my notes? Oh, no, I have too many notes. Is it Herschel? Because I feel like it'd be Herschel if it was. It is Timothy Harris, who is the black writer on this movie. He is the writing partner.

It's like two male writing partnerships that wrote this movie. So it's Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingraud. Great. And then Leo Bianvenuti and Steve Rudnick are the two teams. Leo and Steve also wrote Santa Claus. Shout out. And Timothy and Herschel also wrote Trading Places Kindergarten Cop and Twins so now we know why Danny DeVito is there I see so there I mean it's I I honestly

I'm like okay so there there is a black writer um on this project is it proportional representation absolutely not um I don't know I just ah i love this movie and i'm probably giving it too much credit but i'm gonna give it a nipple and a half and i'm giving them both to lola bunny because we got to get her to 10 so princess um give her 7.5 give them 7.5 nipples um i'm definitely gonna i think i'm gonna be a little bit more generous than Jamie I gave it to I thoughtfully gave it to both of them are Lola's nipples um but I think for me the thing that I was thinking about in context of like female athleticism is like the only other movie I remember that featured like a female athlete in this way where his priority

was like love and basketball that came out in like in 2000 and I feel like when I think about what it meant for me to have like a Lola Bunny doll when I was a kid and like even re-watching that movie today I was like there is something about the way that she just was so effortlessly cool that meant so much to me and I think when I think about even now the way like and even though Lola is not black the way I've seen black girls attached to that character the way I've seen like that happen especially when you think about how the WNBA talks about women treats women how underfunded they are I think even though she doesn't get enough screen time it does mean something to have a competent female athlete in a movie who gets to be a love interest because that kind of thing

desexualizes you in a way that's very like queer phobic and misogynistic at the same time it's like they're like oh she must be like a lesbian as if a that's a bad thing like shout out to her but i think that the tricky thing is that lola is like a made by committee design character and so like that's why it can't be like more than two I love it that it's a black movie I love the music in it and I hope that Space Jam 2 does better

but I think in terms of like the legacy of what Lola has meant to a lot of people is still a good thing and that's why I'm bumping it just slightly up to but i also agree that like i'm probably giving it a lot of nostalgia credit because literally this movie has like genuinely saved me from like the worst like times in terms of depression it's like my sweet

smart daffy remains undefeated he has he, he's so funny. He's so funny. I just, I love him so much. And the only character in this movie that appears in drag, if only for a second. Yeah, because he's doing like a little runway thing. A fleeting moment. And he looked great, you know, like Daffy can pull off a wig. Oh, Looney Tunes look incredible in drag.

Yeah, it's like that's the law. Canonically. Yeah. Well, princess, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I was like,

when I got that, when I got the DM, I was like, I think I was like, I was like, my time has come. Finally. I think,

I think when you asked me, I responded like, I was like, Google play. Yeah. By usher featuring ludicrous yes well we'd love to have you back anytime so this will happen again thank you that means so much but thank you so much for having me this this was so much fun i turned off my fan for this and i don't feel like i've sweated at all even though i absolutely have that's how much i love you guys i want you to have clean audio

and everyone listening please follow princess's work i've been binging your youtube channel it is so fucking good like just get into it listeners if you're not already into it yes and tell us where we can find you and where what anything you want to plug yes i am at weeks princess on twitter no spaces and it's weeks w e e k e s um and then on youtube my username there is melina pendulum because i was 16 when i made it and i don't want to change it uh and uh my latest video was about Gone with the Wind. So, you know, super topical, casual, you know, just have a little. It's about the book, though, because I'm not sitting through that movie

for another four hours, like, because it's too long. Thank you so much for having me and let's go and jam. Well, welcome. Welcome to the jam. Welcome to the jam, as always. May the jam be with you we should rebrand as the jam cast and yes um what if oh no punch up the jam is our new i'm just kidding yeah you can follow us on social media on twitter and instagram at pectal cast you can um subscribe to our patreon aka matreon it's five dollars a month and it gets you two bonus episodes every single

month including our entire back catalog of all the bonus episodes with which is like around 70 now um 70 bonuses so if you're if you're running out of content there's there's plenty more to go through on the matreon you can get our merch at tpublic.com slash the bechdel cast get all your and we have new designs coming in the store soon because i'm going to make them soon so guess what they'll be there soon as soon as i make them which will be soon so look forward to that soon incredible um thanks for listening and um come on and slam and welcome to the jam and welcome to the jam come on and slam if you want to jam bye k hasn't heard from her sister in seven years i have a proposal for you come up here and document my project all you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live

audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart Podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions,

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