The Bechdel Cast - Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtles: Secret of the Ooze with Carlos Camacho

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

This week, Jamie and Caitlin have a very cowabunga discussion with special guest Carlos Camacho about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Secret of the Ooze! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @carlosmcamacho on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. Cowabunga. That's the intro? Yeah? Sorry. Cowabunga. Is that?

Sorry. Hold on. I'm new here. When someone says cowabunga, is it generally considered polite to return the cowabunga or is it just to be received? Is it in a very cowabunga to you? Well, I think normally it wouldn't be used as a greeting. It's not like... It's not aloha. Right. Okay. It's more a term of excitement.

It's not an expletive. What's the word? It's an exclamatory. Yes. It's an exclamatory. Okay. I am a linguist, so this is really helpful for me. So cowabunga, it's a way of saying, wow.

Woohoo. We did it. How exciting. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. And a very cowabunga to you, Caitlin. Thank you so much.

Yes. We were just joking, since Jamie, you mentioned that you're new here, you're rather new to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Yeah, I'm extremely young. So that's it's and it's hard for me. We were just joking off mic with our guest who we will introduce in a moment that he has a phd in ninja turtles i have a master's degree in both uh turtles and screenwriting from boston university which of course i hate to mention oh i didn't know that okay and we were

joking that uh you're like a freshman in high school when it comes to Ninja Turtles, Jamie. Yeah, I'm throwing back to my early days of the podcast where I'm like, I don't know anything. But in this case, it is actually fairly true. TMNT is outside of my purview. I'm the new girl at school and i love homework so i'm excited to learn in my yellow jacket that appears to be canonical but i don't think appears in this movie correct yes okay see i'm learning already she's got a little morton salt girl jacket so this is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Secret of the Ooze episode of the Bechtelcast. Requested by everyone.

Our most popular request. People have just been clamoring. How to lose a guy in 10 days. Pride and prejudice. Secret of the Ooze. And we've done all of them pretty recently. So you're welcome. True.

You're welcome. So this is the Bechtelel cast our show in which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens my name is Caitlin Durante my name is Jamie Loftus cowabunga to you cowabunga to us all please oh and everyone if you're if you're sitting next to someone we can make it like Sunday service could you turn to the person to your left and say uh very cowabunga to you and then turn to the person to your right and say a very cowabunga to you and then turn to the person to your right and say a very cowabunga to you and then let's just sit in our own cowabunga and then say cowabunga to yourself you know yeah I don't think we we stop often enough to say cowabunga to ourselves I tend

to agree that's self-care that's just basic self-care. You sit, you breathe, you say cowabunga, you know? Yeah. Really feel each syllable in your mouth. I've been listening to a lot of guided meditations. What's the podcast about? Well, I already said that, but I didn't say what the Bechdel test is. Sorry. Yes.

What is it? Jamie, maybe you need to take a minute and just like have a cowabunga i need to say cow i'm sorry literally sorry i'm gonna pull back okay um so uh the bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test which we use as a jumping off point And it's a media metric where our version is two characters of a marginalized gender have to have names, they have to speak to each other, and their conversation has to be about something other than a man, ideally for a meaningful exchange, something that's kind of, you know, plot relevant.

Oh boy. Yeah. And this movie yeah idk ik uk ik for sure but without much further ado let us introduce our guest yeah Yeah. He has a recent PhD in sociology and Ninja Turtles. He's a host of Play Hype Dialogue, a media podcast. He's an aspiring screenwriter. It's Carlos Camacho. Carlos! I'm so excited to be here. We're so excited to have you. Thank you for being here. And to everyone who cannot see our video call, which is all of you, Carlos is wearing a Bechtelkast Queer Icon t-shirt. It's incredible. We love to see it.

How are you, Carlos? Thank you for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. I'm really well in the moment. I'm really excited to be here to talk about the turtles. I revisited them for the first time in a while, so I'm so excited. Cowabunga, baby, let's do this. Tell us your your history, your relationship with this franchise. So I was born in 1989. So I was like, primed for turtle fandom.

Taylor Swift over here. So I'm going to post this to my Instagram, but this is a stuffed Raphael from when I was a literal child. So I've literally been around this property my whole life. My family is always getting me turtle stuff. Like it is very much something I've watched, read, played video games of stuffed animals, played turtles. I've done all of it. It's been there from pretty much my inception into this world. Nice. That's so cool. Jamie Jamie what about you nothing nothing I think I briefly pretended in high school to know what it was and what it was about but I just I don't know I I think that TMNT as I know they're called it's like almost like a micro generational thing where it's like if you're born

one or two years outside of the target audience, you just missed it. Because they kind of, I know that they like, they still very much exist. It feels like as like everyone knows who they are. But I don't have any experience of like personality. I don't know. I know who the turtles are. I know who April is. And that was sort of all.

So going into this movie was a treat. I do think I saw the megan fox one in theaters and then blacked it out uh because as it seems like most fans of the franchise did not a slight to megan fox at all because she has only been done to services in this lifetime anyways yeah so i hadn't had much experience with the franchise but i always like liked them in theory i was like i don't think i have anything against these guys they seem i know they like pizza i like pizza i know they have the names of classical artists still haven't really cracked that don't really understand it but uh i'm on board i'm ready to learn and this movie was first of all a hoot and a romp there's a lot

to discuss which we will yes but it was a hoot and a romp. There's a lot to discuss, which we will. But it was a hoot and a romp, and it was mercifully 88 minutes long. And it's actually 81 minutes with the credits. And I just love when movies are that length. Caitlin, what's your history with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? I love these little turtles. Specifically this movie. They're big, Caitlin. They're not little at all they're they're too big you're right I love these large turtles specifically this movie because we were trying to figure out which turtles movie to cover and I was like I know this is the

sequel but I want to talk about this one I don't want to talk about the first or the third or really any other installments in the franchise because this is a movie I've seen probably like 50 times like it was just like on a loop in my house as a kid I played with turtles toy like the action figures as a kid I had like the regular ones. I had the astronaut ones. I don't remember when or if they go to space at any point. There's astronaut ones? But I had astronaut turtle figurines. And then a few years ago, because my fandom has like, I guess just always stuck with me. And a few years ago, I had, I wrote a sketch called Sex and the sewer this I've seen many times thank you so much Jamie uh it's a combination of ninja turtles and sex in the city where I mapped each of the four turtles onto each of the four main sex in the city characters and I have them just out for a pizza

cocktail chatting about their horny turtle sex lives it is my magnum opus, and I'll post it on, you know, our Twitter or whatever. It's on YouTube if you search Sex and the Sewer. I was recently introduced to it. It is hilarious. I loved every second of it. Comedy genius. Thank you so much. It is a classic of the genre, and I will stand by that until the day I die.

Thank you very much. And speaking of cowabunga, it obviously makes an appearance in reference to bung being another name for like butt or anus. Why are you saying anus right now? I'm sorry. This is a family show um i i i feel no need to defend myself i'll say anus again oh my god anyway anyway bung cowabunga a hilarious joke one of many in sex in the sewer anyway i love this movie 10 out of 10 on the rompometer oh yeah there are many things to talk about it's got some problems i did not see the vanilla ice oh my god ever coming imagine not knowing that was coming and

the shock you feel when it starts i simply cannot imagine imagine. It was it was it felt really good. I woke right up. I watched it pretty early in the morning. And then all of a sudden, it was wide awake. Amazing. I'm pretty sure that my mother has home video footage of me performing that song in front of the television with Vanilla Ice. Oh oh that's so sweet in college my best friend and i learned the dance that the turtles do to vanilla ice's ninja rap and we rehearsed it and we practiced it and we sometimes would do it at parties so is there video evidence of that? Because I would love to see it. Unfortunately, no. Drop the footage. There's not.

But I'll relearn it. It would also settle for you doing it now. Yeah. It's like, let's just learn it. Yeah. We're already, the day we're recording this, we're already working on our magic mic choreography. So we might as well just throw another number into rehearsal. Exactly.

All right. So should I just get into the recap and we'll go from there let's do it okay so again this movie is a sequel it is the second installment in the original live action trilogy so i'll just give a really quick recap of the first movie from 1990 where we meet the four turtles leonardo donatello michelangelo and rafael as well as their mentor father figure a giant rat named splinter we learn about their backstory they had come into contact with radioactive ooze from a canister as baby animals 15 years prior, which made them human-sized, and it made them able to talk and have complex thoughts and feelings. And in the case of the reboot movies, the Megan Fox movies, it made them some of the scariest looking computer-generated characters ever committed to film. Yeah. and i also think it changed those movies

changed their backstory it made them like aliens or something am i i haven't seen them but i remember that being there was a lot of outcry about that remember when we had time to be upset about things like that okay so splinter taught the turtles ninjutsu and then throughout the movie they eat pizza they rescue and befriend news reporter april o'neill they fight the bad guys who are the foot clan and their leader shredder the turtles win And it seems like they've defeated and killed Shredder at the end of the movie. So Secret of the Ooze picks up basically right after that. We open on shots of New York City. Ever heard of it? Where everyone is eating pizza. We meet Kino, played by Ernie Reyes Jr. He's a pizza delivery guy who heads out to deliver an order for April O'Neil.

But not before body shaming a girl before jumping on his... You're just like, whoa! Unfortunately, it doesn't generally stay at that vibration for the whole movie, but it was a wild first dialogue exchange. Yeah, for sure. So he's out to deliver this pizza but on the way he discovers a bunch of criminals stealing electronics he fights them because he also has martial arts training but there are too many of these criminals but don't worry the teenage mutant ninja turtles show up and save the day the turtles head back to april o'neill's

apartment we see her on screen for the first time she's played by page turco in this movie she's also yeah she's played by a different person than the last movie correct i could not find out why she got recast i found i found something there okay all right basically it was the director of the previous movie i don't know if the first and second movies are directed by the same person but i think it's different people they basically claimed that uh she was difficult uh says turco replaced judith hoag for this film and the fall uh and the following film according to hoag she was not approached to reprise the role because the producers thought she complained too much during the first movie oh so um yeah women be getting labeled as difficult and uh losing jobs so what a thrilling tale never heard that one

before so this April is played by Paige Turco. They go to her apartment where the turtles and Splinter are staying because they can't go back to the sewer right now because the foot knows where they live. Then we cut to a landfill. Shredder survived. Then we cut to a junkyard where what's left of the foot clan regroups. We see Shredder's right hand man tatsu he's throwing a fit but then shredder shows up played by francois chow he shows up he's hungry

for revenge and he wants to find and destroy the turtles yeah then we meet professor Jordan Perry, played by David Warner, a.k.a. Lovejoy from Titanic. I know! I was so thrilled. Yep. I don't think I, once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. I don't know if I would have gotten there on my own. So because I saw this movie a bazillion times before Titanic came out, when Titanic came out, I was like, oh my god, it's the professor from Secret of the Ooze. Wow, the director of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 would be so thrilled to hear that, I'm sure. Okay, so the professor is helping with cleanup of toxic chemicals from a company called TGRI. April interviews him for the news.

She's suspicious. She senses something is going on with TGRI, especially because this toxic waste seems to be mutating things nearby, like we see these huge mutated dandelions. And Shredder gets wind of this toxic waste and wonders if he might be able to use it against his enemies. Meanwhile,

Splinter reveals that the radioactive material that mutated the turtles when they were babies was the same toxic waste from TGRI. So it's all connected. So the turtles go to TGRI to investigate, but the foot also shows up and steals the one remaining canister of ooze, which is what everyone calls it. I love the deus ex ooze situations in this movie. Sometimes you're just like, what's happening? And then you're like, okay, the ooze is back. I'm assuming that things are back on track. As long as you can keep your eye on the ooze you can sort of

figure out what's going on the ooze is kind of the like connective glue so to speak that really holds this movie together classic ooze so they've also kidnapped the professor the foot has, who Shredder forces to administer the ooze to a couple of dangerous creatures, but we don't know what exactly. We have yet to get a big reveal. Then Kino shows back up to April O'Neill's place because he had seen the turtles in that first sequence and he's like, what's going on? What are these turtles all about so he wants more information he discovers them there he tells them that the foot clan is recruiting especially teenagers with martial arts experience and he's like oh if i get recruited we can like find their headquarters and then take them down but splinter is's like, no, that's too dangerous. Then the turtles go back to the sewer

to try to find a spot to live. They find an abandoned subway station. But Raphael is pissed, I think because they're like not doing anything to try to get the ooze back from the foot. So he storms off. He does this a lot because he also does this in the first movie.

Oh, does he? Okay, that's good to know. I do appreciate how this very New York movie, even when you're in the world of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it's so elevated. It's still really hard to find an apartment. Right? Like that's a level of realism I wasn't anticipating. Okay. Right? Like that's a level of realism I wasn't anticipating. Mm-hmm. Okay.

So meanwhile, the creatures that the professor had mutated are ready for their big debut. It is a giant mutant wolf and snapping turtle, Toca and Rezar. I love them. They're great. They're amazing. They're like, mama. Right. Because they're great they're amazing they're like mama right because they're babies they're babies they're babies i used to scream that around my house as a kid all the time it's so funny it's so funny and sweet and i feel like it without trying to accidentally comments

on the born sexy yesterday trope where it's like something that comes out that's supposed to be very fully formed and then it's like goo goo gaga you're like oh yeah it's a baby that's how that would work right yeah so they're not very cognitively developed but they are strong and still dangerous so keno who has linked up with Raphael, gets recruited into the foot so that Kino can learn their secrets and double cross them. But then the foot clan kidnaps Raphael. So the other turtles go to the junkyard to rescue him, but Shredder springs a trap. There's a big fight. Shredder unleashes Toca and Rezar, and the turtles are no match for them. So they run away, and they bring the professor with them, who gets to work on developing an antidote to unmutate Toca and Rezar, which the professor reveals those animals will have to ingest. So the turtles have the idea to put the antidote into donuts and feed those to Toca and Rezar.

So that night, the turtles go back to the junkyard for the big fight. There's so many fights in this movie. It's very exciting. Truly. They feed the donuts to Toca and Rezar, but another fight breaks out. And as they're fighting, they crash into a nightclub where Vanilla Ice is performing. Woohoo! Which in 1992 New York, that also is very possible.

True. So Vanilla Ice is, you know, know rapping whatever it is they do right and then everyone at the club is watching this fight happen so then vanilla ice improvises one of the best songs of all time ninja rap and then at one point the turtles burst out into a choreographed dance which i later learned and performed as well who could blame you but then shredder bursts in he drinks a vial of ooze which not only makes him bigger and stronger but it also mutates his outfit and makes it spikier. I liked that. Yeah, it's really good.

There's so many things about this movie that as a kid, I did not question for a second. And then as an adult, I'm like, why did the ooze mutate his spikes? I don't know. His outfit. I mean, it stands to reason. I honestly didn't ask that question and i'm almost 30 years old so okay so the turtles are trying to fight super shredder which i also had a toy of

as a kid brag they're on a dock now and super shredder is just like tearing everything down around him and he ends up getting crushed when the whole thing collapses but the turtles avoid getting crushed because they are like we're turtles we can jump in the water then the movie ends with the turtles back at their new home and splinter says go ninja go ninja go and then freeze frame and the movie's over after 81 minutes on a half a flip incredible every movie should do this yes including the freeze frame on a mid-flip that is how the robert pattinson batman movie should have ended uh go batman go batman go flip directed by matt i don't know who knows his last name could be anything matt the movie doubt should have ended no not the movie no meryl's trip to doing apple

flip freeze frame go sister aloesius go sister aloesius go flip oh my god oh we haven't brought up doubt in a while yeah it's I I've found that it tends to bring down the mood of any discussion that we're having wow but I would love to see Meryl do a flip as sister Aloysius but only as sister Aloysius I'm not interested in it yeah in any other character of hers. Actually, maybe, maybe what's her name? The devil who wore Prada. I would love to. Miranda Priestly.

Yeah, yeah. I'll allow it. I thought it was a very satisfying ending. Yes. 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,

a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is La Plática like you've never heard it before. We're breaking the stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between Latinas from Gen X to Gen Z. We're covering everything from body image to representation in film and television.

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Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Where should we begin? Well, I'll let you guys steer oh my gosh carlos does anything jump out to you as a good place to start as the resident phd haver i feel so i feel so inadequate next to you but with only my measly master's degree um

i'm gonna be like you be like i have a phd i don't like to bring it up yeah yeah um i think just talking quickly about um some of the parallels between the the first movie and the second movie um because as you were giving the recap i realized that rafael is in trouble in both movies so he goes out by himself gets beat up and left for dead in the first one and then ends up getting kidnapped and tied to a big pole in this one yeah it's like sir can you learn your lesson and not go out by yourself honestly i wrote down for when the way that rafael he looks like kirsten dunst in the spider web at the peak of Spider-Man 2 where it's just like well I guess he's not going to be allowed to participate in this

this scrap it was fun but then he is because then he's unlike a turtle and yeah not a damseled woman um but on that line of thinking yeah because a lot of the notes I have as they relate to April O'Neill's character, a lot of it is how her character is treated in the first movie versus the second one. So for anyone who hasn't seen the first movie, here are a few things of note that happen in relation to her character. So the first Ninja Turtles movie that came out like one year prior to this one, it makes April have to be rescued at least twice by the turtles. So it damsels her and then she has to be rescued twice.

During at least one of these rescues, she is hit in the face by some members of the foot clan multiple times so she is assaulted quite a bit uh the movie also puts her in a romance with casey jones which i think is like canon to the comics which i never really read but i did watch the animated series as a kid although i don't remember it at all i did a little bit of research on it and it seems like she's uh treated much the same like i think particularly bad in the comp in the original comics where she's like really like drawn exploitatively and like just someone that people say plot to. And then it sounds like the animated series attempted to give her a

character, but maybe not very well. Yeah. So the first movie includes the Casey Jones character. They are put into a like romantic, like a flirtation slash romantic tension. And eventually they kiss at the end he is a jerk to her the whole time and then there's also some like not very appropriate for

a kid's movie stuff that happens where he gives her a very horny massage at one point where he is first like shoves her down in a chair in a pretty violent way and then he starts to give her a massage in which he is almost like touching her breasts and it's just like why is this happening in this pg movie so basically in this first movie she's damseled battered and treated poorly by her love interest i hate how in the second movie they deal with that by being like um let's just not have her be in it that much question mark then we can't do anything fucked up to her yeah so in secret of the ooze april doesn't have to be rescued at any point some random lady does at the vanilla ice concert but right who was

that that was just a random lady who loved ninja rap and that's that's also i mean not that this excuses it but that's like a very brief moment it's not like a super like plot like none of the plot really revolves around that no it's just to the point where it was weird that it was included at all i was like right damseling someone we don't know for 30 seconds and then having it be completely fine and then she also does put a button on the scene by passing out again because women be fainting women be fainting but to be fair kino faints at one point in the movie so they are giving um equal opportunity painting right um so april does not have to be rescued she's not wedged into a relationship with an asshole or anyone which also reduces the ways in which she was like over sexualized in the first

movie so we're not really seeing any of that in this sequel. So like you said, Jamie, she just like, isn't given a lot to do. I would say her involvement in the story isn't zero because she is investigating TGRI, but also nothing that she does in this movie has any real bearing on the

plot. I was going to say, I think you could take her. I mean, I know you can't canonically take her out of the franchise, but you could take her out of this plot and not much would change, which I feel like is such a bizarre, like, I mean, I guess moment in feminism in, like, one particular way where it's like, I don't know, like that whole third wave thing of like,

well, you can't be mad at us because we gave her a job and it's like well but the job she's doing doesn't have any bearing on what's happening or any decision she makes at all right and and most of the time in her job I was like a little frustrated to see that almost every piece of information she makes she kind of encounters by mistake like we don't get to see her do a lot of information she makes she kind of encounters by mistake like we don't get to see her do a lot of investigating it's she encounters the plot information she needs by accident and then she's like i knew it and you can tell that like in the early 90s this was like feminism she has a job and there's another little glimpse of that when her boss is like, it's ratings week.

Drop this TGRI story. Do something really interesting. And then he like hands her a piece of paper and she's like, oh, swimsuits of the 90s. And he's like, yeah, I find that really interesting. And like her reaction, we're supposed to be like, yeah, she doesn't care about, you know, women in swimsuits. She cares about this hard hitting journalism she's doing. But it's like, which is like, she's not doing that. Right.

But then let her do the hard hitting journalism. Right. She could have easily been with Jerry, question mark, her like assistant cameraman, assistant person when he finds the dandelion. Right. Like she could have easily snuck in with him or it been her by herself and then she tells jerry and then he tells shredder like that could have been a moment for her to be more active in the story totally totally it felt like she it's

interesting to know that there was all this shoehorned in love interest stuff in the first movie because it felt like in lieu of that they they were just like, well, we're just not going to have her around as much when it's like, instead of finding ways to meaningfully include her in the plot when it sounds like canonically, she's a great character to have there because she's theoretically an investigator. Bizarre, right? And on the tail of the first one, she's now the highest paid investigative reporter in New York City to afford a two level apartment after days of her old apartment burning down. And it's like, too bad for New York City because this lady isn't investigating a damn thing she's she does yell at the chief of police a lot and i do appreciate that this movie and the first one i did not go back and re-watch the third movie because it um sucks but yeah uh these two movies present cops in a way that shows them as being like severely incompetent and never handling

things properly to the point where april says to the police chief like yes she's like i guess you're not the ones who are going to handle this right after like there's a scene where toka and reza are like wreak havoc on the city and the police chief is just like that's what we do best not handle things and we're like that's pretty cool for a 90s movie i like that and i also liked i'm i have a question for the two experts in the room i like how the turtles have this like story that's connected to environmental disaster and that this movie also kind of like the ooze is like this vaguely environmental story is that something that happens on the show a lot because i thought that that was really cool i actually don't know it's been

such a long time since i've watched the shows um i feel like it was part of that trend in the early 90s where it's like captain planet, the Power Rangers, the Turtles. Everyone had the environment and being environmentally conscious on their radar. But I'm not sure how deeply it goes in Turtles canon. Yeah. And then they forgot. I'm curious because I know that this franchise is being rebooted again again by, I think, Seth Rogen. Yeah, that's what i heard and i i would be surprised if that didn't come into the new story because it's like they lend themselves very well to an

environmental crisis story that hopefully isn't too depressing right because their whole origin is we came in contact with toxic waste. But that was actually a good thing because they turned into these awesome crime fighting martial arts experts. Yeah, it's going to be a very like, don't worry, guys. Everything's going to actually be awesome when the environment collapses. Yeah, we'll just all turn into these amazing superheroes. Yeah, pizza'll just all turn into these amazing superheroes. Yeah, pizza-eating turtles. Another thing about April, even though this movie doesn't foist a romantic relationship on her,

the turtles all have a crush on April, especially Michelangelo, or at least he's the most vocal about it and i just got to think like what if you were a grown adult human woman and there are these four horny teenagers that all have a big crush on you and then they're all also mutant turtles see that's where you lose me i just it's a it's a weird choice i think but wild but it also feels so of the era yeah to do that yes it's also interesting because i watched the first one and the second one pretty close back to back to prep for this episode i also watched the third one which choices but there's a scene when um master splinter is kidnapped in the first movie where they come to her door crying and so it's very much like you are the only adult we can turn to while also still having this sort of hyper sexuality it's like we want to bone you but

you're also kind of a mother figure in the first one right i couldn't tell. I settled on big sister because I'm like, is she mommy? It made me feel better to think of her as big sister. Sorry, can we just pause for a second? Sunny just got here. Yeah. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist

who on October 16th 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Señora Sex Ed is not your mommy sex talk. This show is la plática like you've never heard it before. We're breaking the stigma and silence around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between Latinas from Gen X to Gen Z. We're covering everything from body image to representation in film and television. We even interview iconic Latinas like Puerto Rican actress Ana Ortiz. I felt in control of my own physical body and my own self. I was on birth control. I had sort of had my first sexual experience.

If you're in your señora era or know someone who is, then this is the show for you. We're your hosts, Diosa and Mala, and you might recognize us from our flagship podcast, Locatora Radio. We're so excited for you to hear our brand new podcast, Señora Sex Ed. Listen to Señora Sex Ed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, let's return. Sunny might be running back and forth and there's not going to be a way around it. Right, so, yeah, she's not mommy really. Like, Splinter's definitely daddy. But she's not big sister because they all want to have sex with her. Maybe it's like a creepy babysitter kind of thing.

It's babysitter. That might be it. Yeah, because it's like she's not. Yeah, I agree that she's not exactly mommy, but she does take on this like caretaking role for them. Right. And she worries about them. But she's clearlytaking role for them. Right. And she worries about them. But she's clearly not like into them. Yeah.

Thank God. Yeah. She wants them out of her apartment. She's like, I'm the highest paid journalist in New York City. I'm trying to fuck. All these turtles and a rat are like living here. I love. Imagine her Bumble profile.

She's like, we can't go back to my place not that it isn't nice but i just have some things going on right now there might be four strange teenage boys in my apartment at all times right and they're like oh okay unmatch they're like wait no they're turtles like what that doesn't make it any less weird for the only woman in the movie to be the like caregiver slash person that they all have this like little you know like teen infatuation with and then for her to also not really be allowed to do anything narratively significant don't love it it sucks and it also i i just i definitely saw the first megan fox ninja turtles movie in theaters because fun fact or maybe it was how many teenage I saw the one that came out in like the late 2000s whatever one that was so there there are two there's one from 2014 and there's a sequel to it from 2016 both produced by Michael Bay okay what was the

one that came out in like 2007 2007 there was another one so i saw that one okay so there's a computer animated one called tmnt chris evans it's the chris evans teenage ninja turtle because i that was my cousin's first date and i was like her kid cousin and she's like you're gonna come with me oh you were a little chaperone yeah i was this i was a baby chaperone i was like no kissing while i watch that's adorable creepy anyways i guess all that to say i know that there are movies that treat april and neil much worse than this movie does well because and in the megan fox ones in particular which this one isn't this is the sarah michelle geller one apparently i don't remember i mean all that all that to say like In the Megan Fox ones in particular, which this one isn't. This is the Sarah Michelle Gellar one, apparently.

I don't remember. I mean, all that to say, like, Megan Fox was given the full-on Megan Fox treatment of how she was treated in every movie. Where her body was super exploited. Where she was, like, given love interests and just all this stuff and it's so frustrating in these franchises that all they need to do is involve more women or less guys that only have one idea because the the only it seems like the only alternative to treat april not horribly is to like reduce her presence which is so not true especially it's extra frustrating when it's like in the bones of the character for her to be very useful to any plot involving the teenage mutant ninja turtles i know she's got contacts she can make calls she's

probably got people who will tell her things off the record so she can like sneak around and get information it's like no we're just gonna have her chill in in nowhere right and i i don't know if like the the you know this property's logic is well she doesn't have martial arts training and therefore she can't participate in the action scenes but it's like well then that's all the more reason to give her other things to do right yeah there's so much surface world stuff she could be doing like dealing with the police she could be dealing with any of these business owners does no one have security cameras that she can like steal the footage and use in her reports like right because that's the other thing they have to like stay in the shadows because they're human-sized turtles

which i something okay another thing i really enjoyed about the movie is that they don't seem to be making much of an effort to hide in the shadows it's so funny like when they're there's a computer sequence that is so computers it made me laugh so much where they're like a computer and hey it's like and they're they're such they're so goofy yeah but they're like theoretically they snuck in there and they're screaming they're so loud and they're they're such they're so goofy yeah but they're like theoretically they snuck in there and they're screaming they're so loud and they're huge turtles and they just are making no effort to conceal themselves which is sort of what is being said to them at the end of the movie where they're like yeah we're so discreet like i just it's so funny yeah and then splinter's like he holds up the what made the

newspaper a photo of them dancing to ninja rap and he's like try harder okay you're telling me that would be front page news if four human-sized turtles started dancing in public and then like almost killed people that would be front page news correct that's a documentary yes right the thing that was jarring watching them back to back is in the first one when her boss and his son come over they hide so well yes for the most part one of them is caught under the table but then is immediately gone to watch this right after. Why is your foot there for Kino to step on? Like, you lost all of your ninja skills. So they can do it. But sometimes they because he's like, something's going on. I saw these turtles and I want to know more about it.

He shows up. He shows up under the guise of like, I've brought you a pizza. And she's like, well, I didn't order a pizza. And he's like, that's OK. I'll just come in. So he comes in uninvited. He's like, what are these doing here? Referring to the nunchucks.

And then rather than April being like, who are you? Please get out of my house. You're trespassing. What's it to you? What these nunchucks are doing here? She can sense he's an important side character in the film. So she doesn't kick him out. But she's like just being really defensive about like,

these are my nunchucks. Look at me practicing them. And it's just like, you can, you can just tell this stranger who's intruding onto your property to leave. Like in another movie, that is the setup for a horror, a lifetime movie.

That's the beginning of funny games. Like when you just let a stranger into your home and then keno's holding her hostage and it's the scariest thing i've ever seen yeah god i don't know why i just conjured that movie it's so scary i'm impressed yeah that was a choice sorry on the tail end of the first movie because this is days later like shredder is in the garbage at the end of the first one he's found in the dump like a day maybe two days later like she should be very reticent and fearful of random people coming to her door trying to find her like right her house was just burned down and her dad's shop and she got i know we're talking about the second one we are talking about the second no but she like in the first movie she's like her dad was shot no he had a shop and it was burned

down she had to open for him that's still pretty bad but yeah and the first one she's assaulted by the foot and then later kidnapped or i forget exactly all what happens but like she like multiple times she's in these dangerous situations and then yeah in this in this one she's just like uh come on in pizza guy these are my nunchucks and show yourself around it's totally fine so yeah that was um bizarre i guess it would make sense if you had four ninja turtles in your apartment maybe you wouldn't be scared of one dude at the door maybe right but even i'm just still like no like self-preservation where is it that's why it's like i feel like april is like treated like such a plot character that in moments like that where

it's like well she just needs to behave however the plot needs her to behave in order for this movie to be 81 minutes long where it's like we've got minutes to play around with she doesn't have to be thrilled about this right it's frustrating i was interested to learn about the the actor who plays keno i i wasn't familiar with him but apparently i'm very familiar with his work because he's like a famous stunt performer who's been doing stunts since he was a child so he was donatello's stuntman in the first tmnt and then he was just upgraded to human character in the second one which is kind of fun and then he's done a he did stunt work in avatar he did stunt work in tim burton alice in wonderland

like he's just he's kind of a legend he hosted a reality show on mtv in 2009 who didn't what it was it was about stuntmen it wasn't about it wasn't totally random but like he's just been in goddamn everything he was in the really bad shia labeouf indiana jones you know i just was so thrilled to to learn about learn about him if nothing else keno's character is a little all over the place yeah although i did like that he was given a fully realized arc i wish apr April had had a similar treatment by the movie. Sure. It'd be nice. Also, when I watched this movie

for the first time to prep for this episode, I watched it with friend of the cast, Sammy Junio. Sammy! And I was also talking about this movie with another friend, and they both said the exact same thing, which is that Kino in this movie again played by Ernie Reyes Jr. along with Rufio from the movie Hook played by Dante Basco are the only two

examples of Filipino representation they saw in kids media or just like media in general growing up so like yeah that is um that's so bleak and also i'm very glad that ernie reyes jr is in this part which might be a smooth transition to another topic of conversation which is the representation of asian people and culture in this movie. Cool. Where to begin? Well, so the two main bad guys who have names and are in leadership positions, Shredder and his second-in-command, Tatsu, are canonically Japanese characters.

Like in the comics, and they get some more backs, especially Shredder gets backstory in the first movie. He's from Japan. So there's that. There are aspects of Japanese culture attributed to the good guys in that the turtles study and practice ninjutsu. Splinter grew up in japan also splinter speaks with a japanese accent although i believe that he's voiced by an american puppeteer yes and a

very controversial one at that right and then also these characters the turtles and splinter are not visually japanese human beings because they're turtles and a rat right and yes you said jamie the actor who voices splinter is a black actor named kevin clash who is also the voice actor and puppeteer of elmo i don't know any other information about him so if you have i can give you a very it's a very uh difficult uh story but basically he yeah he he was a famous puppeteer one of the most prominent black puppeteers in the world he was elmo for a long time and um then was made to resign as Elmo because there were a lot of allegations of him having sex with underage teenagers and so yep uh there's there's a lot it was a huge story 10 years ago and I feel like no one really talks about it anymore he has since begun working again. There's been a lot of conversation around the topic that I have not kept up with. But definitely a massive fall from grace from a very well-respected puppeteer.

As far as it's relevant to this conversation, he's not an Asian actor putting on a very very stereotypical you know tropey accent correct is this do we know if splinter also Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are canonically written by two white guys from New England are they not yes so the sore the well is poisoned from the very beginning uh don't let two white guys from new england do literally anything how has history taught us nothing like why would you wall burgers like are you kidding me bad idea never do it um but yes no i will i will uh caitlin i'll send you some links to okay the conversation around kevin clash because i am not an authority in it but i do remember that uh splinter it was a splinter canonically based on mr miyagi that was what i was picking up on but i also don't know like the timeline of that because the same

tropes are present in that character it feels like right karate kid came out in 84. And the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the comic, because that was like the source material, the original source of everything, also was published in. Oh, my gosh. Carlos is holding up. You have it? The issue. Wow. It was also published in 84. So I think it's just sort of like similar similar concepts happening at the exact same time not one

based on the other i would guess but so two white guys doing the same offensive thing in the same calendar year shocking so in conclusion most of the east asian human again, because you have to differentiate that from like the rat, the people, the Japanese characters are bad guys. And in addition to that, there's just a lot of stereotypes of East Asian and Japanese culture specifically being used. There's also that sort of like all East Asian people know martial arts is something that's being telegraphed right and then i feel like the turtles are coded white especially in contrast to the very stereotypical asian villains so are they they're all voiced by white actors is that correct i was having trouble fact checking i think that for the most part that is true and then there's also some differentiation in who

was voice acting some of the characters from the first movie to the second one i think two of the voice actors got recast in secret of the ooze i oh wait brian tochi though brian tochi voices leonardo and i believe he is japanese right okay so imdb is tricky because it's like this actor as leonardo but like in the suit and then it's this different actor as leonardo voice. So it's like, I'm trying to figure out all this. I was just thinking voice because that is how their personalities are telegraphed. Right. No disrespect to the suit performers. I would not want to do that job.

Yeah. The voice actors are primarily white and... With the exception, I believe, of Brian Tocci, who voices Leonardo. Right. And Kevin Clash, who is a black actor, but doing an offensive Asian accent. My head hurts. So there's a lot going on. The movie stereotypes and demonizes Asian people in a very harmful way it's borrowing elements from japanese

culture like ninjutsu and basically saying like when the white-coated characters do it it's good and it saves the day but when the japanese characters do this thing from their own culture it's bad so there's a lot of fuckery happening there yeah and they're sort of bringing in lots of white youth to be the foot clan and so across both movies a lot of the foot are drawn from um runaways in new york city and so one would expect there to be more diversity, especially along gender lines in the foot, given that a good number of runaways are girls. They're across all races, all sexualities, but it is a very kind of prototypical, largely white mass. And so you've got these Asian bad guys seducing these young white kids into lives of crime and deviance in both movies more clearly set up in the first one. But the sort of trails are well established in the second one. TMNT was certainly not happening in a void where I feel like American culture in general was very permissive and actively encouraging these sorts of huge glossed over generalizations about East Asian culture to happen throughout the 80s and 90s and into now.

But I feel like it was especially popular around this time and largely written, directed and acted by white guys. Yeah. I also, I don't even know how I feel. Toca and Rezar, I mean, they're just, they're babies, but they're voiced by the guy who did Scooby-Doo, which I was like, okay. I just love, I hope, I don't know anything about his politics

or anything like that, but I just love I I hope I I don't know anything about his politics or anything like that but I just love uh Frank Welker who's like still alive he's in his 70s like started doing I think we've talked about him on the show before because he's the voice of literally everything famous ever he started doing voices when he was like in his early 20s and he's been every famous cartoon character that isn't played by like Tom Kenny you know like he's he's literally scooby-doo anyways he's garfield the question he's megatron where's our scooby-doo episode he's everyone he's sorry okay sorry i just my frank walker fandom no popped out and to find out he's also toka and rezar i mean he's the alfred bolina of the vocal cords so versatile so versatile he can be dogs and alligators

he's a snapping turtle and a wolf the range the range okay so another thing along these lines is the april o'neill character and there's some controversy around this because of some kind of ambiguity but she is thought by many to have originally been in the comics a black woman oh which is something that is difficult to discern because the interiors of the comic books are black and white but on the cover of i think like the 11th issue of the comic depicts april o'neill as a light-skinned woman of color with black curly hair. But then when that issue was reprinted later, she then appears as a white woman with red hair. So people were like, this character is being whitewashed. Because this happened in 86 when this was reprinted, I believe. So when asked about this by the co-creators, Kevin Eastman said that April was, quote, originally created as an Asian character in Pete's Notes,

referring to Peter Laird, the other creator. So originally created as an Asian character in Pete's Notes, but named after an African-American woman I once knew. And then Peter Laird says, it depends on which co-creator of the TMNT you ask. If you ask me, I always saw April O'Neill as white. If you ask Kevin, I suspect he would say, as he has in a number of interviews,

that she was of mixed race, much like his former girlfriend april so hey less oh wow okay okay so we have so carlos is showing us an image from what is this from exactly so this is from a colorized version um of the graphic novel that compiled the original issues together in color. Okay. So I can post this and give you the information. Yeah, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, book two, first graphic novel number 10, copyright 1987 Mirage Comics.

So the originals were like this, and then they did a colored issue, full color deluxe format. The graphic novel became an instant bestseller. Got it. So the image you just showed us depicts April O'Neil as a light-skinned Black woman. But then if you look at the first, so each version of her is different. So she looks more kind of like the character from this movie that we're discussing here. Also sort of mixed. And then you have her again, looking again, very different, but more sort of the image of April O'Neil that we've come to sort of know and expect.

Yes. Okay. expect yes okay so i i don't know much about the history of teenage mutant ninja turtles but i do know quite a bit about the history of uh women in comics and this is something that comes up again and again and again in the history of comics of characters that were originally black women later being whitewashed once the franchise becomes popular. I believe a similar thing happened to Betty Boop way back in the day. And this is and I think in the case of Betty Boop and April O'Neil, it's a little complicated by the fact that the character from the jump was heavily sexualized, which is something that affects women of color in all areas, but certainly in animation as well.

And April O'Neil and Betty Boop are two heavily sexualized and eventually whitewashed characters. It's just so frustrating. And who is at the top of those comics? It's always white guys. White men. So it's really just continued frustrating pattern. I didn't realize that it happened in this case as well.

And then, you know, of course, in this era and in all eras before, when black women were working in animation, they were underpaid, unacknowledged or never hired. And then as it pertains to right now know, black women who were very successful in animation are completely erased from its history, and you don't learn that much about them. Sorry, that was a little AC cast side rant. But if anyone wants to learn about an amazing historical, and by that, I mean, she she's dead uh an amazing black woman who blazed so many trails in cartooning jackie orms is so awesome cool and i recommend everyone learn more about her that's so frustrating i didn't know that now i'm all pissed off yeah that is something and of course in this movie she is a white character played by a white actor and I think I would guess and Carlos you might you probably know

more about this than me but after that maybe like first string of issues in the comics she was only depicted as a white woman from then on like in the animated series i don't know if she was ever made into an action figure i don't remember having an april o'neill action figure but like much the same way that when like the newest star wars trilogy came out and like ray was the protagonist of those movies and like those toy companies were like well why would we have an action figure of ray because and like those toy companies were like well why would we have an action figure of Ray because she's a woman you know like right again I'm kind of speculating here but like I don't know if there were April action figures all this to say that

most of the renditions of her post those like kind of original string of issues of the comic depict her as a white woman and I would say that the turtles are also again i think perceived as like white coded characters even though they're turtles because i think in at least of the um feature films post this trilogy all of the voice actors who voice the turtle characters are all white actors cementing that kind of coding well and it's another i am saying that there were some april action figures but i think that that's like again further complicated by the fact that she's by the way her character is written she's not included in the action so it's like oh well why would we make an action figure for someone who is canonically excluded from all action it's and and also the like the i don't know the the trope

of like the sexy woman journalist felt felt also very prevalent during this time and in animation in particular where again it's just like such a it's not even a half step it's a whatever two percent step because it's like well but she has a job you know she's not married but it's like but she's not there to do journalism you know like she's not there to do what you're saying she's there to do and so oh pee pee poooo. I'm pretty sure the cartoon up until maybe this movie a little bit and the revivals with the cartoons on Nickelodeon, I think most people, when they think April O'Neil, they think the yellow jumpsuit from her from the cartoon in 87,

which white women, that's where a lot of the action figures sort of began was based off of the show so there's like the the the van they had and all of them with their their tools and toys i'm not sure how much she was involved in the show because i don't it's been right 30 years i know i don't remember it either it's been 84 years 84. And I can still hear the original commercials. So it's definitely ingrained that like, she's a redhead. She wears the yellow jacket, which is why I think some people were reticent with, aside from like the sexism that we love to throw at Megan Fox then and now to a certain degree, was just like, oh, she's not the right fit for the character.

I'm like, she can be a badass and do badass things. Why? Why is she not a good fit? Can she stand in front of a mic and talk into it? Yeah, I think she could do the job, especially given the material that she's given to work with. In this film, I don't remember the recent one to comment. Were people saying like Megan Fox is like too sexy for the April?

Okay. Which is like, oh my God, the standards. But it's also saying it in the way that it's like, I went back to read some of the coverage from 2014 and it made me want to be, I was just like, oh my God,

this is like not even 10 years ago. And this, you could just write, you could just write this down. Yeah. The tone of all of that reporting was very like you know making it seem like it was megan fox's fault that she was framed and written in the way that she was when it's like megan fox by all accounts was really into

teenage mutant ninja turtles and really liked like nerdy stuff liked transformers and it's like yeah so she's she's coming to the project from an honest place. And it's the fucking culture that treats her the way it does. But all of the 2014 coverage was like, Megan Fox ruins this movie. And she was nominated for Razzies. And just all that shit that is just like,

she was doing all she could with what she was given. And anytime she said anything about it, she would get fired. Like Steven Spielberg fired her for insulting Michael Bay, the most insultable person of all time. It's just, ay-yi-yi. Well, that is terrible. Does anyone have any other thoughts about the movie? I want a spinoff series for April O'Neil where she can really get into the New York City.

I want a version that is like April O'Neil with the turtles as her like investigative assistants and they're busting shit wide open and she's delegating to them and she's training them to be turtle journalists. Turtleists. Turtleists. And they solve the environmental crisis and save the world. That's the rearranged pieces I want from this. Oh my goodness.

I mean, you know there's corruption in the police department in city hall that is ripe ripe for the picking right with the turtles and their access the turtles can yeah they can break into anything they can get her the information she needs and then she she cracks it wide open and the nypd is abolished right and that's how it ends i love this yes they're defunded completely they have so much fucking money i know that's not what we're talking about billions of dollars so much money too much money it's not when april's on the case um one last question which turtle do you most identify with carlos you you start i was hoping this would be a question because I was like hmm who do I think

Caitlin and Jamie are and I was like and who am I yeah who do you think you are as a teenager I was definitely Raphael I had a lot of anger issues that I had to process and work through um I'm better now therapy I recommend it to my students I'm like you should go to therapy it's good for you um probably Leonardo with like a bit of Donatello because um I do have a PhD um and he's like become the nerd element of the turtles um so yes yeah yeah so probably a bit of leo a bit of donatello jamie any thoughts i have no idea uh you guys are you guys are gonna have to tell me which one okay oh part of me wants to say michelangelo yes but i also identify with michelangelo because he makes a lot of movie references and he loves movies.

But then there's also Raphael. I don't know. I love his hard shell, if you will, his hardened exterior. You know, he's got an attitude problem, but I kind of admire it. So I don't know. Maybe I'm Raphael and Jamie, you're Michelangelo. Okay. I'm on a medium.com article I have not vetted but they're saying that Michelangelo is Ringo Starr which is always what I'm going for love that well I did a lot of uh I had to think very carefully about

yes which character mapped on to which sex in the city character um carrie is leonardo because they're both like the leaders of the group who's a question mark rafael is miranda michelangelo is samantha because they're both the horniest ones and then charlotte is donatello because they're kind of i don't know what is charlotte's personality besides being boring the george no offense that's wow okay we don't have time we don't have time charlotte's complicated i was definitely gonna give um Michelangelo to both of you a bit but um I was also gonna have Donatello get a little bit to Jamie because the research that went into My Year in Mensa, Atcast, Lolita Podcast just like the journalistic brain and just like Jamie's context corner is

always on point like um sort of very intellectual in a really fun way uh sort of the michelangelo of it and then i was gonna say leonardo for you because you're sort of like the leader you sort of in charge running the show for me yeah oh my gosh wow and you have shorter hair than me so it follows the rule of the baldest woman in charge baldest woman in charge. Baldest woman in charge. Wow. It's been a while since I've heard that one. I know. Unfortunately, you can't really apply it to this series because you need to have two women for the rule

to even come into operation. Yep. The baldest turtle is also not in charge because they're all equal amounts of bald. How many nipples does a turtle have? Turtle facts with Caitlin. The answer is zero because they're rept equal amounts of bold. How many nipples does a turtle have? Turtle facts with Caitlin. The answer is zero because they're reptiles. Oh.

I was once applying a single microsecond of thought that makes a lot of sense. Does this movie pass the vectal test? No, right? No. No. Hard no. There's no women for her to talk to talk to no except for that one woman at the

club who uh gets um kind of held hostage by shredder for two seconds and her neighbor who she doesn't talk to in the beginning because she's too busy being engaged with by her boyfriend husband and he like takes her keys to let her in the building it's like i think she would have gotten it together like she would have been fine right i feel like that's the only other woman in this story with a speaking role and she's only on screen for 30 seconds no name and she doesn't talk to april yeah definitely doesn't pass the bechdel test what about our nipple scale though zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens i would give this a half nipple yeah that feels right because it i guess, it treats the one woman in the entire story better than she was treated one year earlier in the first movie.

But it's not as though that improvement is very significant because it still does not give her really any narrative bearing on the plot. And she could just be replaced by her own apartment and because they really only that's bleak so that's a big bummer but i like her as a character the fact that she like stands up to the chief of police she stands up to her boss she stands up to her boss in the first movie too she's like not afraid to speak out and advocate for herself. And she's strong and empowered in that way. Unfortunately, it doesn't really have much impact on the larger narrative. But I think she is a character to be admired if you just isolate certain aspects of her character.

So that's cool but between like her very minimal actual involvement in the story and the way this movie demonizes and stereotypes japanese characters is despicable so half nipple and i'll give the nipple to toka and rezar when they get turned back into their little animals babies they're just babies they're babies wait no they get an honorable mention but my half nipple goes to ninja rap the song and dance oh that's fair ninja ninja rap and i'm like and you're telling me he improvised this if there's three words in the song uh because the scene goes on for a while that fight sequence goes on for like probably like six minutes or so and vanilla ice is singing the whole time and if you really pay attention he's just repeating the lyrics over and over again yeah yeah well i mean that's i mean that that was i think about where his skills tapped out yeah um so yeah half nipple vanilla ice is ninja

rap i'm also gonna go with a half nipple um for all the reasons you described gaitlin i mean and and it was really thank you both for giving me the context of the um origins of april the more i learn about this character the more i'm like this is a character that had so much potential and has never been seen through to that potential because it just the curse of the late 20th century and five trillion white guys being in control of how she's perceived but like on her face such a fascinating character that could have brought more diversity to the series and then they actively chose not to do it. Always really frustrating. The treatment of East Asian culture is so just atrocious and also very on par, it feels like,

with how East Asian culture was treated. I mean, I don't want to like, you can't even really specifically pull TMNT as especially bad. Like this was just how Western culture treated East Asian characters at this time. For sure. as especially bad like it this was just how western culture treated east asian characters at this time um for sure we didn't get a chance to talk about it but there was a great essay i read in sci-fi wire that came out i believe just last year by a writer named ariel dean who talked about like tmnt being kind of as close as they could find to East Asian representation when they were growing up in the 90s and how frustrating that was, but also how it formed a strong connection with the characters and how that, you know, it's a pop culture is a motherfucker.

It's very complicated and weird. And then you have the babies and I'm laughing and then you have they do flips and I'm laughing. And so it's hard. But as far as our scale goes, half nipple for April being there and not being completely abused by the movie, but only because she's not in it. So half a nipple and i will give it to frank welker all right scooby-dooey-doo scooby-doo carlos what about you oh this is tough i was like on the caitlin's romp-o-meter i know i'm gonna give it 10 stars like i know that yeah but the nipple scale the nipple scale is hard i mean story of our lives we can't give this film credit for the april o'neill character but i know in like the cartoons and in other iterations more currently she is often aged

down so she's like a teenager um sort of still doing investigative stuff and is more active, at least in the Nickelodeon show. So the character is treated better in other properties under this sort of umbrella, which is great. But we cannot give this movie credit for that. Like you said, with East Asian representations, not great. Like the whole 90ss I was thinking about Power Rangers a lot during our conversation today I'm sort of doing similar things sort of just copy pasting and then recasting mostly white characters and actors and mostly white city sort of that piece the fathers and sons of it all I I was waiting for. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. We didn't even talk about that.

But wait a minute. There's the whole. Splinter's always like my sons. And we're like, okay. Yeah. You're totally right. The movie, even TMNT is about fathers and it's about sons. It just makes you sick, doesn't it?

Enough. We get it. It's about sons. It just makes you sick, doesn't it? Enough. We get it. It's hard. Which makes it worse because I watched the first one and I'm like, we don't touch April's trauma of losing her apartment, her dad's store that she kept open in his memory. None of her characterization gets to carry over into the next one other than she has money and a better paying job. I think I'm talking myself into a lower number of nipples. I think I'm gonna go one. Like Sammy and your other friend said, in terms of Filipino representation, it's not the best, but it was something. This was really sort of

formative. Looking back, I'm like, PhD representation? What, what? Oh, because of the professor? Which he would just be called doctor in this research place, because it's not a university, but that is a another conversation. I'm gonna stop talking. I gonna say uh one nipple uh for all the reasons you said but giving it a little extra for um Filipino representation um yeah which also like it makes the representation of the bad guys a little more complicated because you also have Kino so it's not as though every Asian character is a bad guy because also Splinter is like canonically Japanese. But like there's still the optics of a lot of it is still like really messed up.

So it's complicated. But anyway. It's also really more complicated in the third one, which we didn't watch. Don't they? They travel back in time in famous third movie of a trilogy fashion. The characters time travel and yeah, feudal Japan. Why is that a thing?

April goes and then they have to go rescue her from the past. That is fascinating because it's like the first movie is the first movie. The second movie is the first movie a second time. The third movie a second time the third movie they can time travel this i feel like you could think of 10 movie franchises where this is the case that is so wild i've never thought about that before so men in black three it happens

evil dead he time travels in the third movie oh yeah um in the third harry potter book and movie is the only one that they have time travel yes and it is the only one that they have time travel. Yes. And it's the only one that there's time travel. Wild. Why is that? They never do that in the series of Unfortunate Events. They're too busy rehashing the first book over and over.

I know there's at least like two or three other examples. So listeners, if you have examples, throw them at us. But anyway, this is this is the new this is the new leo in not sorry not that leonardo not turtle leonardo we have to differentiate it's the new leonardo dicaprio in a body of water wearing clothes yes yes so oh boy anyway Carlos, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a treat. It's been a slice of pizza. Cowabunga. Cowabunga.

A very merry cowabunga to you, Carlos. Thank you so much for joining us. My Catholic upbringing, when you said cowabunga to you, I was like, and also with you. But thank you for having me. This was great. Oh oh my gosh come back anytime please where can people check out your stuff follow you on social media etc yeah so i am carlos creates 2018 on instagram um i am also um one of the three co-hosts at play.hype.dialogue on Instagram. And I am revamping my professional website to be both part academic and part consultant creative.

So that's carlosmcomacho.net. But it is a work in progress. Sure. Aren't we all? You know, cowabunga. Cowabunga. You can follow us on Twitter and instagram at bechtelcast you can go to patreon.com slash bechtelcast and subscribe to our patreon aka matreon where we do two bonus episodes every month and then you'll also have access to our entire back catalog which is over 100 bonus

episodes and um we always forget to say this but why don't you um you know like us and give us a little you know five star five nipple review i love how you're like we we never say this but why don't you like us like us like't you like us? Like being like the verb where you like click a like button. But also, why don't you like us? But also, why don't you like us? What do we ever do to you? We're so cool.

We say cowabunga. But yeah, write us a five nipple review on, you know, Apple Podcasts or whatever your listening platform is. And you can check out our uh our merch at tpublic.com slash the backdoll cast if you are so inclined spring's coming carlos is wearing a queer icon t-shirt why aren't you get it together get it together jamie i feel like we should also briefly just touch on the shirt that you're wearing.

I am wearing, I don't even know if it's currently, it might be rare at this point, but I'm wearing a shirt that I co-designed with Super Yaki, who advertises on the show. We love them so much. And it says, Alfred Molina could have done it. Yeah. Which is, first of all, a true statement. And also, second of all all today my boss was like done what and i was like everything alfred melina could have been every ninja turtle both voice wise and all of the stunts amen baby cowabunga to that cowabunga to that. Cowabunga, Alfred Molina. Bye. Bye.

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