The Bechdel Cast - The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - Part 1 with Anna Salinas

Episode Date: September 12, 2018

Episode? More like an EPICsode, because this is a two-parter! In Part 1, Caitlin Durante, Jamie Loftus, and special guest Anna Salinas, aka "The Fellowship of the Podcast," decide to embark on the long and difficult journey of discussing the Lord of the Rings trilogy.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @badcomixbyanna on Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

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from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, They're just dreams. silence around sex and sexuality in Latinx communities. This podcast is an intergenerational conversation between Latinas from Gen X to Gen Z. We're your hosts, Viosa and Mala. You might recognize us from our first show, Locatora Radio. Listen to Señora Sex Ed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name's Jamie Loftus. And my name's Caitlin Durante. And this is our podcast where we talk about the... Oh, jeez.

Jamie. Let's start again. Let's start again. I'm sorry. Actually, you know what? I'm not going to start again. If I'm sounding fatigued, it's because we had to watch 900 hours of movies for this episode today. And this is also the third episode we are recording today. Yeah, so it's going it's gonna be a buck episode

there the hinges are off and we are ready to have discourse i feel like i feel like i got my second wind i'm feeling very excited about this episode i'm feeling excited about these movies this is your we are firmly in caitlin's wheel Yes. In this episode. I mean, you have the pictures to back it up. I'm, okay, so we should stay with the podcast. So we talk about the role of women in some of your favorite movies. We use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for our discussion. Hey, what is the Bechdel test? Well, it's just this test that you apply to movies for

example it requires that the movie has at least two women in it so already most movies fail those two women have to have names they have to speak to each other, and even more movies fail that, and that conversation between those two women cannot be about men. Let's demo it really quick. Sure. Hey, Caitlin. Jamie. Did you know that a movie can be nine and a half hours long and still not pass the Bechdel test. That sounds alarming and crazy, but I would believe it because it's a mainstream Hollywood film. Unbelievable. And that is still very cherished. Yeah. Transition the movie series we're talking about today. Hey! It's Lord of the Rings. All three movies.

Caitlin has dressed up as Froda for halloween sorry i leaked it wrong not halloween so it was the midnight screening of return of the king actually that's so much worse have you i are you really yes were other people dressed up or was it just you some oh my god not a lot of people though wait sorry that was one of the times i dressed up as frodo a second time was in a movie that I made in my senior year of high school called Car Wars Return of the Jedi I'm having a panic attack so I had I dressed up as I did a cameo as Frodo where I like get out of a car and someone off screen says Frodo this is return of the Jedi not return of the king and I say whoops and then I put on the ring and disappear.

It's a hilarious visual joke. So I dressed up as Frodo for that. And then a third time I dressed up as Frodo to school as a senior in high school. It was spirit week, and you had to dress up as your favorite character. So I dressed up as Frodo a third time for that. Okay. I guess in times like this, you just have to say, okay.

And that is good, and we love it. In conclusion... Oh, I found the picture. I found the picture. I was looking at the picture. It's on my Instagram, right? I found it on your Facebook. I forgot you're also playing Frodo.

Because it's... We will post it on the Bechtelcast Instagram. I mean, we simply must. You look scared. I feel like you're all acting as though I should be... Because the ring's very powerful. I think you're acting as though I should be embarrassed of me dressing up as Frodo so many times. I am extremely proud of this.

That's good. Anyway, let's introduce our guest. Yeah, I'm sorry that we just took a really long spiral. Okay, so our guest today, she is wonderful. She's the best. She is a writer, a comedian, creator of bad comics by Anna. Anna Salinas. Hi, guys. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much. Yeah. So let's talk about your relationship to Lord of the Rings. Sure. Well, let me say this. You shouldn't be ashamed of dressing up as Frodo. Thank you.

I am a Lord of the Rings fan, certainly. I like anything fantasy. I was really into fantasy in middle school. But I am a diehard Harry Potter fan. Sure. So I can relate because I used to go to the midnight screenings and dress up and the book releases and dress up. But I never really did it for Lord of the Rings. Sure. to go to the midnight screenings and dress up and the book releases and dress up uh but i never

really did it for lord of the rings i think part of it was like the fandom of lord of the rings feels like it spans ages a bit more like in my life there were a lot of older men who liked lord of the rings sure i was like that's that's not for me as much because the books were first published in like the 50s yeah a lot of parents were really into it but my mom was not and so we would watch the movies together we like started from the beginning and watched all the movies and theaters together nice my mom did too yeah which is weird for a movie that is not about women at all it's a very mother-daughter yeah bonding thing but I I love Elijah Wood um I've done an entire comedy show about him whoa yeah really yeah yeah we did a pickle hour maybe a year and a half ago maybe more about Elijah Wood like a powerpoint

presentation that was like the backbone of the show. And I think what you learn is his career has kept going strong. You know? He was, he's been doing things. Yeah, he's around. Sometimes I confuse him with Tobey Maguire. It's just a fact. I mean, that'll happen.

I would say he has a better career than Tobey Maguire. Yeah. Listen, he peaked in Spider-Man 2. Yes. We all know all know that was his best role i never saw sea biscuits so i can't say anything about it but spider-man 2 was good spider-man 3 when he had the emo haircut yeah haircut but the dance scene in spider-man 3 yeah is iconic it's iconic it's iconic it is name a community that scene is iconic. It is. Name a community. That scene is iconic within it. Yeah. That scene connects with everyone.

It is the great equalizer. Oh, yeah. It was a meme before memes. Jamie, what's your history with Lord of the Rings? I read The Hobbit in sixth grade. My whole class did because my teacher, I think, was really into Lord of the Rings but we were like not old enough to read the actual books and then same as you Anna I would go and see it with my mom specifically every year I don't think my dad saw these movies or had any interest in seeing them but my mom and I did and I think maybe it's because they were coming out once a year at the same time Harry

Potter movies were starting to come out so it was like oh and I remember my mom making a big deal of it because those were the first pg-13 movies I saw in theaters and my mom was like you're not old enough you're actually like this is kind of like forbidden fruit but we're gonna go see a three-hour movie and you're not gonna like it and so but we did and I remember not really retaining any information, but just like watching them very passively and being like, wow, that was a lot. Like just being very young and being like, that was a lot of images in a row. I don't know. But, but I, I've never been big on fantasy.

And so, so it, it is a bit of a slog for me. Sure. I understand. It's deep fantasy too. So like Harry Potter, it's like, oh a slog for me. Sure. I understand. It's deep fantasy, too. It's so, yeah. It's like Harry Potter. It's like, oh, it's about a boy and his crushes at school. Lord of the Rings, there's, you just get dropped in this complicated world.

There's so much lore. And it's like, I'm not going to do the homework. Yeah. So just to give you a brief history of Caitlin's experience with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I did not see Fellowship of the Ring in theaters because I did like I watched the trailer. And that was around the time that Harry Potter was like the Harry Potter movies were starting to be released. And I was like, started in 01, right? I think so.

That seems right. Sure. I had never heard of Lord of the Rings before because I grew up under a rock. And I was like, what is this cheap Harry Potter knockoff? That's what I thought Lord of the Rings was. But then I saw it a few months after it came out on DVD. And I was like, wait a minute. This is really good.

I like this a lot. And then I watched that movie a bunch of times. My mom got the extended edition. Then we got the whole box set. I saw Two Towers in theaters five times. I saw Return of the King in theaters six times. My sister has a cat named Precious after what Gollum calls the ring. It runs deep for me.

And I have not revisited these movies probably in 10 years or so. But when we were all rewatching them together, I was reminded that I can recite all of the dialogue to all of the movies. Confirmed. We watched them all. We watched them all with Super Producer Sophie. We watched every minute. Yeah. It was a long day.

All nine hours and 20 minutes, roughly. Yep. Boy, was it nine hours and 20 minutes, roughly. Yep. Boy, was it nine hours and 20 minutes. So yeah, shall I do the recap? I mean, yes. A very brief recap. Yeah. In the interest of this not being also nine hours long, basically the story takes place

in Middle Earth. It's like a very like Middle Ages Anglo Saxon fantasy world where there's men, there's dwarves, there's elves, there's hobbits, there's orcs. All of them are men. All of them are male identifying. There are somehow no women in this world. Except for the elves. Except for some elves. Yeah. So there is a dark lord named Sauron. He made a secret ring because the power and control is held within rings. He used to be good, but now he's bad. I think he was always bad. He was bad, but he used to be Gandalf's friend, but now he's bad and he's not Gandalf's friend.

No, that's Saruman. I'm talking about Sauron. Not to be confused about Sauron. Sauron. Not to be confused with Smaug. Right. Smaug. Smaug. Fantasy is an annoying genre.

Okay, so Sauron, do we see him? Do we know what he looks like or is he just an idea? He's a figure. He's tall. He has a mask. We don't really know what his face looks like. Oh, that an idea he has a he's like he's a figure he's tall he has a mask we don't really know what his face looks like oh that's in the beginning yeah oh well they don't specify right i thought no they say sarum oh yeah i when she said it i was like oh

are they the same sarum he becomes the eye because okay so he has a ring he's poured all of his evil and life force into it the ring gets chopped off of his hand that was him that was him got it so then he so he effectively dies but because his life is the ring is basically his horcrux so he attaches his thank you for so because the ring survived three thousand years later the spirit of sauron endures so so he becomes the the fireball the eyeball yeah okay right right in mordor on track got it okay because that's what i when i think when i think sauron apparently i think saruman but what i meant was i think of the flaming eyeball right that saruman stands next to right just rename saruman why why do that very poor seems unfair name choices yes just like all

the women in this movie are the same like four vowels just in different orders you're just like here's my girlfriend you're just like who is? Sorry. Okay, so the ring ends up in the hands of first Gollum and then Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo gives his ring, which they do not know is the ring of power, this evil ring yet. Right. He gives it to his nephew, Frodo, who is our hero. Cutie. Cute. And this is after Bilbo has gone off on an adventure with it.

Yeah, Bilbo's already been in three boring movies. Yeah. Yeah. But confusingly, because at this point, we didn't know that. Right. Unless you were the author. In the past, Orlando Bloom is older. Right.

And Benedict Cumberbatch is there. Yeah. And it's so long. Also. So Gandalf, Frodo, and bilbo's friend is like wait a minute i think this is the ring of power uh which he confirms then he's like we got to do something with this ring so they meet up in rivendell at the council of elrond which is a boring scene and is that elf elf elf land yeah that's elf yeah that's the movie elf the representatives are like what shall we do yeah yeah so we've got a dwarf there we've got

an elf there we've got another man from gondor we've got aragorn is there who helps out there's also a few other hobbits so and basically they have to they're like oh yeah we should take the ring to Mordor to destroy it because that's the one place that it can be destroyed because if it falls back into Sauron's hands or eye then he'll regain power and cover Middle-earth and darkness right so they're like great let's have a fellowship we'll all take this ring together to Mordor Frodo being the main ring bearer. They go full power of myth at this point. Hero's journey to a T.

And then they get split up at the end of the first movie. The second movie is basically... I mean, the second movie, I don't know how much... It's very important. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas have to save Merry and Pippin, who are two other hobbits that get captured by the Uruk-hai. Are those trees? No, those are goblin-orc hybrid.

Oh, the guys who are yelling. Yeah. There's a lot of names of things that I don't know. Well, I'm here to be your Lord of the Rings dictionary. And in fantasy, too. I'm like, J.R.R. Tolkien probably has a great reason for naming everything a very specific thing. And that somehow makes it worse for me. Yeah. He invented a whole language for this book.

What a dork. He invented Elvish. What a dork. I know. Get a life. What a frick. What a dork. He invented Elvish. What a dork. I know. Get a life. Frick. Get a... Sorry.

Inventing a new language is for dork. But you know what? Do you speak it? Oh, no. But people speak it. Yes. That's next level.

That's next level. I'm not quite there. We had to learn how to write our names in Elven in sixth grade. What? I remember Corey Spivey being all, this is dumb. He was like, isn't this for nerds?

And my teacher was like, no, it's not. Which has just proved my teacher was a nerd. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Shout out Corey Spivey. So the rest of the second movie, Frodo and sam his best friend slash gardener go off together they're heading toward mordor the power dynamics of their relationship is questionable confusing

because like frodo is sam's boss but also are their friends are we beating around the bush on this well we'll get to the yeah the context of their friendship later because there's a i'm curious i mean if listen if we have listeners who first of all sorry i called you dorks uh anytime i call our listeners dorks they get very upset with me but sometimes i gotta tell you i have to do it to you sometimes you're you guys are dorks but but if if we do have anyone who has read the books, I'd be interested in examining some of the subtexts of the relationships in the movies as opposed to the books.

Because my guess would be that the subtext in the books are not as explicit and homoerotic as they are in the movies. But we'll get to that too. Sure, sure, sure. So Sam and Frodo are heading toward mordor they kind of like split off from the group and head there alone and then they meet up with gollum who's being troublesome and then the third movie is like everyone's trying to get closer to mordor there's some battles uh all kinds of shit happens it's i'm not doing a good job with this

recap but because i'm skipping over you know nine hours worth of content oh yeah it's i'm not doing a good job with this recap but because i'm skipping over you know nine hours worth of content but wild because it sometimes takes longer for us to recap an hour and a half movie and it's almost like not a lot actually happens in these movies right well that whole battle at the end is like 30 minutes it's very long at the end of which they do fulfill their mission frodo finally tosses the ring into mount doom after a little scuffle with golem and then everything is fixed and then there's about 13 uh conclusions to the story which makes sense i mean it's a very long story it is funny how many things there are where you're just like, because it keeps, the endings, I think it's because the endings keep fading to black. Yeah.

And then you're like, oh, this is it. Especially after you've been watching for nine and a half hours. And you're just, it's good. It's like, we know it's good now.

Do we really have to see everything wrap up? But the last ending does fuck me up a little bit when you see Sam and the girl from the first movie and their kids

and the feet are huge. You're just like, it's cute. That fucks you up a little? I cried, yeah. You know what? I don't like it because I'm like, do you really love that woman? That's true.

I don't know. I just felt nothing for seven hours. I hadn't felt a thing in seven hours. And then I was just like, oh, this seems nice. Their lives can go on. So I skipped over a lot, including all three of the female characters. And it's maybe because they're hardly consequential to the story. But there are a few of them, and they do some stuff here and there, but kind of not really, which we'll talk about.

But yeah, that's effectively the story. Some good people set out to destroy evil, and then they destroy evil. So let's take a quick break and then we will return to middle earth for the discussion okay we'll be right back Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

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Okay, so we have... Oh, wait, you know what? Gollum. That's who we left out of. Well, I mentioned him, but. Gollum's cute. I really don't. We love him. Gollum, he's everyone's favorite part.

Gollum is cute. He's cute. Gollum is cute. I talked about it on the Daily Zeitgeist last week when we were on it together. Gollum is cute, the cutest boy in the movie. Whoa. He is the cutest boy in the movie. Did you not see Orlando Bloom?

Okay, my crush is from this movie because even if I don't like a movie, I've got a crush on someone. Gollum was a crush. Orlando Bloom was a crush. Oh, and Elijah Wood was like, Frodo is such a cutie pie. He has great hair and beautiful eyes. Yeah. Yeah. His eyes are beautiful but also

i found him to be i just think frodo and sam feel a little gender fluid in the movie gender fluid yeah i don't i okay that's giving it a lot of credit a lot more credit than it deserves but um frodo in particular in my mind watching i was like oh yeah i could see myself in that well i would argue well i think hobbits of all of the races that we see which are all white people um except for the bad guys that have dark skin yeah um of those hobbits are like the least aggro you know they're like you like, let's like just farm and like, you know, live off the land. We're going to have little hobbit holes and we're going to be nice. They love to dance.

Yeah, they love to dance. They love to hang out. Yeah, that's their purpose. Right. So at least they're displaying the least amount of toxic masculinity of all of the characters we see in the movies. Well, yeah. So let's get into that really quickly. So it has been said by many that there are gay undertones to Frodo and Sam's friendship.

I think that the movie does at some times go out of its way a little bit to hit that point kind of hard. You think the movie? I think the movie, yeah, I think that the movie is implying it a little bit without implying it in the way that movies sometimes do where male friendships are portrayed on screen as being kind of homoerotic. And Caitlin and I were talking about this a little bit before we started recording and and it's where i think that you can even draw a line from scenes that we see between sam and frodo which are nice scenes like i have no issue with the actual scene itself or the friendship or

anything like that but you can almost draw a line from there to like a Judd Apatow buddy comedy of like okay what are other examples of male friendships we see in cinema and like where you have let me see I'm trying to other big examples correctly yeah where it's like there's a lot of like oh we're friends and we care about each other no homo where this isn't the type of movie that would say that, but there's, I don't know. I see what you're saying. I think there's an element of, A, we care about each other more than anything else, which can carry a bit of a homoerotic undertone. And I think, I don't give Peter Jackson in particular

any credit for setting that up in any kind of progressive way, but I think because the performances are so heartfelt and the characters themselves are so emotional and sweet and earnest the result is this unadulterated love for each other free from toxic masculinity which is like in real life if sam and frodo lived i think they and Frodo lived, I think they would experiment. I buy that. Because I don't think they would have hang-ups. Maybe Sam more.

I don't know. I mean, in real life. In real life. Let me be clear. If these two hobbits lived in our real world as hobbits. If we saw them at the Frolic Room tonight. At the Frolic Room. That's just the bar around here that I like the best.

It's a fun little dive. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, and then something I thought was really great with Hobbits in particular is, and you were touching on this a little earlier, Caitlin, and I was like, they are so openly emotional in a way that we don't see Aragorn. We definitely don't see Legolas, aka Hacker Computer Boy. I think that if we bring Legolas into the real world,

he's straight up Mr. Robot. Because every time people are having feelings, Legolas is standing to the side like, we need to go. He's not mean about it, but we do not see him cry. No, we don't. But the hobbits are very emotionally expressive. We see them cry a lot.

I mean, Frodo is just sobbing for quite a bit of the whole franchise. So is Sam. Yeah. Yeah. And Merry and Pippin as well to a lesser extent, but I think it's just because they're more humorous characters. But we see them cry multiple times yeah and so i i guess i can't say exactly what it is but it's something about the tone of the scenes between frodo and sam that are a little bit different than marion's we see yeah the scenes we see between uh even if they are emotionally charged scenes it's laid on a little bit thicker for those two characters probably because they're more main characters i don't know that and it is frodo's his burden is being the ring bearer so

like right he carries the most stakes you could say and the stakes in this story are super high i mean it's like the world the world is truly the world so because he and sam is with him every step of the way, I would say that the stakes are so high and there's so much emotion attached to whether or not they accomplish this quest that I think it makes sense for them to have such like emotionally impactful scenes because they're carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. I think, so in terms of Frodo and Sam's relationship, I don't want to erase or deny the existence of a same-sex relationship if that is in fact what it is. Sure. But I think there's a tendency to see a close male platonic friendship and label it as gay, which I would argue, I think that can be harmful because it kind of implies that men are not allowed to or that it's not normal to have a

close platonic friendship between two straight men or between like a gay man and a straight man. Because men feeling like they can't have closeness and emotional intimacy with other men in a non-sexual way, I think, contributes to toxic masculinity. Because, I mean, toxic masculinity stems from a lot of different things. One of them is men suppressing their feelings and thinking they can't be emotionally vulnerable with people, especially other men. Right. Because that's a sign of weakness. I totally agree with you. And I think I love you, man, is a response to that.

I mean, I don't want to over credit Judd Apatow because he's super problematic. But I think he's horrible. But I think I love you, man, was an attempt to be like, whoa, no. Men can be emotionally bound as best friends. And it's not weird, guys. Look look he's also married that is what i was attempting to say earlier and i feel like i need i needed it set up in a way it had not been set up and i felt very insecure about it uh but yeah i think that that is true where it's like because those movies did come out later it's like oh let's normalize male friendship

but the asterisks in those movies like but it's not gay like the way avatar does it is homophobic because he's like yeah straight dudes can be friends in a way that's not gay coded yeah and that does seem in a way a response to scenes like the way and i can't like I literally can't describe exactly what it is but the tone of those scenes to me is different and in a way that I always liked like I I love I'm fully here for Sam and Frodo in the real world yeah I think what you both are saying is true and exists sort of parallel sure because you Jamie you see it you it. And I'm sure no part of you is like, men can't be friends. And if they're friends, it's gay. But there is the I understand, Kayla, and you too, there is that danger when that is the narrative we're pushing, that people will

read it and say, well, I guess guys can't be friends. Because if we try and put it in things, it'll just be seen as homoerotic. But I think they're both true. But I do want to add what's interesting. I know this is not supposed to be about I Love You Man. But there is a gay character, well, there are a few gay characters in I Love You Man. And even that, to me, was super problematic. Because Andy Samberg plays, like, a gay dude,

but he's bro-y. What? And it's, like, great. Wow. Oh, but he's bro-y. What? And it's like, great. Wow. Oh, the movie's trying to be like, look how innovative we are by having a bro-y queer character. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

Yeah. Johnny Apatow has never done a good thing in his life. I think we can all agree. I haven't seen Freaks and Geeks because I can't look at Seth Rogen without wanting to pull my own head off. Yeah, the time to watch it may have passed. Is it done? Should I not bother? I like Martin Starr.

I do, too. Is it worth it? I love Martin Starr. He's a good one. He seems great. It was good when I saw it when I was, like, 15. Yeah, I haven't revisited it in a long time. Yeah, so just to finish this thought,

I just, like, to see, like, a close male friendship on screen and automatically like automatically assume that it's like a gay sexual relationship. I just think can doesn't necessarily have to, but it can further perpetuate the idea that it's like weird or abnormal to have straight men have emotional closeness with other straight men. And I think that helps keep toxic masculinity alive and well have i been guilty of doing this myself where i've seen two men on screen who are friends and be like oh they're gay yes i have done that i'm guilty of that but then there's the separate analog of like fan culture which i think is divorced from what we were just talking about there's so many different ways to look right this and one. Erotic fan fiction in particular. Which is hot in rules.

Oh, it's super hot in the rules. But it took Frodo, Sam, and it built a whole world. A whole world. A whole horny world. A whole horny new world. And then I ran this whole train of thought that I have about their relationship. I ran it past my friend JT, friend of the cast, Twilight episode. Twilight, ever heard of it?

And he said, yeah, that's all well and good. But keep in mind that queer people seeing media like this that has a close male friendship will like ship those two characters together because there's such a lack of visibility of queer characters in mainstream media that they'll say yeah those two men are gay and I see myself represented in their relationship because that's pretty much all I have to choose from right So I think if the queer community is seeing relationships like that and saying like, yeah, I see gay undertones and that like they know better than straight people. So I think it's maybe more appropriate when that happens. Yeah. Yeah. This Lord of the Rings in particular, and I guess like, I guess I would extend this to a lot of fantasy and possibly sci-fi as well, is there's so many different ways to watch it.

I feel like almost more so than other genres. When you're looking at hyper-fictional characters, it almost depends on who you are and what your life experience is based on how you're going to view it because if you're you know like a queer person wanting to see yourself represented in a movie like this and aren't seeing yourself explicitly represented then it makes sense that you would see that scene and be like oh cool i feel at least a little bit seen because of how i'm viewing this scene where if you're a young toxic man who sees that and is off put by it and is like that, you know, sees that same friendship and thinks I'm less likely to want to be like close friends with another man because I don't want to be seen in this way. So it's it's it depends on who you are, what your life experience is. Let me ask you this. True. Right. That lack of visibility. Is it possible to make a feminist argument for Lord of the Rings using sort of that same logic of like well there aren't a lot of um you know obvious opportunities here for feminist visibility but are there ways in which toxic masculinity is subverted that makes

this in some way a feminist movie i think that in the way the hobbits in particular subvert masculinity worked for me. But just because it subverts masculinity doesn't mean it's feminist. But then there's the I am no man argument with, and I'm going to try to say this name, but it is all soft vowel-y. Eowyn. Eowyn. Yeah. Eowyn. Which is, what you're saying is how you pronounce Ewan McGregor's name on that.

Oh my god, yes it is. Oh yeah, I'd like to issue a formal apology to all of our Scottish fans who slammed my mentions saying it's Eowyn McGregor, not Eowyn McGregor. No, it's Ewan. It was Ewan McGregor, which I had. I also just made mouth noises that time, I swear. I was not trying to say his name. It's Ewan McGregor, which I had. I also just made mouth noises that time, I swear. I was not trying to say his name. It's Ewan McGregor.

I had said it correctly a year previously. And then in the year between recording that and the time I fucked it up 900 times, I met him and worked with his girlfriend for six months. And then I learned how to say his name the total wrong way. And everyone got mad at me. Wait, but how? Wasn't she saying his name all the time? She was saying his name.

And she was saying it correctly, obviously. But I was like, you know what I should say? Saying it again. Well, you know, what's her name? Scorsese Ronan? Oh, Saoirse. Saoirse. You never know.

Scorsese. Scorsese Ronan, who was in Brooklyn. Ronan, Oh, Saoirse. You never know. Scorsese. Scorsese Ronan, who was in Brooklyn. Ronan, another movie. Anyway, there we go. Eowyn. Is that correct? Eowyn. Ewa. Not to be confused with Arwen.

That's annoying. You don't do that. Hey, if you're writing something, don't make everyone's name the same name. Yeah, that's script writing 101. Different first letters. That should be left behind you in the second grade where you've got like Stephanie O and Stephanie T. Anyways, you can make the, the thing I, because I tried to research like, okay okay are there feminist arguments for this series and they seem to mostly fall to Eowyn because she is a woman we see in combat and she also says and I

feel like with these arguments they tend to boil down to like one or two things the character says in the space of 9,000 hours but she says the line i am no man and that seems to be the core they're like well someone said they weren't a man and that was true also she wrote a horse so it's a feminist text well yeah riding a horse driving a car right women can do it all yeah i like that character same and she's the the one who's in love with Aragorn. And he's like, sorry. Which, fine. Yeah.

Oh, wait, what? I don't know. I mean. What's your take on Viggo? I have a skewed view of Viggo because he made my mom so horny that she almost died. That's why we saw it with our moms. I think that Viggo had a lot to do with it. Yeah, because it's like Orlando for the young gals.

Viggo for the moms. And Frodo, you know, Elijah for anything in between. Frodo is like basically, I was like, if you had a crush on Harry Potter, Elijah Wood's going to give you that vibe as well. Because he's the size of a 10-year-old according to this movie. Yeah. So you're like, you i see it and they have piercing blue eyes oh thank you for bringing that up sorry i have to interrupt for a moment because okay when i was listing all the characters all the main like

named characters in this movie i ended up color coding their names in my notes based on the color of their eyes because nearly every single character in this movie has blue eyes. Whoa. Go back and watch it. I did not notice this until my 40th viewing of this trilogy. Who doesn't? But Frodo, Samwise, Gandalf, Merry Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir, Gollum, Grima Wormtongue, the Steward of Gondor, I forget his name, Elrond, Faramir, King Theoden, Bilbo, Isildur, Haldir, he's one of the elves, Arwen, Galadriel, and Eowyn, plus a bunch of other secondary characters, all have blue eyes. Well, I don't know if you know this, but Middle-earth is what we should be. I personally aspire to be a blue-eyed hobbit.

Or any, I'll take blue-eyed elf, blue-eyed anything. We'll get to the racism in this movie. Oh, because elves. Well, because everything. There's a lot. Yeah, there's weird. Anyway, so yeah, pretty much all the good guys and some of the bad guys in this movie have blue eyes. The only good guys in this movie who do not have blue eyes are gimli aimer amy

if anyone knows how to say it it's me and and tree beard that name is cheating oh that's that's too funny of a name i've got notes on that name which is that it's so funny another fun fact about eye color in this movie so Orlando Bloom has brown eyes he was given blue contacts so that Legolas would have blue eyes in this movie because you know this is an Aryan nation and whatever but Orlando Bloom hated his blue contacts. And sometimes they would forget to put them in. So whenever they did, he would just not tell anyone. And then the movie would get shot with him and his brown eyes.

So there are some scenes where he has brown eyes. And they didn't fix it in post or anything like that. That's really funny. What a weird choice. That seems easy to fix. I know. I was going to say earlier before we got into the blue eyes theory, that because of Aragorn, Aragorn was, I think, there for the moms, casting-wise. Viggo was there to make your mom for Roth, and I think he was successful in a lot, in the case of many moms.

Oh, yeah. moms oh yeah but i think that 2003 was probably one of my mom's hornier cinematic years because that's also the year where captain jack sparrow debuted and that made a lot of moms right something for the mom something for the and again and again in that same movie orlando's for the younger set yeah there's a clear formula operating in hollywood at this time. Absolutely. Yeah. Gee whiz. Anyways. Well, I just want everyone to know that we do fully acknowledge the irony of having only talked about men so far on a podcast about women. I tried to talk about a...

Well, yes. So let's take... So let's just take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about the freaking women golem yeah well the women aka golem yes okay uh so we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks.

President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine

that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our recent episode with Grammy Award winning rapper Eve on her new memoir and the moments that made her. It became a theme in my life,

the underdog syndrome of being questioned, of the would they say this to a man? No, they would not. Like, why? That was one of those moments where you're just like, oh, wow. It was a bit shocking, but it didn't take any steam away or anything like that. If anything, it was more of the, okay, I'll show you. No worries.

Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So let's talk about the female characters in Lord of the Rings. Okay. There are exactly three, four if you count Rosie, who Sam marries at the end but i don't i would say you could so easily cut her out of this story with very little impact besides me crying at the end that's fine so i feel like i don't know if this is true or not but i feel like this movie cares less about women being in the story than maybe any movie we've come across so far like

but in a way that is like it's confusing i'm trying i feel like we've maybe covered one movie where i also got this vibe where the movie is not outwardly hateful of women really at any point. Just omits. But it's just a world where women don't exist. Until you get to elves. Right. Even still, there's two elves, and then Gladriel only gets a couple minutes of screen time. Gladriel is Cate Blanchett.

Right. She's mainly used for exposition. She is. Is she more important? And this is, I don't know if this is a question you can answer. I feel like you probably can.

Is she more important though in the world of Lord of the Rings than we get in the movies? I don't super know that having not read the books. I tapped out in, I don't even know. She's not even in,

she's in the Hobbit movies but not in the Hobbit book I don't think.'s not even she's in the hobbit movies but not in the hobbit book i don't think um interesting because she's presented yeah by i mean she's an exposition yeah that pure and simple but i felt watching it that she was somehow super powerful she is well she's powerful but in the context of the story she's given so little focus that i think you could easily remove her or replace her like function with like elrond because so her thing is she's the first voice you hear in the movie because she does provide all the voiceover narration in the very beginning where she's like doing all the world building and like here's what middle earth is and there's some

fucking rings and shit we do meet her on screen in fellowship of the ring she's one of the like leaders at los lorien but i mean talk about uh presenting a character as virginal where she is dressed in all white and she's literally glowing with having never fucked like that is you think she's never fucked i think that there i think that it could be there could be a very easy argument made of like she could have fucked but i'm just like strictly presentation right it's like the classically virginal like it almost is like baptism right fair maiden for sure she's right so and then so the first time we meet her on screen in los lorien where she's like the she's described as being like an elf witch and a sorceress

which sounds like a sandwich of elves she's an elf witch some of the Keebler snacks Keebler cookies she's an elf witch so when we see her on screen for the first time she's like being escorted by

a male elf who I don't know if this is true or not, I think that might be her elf husband. Not sure. There is a dude with her, and he seems to be an elf king, and she's sort of like the elf queen. I don't know. But she is definitely a very fair maiden.

But she's spoken about as being very powerful, highly regarded. So it is weird that like, oh, but a man has to like hold her hand. And she doesn't fight either. She doesn't. She's a pacifist. But then that just makes it a jarring movie experience where I'm like, you're not even going to comment on the fact that women have nothing to know. They're nowhere in this whole world. It's like if we were surrounded by like if there was like the same thing was in the whole world and we just never acknowledged it like ever. We're just like, oh, we're living as if they don't exist because they don't exist.

Well, female characters written by men wouldn't notice that because men don't notice when they write stories with only men in them yeah yeah right because there's there are three female characters in this movie worth talking about and 40 male characters who are like named and like not all of them are fleshed out fully but like every single person in the in the fellowship it's nine people and they're all male. Yeah. It's wild. So last thing on Galadriel, she appears again throughout the course of the movies. Usually she's talking to Elrond, but they're never on screen together.

They have this kind of- Elrond is the elf king guy? In Rivendell, yes. Yeah. So there's different elf realms. Brunette elf. Is that Arwen's dad? That's Hugo Weaving. Yeah, yes. So there's different elf realms. Brunette elf. Is that Arwen's dad? That's Hugo Weaving.

Yeah, that's Arwen's dad. Okay. It does feel like the elfish kingdom is a patriarchy. Yes. For sure. I mean, the structure of every community in this movie is 100%. Which I think is made really clear through Arwen's character, too. Sorry, I said Arwen, not Al.

Well, there's Arwen and Eowyn. Yeah, I know. It's stupid. You only have to come up with three female names and a 400 character, and two names sound exactly the same. Sure. For Galadriel, the one scene that stuck out to me where it seemed like she had the most to do was the scene she has with Frodo. Yes. Where Frodo's, I don't know, tiptoeing around, just on a little stroll with his little ring. Gandalf has just passed away. Gandalf did that thing where he's like,

see ya, and dropped off a cliff and was like, you're not even gonna try okay. But then he's fine, whatever. So there's a scene between Galadriel and Frodo where basically Galadriel is tempted by the ring's power

but then overcomes that temptation and is basically like i passed the test and then like high fives herself certainly not the bechdel test not swish the ring test and then she also has like another harry pottery thing where she's like i have a pensieve is that the harry potter thing where you can look in that you can look into your own memories with a pensive right so but she but does she just show the future yeah so she she has the gift of foresight like many elves seem to and that's a raven who might be an elf we don't know it's not fully explored but i would like to think that's a raven is an extension of the lord of the Rings universe. Yeah, of course. Safely, I think we can say that. Yeah.

So yeah, she has that scene where she shows weakness and being like, yes, I would be tempted if I had the ring because Frodo's like, I don't really like this whole ring bearer thing. Why don't you take it, Gladriel? He's like, I want to be a flower girl. Right. It seems like a more fun job. But there's a reason they give give it so not to defend the

sexism of this movie there's a reason that hobbits are best suited to carry the ring right which is they're so pure of heart right they're resilient to its evil yes what's weird is that only hobbit men were available for that duty but that is my giving a little space to well on that so you could maybe make the argument that like yeah why wouldn't a woman have been considered for this because we've seen throughout history women being less corrupted by power but maybe that's only because women have never been given power, so we don't know how corruptible they are by it. Give us a shot. We could fuck some shit up.

Yeah, we could. Right, right, right. But yeah, that is... But Bilbo presumably wouldn't think of that, because he's just like, my buddies. Do we know anything about... Well, and also his nephew. Do we know anything about Frodo's parents?

Or like, does he... What? He must be an orphan, I guessing i don't know yeah because bilbo is his uncle yeah and and there's no parents intervening being like don't give him the worst thing ever that's true no one cares that he's going i think his only family is yeah well and bilbo also does the rudest thing ever he's such a drama queen he when he goes to his own birthday at the beginning of the fellowship of the ring and he's like hey everybody just telling you i'm leaving forever pow and then he disappears and leaves without saying goodbye to literally anyone

including frodo pretty rude yeah it was a weird move but he's a little corrupted by that point he is i think he yeah like he gets nervous around the ring and he's like, I have to get the fuck out of here. Yeah, he feels it. He does see Frodo later. Just like Frodo feels it by the end too. Right.

Right. We just got word from super producer Sophie that Frodo's parents drowned. Oh my God. Wait, in like The Hobbit? No, because we don't meet Frodo or any,

I don't think any of the other Bagginses in The Hobbit. There's probably somegins is in the hobbit there's probably some backstory somewhere in the books that we learn this well or maybe like an appendices or something frodo is just another example that i think you could apply to this almost this whole world because gender is dealt with in such a passive way in this entire world where you could gender switch most of the characters in these movies i think that they're yeah with no impact i think like characters like aragorn would be a little bit trickier

characters directly involved in the patriarchy at least seem to be making some sort of commentary but all of the hobbits i would say because they are so all so emotionally open they're all nice they're not involved in overt love triangles and they're not oppressing they're not doing like they're frodo could easily be a female character with really nothing about the story changing for sure well yes about this story changing right if the writers of the lord of the rings movies had made frodo a girl it would certainly have been a different movie because men were writing it oh i don't think it would be the same yeah no it wouldn't be treated i don't think that a studio would invest like a bajillion dollars into a female-led film franchise in 2001 especially based on because the source material

like all of the like old school fans of lord of the rings would have been like oh they made frodo a girl what the fuck like i'm not going to say this protested peter jackson fran walsh a woman and philippa boyans a woman co-wrote these movies what so it's one man and two women what Doing most of the writing. I knew for a moment. Mm-hmm. Oh, my God. Well, this just gets back to not all women are. That is mind-blowing because the movie itself could have made the choice to make these women more important. Well, it did.

Because from what I understand, again, haven't read the book, so I might be a little wrong on this. But Arwen's involvement in the story in the books is hardly there at all. And they took mostly stuff from the appendices and beefed up her character much more than it had been in the books. Is Arwen Liv Tyler? Yes. Yeah, but that feels like more of a movie thing because they're like, we're going to have some love. We've got to have a romance. Yeah. She's a tricky character because it's like, of course, I want to see women in these movies more.

But the way that they amplify her character is so like there's such an agenda behind it. Yeah. gender neutrality or to see Liv Tyler specifically so that she can be you know like coveted and her father can just be like I don't want you to do this so don't and that's so many and they're all the scenes are so quiet and he's like listen up bitch you cannot do anything. And she's like, but I would like to do something. And he's like, tough shit, you cannot do it. And then crying, and then you're just like, this movie is very long. Well, let's get into Arwen. She is the daughter of Elrond.

And in some ways, the daughter of Stephen Tyler. You could argue that, I suppose. You could also argue Elrond is Steven Tyler. If you look at him closely. I think Steven Tyler was really slept on in the casting process. Well, does he have blue eyes? Because if not, they

could not cast him. He for sure has blue eyes. I remember my mom, because I'm from Boston, aka the land of Aerosmith, where literally the year the Aerosmith roller coaster debuted at Disney World. Why does that place exist? The Aerosmith roller coaster, not Disney World. My mom made us all go that year.

But I have a very specific memory of my mom looking at Liv Tyler in the movie, leaning over to me and being like, Stephen Tyler's daughter is so beautiful. I was like, uh-huh. Anyways. So her story is that she has to decide if she wants to stay in Middle Earth and be with Aragorn, which means she would need to sacrifice her immortality, or if she wants to sail away with her elf people to the Undying Lands so that she can stay immortal. Wait, a woman's storyline is rooted in whether she's going to sacrifice something for a man or not? And that's all we see, do, or think about?

I don't see why that bumps anyone. No. I'm on board. So both Elrond, her father, and Aragorn are encouraging her not to make this sacrifice, but she decides to stay,

which means I suppose she's given a little bit of agency in order to be able to make this life-changing choice, but of course the choice that she makes

is to sacrifice a huge part of herself for a man. Yeah. I mean mean and it's her choice she does i i appreciate and again we're going bare minimum argument that the story at least lets her make her choice and doesn't go the route of like because if you go like way back in mythology, there's so many examples of like a female character who makes a choice and is killed because she made the choice she wanted to and didn't do what her father told her to do. So at least that's not an example of that like ancient trope of women being punished when they do what they want but it's not it's not good it doesn't bode well that's the only thing we really get to see her think about or grapple with is like she's basically choosing between her father and Vigo yeah she has agency but she's still just an accessory

right right and part of the reason that she makes this choice to stay with aragorn is because she also has foresight abilities some clairvoyance if you will uh and she a little bit of foresees she foresees that she will have a son with aragorn so like now motherhood is really not Not even a fucking daughter. Right. That really annoyed me. That whole thing where she stares into the woods and she's like, what if I had a son? I was like, even you can't imagine women in this world. Right. You can't even, because you've never met one.

Well, there needs to be a male heir because, you know, Aragorn does accept his destiny to be king. You can't be in charge. It's the rules. You know, Aragorn does accept his destiny to be king. If you have the wrong peepee, you can't be in charge. It's the rules. But what's really getting me down is to know that two women co-wrote this with Peter Jackson. Right. I mean, and I also wonder to what degree were they calling the shots. True.

Who knows? Who knows? It was a different time, man. It was almost 20 years ago, you know. Oh, man. It was a different, it was almost 20 years ago, you know. Oh, God. But this is so within our lifetimes that it is so frustrating to think of, like, this nice memory that we have of, like, seeing a movie with our mom. And it's like, oh, we were not represented in these movies in any way and didn't even notice it.

Yeah. It's just, it's just unfortunate. This huge franchise. they tried a little harder again i haven't seen hobbit one just hobbit two there's also a third one known smog head i mean number two was smog fucking heavy they went hog wild on smog but they do try to make that female character more active interesting that you mentioned that because um well friend of the cast lindsey ellis oh i was hoping we'd talk about this she made a three-part video essay series about the hobbit trilogy she made a straight up feature length documentary it's amazing it's unbelievable like everything documentary. It's amazing. It's unbelievable. Like everything she does, it's amazing.

I encourage you to refer to part two of this video series. There's a section between around minute 19 and 2530 where she talks about the character of Tariel, which is the elf maiden played by Evangeline Lilly in the Hobbit trilogy. So she was added in just like this character kind of like created from nothing because I'm pretty sure she's not in the Hobbit book. Yeah, makes sense. She gets added into this narrative as a warrior lady because the studios thought this movie would be more marketable to a female audience if there was a lady in it.

That is misguided positive, but the movies are so lame. Right. Well, then also, as Lindsay Ellis points out in the video, her being present in the story in the context that she is in the story, which is like a warrior, creates a contradiction in the Middle Earth universe because in the story which is like a warrior creates a contradiction in the middle earth universe because in the lord of the rings trilogy it's established that women don't do battle and like eowyn has to disguise herself as being a man in order to like ride into battle in return of the king so like there's like these very rigid gender roles that are established in the lord of the rings trilogy where like you, you know, save the women and children.

They have to be, like, protected and put away into the caves. They can't fight. And she's all, and Eowyn's all, like, well, I'm competent with the sword. I want to fight for this cause that I believe in. Like, why shouldn't I be able to fight? Right. So she, so we'll get to Eowyn, but, like like she's easily the most active character but the Hobbit trilogy like really fucks up the rules that are established in this universe by putting this Tariel character

into those movies right huh um but anyway so back to Arwen really quick um she does do a couple of small things that influence the direction of the story like she saves Frodo from the ringwraiths that are chasing him in The Fellowship of the Ring. Right. In the first movie. She tells her dad, Elrond, to have the sword reforged so that Aragorn can fulfill his destiny to become king.

Oh, that one. So she doesn't forge the sword herself. She tells a man to do it. For a man. For a man. For a man. Sure. Women can't touch swords unless you're Eowyn. But if the sword is a stand-in for the phallus,

then this is a very homoerotic movie. Then you better be jerking off that sword, pal. Yeah. But basically, you can Good discourse, Kay. Yeah. You can pretty easily remove her character from this narrative, and the story would be pretty much unchanged. Like, she doesn't have that much to do. We don't even see her on screen in the first movie

until I think it's an hour and eight minutes into the movie. To be fair, there's a lot left after that point. That's true. That's only 2% into the movie. But she's on screen then for about four minutes during that chase scene. Yeah, she is mostly absent from the movie. Meanwhile, there's 800 men in it. Well, hey, gang.

Hey, it's us. I'm sick now. Yeah, you, gang. Hey, it's us. I'm sick now. Yeah, you suddenly got sick in a matter of seconds. I'll break the fourth wall and be like, man, we recorded this months ago. So this is a two-parter because, as you know, The Lord of the Rings is extremely long. So stay tuned. We have the second part of this episode with our wonderful guest, Anna, coming up very soon.

In the meantime, you can follow us at all the normal places you follow us on Instagram at BechtelCast, Twitter at BechtelCast, Patreon, aka Matreon. $5 a month, two bonus episodes. Also, if you live in the Los Angeles

area, come to our live show on september 15th at 9 p.m at the ruby uh we are covering edward scissorhands with guest maggie may fish we're so excited it's gonna be great i won't be sick anymore then yeah you'll be in tip-top shape i promise and if you want to come to that um tickets are going fast, so get them while you can. And to do that, go to our website, Bechtelcast.com, and go to the Live Appearances tab, and there is a link to buy tickets there. And as always, you can go to our merch store if you need any of the merch. Which you do. You do need it.

Listen, you need it. And that's at tpublic.com slash the bechtel cast the bechtel cast i was going to get it wrong uh we'll see you for part two of the lord of the rings episode soon live long and get that ring hey one ring to rule them all but two parts to this episode oh i love it bye bye daphne caruana galicia was a maltese investigative journalist who on october 16th 2017 was assassinated crooks everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one woman wiki leaks she exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. 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. Guess what, Will? What's up, Mango?

I've been trying to write a promo for our podcast Part-Time Genius, but even though we've done over 250 episodes, we don't really talk about murders or cults. I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy. We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores

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