The Bechdel Cast - The Love Witch with Alyssa Onofreo

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Witches Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Alyssa Onofreo brew up some love potion and discuss The Love Witch.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @omgchomp on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELPHere are the articles we mentioned in the episode:"White Magic" by Lou Cornum - https://thenewinquiry.com/white-magic/"'The Love Witch' Director Anna Biller: Most of the Film's Crew Hated What We Were Shooting and Never Even Saw the Movie" by Michael Nordine - https://www.indiewire.com/2017/12/the-love-witch-anna-biller-crew-1201904994/ Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.

Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.

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if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Hey, Caitlin. Yeah, Jamie? Do you feel like podcast hosts are supposed to please each other? Do you think it's one podcast host's responsibility to bring pleasure to the other podcast host or am I just thinking too binary about our medium sounds to me like you've been brainwashed by the patriarchy

big podcast got me or should I say the pod triarchy wow how about that it's true it's true it makes you think it makes you think i hope i hope jack is listening to this because we've been brainwashed by the podriarchy aka jack o'brien with little devil ears on top of him oh my gosh well that was what i had for the intro i was i was like maybe we'll start debating like trish and elaine being like i don't know i don't care if my podcast co-host feels pleasure and then i would be like but you have to bring your podcast co-host pleasure that's our job that's why i was put on this earth jamie i want you to feel all the pleasure that you want to feel see now it sounds like work for me and i don't want to do it well we already have a lively debate going welcome to the bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante, and this is our show about movies in which we look at them through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point.

There's a lot more to discuss, but we kick it off. Actually, we end the episode on the Bechdel test. So what are we talking about? And then sometimes we don't even remember to do it. As we've said multiple times, it's so fun to like, and not in a way that it's like, got your ass, but in a way that you're like, oh, okay. Just like, you know how people will tell like simple social lies before like, oh, I love your pie, whatever. Oh, yeah. You know, but when someone says that about the Bechdel cast and

then they're like yeah that's such a cool idea figuring out if movies pass the Bechdel test I was like oh so you have not actually you have not actually listened and then I go to their little cabin upstate and I uh kill them because they fall in love with me so hard that they die. Yeah. And then you piss and shit and put your tampons in a jar. And then there's voiceover about like, this is actually really cool that I'm doing this. And I did. That was one of my favorite parts is when she's doing like the grossest thing I can think of. then there's voiceover that's like actually this is people need to chill out about the fact that I'm putting my piss and shit in a jar and I'm like wow makes you think makes you think it's great yeah so what is the Bechdel test though oh yeah

okay so the Bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test there's many versions of the test but the version we use is that a piece of media should feature at least one exchange between two people of a marginalized gender with names and they must speak to each other about something other than a man and for our purposes it has to be a meaningful exchange i won't even get into it too much because this movie passes pretty handily i feel like we don't need to like split maybe not as handily as i would have expected it does but like i guess yeah okay caitlin's gonna be hard on this i'm gonna be caitlin did not like the movie i don't know how i feel about the movie i'm in too chaotic

a headspace but that is why we bring a guest on because we don't know shit about shit at times and i feel like in the horror genre we that is that's where we've been that's where we're at true yes and so we have to bring on extra special experts in the genre to explain to us what the fuck is going on so let's bring our guest i love this movie oh my gosh i'm so excited i unabashedly love this movie i've seen it definitely more than six times i was trying to count last night when i watched it this past time so at least six maybe minimum 10 oh my gosh maybe like at least 10 yeah i don't know okay well okay so the voice you just heard is that of director of social media at crypt tv where there's where there's a new show coming out this fall called Girl in the Woods.

It's streaming on Peacock TV. It was co-executive produced by our guest from last week's episode, Jasmine Johnson. So be sure to check out The Girl in the Woods. This week's guest is Alyssa Onofrio. Hello. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Big fan of the pod. Long time listener. Hello. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

Big fan of the pod. Long time listener. Yay. Thanks. Yay. Thanks for coming on. We're so stoked to have you. And we're like, because you're you and also because you know so much about horror.

And as we were just alluding to, it's not a genre either of us have a huge history with. So we're covering The Love Witch, a 2016 movie. And so Alyssa, let's start by just talking about your history with horror. Because I'm interested in what draws you to the genre, what got you in, and then we'll kind of get into the movie. Yeah, so growing up I was not into horror. I was Disney movies only childhood. and then we'll kind of get into the movie yeah so growing up i was not into horror i was disney movies only childhood like my parents did not allow anything beyond that and uh i think i saw the shining in college which i really liked but my form of horror experience was my freshman year

of high school at a boy girl sleepover they played texas chainsaw massacre the remake and it was the scariest fucking thing that's ever happened to me wow and it it was yeah it was horrible i was like i never want to see another horror movie again that was horrible and also everyone was pranking each other all night so it was like extra spooky stressful so i swore i swore off horror for a while and then college i liked the shining then i took a class where I had to watch The Ring walked out of that screening. Straight up was like, no, this is too scary. I saw The Ring probably,

I don't remember when that movie came out, but I saw it at my cousin's house shortly after it came out. And I like pissed myself and had to go home. That movie is very scary. It's so fucking scary. I still, I can't watch that. I not gone back to texas chainsaw i tried to watch the 70s one i'm still like it's not about it it's too scary it's just like yeah trauma memory too scary then i saw alien

and aliens and i was like wait what the fuck this was a movie in the 80s and no one told me about it until 2014 i'm fucking furious uh and then i also saw the thing that year and i was like wait this was here the whole time and no one told me and and then i also saw evil dead 2 and i just loved all of that like super extreme creature and like i really love campy horror stuff also i've been and so i've been working at crypt since 2017 uh so i'm coming up on my four-year anniversary on october 2nd oh yeah but yeah the company has come a long way but we we make we're a digital multimedia company so we started by making short films on facebook and youtube and now we have show on peacock i make tiktoks with our monsters and they do a bunch of

really silly stuff there's there's a tiktok of the luxie one of our monsters with um this guy johnny bridge told them they're like flirting with each other and tracy mattel liked it on twitter so like that's like one of my things that i was part of and i'm like oh you've made it my dream i made it yeah exactly well done oh that's so cool okay and then so so you like know your shit it does bring me some comfort that you're also a late comer to the genre because i feel like there's a lot of the horror fans I've spoken with in the past they're like I was born I was born into horror there definitely is some like gatekeepiness about some of the community there are other people I've found that the crypt community has definitely built themselves around are the people who are just lovers of horror who want to share it with other people

and want to welcome people in wherever you know that ends up being so i have another friend of mine uh this guy dead meat who does a kill count youtube channel and oh yeah i think i've watched it yeah oh yeah so for a lot of kids who don't watch the horror movies they can watch the kill count it's like a silly way of like getting into horror or like watching something that is too scary for you so yeah there's a lot of horror fans that are uh more welcoming and and want to get people in nice oh my gosh so then as far as your relationship with the love witch you said you love it and you've seen it several times i love this movie nice yeah so it came out in 2016 i saw it i think it was 2017 because they were doing a screening of it at the new beverly and they had a bunch of anna biller's original paintings hung

up in the theater so there was a night where she was there i think but i didn't see her in person but i did get to see all of her original paintings because she directed wrote produced made the costumes made the sets wrote the score the score yeah yeah everything she did everything that blew me away because yeah i was like it took her like what like seven years to make this movie yeah so wild yeah yeah so so another friend of mine had seen it at the new beverly and was like alyssa this is exactly your shit you need to go like do you love spooky stuff and like 60s mod horror campy like culty and so i went and i saw and i was like this is the best thing i've ever i just also seeing it in a theater with people everyone was laughing and so there have been other times since that that i've now shown it to people and i've

been like looking at them expectedly and they're like I don't know how to react to this like I'm kind of freaked out hello because Caitlin and I had like different degrees of reaction to that and it does I can't see how seeing this movie in a theater would have made a difference because it does feel like a especially with part of my so my history with this movie is I have no history with this movie and I was very excited that you brought it to us because I had like heard of it several times but I just had no I didn't know anything because this movie is streaming in a lot of places and I was really stoked to watch it and I felt like I didn't have the pre-existing knowledge of what was being like pastiched to understand some of the references so I'm excited to go through them because I

I think that like I mean in terms of like if you showed me this movie and I did not know when it came out 2016 would not have been my like I feel like she nailed making it seem like a movie from the seventies, like in every single respect. I never would have guessed that this came out in the last 10 years. You know, it's shot on 35 millimeter film and she's done. She did a lot of collecting of vintage items, furniture and clothing and a lot of of stuff she remade herself.

There are several tells, though, because there are modern cars and Trish literally opens a cell phone to call Elaine in the restaurant. That's so funny. There are two other references. There's a Stepford Wives reference, which comes out in 1972, and they reference dna testing which does not uh come into practice until 1986 right so those are the tells so yeah it's like i feel i i i have a lot of questions and things i want to like talk through and then criticisms as well but i do i mean on its face the like i i feel like i'm gonna skew towards giving this movie the benefit of the doubt in a lot of areas because it's such a labor of love and it's like I feel you know like almost no directors get the chance to do every single part of a movie and work on it for the better

part of a decade and the fact that a like a woman whose entire mission statement for her whole career has been to see things through the female gaze and and channel that i think is so admirable and and just really fucking cool so i'm yeah i'm excited to talk about it um caitlin what's your history with the love witch i had never seen it either it's only been the past three or four days since i first saw it i will similarly have to talk through my feelings caitlin hated it i fucking hate this movie i'm sorry everybody but i don't like it um i think it has a lot to do with wait for listeners alissa just panned over to a framed poster she has of the love witch i also dressed as a love witch for halloween in 2018 no way nice that's a good fit i did the rainbow coat you did the rainbow coat the rainbow coat was gorgeous and then knowing that anna

biller made the rainbow coat made it better like that's so cool i'm excited that kaylin hated it though because i'm excited to have this conversation and this is exactly what i wanted oh good okay this is an open forum baby i'm i'm a centrist in terms of the love which yeah the this the spectrum is represented here um as far as how you might feel about the love witch um i will try not to come down too too hard on it because there are some things that it's attempting that i appreciate but then there's like i have a whole other like monologue prepared about what it means to be a true feminist and that means that i can hate a feminist piece of art and that's okay oh yeah spicy i know yeah i mean well that's been we've been talking about that

since 2016 is like equality means that everyone can be mediocre shit and that's fine girl can bad but if i girl oh no must like other girl things but women support women oh okay always i feel like that's what was that horrible movie i feel like that's bombshell feminism that's like i have to empathize with Gretchen Carlson because we're and you're like, no, I do not, baby. I do not. Like, yeah, I'm excited to get into that because it's like, yeah, it's like if it's not your thing, it's not your thing. Like, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Should we should we get into it? Let's get into it. Yeah. On a recap. Should I recap it? I'll be recapping it here we go so as we said the movie is very visually stylistic an homage and perhaps even parody

of like pulp novels and like technicolor b-movie melodramas of the 1960s down to like the acting style too which i appreciate i wasn't expecting that i felt like that was like the visuals are beautiful knowing that the director made all the visuals is really cool to know but i felt like it was like kind of the act the b-movie acting that sold me on it weirdly sure i don't know because i i don't know how to like describe what kind of acting it is that they're doing it's not great it's very stilted dialogue and like you can see at least for me like i feel like i can see the directing and i can like hear what direction she gave the actors and also there are many there are a few points i can't remember the woman's name who's like the queen of the witches or whatever but she's like

clearly looking at a card off camera right oh yeah Barbara Barbara she's like very clearly like reading off of a card being like witches have always been burned and oh yeah she keeps looking back and forth and there's like no big names in this movie so it's hard like it's it was kind of fun to be like I wonder if that actor legitimately has no talent or if they're playing a game of 4d chess i don't know about hard to say but i thought samantha robinson was really really really good in this part she's amazing it's i don't know how many actors can but i okay we disagree on that like i i think she was in terms of like what it seems like they wanted her to do, she did it. I think she nailed this part.

I think she fucking was perfect for it. I don't think that anyone else could have done it and sold it this way. I've never seen her in anything before. She's also in this movie called Cam. She's not the main character of it, but it's about a cam girl. And Samantha Robinson is a competing... Oh, we've had isa on the pod before oh yeah okay yeah i think i might i definitely listened to your episode yeah i think that she

came on for eza yes anyway yes yes yes okay so we meet that character elaine she's driving in red convertible her voiceover tells us that she's starting a new life. We see shots of a man drinking something that seems to be poisoned. It turns out that this is her ex-husband, Jerry, who she may or may not have murdered. Then Elaine gets pulled over by a cop. We'll put a pin in that guy. But then she continues on her way. Her voiceover continues. And she basically is saying, like, when Jerry left me, I devoured everything I could about how to get your man back.

So she's on a mission. She arrives at this house she's moving into. This woman, Trishish lets her in. And then she and Trish go to this Victorian tea room where they have a conversation about love and romance and pleasing men. Love Trish. Rooting for Trish. Elaine tells Trish how the day her husbanderry left her was the day that she died but then she was reborn as a witch

then we see elaine making a love potion and she sort of like prays to the goddess to be sent a beautiful, sweet man. Then she meets this guy, Wayne, and she has him take her to his house in the woods where she gives him her potion and mesmerizes him with some dancing and also the lining of her coat. And also those hallucinogenic herbs yes i figured that was part of the potion oh yeah yeah i'm not sure yeah wayne is i mean you know r.i.p in a second but wayne is such a piece of work where i just never knew how he was like just such a what was what was the word he used to describe himself that was just a way of saying horny like a libertine yeah I was just like okay so you're horny like it makes me laugh so much when horny people use fancy words to describe

themselves I'm like you can just say you're horny and we'll all know what you're saying and it doesn't make you a genius to be horny sorry like you're not like galaxy braining horniness what people intellectualize being horny it cracks me up um so he has drank this potion that he doesn't know is this love potion and then he's all like, I feel so weird. And then they have sex. And then he seems to very painfully fall in love with her to the point where he dies from it. It's like he almost like Benjamin Buttons where he becomes more and more baby like and then he dies. Yeah. He's like screaming and crying. Yeah. he's like screaming and crying yeah he's like elaine like he's calling for his mom and then he yeah and then he dies and then he dies that was

fascinating so he dies and then she buries his body along with a witch bottle that she makes that she puts her urine and a used tampon into. Then she meets up with some witch friends at a burlesque show, Barbara and Gaean? I'm not sure. Gaean? Yeah. They talk about love spells and how Elaineaine should be careful with using them and they talk about how they as women need to approach love and sex and it's mostly gay and being like this is how women should have love this is how women should sex and dancing sexy is actually good chicken soup for the for the lady you're just like shut up yeah okay right right

and again it's like that actor i thought did a really good job of making me want them to stop talking just being real nasty just being a gross person yes then we get what might be a flashback, but also just might be the next scene, which is a just kind of like ceremonial ritual where Elaine, I think it's like inducted into the witch coven or there's some induction type ritual. I think it's a flashback. Yeah. Okay, got it. Then we cut to the cop that had pulled Elaine over at the beginning of the movie. This is Sergeant Griff Meadows. He has been promoted and now he's a detective who starts investigating the death of Wayne, the guy who died after taking Elaine's love potion, they find his buried body and the witch bottle that Elaine left behind with her tampon and urine. I was like, Elaine really does leave behind a lot of evidence. An absurd amount of evidence. Firm evidence.

I was like, okay, it's very campy because she's just left like so many different ways to identify her on the scene. A very shallow grave with everything that belongs to her bodily and physically. Right on top. Like just a pile of different DNA samples. And here's my driver's license and here's my birth certificate and everything else you might want. Here's actually my phone number and feel free to text. Oh, yeah. So the cops find the body because the teacher that works with Wayne is kind of seeing what's happening and she reports him missing.

And so that's why the cops go up there. Right. That woman also saw Wayne leave with Elaine. So the mountain of evidence just keeps piling up. Real stacked against her. Wild. So this investigation is happening. Meanwhile, Elaine has dinner with Richard.

This is Trish's husband while trish is out of town uh elaine feeds him some love potion is what i think we're meant to understand happens yeah she's seducing him and he's like who are you and she's like i'm the love witch and we're like that's the name of the movie she's like yeah i'm the love witch and then we see another witchy ceremony where elaine tells barbara that she broke things off with richard and so she's now back in the dating pool and she does like that classic thing where she's like yeah things didn't work out like every time someone definitely dies she's like that classic thing where she's like, yeah, things didn't work out. Like every time someone definitely dies, she's like, I don't know what happened. I guess it just didn't work out. I was like, wow, been there.

That's what I identify with about this movie. I see. I see. Yeah. So then Sergeant Griff continues to investigate. He speaks to a professor who specializes in the occult and then he speaks to the owner of this witchy apothecary type store and she tells griff about elaine so he pays elaine a visit to ask her some questions about what might be a homicide. And he's like, are you a witch? And she's like, yeah. And we're like, okay, she's honest. And then he's like, do you

know Wayne Peters? And she's like, nah. And we're like, okay, just kidding. But then he gets all like wooed by her. And she's like, we're meant meant to be together and then they start dating and he takes her horseback riding and while they're horseback riding they happen upon a renaissance fair where they're kind of like canoodling and they do this like long scene at the renaissance long scene really long scene at the renaissance fair and it's like once again it's like on my first watch of this movie i wasn't aware that the director had made every single piece and i'm like i guess if i had made all of those renaissance clothes i would have made that scene last longer too but that's also why i would hire a costume designer so i would be less precious

about about it that scene was really long yeah she spent a year on the costumes for that scene alone well i can't believe i mean they were gorgeous but i was like we wow we sure are spending a lot of time here but then in retrospect second viewing i was like okay i get it i understand i will say that this scene did traumatize me a bit because a Renaissance fair is where I had my sludge attack. And so it really brought back some, some bad memories. You know, you know,

you know, okay. Anyway, so they go to this Ren fair and they have this like kind of like fake marriage ceremony. And then we hear Griff's voiceover about how love makes a man soft and how an ideal woman doesn't exist. But it also seems like he's falling in love with her.

I do not think he is. She has like fed him any potion, but he is like smitten with her to the point where he refuses to investigate Wayne's death any further because he no longer suspects Elaine of killing him. She's to his girlfriend to be guilty. Right.

Then Trish discovers her husband Richard dead, having died by suicide. Then we cut to a scene where Trish and Elaine have tea again, and Trish talks about how she blames herself for Richard's death and how she suspects Richard was having an affair she doesn't know with whom but she wants to kill whoever it was with then Trish discovers that it was Elaine who had the affair with Richard andaine comes home trish is there and then they fight a little bit she's there wearing a wig like putting on all of looking like late i feel like that we gotta mention that yeah i really did enjoy that part it's like what is this like single white female like little right off roadroad we're pulling up on

but i was like all right let's see where this goes and it kind of didn't go anywhere but whatever right it's still fun to watch because then trish there's like a dagger involved but no one gets injured and then trish just like runs out and then goes to the police um and like gives griff even more evidence and then elaine and griff meet up at the burlesque club and he's like hey elaine the dna testing came back and it's your dna and she's like so she's like i didn't kill anyone they died because they were so in love with me. And he's like, you're still under arrest. And then all the patrons at this burlesque club attack her. And they're like, burn the witch, burn the witch. Griff helps her get away.

Then they're back at her place. And she's like, Griff, everything's going to be okay. I love you so much. And then she tries to give him a love potion but he tosses it aside so she stabs him to death in the chest and she lived happily ever after the one thing that kayla and i were like oh she killed the cop at the end because there was so much of this and i'm like oh this is playing out like Lana Del Rey's life. I hate it.

But she does kill the cop. She does kill the cop at the end. But then she has a fantasy about them getting married and riding away together on a white horse, just the way she described her like fantasy fairy tale. So that is the story. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions

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And we're back. So, okay. So where I wanted to start was with, want to kind of like get the the bigger criticisms out of the way so we can jump into like movie discussion so one of the things that like really jumped out to me about just like the premise of this movie without even getting into what is really actually happening is getting into just like white girl witch culture which I feel like has always been a thing but it's been kind of steadily on the rise in the past I want to say like five to ten years and it it feels like something that this

movie is very much interacting with yeah and I feel like it's not I know Caitlin you you have some stuff on this as well it's it's not, I know, Caitlin, you have some stuff on this as well. It's, it's not something that, you know, it's really within our purview to completely unpack in the space of an episode. But I just wanted to sort of acknowledge it because it is so I mean, I feel like it follows so many kind of frustrating and unfortunate media trends that are essentially white women co-opting black and indigenous culture in order to center themselves in narratives or cultural practices or whatever it is. And it feels like, especially like, in particular, like the idea of witchcraft, most of the famous quote unquote, like witches in popular media are white ladies. And I wanted to shout out one essay in particular that I thought was like just so incredibly good.

We'll link it in the description. It's by a Navajo writer named Lou Cornum in The New Inquiry and it's called White Magic that interestingly their thesis kind of centers around another movie we've covered on this show, The Vavitch Oh yes. And so it's not in conversation with

The Love Witch directly because I do think that The Love Witch is so campy that it kind of manages to skirt some of this conversation sure whereas the vavitch is taking itself very seriously so that the criticism feels like okay we really have to tell what is the name of that director again who is like i went to the library um is it robert eggers is that am i getting that right yeah I always want to say Robert Evans but like that's just my friend like that's not that's not who made the bavich at all

yeah Robert Eggers and then he has that iconic quote that was like I went to the library like and that was how he learned about uh women and indigenous. And it's like, why did you make this movie? Anyways, Lou Kornham wrote this really good essay that discusses the Vovich and also discusses other really popular movies that have come out that center around white women as witches. So think, I mean, a lot of movies we covered on the show. Think The Craft. Think Practical Magic. Like Hocus Pocus. Hocus Pocus. Yes.

Like these are all name checked in the essay. But essentially, I mean, I would really recommend that listeners read. It's kind of a long essay. So you should also read it for yourself. I want to quote a little bit of it. But they're making the argument that while uh it's not untrue that white women have practiced witchcraft for a long time no one's saying that that isn't true however it is often at the expense of or the erasure of black or indigenous people so

i'm gonna quote a little bit here they talk talk a lot about the Salem Witch Trials, which is, again, a true event that happened that specifically centers white women in the historical retelling of it, even though there were many of the past, such as the Salem witch trials, followed from a fear of indigenous women and their role in forms of governance alternative to those of the foundling country. Along with genocidal tactics of sexual violence, early settlers also worked through their fear by projecting it elsewhere. The hyper visibility and necessarily spectacular aspects of witch trials against white women were an arena to handle physically and politically the threat of indigenous societies where women were in power. Beyond the events at Salem, a historical spectacle as formative to America as the Thanksgiving myth, unruly women,

be they native, black, or white, have continuously been posed as savage and placed outside the enclosed boundaries of civilization and nation in a move towards symbolic enclosure both witches and indigenous women have been reduced to accessorize signifiers hawked by urban outfitters of forever 21 available for the carefree to adorn themselves with at coachella and express their pagan predilections for living ever so briefly outside time unquote so essentially the argument that luke Cornham is very effectively making here is that it's just yet another example of centering white women where the issue is much, much larger. And it is, in some ways, a costume that white women can very easily take on and off in almost like a cosplay kind of way

where when black and indigenous women engage with um with i i i guess it's like i don't even have the correct language for it but witchy shit um it is not as easily separated taken on taken off and and the consequences are are more severe and pervasive. So I just wanted to touch on that because we haven't talked about that in a while. And I think we covered the craft so long ago that I feel like we didn't even really fully understand that stuff at the time. Totally. Yeah, that was kind of before we were like deep dives into context and things like that so um but well look at us having grown wow now our old geniuses um yes thank you for for doing that research and for sharing that and yes we'll definitely link that article um some of the context that i did but didn't get very far into because it's a book and we famously famously

i tried my very hardest wow in unison we killed it um the book is entitled witches sluts feminists by kristin j soleil it is and again i did not get very far into it um but i would recommend it nonetheless because it seems like it's very cool and well researched and has a thesis statement that very closely aligns with the ideology that we promote on this show. But it's basically about how the sexuality and sexual liberation of women and femmes has historically been feared and demonized. And that fear has been used to justify condemning women, accusing them of witchcraft, and like accusing them of being demonically possessed, burning them at the stake, all that stuff from history, and then how that fear and condemnation has never gone away, but has evolved over the years into

what we recognize today as modern day slut shaming, shaming of sex works, shaming of queerness. So that's what the book is about. I plan to read it more one day when I have time to read a book. One day when we're back to book reading. But I feel like this movie is trying to say a lot of what this book says, I would argue, more effectively. And this book is also way more inclusive in its approach to that, because we'll talk about how this movie is very white, very heteronormative, very gender normative, very body normative, the list goes on. And maybe that'll bring us into the discussion about like what this movie is trying to say um but i feel like caitlin's hitting the trying really hard but yeah i recommend the book for anyone who wants to check it out i'll check it out hell yeah okay

so yeah let's let's get into the let's get into the movie um so this movie is definitely talking a lot about patriarchy is talking i feel like it presents a lot of i don't know some of the the moments and it is absolutely we'll get into how gender and heteronormative the approach is and how the characters are there were some conversations so that i i enjoyed watching characters go back and forth about like i i thought all of the conversations even though they're not you know back to test friendly but uh the conversations between elaine and trish on both sides of the movie I thought were really interesting and just presenting different approaches to dealing with patriarchy. Sure.

Yeah. that this movie is about a woman who reclaims her power and becomes sexually liberated by way of being a witch and by way of murdering men which is funny but it is very funny i don't hate that no it's fun again for me it's just just like the execution just didn't feel very effective to me. I feel like the movie is setting her up for a character arc that never happens. What did you think was going to happen? I'm so curious. I thought that she was going to start out. So she starts out being very much like, so the conversation she has with Trish at the very beginning I like transcribed

it because I was just like what is happening here okay so she's you know she's all like you know we may be grown women but underneath we're dreaming about being carried off by a prince on a white horse and then she's like men are like children They're very easy to please as long as we give them what they want. And what men want is a pretty woman to love and to take care of them and to make them feel like keep catering to men and like all of their needs? And I'm like, yeah, good point, Trish. And Elaine is like, if you want love, you have to give love. Giving men sex is a way of unlocking their love potential. And then this is when Trish is like, sounds like you've been brainwashed. Elaine sounds like a bad self-help book at many points.

Like a 1980s self-help book for women written by a man exactly yes exactly and then this is when Trish is like it sounds like you've been brainwashed by the patriarchy your whole self-worth is wrapped up in pleasing a man so at the beginning like at the beginning here Elaine has these very regressive ideas about like catering to men's needs and then Trish calls her out on it and so that's why I'm like oh there's this you know maybe Trish is gonna kind of help her see her worth outside of how men value her and all this stuff and you could argue that that maybe happens again because she just like keeps killing men but to me it felt like the voice of reason character, Trish, leaves the story and is absent from it for most of the time.

And then when she does show up again toward the end, she's like, oh, maybe you were right, Elaine. Maybe you should give a man his fantasy and cater to his desires and all that stuff. And I'm just like huh i felt like okay so like i i'm going through an extremely heterosexual breakup right now so i was sort of just like i mean i don't mean to laugh at that but the way you framed it it's well i'm sorry i framed it like it was an extremely goofy movie um and that's on me i'm realizing why it is funny but i don't know like there were i agree with you structurally that where trish lands isn't satisfying and maybe i'm giving the director too much credit here but i felt like anna biller is such an outspoken feminist that she has to be aware of what she's doing there and it's kind of a matter for us of whether we agree with

that approach or not because it's like because because i feel like if you know if this was actually a movie from the 70s that would have most likely been written and directed by men if a conversation like that happened there's no 4d chess going on like it's not like like that's just literally what they think but anna biller's body of work very much indicates that that's not what she thinks and interviews that she did around this movie indicate that it's not what she thinks and so where i was sometimes hitting a wall but like where i kind of landed on was like, I don't know.

I'm curious what you think about this as well, Alyssa of clearly there's a lot of dissonance in Elaine's mind about men, because I feel like she's almost trying to present this fantasy so hard. And it's not like she's really presented to us as like an aspirational character. Like she's not like she's really presented to us as like an aspirational character. Like she's like, right, whatever.

But she's trying to present this fantasy so hard in a way that is clearly so psychologically destructive to her that she like kills the people that she's working so hard to bring this fantasy to. And on Trish's, I felt like Trish, like I was also bummed out that Trish ended by being like maybe I was wrong maybe I shouldn't have like had thoughts about like my own agency and independence and it felt to me like Anna Biller like kind of left it in this place where it was like fighting the patriarchy is really hard and doesn't always like work which is so depressing

and like not really the message i'm seeking in a movie this is why i think it's so clever okay yeah please tell us what you think hit us because anna biller is a feminist and she is aware of what she is doing and i think the conversations conversations between Elaine and Trish clearly show that because like when Elaine is talking cuckoo, then Trish is literally, yeah, the voice of reason being like, um, hello, here's reality. What are you talking about? But Elaine is such a surreal and otherworldly character. And I put her solidly in the good for her universe.

Like she wanted love and she took it and she whatever but uh i did i did also want to mention that anna biller was reading a bunch of self-help books and that was what inspired her to write the movie and the character was like echoing those and that's what i think is so cool is that it like the look of it being so solidly 60s and it feeling like a 60s movie like you could look at a frame of it or a scene of it and think it's from the 60s and i think that's what the juxtaposition of all of these things playing together like i'm not explaining it right but no i think i feel like it it adds up to something that is very funny and very clever to me

because i think she's pointing out so many things while staying so true to the campy 60 horrors genre and saying a new feminist message like i see trish's like well i guess feminism didn't work out for me after all and she's kind of doing this robotic it's like this robotic like i don't know what to do and she's kind of like it's like she's standing at a wall and she's like walking into it and like she's malfunctioning almost it's like well i don't know what to do now it's like the stepford wife's moment where she's like come have some coffee come have some well it's like when she's supposed to she's supposed to be the good wife she's supposed to be the one who has emotions and and earned her husband or whatever or like has her own agency and feelings and blah blah but then as soon as she's without

her husband she's like what what do i like that makes sense to me. I, I, I found, okay. So Anna Biller has an interview about this movie posted on her website that I found very clarifying in, I don't know. I had a lot of questions, especially when I was leaving my first viewing of this movie, which I went into completely cold and then was like, hold on, who is, who made this made this movie because it makes it makes all the difference and speaking to your point elisa yeah i i found her perspective really helpful in wrapping my head around like what she's trying to do so the question i also am not clear on who's asking these questions it might be her asking frequently asked questions to herself unclear but on her so the question is which character should we identify with elaine or trish anna biller replies quote our identification flips depending on the scene i'm trying to talk

about how difficult it is to be a woman in today's culture and how all of the options for creating an identity are problematic for instance trish is comfortable with herself and happily married, and Elaine feels she has to tie herself in knots to please a man. So Trish is the quote-unquote normal one, and Elaine is desperate and has self-esteem issues. But in the end, Elaine uses her fantasy doll tactics to steal Trish's husband and destroy him, and Trish is left widowed and broken.

So when we see what Elaine has done to Trish, we hate Elaine and identify with Trish is left widowed and broken. So when we see what Elaine has done to Trish, we hate Elaine and identify with Trish. But at other moments, as when Elaine is flashing back to her abuse by men, we identify with Elaine. I tried to create a Jungian animus for Elaine. First of all, okay, you've read a book. Okay. She went to the library. are you robert eggers i know robert eggers went to the library we never made that t-shirt um i tried to i think it's i've never said car is it carl young i think young the psychologist right oh yes okay i tried to create i'm continuing her quote i tried to create a youngian animus for Elaine, a group of judging, manipulating male characters that she hears in her head or paints in her

paintings. It's in her attempts to escape this animus that she becomes dangerous to herself and to others. It will be interesting to see how many women will relate to this, unquote. So I get it like that that totally makes sense to me of like different perspectives on trying to navigate patriarchy navigate abusive relationships because that is a lot of what Elaine is actively processing throughout the movie is like trauma inflicted on her by men from her past whether it's I think that you like hear the

echoes of her father at one point, you hear certainly a lot from her ex husband, she talks about it with other characters. It's clearly like a big defining trauma that like informs all of her behavior. So yeah, I mean, I, I'm having this thought in real time. So bear with me here. But I feel like something this movie, especially upon hearing that quote from Anna Biller, I feel like part of what this movie is attempting to comment on is something that we've kind of grappled with on the podcast and even in my own personal life. This navigating and reconciling as a hetero woman, how do I reconcile being a militant feminist while also wanting the heteroantic companionship of a man. This is something I have a conversation with myself about daily.

And I wonder if that's part of what this movie is dealing with. Because we have Elaine, who is very emblematic of this old school, 60s era and earlier ideology of like, well, a woman exists to please a man, to cater to his every whim, to be sexual, not because you want to be sexual or explore yourself sexually, but to sexually please a man. You know, all of this stuff that for all of history had been what was expected of women by the patriarchy. And then you have a character like Trish, who is saying like, no, this is 2016 or the 60s. We don't know what decade it is that we're in, but we don't think like that anymore. You've been brainwashed. Life isn't a fairy tale. Husbands aren't Prince Charmings. Get with the program. So you have these conflicting things that, and again, I don't know what even point I'm trying to to arrive at here but no I I totally

like again this is like watching this movie and at a very interesting time for me personally is like yeah I think that that's something that a lot of tragically straight women are grappling with, you know, is, and also like, I think that that exists, you know, across the spectrum of sexuality of like, well, I want to be empowered. I want to be independent as a person. Why am I still feeling like I want a partner? But it's like, that's part of,

and not everybody feels that way. I'm not trying to overgeneralize. But it's like that's such a part of being human. And the more I watched it, the more I engaged with Anna Biller's commentary on what she was trying to do. I thought it was kind of a really brave thing to do in some ways. Again, it's a very white cast. And Anna Biller is is um half japanese half white but the cast itself is extremely white i feel like this is you could

argue that it because it's interacting with 60s and 70s b movies it's extremely heteronormative and binary as it pertains to gender but i I also feel like, like what you're describing, it feels like almost like a feminist elephant in the room for some people where there's so many beliefs that I hold very firmly that I cannot apply to my own life to save my own life. Like, you know, I feel like I'm in this is maybe a reach, but but like I feel that way about like a lot of body issues and a lot of I like I'm an extremely body positive person I feel like I actively recognize how our bodies are policed and mistreated and we're told to look a certain way and I'm still anorexic like it's so like it is like such a personal journey on yeah you know holding your

beliefs and holding them very authentically which it seems like anna billard does as well and also i don't know acknowledging through a piece of art that it's like but yeah when it's you like fucking good luck you know it's yeah yeah yeah i don't know I feel the same way I find so in that way maybe this movie is far more relatable than I'm giving it credit for for me okay here's what I think it is again I see what the movie its intentions are and I honestly think it's because I think it has a screenplay that I do not think is well written the execution just like kind of falls flat for me. I think it's very largely like a screenwriting thing, an editing thing.

The movie is like a half hour longer than it needs to be. And I feel bad dumping on these things because I know Anna Biller did all of it, but that will bring me to my monologue that I'll get to eventually. But so I think it's just kind of like a personal preference thing where the execution falls flat because the story is just sort of like meandery and at times unfocused. And I think some things happen that are probably like symbolic or allegorical of something, but it's not totally clear to me what or things aren't

totally tracking. And, and I don't know if it's because it was intentionally. Okay, this is going to be so mean, but I have to say it. Was it intentionally poorly written? Because it's paying homage to the like these pulpy B movies of that era that are also poorly written i sort of thought so i don't know what did you think alissa in my opinion yes in my opinion yes yeah if it is if it is not then in my opinion she like if she didn't do it on purpose she is geniusly riding the line of and just like stumbling into the perfect like wrongness, but also. So that's why I think she had to have done it on purpose. Like, I think it's so stilted in the way that it is written.

And like, yet other lines are so clever. And like the stuff about the tampon, like most men have never seen a used tampon. And then later when he's like, and I found an old hot dog under the bed. It was like, oh my God. I didn't get that until my second viewing. Stuff like that is so clever that I think that the moments where it is like,

I think it is just a perfect homage to 60s movies and like using all of the parts that are like, using them as paper dolls almost of 60s movies being like, okay, these are the pieces that I have, so I'm going to use them to tell a more messed up, different story but it's i these are the what i have and people will recognize the roles that these people are in so i'll yeah i will use them

yeah i suppose i land on okay well a poorly written movie and kind of muddled story does then not lend itself very well to a clear message for me sure clearly other because i read so many reviews that are like this movie is genius it's brilliant it's amazing people were foaming for this movie foamy but to be fair a lot of the reviews I read were hailing the visual style and all of the like artistry that went into the movie. But saying like, you should just ignore the plot. The plot, just don't even notice it. Just like kind of don't even watch the plot. But just be sure to really look at the movie, though. But it looks amazing.

So for me, coming from like a very like story centric screenwriting background, I would obviously never mention my master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University. Certainly not. But I just feel like there could be a much clearer, more like sex positive. Here's why I think she did it this way. I think that the visual style of it is so effective and it just burns into your brain. And you can't not look at it. And I think the poster is just so eye catching. And like, it looks like the 60s in such a way that you're like, I have to see if this was real. Like, I have to know if this was from that time.

And the way it glues you into it that way, I think, is part of the trap of it and then it also like is using this yeah meandering type of stuff but and like these dreamy styles because i think that it's supposed to be when you you realize later like oh that was a 2016 movie that was not really from the 60s and like these parts of it stick out to you so i think it's supposed to like yeah parts of it stick with you later where you're like oh an old hot dog he he meant he found a tampon under a mummified I think that's why it is affected I don't think it's supposed to be like if it were more straightforward about the message I don't think it would be as fun or interesting or catchy that it uses that style to its advantage and like it has it does a bunch of silly and

possibly meandering stuff in terms of like other films but i don't think that would it would work any other way and i think the campiness of it is what makes it so weird and special and why the the real cool feminist message of it are so special because it's just like they're dropped in there among this like glittering display or like oh i didn't expect to find right this in here but this is fun yeah i suppose if it was more straight forward it would feel too preachy and just too like we get it women are people who deserve to be sexually liberated and like all that stuff so yeah yeah because because i i i don't know like i i run very hot and cold on art movies where like if i like it i love it

and if i'm like not vibing with the style or the script i'm like this is the most annoying shit i've ever seen in my entire life like yeah that's whatever the nature of the genre but yeah i don't know it does feel like it comes down to personal preference i like that she i don't know i just like i can't in good faith dump on this movie too much because it's just so much work and so many like risks and i i feel like making very simple feminist points in movies is such a thing to do right now where it's very like and that's how I am and I'm and girls actually rule and like as time goes on there are and this this kind of brings me back to the essay from Lou Kornham I was talking about earlier where it's like straightforward movies about witches that come out now are operating on like a higher level in terms of social commentary

than they were 20 years ago because if you think about the craft the craft starts as a story of his sisterhood that devolves into teen girls blackmailing each other over various guys like it ultimately becomes and you could say the same thing for practical magic where it's like it's about sisterhood but also is inherently tied to heterosexual relationships and doesn't really end up making a point about anything in spite of marketing itself like it is saying something which it kind of isn't even though it's still fun to watch right whatever but Whatever. But I am finding myself more drawn to, like, unusual ways of making points like that because there's just so many movies right now that's like, women are good.

And it's like, yeah, I know. It's that I just find that exhausting. It's like be bashed over the head with it. And I think the scene that really solidifies is that the last scene of the movie really solidifies that it is a self-aware parody to me is like when they they go back to the renaissance fair the mock wedding scene and all of the sound all of the music is gone but you hear all of everyone's like shirts rustling and like people breathing weirdly so you hear like all of these just like gross

unsettling noises that are like okay there's people here but there's all of the music is gone and like it's just very unsettling and weird and so that to me says like she is aware that like this is a really ridiculous fantasy and like obviously you should not be like i'm gonna be like elaine when i grow up but also it's like that girl boss elaine literally yeah mrs mrs girl boss mrs elizabeth holmes the witch but like yeah but also it's like i don't know there were parts of it i didn't like there are parts of it i did like but i do feel like now having watched it a couple times and like reading where the director's coming from I do feel and just like through this conversation I'm like okay I understand what she's trying to say and then it's like you know no no harm no foul as far as

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I agree, Alyssa. Like, anything that bashes you over the head or has some weird... I'm always reminded of that scene in the last Avengers movie where like the 10 women that they've managed to like weave into the stories throughout. Who don't know each other. Girl scene. The girls are here. Exactly. Like all the women in the MCU congregate on the battlefield and start to walk alongside each other.

And they're like, woohoo, feminism. Let's go, ladies! Da-da-na-na-na-na-na-na. Exactly. That shit annoys me so much because it's just so, like, performative and it's, like, whatever male director's idea of what they think women want to see or that they think is empowering for women or whatever.

And like, so anything that's like very bashed you over the head like that is similarly not effective. I guess I just think there were some things that I was like, how, what, what is the takeaway here? What am I supposed to be? Or how does the movie feel about this? Or how does the, you know, how does the filmmaker feel about this? Or how does the, you know, how does the filmmaker feel about this? And one of those things was, and again, maybe this is more clearly effective comedy and parody to other people, but I was just kind of missing it where, so the men would typically

take the love potion, fall painfully in love to the point where they were feeling in such a way that some of the other characters were like men become soft when they fall in love and it's it's really gross for a man to have feelings and when elaine calls him a pussy and she's like what a pussy he's crying just like a little girl yeah yeah yeah a lot of like equating um men being vulnerable and men expressing emotion to like being gross and stuff and i feel like i guess because the characters who are who don't find that appealing are characters like elaine who we are not meant to identify with i i felt guess my take on that was that again I do think that Anna Biller knows what she's doing there where it's I feel like that would only happen to male characters after they had already

previously expressed that they found the same quality when it appears in women to be embarrassing and gross and annoying where it's like Wayne's character before he does begin like painfully emoting, which is like super campy and like whatever. It's a bit much. But he's like they have he and Elaine have this discussion where he's like, oh, yeah, you know, like when women expect things of me or like basically like i don't know i feel like everyone who is happy like misfortune of having sex with kind of an asshole guy has like had a version of this conversation where it's like you know like i don't understand why i have to be like nice to people that i have sex with and like it's it's so like corny and over the top but it's that I thought because that conversation happened when he was expressing the same overblown clearly overstated behavior that he was describing

in an earlier scene that I didn't care like it didn't come off to me as like men shouldn't emote mention express because some movies definitely firmly come down on that side but it i think that it was almost like a punishment for finding any woman he'd ever been with to expect and it's also like he describes it as like neediness but what he's describing is basic respect like i thought that scene was really like the way that that dialogue was written is he's making it seem like oh can you believe someone would expect this of me when it's kind of basic courtesy so yeah that didn't that didn't bump me too much i i and i like that she's so i like that she's sarcastically babying him in that scene she's like your life's been tough, huh? And then he goes, in a way, yes. And you're like, oh, God. I feel like she was showing, like,

they were flipping the gender roles, basically, and that, like, Wayne was becoming the way women are, like, stereotypically portrayed as as, like, super emotional and, like, needy and whatever. And, like, when he does all of that, then Elaine is like, oh, no, ew. I didn't want you to be like that this is not what i wanted from love and now you're doing what women do and i'm not this is not what i asked for yeah which does i mean i think what what that flip because it is like a clear like the way we've been classically conditioned to view binary gender roles flipped and then used

to like weaponize against cis men what that i mean and it's like not every movie can do everything so i don't even know how much of a criticism this is but that creative decision means that there's no room for nuance in the discussion like it's like if you're flipping traditional gender roles manufactured by society in this 60s 70s way then yeah it feels like anna billard doesn't leave herself a lot of area to discuss living outside of like traditionally prescribed gender identities or like so so i i i understand why like that is something that feels kind of glaringly missing i don't know this is such a complicated discussion do you do you think i'm i'm really curious about this do you guys think that it would be possible to emulate the 60s aesthetic

and theme and balance a more nuanced feminist conversation because i don't know i feel like there would be room for i mean there's what i don't understand is like why there's basically no non-white actors in this movie because even for the 60s or 70s that's not off certainly like not off the table so I thought that was like definitely a bizarre choice and I wonder how consciously made that choice was if at all I don't know I mean but in terms of like having a nuanced conversation about gender I mean this is like the least nuanced genre available so i don't know yeah i yeah i guess i don't know i feel like i mean you can just like even if you wanted it to be aesthetically 60s camp technicolor melodrama b-movie type thing and still make commentary i feel like that's possible because you can just take creative

liberties with things and it i mean maybe it's it'll be dissonant for some people but i don't know i feel like it could be effective and now okay so now i'm thinking about how there's like long monologues because i was like oh yeah i know, I don't want anything that's bashing me over the head. But then there's like these long scenes where like Barbara and the witch man, Gaeon or whatever, are like, and this is another example of where I'm not sure what the movie is exactly trying to say, because Gaeon and Barbara, they're talking and they're saying some things that I very much agree with. And then two seconds later, they say some other things that I cannot really get behind. So I'm not sure exactly where the movie lands or if this is parody that I just don't quite get. But to give you an example, they're talking about how

like, you know, there's this history of witchcraft and it's interwoven with this fear of female sexuality and how women were burned at the stake because, you know, men feared the erotic feelings that women solicited in them and stuff like that but then gaines like oh but a woman's greatest power lies in her sexuality and i just i i always found it a little bizarre that that message came from a guy who is clearly painted as creepy because i i'm not opposed to the message of like anyone finding their sexuality to be a liberating empowering thing but it's just like sure yeah the vessel for the message is a little dissonant yeah because later he's also like because women's greatest power is in their sexuality that means that you

should wear perfume and high heels and makeup and learn to dress your hair in attractive ways. You know, display flesh artfully and be a mother and a lover. I'm always displaying flesh artfully. I don't know about you. And I'm not like anti-makeup or anti-perfume or anti-exposing flesh. Like I do all of these things. Anyone can do whatever they want with their body. But he's basically saying, do these things in order to be appealing to men. And it's very important that you do these things. And then he says, like he's telling women to

stand your ground, but always let the man feel like a man. And then Barbara's chiming in and she's saying, yeah, we have to use sex magic to destroy a man's fear of you. And so I'm like, is this what the movie subscribing to is? I didn't think so. Like, I didn't think, I mean,

I don't think that the movie was necessarily getting behind what Gann was saying, because he's like, I feel like he is like clearly like this bizarre foil who's like trying to get women to behave the way that he wants. But I do I do see what you're saying that like the message of this movie can get a little like it's so aesthetically pleasing. And then sometimes the the message gets a little bit muddled, especially in a scene like this where again it's like this constant tug of war of like points that i agree with and that i think are coming from a place of like yes it's okay to be

empowered sexually as a woman yes women have historically been condemned and persecuted for their sexuality and perceived as being evil witches because of it and then two seconds later like this guy who barbara and elaine seem to agree with is like and that's why you should make yourself as attractive to men as possible because that's how you become empowered and i'm like and again I'm like this might be parody but if it is I can't not really tell and it's just not quite working for me just because of like the way the scene is written the delivery of the dialogue there's just like all these things that to me make it feel very dissonant it does I mean it just it does seem like it's a matter of like this is just like not

definitely like not a movie for everyone like yeah at its core which like yeah I guess leads me to my kind of spiel about how I tend to feel this pressure to like media made by women and other marginalized creators especially media with a feminist with feminist themes like the love witch because i want to be supportive to these filmmakers and this cause but i also don't want to feel like i kind of have to automatically like these things based solely on this pressure to feel supportive and because then it's just pandering like right yeah i do i do feel like it's like i don't know everyone has a different perspective on this but i feel like i'm like i'm always going to like give a marginalized creator's project and work a chance like before i will give some rando white

guy a chance right but it doesn't mean like i don't know we talk about this on this we've talked about this on the show in the past where it's like you know true true equality means that everyone makes mediocre shit sometimes the difference is more in like how you know the number of flaming hoops that are added for marginalized creators. But it's like, this is a movie by a woman of color, and she did have to jump through a lot of hoops to make it. And it's still not for everybody. I know, that's like kind of what I'm grappling with on this entire episode, as I'm sure listeners can tell, where like, I want to be able to judge things based on merit and based on the quality of

storytelling which is the criteria I use to judge media made by cishet white men because again like true feminism is to me is that it is okay to admit that you don't like a thing made by a woman but like you said you know i know how difficult it is for marginalized creators to get their movies made to get funding for their projects to fewer strikes if there's a flop etc yeah i mean right that you know distribution and like have their movies seen by a large audience yeah they don't they don't even get to do the same job and i can't emphasize that enough because i've seen i've seen it all different ways and they just don't even get to do the same job and it's just not fucking fair to judge them on the same standards because it's a different ball game um that's why i am inclined to be more forgiving or to just to not not be more forgiving

but like to right okay what were the circumstances here like what was the budget who else was involved and really like analyze that part of the situation in context with how i view the my opinion of the movie because i think all of that really hugely matters and like like anna biller she had had experiences like that with her own crew on this very movie. There was a piece in IndieWire published in late 2017 based off of a Twitter thread that Anna Biller had made about how she felt very frustrated by and disrespected by her own crew at many points. And it doesn't sound like it was like anyone high up.

It sounds like the actors were all very respectful. But just feeling like that she as a director who is a woman and also a person of color, like she was not taken as seriously as someone who is like, admittedly. I mean, if you've seen the movie, she's doing some weird stuff. She's making some like hard choices. The swings are big ones but it doesn't sound like her crew was as i don't know i mean they weren't treating her like they would if she was like david lynch being like we're doing something weird today everybody right and like they were just like this woman doesn't know what she's doing so i wanted to uh i mean she she we can link to this as well but she was saying quote it was so bad that during reshoots we had different ads assistant directors

and they were appalled at what was going on they said your own crew is sabotaging you why uh blah blah she said uh she's had quote this same thing on other films some crew members seem hell-bent on destroying you and the film to make sure it never gets in the can I think it has to do something with being a female director and something to do with how the line producer set up a bad vibe and then disappeared so you know it's like and also it's person to person I don't know what Anna Biller's directing style or personality is the examples are too vague but it does that just like pinked in my head of like yeah just like your own crew is not aligning with your creative vision that has to be so frustrating as long as you are treating your crew well right because you're just a different shape and a different

like they won't see you the same as they see a man and so they are not going to just intrinsically the way that things are they will not treat you the same and you will not get the same as they see a man and so they are not going to just intrinsically the way that things are they will not treat you the same and you will not get the same respect and so it is inherently a different ball game to direct as a woman and i'm sure as an asian woman like it's like um do you know who you're talking to like this is the director of the movie like yeah like who said do you think you're on yeah yeah who do you think is is paying like who do you think your job is coming from like yeah i feel like it is like that's like a conversation that i hope we keep having because it's like i don't know i mean it is kind of a difficult thing to reconcile and i

mean i totally see where you're coming from caitlin was like we don't want to like judge directors on separate scales like that's not fair but then it's also like but not being a cis white guy making a movie is gonna affect your experience totally significantly so it's just right which again i do want to like acknowledge and like take into consideration as i am judging a movie i don't want to like ignore that or be like it doesn't matter I'm just gonna judge a movie because like the movie by the movie but at the end of the day there are just some movies that yeah like that don't end up being for me and all I have to do is just not watch them ever again I think it's just like the work of asking yourself like well why isn't it for me right and if you hit a block there if you're

like well i just couldn't perfectly relate with the main character because they weren't exactly my perspective or blah blah blah like if if you're hitting blocks that are you know based on your own biases or your own unwillingness to learn about the experiences of others like yeah sit yourself down in your little inner brain chamber and have a little talk like and that is a huge and i feel like that is like kind of in conversation with what you're talking about and and part of the reason it's so hard for marginalized creators to get projects funded is because there is such a like cis white male normative like if a if a white guy can't enjoy your movie then you don't get a movie sorry like right but in the same way it's like if you're if you ask yourself which it

seems like you very much have in the case of this movie like why is this movie not for me and the answer is like i didn't like the writing and i it's not my genre then it's like yeah yeah you're not like you're not gonna go to hell like it's totally fine I don't know it's it's like it's a very it's like a similarly hard thing to grapple with as um being a hetero woman who likes the romantic attention of men it's confusing it's all complicated we're all on a journey here baby yes i did want to shout out the cinematographer of this movie who is an icon we've covered his work before m david mullen a japanese cinematographer check out this resume baby akilah and the bee jennifer's body and the love witch amongst other but those were the three that jumped out to me as like oh hell yeah that debs

oh he rocks he rocks yeah i mean akilah and the bee alone and also a bunch of mad men a bunch of Mad Men, a bunch of Westworld, a Sarah Silverman special. Just like amazing work top to bottom. So I just wanted to shout out M. David Mullen. I just wanted to take a moment to give credit to a man. Excellent work. Brave, brave. Yeah, but I was like, wait a second. The same guy who did the camera work on Aila and the bee which i we have to cover

we have to i can't believe we haven't covered akila and the bee um classic i want to point out the heteronormativity and gender normativity especially in the way that the characters discuss love and sex and romance and stuff and again maybe that's part of the commentary and parody of it all but all the love and sex that gets discussed in this movie only refers to hetero attraction between cis men and cis women discussions around gender are always framed in a very kind of rigid binary of man and woman and not acknowledging anyone else on the gender spectrum um which i do think that there could have been room for in this movie in terms of diversity and race body type and and i i feel

like you know i i know that queer identities were like i almost went full boss I was like wicked underrepresented in movies in in the 60s and 70s but there's there was like queer b-movie cinema that existed like there there was there was definitely room for it right but and then well I also have to kind of question like is the movie stylistically paying homage to that era and the movies that came out in that era an excuse for why the movie looks like it does in terms of whiteness and body normativity and gender and heteronormativity i don't know i don't feel like that's a very good excuse for a movie that comes out within the past five years. But I don't know.

That's something that I would be interested in deferring to Anna Biller on. Because I do. I'm like, I trust that she has a creative vision. And if there's a question that it's like she's truly like, oh, I guess I wasn't thinking about that that hard. And I don't have reasoning for it. Then it's like, OK, well, then I'm criticizing you for that. Right. like uh oh i guess i wasn't thinking about that that hard and i don't have reasoning for it then it's like okay well then i'm criticizing you for that right but yeah i would i would be this is just something that i was just like i wish she would answer these questions maybe she has and

we just don't know um does anyone have other thoughts about the movie? I think that's everything that I had. I don't think there's anything. I loved when she's burying Wayne, her total tangent to talk about her cat that she misses so much. Oh, yeah. It was like my best friend. I was like, wow, feeling seen. I was like, girl.

Yeah, there were a lot of moments in this movie that I thought were, like, very funny or, like, just, I don't know. Like, the moments where I did understand what was being referenced, I was like, woohoo, I love this shit. And then there are other moments that I'm like, this is referencing something I'm assuming I don't know. But, yeah. Does it pass the Bechdel test? I believe it does a couple of times not a

ton of times because it is mostly you know women talking about men what were we talking about oh yeah men yeah yeah but it does pass a few times it is like more on a technicality than I was expecting honestly but there is that whole I mean there's that whole intro scene where Trish and Elaine are meeting each other they They're talking about the house. They're talking about why did you move. They're talking about a couple things that are not about men. Like, it does pass. The interior decorating.

Yes. Elaine also talks to the witch shop lady about selling her wares. Yes, yes. But most of the conversations between. Right blessings, Elaine. Merry meeting. But most of the conversations between women are either directly about men or the subtext of the conversation is about using witchcraft to find hetero love with a man.

Right. Which makes sense. It's a story about a woman who is trying to find hetero love. But also why are so many movies where a woman is the protagonist about that? This movie broke my brain. Yeah, this movie. This is the movie that broke the podcast. Congratulations, Anna Biller. Congratulations, Alyssa. The podcast is broken. I'm so proud. I'm so glad that I got to bring this one I am too I really like this movie is going to

like haunt me and I think in a generally positive way I feel like there's going to be a lot of listeners who are going to be like Caitlin you fucking asshole with your horrible opinions about this movie you're paying very hard on yourself oh i mean usually i am yes i don't know my again my brain is broken and let's rate it

let's rate it let's rate it our nipple scale is zero to five nipples based on how the movie fairs looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens. Here's what I'll say. Oh, my God. Ready? Knowing who made the movie and Anna Biller being a very vocal, outspoken feminist and all of the work she put into it and the care she put into it and what is clearly messages of the sexuality of, you know, women and femmes and how that's historically been feared and punished and how it deserves to be empowered and how there's commentary on toxic masculinity and male fragility, how there's kind of this acknowledgement, or maybe this was just my read of it, but open to interpretation that

it's exploring this kind of tug of war of like, being a sexually liberated feminist person and also a heterosexual woman who is attracted to men and how that can be confusing what are you gonna do do you kill the men do you have sex with them why not both well i can't be both do you get into a relationship with them and then have sex with them why not both well i can't be both do you get into a relationship with them and then have sex with them and then kill them it could be everything let's not take anything off the table and this movie certainly does not take any of those options off the table right right so i think it's attempting to do some interesting things i think that because the screenplay and just the way the story was crafted is muddled and dissonant, I found a lot of the messaging to get lost in that. And I feel like it wasn't as, again, not as effective commentary for me as it seems to be for a lot of other people.

And again, that's probably that's just like a personal preference, art being open to interpretation kind of thing. So I appreciate what it seems to be doing. And because of that, I will award the movie three nipples. Maybe that's too harsh, but that's what feels right to me at this time. Three nipples. I'll give one to Anna Biller's costume design. I'll give one to Anna Biller's score. And I'll give one to the prop that is the used tampon that goes into the witch bottle. Woohoo! I'm going to go three and a half here.

Here's what I think boiled down. The movie is too white and too straight even for the genre it is parodying for my personal preference and that is kind of my biggest stumbling block with this movie I don't see why there couldn't have been more character and also like a body normative things we've we've discussed at this point in the episode but I think that there was certainly more room even within the confines of what Anna Biller was very clearly referencing so that I think is my my main critique outside of that I think like this is like a movie that I am very glad exists I feel like the fact that it broke all of our brains in the way that it did actually speaks to the movie

and speaks to the fact that it is good that like I that I'm that I'm very glad it exists because it's presenting you know in a in a very weird way that seems very inherent to like who this director is and how many women get to make very like weird movies exactly how they want to and while she while she was certainly limited by budget got to do the whole thing by herself and have it received with extremely open arms by the general public which i feel like is also unusual for marginalized auteurs where you i feel like it's a more normal reception to be like you know white guy reviewers being like well i don't know what the fuck that was about anyways like you know so i think that they're like this movie has a lot going on and the fact that like we were like like the different ways of navigating patriarchy and again it is a very

like how heterosexual women navigate the patriarchy but but but even the shades of gray within that very specific group of people who are overrepresented in movies. But to have that and have both of them sort of lose, it's frustrating, but it's also so reflective of what real life can be. And except everyone is really sexy and wearing cool costumes and so ultimately i i think that it's i think it's definitely worth a watch if you enjoy like very i'm trying to think of the word like whatever the intellectual word for quirky is that like the i would like anachronistic it's not that but it sounds like that kitschy kitsy is kind of what comes to mind. I don't know.

Kitchy, it is definitely kitschy. I'm going to think of this word in like three hours and then walk into traffic. But I'm very glad this movie exists. I think it's, I mean, just based on the conversation we've had here alone, I would recommend watching it. See what you think. Maybe you'll like it.

Maybe you won't. And that's just kind of uh art movies um so i'll give it three and a half docking for the reasons described i'll give one to elaine i'll give one to trish i'll give one to anna biller i'll give my last half to Elaine's cat that died. Poor kitty. Alyssa, what say you? I'm going a solid four nips. Wow, you really did the spectrum. You already gave a nip to Gray Malkin,

so I'm going to give Gray Malkin two just to be extra. I think this movie is so clever. I think it's so funny. I think that the satire of it, it works so well for me because it, there's just so much to pick apart and it's not straightforward and you have to kind of look at it for longer. And I can't remember the exact quote that Anna says, but she said something about making it for the feminine gaze and how she did

a lot of artistry with the costumes and the sets and all of that so that you weren't just looking at the women sexually being like oh she's a beautiful woman it's like there's all of this other stuff to look at at the same time so she wanted there to be like that to be part of it but there for there to be more to look at yeah so i think it's i don't know i i just think it's such a great movie i I do want to share a quick quote from Anna Biller from an article in The Guardian, in which she's kind of talking about what she wanted to do with this movie and like different cinematic identities she wanted to reclaim as far as like archetypes and stereotypes and like things like that, as far as like female characters throughout cinema. And she says, or sorry, sorry, this is talking about what Annabella wanted to do. So it's not a direct quote from her, but it says that she, quote, cites other female movie types whose voices she would like to reclaim, the sexually aggressive, confident women

of the pre-Hays Code era, when many more screenwriters were women. Film noir femme fatales, such as Anne Savage in Detour and Jane Greer in Out of the Past, projections of male post-war anxiety and misogyny. And then she says, quote, I'm doing that with the love witch, reclaiming the figure of the witch, the femme fatale, an old sort of male fantasy figure, and make it a femme fatale seen from the female side, unquote. So, you know, I appreciate that. I get what she's doing. Caitlin, it's okay you didn't like the movie. With that, Alyssa, where can we find you online? Where can we follow you and follow your work? You can also watch Girl in the Woods, which is our new show coming on Peacock this October. And the whole show centers around a queer love triangle and a non-binary person coming out. And girls kiss in the first episode. That's all I'm going to say. It's spooky.

It's fun. I think it's got something for everybody. Yes. Everyone, be sure to check out The Girl in the Woods on Peacock TV, which drops October 21st, which, depending on the release date of this episode, might be today. So check it out. And then you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Bechtelcast. And of course, there's our Patreon, aka Matreon, which is found at patreon.com slash bechtel cast it's five dollars a month it gets you two bonus episodes per month and also the entire back catalog love it

you can uh get merch at tpublic.com slash the bechtel cast and the last thing i'll say is everything i didn't like about this movie or the moments I didn't like were when I felt like I was watching a Lana Del Rey music video and that I feel like I'm like well I'm bringing my biases to the table as well sure sure

okay bye bye hey everybody this is Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang we've got some exciting news for you you know we're always bringing you the best guests right well this week we're taking it to the Bye. It's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Catherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden.

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as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unnerves 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.