The Bechdel Cast - The Royal Tenenbaums with Jenny Yang

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

This week, sisters Caitlin Durante, Jamie Loftus, and Jenny Yang all reunite to examine the representation of women in The Royal Tenenbaums!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @jennyyangtv on Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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My name's Caitlin Durante. And this is our podcast about the portrayal of women in movies. That's right. We measure it sort of by the Bechdel test, or that's our jumping off point, which for us is a test that requires that a movie has two female identifying characters who have names. They speak to each other about something other than a man and their conversation has to be at least two lines of dialogue. That's it. Low bar. You think pretty easy to do, but some movies really struggle. I would say most movies. Great transition into the movie and really the body of work.

This is a popular request for us, and I would just say movies of this particular filmmaker, people get a real freshman year attachment to. This is a peak, you know, like, have you ever had sex with a guy that has a framed poster of. Oh, OK. Hard to stop. But I've you know, I feel like many people have had the experience of hooking up with someone who has a framed poster of this filmmaker in their house. And it is a real red flag. I mean, less of a red flag than a lot of directors, but yeah. Not the biggest red flag, but a little waving to say, hey, I'm going to try to explain something to you and soon. Yeah. Yes. So the director we're talking about, of course, is Wes Anderson. The movie we're covering today is The Royal Tenenbaums. First, before we get into our heavy discourse let's i know some heavy flow

a heavy flow of discourse today yeah let's introduce our guest she's a stand-up comic she is an actor she is a writer and she's so wonderful jenny yang hi thank you for having me thanks for being here let's do this let's Let's do it. Okay, so Royal Tenenbaums. Thanks for taking the Wes Anderson bullet. No one's been brave enough. Apparently, but you know, Royal Tenenbaums was like a movie I used to consider one of my favorites. Yeah? I think that that's

pretty common. I, well, when did you first see this movie? What's your history with the movie? I mean, I feel like I saw it in the early aughts like everyone else, you know, when it came out ish, but like not in the theaters. I forget, I feel like I saw it in the early aughts like everyone else, you know, when it came out-ish, but like not in the theaters. I'd forget if I saw it in the theaters. I just remember it made a really strong impression on me because I feel like I was probably already raised so basic with pop culture that, you know, to me, seeing a Wes Anderson movie like Royal Tannenbaums was like, it blew my mind. I was like, oh, wow, this is so stylized and so artsy.

You know, and so I think that was like one of my first tastes of something that wasn't just a typical popcorn movie. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And it really made an impression. I think probably because there's such a melancholy in the movie and it's really about like a dysfunctional family, which in a weird way

even though i'm like not white um i related to them somewhat you know with sort of like a messed up patriarch kind of a storyline yeah sure and i just like this sort of droll like irony and and sense of humor in it because it was still like pretty new and like interesting at at this point where i feel like a lot of people have exhaustion with it now yeah but oh one wes anderson we're talking peak wes and fresh and this was one of his earlier ones yeah before this of the features he did bottle rocket and rush more and i think maybe that's it as far as his like notable features yeah but those are like the only the movies that like indie film nerds kind of like me

guilty as charged but yeah so uh I think I also saw this not in the theaters but shortly after it came out I think it was my first exposure to Mr. Wes Anderson. At the time, I was like, yeah, I'm into this. I like the production design, the cinematography, all the mise-en-scene. I was all for it. And now I go back and I revisit this or I see other Wes Anderson movies, and I'm reminded that they usually, story-wise, not for me. This, I think we were, because we watched this movie together. I have seen this movie before, I think at some point in college.

But, and I think that this, Jenny, I'm interested in your take on this. But so far with people we've talked to, there's a lot of Wes Anderson movies that you know you've seen. But you cannot remember anything that happens in the movie you're like oh that's the one about camp and then if someone's like well what happened we were asking Jack O'Brien at How Stuff Works he was like oh yeah I loved uh I think he said like Live Aquatic I was like oh what is that one he's like uh Submarine i was like oh yeah you love that movie and you cannot tell me one thing that but i i don't know what it is most of his movies tend to explore kind of the same themes but it's not like they're totally with the i mean darjeeling limited is just straight up a bad one but like

they're not boring movies there's stuff that's happening but maybe it's just so stylized that that's all you can retain or it's just i don't know i i know i've seen at least three wes anderson movies couldn't tell you what happens in a one of them it's just like i feel like if you've studied music there's not a lot of dynamics in a wes anderson movie it all kind of just the notes just kind of center around this middle part. Yeah. Of like emotional notes, energy, right? It just kind of stays right. It's pretty static, yeah. Right. So I feel

like and the look of it is all kind of in that same kind of like, you know, early Instagram filter, right? And pretty wide shots, way too much headroom yeah yeah like we're living very yeah it's all just that right and so that's why I feel like you know visually too people will just kind of confuse one Wes Anderson movie with another it's like we're living inside of like a

thrift store diorama you know and so and they're just swapping out these dioramas but but for me though I feel like maybe you know Bottle, it might have been a little different. But I feel like it was Royal Tannenbaums that really set the tone for like the look of his more commercially successful films after that. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And so I feel like I feel like no matter what, Royal Tannenbaums might stick out a little more for people in terms of being memorable. But yeah, after that, it gets kind of blurry.

It kind of blurry it kind of yeah the tone is sort of set with this movie and then you're like visually and and i'm sure you know people who know a lot about film know the specifics but like visually a frame from royal tenenbaums and a frame from moonrise kingdom same fucking thing like it's like and that's not even a bad thing it's okay to have consistency throughout a body of work but the wes anderson theory if you are listening and you consider yourself a fan of wes anderson's work i defy you try to uh summarize one of his movies and not just have it be like that's the one about dogs that's the one about camp that's the one about underwater that's the one about i don't know bill murray's in

it like that right all of them oh i think that serves as a great transition to the recap which i will try my best to do i just watched the movie twice and i still don't okay basically we learn about this family of tenenbaums the patriarch is royal tenenbaum played by jane hackman he's married to ethylene they have three kids chas margo and richie and they're like a bunch of baby geniuses they're these very accomplished kids who like do a lot in their youth and they're very exceptional and and that's pulled from a bunch of different sources where the magnificent ambersons is an orson welles film that's referenced pretty heavily in this. And then it's also referencing J.D. Salinger's Glass family,

I believe they're called. So Wes Anderson, he's pulling from other male auteurs of note, of like the white family that's really smart but tragic. Like that's, he's clearly pulling from that sort of stock story right yeah so it's this family of like exceptional young kids and the parents split up when they're fairly young and they kind of estranged themselves from royal tenenbaum until a few things happen where he gets kicked out of his hotel room and he's broke and he doesn't really know what to do so he decides to reconnect with his family under the ruse of telling them that he is dying. So they will basically take sympathy on him and be

more willing to reconnect with him. So this happens for a while where the family who had kind of drifted apart over the years gets back together. They're all under one roof again where Etheline lives. Etheline is considering getting remarried. Yes. To Henry, played by Danny Glover. Right. And then all of the kids have kind of, they were exceptional in their youth, but they've kind of like leveled out and they're not that great anymore. Or they're just not exceptional the way they were when they were kids. So they're sort of reconnecting. And over the course of a few days or so um it comes out the royal is not actually dying of stomach cancer like he says he is uh he just made that all up so that people would take pity on him and want to hang out with him again so then he uh gets kind of cast away again but the family is

still sort of like working through their issues and their relationships with each other. Two of them are in love, but it's fine. It's fine because Margot is adopted. Oh, what? As played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Right. So basically the story ends with the family reconnecting just as Gene Hackman's character wanted, but under unusual circumstances. And then flash forward, he dies.

Right. And then the movie ends he dies. Right. And then the movie ends when the company Goop is founded. The end of the Royal Ten. Marco has a wild idea. What if she founded the most annoying company possible? Then Goop starts. Wait, does that happen?

No. Oh, I was like, what? I'm talking about Gwyneth Paltrow. $200 snail cream. Oh, okay. I am not aware of Gwyneth Paltrow. $200 snail cream. Oh, okay. I am not aware of Gwyneth and her products. Gwyneth, oh, God. Her content. You know, I would say live in ignorance with Gwyneth and her products.

It's a lot. Okay, yeah. So, yeah, that's basically the story. And there are some interesting things to talk about. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess there yeah i guess i guess so much yeah or so little there's i don't know like i have a lot of notes for this it's but it's hard to know where to start well so there's two main female characters of any note in margo played by gwyneth patro and etheline played by Gwyneth Paltrow, and Ethelene, played by Angelica Houston.

Right. So the first opening sequence of the movie is our introduction of the young Tenenbaums. And we learn a little bit about the children and then the parents as well. So with Ethelene, we learn that her main concern was the children's education. And then it pretty quickly cuts away from her. It goes to chas we learn about him loving finance he bred dalmatian mice he was a real estate mogul as a small child then we learn about margo we learn that she is adopted she is a playwright um we see her in a

dark room we see her doing ballet um she camps out in a library for a while with her brother, Richie. She's not like the other girls. Right. She smokes and she's depressed. I don't know. They're all depressed, aren't they? It seems like it. They're so moody. And then we learn about Richie, who was a star tennis player. We see him playing with a ham radio. He has a drum set. He paints pictures of Margot. He has a bird named Mordecai. And then we learn about Royal and that he was a litigator until he was disbarred in the mid 80s.

So we're getting an introduction to all these characters. It feels as though the two women that we learn about, I don't know, they just feel more glossed over or like the only accomplishment that is noted for Margot is that she won like the Braverman Grant in ninth grade for a play she wrote. But for the boys, it's like, oh, they did this thing and they did this thing and they did this thing and da da da da. And then Etheline is like basically just described in the context of her being a mother in that sequence. So right away, I feel like it's sort of that whole thing lays the groundwork for how the female characters will be treated throughout the rest of the movie. It's interesting because it's like the story has like the skeleton of female characters that could be well developed if the movie was going to like invest time in it.

Like we know that Ethelene is an archaeologist and a really good one. And like she has this career and there's enough there that we could explore something outside of how she behaves as a mother and a wife. But that's all the movie really chooses to explore, which is frustrating because it's like, well, there's more. There's more there. But it just we just don't really get to see it. No, we don't. You know, when I was watching, I kind of like looked at like when the women said lines.

And it really wasn't until like a third of the way in that like ethylene finally talked to her daughter yeah that was a while everyone it was like a while and even before that each of them got maybe one or two lines right because in terms of like the bechdel test like you're like well that's going to be the scene that would pass if we get to see these characters together at all like and it's just kind of the scene that would pass if we get to see these characters together at all. And it's just kind of the question of, like, will we get to see them together? And it takes a long time for us to see. Which is kind of a bummer, too, because Ethelene and, well, I guess if we start with Royal,

Royal has meaty, substantial scenes with all three of his children with some of them more than once ethylene kind of doesn't we see her interact with all three of her children but it's not with the same amount of depth it doesn't reveal as much about her character it sort of exists more to tell us about her kid and not really anything about her where the royal scenes are either like equal of like we're learning about him and his child or we're just learning about him yeah and like why he is a liar why or something about his past where i mean we learn a lot about royal tenenbaum's past we don't really learn we learn about ethelene's past as it pertains to royal i think that's what's messed up about this is that it is about a dysfunctional family that is dysfunctional primarily in response to how messed up Royal is, right?

The patriarch. And so this whole story is surrounding sort of Royal driving what's happening, right? So he's like wants to get back in with the family so that he can intervene and really have a relationship. So he's always the one trying to instigate something or call one of his kids out. Whereas Etheline only serves as like a typical female counterbalance, kind of patriarchal counterbalance to that, which is like, she's the one to soothe,

to coax, to like- Clean up the mess. Yeah, exactly. She's the clean up the messer. And obviously, that's probably reflective of their relationship. And I think that it poses the same question I always have, which is, if say we do want to talk about how messed up the patriarchy is, you know, and we write a story about it, how much is that just simply continuing to put a spotlight on the men to reflect you know what i mean rather than really dismantling it or undoing it and i think that's what's tough you know on the one hand like if i have a similarly messed up kind of

patriarchal dad and i want to write about that to dissect it does that mean i'm giving more power to that person's voice you know what i'm saying like like because we're because we're still saying royal is the one taking the action he's one of the main protagonists right yeah he gets all the fun scenes i think yeah i think that that is part of it yeah like the movie isn't critical enough of him where he is like the way that like misogyny is displayed through oils is like lighthearted and like, oh, you could imagine a giggle in the movie theater. Cheeky. Yeah. And the same with when he's like being racist against Danny Glover's character is like, oh, just an old guy being an old guy.

And it normalizes it pretty quickly in the context of the movie. And then at the end, what I mean, I forgot literally everything that happened in this movie. But I definitely forgot the end where I feel like we get close to criticizing Royal when he's kicked out of the house and they're like, no, fuck you, you can't lie to us anymore. You're cast out. But then in the end, you know, he does sort of apologize. But that was, even that was like, did he really? And then at the end you know he does sort of apologize but that was even that was like did he really and

then at the end he dies and sort of the takeaway of the movie is like well if he hadn't lied all those times the family wouldn't be back together yeah that's the takeaway and i was just like oh so we should so it ends up being completely uncritical of the patriarchy and the patriarch in that they're like, well, yeah, mistakes were made, but families chill now. And it wouldn't have been if he hadn't like faked cancer and gaslit his whole family. It's like, no. What? They're like, oh, the consequences of his of his shenanigans actually was kind of good. It was cute.

It worked out. If we end this movie and we've cast out the patriarch who clearly has no respect for us or himself and well, we're all here

so let's hang out and keep him out of our lives. That's maybe less movie neat. I mean, it's one of those we talked about this I think on our how the grinch stole christmas episode and on our muppet christmas carol episode about the male redemption stories that we see so much of where it's like like sure if you want to make a movie about a dysfunctional

family and how everyone is messed up as the result of at least one of the parents disservicing their children in some way great that's an interesting story but like why do we have to hear it from the point of view of the person who did the messing up yeah right like why can't we i mean and you know there are movies that explore it from different points of view but it's just like yeah i just i have so little patience to the point where the movie is named after right the patriarch yeah like yeah it it ends up there are moments where it approaches being critical but ultimately he's a redeemable character he ends up getting everything he wanted which was the relationship with his family which he got after years of lying and then kind of a half-assed apology right so that's all it takes really i mean great a lifetime of trauma and therapy

no no way like just a sorry maybe just like a my b like what are you talking about i don't know yeah the male redemption story and then there's a lot of men who are redeemed in the course of this story. Royal's the main one. But I think also with Richie, there's sort of like a redemption story told there a biological Tenenbaum, and Margot, who is an adopted Tenenbaum. This is the premise of the most searched porn on Pornhub. This is the basis of this. Yeah, you see that? You're like, this is a Wes Anderson thing. There must be a Wes Anderson, Richie and Margot porn parody. There must be.

I'm going to go search after this on Chrome incognito. I'm going to do it in plain sight. I don't care. Who knows about my search history? I'm going to Starbucks right now. Gorgeous symmetrical pornography. A kink song is playing in the background this time tomorrow i mean they have face swapping technology so who knows maybe it's you know 2018 kind of a joint uh okay so this this relationship is established where, for the most part, we see Richie pining over Margot.

Painting. He's painting pictures of her. He's waiting at the bus stop for her. He's simply. Yeah. But then whenever it comes out finally, they basically confess their love for each other. And at this point, we don't really know that margo had loved him it we only find out in that moment because we're seeing most of the nature of their relationship through richie's point of view

so when i find it weird that we don't know how she feels about totally that's a great point her reaction whenever he's like i love you and she's like i love you too and then they kiss and then they lie down in a tent together like we didn didn't know because she is married to Bill Murray's character, Raleigh, and then also was having an affair with Eli Roth. Not Eli Roth. Eli Cash. Eli Cash. So, yeah, so she was she's engaged in multiple relationships with men, which means that she is the object i feel like margo's main purpose in the story is to be the object of several men's affection and not much else the same

for etheline where it's the true the push and pull between like is royal gonna rope her back in or is she going to marry henry there's no option presented where she can be single. Kind of the same for Margot. And there's two montage scenes in regards to those characters that I wanted to talk about where there's a lot of montage scenes in all of Wes Anderson's work. And these aren't the only ones that appear. But the two montage scenes that are specific to margo and to ethylene

are almost exclusively about their sexual history with yes uh well in margo's case not all men but mostly right where like we see highlights from margo's life and it's like she starts to smoke she leaves school the rest is sex yeah all her sexual relationships all the hookups yes right and then for ethylene it's here are the men that she's dated since she and royal tenenbaum broke up and then we get finally to henry who is the new man in her life so there's no there's really no ambiguity about what matters to the story with these characters where there are other elements of their lives. But that's not what Wes Anderson and co-writer Owen Wilson really want your attention on. Right, because we don't see any such montages like that of characters romantic or sexual histories with any of the male characters.

It is only with Etheline and and margo which is a very deliberate choice and a very glaring they do give uh they they give ben stiller's character a different trope which is the good old-fashioned dead wife his wife his wife and they do go to see her gravestone much like in the rock Rock. His wife. My favorite movie. Yeah, Ben Stiller and his wife, who we never meet, but her death is the main thing that defines his character, is dealing with her death. And how that has manifested in him being extremely overprotective of his two sons and being very overly concerned with their safety. That's a part of the movie I didn't dislike. I thought it was kind of nice and a little unusual to see a single father definitely being overbearing,

but being a pretty solid parent throughout the movie, definitely overprotective. But usually if you see a single father, you don't see a lot of single fathers in movies at all um but especially like if you do see a single father he's fucking up and he you know he doesn't get it can't relate with his kids or whatever and i mean too like the chas tenenbaum character is a good dad uh who clearly is suffering from ptsd. But I thought it was nice. Yeah.

But also, Ben Stiller's just really good at playing nervous. He's really good. He's great in this movie. And anxious, yeah. And then the best visual pun in the whole movie is at the end when Royal Tenenbaum dies, Ben Stiller and his sons show up in black tracksuits to the funeral. Oh, yeah, because they've sons show up in black tracksuits to the funeral yeah

because they've been in red adidas tracksuits up until that point they switch it up out of respect yeah these characters do not stray far from their costume design right no they've got solid aesthetic um back to the relationship between margo and richie i mean yeah why was the choice made i mean it's not technically an incestual relationship because they're not related by blood but it's weird I mean I feel like it it introduces like in theory if we paid a little more attention to the Marco character outside of how she relates to the men you know or how she furthers the male stories we don't need that romance at all really like if you took the time spent on margot and richie's not incestual

relationship and put that into fleshing out the background of margot and of etheline a little more you almost like don't really need it. I don't hate that it's there. But I do think that it just, yeah, it kind of takes away from Margot's character quite a bit, because it's like, even the first time you see Margot as an adult, it's such a male, like a kind of a comically male gazey shot, where she gets off the bus, and it's like slow motion and oh right he loves her and you're like wait but he's her brother and you know i don't know i guess i don't know where i fall on that exactly for me so after the family discovers that royal had been lying about having cancer that's like halfway through the movie which means there's a whole half of the movie to go. And where the plot goes from there is basically focusing on Richie and Margot's relationship with a few of the subplots like weaved into that.

But that's largely what the narrative focuses on. The three big things that advance the narrative in this movie are royalized his family. That's the first phase. Second phase, which I think is done pretty irresponsibly by this movie is Richie tries to kill himself. That's what brings the family together the second time. Right. After they disperse. And the third thing that brings everybody together is Ethelene decides to marry Henry. And there is a wedding. Yes. Those are the three things that bring the family together. All of them are pretty intrinsically connected to either men or marriage. True.

That's all there is. Right. The boys are back in town or we're marrying the boys. Right. right well because the way that the male characters including the narrator talk about margo or the way that she serves a purpose in the narrative well like for example richie attempts suicide because he has just learned that she had been having an affair with his best friend eli right which i mean we can get into a whole discussion about how this movie does not handle suicidality and mental illness well at all but

setting that aside so him discovering that she was having an affair with his friend prompts Richie to attempt suicide then her husband R, Raleigh, played by Bill Murray, goes on this whole tirade where he blames Margot for Richie's suicide. This is shortly after he has called himself a cuck. And then he gets up and storms out. He does call himself a cuck. That's fun. That's a fun moment. Earlier in the movie, Royal confronts Margot because he doesn't like the way that she's treating her husband, Raleigh, because she's so secretive the different montages that the narrator is describing it's often in the context of who she's married to or who she used to be married and divorced to and then we focus on things about her husband when we should be learning more about her so even when she's on screen or

even when she's being talked about it's still usually in the context of her relationship to the men in her life right which is stupid that's my hot very academic take on that. Margot, kind of like with Aethelene's character, there's like a glimmer of like, why don't we look at that a little more instead of making her marry someone or making her fall in love with someone. You get that flashback scene where Margot looks for her birth family and finds them and then is unsatisfied and, you know, like kind of a tropey approach to the adopted child story where they go to find their origin and then it doesn't answer the question that they actually had and like doesn't end up solving all their problems.

Fine. A pretty interesting scene and shows us more of that character and kind of like where she's coming from but then it's kind of really not touched on again and and i mean i can't say this with certainty but it seems like part of the reason that i mean she's made to be adopted so that it's we as an audience are okay with her kissing lu Wilson. Right. But it goes largely kind of unexplored where you see like a little piece of it and you're like, oh, that's interesting. But then the main takeaway of that is like,

she's still sad and it's actually fine if she makes out with Luke Wilson. Yeah. Right. And that's really all we're given. I feel like the way that the semi-incestuous relationship is covered is such an indication of how Wes Anderson portrays the depth of true relationship dynamics. It's almost like fundamentally this family is a codependent, dysfunctional family with a very mean and narcissistic father figure right and that has all of these consequences with like all the kids being depressed and probably self-critical and in some ways

self-harming and that's really deep and like sad and awful and that's like what happens in like a family dynamic like that but like what Wes Anderson does is he like takes a story like that, but only skims really the like the cute and the quirky and the delightful parts for us to look at, you know, which is entertaining. But there is something to be desired when it comes to really getting into why the relationships are the way they are. Totally. Right. really getting into why the relationships are the way they are. Totally. Right? Like it's like, oh, we have this sort of surface level presentation of this really dysfunctional family. The jokes are cute. The casual racism. Chuckle, chuckle.

Right. You know? And so I think in the end, I've heard about dynamics where stepchildren might grow way too close or even regular children grow way too close because the parents are like not really there for kids. You know, but and maybe that could be an explanation for Margot and Richie, but we don't really get that, you know?

Yeah, it's not like, and the fact that Wes Anderson, you know, really goes out of his way to be like, they are not related is a very deliberate choice on his part. And I think that the choice is like, I want this movie to make a lot of money and be successful. And I don't want people to feel weird about it. I want it to be quirky and like not like the other relationships, but I don't want it to be outside of what is conventionally uh acceptable and you know within in the law and all that stuff so yeah and and then i really like and we don't really have time to fully unpack it

but just the way that this movie treats richie's suicide attempt is is very yeah sudden and and more graphic than i remembered and It was beautifully shot, though. Lots of symmetry. Gorgeous shot of this horrifying act that is really barely commented on after it happens. And it's just, I mean, it's scary to see. Like, he literally slits his wrists on camera, which, I mean, we can argue the ethics of that. I just don't think that that's like a responsible thing to do in what you're trying to have be a mainstream movie. And then really it just serves the narrative purpose of, you know, getting Margot to talk to Richie again and to get the family together again. And outside of that, that like very drastic upsetting action is not really addressed that much after

that except of like well margo's talking to me again so shrug like it's just it's very bizarre i mean the gorgeousness of the art direction and the cinematography risks glamorizing suicide and depression absolutely you know what i mean it's like oh that was pretty well yeah yeah like why did that look so nice right and then the scene after so you see he kind of like lays his arms onto the sink and then you see the blood kind of rush down and then that cuts immediately to it's not comical but it's such a juxtaposition against what we just saw that it's almost like, I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it's like a bunch of doctors and nurses and stuff like that,

rushing him through the hall. And it's like suddenly this bright colors and it's like, the music and the, and just the, the movement on the screen almost makes that seem amusing yeah well i think that the especially with the music there is communicating is like and we're all back together again right because this thing happened either that or saying like oh it's all gonna be okay like he won't die from this right but it's still yeah just if that felt handled irresponsibly. Yeah, I mean, the way that that shift communicated, what it communicated to me was Wes Anderson saying, oh, isn't it cute that Richie tried to commit suicide, but he's not going to be successful.

Ha ha. Right. Because he got found before he died. You can't even get that right. Exactly. That's how that felt because the way he was found was pretty soon after he started bleeding and he was on the floor of the bathroom and the random test subject of Riley St. Clair finds him, the teenage boy. Dudley. Yeah, a lot of hair, a lot of hat.

I'd like to throw in here, if I were to rewrite the Royal Tannenbaums from a different perspective in order to fulfill the Bechdel test, I would write it from the perspective of Sing Sing. Ooh, okay. Yeah. Sing Sing is... Wait, that's the character in the very beginning that's... The masseuse. Yeah.

You know, in the scene where you find out that Royal is going to get kicked out of the hotel that he's been seeing in. And you pan up and you see Sing Sing is, you know, his masseuse looks kind of Asian-y. And Sing Sing is like what an elementary school bully would call me in order to make fun of my Chinese name. Oh, my God. Yeah. So I'm just like, okay. And so I would rewrite the Royal Tannenbaums from Sing Sing's perspective.

You actually see sing sing later on um you do you do she's in the background and i think this is very indicative of the the people of color characters that in this movie for wes anderson you have pagoda which is it's a japanese word for a chinese architectural detail that is the name that is given to the Indian man in Calcutta that is his sort of manservant for the royal, for royal. Right. So very bizarre. And, and, and so, you know, because of the sort of wide angle shots that we get of every scene, the sort of quirkiness and the benefit and the color and the texture of these shots is that you get to see side characters and background actors and background movement, right, while the foreground is happening.

And so often it's either Pagoda or Sing Sing or other sort of people of color or servant type characters in the background being quirky and moving to sort of be like animated GIFs of delightfulness in the back. And so I think Sing Sing would be, apparently Sing Sing showing up later probably indicates they had a really close relationship. I don't know what the nature of it.

She didn't say one word, but I would rewrite, that would be my wicked musical. I would rewrite Royal Tandem Bombs, the musical, from Sing Sing's perspective. Hell yeah. I'll buy it. Would watch. We'll see.

Opening night. She has like a secret relationship with Pagoda. You know. I mean, yeah. Non-white characters are largely used for comic relief in this movie. With the exception of Danny Glover's character. Yeah. Who's really the only non-white main character in the movie and even then he's

like a b character pretty much yeah yeah yeah i think it just it just hints to the sort of orientalist problem that wes anderson tends to have as we saw with isle of dogs recently i hated that movie because you know i you know i notice the asian shit all the time in any movie. And so in this movie, the first time we see Asian shit is Sing Sing, the masseuse. The second time we see Asian shit is actually when Royal confronts Etheline to get back into her life. And you see they actually have a street argument, and it's in front of some kind of embassy that has Chinese words. Yeah, you know, but it's very prominent because it's, you know, it's, it's Ethylene and Royal on the right hand side of the screen, and three quarters of the rest of the screen is the sort of wall of this. And you see the sign and it's these sort of little details that tell me that like, it's very deliberate,

because there is no scene that is not deliberate for Wes Anderson. And, you know, in the way that he also uses sort of essentially Orientalist things as set dressing, and people as set dressing. So, to me, the setting in front of a Chinese language sign of an embassy in the street of New York is no different from the fact that Sing Sing was in the background for another scene and Pagoda acts as set dressing for other scenes i mean wes anderson is an example of one of these auteur directors that has his little like darlings where he keeps recasting a handful of actors in his movies over and over again your wilson brothers your jason schwartzman's your bill murray's uh maybe a couple others a. A ton of white actors. Exactly. Mostly men.

Wes Anderson on Race is just a deep sigh. How do you spell that on a script? It's just like a bunch of U's and... C-H's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like repeated into infinity of like... Oh, also a common, not really a through line, but basically just an image that you keep seeing

is this cab that shows up all the time. Yeah, gypsy cab. Gypsy again being a slur for Roma people. Not okay. I feel like this is another male auteur issue and probably a white director issue as well of like by thinking that the mere presence of something like makes it okay i'm trying to articulate this correctly i think i

know what you mean where he's like cutifying all this stuff that he cannot possibly understand or and and cannot represent on screen responsibly but he's like well it's there so that's good you know i didn't ignore that because it's in my movie so i must be doing a good job i acknowledged that people who aren't me exist at all so trophy please like that kind of deal cutifying is a good word for uh the wes anderson filmmaking filter yeah that's the name of his Insta filter. Swipe, swipe, swipe, cutify. Also, I couldn't help but notice that toward the end, Eli crashes the wedding by literally crashing a car into the wedding.

And I just wonder if that's the inspiration for the movie Wedding Crashers that he would later star in. You know, I'm just here to ask the important question is wedding crashers a part of the expanded wes anderson universe i believe it must be does anyone have any final thoughts about the movie you know there's still a part of me that appreciates the craft and the storytelling that happened in the movie. Like, you know, I liked it back then, pre-woke viewing days for a reason, you know, and I think there's a lot I can learn about storytelling. But I think we're in this moment where flipping the script, talking about the Bechdel test,

seeing what it means to hear from the voices of people you don't usually hear in a more popular conversation, that means that we're all going to figure out what it might mean to, like, create more mainstream accessible stories, right, that are more critical of the patriarchy, that are going to, you know, have us drive the story. Such as your future Broadway musical. Yes. Starring Sing Sing. Sing Sing, you know, the Sing Sing Tanner bombs. Exactly. Featuring Pagoda. That's my takeaway that I want to write

my Wicked. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not to say that every single movie that comes out has to be this like hard hitting deep analysis of the patriarchy and how to dismantle it. Because as much as I love to watch movies like that, I also love to watch just sort of mindless popcorn movies sometimes. And they're like Wes Anderson is the king of these kind of fun, quirky movies that start to maybe explore some themes that tend to go unexplored in his movies, but he really only kind of touches on the surface of them and doesn't really do much in the way of anything like that. But if you are going to have just a fun kind of mindless movie, I think that you do still have the responsibility

to treat your characters well. And if you are going to have women in your movie which you should which which i mean i'm rolling my eyes but sometimes it has to happen i guess you have to have women in a movie because what if the protagonist what if the male protagonist wants to have heterosex right who is he gonna have sex sex with? Right. So if you're going to make a fun, quirky, offbeat movie, then have your female characters still not be entirely defined by their relationships to men, for example. Or have the people of color in your movie not only be the help of the white characters. So, yeah, just a lot of missteps in this movie, as you can expect from a mainstream movie. I had one other little note that was just like, both a missed opportunity writing-wise and just like, come on. The only writer character in this movie is Margot Tenenbaum.

And yet the movie framing device is a book written by a man. Why? We have a writer character. We have a writer character. Well, Eli is also a novelist. Oh, that's true. He is a novelist. And Margot's husband, Raleigh, he is a psychologist, neurologist, I think.

But he has also written books. I want a female narrator. Yeah. But also, this story would make written books i want a female narrator yeah but also this story would make no sense coming from a female narrator because it ignores uh its female characters a lot of the time also i'm sure the narrator alec baldwin has some me too stories that's oh yeah i mean we've it's you know the time the moment in culture has come where we finally need to hear alec baldwin out hear what he's got to say. I think that just speaking to, because Wes Anderson is such a common request from our audience and a lot of auteur directors are, that because Wes Anderson's work does tend to be in its positives and its negatives so consistent that we can take a movie like this

and sort of view it to an extent as a reflection of the filmmakers values and interests right so you know it is a little bit of a reflection on Wes Anderson where he is you know the creative driving force behind this where it's like this is probably a reflection at this time at this point in time, how Wes Anderson views women and views non-white people as, you know, not the primary focus and thought of more in a utility way than in, oh, like, here's a character we really want to explore and give time to. It's all about, okay, they're allowed to be there, but only to further the story of the person he's really interested in, which is almost always one of his friends.

Main dudes. Who's a white dude. Yeah. And also reflective of the way he uses depression and mental health issues for utility. Absolutely. You know, we can judge him according to this movie, but it also is a judgment on his oeuvre. Yes. Each of you used a French word to talk about film, and I felt left out, so I wanted to use a French word.

I loved it. I thought it was very well done. It's beautiful. It's very symmetrical. It's very academic. It's going to be a toned. Gang, we're real smart. Wow.

The thing about us is we're geniuses. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? I would say yes. It does. By the skin of its teeth, it does. There's a few conversations between Etheline and Margot.

There's a scene early on where Margot is in the bathtub and Etheline's like, Raleigh says you've been spending a lot of time in the bathtub. Margot's like I doubt that. Shout out to the movie Doubt. Doubt. And then they're talking about

she's like I don't think that's very healthy. What if the TV falls into the tub? And she's like I tie it to the radiator. And she's like wow it can't be very good for your eyes. And then she says Chas came home so there is a two-line exchange that does technically pass within that but the conversation starts talking about raleigh and ends with talking about chas and then ari and uzi and the trunk that passes is the only part of that conversation that really has no narrative implication right yeah it's just

like like it's it's a little joke right that's i think that almost every part of this movie that does barely pass the bechdel test has nothing to do with what is actually happening in the story yeah um the scene after that where the those two women interact again is when they're talking about eli cash sending ethylene his like clippings and his grades from college that doesn't pass because they're talking about Eli and then there's a scene at the end between the two of them again where Margot is chewing on her nicotine inhaler and she's like what are you chewing on she's like oh it's supposed to help me quit smoking is it working not really and then a car crashes into

the building and it was Eli wedding crashing with Vince Vaughn as he's always doing Vince Vaughn's in it for a fleeting moment so that scene I think also technically passes because that's a four line exchange also I didn't realize until you said it that way that one of the only Bechdel test passing scenes is literally ended because

a man drives a car into that scene poetic yeah beautiful just a real representation of and but you're right like all the scenes that do or all the moments that do pass the bechdel test have no bearing on the narrative they could easily be cut and the story would not be changed one bit like well maybe that's because we're always trying to figure out ways to modify the test to make it a little more effective for our purposes and that i mean that might be a new thing of like what is the narrative implication if if there's only exchanges between women and movies that have no bearing on what happens then maybe if that

shouldn't pass right i think in a recent episode we were saying something to the effect that we're hoping that the conversation is meaningful so because oftentimes it's like hey server at a restaurant do you have any pie and they're like yes my name is marie you're just like well i guess and that's so that's not a meaningful conversation so yeah i mean this movie could have easily done better it did not capitalize on any of the opportunities to pass the Bechdel test more. I still don't hate it. I hate myself for that. But also, I still don't hate it.

No, it's okay. I don't hate this movie. I don't think it's especially regressive. It's not progressive, but it doesn't necessarily set us back any further than we already are. Which says what? but it doesn't necessarily set us back any further than we already are. So like, yeah, I mean. Which says what? I guess that just means like, oh, all right. Okay.

It exists and it's allowed to continue existing. Which, by the way, if you do want to change the test that this podcast is based on, maybe you don't have to change the name of the podcast. Just call it the Bechdel Plus, and then you can start modifying the test let's do it well we do also talk about other tests that come up the rito russo test the ava duvernay test yes ava's um which i don't think this movie would pass no no no no anyway so yeah uh yes to passing the Bechdel test, but that does not make it a feminist text, unfortunately. Nope. Let's rate the movie on our nipple scale. We have a scale of zero to five nipples and we rate based on its portrayal of women. I'm going to have to give it like a one and a half, I think, because I mean, a little time is spent characterizing Margot in that she's

established as a secretive person. She's a playwright. She likes the arts. She likes photography. I mean, we only see a glimpse of that in a montage that lasts for one second, but we do learn certain things about her character that a lot of movies wouldn't even take the time to establish. But for the most part, her character exists in the narrative to be either the object of men's affections or to basically further characterize the men around her. So she is not actually characterized that well at all, I would argue. But then there's also Ethelineene who, similar to Margot, is pretty much only defined and characterized by her relationships to the men in her life. So I would

say overall the female characters are disserviced by the filmmakers and the narrative. So it gets one and a half nipples, one to Margot, and the half nipple will go to Sing Sing. One nipple. More Sing Sing. Hashtag to Sing Sing. One nipple. More Sing Sing.

Hashtag more Sing Sing. Concise. I'm gonna go one nipple too and this is something we didn't really touch on but just going on a lot of people who are fans of Wes Anderson I think are teenagers and I think that's for a reason which is that he has very visually appealing style that is perhaps if you have lived a little bit only appealing to an extent uh but the the reason i i bring that up is because i think margot tenenbaum is kind of a very commonly cited female like role model in in the wes anderson there's BuzzFeed quizzes about her. We took it. Listicles, all kinds. Yeah. Regretfully, I was a Margot. You were a Chaz. I was a Chaz Tenenbaum. I'm going to look at you completely differently. It's because I'm pretty neurotic and extremely

concerned about children's safety. You're an amazing father. Yeah. So much shame. You're welcome. I suck. No, I know. No, I mean, but Marco Tenenbaum is the central female character. And I think she's very often referenced and cited as like an early, you know, female avatar for for young female viewers. And the fact that we are really only given a glimpse of what we could be given and she's still largely defined by her relationship to men is disappointing and a missed opportunity to give young women a character of a little more substance. For sure. So one nipple and I'll give mine to Sing Sing too. Yay!

Jenny, thank you so much for being here. We've had a great time with you. This was the best deep dives into pop culture where can people find you online at JennyYang.TV and every username JennyYangTV

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Especially when you really like it. Yeah. Yeah. Bye. Love you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden.

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