The Bechdel Cast - The Witch with Jana Schmieding

Episode Date: July 16, 2020

This vveek, vve dissect The VVitch vvith the vvonderful Jana Schmieding!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @janaunplgd of @WomanOfSizePod 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.

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. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations 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. Nerves the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption. They were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Lost Culture East. 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. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name's Jamie Loftus. My name's Caitlin Durante. And welcome back to the damn cast. This is a podcast where we talk about a lot of things. We talk about representation in movies of women, of marginalized groups.

We talk about representation and how, guess what? It's usually bad. What do you mean? I mean, have you seen a movie before? No, I've managed to never see one. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. So there are these things called movies and they're so aggressive. They're so aggressive.

What I have to reckon with every day of my life is the fact that my favorite thing is movies. I love movies. I went to school twice about movies. And they're bad. They're all just, they're so, most of them are just trash. And I really have to reconcile that the thing that I love and have made a career out of and have made my, like, is my biggest hobby is just bad. Who in their life has ever liked something good? You know, there's no such thing as good things. So, true. good things so uh true anyway so we the show is called the bechdel cast but if you've been

listening for a while now you know that the bechdel test is becoming increasingly less important to the show um but that's what we named it so that's we have to acknowledge that it's there but anyway so we use that as just a jumping off point to initiate a larger conversation about representation in film and the Bechdel test is a media test created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test and it requires that our version of it our updated version of it requires that we've made alterations we have not gotten approval from anyone but that is just um what it's like to be brave yeah we're our own bosses yeah we're girl bosses we're girl bosses and this is what we do

we make the rules yes girl wash your face our Bechdel test requires that two people of any marginalized gender, that includes women, that includes all trans people, that includes non-binary people, that includes intersex people, must speak to each other about something other than a man, a cis man. It doesn't happen a lot. It doesn't happen a lot. But Jamie, I would like to try it with you right now yeah let's do it okay um hey jamie yes caitlin um would thou like to live deliciously you're you're like quoting a male goat does that count if you're reading me actually this is like a level of the test we never explored if two women are okay so if we're this is pointless but if we're like if we're quoting like non-gendered quotes but they're from a male goat

does that pass the test maybe not i want to say it does just because the goat is an icon. You know what? I'm reclaiming. The goat is the protagonist of the film. I was not ready for what a goat-heavy plot we were in for here. I realized that I knew very little. What I thought I knew about this movie was wrong because I was like, I did not think this was a talking goat movie spoiler alert the goat talks well the goat becomes a man

or the devil and then talks i think i don't know i i don't i wasn't sure this movie was sometimes i'm just like this movie it was either i mean i think it was like a little bit too smart or too stupid for me don't know which don't know which don't know the bitch let's bring our guests up we're talking about the witch the witch or the the itch if you because there's men are so annoying when they make movies they're like no we're not using a w because reasons like so it's the the bitch um yes and our guest today uh she is a lakota native comedy writer host of the woman of size podcast it's jenna schmieding hello hi welcome thanks happy to be with you the bitches today we're rebranding this is the bitch the bitch cast i was something about seeing that made me furious

i'm like there's no way he went for two v's and then i verified on the wikipedia page i'm like sure enough he went for yeah yeah i i looked it up as well and it said something about a language called enochian oh did you did or no i didn't get that i don't know it was it's a witch's language of course there it's just like there a man goes to a library one time and all of a sudden the movie's called the vvitch you're just like sure that's ridiculous so true he's so authentic to the moment um yeah wait let me find there's something about it on wikipedia about he did have like what seemed like a grounded reason i just thought it was a very silly it just seems like a very pretentious choice he found it yeah according to um our our favorite scholarly journal wikipedia our friend

director robert eggers said that he found this spelling in a jacobean era pamphlet that was on witchcraft what is the jacobean area the era um i don't know would have to look up i like i will jerk off the loser who does know who the jacobean what the jacobean there there was i i did like i i did uh read all of robert eggers's like interviews from around this movie's release and he was i do at least appreciate how he like explains his more pretentious choices as mostly the answer is i went to the library and um yeah it said no w's so i was like all right no w's like he's he is mercifully pretty straightforward and doesn't give you like a freshman film school explanation all right to his weird choices so i'm like you know what that's more than i expected i think he said also something like somebody was asked him were you going for a feminist message in the film and he said not really it just came out I have the quote

here um when yeah basically when asked about this uh the feminist themes in his movie he said quote in all of my trying to stand back and be objective about themes feminism rises to the top there's nothing you can do about it it's just in your face end quote but like okay i what that's a lot of words but i don't know what they're supposed to mean in sequence i don't know what he means i don't know what does he mean by feminism you know it just there it is it's just in your face it's so close you can't even see it is what I infer from that statement. Right. Honestly, based on these weird interviews that I give, he gives, I think I kind of like him.

Because I'm just like, he's just a weird, I don't know. I haven't seen The Lighthouse. I haven't either. Yeah. I have seen The Lighthouse and I really embarrassingly enjoyed it to the extent that I dressed up as Robert Pattinson's character for Halloween this past year. People seem to enjoy him. And he seems like, you know, just maybe just like a weird guy. I don't know.

That quote threw me for a loop. I was like, if there is meaning here, I can't find it. I cannot find it. I certainly like him a lot better than the other high art pretentious horror director of the moment right now, Ari Aster. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I really did think that it was an Ari Aster film. I'll be honest. When I started watching it, I was like, oh, my God.

This is giving me strong hereditary vibes. And then I look and I saw it was Eggers. And I was like, okay. It's the other one, yeah. I mean, they both have real fixation on female trauma. Yes, leaning into the trauma. Ari Aster needs to seek treatment. A therapist?

Yes. About his fixation on women's trauma i like i at least like rob at least like in robert in this movie it felt at least plot relevant i don't know yeah anyways so jenna what is your relationship with the witch the vvitch my relationship with this, the bitch, is basically, I really like horror as a genre. I love to be scared. I like to be scared. I like to be creeped out. I don't know why.

It's not something I'm proud of. Cinematically. Cinematically. Sure. Sure, sure. But I remember seeing it a long time ago ago like when it came out and being like this is a legitimately kind of creepy movie and in thinking about it now i think that since it originally came out there has been this kind of um resurgence of the witch as a thing that mostly in my life white women have embodied as like a

as a lifestyle and a and a something i don't know and i find it to be very problematic as a native person um so i was like let me watch this again and see if it has at least like origins of that. And it kind of does. Yeah. I, I truly had no idea what this movie was about. I was just shocked at every turn. So this, that was your first time seeing it, Jamie, right? Yeah.

I'm new to the Vivitch verse. I am not new to White Lady Witches. This is something that I've been around. But yeah, no, I'm new to the Eggers extended universe. Yeah, this is so weird because I grew up not too far from where this movie happened and massachusetts children learn i think one of the more warped versions of this moment in history and so anytime i come across it i have to basically remember to unlearn all the stuff i learned as a kid because just everything i learned was incredibly wrong and i even like looked up um i was like oh right

I wonder if he's like from New England and Robert Eggers is absolutely from New England grew up going to Plymouth Plantation the world's worst most historically inaccurate tourist attraction and just I was just like okay so I wonder how much he I wonder if he's made an effort to unlearn these things. And I left unclear on that topic. Sure. What about your history, Caitlin? I didn't see it in theaters, although I remember the buzz around it when it came out. Because it came out five years ago, 2015. I remember it being hailed as this, you know, like, wow, this movie is the creepiest movie of the decade. It's

so scary. It's so good. It's beautiful. It's haunting all this stuff. So I was very intrigued by it, even though horror is probably the genre that I am least acquainted with. I'm getting, I'm getting better at having seen more horror films, but I don't seek out horror the same way I do other genres, but I was still intrigued by it. And I was like, okay, got to see this. I think I saw it probably later that year or like in early 2016 or something, not long after it came out. And I remember like, yeah, being like, wow, that was creepy. That was haunting. That was mesmerizing, and didn't watch it again until we started prepping for this episode. And now I feel super, I just have a lot of, I don't know what to make of it,

and I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm very, I guess I just left very unclear on what this movie was trying to say. Well, let me ask you both this what was creepier to you the talking devil goat that they kept calling blackfellop or the elderly woman's naked body okay so i'm so frustrated with any time and this is like this new guard of male horror directors i feel like and and old i was even reminded of like the shining of like yes i was gonna bring this up using an elderly woman's

naked body for shock value is such a tired i was so bummed to see that trope pop up here because it's so like ari aster just did it in midsummer butar, but there's such a precedent for it that pissed me off while I found the Satan goat to be very funny. By the time that happened, I was just like, yeah, sure. Cool. And what a sexy voice the goat had. I mean, hubba hubba. Not a trace of goat okay so i looked up the actor who plays black philip when he once he turns into the devil man it's an actor by the name of daniel malik who is a pakistani actor who is first of all

extremely hot secondly the optics of like a brown pakistani person playing the devil in your movie full of white people perhaps did you ever see him though i feel like i didn't see the actual face you only see maybe like it's kind of like a silhouette or just like a a glimpse of his face nothing to to really be able to distinguish it so perhaps my point here isn't super valid but i guess if you're being generous i still am not sure but he did have a perfect devil voice i was so i didn't know what to expect of the voice and I did not leave disappointed. Yeah. Well, should we get into the recap and go from there?

Yeah. Yes. Also just want to apologize. Apparently there is a world war happening in my skies right now. So I hear like helicopter, a lot of helicopter activity outside above me as well. Okay, okay. Yeah, we've been having that.

We just have been telling our listeners like, listen, we live in a police state and it will happen. Yeah. Okay, so the Vovich. It is 1600s, I think it's 1630s. 1630s. I think it's 1630s. Colonial New England, specifically Massachusetts, specifically Plymouth Plantation. Although I don't know if they ever say that in the movie. They say the plantation. They say the plantation.

I think that that might have been the only one at the time. Got it. A man and his family are being banished from the plantation. It's never made clear exactly why but the idea is that they are like two christian yeah they're like two devoutly christian were they wrong to say they were two christian they're pretty christian they were really intense they were like not fucking around with being calvinists yeah it seems like it was over some what seemed like a religious dispute um that is not ever really specified but my my interpretation is like this

family too devout go away um so uh we and they do they do which is crazy considering in my humble opinion when i think back on this time, I think everybody was like this family. I know, right? I kind of am curious of like what in a like in a world that we know the white settlers were so extremely like what would constitute like this is the line for us. This is too Christian. Like I didn't know that that line existed. I know. Yeah. Sh know shrug who knows but we meet the family the father is william from game of thrones you're like oh it's who from game of thrones both the parents are from game of thrones i truly don't know the actor's name is ralphnocent. Another great voice. Great voice. Yes. Very gravelly, deep voice.

He's got his wife, his wife, Catherine. She is played by Kate Dickey, who was also in Game of Thrones. Yeah. It's like, okay, we get it. You're casting British. Yeah, we get it. You want to cast British women who will breastfeed inappropriately. Yes.

Oh, God. That was the other moment that I'm just like, male directors shouldn't be allowed to make these kinds of visual metaphors. IMO. No. Icky. They have a teenage daughter,

Thomasson. Thomas- Sin. Get it? Sin. I really enjoy this actress's work, Any taylor joy she's fun she's fun and everything and i think this was her first movie yeah i believe so i feel like every actor in this movie side note great performances all around despite the content yeah very good acting

definitely because it's we're always we always come we historically come down too hard on child actors oh uh american ones are the worst yes oh yeah but but the child actors in this especially like the kid who plays caleb like he held it down that that was yeah and they're talking in like old english like iambic pentameter shakespearean i mean this eight-year-old is possessed in old english and like kills it it's very impressive also there there will be scenes that don't cut away for a while so these kids had to learn a lot of dialogue at once and yeah i was super impressed yeah so So, Thomason is our protagonist. Her brother, Caleb, is, I think he's supposed to be like 12, although I truly don't know how old children are.

Yeah, I said eight. That's probably wrong. I don't know. He's definitely older than eight. You're both right to me. I would say like 11, 12, maybe 13 even. He's for sure a child. Then there are two younger twins who they might be like seven or eight, but also don't know.

And then there's an infant Samuel. Having been banished, they travel to the wilderness and set up like a homestead on the edge of some remote woods. And one day, Thomason is playing peekaboo with the baby, and suddenly the baby disappears. I like that very quickly the word witch becomes a verb. Like, you get witched.

Yes. He's witched. He was witched. Samuel was witched. You're like, oh, okay. Yeah. Because then we see a witch scurrying through the woods with the baby

then we see her cutting or like it's implied that she cuts the baby open and then like pulverizes it and then smears its flesh and blood all over herself in some sort of like ritualistic sacrifice thing why because i i you know what i looked it up oh they said back in the jacobean era i'm assuming our favorite era our favorite era who knows 1630 apparently that one of the ways in which witches were able to gain the power of flight is through a mixture of essentially like ground down the fat of a baby plus like hemlock and like lion's mane, like all of the old timey herbs that you can think of. Like they like grind them all together

and rub them on their body and that is what makes a witch fly uh-huh okay so like how at the end they're floating that's because they had herbs and babies yep yep they had that magical poche incredible that's actually really helpful to know because i was just like why does she want the baby yeah she needed its fat she needed okay so that she needed a baby ingredient great so then back home the family mourns the loss of the baby. Catherine especially is inconsolable. And they all think he was probably snatched by a wolf. So the crops that the family are growing are diseased. So William, the father, takes Caleb out into the woods to gather food.

They try to shoot a rabbit but are unsuccessful. Their traps come up empty and William explains that he traded Catherine's silver cup so that he could buy the trap I think and he tells Caleb to keep this a secret. Then we meet the most important character of the film, Black black philip a goat a vaguely cgi goat oh really i didn't notice any cgi okay maybe i'm wrong but i just there were a few moments where i'm like oh post got to philip i i did read um some trivia that the actors said of all of the animals on set the the horse was great. The chickens were great. The rabbit was the most well-behaved, but the goat.

Oh, the rabbit was great. Black Phillip was a real handful, non-cooperative. Well, famously, Black Phillip is method. He was going method. He was Daniel Day-Lewis- Yeah. He was going method. He was Daniel Day-Lewis. He was like, of course I'm going to terrorize the set. I'm Black

Phillip. The Black Phillip wrestling scene was improvised. I'm not joking. That's the nerdiest piece of trivia I feel like I'll drop on this. Oh my god. Wow. That's scary. That's how unruly he was. Black Phillip, you

little devil. That makes it even better. I know. So we meet Black Phillip and the two young twins, Jonas and Mercy, are chasing him around and then Mercy's all like

they're friends. They say say he talks to us he tells us things and then mercy tells thomason how she has seen a witch of the woods and um it was a witch who took the baby and thomason to tease and scare mercy is like well i'm the witch and then that night catherine uh the mother she she's like, oh, I don't know, something is weird and unnatural. And, and Thomason, you stole my silver cup, didn't you? And she's like, no, I didn't. And then William and Caleb don't speak up about this. They don't, they let Catherine think that Thomason stole the cup. Oh, also, Thomason goes into the barn that night to tend to the goats. And she sees the same rabbit from the woods.

And we're like, is the rabbit the vich? Like, is she taking the form of this rabbit? I think that's what's implied. So then Thomason overhears her mother talking about how Thomason should be sent off to serve another family. Basically, I think to be like married off is what the implication is here. Because they're starting to starve and she would be one less mouth to feed. And not wanting this to happen, Thomason and Caleb go into the woods to find food. But they get separated because the witch

rabbit spooks the horse and then in the woods caleb comes upon the witch's cottage and the witch comes out only this time she is younger and her cleavage is present oh boy she lures him in by kissing him on the mouth did that need to be shown no did not that was a real scene where a child gets kissed on the mouth passionately by an adult by an adult woman and if you truly if you're robert eggers and you're like this needs to happen then like there are so many ways to show that without it having to happen also throughout caleb is like checking out his sister like checking out thomason and kind of like feeling shy around her there's this weird vibe where he's like curious right which is later weaponized against thomason by her mother by saying like why are you making your brother horny and she's like i wasn't doing anything anything poor thomason this whole

movie she's just like i'm literally just standing here they're just like you're the devil i do think that that is one and when i was reading about the movie and reading feminist critiques or quote unquote feminist critiques that they were that a lot of them said yes this is true to how the witch trials were presented at the time, that young women were seen as very demonized just in general. You just had to be othered in some way. It could be the crops sucked or whatever. You were an unmarried woman older than the age of 16 or whatever.

And you're just a witch. And joking aside, I mean, it is like, it's especially unfortunate to see her mother being the one to voice this criticism, but like being blamed for a man, like looking at you is like a thing that happens constantly and it's doubly hurtful when

another woman is the one doing the blaming for it it is weird how the position of the father and the mother in terms of the way that they treat thomason are kind of reversed natural like yeah like it's to me it's unnatural that the mother would not she would not understand and be like wow my she must be a little witch you know and the father is like protective of thomason that doesn't make any fucking sense the dad is clearly the witch mongerer and the mom would be like yeah i went through this too when i was 16 they all thought i was a witch too yeah i know right yeah there i was kind of I went back and forth on how I felt about that and again it's just like I just wasn't really able to tell what the

author was trying to say and then sort of fell on like I think that he just kind of like wasn't I mean he said it himself he wasn't thinking about it from a feminist perspective so some stuff kind of gets a little garbled which is a bummer because i feel like if it had been if it had been focused a little or if he had had a woman look at the script maybe we could have gotten a little more i mean i have a whole spiel on this that i'll get to yeah later but yeah it's it's muddled to say the least. So Caleb is missing. The family is frantic, but he appears again outside the house. He's very ill. And then the family is trying to figure out what to do. Things seem hopeless. He's not recovering in any way. And then Caleb takes a turn in which he barfs up an apple and then dies. And then everyone's's like thomason you did this to him

because you're a vvitch and she's like no i'm not maybe mercy and jonas are the witches they're the ones always talking to black philip and the devil appears as a goat often so i don't know maybe look at them which honestly when she said that at first i was like all right that's a stretch not knowing that she was um 100 correct yes oh i thought that there was no way i was just like okay like thomason's in a difficult position and she's trying to be like where can i deflect this blame so people will leave me alone but nope it the devil is the goat and she was right yes um but i mean i also feel like imagery of the devil at least in like pop culture is often like to a metal concert like you know there's like the horns and the hooves and all that stuff it just feels it just feels weird hearing in old English, I guess I would choose as like,

sure. It'd be the goat. So I was like, it'd be the goat. It'd be black Phillip. But she's right. Um, so not knowing who to trust,

William locks up Thomas and mercy and Jonas and black Phillip in the barn for the night. And then the old Vivitch flies in because she knows how to fly now because of the potion that she made. And she drinks the blood milk from another goat, not Black Phillip. So the next morning, William comes out and the barn has been torn open. Mutilated bodies of the goats are lying around. The twins have disappeared and I think don't show up again in the story. And then suddenly Black Phillip impales William with his horn. It's a big metaphor.

He falls beneath the wood that he was chopping and he collapsed underneath his own failure as a patriarch when he was wearing his like jesus-y robe chopping the wood in a like yeah okay in a he has his canvas skirt he's like yeah he's like wearing like a canvas fit and he's got like his light six-pack and he kind of like i mean he looked good okay i'm hetero and i was into it game of thrones dad gets shirtless early and i was like oh wait who is he in game of thrones again oh i couldn't tell you i couldn't tell you the name of a game of thrones character but i but he is um he's definitely he was on the show i recognized his voice not his face so maybe he wore a lot of makeup on the show i don't know maybe he was an orc i couldn't tell you one thing that happened on that show but i did see every episode same exact same um so then

william is dying and katherine comes out and she's like wow Thomason it really seems like you killed all of my children and my husband and that you are a witch so Catherine tries to strangle Thomason but she fights back and ends up killing her mom and then she's like well my whole family's dead now what do I do we also we don't see the twins die but we're like well safe to assume right right yeah or they've gone off and done more of black philip's bidding somewhere else i was kind of curious because i was like they were black philip's only friends and it would be rude of him to kill them right they were so nice to black philip the whole time they were singing songs about him constantly.

They were making fan art right and left about Black Phillip. But anyway, so Thomason goes to Black Phillip and she's like, hey, any chance you're the devil? And he's like, actually, hi. Yes. Step into my office. Please sign my book. Please follow me on twitter and i'll give you whatever you want then she goes into the woods and joins a coven of witches and they all start levitating off the ground and she seems really really happy now elated elated yes which is another like i there's an echo of i know that this movie comes up but i hadn't seen this and i was

like this reminds me of the end of midsummer oh yeah very similar like everyone's dead and now i can finally smile and now i'm with my new friends also hereditary also hereditary it's like yeah i mean but i guess that that is more of an Ari Aster criticism because both those movies came out after this yes let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss hey I'm Gianna Prudente 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 like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions.

Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. 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 16, 2017, was murdered.

There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Tafni exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Lost Culture East. 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. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh, my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know.

I'm so behind. Catherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person?

I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. I'm not going to hawk this slalom. Rudy. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And we're back. So the main thing for me for this movie is so like like many horror movies including several that we have discussed on the podcast this is a movie it feels like to me where there is a pretty clear feminist reading of it and there's also any number of readings of it that are not so much because on one hand like you it's a movie about a young woman who is accused by her family of being a witch because they're starving and their farm isn't yielding crops so they're blaming her they're like using her as a scapegoat goat scapegoat coincidence no hello black philip he is with us now but uh you know they're just they're accusing her of like being a witch and placing a curse on them

and you know this accusation isn't fair it mirrors the unfair way in which women were treated during this time period and in the present time and i do really appreciate that the movie from moment one makes it clear to the audience that there is like it's never a like suspicion of like is thomas in a witch we know from the first second that she isn't and then you have like this level of anxiety of like wanting to protect her because you know that she truly didn't do anything which is nice i feel like not every movie would lend her that yeah i feel like it would maybe be more ambiguous like is she rich yeah right um and then part of this part of these like accusations that are hurled against her we

already hinted at this but like it's that she's going through the natural process of physically maturing and like quote becoming a woman with boobs and that makes her extra suspicious in the eyes of her family and society and like the fact that she doesn't want to be sold off to some other family like a piece of property also makes her seem extra witchy right bitch what what a bitch this sacrifice your life for the starving family right um and then also you know the end where she like her becoming a witch could be seen as like her becoming empowered and independent and having her own agency and autonomy and she joins a coven of other women and you know in that way i see the feminist read sure however i feel like this message in the movie would be way more effective if there weren't also like quote real witches in the story who are evil scary baby snatching murderers.

Because like, I don't know, just like to me, it sends a conflicting message of like, oh, see how women were accused of being witches for no reason. And doesn't that suck? Yeah. Anyway, witches are real and some women are witches. And they've made a pact with the devil and they will murder your whole family for no reason. Yeah. I had a similar thought. I thought and multiple and I mean, I did not get to the point where I'm like, and here's a rework of the movie that would have

worked better for me. But I did like at some point in the movie, I'm like, I feel like this would be an even more anxiety inducing movie if witches don't exist we're not yes totally and things keep happening and they keep being blamed on people like i feel like it is almost a weird narrative crutch for witches to be real yes does that like totally there's a movie there's a movie in there where that doesn't need to be there and i feel like there's at the beginning it says like the vavich like an american they use the word folktale as the subtitle and i feel like robert eggers really leans on that to get away with some story stuff or like not fully explore stuff because he's like well they're based on folktales and folktales were very biased and

they don't actually make a lot of sense and so i was just kind of doing that and it's like well or dumb like right yeah i feel like the scarier choice to me is to lean into how extreme these settlers really were at this time like so terrifying they're super religious they are religious to the point that they will invent the devil in anything that is othered and they're terrified of this land they don't know how to manage it they're like tripping balls on like fungus that's growing on their corn which i read as a criticism or something that eggers actually puts in the film it's like apparently in one of the first shots of the corn field you can see a fungus growing on the corn and it's like at this time this was like a

popular thing that used to happen they couldn't manage the fungus that would grow on their corn and it would make them hallucinate it would give them the illusion of having possession or like hearing voices and shit. I didn't realize that. That should have been more clear. And then, and then you wouldn't have needed the wit. I mean,

is there, I was also trying to figure out like, is there a plausible reading of this movie where you're like the witches were being hallucinated but i don't know i know well it's so witch heavy i don't know i don't know yeah i truly feel like a better version of this story that i would be able to latch more onto from just from a feminist perspective is if witches were not actually real the paranoia around witches and witchcraft sure that could have been real because that fear of witchcraft was historically accurate yeah and that fear could have been heightened by the religious zealotry of this family like that all makes sense to me especially in this specific era when a ton of people were

afraid of the idea of witches like they didn't they didn't understand science so they thought if you were sick or if you had a mental illness like they thought you were being cursed by a witch or or possessed by the devil like it's all of their misunderstandings of everything that would lead them to this this fear that makes them become violent and kill each other like to me that's a more intriguing story if them being uncompromising religious fanatics leads to their demise and not actual like witches yeah so i had no idea that jenna i didn't realize that he like he puts the fungus in front of you so he clearly has done his homework and knows it exists i know so then why not write to that that is so i feel like that is like a way scarier movie to me than like two jump scares that are

that are like rabbit based right and then i'm like and then i'm like the witch is a symbol for what yeah i don't know that's sort of what the lighthouse is about where it's these two people who are in isolation together and they are just like slowly driven mad because of the isolation but what i i mean what i did feel like this movie did well this movie did some things well for me and then other things i was like couldn't couldn't make heads or tails of it but i did like how clear it was made and like how authentic it felt in story that it was like their own religion was setting them up to tear each other apart and it was setting them up to not be able to process their own failures it was setting them up to be completely

unwilling to process their own grief and like they are so like set on this really deeply restrictive sexist emotionally withholding way of life that it's like if you isolate those people how on earth are they going to survive like of course they tear each other apart and they're on drugs i guess they're just being poisoned every day by themselves yeah and i really liked that um the establishing shot we get with Thomasin where she is like doing, I'm sure, an authentic prayer. It seems like Robert Eggers really did go to the library. It's all he talked about on the press tour. But she does this like very specific, deeply self-hating prayer that is like, I am bad. And then I did a little bit

of research brag on Calvinism specifically, because I was like, is it just like the X games of Christianity? And it kind of is. Oh, yeah, baby. Give us the deeds. What the hell is Calvinism? So Calvinism is not just extreme Christianity. And I feel like once I knew this, it kind of put some of the talks that especially William, who I feel like is the most religious out of everybody. So Calvinism says that there are a small number of saints who are marked out for heaven, and everyone else is condemned to hell. And people who are marked out for heaven and everyone else is condemned to hell and people who are living have no way of distinguishing the first group from the second oh so no wonder caleb is so stressed out all the time about the baby it's a losing game yeah and it's like i guess getting baptized

increases your chances of going to heaven but there's no guarantees it's a very unf it's the least forgiving version of christianity i've ever heard of it's yeah all humans are born sinners but it's just it's like very elite heaven tier and then like 99 of people go to hell and so what's anyone's incentive to like be a good person while they're alive then according to this religion you gotta get god to your baby i don't but it's like that that knowing a little more about calvinism specifically i'm like this family is fucked like totally and it's so it is devastating at the beginning of like caleb is so stressed out about whether his baby brother is in heaven or hell and then his dad is just kind of doing some religious deflection and saying god's plan god's plan which is sometimes what religious

people say when they don't know what to tell you. I had a lot of that in my childhood. They're like, IDK. It's just what Christian people say when they can't say like, IDK my BFF Jill. Like they're just like, God's plan. But it also, the way it's framed to Caleb implies that he has to, like, they're like, and we're never speaking of this again. Your baby brother

never existed which is like that's oh my god what a traumatic thing to to learn as a a child who's somewhere between the ages of 8 to 13 old enough to wake up at the crack of dawn and go hunting with your father right so that's calvinism and cal yeah calvinism is um the scariest christianity i've i've heard i mean and to just to zoom out a little bit like i look at this film and i'm like i actually really love films that like depict the harshness and the rawness of early america i also love like films about that like depict the the harshness and rawness of like renaissance england and like you know like how people actually lived i find it fascinating and i think that i've agreed that i found it so gross and beautiful um in that way but to like look at it historically to think about like even in this dramatized representation which i'm sure definitely has some like truth and reality and like what it was actually like these are like the foundations of white america

yeah like this is our past and this is these are the people that were like quote unquote first the first whites and you can fucking still have like a lot of those vibes still radiating in this country yeah the that actually might be the most unsettling aspect of this horror movie to me that like this is the type of people on which like white america was built like the colonists the colonizers this is who these people were and how again they're like their own religious zealotry was like was their demise and this is what you know america as we know it today was built upon and that is very unsettling to me yeah yeah I tried to do a little more research into because I was like okay 1630s so at this point the colonists have been in Massachusetts for about 10 years and that it's even referenced in story a little bit because Thomason and Catherine both mentioned that they're very homesick and that

they had this previous life in England so it's like okay Thomason was I think maybe the other kids were born um stateside but Thomason was like born in England and and you know did the whole trip and all this and so I was looking up okay was I mean, you know what's going on in Plymouth Plantation is bad. But the first 10 years of colonists in Massachusetts on Plymouth Plantation is so fucking brutal. It is just some of the most I don't even want to like repeat it all here but it it is some of the most disgusting slices of history that you'll you'll ever come across and so this family is coming off of almost definitely william was actively participating in a genocide oh yeah a few years before this and so which is not you know is very sidestepped in the movie i feel that like that this family were full and

as as sympathetic as they can come across they are full participants in the the colonialist lifestyle and and apparently they go too hard in the lifestyle there there's also it's like almost certainly all of their friends have died like they're it's just the first 10 years of colonial history is so it's all genocide and it's starvation and it's just blowing it yeah just completely not a single good thing happens right it seems like a joyless existence it doesn't surprise me that by the end when when thomason is like floating in the air i'm like yeah i guess same like seems liberating whatever was happening back there sucked right yeah and like jamie you mentioned that katherine especially there's a line where

she's like i wish i was home in england and it's like well then i mean i guess you move like you colonize this new place because you thought you'd have a better life but um look how wrong you were comma idiot um but yeah like well the people that came across were all were ousted from england for their zealotry right well speaking of the colonizers and the genocide that they were committing against indigenous people there are a few references to native people and you see them you see them uh one time you see a few very beginning a whole one time will William says that he traded with someone named Indian Tom for the traps. And then when Caleb shows back up at the house and he's sick and, quote, possessed, Catherine is like talking to William and she's like, do you remember some family's son?

That first winter he was tormented of Indian magic. So they are blaming the native people who they are actively committing a genocide against for having some kind of dark magic that is plaguing their white children. Yeah, and that's a theme that persists until about 1975 when the Religious Freedom Act is passed in the United States. Oh my God, yes. Depressing fact. Truly both hated the quote unquote magic of the natives at the same time stealing it right so when using it i mean it's right it's a tragic thing i think like also like just this the um the savagery the narrative of savagery also persists and and was used um it's so weird like i don't really understand

i can't imagine the first of all genociding any one is must be very hard like it must actually be so traumatic to do that to a people who actually were helping you in the beginning right yeah and and like teaching you their ways and to be, to turn around and be like, yeah, actually like just going to take you out makes me question their, their capacity for love and compassion. I just don't,

I wonder where that comes from. And it's got to come from that religious shit. think it is rooted in that like very i mean it's rooted in white supremacy but yes but a lot so much of that is contained within this religion that they're so yes rooted in of just like even like the calvinist log line is like there's only a few spots in heaven so good luck and like this chosen one narrative that they've like really lived by and i will say that like indigenous people on this land in north america specifically but this is true for probably a lot of indigenous people who have been colonized by christianity that um kind of religious oppression has persisted as well and is like largely been used as a like

force of colonization and a force of cultural genocide against those people so like i see that like the adherence to like this extreme like i i feel like i look at um the way that americans vilify islam and muslim people and i'm like man i just watch the vvitch guys we're we are that like that is that is that is the zealotry like come on just all the missionaries that christians go on to more or less force their religion on to other people yeah it is it's oppression yeah yeah it's just like that core idea that like hi i'm a random person and i believe that what I am bringing you is surely better than whatever was here. Yeah. And we all can see that people before they came, we were flying around with baby fat on our bodies. It was so much better.

You were thriving this is another i think that like i wasn't able to find a quote of robert eggers being asked about the kind of absence of any indigenous person from this narrative and granted it's this family's very isolated by themselves but what i feel like it's bizarre to not contextualize is why is the area they're living in so extremely isolated because a genocide took place and like there there's not a lot of context given as to why they're living in a ghost town and what was here before the plantation, like before they left the plantation. They're just a day away from the plantation. And so there's just, I don't know,

very little to contextualize their surroundings or really their history in this area at all, even though we know that they would have been there for about 10 years at this point yeah you can see that the way the plantation is they have the like big gates and it's like enclosed it's like a gated community and that was 100 to keep a barrier between them and the indigenous people of the time which which is, you know, but there's also within the barrier you see in this film that, like, there are natives, like, mingling amongst them, trading. Like, there's so much. of cultures happening because what is seen by white people as like uncivilized savagery, I think even in our modern minds, we have to like really train ourselves to look at that time. And

we, and, and, you know, fuck American cinema and television for like poisoning us with this understanding, but like, we don't really see early indigenous Americans as civilized when in fact there were extremely like highly coordinated centuries old trade routes and languages being exchanged and like, you know, materials being exchanged like it and, and exchanges happening with settlers. Like it wasn't all just like we came and exchanges happening with settlers like it wasn't all just like we came and we wiped them out like there was actual collaboration happening also and

like deep partnership happening because they had to they would not have survived if it weren't for the indigenous people they wouldn't fucking have been able to do anything they had no idea what they were doing well and when william you know and his family strike out on their own to try to yield crops he can't do it no he can't trap he has no idea how to trap animals he has no idea how to hunt animals like he can't he just has no survival skills yeah I think it was kind of, I mean, irresponsible and just bizarre to me in such a pretty well researched film to just not address anything or anyone. Like there's just a lot that is just left out. And then you're like, the goat is haunted. Let's go. Like, to me me i'm just so used to it i just i never ever expect that anybody's gonna tell a story about indigenous in a story about settler colonialism from an indigenous even mentioning indigenous people it's never it never happens and when it does it's done poorly so actually i'm

kind of okay with him not having touched that aspect. I don't think that he would have managed it well. That's true. No, especially because like in most horror movies where there is any mention of indigenous people, it's like, oops, we built our house on a burial ground and now it's haunted. Yeah, not good. A lot of IBGs floating around this entire land. And they're so spooky. Let's take another quick break and then we'll come right back for more discussion. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And then we'll come unfiltered work questions.

Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Santer. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep.

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 murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, Catherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. 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. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God,

I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke.

What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. I'm not going to hawk this slalom. I absolutely love it.

It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I wanted to kind of jump off of, we were talking a little bit about william's inability to grow corn um and jenny you referenced this earlier and i his character i is all over the place i i think i generally like where it went but i also sometimes when i was feeling empathy for him, I was just like, what? I feel like this should be with someone else.

What I mean, because he is trying to be the perfect Calvinist, right? He is super. He loves Calvin. He loves Calvin? Do they worship Calvin? I don't know. He loves Calvin so much. And he's but he's very like the religious enforcer of the family.

And if anyone is having a crisis of faith, he's like, get your shit together while also constantly lying to his family. Right from the jump, he lies and asks his son to be complicit in that lie. So he is disingenuous towards Calvin, let's say. Later, he then takes accountability for this lie, which I wasn't expecting him to do. I thought he was just going to let Thomason take the fall. So now I'm like, okay, he admitted he made a mistake. Let's see where this goes.

And the moment that I thought was really effective was when he and thomason are arguing and this is like a really difficult scene to watch but he is like i think really trying to hold it together he wants to believe thomason more than her mother does which i agree janna felt like kind of strange like a strange choice not to say that there isn't like a mother that is so attached and so and she's like wracked with grief and there's a lot going on and she's just shrooming probably just straight shrooming this whole time she's high on mushrooms and her children are just dropping like flies and she's just breastfeeding a crow at one point like yeah she's having a hard week and so like a lot really piles on to this family in a

really short amount of time close together they're having the worst week ever um but william does try like he believes thomason pretty far into the movie and doesn't believe that she is a witch but the second that she says correctly that he is mediocre and that he is not able to provide for the family the way they need then he snaps and yes basically dooms the entire family and i thought that was like a really effective story choice of like being the moral superior until you criticize me and then i'm gonna fucking kill you like totally yeah yeah the second she challenges him he's like the devil is in your tongue you bitch he calls her a bitch and then he throws her on the ground you should have called her a vavitch

and then yeah accuses the devil of like being inside her and giving the her these thoughts and these words which is kind of like a funny male not funny it's horrible but like it is like a very it is very male of him to me to be like you're not a witch unless you say i'm bad at something and then you must be possessed by the devil right i mean it's fragile male ego at its like peak yeah yeah so i thought that that was pretty effective i agree and then like where yeah where the story goes from there is that he's immediately murdered by black philip so maybe okay let me re look at this let me reframe this story for a second what if like black philip is like rooting for thomason this whole time and he's like slowly getting rid of the rest of this like

scary family of hers who are like accusing her and manipulating her and ogling all this stuff and ogling yeah like incestual ogling and then he's so he's rooting for her took the baby he did take the baby but he that was kind of a business decision he needed his his friend in the woods to fly yes it was the baby served a very important purpose in this story so yeah what if he's like looking out for thomason and then his whole plan his like master plan was to be like yes come with me i'll i see how oppressed you are in this family i have such a better life to show you here i've got this group of women we're all hanging out i'll give you whatever you want that i actually i sort of like that i guess that was like so okay i'm very curious at how

you both read the ending because i watched the movie and then i had to go on a walk and then and then when i got back i was like i think i'll but i was also i maybe this is a reach but my read of the end of the movie was that like thomason has been living in this world that is so deeply restrictive and she has been like because of what we know about how you know any woman who is othered in any way is going to be accused of being a witch in this culture that like giving herself over to satan is more liberating than continuing to live with this in this like deeply restrictive religion and so like why not why not satan at least there's less rules they already think i'm of a bitch might as well become of a

bitch i think that that's kind of like a through line also with the Ari Aster stuff. It's like the scariest thing is that she actually just becomes one and like really just rejects the restriction and just goes and becomes a fucked up witch, you know? Yeah. My problem with that is why does that have to be depicted as an evil thing? Yes. Why does it have to be devil-y? The devil has nothing to do with that. It can be completely like I just went to live with a coven of other broads. Man, this goat

went hog on my fucking family and I'm just, there's nothing left here for me except for some shroomed up corn. Let me go live with these the only other humans that i've seen these naked old ladies who seem to be having a good time right just literally midsummer and yeah that's my whole thing with this movie another reason that i don't think i don't find the end of the movie to be a moment of empowerment for thomason is that like any agency or power

that she does have that she gets at the very end of the movie is like bestowed upon her from a man like the devil a devil man yeah i wonder i always wonder i'm like as i get the devil is i guess i mean in this movie certainly gendered i think the devil is always I guess, I mean, in this movie, certainly gendered. I think the devil is always I mean, there's like she devil you hear the expression she devil. But like, I think in like Christian lore, the devil is always perceived as a man or like with he him pronouns. For sure. Right. I need to. Yeah, I agree. I just wonder if there are you know different versions i mean there's so many versions of the devil and i wonder if there is a uh a genderless uh devil care i mean sure would really clear up some issues here i think and i was not raised christian

so i can't not say for sure. But thank you. I was. The devil is gendered as a male in Christianity and certainly in Calvinism. Calvin? Shout out Calvin. Calvin! Calvin, yeah, loves when men have power. So this is a male devil.

So the point is, like, she got her powers from a male figure. And so did, we can assume, all of those other women at the end. They got their powers from him as well. So to me, they're still living in a patriarchal structure, like doing a man's bidding or this, you know, male figure's bidding. So Thomason basically goes from one, one like patriarch to another at the end at least it's not a lateral move at least it's like the patriarchy but now you can fly it is an upgrade yes get it but yes yeah i i i hope that she um doesn't remain in the devil's employ too long. I know. I've heard bad things. It usually does not end well. Yeah, we don't know what happens after she starts floating.

Who knows? Maybe the devil is a really, you know, just and kind. The devil is literally a socialist. I feel like, I don't know why I'm like the devil would have a great health care that doesn't make sense but the devil wants to defund the police yeah exactly the devil i mean i feel like in in the time the devil was demonized but actually he had some pretty good ideas well

what makes you think revisionist history anyone No one wants to see that movie. Anyway. Well, too bad because I'm writing it right now. But yeah, no, I totally agree with you. She's going from the, I mean, multiple patriarchal structures. She's trapped inside of her family. She's trapped inside of religion. And then she just kind of upgrades to like patriarchy with

superpowers yeah the scene at the end with thomason joining the coven of other witches there's kind of a similar scene in a very different movie portrait of a lady on fire where like it's these rural french women who like help other women out by like, it's like, Oh, you need an abortion. Come on by the coven. We'll give you an abortion.

Let's sing around the fire. And it's very nice and not evil and not murdery. Like that's how I wish this movie had ended. Yeah. Conflating it with evil. And this is, I mean, a very common choice for this new wave of white auteur horror directors to make is like, and it's frustrating because I at least aesthetically, in every single case and I think Caitlin and I have talked about this before of like I feel there's a lot of male directors right now who are trying

to write a female character for the first time and blowing it there and I think that a very common mistake that they're making is to conflate women with evil but they're like but it's liberating and you're like that you still still evil yeah yeah and and also entirely defining using like the last moment of the movie to define a woman entirely by her trauma which women are constantly asking male writers not to do yeah um this bothers me more in ari a movies than here, but I think that it is like a very similar thing of like, yeah, she's evil. It's all kind of the same thing. Well, The Lighthouse, which is again, Robert Eggers' other feature at this time, having seen both of these movies pretty recently now i think that robert eggers

thinks that women are either witches or just like kind of evil temptresses in general because in the lighthouse there is one woman she's on screen for maybe less than a minute probably uh she is a like siren she's a hallucination succubus type of mermaid yeah she's a she's a figment she's a figment of robert pattinson's imagination he definitely does have sex with her uh in his imagination he's also jerking off to a mermaid figurine at different points in the film i just i don't understand how you could say that when robert eggers famously said in all of my trying to stand back and be objective about themes feminism rises to the top like how can these things be true he famously said the most famous thing that has ever been said about feminism that makes the most sense i want to put that on a t-shirt truly i'm so sorry i should be giving him far more credit he gets the accidental feminist award

i mean it comes down again to like robert eggers to me was like hey you know how a bunch of people mostly women were persecuted during this time and also throughout a large chunk of recorded history because they were suspected of being witches, even though this version of witchcraft is not real and was completely invented by the people making these accusations. Well, my movie is about how those witches are real and pure evil i'm gonna verify it that's why i don't i mean it's like he so he does he goes to the library five or six times and he like i have no doubt that he went to the library he's said it but but i don't i guess that it's like he's doing this research on folklore from just white settlers of this time which he which is reflected in the

interviews as he was reading early colonial accounts and folklore and then he he doesn't subvert anything about it like he does show i guess i guess he he goes as far as showing that the women being accused of witchcraft themselves probably weren't witches at first but then religion made them witches like i don't really know i feel like he subverts the crucible by making witches actually real. Which we didn't need. We don't need that. We need Tituba's story of the crucible. Right.

Yeah. I just, the whole, I just feel like, yeah, he uses one word in the subtitle of the Vovich to just not actually say that much. That said, I do like thomason i think that she's like a pretty well written and well realized character who i was worried for the whole time yeah and i like that she does like the moments that she chooses to stand up for herself versus the moments she doesn't felt pretty authentic and i also like i felt bad for mercy when thomason bullies her and like chokes her that was not nice but i also like even in that it's like she i don't know i guess maybe being

an elder sibling myself who yeah i didn't choke Ben but I wasn't nice to him but you know it's like when your parents are giving you shit the only power Thomason has to inflict is on her younger siblings and so while it's not the best thing for her to do it felt like okay yeah older siblings do that because that's the only power they have. Yeah. Right. She's also what? Like, I don't... 15, 16?

I don't know exactly how old her character... 14. Yeah, but I would have guessed 14, 15, 16. Wait, okay. So I have the screenplay here. So let me just... Let me pull that up and see if her age is actually indicated in the screenplay. So let me just...

Because my guess would have been I think that like I think Anya Taylor-Joy was 16 when it was shot but I feel like yeah that oh okay according to the screenplay Thomason is 13 oh yeah I was thinking she was older I was thinking she was like 15 16 I want to I guess I appreciate that they don't say an exact number i mean i don't really think that i don't know i i would have thought she was supposed to be older right i guess it wouldn't make a huge difference the implication is that she i guess is you know she's just starting to become a woman so that makes sense because that's like how old is caleb supposed to be because i was i already said eight right caleb is supposed to be 11 oh damn it well so we so close jamie so close um so that brings me to wanting to talk a little bit more about something we already touched on a little bit

which is just the idea of women's bodies in the vvitch like the vimmin and their bodies so part of this discussion is thomason maturing physically and then being shamed for it when people notice that her brother is always leering at her because he's also nearing puberty if he's 11 right so like there's that line where her mother says something like you bewitched thy brother proud slut did you not think i saw thy sluttish looks to him bewitching his eye as any whore thompson's minding her own business doing her chores and her brother is you know creepily leering at her and then then her mom is like, you're a slut. Yeah.

I mean, I don't even for me, that's not so much a critique of the movie as it is of like, this is very true to this time. And also this religion, which I found out I was like, whomst is Calvin? Truly, he was he's a guy named John Calvin oh a Protestant reformer in the 16th century so it's just I mean all these regressive views I was basically joking but actually came from a man whose last name is Calvin and it's Calvin so you know um Calvin is canceled of course yeah yeah I don't mean to uh imply that I think this like that this isn't a critique of the movie. This yeah, this is very historically accurate. And this still this idea of like shaming and blaming women just for having bodies is very present today.

And to me, like, yeah, that's the horror or that's one of the sources of horror for this movie like you don't also need to put these quote real witches in your movie when your character has a puritanical mother who hates you because you're developing breasts like right like just heightening that would be would have been a more effective approach to the horror movie than you know just to have some random witch pop up every so often. So the other thing, and we already touched on this as well, but the idea of like the various forms in which we see the Vavitch. We've got the like kind of the older witch form. We've got the young witch form. And then we've got the rabbit form.

Which is an action. I looked it up, the hair does have witchy representations in old, in early America witch lore. Didn't realize that. Well, he went to a library.

I think there were also things for like frogs, I mean, I don't know, people were just shrooming so hard back then they're just like oh there's an animal probably a demon lives inside of it it's trying to kill me it's trying to kill me but um so just to kind of repeat the idea of there is a horror trope that is quite present in many horror films the idea of seeing an image of an older woman, sagging skin, a hag, not super thin,

not Western beauty standards, gorgeous, as being a part of the horror imagery of the film. And Jamie, you brought up The Shining. This exact same thing happens in that movie too, where it's like there's that scene where, you know, Jack Torrance is drawn to room whatever it is 237 or if that's wrong please slide in never let us forget he starts because he's drawn in by this conventionally attractive woman lures him in they start making out because she's naked and that's what you do when you see a hot woman

and um then suddenly she is older she's the you know the hag trope and that's part of the horror like oh how it's disgusting now terrifying it's just shorthand for evil like it's the least sexual naked image in movies i feel like it's like the bodies of older women are the least sexual like nude images and horror movies be terrified of it i don't know about you both but i am really looking forward to having a body that looks like that um it sounds it seems great i just oh god that the the amount of trouble male filmmakers will go through to make women terrified of i know what would be a very lucky thing to arrive at yeah to get to live for a long time and have a body like but they don't like it they don't want to have sex with it so it's scary i feel like it's on par with like the sci-fi vagina mouth monster with oh yeah the most annoying like blatantly

anti-feminist tropes that if you ask a male filmmaker about it it'll be like doesn't look like a vagina to me and you're like sir it's that's a thing in the lighthouse too where the mermaid who he imagines uh and then has sex with there's like this and maybe i'm misremembering this but i'm pretty sure this is what happens where he like looks down and she has like the mermaid succubus lady has, like, an enormous vulva, like, the size of a dinner plate. Grow up, vulva. Like, you're 40. Like, can you not do this? Truly.

What is your hang-up, man? Deal with this by yourself. I don't know. By the way, the actor who plays the Vovich, Bathsheh sheba garnett she was born in 1925 so in this movie she's like 90 and that yeah good for her if only she had been like framed and used respectfully in the movie right imagine that being too much to ask i mean i i think about this often because i am also a performer but uh i just i dread the um casting notice that is asking for my naked old body the older the better the saggier the better in the same way that i um am privy to um fat casting notices that are really extremely offensive because we can't cast fat women as

anything but the fat woman right in the show that's the defining characteristic of their character and that's all we ever know about them right that's the one thing oh good grief well does anyone have any other thoughts on the film the witch i guess i just wanted to talk about katherine really quick we haven't talked about her that oh sure much she apologizes for being a shrew to her husband she does uh peak his wife behavior i should not have been a shrew to be and it's like all right um i yeah i i guess that i don't love that she is painted to be the more villainous parent i don't quite like how she's characterized but it i do think it's interesting in the same way that like caleb isn't allowed like his religion doesn't

permit him the space or permission to grieve his dead family member i feel like you do sort of on top of the fact that she is a part of a deeply oppressive society and is on drugs like she is deeply depressed and anytime she brings it up to anyone around her they basically tell her to shut up and she's like just lost an infant and so in that way i i feel for her but it's also like a mother being it also the visual metaphor of like the repeated visual metaphor of mothers equals breast like breastfeeding metaphor i feel like it's kind of is pretty lazy if nothing else and and just the fact that i mean we don't know much about any of these characters but we know what we know about this character is that she is grieving her son and she hates her daughter and why i mean i guess you again

another generous interpretation is that like it doesn't seem like calvinism encourages women to like each other or to do anything but blame each other for the things that are not their fault and there are moments where you can tell you wants to believe Thomason, but the second she gets permission to call her a witch, she's like, I'm going to kill you. So I don't like her. I don't have to like her. You know what I think is interesting is this actress who plays her, what's her name again?

I'm looking at Kate Dickey. Kate Dickey. Kate Dickey who plays Catherine breastfeeds in the movie and also in Game of Thrones plays Catherine's sister in Game of Thrones

who is breastfeeding an eight year old boy. Yeah, eight year old like a very well past breastfeeding age. She has had to breastfeed in her career for two major roles. She's had to breastfeed, which is such a weird typecast. Yes.

What a horrible situation we're putting people in. That is so annoying. Like her two, arguably her two biggest credits. Yeah. She has to horror breastfeed. Yeah. Right. It's like the same thing of like body horror imagery, like things that are natural, like

a woman's body aging, breastfeeding, etc. Like those things are made to seem scary and unnatural and wrong. And I just I don't think images like that should ever be included as a part of like the horrifying imagery of a horror movie, especially when those things are almost never framed in any kind of positive light in media either we see nothing right in terms of that kind of representation or it's there but only in horror movies as a part of the horror and i do not like that at all yeah i don't know there's i think as it pertains to women i like thomason's characterization and don't think that any of the female characters especially are particularly well thought out especially because the conclusion is that they're evil but right yeah i guess that's all i have to say oh gosh if nothing else i like that

thomason survives until the end i was really worried that she wouldn't i'm glad she does but i don't like that it's to be like and she's the witch and you're like what are you telling me like what are you telling me that i think i i think what he might be trying to say and maybe i'm like i don't want to put words in feminist icon robert eggers mouth. But I feel like he's like, you know, witches are like made not born, I think is maybe what that's, I think, a generous interpretation of like, all this religious oppression made her a witch. And it wasn't but I but but that also still makes women evil and also doesn't make a lot of sense um so i am just quickly looking up the two whoa i'm looking up the two people who played the wampanoag people to see if they're actually

native i can't tell one of them was also in freedom writers and was on top chef okay what a life anyway i always look for that because i am genuinely like uh pleased when a director casts actual native people to play natives in movies it doesn't happen that often that does not surprise me. And Jana, you mentioned a test that I don't think we were familiar with, Jamie and I, until you mentioned it, but would it be the Ayla test? The Ayla test? Ayla test? Yeah, I'm reading it as Ayla. And it is a media test created by Ali Nadi. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. And to pass the test, a female character in a piece of media is an indigenous slash aboriginal woman

who is a main character who does not fall in love with a white man and who does not end up raped or murdered at any point in the story. So those are the three qualifications. The fact that it needs to be stated is very telling, depressing. Good Lord. Thank you for letting us know about that.

Yeah, it's relatively new. This test is from 2020, the first of its kind, but it's absolutely necessary because you will be hard pressed to find a a lead female character in a tv show who doesn't get killed i mean not even a lead you'll be hard pressed to find a lead uh indigenous character i'll just say that that's the end of my statement sure very true well does that bring us to the other tests that we should put this film up against yes okay uh the bechtel test does it pass uh i i think it does between thomason and katherine they talk about a silver cup they talk about goats i think between thomason and katherine they talk about a silver cup they talk about goats i think between thomason and mercy as well they're talking about the bitches and the bitching they're all accusing

each other of being witches that uh unfortunately passes the when you say hey woman you are a witch yeah i think i think it does um it does pass amazing feminist icon robert eggers i'm surprised and amazed yeah i honestly was as well but it does not pass some of the other tests that we moving forward are going to put the film up against such as the does not do renee test it's you know it's a bunch of white religious extremists colonizers and um yeah so it's really not going to pass most of the tests no at very least they're not made out to look good right yeah which is i think the most you can say yeah well that brings us to our nipple scale in which we um examine how well the movie fares when it comes when it's put through an intersectional feminist lens zero to five nipples

my brain is like rupturing i guess i would give it like a two oh on the grounds that well that's probably too generous i do like thomason as a character and i do see a version of the story in which she is empowered by the end and like has autonomy and has escaped the fundamentalism of her oppressive family yeah and you know i guess is gonna thrive as a witch probably in the coven of the other witches um but we don't know that i guess are we assuming have been through the exact same thing right is it just like other like farms like spread out like every few miles there's just another daughter who's like being oppressed by their Calvinist family and they have to escape this life and they all just converge in the forest. Yeah, I guess so.

But yeah, my big issue with this is the being accused of being a witch and then having that happen in the same story in which evil witches who have made a pact with the devil are real and you're probably gonna become one um if you hang around long enough and just yeah that whole thing so maybe i'll go down to now i'll stay with it too i'll i'll be decisive for once in my life which which is still a failing grade. So I feel fine about that. It's less than 50%. So, uh, and I'll give both of them to black Phillip.

Obviously both of my nipples go to black Phillip, which is weirdly, I know that we, it's the title of the character, but I cannot help, but find racial undertones in the name. It's crazy, especially because like the two goats that were, but I cannot help but find racial undertones in the name Black Phillip. It's crazy.

Especially because the two goats that were perfectly well-behaved and not possessed by the devil were white goats. Yes, and that is an actual real thing in witchcraft. The idea of white magic versus black magic does have racial origins. Yes, for sure. Did you read that at the library robert i'm pulling my library card i'm i'm being a little hard on him he doesn't say it that much but it just made me laugh that he's like well folks i went to the library um i'm gonna give this movie one nipple i i think that it is partially stemming from frustration that it features so many tropes that are used against female characters so often, especially in contemporary horror.

But it also I think the response to it at the time was like feminist, which I don't think is true. And I just I really i know that horror it's a horror movie there's going to be a lot of trauma but i think that there are better ways to depict female trauma than is done in this movie i like thomason a lot i hope the best for her in her next chapter um and i where's the vivitch too i don't i don't want it uh we don't need it but but she i i do like i feel like she makes the movie for me and like the anxiety i felt wanting to protect her i feel like is what held the movie together for me and also just seeing like in a very brutally depicted way the delusion that comes with

extreme religious settings and how it can turn you against people that you love and like can just completely tear your life apart I thought like that point was well made and I think maybe that was more the point he was trying to make. But inside of that point he's trying to make, I feel like his female characters get a little lost and a little muddled. So to quote a scholar, in all of my trying to stand back and be objective about themes, feminism rises to the top. It's just there in your face it rises right up i just like i cannot subscribe to the mindset that i just feel like it is so like baby brain to be like levitating woman last shot it's feminist

like i just no yeah uh i'm gonna give it one nipple and i'll give the nipple to thomason hope she's doing well are Are Robert Eggers witches immortal? I don't know. I don't know. She might still be around. Could be. Jenna, what about you? I'm also going to give it one nipple.

If I'm really looking at it authentically through an intersectional lens, Thomason is really only experiencing one oppression, and it's because she's a woman. I guess there's some religious oppression happening in there too but intersectionality is more about the oppression that arises from queerness from gender from race and I think that like there's literally no other I guess there is some there is a lot of ageism in this movie. Just like we just hate old people, specifically old women. I don't love that.

I really think there's a better way to scare people. I feel like there's a better... If we're going to move toward horror that is actually psychologically terrifying, we need to lean into the get out versions of these things. And this was a, this had opportunities to really make a critique about early religious settlements and how fucked up they were. But it,

then it just was magical in the end. Instead of like confronting the reality, the non-magical reality of just straight up tripping balls, hyper Christianity. Right. You know what? I'm going to bring my score down to one nipple as well.

No, I do this all the time time i let other people influence me but hey isn't that how we grow isn't that how we become better people to listen and to reflect back onto ourselves ourselves from five minutes ago oh my god like anytime i like write in a diary and i'll like go back to three days earlier and just to see what i was like oh i hate myself three days ago i was such an idiot so this is very much my personality it's good it allows growth yeah uh yeah i hadn't even really thought of but yeah it's like every complicated discussion that this movie could have had it just says magic instead yeah specifically like black dark magic like yes with very in my opinion clear uh racial undertones racial undertones for sure yes um well there you have it folks the witch uh the sorry the

vavitch jenna thank you so much for being here this has been amazing thanks for having me of course of course where can people follow you online check out your stuff anything whatever you'd like to plug oh my gosh um well i have a podcast called Woman of Size. It's about life in the intersections of race, gender and fatness. It's about weight stigma. And it's also funny. That's great. But that is at Woman of Size pod on Instagram and Twitter. I also have a personal Instagram, Twitter, that's Jana Unplugged. And I hope that everybody will watch the TV show Rutherford Falls coming out in 2021 on the Peacock Network. I wrote on the show.

And it's the first show that has native lead comedic characters. That's awesome. So I'm really excited about that. Hell yeah. You can check out us on the social media as well twitter instagram at bechtel cast we've got our patreon aka matreon it's uh five dollars a month it gets you two bonus episodes every single month plus access to our entire back catalog uh also if anyone wants that robert eggers quote on a t-shirt, I'm very tempted. So I just need one listener to want it.

Jamie. And that will be enough for me to follow through. I have a list of t-shirts. I know. Well, now it's time. New t-shirts we got to make. You know, deeply unemployed and locked in my home. So sure.

Can I just scrawl the words of Robert Eggers? Yes, I can. Well, if you do want our existing merch and any upcoming new merch, go to tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast for all of your merchandising needs. And otherwise, you know, I was going to try to quote this movie

and I realized I don't know a goddamn thing they're ever saying because it's like 17th century English. So never mind. Live deliciously. Live deliciously is a great. Live deliciously. Also, anytime that someone, sorry, one more, one more Robert Eggers dunk before we go. Anytime someone was like, wow, the dialogue sounds so authentic. And he's like well i went

to the library you're like shut up stop he's a library boy library bay also okay sorry one last thing the black philip the devil when he becomes a man a devil man he's like what would you like i'll give you a pretty dress because you know women be shopping women be loving dresses even with zero dollars in the middle of the woods women be shopping truly um all right that'll that'll do it thanks for listening we'll see you next week hey i'm gianna pradenti and i'm jama-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. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations 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 unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, Catherine Han is joining us on Lost Culture East. 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 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.