The Bechdel Cast - The Woman King with Oyeronke Oyebanji

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

This week, woman kings Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Oyeronke Oyebanji discuss The Woman King.  (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @OyeRonke_ on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante, and @jamieloftusHELPSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. It's me, your general of the army that you're in and also your mom. I mean, what is a movie if not about mothers and daughters? Gasp. Caitlin, I truly dream of the day where you say, turn around and then you cut my shoulder and pull a shark's tooth out. That's how we'll know that this was really meant to be. That this was some real

second act shit going on. Yeah. Yeah. Wait for it. Wait for it. Yes. I will keep my shark tooth in place until the day comes. Thank you. But I will be ready. Great. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. Yes. Which of course is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, originally found in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For. A classic. Intended as just sort of like a bit, a joke. And it has since been used as this media metric that has many different versions. Yes. Ours is as follows. Two people of a marginalized gender must have names. They must speak to each other about something other than a man. Such as a conversation about a mother tearing a shark's tooth out of her daughter's shoulder. That is, that's a really excellent pass because those characters have names and that's a very impactful exchange of dialogue.

Yes. The only reason we say that, as we've been saying for years on the show, is because there's so many movies that people will be like, well, it does pass. And it's like a waitress being like, hi. And then Nicole Kidman's like, hi. And you're like, what was that? And then Nicole Kidman says, we come to this place for magic. And that's impactful. Yes.

That's true impact. So that's our show. Now you know. And today we have a very popularly requested episode. I think we've been getting requests for this movie since the second the trailer dropped. Which makes a lot of sense. And we're very excited to be covering it. It's the Woman King Day on the Bechdel cast.

We are here. We did it. And we have a wonderful guest. We certainly do. Who we found through a piece that she wrote on NPR entitled, The Woman King Speaks Loud and Clear to This Nigerian Feminist. She works in global health. She's a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute. It's Oye Ranke, Oye Banji. Welcome. Hello. Hi, Kathleen. Hi, Jamie. Really, really, really thrilled to be here. We're so excited to have you. Same here. I mean, it's my first time recording a podcast,

so I'm looking forward to seeing how I do or hearing how I do. But really lovely to have you. Same here. I mean, it's my first time recording a podcast, so I'm looking forward to seeing how I do or hearing how I do. But really lovely to be here. You're going to do great. You're going to crush it. Already doing great. Can you tell us a little bit before we talk about the, well, I guess this kind of goes into the discussion of how did this piece come about for you, the NPR piece?

It's a very interesting question, and I'm not sure if to give the honest or the not honest view. But I mean, obviously, The Woman King came out and there was a lot of chatter on social media and everywhere about this movie about Black women. And then I got a request from someone at the Aspen Institute to ask if I would be interested in writing about The Woman King. And I thought it was a good way to watch the movie because I would usually watch movies like two years after they've been released.

I'm like the last one amongst my friends to watch movies. But this time, I mean, obviously there was a lot of chatter about The Woman King. There was a lot of thrill about the woman king there was a lot of thrill people were extremely excited my friends in nigeria couldn't see it at the time because it was showing in cinema here in the uk in london where i live but not in nigeria yet so people were pushing me from home to go see it immediately and tell them about it and of course the opportunity to write about it came up so everything just you know gelled together into one and then i found myself going into the cinema one night after work um again quite unusual of me i would usually wait till the weekend but i couldn't wait till the weekend for this one

and then i decided to yep i went and watched the movie loved it and indeed wrote a piece about it and we loved it and we loved the movie and we're all in agreement that the woman king rocks it's really good Caitlin what's your I mean I guess like yeah what's your history with the movie other than I think we both saw it the week it came out that's pretty much it yeah I went with a group of friends of the cast such as uh sammy junio and daniel perez awesome and we just went together and we had a blast and and i'm so happy that it's on netflix now and is very accessible yeah and i've watched it a couple times since then how about you jamie uh i bravely went alone i was um which is how i go to most but i thank you so much uh but no i i i did see it um shortly after it came out it was it's really good uh theater experience when if you like go at night and everyone's fucking pumped to be there oh yeah it is to quote

one of the greatest uh film critics of our time Harry Styles, the movie felt like a movie. It certainly did. It really felt like a go-to-the-theater type film. And there's no getting around it. But yeah, I thought it was a really, really fun... I guess fun is kind of a... But there are moments in this movie that are really fun. There's such a huge range of emotion.

And I can't... As I was leaving originally, I'm like, I can't remember the last time. I mean, there's a lot of feelings of I can't remember the last time or the first time that I've seen a movie quite like this. But even just a big sweeping historical epic. I just hadn't seen one in a really long time. And there's just, there's so much going on. I'm really excited to talk about it and I was aware I feel like because this is such a recent movie there were kind of two waves of discourse that surrounded this movie and I before researching this episode I was only really aware

of one I was definitely well aware of Gina Prince-Bythewood and the film in general being shut out of the Oscars and the very, very needed discussion around Black artists in general, but especially Black women being shut out of big institutional award shows like the Oscars. But there was also a historical conversation that I it didn't come across my feed on Mr. Elon's website but um I'm excited to to talk about it after we we talk about the movie because I think there's a lot of yeah I guess just speaking to like the historical epic of it all there's I feel like there's I mean I can't speak to this specifically because it's like historical epics don't tend to be like my faves this is kind of a huge outlier but i feel like they're largely considered to be like truth adjacent maybe but often right not and we're also about to record an episode on rrr which takes right yes billion liberties with historical accuracy. Yeah. This movie follows history a little more closely,

but also takes the Titanic approach where it's like, this happened, but let's introduce some characters who didn't exist. Right. Well, I'm excited to talk about it because, yeah, we'll get into that in a little bit. But anyways, I saw the movie. I really, really enjoyed it and um it's just as fun to watch at home i don't know yeah i'm also excited that it's on netflix and everyone can

watch it if you haven't watched it get your shit together seriously time to watch it yeah so i i think it's just on netflix in the u.s by the way oh is it not in the uk no it's not in the uk certainly not in nigeria so yeah that's a real shame yeah um that it's not freely available on netflix for the rest of the world yet huh well hopefully that's frustrating i know i know okay we were just being us-centric sorry about it classic americans bad um well shall i do the recap yes and we'll go from there i'm i'm john boyega i have to give you permission to do anything because i am man i am mr king and yes you may oh thank you so much why do we need him anyways i mean we

need john boyega but why do we need kings but why do we need kings exactly yes um i will place a trigger warning for rape and sexual assault here at the top of the recap the story takes place in west africa i believe the year is 1823 we get some voiceover with backstory about the kingdom of Dahomey and its new king, Gezo. Dahomey's enemy, the Oyo Empire, has joined forces with the Mahi people, and together they have been raiding Dahomey villages and selling captives to European slavers. Right away, like right as the movie started, I don't know, I was kind of struck by like, there is like, I know that Star Wars doesn't own the crawl. But like, there is like a historical crawl to give the audience just an idea of like where we are and who we're with. And I feel like we see a lot of big movies that take place within this time

period and I think it does like speak to how few movies have taken place in Africa whatsoever because it's like yeah as an audience member I super super needed that context but if you're seeing a movie that is placed in a similar time period and it's you know like a Jane Austen adaptation they're just like here we are we are assuming we know where you are because this is the history we prioritize teaching for sure yes so we learn about dahomey villages being raided but the dahomey have a powerful weapon to fight back which is an elite army of female soldiers called the Agoge, led by General Naniska. Oh, it's so exciting to see them appear.

Oh, at the beginning, the theater I was in, they were like, everyone was so pumped. It's very exciting because the movie opens on General Naniska, who's played by Viola Davis, and her Agoge warriors attacking a group of Mahi men and freeing the people who were being held captive. We meet a few of the other warriors like Amenza, played by Sheila Atim. And Izogi, played by Lashana Lynch. They all return to the kingdom where we meet Nawi, played by Tuso Mbedu, a young woman whose parents are trying to arrange a marriage for her, but she does not want to be an obedient wife who puts up with a husband's abuse. Because that she is seen as like worthless and insolent so her father gives her to the king i learned um when i was doing some historical research so most i mean the majority of these characters i think with the exception of the king and one of the um i think

portuguese slave traders um is based on a real person. But most of the Agoge women are based on like sort of an amalgamation. But Neniska and Naui, those are like references to actual Agoge warriors who existed and were seen, you know, being really good at war. I was like, wait, I don't know how to talk about military stuff. I don't know what the fuck I'm saying. Really good at war. That's correct.

I mean, say like the Agoge, if they're really good at one thing, it's war. Making me go, ah, it's exciting. So Izogi takes Naoi under her wing. She shows her around the palace and Naoi joins the group of women who will train and basically like audition to become warriors of the Agoji. Meanwhile, Oyo soldiers led by their new general, Oba Ade, played by Jimmy Adukoya, who is particularly vicious.

He discovers the men that Naniska and her warriors killed earlier. And General Oba is not happy about this, especially that his men were killed by women because he's mr patriarchy yes back in dahomey we meet king gazo played by john boyega which is great news for uh for i think everyone and our eyeballs yeah yes we're thrilled he meets with his council and they are deciding how to proceed with their enemies, if they should go to war or not. And Neniska and Amenza are like, hey, we should stop participating in the slave trade and focus on harvesting and selling palm oil. Because the kingdom of Dahomey tends to sell their enemy captives to European slavers. Meanwhile, Naui and the others learn about the Agoge, how they're fierce warriors. They are not allowed to take husbands or bear children, but they will be respected their opinions will be heard and we do see them being like

revered by the community yes that is something though that i feel like and this is like maybe getting a little ahead but i'm interested in what you both think about it because i think that like that was one of the historical issues that when i read more about it i was like oh yeah like it's referenced in the movie that it like mainly through naoi that you know obviously it's unfair that they are prevented from having relationships outside of being warriors because we see their you know male counterparts having all having not just relationships and families but like access to alcohol and just stuff that like they're doing the same job and not being treated in the same way but i feel like john boyega's character who is a real man king geza like kind of skirts around criticism of that

in certain ways because like i i historically i guess that every single person that was a part of the agoji would be considered his wife and like a third tier wife and that that is why they were so controlled in how they were allowed to interact with the world it was still like an emphasis on control um and it's it's weird because it's like that is present in the story but i but the first time i saw it at least it didn't register to me as like something that was emphasized i don't know yeah i mean i have a whole long spiel that we'll get to about the double standard that now he does challenge but nothing changes and i imagine like it didn't change historically and that's why yeah but she does comment on it um and then there's a whole

other conversation to be had about how like the agoji view love and emotion as weakness and you know that's a very familiar concept both in like real life and media but it's often at least in media it'll be something that is traditionally associated with male warriors like the jedi uh from star wars who are like oh from star wars oh from yes yes yes yes ever heard of it sorry the jerry from where i was trying to think of the name the jedi it's the oh the jedi order which i couldn't think of so then i said from star wars and then i sounded like a fool um so you know the jedi from star wars it was helpful um who i think are except for like the newer crop of star wars movies the jedi order have largely been men um and then also like from game of thrones there's the knights watch or whatever they're called the guys who like guard the wall against the ice people i've seen that show i just

don't remember what anything is called yeah I mean I feel like that is that is um I mean obviously I don't know maybe not obviously I am not a veteran I have not served I I have not gone to war okay you're not good at war you would say I would say I am probably would be uniquely bad at war and um i don't dislike that about myself but i yeah i mean that is like sort of a general training thing of like repressing your emotions which i think is like addressed to some extent in this narrative by like even though general naniska feels that it is and i think to some extent it is necessary for her to do her job, like to compartmentalize constantly. But you can also at least get to see how it affects her.

She clearly has what I would say is PTSD from combat, from trauma that she has experienced that we'll talk about. And so I was at least grateful that, I don't know, I feel like most, well, obviously, most war movies surround men, and white men specifically, and you see all this trauma taking place, but you don't ordinarily see how it affects them down the line, or gives that any sort of serious consideration of, of course, how that's going to affect your mental health and just how you interact with the world. So I do like seeing a, I mean, I guess General Nunesca, she's like an active general, like in how her career has affected her. Because I'm always just like, we kind of get, we like, I don't know, in the US, and it feels like almost everywhere, veterans do not have access to mental health services that they need and so when there are movies about war i'm like let's

let's show that uh yeah why didn't general naniska go to therapy i'm just kidding yeah that's actually that was going to be my main point of the i'm like you know what really took me out of it is that word generals in 1820 didn't go to see my therapist yeah explain that pretty messed up anyway so i yeah when i when i was watching the movie one thing that really struck me well firstly i should have said probably about my history to it was in watching I tried to reflect on life then in the 1800s and life now in 2022 which was when I watched it and you know the beat about women the Agoje women not being allowed to marry or fall in love that has changed in some ways but there are still some very tricky policies that still affect many women especially women that are in the army or in the police in nigeria for example women in the police have to seek permission

from their superiors before they get married now men don't have to do that you know a man can just get married and do whatever and a married woman in the police force has to actually seek permission from her supervisors and it's just one of those laws that i found i know still i know i found out and i was like in 2022 you know and it's one of those things that people don't talk enough about you know it has become sort of the status quo and so you're told that when you're joining the police you know you have to seek permission and so that's okay but it's not okay in any way and it's just one of the ways that discrimination is shown and it's one of the ways or one of the reasons in my opinion why there are way less women fighting wars i agree with you jamie i mean wars are not my thing. But still, there are several women and

young girls that want to join the army or the police force or, you know, go to war, fight wars or protect their countries. But when you think about the discrimination they face, and this varies from one spectrum to another. But when you think about the fact that you have to seek permission to get married, and your male counterparts do not have to do that, then that's totally discouraging. And it is unfortunate, I would say. Definitely. But yeah. God, that is so upsetting to hear that that is still the case now.

That, I mean, yeah. Wow. Learning. Learning upsetting things on the Bechtel cast yeah anyways i was just glad to see that it didn't i don't know it didn't undercut what a powerful leader she was to see that these years of trauma on the battlefield and outside just interacting with these slave traders um has had an effect on her. Right. Yes. And that comes across clearly in the film.

It's Viola Davis. She's amazing. Dotting all over the place. Okay. So we've just learned about the Agoge and the sort of like freedoms and restrictions that they have to live by. Then Naui has a conversation with Neniska in the bathing pool where they kind of like size each other up and they both think that the other is arrogant and foolish. Then it's time for Naui and the others to start training to become warriors okay did anyone think about

the mulan montage when they were watching this i was thinking about it the whole time i had it i was humming the song be a woman man woman king so there's the training montage where naoi is learning and improving but she also tends to talk back and she challenges authority and tradition she pulls a prank involving gunpowder. Naniska is still... Hilarious. Still. Hilarious war prank. And Izogi is still mentoring her and trying to keep her in line. Naoi reveals that she acts out so that Naniska will notice her because she's trying to stand out above the crowd. And what is that from? Stand out?

Oh my god. It's a Goofy oh yes yeah god our brains are so broken we just talked about that yeah i cannot remember anything okay so she's trying to like stand out above the crowd max goof style And there's also mention of the woman king, a position that has not been held by anyone in the kingdom of Dahomey for many years. And of course, when we in the theater hear them say the title of the movie, we begin cheering. We stand up, we applaud. As one does when they say you know i think this is everything everywhere all at once and then everyone stands and cheers it's the most famous scene in that movie or you know when meryl streep is like i have doubt i have such doubt wait but she does she does also another viola davis classic performance i think she won her or one of her. She won an Oscar for that.

Did she? I don't know how many Oscars she has. That's a question for another day. But she did have such doubts. She did. Certainly. So there's mention of the woman king. And it's speculated that Neniska may one day be named the woman king. And then soon after, the Oyo general Oba shows up with his

soldiers, expecting a tribute to be paid to him. And then we learn via flashback that many years ago, he took Neniska as prisoner and repeatedly raped her for a period of time. King Gezo reluctantly pays them this tribute so that Dahomey can continue using a port for trading, which the Oyo have taken control of. And part of that payment is 20 Agoge one of whom is naoi we cut to this port where two men from brazil show up uh santo played by hero finds tiffin who sucks he's bad he gets drowned in shallow water at the end which is pretty thrilling yeah. Yeah. It's very cathartic.

It's kind of that rock. And then... Unfortunately, not historically accurate, but fun at the movies. Ooh. We come to this place for magic. We come to this place to see slavers be drowned. We come to this place to see a colonizer get drowned. Yes.

Yeah. With him is Malik, played byordan bulger parentheses hot so they they show up at this port which is used by slavers to traffic people who have been sold into slavery naniska also shows up to the port with some of her warriors oba thinks it's the tribute being paid but surprise naniska is like fuck you here's some decapitated heads that's your tribute we're cheering again it's exciting that was so powerful that was amazing um then there's a fight between naniska and oba and then the agoji escape and because of this war has been declared between the kingdoms of Dahomey and Oyo.

I mean, I know we're going to talk about this in a bit, but the fight scenes are fucking incredible. They're so good. And again, I'm not a war movie person, but these fight scenes are so good. It's so good. I read about how the actors trained and it seemed intense i poof good for them it's like holy shit everyone is ripped shredded and and killing people it's it's thrilling yeah for sure um okay so war has been declared, but before the next battle, Naui runs into Malik while he's bathing in the river.

Parentheses, hot. Again, we learn that he is half Dahomey. His mother was from there. She recently passed away, and it was her dying wish that he visit her homeland, which is part of why he's there. So then Malik and Santo go to the palace to watch the Agoge trainees do their final test where Nawi wins first place. So she's like the best trainee.

She and others officially become Agoge.ji which again it's like they're done that's all done with the king's permission like they are existing at his leisure basically right later when nao's wounds from the um test like obstacle course thing when her wounds are being tended to woman king you must be woman king keep going um naniska notices a scar on naoi's arm and she's like oh yeah i've had that since i was a baby at the orphanage and naniska'siska's like, what? You're an orphan? And she has a very peculiar reaction. Because we learn that Naui is Neniska's daughter, because about 19 years ago, Neniska gave birth because she got pregnant from being raped. And Amensa gave the

baby away to missionaries who were passing through, assuming that they would never cross paths with this baby or person again. But it turns out it's Naui and she's right there, but they're both like, no, she's probably not my daughter, but they're in denial. What are the chances?

And you're like, this is a historical epic of course she's your daughter so then now he sees malik again they're flirting they're into each other but again the agoji are not allowed to canoodle with men romantic love is thought to make them weak and again now he challenges this but she can't really do anything about it and then also malik tells her that he overheard that general guy oba planning his next attack so now he goes to tell this to naniska she also takes his weapon which is like oh parentheses hot yes so hot people being hot together i love it it's what the movies are kind of all about isn't it that's why we come to this place so first of all naniska

is like you shouldn't have been talking to a man and then she tells naoi that she was captured and raped and impregnated and that she gave birth to a girl and that before amenza took the baby away she made a cut on the back of the baby's arm and pressed a shark tooth into the cut hence naoi's scar confirming that naoi is naniska's daughter i had to end there such i i was so i was like you had such doubt no did it i know i was just like how has it not gotten so infected how is it their tooth's just still in there i don't know how that maybe that i'm like i'm not a doubt i'm i'm both not good at war or not good at medicine i'm like could that happen could you have a shark tooth in your arm for i guess people can like have like shrapnel and and like yeah i just i would have thought it would fall

pop right out but babies maybe babies heal really fast and it just kind of healed over i don't know we're so we're so good at we are scholars real women in stem action going on here can baby sustain sharp tooth we don't know um ronka you work in global health this is right right you probably know the answer to every health question i know and that was another really interesting part about the movie every you know the scene where i'm sorry to jump off no the scene where they were cutting themselves and putting blood into the bowl yes as a means of initiating them into the agoges and all i could think about was oh my god that's tetanus that's hepatitis because they're sharing a blade they're like using every time you know they're all bleeding

you don't know where anyone's come from but yeah um yeah i tried very much to separate my science and health brain from the movie because i was freaking out yeah yeah same yeah that's i like to imagine you ronka entering the scene and being like look i know what you think you're doing but this is actually really dangerous it's not sanitary We can do this symbolically shortly. Right. Absolutely. So Naui has just learned that Neniska is her mother, and they are both very overcome with emotion, especially Naui. They're acting.

It is acting. They are acting. And then Naui runs off crying. The next day, Naniska starts to plan and later launches a counterattack against Oba and the Oyo warriors. The Agoji are victorious, but during the attack, some of the warriors, including Naoi and Izogi, are taken prisoner and brought to the port to be sold. They attempt to escape, but Izogi is shot and she dies in Naoi's arms. And cry, cry, cry. Yes, very sad. That scene broke my heart at the end. Yeah, yeah.

Their friendship is just so wonderful. And really i mean it's like i know that that is classic the movies but as i i really didn't think anyone in the main cast was going to die at any point because they were so good at war and the fact that they did it to maria rambo of sick twisted not right yes um okay so meanwhile back at the palace naniska is like okay there these warriors who have been captured we need to go rescue them and king gazo is like no it's not worth it so naniska decides to disobey him and she heads off to the port she was planning to go alone but many of her fellow warriors follow and join her back at the port malik buys nawi to save her and when naniska and the other warriors show up at the port for the rescue mission. Naoi joins them in battle. They free all of the people who have been captured. They fight back against the slavers.

And there is a final showdown between Neniska and Oba in which she kills him. Another very cathartic death. Yes. The movie feeling like a movie. The Agoge return to their kingdom, having defeated the oyo and their reign over dahomey king geizo commends naniska and the agoji for their victory and he says woman king

again he says you were the woman king and he says we are not going to be complicit in the slave trade anymore, which is not historically accurate. Oopsies. Not even close. But in the movie, that's what happens. And then there's a tender moment between mother and daughter, between Neniska and Naui, and the movie ends with the people of Dahomey celebrating their victory. The end.

Yeah. So let's take a quick break and we will come back to discuss. 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. 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 gotta hawk this slalom I'm not hawk this slalom I absolutely love it

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Ronke, is there anywhere you would like to start? What's jumping out for you? I think the relationship between Izuki and Nabi is something that really struck me. And I know I said during the recap, like when she died, that was, I had tears in my eyes. Again, it's a movie, I know,

but it just felt so real. I mean, that jumped out at me because I really loved that he didn't love sort of relationship well i don't i don't believe in it but it's how i grew up and how many nigerian and african women grow up in the sense that your mothers and your aunties and i mean every older woman is a mother and auntie first of all so whether it's your mother's friend or whoever um your mothers and your aunties really love you but they show you by being hard with you you know they show you by being really strict with you but deep in there somewhere they are ready to fight and go to any war for you and with izogir and now we you could tell that izogir really really loved now we

and that now we completely admired izogir and it was just such a beautiful relationship yeah to watch um and with every scene i could feel you know there were loads of unsaid words but you could see from their emotions from their facial expressions from you know what's the first rule of war always obey izogu like i found that so powerful it was like a deep connection between both of them and so i think throughout the movie i always looked forward to scenes that had izogu and Nabi, whether actually congratulating her or being firm with her, which was most of it, or sadly when Isoge died in Nabi's arms. Their friendship was really, really, I think, like, well done.

And yeah, it's like, because it's so devastating when Isoge dies, because I didn't see it coming. And also, like, yeah yeah you've built you've spent so much time and they've like clearly like learned from each other i think like kind of their last moment together now we what is she what is she like she moves a bone oh it's really difficult yeah to watch but it's like they are just like so in it together and like in it collectively. And it's so like one of the things I really liked about this movie is obviously it is a woman centric plot. But you get to see so many different kinds of women and so many different personalities interacting. You get to see it across generations. You get to see relationships between women that are i think more like now we

and izuki's relationship is like pretty warm as time goes on and you get to see like a really warm friendship and then with naniska and amenza you see a different side of naniska with amenza than you do when she is being the general like you just get to see a lot of different facets and types of relationships and they all felt very like grounded and earned and yeah you also you also get to see jealousy which was um quite the mix between the queen whose name i don't remember but king gizzo's wife um yes shantay shantay you stay you know and she just did not want naniska to be there she didn't want her to be the woman king she didn't want her to quote unquote make decisions for king gizzo um she didn't want naniska to have authority when Naniska was suggesting that the Dahomey people stop engaging in slave trade. And she thought Naniska was confusing the king.

But it was just very interesting to see one end of love and support and comfort amongst women. And then the other end of jealousy and some spite. I like when there's a character who i don't remember his name i kept calling him mr purple oh i like also queer icon mr purple mr purple crushed it he says something like oh yeah the king respects naniska because she fought for him in the coup what did you do you hid in a cupboard and i was like i know yeah but i think that like that dynamic between the two of them is so it's really interesting because it's like uh i don't know i've been thinking a lot recently which is dangerous um but about how like through history how women have had access to power and i

guess having to like talk about power as a neutral term just for simplicity but like i think between those two characters you have like probably the two available routes for women in this culture as it's presented in the movie to gaining any sort of power or influence over what happens in their lives and yeah shantae gains it through marriage um which i think i mean and even we've been guilty of this over the years like modern feminists don't always and they're like well she just it's like well there's literally kind of the only option nothing you can do. And it does seem like Shantae wants a seat at the table in terms of decision making and resents that General Nisga'a takes that role, which I think, honestly, based on what we see, General Nisga'a probably should be at the table more so than Shantae.

But then it's also like, well, why can there only be one woman at the table more so than Shantae. But then it's also like, well, why can there only be one woman at the table that has everything to do with the patriarchal structure that they exist inside of? And I liked I felt like that. I don't know. I mean, I think you could argue that Shantae is made out to seem a little silly. But she does, I think, by the end, like, get her I don't know, i guess i'm curious what you what do you both think about that like because at the end kind of the last we see of her is being upset that naniska has gotten the seat at the table that she has not been we've seen king gazo speak pretty negatively of her and also i mean there's like that one that one exchange where he you know i i don't remember

which villain but i think maybe the the portuguese guy they're having a discussion and the villain references well shantae told me that this was the plan it is santo yeah okay so they're having i'm like he gets drowned i don't have to remember his name uh but in any case you know King Geizo has a very negative reaction to hearing that Shantae has asserted herself in any way shape or form and says that she will be punished for having done that and yeah like he said something like she does not speak for me and she will be punished for thinking that she does but doing that right yeah so I think like it's it is obviously like the filmmakers and the writers are well aware that Shantae is also in a very limited situation with what she is able to do. But I don't know, I kind of wish that we got a little more of her because yeah, I think that like, clearly, like the movie has a clear and necessary agenda to uplift naniska but it felt like a few times they took jabs at shantae in order to be like well clearly naniska deserves uh power and it's like yes but why do we have to

kick shantae to make that point true true yeah but then shantae was one of dozens of wives i think he did have many wives probably yeah technically general naniska is a wife too like yeah but not in the same capacity because it's referenced that the uh goji are celibate virgin like they're not like engaging in like sexual activity with the king so they're like relationship with him but in a far different capacity they are both both completely at, like under his control, but yeah, it different in different ways to do it. I didn't realize,

um, um, Angelique Kicho is in this movie when she plays one of the, I know I, I only realized the third time, the third time I watched it. That's when I realized that she was one of the members of the King's cabinet.

Love that. Yo, I know, I know. She's credited as the munin, which I don't know what that means, but I kept seeing it as the minion. And I was like, wow, what a crossover. There's going to be more minions. I'll bring up minions later as well. Right.

Would the minions work for the woman king? You know? minions later as well um right would the minions work for the woman king you know well it's because one of the people who conceived of the story for this movie's name is uh maria bello bello oh my god ronke we're so sorry that we have a minions problem on this show but minions and things tend to come back to the it's just we're just very cultured um all this to say uh is that i love that the there's such a strong emphasis and focus in this movie on female relationships of yes many different types we see a large spectrum of what a relationship between women can look like. We already talked about the friendship between Naui and Izogi, as well as the

friendship between Neniska and Amenza. I was also getting some queer undertones there. I think you could easily read that as a close friendship but I was getting some vibes oh that they are lovers you know fanfiction.net is like popping off with a lot of these uh yeah yeah I'm not saying anything new here but I just want to say I I too felt the vibes I I guess like going back to Shantae and Neniska I like I liked when the women of this story were in conflict with each other because that's like a very clear grounded conflict for the time and place that this movie takes place and even with like naniska and now we they're in conflict for almost the entire movie definitely but it is like it's so so well written and directed and performed that there's like always

a feeling of mutual respect and they're basically like challenging each other and by the end it's like naniska if she hadn't seen naoi being little miss rebel the whole damn movie she wouldn't have done what she did at the end and it's just i like it i like it i was say, you know, the scene where Naniska took the decapitated head to the Oyo Empire. And then she asked them to leave. And then Naoi went back to save her. But instead of a thank you, she got told off. And, you know, it was very interesting because I kept wondering, did Nanka really feel upset with Nawi or was that some again

interesting form of hiding your emotions and you know deep inside you're proud and you're happy and you're grateful but you have to show the powerful general mantra where you know you're upset for this disobedience so yeah that was that was quite interesting in terms of that relationship their dynamic felt like between mother and well yeah who we learn our mother and daughter via shark tooth wound it felt like I mean there were a lot of moments in this movie and I feel like generally positive we'll get back to it but um that felt like a very kind of modern dynamic even though it's clearly rooted in history but the generational divide between the two of them felt pretty like modern and easy to relate to um if you've ever had a parent that felt they had to push down their emotions in order to navigate the world more effectively, or especially, you know, in marginalized communities. And I mean, I'm thinking about honestly, like my own Irish Catholic parents

where it's, there's a lot of, you know, just compartmentalizing and feeling that that is the only way to navigate the world successfully. And it's clear that Nuniska has internalized that and that it has served her well in what she does it's not like the movie makes this out to be you know an inferior way of navigating the world but I love that you have Naui as an alternative to that where Naui wants the freedom to feel things freely she wants to have relationships if she wants to have relationships and it's I mean what it's she's she's trying to have it all but unfortunately which is like difficult right well one thing I was going to say is that um it felt like before they knew they were mother and daughter they had a very mother-daughter

relationship dynamic already oh yeah where like to your point Ronke when Neniska is upset with Naoi that she like stayed behind to help when they were launching that like surprise attack I feel like you could read that as Neniska was upset like oh you staying behind could have gotten you killed and i wouldn't want that because i love you like you're my own daughter and it turns out she is our daughter um yeah i think that that relationship was just like built out very cleverly and i to speak to this sort of like compartmentalizing of emotions and that whole idea that the agoji hold that you can't have relationship like romantic relationships you can't have a family and bear children to show love and to show emotion is a sign of weakness. And that's something that Naui challenges.

One, she like challenges the double standard of, well, the male soldiers, the men warriors are allowed to, you know, have wives and have families. Why not us? And then you have, I think at one point, Zogi is like, you know, know i'm gonna be general someday i can't have love you know i can't have both things because um now he's like if you never loved before and she's like no women can't have it all um oh no the classic conflict and i think like in a more historically accurate ending even though it's framed there's a lot of joy in the way this movie ends and there is a celebration and um

naniska is given the woman king like role that we have been rooting for her to have the entire movie but but in the end it's like now we can't have it all which is unfortunately how it ends for a lot of a lot of women um where she does the oh i'm i want to like i wonder if there's a term for what this is but when because we haven't talked about the relationship with her and malik yet but that like meaningful glance of like this has run its course it's almost it almost reminded me of like at the end of the dark knight rises where fat man sees what's his name oh no the butler and they're like yeah okay well see ya like it's the the just like well we this relationship needs to be done because the movie's over so we're just gonna have them have a little a little look yeah a look goes a long way sometimes but she doesn't

get the relationship that she i mean it and it didn't need to be that relationship, but like, she isn't able to have it all. But I like that she is, which is, you know, historically accurate. Right. Though I will say, so again, like, Naui challenges this idea that like, to express emotion and to feel love equals a sign of weakness. And she's like, that's not true. Like I can still be a good warrior and love somebody. And it feels as though Naniska comes around on this

and it's not on like romantic love, but familial love where like, I think she was like holding herself back from like loving her daughter that she found out that she had but then with that tender moment between them in the end where you know she's apologizing and they're both like just kind of reconciling and recognizing their relationship and what that means for them and they're like letting love in it's so that ending scene with them is really beautiful. I really loved it.

Where they're, yeah, they're like, yeah, they're apologizing to each other, but it's not, I don't know. It's like such a, you're like, oh, two women apologizing to each other. But it feels, but they're like, it kind of boils down to like, I'm sorry that the world is the way it is. And I'm sorry that society is stacked so much against you and against me but that doesn't mean that we can't love each other and that is beautiful it's beautiful um let's take another quick break and then we will come right back. is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. And we're back. And I want to quote and paraphrase a piece in Refinery29 entitled The Woman King Severs the Strong Black Woman Trope for Good by Kathleenathleen newman braming which kind of speaks to this as far as like the withholding emotion or suppressing emotion but then particularly naniska kind of having a character arc where she lets emotion happen um which is something i need to learn how to do sometimes as well. So hashtag relatable. But in this piece, Kathleen talks about a trope in media and an expectation in real life that

Black women have to be so strong and resilient. Quote, quote, unquote, strong black woman TM. She's the epitome of resilience and perseverance. She's an overachiever with an infallible moral compass. Her strength comes from having to overcome unimaginable adversity that would break anyone else, but not her. It is her most defining characteristic, unquote. And then the writer goes on to say that a lot of people have rejected this trope and this expectation, which has led for this like push for softness. And so I'll share another quote. When strength has been the default, the requirement and expectation to be soft is a quiet defiance of a burden we never asked for. For some black women to say, that's enough resiliency for me,

can be a revelation, an exhale of freedom from the presumption that our worth is measured in how well we endure oppression, that our only value is our high tolerance for suffering. On its surface, The Woman King seems like another addition to the strong black woman TM canon. The film tells the story of some of the fiercest warriors in history, the Agoge. Of course, they're strong. In the opening battle scene of the film, Lashana Lynch's Izogi takes down her opponent by gouging his eyes out with her nails. With a piercing rallying cry, these warriors race into war with sharpened machetes and no fear. We have never seen black women be this strong on film.

The closest we've come is the Dora Milaje in Black Panther, a fictional army that was based on the Egoji. And yet, as physically adept and mentally tough as the Egoji are, they are also full human beings who experience other emotions than fortitude. I said that so weird. Fortitude. Ooh, Professor Durante. Fortitude. There we go their strength is a fact a basic requirement of their job not a replacement for a personality the piece goes on it's really excellent I recommend reading it um I just want to share one last quote from Sheila Ateem who plays Amendaza, she says, quote,

Strength has been weaponized against Black women. As much as it is a positive trait to have at times, it's also something that has been placed upon us to prevent us from having the agency to feel anything else and to be anything else. What I love about this film is that it says you can be all of those things within the spectrum of strength. You can also be vulnerable, you can find strength in others. I think that's really important for us to see because the strong black woman trope is still prevalent out there. And I want people to be able to understand that they can feel the full spectrum of what it means to be a human being unquote which i think all of that just nicely sums up that conversation we were having about the female relationships and the kind of nuances

of them and whether or not showing emotion equals weakness all that it's like an active question and yeah and like when um the the fact that that is like kind of an important question as the um without shaming the niska and knowing that she comes by this mentality honestly but you know it's a good historical epic precedent because i i feel like that is again like this is an outlier in so many ways but even just with that mentality of like being emotionally open is not a weakness and is in fact a strength is something that still feels like kind of rare uh in in movies in general. And, you know, given that the movie was a mix of or an amalgamation of fiction and the writer's ideas, it was one of the things that caught me as well. I don't think

there would have been any harm in the overall plot if we had one soldier, one of the Akwesas, who was soft and, you know, showed emotions without necessarily being seen as weak yeah you know and i really enjoyed reading that article on the strong woman trope for the black woman and yada yada um but yeah i just felt like it was one of the things i would have really loved to see it's not it's indeed not reality that you find many, you know, most successful Black women are seen as strong and powerful. But when you read their histories or their biographies, you know, Viola Davis, as Viola Davis, not General Naniska or Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey. Now they tend to come out in their books at least as vulnerable and soft.

And they talk about how they've had to show up as strong women. But that's not the lives they want to live in many cases. So yeah, I feel like that's one of the things that the writer could have weaved in somewhere into the movie. There was the girl that was from the Mahi, I think, community. And she hardly spoke. And she was calm but she was really strong i mean she she came second after now we in the agotie um competition the competition or whatever yeah and you know she was a bit close to it but we hardly heard her speak and then at the end she got killed um yes right that's a good point i didn't I honestly didn't even register that yeah because I think that like Naui is sort of our main analog into that mentality but she's like punished for it a

lot before it's and oh man I also I wonder if like justice for that character yeah I well then there's another character named Fumbe who is good friends with naoie is she the character who says something like i don't really want to stay and be a warrior but i have nowhere else to go yes and so she i feel like maybe they could have explored more like softness with that character too especially because she's not gung-ho about being a warrior and but i also that's another friendship i really liked and i yeah i think maybe if that had been explored further did from bay not die did from bay die oh i do i i was losing track of who was getting killed i don't think she died did she wait no i don't know if we see her in that final battle wait that's that's

not fair there i mean there's a few things toward the end of the movie where you're like huh huh there's a lot of loops closing kind of rapidly so i feel like i lost track of a couple characters i honestly forgot by the end i was like oh yeah malik right can we talk about that really quick what did we think about the the romance this movie? I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. I didn't love it, I would say. But here's why I didn't hate it. She challenges him in a lot of ways.

She's like, you, you're a slaver. And he's like, no, I'm not. I'm just here because my mom wanted me to be here. I'm just hanging out with slave traders and you're like we're gonna need a better i think we need a better answer yes um maybe i just like him because he's hot but uh that's entirely possible but he um seems to respect her i also i what i think i like about it is that i appreciate that the movie didn't feel the need to keep them together forever yeah they had this short romance i'm pretty sure they have sex in

that like hotel room or something wherever they are implied yeah but and then they go their separate ways and he's like come with me to england and she's like um pass so i appreciate because i feel like most movies would be like well they like each other and they had sex one time so now they have to be together forever right right and and i feel like there's also i don't know like because it seems like there are a number of goji soldiers that are like again like women often are like valued and prized for their chastity and that is like elevates their value as a person they're so chaste and they're virginal and all this and and like just I do like representation of losing your virginity and then being like and now it's you

know the next day and I'm moving on with my life. It's like, not like this huge thing that is built out to be right. I guess. I don't know. Yeah, I, I liked what the relationship represented, which was like, to me, like now we saying like, well, no, fuck what the king says about how I can like, I'm fighting for him every day and I can't have a boyfriend like get a life or I like that uh as like symbolic uh like an act of defiance as like symbolic rebellion yeah yeah because usually I don't think you usually see a heterosexual relationship as an act of defiance um but it is in this and it like does symbolize and I agree with you Caitlin I like that it ends and it now he's not gonna throw away this community and this

newfound family and literal like literal and symbolic family to move to England with a guy she had sex with one time like honestly that's that's good that that I was like she was right about that because sometimes I'm like yeah I'd move to England with someone I had sex with one time um but but what I what I didn't love about I don't know I just I the actual relationship I was not super wild I think it's just like she's too good for him yeah for sure like but he's also he's like the least worst man in the movie because all the other men are horrible and i do appreciate that the movie is not shy about saying like look how awful men can be i feel like they still let john ve Vega off the hook a little bit but yeah I just

didn't love I didn't love Malik because obviously now that the Barbie trailer is kind of has come out all I want to say is she's everything he's just Ken and that's kind of how I feel about that relationship like now he is everything Malik is just Ken yeah like he's I I wouldn't even say I mean I understand like they the script and the story contextualizes his predicament um and i don't want to oversimplify it but ultimately he is still you know hanging out with slave traders yeah and like now we she's everything he's just ken is true is how i feel about the relationship i don't know what did you what did you make of that wrong k i felt the same way too i was really hoping that at the

end of the movie she wouldn't choose to get on the boats with him that said um i also admired how much he seemed to love her yeah fighting for her especially at that scene with izogye where they were being sold or you know the highest bidder was looking at um how much they would cost and then he came and disrupted the whole thing and yada yada and he disrupted their plans to escape or whatever anyway um but you know he was really he was ready to put himself on the line and then obviously a white man killed that means real trouble trouble for the dahomes and the oyo empire people um but he still kept nao in his room that seemed a bit unrealistic to me i mean how could he have kept her in the same compound where the very angry people were and they couldn't

overtake him kind of half-baked plan and he's not a fighter exactly um so yeah it was interesting to see that um but in terms of their love um yeah i really liked that now he sort of stood her ground she dictated how she wanted the relationship to be you know there were times where she was soft with him not a lot but there were also times where she stood up to him and quite boldly too and again i would say i was really scared at the end jamie like you that she would just up and go with him especially when he offered her a dress i thought that was the start to oh now that she wears the dress of the europeans yeah she would become one of them um but thankfully she didn't um so yeah that that was quite intriguing to watch yeah and and not unusual to be honest i

mean again linking it to today's world there's a lot of europeans or americans or whatever who go to america to african countries to um whether it's for wars or for business or for tourism pleasure whatever it is and then they fall in love you know it's it's a usual story you fall in love with a black woman and there's you know controversies around whether you can date a black woman or not or an african woman so it wasn't it wasn't intriguing in the sense that yeah this is the normal world and this is what we see every time but i loved the twist where now we did not let herself get swept off her feet because of him. You know, she didn't show that she was intrigued by being admired by a white man or a slave trader or a mixed race man.

Whatever you want to put it as. Yeah, I hope that like if this I don't know, this doesn't really seem like this. Most historical epics don't have sequels. But I'm like, I hope, you know, like if headcanon you go like a couple of years down the line in this story that now we would feel more comfortable to explore a relationship with maybe someone who wasn't a slave trader, you know, just an idea but yeah and that hopefully because because naniska has gone through this transformation and is is more open to emotional vulnerability and the sort of i guess like quiet emotional rebellion that she is able to do that she would be accepting of that because it was like yeah now like I don't know I think it's so I've been thinking about this a lot lately but like I think it is such a trapping of like modern feminism to say like I don't need a man or even a partner because I can provide for myself which is true and like is now not as accessible as it should be still.

But I think that sometimes it is like a little like demonized to still want partnership, even though you can provide for yourself in a way that has not been historically possible before. And I like that now we again, it's like I think I mean it's funny because I feel like we we keep um applying the woman king's like 18 20 premise to right now but I think that the movie wants you to do that um in a lot of ways and I don't know wait I have I have two roads we can go down if either of you are interested okay uh I love man I love talking about movies um okay we can go down if either of you are interested okay uh i love man i love talking about movies um okay we can go down the history route or the production route the two two roads of discourse lay in front of us i mean we we will get to both eventually yes let's do history first

okay so did i did either i mean i i think part of why this movie is very i mean there's a lot Let's do history first. Okay. So did I, did I, I mean, I, I think part of why this movie is very, I mean, there's a lot of reasons why this movie is, it's important that this movie was made, but one of them is just, this is an area of history that in my,

you know, Massachusetts public school, I did not learn about African history really at all. It's so same. I just didn didn't know and it was not prioritized in I think American education across I mean American education how they teach history it seems like it's still somehow getting worse which is a fucking nightmare but this was an area of history that I didn't know anything about. And so I was excited, especially where the movie starts with context that like we're saying, like, I definitely needed to place you in this world. I was interested

to read, I don't know. Yeah. Did either of you know about any of the history of the Agoge before seeing this movie? I did not know. Not of the Agoge j for me i did of the oyo empire because the oyo empire is now in modern day nigeria it's now a state um in modern day nigeria so i knew of the oyo empire but not of the ago j which is a shame to my history teachers as well i would have loved because i would have really loved to learn about not to distract from the story but i would have really loved to learn about, not to distract from the story, but I would have really loved to learn more about historical feminism in Africa. Yeah. While I was still in high school and not, you know, when my life has gone through turmoil and I'm like, oh, wow, there were actually women in the 1800s who were fighters. But that's another story.

But short answer, no, I never heard of the other years before the movie it's so true though i feel like they're it reminds me of our our friend margaret killjoy has this amazing podcast called cool people who did cool stuff and the whole like mission of it is to yeah like bring figures that have been buried by historical quote-unquote disinterest and like bring them to the forefront and be like no women have always been fucking cool and like they were cool people which doing cool stuff so anyways i was as i was watching the movie i was like wow there are so many parallels to discussions we're having in the west today and And it turns out that that is sort of by design because this movie, for as much as I enjoyed it

and as much as it seems like everyone who saw it enjoyed it, there has been a fair amount of criticism about its historical accuracy and almost like prioritizing, making sure it speaks to a Western audience, not just a Western audience, but a Western audience's understanding of slave trading versus historical accuracy of what was actually going on at this time. And I don't like, I don't know, it's, I'm going to quote from a new yorker piece by julian lucas who sort of unpacks this um and i think there are there most reviews of this movie mention like yeah it's not super historically accurate but like

it's fucking amazing it's the woman king so relax um which i think is a fair stance to take and i also think that you know it name a historical epic movie that is like known for its historical accuracy. It's not really what the genre is known for. And I feel like it almost has like, like any sub genre, but like almost like a horror movie thing where it's like, yeah, this historical epic is being made in this specific time for a reason. So it's probably trying to speak to people about something specific. But, okay, this is from the New Yorker piece. Quote, the Woman King has been billed as a powerful true story, but one wonders what Kosola and Hurston, one of America's first black woman filmmakers, he's referencing Zora Neale Hurston and Alule Kosola,

two writers and filmmakers. But one wonders what Kosola and Hurston, one of America's first Black woman filmmakers, would make of its narrative. For one thing, King Gezo was not a reluctant participant in the slave trade. He fought hard to preserve it from the British, formerly his favorite customers,

who blockaded the coast and unsuccessfully lobbied for abolition at his court. His defeat of Oyo led to an explosion in the number of slaves sold at Oida, a commerce that he zealously defended, once giving a British envoy a six-year-old girl as a gift for Queen Victoria. Nor do I know of any evidence that the Agoge ever resisted the trade. Some used their voices to clamor for war in the royal council, expressing on one occasion a preference for invading weaker neighbors. Quote, if we fail to catch elephants, let us be content with flies, unquote. The film's conceit is charitably an elaborate exercise in wishful thinking. Wouldn't it be nice if Dahomey's brave women warriors had also been

fighters for justice? Defenders of white supremacy have often exploited these uncomfortable truths. Apologists for the slave trade once used Dahomey's bloodthirsty reputation to claim that they were rescuing their victims from human sacrifice. Imperialists use similar rhetoric to justify colonial conquest as a form of abolition. In though african forms of slavery didn't compare with the radicalized industrial variants that western empires unleashed upon the world unquote so all i just i mean this is again like we none of us knew this history specifically and i kind of assumed that this movie would skew more historically accurate which is like maybe not fair of me to like and then he goes on to suggest like well if you wanted to emphasize the uh power of the agoji they could have chosen this period versus the period that

they chose because it seems like in this moment specifically certainly King Gezo I don't know like reading because I watched the movie and then learned the history and then watched the movie again and the ending scene with King Gezo does not go down as well once you know that the historical figure was actively participating in the slave trade enthusiastically the entire time for personal profit and was very complicit in the subjugation of his own people. And then you have John Boyega being like, abolition now. Right. So yes, there were liberties taken with history as we've said a lot of historical epic cinema does i mean that's a really big liberty huge liberty i guess i wonder what would the value have been to depict history exactly as it happened in this instance and that way you have this movie about these

warriors who are like not necessarily fighting for justice they're just fighting to like uphold the status quo of the slave trade and then you have this king who's like yeah let's keep being slavers and then that's it yes that would have been historically accurate but uh do we need a movie about that, I guess, in 2022? I totally agree. I mean, I totally agree. I just, I don't, I mean, I don't have a good answer for that. I think that this writer tries to suggest different periods of time in the Agoge's history that would not be chafing with the reality of the period quite so much. I don't know. I'd be interested to know what our listeners think about this. Cause I,

I don't really like, I don't know. I mean, that's making King. I mean, and again, it's like, you don't need to write it so that King Geza is an abolitionist by the end

of the movie. Like that didn't need to happen. It's a very Hollywood ending. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think that like, honestly, I didn't mind the creative liberty taken that Naniska was opposed to the slave trade. I think that that like is a creative liberty that makes a ton of sense.

And it like keeps us with the Agoge. It's not, you know, and I know that this piece says that in general, the Agoge were often complicit in this. But I think that the way that it's written of saying, because at the beginning, Neniska is complicit in it, but she is trying to actively make it stop. So that made sense to me. I think it was just the King Gezo creative liberties. That was, I think think a line for me yeah um the creative liberties within the agoji i wasn't as bothered by because i i agree it's like you know you want to get on board with the story but i don't know and especially because the what is the name of the army that um is in black panther we said it earlier i already forgot

brain dora dora milagi yeah yeah they they were so they were inspired by the agoji and so like as we can see in the black panther franchise because it's inspired by and not explicitly the agoji you can take exclusively creative liberties right um but i i think i mean it's it is kind of just like a something that we see in movies a lot that say they're based on a true story there's never any clear disclosure of like this is the creative liberties that we took which i don't know i mean i i don't want to imply that. I mean, I don't know. Historical filmmaking in general is mostly fake. And I guess that, I don't know. I was interested to learn the history,

especially because the king subjugated his own people really, really aggressively. Don't give him an abolitionist speech at the end. Yeah, I do have an interesting perspective. But firstly, Jamie, big ups to you for watching reading the history and then going back to watch again because i think it gives you a whole new perspective it's still good when you do that um so you know i tried to do the same thing um and read up about the history of the movie because when i wrote about it people said i was also supporting a rewrite of history um so i went to check myself and you know maybe to frame this

with there's an african proverb that says until the lion can tell his story the hunter will always win or the hunter story will always be it but basically saying you know because the lion dies there's nobody to tell the lion story and in this case it is one of the things i found was that the actual history of the ago chase or most of the actual history of the ago chase that you can find has been written by europeans right and not necessarily by people from benin republic, which is the new, you know, where modern day the Dahomeys are. And so it's hard to say how much of that has been influenced by the Europeans

who were mostly the actual slave traders, or at least who received most of the slaves. And that just really made me feel like, oh my God, this is deeper than just a criticism of the movie and how much history is in it it's also a criticism of where is the history of the ago jays in the world yeah who has written them what biases did they hold um what stories did they adjust for their own selves i'm not a historian so i haven't like really deep dived into all of this

but yeah it just gave me a whole new perspective and it's a it's not just about the agogist there's so much about african history that i think isn't written by africans yeah and so i personally struggle you know when you read about whether it's the slave trade or colonialism or how christianity and other religion was brought into african countries it's very hard to find those tales written by africans who experienced or whose families experienced and so it's written by europeans and it's very hard to know if you should take it hook line and sinker totally or if you recognize the bias there i read on scholarly journal wikipedia that um the director gina prince bythewood as she was researching for this movie she had a really hard time finding accounts of the agoji that were not written by europeans and like people who were like speaking about these warriors in a

very like disparaging and disrespectful way so she had to like really dive to find accurate and unbiased accounts well they even where they even where they found the names Neniska and Naui those yeah those are from accounts of colonizers which yeah that's that's a really good point ranke where yeah like history and this is like i guess part of the reason we didn't know this story at all um to any degree and so we're like yeah the woman king is probably a documentary which shouldn't be the responsibility of a historical epic you know it's like that it's such a complicated thing um yeah that's that's a really good point but then like that's a good proverb too i want to write that yeah but then like the flip side of that is that yes there are historical liberties and

inaccuracies taken with this movie but just from like a very, I guess, maybe surface level point of view, again, like nothing I learned in school about the slave trade focused at all on what was happening in Africa. And none of the movies I've watched about slavery have been told from the perspective of like they were always told the movie of the movies I've seen about it it was always told from the perspective of the people who had already been sold into slavery and were working on plantations and you know those are important stories to tell of course but there's so many of them and it kind of erases part of the narrative of like the people who were slowed into slavery and it erases like their lives and their culture in their homeland pre being stolen and human trafficked. So I had never seen anything in media

or like, again, anything I ever learned in school that was focused on the perspective that you'd see in the woman king right so at the very least like this movie is valuable in showing and again there's inaccuracies along the way but it's also pulling from a lot of history and to show that perspective was super valuable for me having never seen anything like that in like American media or American education I agree yeah I mean I think again it's my this is like I think just a preference that this is true of all historical movies for me is that because Naniska is not a real person who exists you have a ton of creative liberty you have a ton of freedom every soldier that we see in the agoji we're not

real people and and if you're attributing stuff to a real person and a real leader i feel like there is a line of where creative liberty is appropriate, but that's also just my opinion. I have one more chunk from this New Yorker piece I'd like to share. I also didn't know that Lupita Nyong'o was supposed to be in this movie, and then she dropped out. Yeah. So this piece is very much speculating as to why, but I just wanted to share this really quick. So from the same New Yorker piece, quote, but you don't have to take my word for it. In 2018, when TriStar announced The Woman King, Lupita Nyong'o had been cast as Naui.

Fresh off the success of Black Panther, the Kenyan-Mexican star was apparently so excited about her new role that she visited Benin to make a short documentary on the Agoge. Possibly intended to build hype for the woman king, it also unravels the film's heroic premise, as Nyong'o's Beninese guide disillusions her about the Dahomian legacy. Nyong'o begins her journey enthusing about how dope it is to be in the land of the Amazons. But after a sobering encounter with Gezo's skull-mounted throne, she accepts that, quote, any notion of the Agoge being a beacon of enlightened feminism, like the Dora Milaje in Wakanda, is long gone, unquote. The emotional climax is an interview with the elderly granddaughter of a woman enslaved

by the Amazons, who laments that she will never know her family in present-day Nigeria. Quote, what the Agoge did was not good at all, the old woman insists. Not good at all. As the woman sings a Yoruba melody, Nyong'o begins to cry, wondering aloud how she can reconcile celebrating the agoji with the bereavement of their victim's descendants. And then we don't know why she ended up leaving the movie, but I also didn't know that short doc existed.

So it's very, very complicated. Yeah. And it's almost as if all history is fraught with horror. Yes. Violence and prejudice. Again, this is like, I'm not not i'm not arguing against the movie's existence i really really enjoyed the movie but i that i don't know that's i think why i struggle with historical epics in general where you're like hmm what um anyways yeah but i i also want to make

sure that we are talking about the other big conversation that surrounded this movie that is very much rooted in the here and now, which is how difficult it was to get this movie made. And the very Mr. Hollywood reasons why it was really difficult to get made. So just kind of preliminary information as far as who's behind the camera for this movie. It was directed by a black woman, Gina Prince-Bythewood, who we've covered on the show before because she directed Love and Basketball, as well as The Old Guard, Secret Life of Bees, Beyond the Lights. She's also directed quite a bit of television like Girl girlfriends everyone hates chris and the bernie mack show the movie was written by dana stevens uh with like story by credits from dana stevens and maria bello bello okay bello and we're back and we're back to yes um dana stevens uh she's a screenwriter who's written a number of things like city of angels for love of the game stave haven which i think is a movie adapted from a nicholas sparks book oh really wow range i'm pretty sure and then maria bello has mostly worked as an actor and i recognize her from coyote ugly she plays like the bar owner in coyote ugly oh wow wow a lot of range taking

place here yes um dana stevens and maria bello are both white women yes the whole kind of conceit of this movie happened when maria bella bello i'm sure it's bello um anymore in 2015 she went to benin in west africa specifically to learn about the history of the agoji it seems like she went on a or i don't know if she like went and then learned about it or went with the intent of learning about them um either way she was like there's definitely like a story here there's a there's a movie we can make about this so she returned to LA she recruited a producer later pitched the idea to Viola Davis they found a screenwriter which I thought was interesting. Yeah, which like really puts Viola on the spot. I was like, what a swing. You're like, oh, by the way. You're like, geez, Maria. And then, Jamie, I think you might have more information.

I just have like a very brief overview. I don't know if you have more. So, yeah, I mean, this, I think we've heard this story many times. Unfortunately, at this point where this movie was um i mean like a lot of movies it was in kind of development hell for a long time starting in 2015 but a lot of it was because of hollywood and producers especially the further back you go uh doubt that a majority black cast could be successful on a blockbuster scale, which is unfortunately something that we hear a lot. And so, you know, having Viola Davis involved was

really, really critical because she has such star power. There was also a fair amount of colorism that Gina Prince-Bythewood described in the casting of this movie where before Viola Davis signed on a lot of more light-skinned women were floated as playing Neniska as opposed to what would be historically accurate and fortunately a battle that was won but I have a quote from Viola Davis sort of speaking to this point. She says, the part of the movie that we love is also the part of the movie that is terrifying to Hollywood, which is it's different. It's new. We don't always want different or new unless you have a big star attached, a big male star.

Hollywood studios like it when women are pretty and blonde or close to pretty and blonde. All of these women are dark and they're beating men. So there you go. And that was just her talking about why it took so long. And we've heard this a few times now because I can't believe Black Panther came out almost five years ago now. now um yeah but it wasn't until black panther was massively successful with a woman army that was based on the agoji that this movie got a meaningful push ahead and so again like this is everything is incremental and and then at that point i believe gina prince bythewood signed on she said to i think that she did do some work on the script,

but she's not a credited writer. But I just, I thought it was like, I mean, Gina Prince-Bythewood, like she walks the walk hard. She's so fucking cool. Like she advocates for having diversity and giving people opportunities that most filmmakers and most systems do not prioritize. I wanted to share a quote from her about really prioritizing having a lot of diversity and women and people

of color behind the scenes as well, because as we talk about all the time, that does not always happen. But she says, the thing is for women and people of color, often the resumes are not long because it's about lack of opportunity, not lack of talent. So when you're in my position, it's important to look past that resume. And yeah, I mean, she's the coolest. And she also wrote that kick ass, kick ass. Okay take that I that that word feels that word feels very 2013 coded to me for some reason I take that back she wrote a really good op-ed when the woman king was snubbed it was published in the Hollywood Reporter and she's, I mean, she's been historically very outspoken, speaking on behalf of marginalized filmmakers, both on behalf of women and on behalf of Black

women specifically. And I think that that op-ed prompted a lot of discussion that was like very needed. So I wanted to just share a quote from that. I believe this is at the end. Quote, it's a difficult thing to know for every black filmmaker and definitely every black female filmmaker that your work is not valued in the same way. This is a systemic American problem, which is why this felt so insidious and large. It's tough to enter something

that's supposed to be judged on merit, but you know it's not a meritocracy, unquote. And I mean, we'll link it a it's a really good piece and um yeah so i mean this unfortunately like we hear a lot this movie um was not easy to get made but it did end up getting made on a pretty large scale it has a 50 million dollar budget and it made around 100 million dollars it was successful and so once again mr hollywood is fucking wrong what do you know something i was curious about and kind of surprised by when i learned who wrote the screenplay and developed the story. Again, these two white women, white American women.

I was curious about, because we've often talked about movies that we've covered that make an attempt at a feminist theme or are trying to say something about race or racism but the movie doesn't quite stick the landing or go far enough usually because it was written by someone whose perspective is not it'll be you know written by a white person or a man or both so right so's often a... A for effort. A for effort, but the perspective wasn't quite there and not enough consulting was done.

So I'm curious, Ranke, if you have any thoughts on, aside from the very obvious thing of the people of Dahomey speaking English, aside from that obvious thing, were there other things that made it particularly obvious that this movie, which is about Black women in Africa, that it was written by white women from America? Or does it feel like they did enough research

and that they handled the subject matter with enough care that it wasn't super obvious? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. So when I first watched the movie, and I've seen it three times, the first time I thought, oh, gosh, beautiful, powerful women, black women. And then the second time after reading, you know, some of the history and things i went back and watched it and it was like you know if a black person i think if a black screenwriter was behind the movie they would have really brought out malik and the other guy who died by the shallow water as some of the real villains in the movie i think the way it is the Portuguese people whether Malik and the other guy or the ones who were doing the beads

were very they weren't really the bad people they were bad but it was more about the Oyo Empire and the Dahomeys promoting slave trade and doing everything the Portuguese were seen as the ones who brought the nice gifts and who gave access to the sea and whatever

had the shiny boats it wasn't about the fact that they were the ones in true history who were behind slave trade. And this is a whole, it's a bone of contention. There are people who argue that the Africans who sold their people were responsible for slave trade. And there are others who argue that the buyers, and mostly the Europeans or sometimes the Americans, were responsible for slave trade and there are others who argue that the buyers and mostly the europeans

or sometimes the americans were responsible for such so anyway my point really is that i think we would have seen that inherent bias if the tables were turned and if it was written by black script writers you'd see more of how terrible the portuguese. Otherwise, I really, really loved how much of the culture was brought out. The music, the dance, sharing blades, like using one blade on several people. The clothing, the facial expressions. You know, I felt very, as an African woman, as an Nigerian woman, I felt very close to home by seeing all of that. But again, you know, there's one thing in seeing the movie

from face value and just watching it because it's a nice movie. And there's another thing in trying to interrogate the history and the race of the people behind it or their gender. So for me, face value, excellent excellent movie i didn't think anything was wrong i love the culture i love the display on reflection it was a bit of okay yeah maybe this is not really telling the true story of the role of the slave traders here right yeah because they

really lean into general oba as being like yes the exactly really worst man alive exactly he's the worst bad guy is is it you said earlier on yeah exactly the worst back which is like a trope we that pops up in different ways but it did feel like yeah he was implied to be worse than the Portuguese which does not make sense to me like I think you can be obviously complicit yeah in the way that I'm coming down hard on the king but like you can be complicit but that doesn't yeah that felt a little false equivalence that's a good point yeah yep other than that um again I just really want to say how much i love the culture like just watching them dance it wasn't just about moving their bodies it was the power and the energy you know and how much their feet were hitting the ground it was the right color of sand of dust

and i know this is really really crazy but i remember one time um i traveled to nigeria i came back to the uk to london and i went to wash my hair and there was a lot of dust from like for my trip in my hair and i remember the hairdresser calling her colleagues to come see what nigerian sand looks like because it was really red and stuff and that was really funny to me i was like nigerian sand but on reflection you actually don find, at least in my parts of London, I've never really seen red sand. But the movie had that. I think it went down to the detail of what those communities looked like.

The indigo dye boiling in a well somewhere. The walls. Maybe not the clothings of the queens. But then, I mean, that was the 1800s. I don i don't think i don't know maybe queens dressed like that then i think that was a bit extravagant for west africa i don't i don't think we got the out they got the outfits right for the west african queens but otherwise it was such a beautifully done movie in terms of the culture that was displayed oh that's good to hear yeah i also was reading like um just gina prince bythewood um i thought it was i was so curious of like what movie she was thinking about it's just like i like to know that in general but she said

some of her inspiration she said when she was staging well it feels bad to phrase it that way but when naniska is having flashbacks to being assaulted that she went to christine blasey ford's testimony a lot in building out what that was supposed to look and feel like and also um had the actor who was playing a young naniska read roxane gay's hunger which is a book about her assault so i thought that was really interesting and then she also said what was like she referenced a couple of she i think she referenced like gladiator as like when she was looking at staging the fights and brave heart was another one brave heart i've never seen brave heart And Last of the Mohicans, which I haven't seen and I don't think I want to. But anyways, Gladiator. One of the last things I want to say, because we touched on like women as warriors, because

we've talked a million times about the tropes surrounding women fighting on screen and like their fight choreography we're talking a lot about it recently on the john wick episode um i don't think we need to rehash most of it but the one thing that i do want to point out that we haven't really touched on quite as much is the sort of like level of graphicness when it comes to the violence because i feel like usually when you see women fighting on screen even if they kill someone the violence is not very graphic um like there's sort of this idea that like oh when women kill people it has to be you know it's either implied or like it can't be bloody yeah it has to be feminine it has to be right um or the other thing you'll see is that i feel like women are way more likely to be seen showing mercy than a man where like a woman will maybe be about to kill someone but then she won't

because like that person appeals to her emotions and she feels bad and so she shows mercy but the agoji are like brutally killing people and the movie's not shy about the violence and the blood and they are you know people's like personal mileage will vary about like how much how graphic they want you know battle scenes to be but in real life a battle like this would be very brutal and bloody and i appreciated that the movie was not afraid to show the women warriors being brutal the way that male warriors in movies get to be brutal all the time yeah it was not toned down no to be more not at all that scene where is okay used her fingers oh yeah stab someone's eyes that was gory that was i remember the first time i saw the trailer everyone was like oh my god like yeah that felt i wonder i wonder if that was a historic i

didn't look up the historical accuracy of fighting or how much there's even available about their methods of fighting but in like the Hollywood movie sense it kind of felt like the ponytail moment in Birds of Prey where like it's this traditionally feminine thing having long nails used to fucking destroy someone yeah it's pretty cool I like I'm like I'm a sucker but I like those moments I thought that was awesome does anyone else have anything they want to talk about yeah I think I've covered most of the things

I had I can't believe two hours has gone I was like I don't have an hour I was like you'll be surprised well does this movie pass the Bechdel test You're like, I don't have an hour. I was like, ooh, you'll be surprised. Well, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Yes. Yeah, a lot.

Almost exclusively. Well, more often than not. More often than it doesn't, yeah. Yeah. Between a lot of different combinations of characters. Yeah. As far as our nipple scale, perfect the one true metric um where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens i will give this four maybe like 4.25 nipples.

Just a couple of things we talked about as far as like, and Ronke, your point about if this movie had been written by a black woman, that they probably would have framed the like European slavers as the primary villains and not another african person because mr evil is the like oyo general and he's like the main villain of the movie but there's a lot to love about this movie um the dismantling of that strong black woman trope of you know always having to be like unrealistically strong and resilient when that expectation is so unfair for black women the movie deals with serious and painful subject

matter i mean it's covering things like slavery and human trafficking and war and rape but the movie also takes time to show black joy largely through the relationships between women it strikes a really nice balance of the heavier and more painful topics but also showing a lot of black joy and black love yeah like they're just showing the full spectrum of humanity like human experience tragedy right so um i appreciated that um you know there are some historical inaccuracies and i remember the conversation like when the movie was released in theaters there was kind of like a push to ban the movie and like not go see it. Which is ridiculous. People's reasoning was like, well,

the nation featured in the movie was where they were active participants in the slave trade. And while that is true, the movie takes some historical liberties to show different characters fighting against that. And yes, that wasn't historically accurate. I don't know. It's complicated wasn't historically accurate i don't know it's complicated and i i don't know i mean i don't think it where to land on it i don't think that

tanking the movie's success is going to unfortunately because it always feels like especially movies made by marginalized creators that like it's mr fucking mr hollywood a person who exists um but like that system is always looking for an example to point to to be like see people don't want to see women leading a movie people don't want to see an all black or a majority black cast in a movie and yeah i understand why people would be upset about the historical inaccuracies. I think that's very valid. But I don't think that the appropriate response is to be like, let's tank this movie. Like, yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, it's tricky. But yeah, there's a lot to love about this movie. The focus on the female relationships, the focus on the female warriors, because historical action epics like this are never about women and especially never about black women and again to represent them as having a range of personalities and emotions and to get to see their physical strength and combat skills and see them kicking ass to go back to kick ass as a phrase yeah we're living in the past um i like that you

see a woman naniska be recognized for her contributions and skills and leadership and be elevated to this powerful position of woman king i like that you see another woman now we be rebellious and challenge the status quo and the patriarchal sexist double standards they have to live by just a lot of cool stuff happening so I will give the movie four and a quarter nipples I'll give one to Viola Davis I'll give one to the director gina prince bythewood um i'll give one to lashana lynch who plays izogi and i'll give one to tuso mbedu who plays na'wi i really loved all of those performances i'm gonna go i guess i'm gonna go for I will be honest I the historical stuff does bug me a little bit especially after reading a little bit about the Lupita Nyong'o short doc in which you know the descendants of people who had been victimized were not okay with it and I think that those opinions should carry and matter and and again it's it's I don't know this this genre is never going to be a historically pure genre like I can't

think of a historical epic that is famous for being accurate they're mostly famous for being epic and often famous for glorifying people who were not that great. And I think that this movie does a lot to avoid the trappings of the historical epic. But also attributing an almost completely 180 political philosophy to a person that actually existed. It does bug me a little bit. I'm also a history head. I don't know. However, to echo everything you just said, Caitlinlin i mean it's a fucking good movie and i and i it's you know centering majority black woman cast i feel like you often hear when movies are centered around black women that there's often colorism involved

that doesn't seem to have been the case here we get to see them fight and you know be brutal and ruthless and we also get good at war people be good at war which is what they should have called it the good at war uh woman yep uh but you also get to see their humanity you get to see their different personalities their different relationships their conflicts with each other i did you get you get it all in a way that is very very very unusual and I think that this movie is just like good and also the fact that it was successful means that hopefully um we can see more African historical epics that come out in Hollywood and maybe uh they're you know again we're always talking about on the show like how progress is incremental it was our idea we were the first people to say this correct yes it's true but that the success of the woman king can lead to an even better possibly more historically

accurate um African epic uh I like those uh it's I feel i feel good about and it's just yeah really beautiful well-performed movie and uh shouldn't have been uh snubbed in the way it was across um and i feel like well you know there has been incremental progress in those systems and also um oh my gosh danielle deadweiler is that her name um who was Till, that movie also got massively snubbed. And I'm glad that Gina Prince-Bythewood is always, always, always using her, not that she should have to, but she's always using her platform to bring attention to how disrespected black women still are in entertainment and in general today.

So I'm going to go for nipples. I guess I'm going to give one to Gina Prince-Bythewood. I'm going to give one to Lashana Lynch because she's my fave. I love her. I'm going to give one to Viola Davis. And I'm going to give one to Lupita Nyong'o because I'm intrigued and I hope she talks about this someday. Yeah.

Franke, how about you? first of all you're allowed to give me those to men you can do whatever you want, you do whatever, yeah okay that's just by the way I mean I share the reflections from both of you

I really enjoyed the movie so I will give it maybe a 4.5 because i'm really nice um and taking away the 0.5 for that history reason um i feel like it's a movie to enjoy and watch but then there's also the risk that it perpetuates the wrong story of history right so you know while the uh the writers can give the excuse that this is just a movie and it's fictionalized and yada yada I mean the people like us that didn't study these things in school this is the way we learn it

and if people don't go the extra mile of going to find the actual history this is all the history they know and of course you know there are people who are actual victims of some of the work that the Agoje women did and the Dahomey community and the old Oyo empire. And them having to watch this, like Lupita mentioned in her interview

and maybe documentary, them having to watch this and see that their roles as victims have actually been erased, I think is really unfair. Because this is a movie at least a postscript or something at the end to say this is really fictionalized we've done this we've done that or we pay respect to the men and women who died as a result of the slave trade or whose lives were changed as a result of the slave trade i think the movie should have done that at the end of it i really love the culture like i said earlier on

um and i want to emphasize about the black women like it is so powerful to see dark-skinned black women and i mean we could take this for granted in some ways but in other ways it is this is not something you normally see in hollywood um most times when black women are featured in Hollywood, it's played by black women who have maybe a white father or white mother. And so, you know, they're lighter skin. And by no fault of theirs, I think they're really beautiful. But the narrative that dark-skinned black women are not beautiful needs to be changed.

And I think this movie has contributed to changing that narrative. I mean, despite how powerful and strong they looked the akoje women came off as extremely beautiful oh yeah to me so um i really love the movie for that i love the goriness um not because i enjoy seeing blood but you know that confidence and power that the women were allowed to show was really great. The Rebellion of Naui, again, you know, thumbs up for writing that in. And it wasn't just about dating or being with Malik or flirting with men. It was also about challenging Naniska and standing up to her in different ways. So I really, really love that.

In the sense of fiction, I loved King Getsuo. And I loved him because you could see that he was listening to Naniska. He respected her in places where, you know, in the king's cabinet, where the other men, the head of the male warriors would try to undermine naniska you could see him you know speaking up for her in some cases and actually taking her advice um so it was really good to see that happen i think that's fiction yeah he went to those palm oil fields he's like this could be something let's try it i guess exactly exactly so he was actually listening to her which is quite unusual um so um yeah by 4.5 can i give two nipples to viola davis oh my god oh gosh she is such a powerful strong confident beautiful woman and i'm probably a bit biased now because i watched woman king and

then i read her book um finding me i think that's the title and i just feel like i found another side of viola that i can't let go of so two because to her of course it's okay um she was really the big sister but also more experienced soldier, powerful soldier, confident, but also empathetic. You know, going back to get Nawi at the end and then getting shot at that point. Of course, Nawi, I really, really loved Nawi. Young, confident, the scene where she pushed the man who hit her, the one who was trying to get married to her, right in front of her parents. This is 2023, and I think there'll be a handful of African women

or African girls who can actually fight an elderly person in front of their parents. So her doing that in the 1800s, big ups to her rebellion. The point five is to King Geza, because I really like John Boyega. He's of Nigerian origin, so that was really good to see.

And I think he put in so much effort in trying to do the right accent. And people have criticized him for this accent, but I think that was a lot of effort. It's not easy to... I don't know where that accent is from. It's definitely not Nigerian. a lot of effort it's not easy to um i don't know where that accent is from i don't think it's not it's definitely not nigerian um i don't know if it's beninois from new day or today's dahomey um but anyway i think he did make an effort in speaking the right accent but also because he supported naniska through it so 4.5 i think is what i gave very nice i think i forgot to give my quarter nipple away so i'm gonna going to give it to Mr. Purple.

Mr. Purple. Of course we can't forget Mr. Purple. Give us a Netflix series with Mr. Purple. Was he implied to be a eunuch? Because there's a reference to some of the men in the palace being eunuchs. And I'm honestly maybe filling in a lot of blanks myself but i was like i wonder if he's supposed to be a eunuch i'm not sure anyway i love him no matter what he's the best well runky thank you so much for joining us what a treat this has been

everyone read runky's piece about this movie and we'll link it of course along with the other things we'd mentioned we'd link where can people um follow you online and check out anything else you want them to check out on twitter at oh you're wrong care underscore and i think you'll link it right yes um but yeah um i think twitter is the best place to find me crawling and being quiet and tweeting about the books I read love it the best use of the internet possible exactly

you can find us all the regular places on Instagram and Twitter at Bechtelcast you can join our Patreon aka Matreon at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast where for five bucks a month, you get two additional episodes every single month. How about that?

This month, we're doing... Dolls coming to life. We're doing life size, and we're doing Megan. So really all killer, no filler on the Matreon this month. Yeah. And you can check out our merch at tpublic.com slash the bechtel cast where you can find all of your merchandising needs all designed by a one jamie loftus wow good for her and with that let's go um i mean if we want to have a light afternoon you know just like tear

shark teeth out of each other's shoulders yeah let's do that yes okay bye hey everybody this is Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang we've got some exciting news for you you know we're always bringing you the best guests right well this week we're taking it to the

next level the one the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious

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