The Bechdel Cast - The Women (1939) with Ramzi Fawaz

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

On this week, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Ramzi Fawaz head to Reno Divorce Camp to discuss The Women (1939)! Follow Ramzi on Instagram at @nerdfromthefuture and check out his website ramzifawaz.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, it's Joe Interesting, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns.

The embodiment of Pisces' intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my charge. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast, starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Ready for a different take on Formula One? Look no further than no grip, a new podcast tackling the culture of motor racing's most coveted series. Join me, Lily Herman, as we dive into the under-explored pockets of F1, including the astrology of the current grid, the story of the sports most consequential driver strike, and plenty of other mishaps, scandals, and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent gumster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to No Grip on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe?

Oh my God. I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets.

Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast, start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Oh, hello. Hey, did you want to hear some gossip about Jamie Loftus that's stupid bitch. What? Wait, that's not a word that we use here. Certainly not outside of kennels.

Oh, yeah. Also, this is Jamie on the phone. What the hell? You're Jamie Loftus? Oh, no. Yeah, no. And I'm fucking your husband. Sorry.

Wow. Sorry. Look, a girl has to survive. I'm just kidding. He found me in a perfume counter. There's nothing I could do, darling. It's fine. Welcome to the Bexelcast.

Really feminist exchange we just had. Oh, we can do mid-Atlantic accents today. My name's Jamie Laughes. My name is Caitlin Durante. Okay. Come on. Get on board. I, well, I find the way they speak in this whole era, very grading.

I'm so sorry, everyone. Look, I think you may be alone on the Zoom call, but we will. We will forge it. I'm going to be the villain of this episode, I think. You're going to be the Joan of the episode. Yeah. So true. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I'm the Crystal, what's her name? Crystal Adams? I was immediately to do like mess. Crystal Allen. Crystal Allen. Great character name. Great character name all around. I can't wait. Yeah, we're talking about the women in 1939 today. Very thrilling. But before we get there, before we get to words that aren't frequently spoken outside of kennels,

let's talk about what the hell this show is, because it's actually very, very relevant to the themes of our show today. Katelyn, where are we? What's happening? Well, this is the Bechtelcast, a podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. That, of course, being a mediometric created by dear friend of the show Alison Bechdel. Alumni. Indeed. There are many versions of this test.

The one that we use is due to people of a marginalized gender have names, do they speak to each other, and is there conversation about something other than a man? And then we particularly like it when it's a narratively meaningful conversation and not just like throw away dialogue that you could cut out and the story would be no different. And just to get ahead of our conversation about this, because this movie we're covering today, 1939's the Women, adapted from a 1936 play, is a movie that's come up on the show, I think, Almost since the first, yes, because there are a lot of popular, I think, popular narratives around this movie that are not necessarily true when you watch the movie. I think that this was almost like a memeified piece of like 2010's information that would make the rounds every so often is that the women is a movie that came out in the 1930s that features only women on screen but doesn't pass the Bechtel test.

After, I mean, this is a beloved movie for me and we'll talk about our respective histories. but I think that that really if this is a memeified piece of information you've absorbed by osmosis I certainly had I think you will find yourself pleasantly surprised by how what what a dense, rich text this is at least for two-thirds of the movie and then the end of this you but like but I just I wanted to address that at the top of the episode because I think we have referenced this movie in a number of ways in and I'm sure the further back you the less sophisticated the conversation becomes, and now we're perfect geniuses, so we have to correct the record. Of course.

But I just, I'm so excited to talk about, I can feel myself talking faster for having watched this movie twice in the last two days. It's going to be fabulous, darling. So yes, that is the Bechtel test. And we have an incredible guest today. So let's hop to it. Let's do it. He is a professor of English at the.

University of Wisconsin Madison, host of the podcast nerd from the future, and author of the books, The New Mutants and Queer Forms. It's Ramsey Fawas. Hello and welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. Oh my gosh. Really brave. I was like, wow, I can already feel our guest being like, he him on the episode about the women. Listen, lock in, lock in. We found the right guest. I'm locked in. Listen, I've always felt the effect. affinity with women from the beginning of time. I say at the end of my book, Queer Forum, as I say, this book is a love letter to feminism and the women in my life.

So I have never felt any problem with the idea of cross-identification. Like, let's go. I mean, it's a cute core movie. Like, this is a girls and gays kind of movie. Yes, yes. We're so excited to have you, first of all. Thank you for coming. Thank you.

Me too. I can't believe I haven't been here before. I know. It feels overdue. Yeah. We're being huge. the dogs they put in kennels by not having done so. Yeah.

But we love your work and I... Thank you. That's so humbling. Well, truly. And I'm very curious because I've had a Celsius today and I'm vibrating. I'm so curious what your history with the movie is. So, you know, when I was asked to create a list of movies to potentially talk with you both about, this was one of the ones that popped out from... You guys sent me a list of possibilities that I was like, oh, the women, they haven't talked about, the women, amazing.

I encountered the women in the single most formative undergraduate course I ever took at UC Berkeley. I took a class on the year 1939. Oh, I'm so jealous. That's cool. My great mentor, Kathleen Moran, who's on my own podcast. She's on one of the last episodes of the first season. She's incredible. She had invented this class with a brilliant political theory.

who was her best friend named Michael Rogan, who had just died a year before I came to Berkeley. So it was the first time she was teaching it on her own. And if people don't know, the audience doesn't know, 1939 is this unbelievably momentous year in American politics, history, culture. It's the moment of sort of the waning of the Great Depression as we entered World War II.

It's the moment that we start to commit ourselves to the arms race leading up to World War II. It's also the golden age of Hollywood. So it's like that year alone produces the Wizard of Oz, MGM, the Grapes of Wrath, Gone with the Wind. Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Yes, Mr. Smith, we watch that. Amazing.

I mean, these are, you know, about one year, four of the films are considered by the British Film Institute to be four of the most important movies ever made. So I found that class just extraordinary that you could study, like, all the different dimensions of American culture through the prism of this one year. Of course, we study things

that also fell outside of that year. We study things that are sort of of mid-30s, early 40s. But it was an amazing and transformative thing. And I want your listenership to know how I watched it. We read the work of Elizabeth Hawes, who is a socialist, feminist,

fashion designer. Each word better than the last. Isn't this, it's like, fascinating? She wrote this incredible book that nobody reads now, but everybody should get their hands on it, called fashion is spinach. And it was basically her saying that for the early part of her career, she worked for all these courtiers in France. And she said basically what would happen is that there

are these companies where they would send people like me to go look at the designer clothes on the runway for Dior and to copy them for middle class women who couldn't afford the originals. And she said at some point I was like, why am I wasting my life doing this? I should bring couture. level clothes to working class people. And so she comes back to the United States and she starts making ready to wear clothes but that are made with a courtier's eye for men who work in factories. And so it forced us as the students to think about the women as a movie that is partly about fashion and about how women use fashion to exert some kind of social control in the world. We'll talk today about how like there's suddenly a full color sequence that's a fashion show in the middle of the movie.

Oh, my God. And another queer icon moment for, because it's all Adrian clothes, too, which is like, yeah. Every time I watched this movie, because I watched it about six months ago just for, because it was on canopy. Yeah. The first outfit we see Rosalind Russell and Russell in with the eyeballs, I'm like, I would, I would cut my own head off to own that. It's so good. Honey, this is modernism. This is Dada. The disembodied hand during the fashion show? Yeah. This is like the lesbians of the left bank, honey.

Riegosch. Like, it's, it's wild what we see on screen. Truly. Mm-hmm. Truly. So that's kind of my history with it. And then I remember seeing the 2008 version and sort of being like, oh, I feel like they missed the point of what this movie is about,

even though it's entertaining and I like all the people in it. And it stuck with me. The last thing I'll say, it's stuck with me deeply because there is a book that I adore, that I wish more people read. There's a book by this. this feminist cultural study scholar named Janie Scandura. She wrote this amazing book called Down in the Dumps about depressive modernity. And it's a book that is all about the idea that American modernism,

which is all about the future and progress and advancement and civilization, requires the production of a culture of waste, of throwing away. Of the fact that, like, in the Great Depression, millions of appliances that people could no longer afford had to be thrown and were thrown away into dumpsters. and all of this stuff. And she does a chapter about Reno as the dumpster factory for women. The idea that Reno was this place in Nevada that women were basically disposed of in our culture,

like they're thrown away when they get divorces. And I remember reviewing the movie after I had read that book and being like, oh my God, this is a document of Reno as this place, right, where they say where women get renovated so that they can get married again. And so that was the other kind of dimension of my relationship. ship to the movie. No kidding. This is... It's deep. Oh, you just gave me an incredible reading list. Thank you. Such a good book. This is wonderful. I mean, this movie really does. I've seen different

depictions of Reno in media, old and new. I mean, I think also about how in Mad Men, there was like a whole Reno narrative way back in the day, but like... Yeah, yeah. But this is the most compelling and also manages to make Reno look kind of fun. A dreamy. Yeah. Kind of like, Oh, it's just kind of like girls camp. Yes. Yeah, your horseback riding. You know, we're vibing. I'm like, we should all just maybe stay here.

This is like the beginnings of a compound. We're so close. There's another representation of Reno, I would say, in this very famous, very dark drama with Marilyn Monroe, which was written for her by Arthur Miller after they had divorced. It's one of the last movies that she makes. I don't know why I'm forgetting the title. The Clark Gable one?

No. It's before that. Okay. It has another very famous male lead. But it is about a woman who's been divorced and she's in Reno. And it is a very dark, brilliant. I mean, I think Monroe is a genius. And I think, like, it's her first time trying to do a dramatic role.

And Miller sort of writes this role that's both amazingly suited to her and also very punishing. He makes her seem sort of like a promiscuous woman because he's mad at her about the failure of their marriage. Let's make love. Is that it? That might be it. That might be it. Okay. If so, directed by George Kukor, pretty cool.

Oh, stop. Yeah. Parallels. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah, I think that her last movie is the misfits. That's what I'm thinking of. That's what it is.

It's the misfits. It is. Oh, okay, great. It's incredible. People should be watching that movie. That's an incredible movie. I've got to see it. I still have never seen it.

Yeah. I feel like I hear it referenced constantly. I haven't actually seen it. It is very moving, very powerful. I'm of course written by one of the greatest playwrights of all time. Yes, you're right. It is Clark Gable. It is like kind of at the end of his career when he becomes sort of a little bit of a has-been.

Yeah. Sort of like, you know, actually like Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Once Upon a Time on Hollywood. Totally. Where he's still a heart throb and he's still a big deal but is like waning. And it is a pretty, it's a very moving film. And Montgomery Clift. Wow. There's so much.

Yeah. I mean, queer. I mean, queer icon. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I'm having a great time. Thank you for that.

Caitlin, what is your history with the women? Well, and here comes my villainy. Go for it. Well, listeners of the show will probably know that I am not that big of a fan of the classic Hollywood era. Okay. There are very few movies from this time period, and I've seen many of them, but there are very few that I connect with or have any affection for. And this one, so sorry, not really one of them. It's a hard pass.

So I saw it for the first time a few years ago because it would come up on the show here and there. So interesting. And it wasn't really on my radar before that, but it would be referenced pretty frequently by either you, Jamie, or guests. And I was like, what's this movie? So I watched it. And I was like, oh, okay. It just doesn't really appeal to my sensibilities. Sure.

You know, I have a lot to say, a lot to talk about. I'm still sort of like forming opinions about it. The end drives me nuts. Yes. But I don't think it could have ended any other way in 1939, but I... Right. So, but yeah, it's, it's, it gives us lots to talk about. Yeah.

But again, I'm not as enthusiastic about this era of cinema in general. So I'm going to be the NNAE person on the show. The killjoy? Yeah. We always need a kill joy. We do. Thank you. Balance.

By the way, I'm about to be a killjoy for heated rivalry. Oh, I see it. I'm writing an essay for film quarterly about how much I can't stand it. Not the actors who I adore. And I'm so glad that they're getting all the success. And it is a very sexy and hot show. I think its message is awful. And I think people's unhinged obsession with it really needs to be put in its place.

And so listen, we all need to occupy that seat at some point or another. People just have to come in and be a female dog in a kennel. Yeah. Yes. Yes. It is necessary. I still haven't seen heated rivalry, but I just know that everyone I talk to is obsessed with it. So.

Yeah. I'm going to wait until I get the flu and then I'm going to watch heated rivalry. Not a bad idea. I think that's right. That's how I watch most television as I wait to get a flip. That makes sense. Yeah. Jamie, what is your relationship with the women in 1939? I really love it. I've tried to remember specifically when I first saw it. I think it probably would have been in college. But I've been on a

journey with this movie where I did sort of feel, you know, buy into a lot of popular narratives around this movie prior to, I think probably around 2021 would have been my big turning point with this movie. Because I'd seen it. I enjoy it. I enjoy this like. dialogue cadence. I like old Hollywood divas. Like a lot of it works for me. And I also like the, you know, sort of for lack of a better phrase, gimmick of this of we don't see a man. We simply don't. And how refreshing. Not a single man, not a single man's voice. Even the animals on screen are all female animals. Yes. I like I really appreciate that. But I did. I think in prior references to this, I sort of like even though I'd seen it, I'd like basically,

enjoyed it. I also find the ending very dated and frustrating in a way that I feel like, you know, I think that there are reclaimable elements to it, particularly the more I learned about the context of who wrote it, how it was written, when it was written, all this. But I still do find the ending. Like, I'm never looking forward to the ending of the women. I'm looking forward to the first hour and a half. But I had a turning point with this movie probably around, yeah, around the pandemic because that was the time that I was working on ACCAST, which listeners of this show probably already know was a podcast that took a look at the Kathy Comics of the 70s into the 2010s and how it was sort of this mirror to in conversation with feminist movements of the time

and before. And so to do that, I did like my first, which feels kind of like ridiculous, but like my first deep feminist history research, at least in America. And since doing that, going back to movies of this era has been interesting because you can pick up on what it's in conversation with, which I think this movie is very much in conversation with the results of the first wave of feminism. And weirdly, I mean, but also before World War II, in the sense that like, we are not encouraging women to be in the workplace quite yet. It's not seen as a noble thing. It's seen as kind of embarrassing. So I really enjoyed, especially the first two-thirds of this movie, that it is doing a lot. It's written by women all the way down and, like, fascinating women.

It is directed by, like, one of the most famous queer directors ever. George Kukor. It features designs by Adrian. It's just like it's girls and gays. It's girls and gays. And so it is impossible for me to dislike. But I, well, my favorite thing learning about it in this round, as I never really, I knew that there's two women screenwriters, which already 1939 is like, amazing. I really do appreciate that to a larger extent than the majority of productions at this time and still, like that there is some level of commitment to the women behind the camera as well, where it's based on a work by a woman and it is adapted by two women, including someone we've talked about

before on the show Anita Lowe's, who wrote Gentleman Prefer Blonde's and also adapted Gigi for Broadway, just like a complete legend. She's a genius. She really is. I mean, I recommend people to go read the original gentleman, gentlemen prefer blondes. It's a work of 1920s modernism. It is experimental and avant-garde. She's playing with language.

And she is exploring what it looks like for women to have to invent a language of sex. sounding dumb while being smart. That's the whole point of the book. It's about these two women who basically are using, are intentionally sounding stupid to men because they know that it is a way to manipulate social, like socially constructed moors around gender to get what they want. And there's that great, you know, in the Marilyn Monroe adaptation in the 50s, there's that great moment right at the end where the father of the man she's married,

just can't stand her because he's like, you're a gold digger. And she's like, no, I love your son and also want his money. Yeah. And she's like, if you had a daughter, wouldn't you want her to marry for love and money? Because you're rich. And he looks at her and he's like, you know what? You're right. And it's kind of an amazing moment where Lewis is saying, like, we're all playing a certain

game within this arrangement. And like, let's just admit that women know what the game is, right? And let's act naive. I really appreciate. I mean, we cover gentlemen prefer blondes all the way back in 2018 with Karina Longworth, The Legend. But it's something I want to revisit and kind of take another crack at because, yeah, no, Anita Lowe's is wonderful. Co-written with Jane Murfin, was also a prolific writer of the time at a time where it's like women working professionally as writers was so rare. And the fact that this was, you know, a part of the marketing was that it was made by women. Again, it is telling of the misogyny of the time then and now that it is a marketing gimmick that women made it.

But I think it's really impressive, it really cool. And yeah, this was my first time learning about sort of getting back to it. I knew about the screenwriters. I didn't really know about the original playwright, Claire Booth Luce, who will talk about her in the context section of the episode, but just like, holy shit, she's so cool. I was so blown away by like just her life in general because in ways where I was trying to understand. I think I'm always trying to understand. It is clear to me that the writers and actors and director all love these characters where even when characters are presented, I think, in a heavily stereotyped way in certain cases, it feels less punching down than you would expect. I think particularly in the case of Sylvia's character, which we'll talk about.

I feel like Sylvia, I was like, I think that she's so funny. And you are given the proper context to understand why she's doing what she's doing, even though what she's doing is horrible. And I'm very excited to talk about that because Claire Booth Luce was the other woman. You know, like she, and in the same way with Crystal, where, like, Crystal is framed as a villain, but also, like, you have the information you need to understand why she's doing. she's doing and she gets she gets she gets I guess there's two last words in this movie she gets the better one um frankly because norma sure is like pride is for losers I'm going back to my husband and you're like oh well I think the the the line about bitches is far better but clare booth has it been both of those women and I think that like you can feel that where she wrote this play

and produced it a year after being the crystal allen in her then husband's relationship where she, you know, whatever, that dynamic played out. He left his wife for her. Then she wrote this play and released it. And it feels like almost like an attempt to process in a very kind of brutal way. Just the roles that women have to fill in how they relate to each other. I'm going to shut up because it's been like 400 minutes since I started talking. But I just, I really, really appreciate this, Buffy.

I like it so much. And it makes me want to talk really fast for a week. Ooh, always. I think that's already how I live. So to speak to Caitlin's point, I completely get it. But I also like, I speak and operate in this ballistic mode. So while I don't always enjoy watching it, I'm fascinated by it. And I think I have a lot to say about that in a minute when we get back to that.

Wonderful. Well, let's take a quick break. And then we will come back for the recap. Yay. The newest tracks. Let's go. We need it. And the next big thing.

Always on the new music first. Your first place to hear it home. Because you don't like it, love, or want to play it twice. Playing now. I heart new music. Your digital station for brand new drops, fresh vines, and tomorrow's bangers.

I think we need something new. Discover I heart new music. Always fresh, always first. Stream now on the free IHart Radio. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life.

And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A son and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house Spark her unconventional approach to partnership.

He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want to chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast, starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you can.

listen to your podcast. Ready for a different take on Formula One? Look no further than no grip. A new podcast tackling the culture of motor racing's most coveted series. Join me, Lily Herman, as we dive into the under-explored pockets of F-1, including the astrology of the current grid. Lewis Hamilton, Capricorn Sun, Cancer Moon. Wouldn't you know it?

Michael Schumacher is also a Capricorn Sun, Cancer Moon. The story of the sports most consequential driver strike. We have one man who, upon hearing that he was going to be fired, freaked out. and apparently climbed out the window of the bathroom. And was Daniel Ricardo's illustrious F1 career, a success story, a cautionary tale, or some combination of both? He started getting all this attention, and he maybe started to think, I'm bigger than this, I'm better, and plenty of other mishap scandals and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent, dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt the case of Lucy Lettby,

we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it, to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. Here is the story of the women.

Yes, and we are introduced to, just to set the scene, it did crack me up. It did not escape me that we do begin the movie by introducing all of our main characters by comparing them to wait for it. Animals. Look, look. And very, pretty, like, and oh, the older the women get, the more cows and don't know, Horses. Yeah. Horses.

You're like, okay, this is, now let's hear them out. Yeah. But that is a bad look. It's a bad luck to start with. Sure. Right. Because you have, like, the main character, Mary is a sweet little innocent dough. Yeah.

And then Crystal is a panther. Snarling. And Sylvia is a black cat going. Amazing. Which I was like, I wasn't even really quite getting. There were some of the comparisons that I'm like, Yeah, right. Maybe it's just a reference to how some women are catty.

So they literally have cats. Oh, yeah, the women who gets into the late stage cat fight, in which it is said that Rosal and Russell and Russell actually bit and gave a permanent score to the other actor. No, that is hilarious. And again, it's one of those old Hollywood anecdotes that's been rehashed so many times that you're like, it might not be true. But I've read it in more than one place. So let's just leave it at that.

Amazing. Sure. Yeah. Okay. So we open at a salon full of women doing various beauty treatments because women be doing their hair and nails and stuff. And a manicurist is gossiping about a Mrs. Haynes and how her husband is cheating on her. And she tells this to Sylvia Fowler, played by Rosalind Russell, who is friends with this

Mrs. Haynes. And then Sylvia also tells another of their mutual friends, Edith, played by Phyllispova. And the two of them are kind of like reveling in this information, this gossip and they're trying to decide like what to do with it. Again, very catty stuff. We cut to Mrs. Mary Haynes, played by Norma Shear and her daughter. little Mary. They're horse riding together because they're rich. It seems like every woman in this movie is a socialite who has access to wealth to some degree. And Mary and her daughter talk at length about Mary's husband Stephen slash little Mary's father and how they love him dearly and it seems like a very happy family. If Stephen is cheating on her, Mary has no idea.

Then Mary invites several of her friends over for lunch, including Sylvia and Edith, who we just met. Sylvia wearing truly one of the greatest articles of clothing I've ever seen. Very Salvador Dali. It's just like, and it's so, it's like so character driven that it's almost too much, but kind of like there's no such thing as too much in this movie. And I love that. Mm-hmm. So they're there as well as Peggy, a sweet young woman who got married recently. And then Nancy, an older career woman, a writer, who never got married. So... An old maid, as she says. Exactly. She's aware of her status as whatever, spoiled goods. Yes, but she has frozen assets, let's not forget. Uh-huh. And so she is society's worst nightmare. And she's well aware. I, every character, every character, almost every character, I'm like, I die for them.

Yeah. I die for them, yeah. And so these women are all chatting and they're like insulting each other, but in very like veiled ways. Again, the catiness is very present. And Sylvia keeps making all of these remarks about Mary's husband Stephen insinuating that he's cheating on her. Stepping out. Stepping out on her. I'm curious how, because there's.

is just simply so much dialogue in this movie. I always forget, and I try to figure out if I miss it or if it just is very telegraphed in one line of dialogue pretty late in the movie, that Maria and Sylvia are cousins. Yes, correct. Which to me, because I feel like that, not to stereotype all cousins, but that contextualizes so much of Sylvia's behavior. It's like, this is her perfect older cousin. Sure. I don't think it's said enough. I think that I needed the Stranger Things Netflix treatment of being reminded they were cousins at certain times. This is like a crucial moment when the career woman of the group says to Sylvia, like, of course you're gossiping about Mary because you can't be happy that she's happy.

Right. She's actually contented. There's an amazing line we can talk about later where she says, you know, you're unhappy that Mary is a woman. And Edith and Sylvia say, well, what are we? And she says, well, you're females. Right. Like suggesting that like a woman. is like someone who is more evolved, someone who is like, yeah.

And there is, but like I just think it was really a really smart choice to introduce like a familial jealousy. I feel like it helps me get away from the like the catiness of it all where you're like, oh, anytime someone's related, I feel like I will tolerate 30% more pettiness in all behavior, you know? Yeah. So we see this interaction and Mary is like, hmm, is my husband cheating on me. Then Stephen calls her to tell her that he has to cancel a two-week trip to Canada that they were about to take because he simply can't get away from work. And Mary is very disappointed and maybe because she is suspicious or maybe she's just taking Sylvia's nail color recommendation. But Mary... Jungle red. So iconic. Mary pays a visit to Sylvia's manicurist,

the one who is known for being super gossipy, and not realizing who she's speaking to, the manicurist reveals that Mary's husband, Stephen, is in fact having an affair with a woman named Crystal Allen, who he met at a department store. Mary is devastated by this. Her mother comes over and tells Mary that basically all men cheat, including Mary's father,

but Stephen probably doesn't love this other woman. So Mary shouldn't say anything or confront him and basically just pretend like it's not happening, especially because they have a daughter to think about. This scene, one of the many things they appreciate about this movie is its attention to generational differences at this exact moment. Yeah. It's really, and because I think in a lesser movie,

you know, while there is a clear argument, and it's not totally wrong to say that the older women in this movie are portrayed as silly, right? But their perspectives are clearly telegraphed and taken seriously. Absolutely. As well as her daughter, like where I think that, you know, so often we see like, oh, little, also such a power move when women name their daughters after themselves. I love that. Very Gilmore girls to do. I think the daughter is totally weird. The daughter is a weird thing.

We're going to come back to that. I actually think the daughter is like very psychoanalytic. There's like a whole Freudian thing going on it where she's having like an electrocomplex where she's obsessed with her mom. And she almost wants to be her mom's girlfriend. And like I kind of love all that. But also like it's done in a way that's like not fun. It's like weird.

If you're talking about the whole back scratching thing, I used to do that with my mom. But all of it. She's always like, do you love me as much as you love dad? Are you in love with me, mom? Yeah. She can't understand the idea that like the, the love between a husband and a wife is different than the love between. Like it's just like it's so accentuated in the story that it's symptomatic.

I think the issue for me was that like she just seems a little bit too old to be thinking about that. That's exactly it for me. That's fair. It's one thing where it's like if you're six, you're like, what is this? But like she seems like 11 and I'm like, yeah, she looks like she's 11. She's like, do you really love me, mommy? And you're like, your mom is obsessed with you.

Like you just said, she just named herself you after herself. So like relax. Little Mary, such a flex to do. Oh, God. I wish I liked my first name better because that would be such a flex. Little Jamie. But I do want to say the conversation with the mom. I hope we were.

That's one of my favorite moments in the entire movie. I think it's brilliant. It's fascinating because it's like you, whatever, even in like almost 100 years later, you find yourself being like, well, I hear what she's saying generationally, but like, no, Mary needs to stand up for herself. And then she literally does. And she's like, you know, it's just, it's really cool. I wish that this movie was allowed to end differently, but also Hayes Code.

You know, we cannot be disparaging marriage and the home. And that's, they're going to bring that back any day now. Hayes Code is going to come back. Hayescode's coming back. Hayescode 2.0. Somehow worse. Yeah. In any case, so Mary's mother is trying to convince Mary to not do anything about the knowledge of this affair

because basically boys will be boys and just accept it and move on. Mary is not willing really to do this and it seems like maybe to sort of like take a break from this whole situation she decides to take her mother to Bermuda. Well, and it's also a power move. I think like something that I thought was interesting

in tracking Mary's behavior through this time because I think, I don't know, I've heard a lot of like stuff that is a little more dismissive of Mary than I feel of like, oh, she's too perfect blah blah she's the perfect wife but it's like you can see that she's making decisions not because she actually wants to be away from home but because she thinks that by leaving her husband will miss her and that'll resolve the problem which is what her mom told her that was her mom's idea exactly yeah right right right right I feel for her I think she's having like a weird like

Francis Ha style vacation where she like yeah yeah does not want to be doing it yet but it's like it feels like I should be doing this yeah Yeah. So while Mary is away, we meet Crystal Allen, played by Joan Crawford. She receives a phone call from Stephen, who is canceling their dinner plans that night, even though it's her birthday, because it seems like he is trying to spend more time with Mary and that he's like trying to, his wife, he's trying to focus on his marriage. Then Mary's friends, Sylvia and Edith, the very, the very friend. very gossipy ones, go to the department store where Crystal works to find her and basically fuck with her. They keep mentioning Stephen Haynes and his wife. And she's not like falling for it. No, this is also like it does, I think we're encouraged to think that this is not Crystal's first rodeo when it comes to managing a situation like this. Yeah. But this is her first rodeo dealing with these Difa specifically. But I just think it's so like,

And again, we'll come back to this. But there is, while I do think it's, like, easy to reduce that interaction to caddiness between women, there is a clear class dynamic going on there, too. And, like, throughout, like, again, just, like, the shades of gray that I feel like this movie doesn't often get credit for. It includes, like, care for generational perspectives and for class perspectives. Because not only is everyone, every person we see on screen a woman and addressing the elephant of the, room now, as we will later, majority, majority, majority white women. I think that there's two or three characters who are black women who exist strictly in service roles. Sure. I don't even think you could call them characters. They're on screen for a minute or less.

They're there to react to what white women are doing, including Butterfly McQueen, who also was in Calm of the Wind that year. Yes. But this movie is clearly only interested in the interests and affairs in politics of white women, which is very, very relevant. Within there, there are generational and class perspectives that I was like, especially doing like a close read of it for this. Like, you're like, oh, there is, there is more here than I, you know, generally give it credit for, even as a movie that I really like. Yes, absolutely. Okay, so then we cut to a couple weeks later, Mary and her mother have returned from Bermuda. And it seems like ever since, then Stephen has been more attentive in their marriage, though we do not see this on screen

because, again, famously, there are no men on screen at any point. Bring it back. We just have to take it back, bring it back. Bring it back. So we're just kind of taking Mary's word for it. Then Mary and a few of her friends attend a technicolor fashion show that lasts for, again, like six minutes on screen. It seems like it's just sort of like a commercial wedged into the middle of the movie.

Yeah. Does anyone, was anyone able to? find in your research, what the hell is going on there? I actually did not. I forgot to go out of my way to figure out why that is there in that way. I didn't research it, but I think it's something we can talk about that it is, I mean, if you read it in a Freudian way, it's symptomatic, right? Like the fact that there is an explosion of technicolor in the middle of this black and white movie that is all about fashion and that the fashion show is a performance of the entire arc of the daily life of a rich woman, starting with playing sports in the morning, tennis,

all the way through going to the zoo, all the way through going to a dinner party with a gown and whatever. Like, there is something, it is like a Freudian slip. Like, the movie is telling on itself. It's saying, like, this is actually the fantasy that is at play in living this life. And the fantasy is radically different than the reality. I mean, I think that's part of the, the, place where the movie is so smart.

Yeah. Is that the movie is very aware of the fantasies that women have to navigate, the forms of denial, that they have to live to navigate the sexual arrangements of mid-century American life. And I think that the technicolor moment is also giving the audience the joy, the pure, unbridled joy of that fantasy before it says, uh-uh, uh, that's not what you're going to get. That's not what this whole movie is going to be, right? Like this whole movie, we could, the whole,

movie could have been tech to color. That's what the Wizard of Oz does. It's incredible. Like, I, I, I know that, I mean, the most I was able to find out is that George Cucor did not like that, I think that that was sort of like something he was forced to do. Got it, by like the studios. Yeah, he felt

like it disrupted the rhythm of the movie, which I think is true, but also, yeah, it definitely does. However, I think in some ways, Caitlin, let me know what you think, like if you do, if you are kind of exhausted by how fast this movie is. This is, it kind of functions as an intermission of like, all right. That's true.

You know, catch your breath and buckle in because they're going to be talking even faster in the back half. And I don't know. And also just because 1939, there's so many fun like overlaps here where like Adrian, queer icon who had like a famous lavender marriage to Janet Gaynor also designed the ruby slippers. And like he, he was having. a hell of a year in 1939. Just a legend. And he did all the costume designs for the Wizard of Oz as well. Okay.

So, yeah, he was really cooking this year. So I'm like, while I do find it a little weird, I don't hate it. I mean, it is kind of an intermission. I love the disembodied hand dress. Oh, my. That's incredible. At the end of the day, I'm not mad. That's modernism, honey.

It is just, oh, it's so weird. I love it. Yeah. It's great. I would just say as a side note, you know, there's this. extraordinary book by a dear friend of mine, brilliant film scholar who you should totally have on this podcast, named Matthew Tinkum.

He actually wrote the British Film Institute book on Grey Gardens. Oh, wow. And he wrote a book called Brokeback Mountain and Queer Theory. Two movies we should have covered and we haven't yet. Oh, my God. Great Gar-Rour? Oh, I know. Bring him on for Grey Gardens.

Honey, he will blow your minds. Hell yeah. So he makes this amazing argument of that book where he says Golden Age Hollywood System while it was intensely homophobic, was obsessed with the cultural labor of gay men. Because it believed, like, there was like an understanding, a cultural understanding within the film industry in the 1930s and after,

that gay men had a distinct aesthetic style that was extravagant, that was over the top, that was flamboyant and beautiful, and that fit beautifully with the desire of Warner Brothers. and MGM to do these extravagant musicals. And he shows you, he has a chapter about how, like, he gets the title of his book from an amazing interview of the head assistant to, oh, why am I forgetting his name? He's like one of the most famous musical directors, Judy Garland's first husband.

Is it Vincent Minelli? Thank you. Yes, thank you. Yes. That Vincent Minnelly's head assistant in the 50s and 60s, she was interviewed, looking back, and she says to the interviewer, I don't know how else to say it. and I don't mean it at all as a dig. She's like, he worked like a homosexual.

Like, he had a style. High praise, high praise, obviously. And so the idea was that audiences, when they viewed those movies and they're incredible over the top Technicolor extravagance, they didn't think gay. They thought that's entertainment.

Right? And so he talks about how, like, gayness was woven into the fabric of the aesthetic of the Hollywood musical, Star is Born, Wizard of Oz, all of these movies singing in the rain, but that it could be coded. And that is very true here.

I think the explosion of Technicolor here is also about the celebration of extravagant femininity that is pleasurable to gay audiences and also women. I hear that. I hear that. And this movie has all of that.

Oh, yeah. And the fact that I feel like the most, again, echoing what you were just saying, like, the most prominent voices and fingerprints you see on this are women and queer people. Like, George Kukor was like, you know, obviously not open to the public, but like known to be openly gay. And as well as like I think probably maybe this is wrong, but one of the, if not the first director who was known to be like women loved working with him. Yes. And part of what, I mean, we can get into because there's some interesting, like, production narratives that come up. But, like, for all of the, like, maybe true, maybe not true narratives about how the stars of this movie interacted throughout production, what no one ever disagrees on.

And I've never seen anyone say is that George Cucor was not, like, deeply respectful and reverent toward women actors, which I think particularly given the time must have been such a breath of fresh air. where it's like almost any story you hear about a director of like gay straight whatever like yeah it was okay to treat to quote movies like the women to treat women like chattel and to treat them like they were garbage and that they were like you know meat puppets to be to do what you were supposed to do and George Kuker was like collaborative and respectful and everyone loved him it's so nice I mean think about the fact that he is one of the directors of the Wizard of cause, also 1939. All the CPS sequences, right?

Yeah. And he, most of his greatest movies, Philadelphia Story, a star is born with Judy Garland, are female-led like behemoths of film history. We love George. We love George. And in Adrian, another very like

a queer artist whose fingerprints are everywhere. And then it's written by women and you're just I'm cheering. I love it. Also, George Kekar directed Gaslight. Like, he's just so in the conversation. He's awesome. Amazing.

Sorry, continue, Caitlin. Well, I was going to say, apparently, there are two uncredited screenwriters of the movie, according to IMDB, at least, who are men, including F. Scott Fitzgerald. That makes a lot of sense. Because of Anita Lowe's. I'm pretty sure Anita Lowe, or was it the other screenwriter? Maybe, I think it was Anita Lowe's. Let me double check.

Lowe's worked with and on Fitzgerald projects pretty thoroughly throughout her career. So that makes sense given like the time and the place. I don't know. Honestly, I mean, I've read the Great Gansby. I don't know that much about Scott Fitzgerald. I've never fallen down that particular rabbit hole. I mean, the main thing you need to know is like one of the greatest kind of chroniclers of the misery of the rich. I mean, that's true.

A really, like, right? Like he was incredible at being able to capture both the allure, the aesthetic allure, the color, the lights, the fashion, the parties of an emergent Nouveau-Riche class in the 1920s and the misery that that culture produced. I mean, he is essentially writing about today, right? Like, he is writing about decadence. I was like, what Jesse Armstrong is doing right now. Yeah, decadence.

Yeah. That's so cool. Wow. Sorry. just did a 10 minute, do you feel like, where are we in the movie? It just started. Oh, we're talking about the fashion sequence. The fashion show.

Yes. And then afterward, the women, ever heard of them, are deciding which dresses they want to buy. And then Crystal Allen comes in and orders a bunch of expensive dresses, and it seems like Stephen will be footing the bill. And Mary is gutted by this. This is her first time seeing Crystal face to face. the drama-loving Sylvia wants Mary to confront Crystal,

which Mary finally does, being like, Hello, Miss Allen, I believe you know my husband, but you won't be knowing him any longer. And Crystal is like, oh, well, bitch, that's not for you to decide. I can do whatever the hell I want. Love her. The next thing we know.

She's also wearing like this like... Gold LaMay. She's doing, she's, whenever you see Mary and Crystal in this, you're just like, okay, yes, these are,

these are very different, the women. Very different the women's. I love it. Yes. Yes, yes, indeed.

The next thing we know, Mary has asked Stephen for a divorce. There's a scene where Mary and Stephen have a big fight, but once again, it's off screen

because we don't ever see men. This is, I want to just say real quick, this is important. And again, we should come back to this, the entire fight between her and, like, because men are not in the movie, they have to come up

with all of these really smart and interesting narrative and visual techniques to represent what's happening with men without them in the picture. And the way they do this is that the two women who work in the house, the woman who runs the kitchen in the apartment and the woman who's like, cleans the house, they are gossiping with each other. and the younger one is narrating to the older one all of the fight that she's hearing. Yes.

And so what you get is working class people, people who work in the service side of like serving rich people, interpreting what they are hearing. They not only repeat what they're hearing of the fight between Mary and her husband, they also interpret it. And they're also like thoughtfully judgmental

of both of them. Yeah. They're just like, why is he talking like this? why is she saying that she should know better, he should know better? Like there's a really cany knowingness among working class people that's sort of like, we love these people, but also like what an eye roll. They know how to blow up their own lives. Like get, grow up.

The older woman especially is providing some very colorful commentary during this where the whole thing she's like, men ain't shit. They're all liars. They cannot be trusted. They suck. They're horrible. I mean, something I appreciate and I do think there's shades of this. in real life. I think every woman

over 45 that is the main narratives that they're presenting us with, even if they're like, and I do it all again, but like, obviously men are. La more. Lour. Lour. Lour. Testa love. She loves love.

You know, so much that she is fully, I mean, and again, there's a class privilege to this that you can afford to have your life blown up time and time again. Five divorces. But, yeah, so you could afford to keep getting back on that train. But there is a really cool, element of that where every woman who is like not in their 30s or younger basically are like yeah men are awful and you choose to engage with them or you don't and I I don't know there is a timelessness to that

that message I yeah yeah I just thought that was like such a smart writing choice where I think that there is an argument for like I wish that we outside of crystal and even that I feel like there's something left to be desired but outside of crystal the working class girls, we really don't get to know what their inner lives are, but we mainly get insight into... We know their perspective. Exactly. Exactly. And it's like, you know, one movie can't do everything.

But yeah, I don't know. I just, again, it feels like peanuts, but like even having their perspectives considered and included is so unusual, especially in a way that doesn't feel, you know, trauma, porn or, like, condescending in a way that I think that, like, you know, working class people are so frequently treated in, in movies. Yeah. Okay, so Mary starts divorce proceedings and she tells her daughter that she and her father are splitting up and little Mary is very sad. She's crying. Then Mary heads to Reno, Nevada because at this time, and we alluded to this already a little bit, we can talk more about it later, but at this time in the U.S., getting a divorce was very difficult in. most states and most areas in general, except for in Reno. There were certain laws that just made

it very easy. If you basically moved there for a few weeks, set up residency, you could basically get a divorce, no questions asked. So that's what a lot of people, and especially I think a lot of women did during this time. So Mary heads there. On the train to Reno, she meets several other women who are in the middle of a divorce, some of whom are despondent about that, including her friend Peggy. But a couple of the women seem to be thrilled about getting a divorce, including an older woman named the Countess de Love. I love her.

I love her. Who at this point has been married and divorced four times. She's like in the middle of her fourth divorce. Who among us doesn't have an aunt that is somewhat like this? Yeah. La more, la more. It's beautiful. Two of whom tried to murder her. Just, oh, my. And again, and again, it's like, okay, we can

academicify that to death. But just the, the casualness that she presents it with, I feel like is actually really powerful where it's like, oh, of course, women can be expected to have attempts on their wife done casually and yada, yada, whatever, I get back on the train and no harm, no foul. Keep it rolling. Love the energy. Love the energy. Yep. So there's her, and then there's a younger woman named Mary.

played by Paulette Goddard, who is getting her first divorce. With a with a bob of the century. Her bangs start all the way back at the back of her head. Her bangs start like on her butt. It's like her bangs. There are so many really interesting characters introduced very deep into the movie. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. And so Mary starts kind of palling around with these two women who perhaps are helping to give her a new perspective on divorce that maybe it's not so bad. We cut to Reno. Mary has been there for six weeks and her divorce is almost final. Because I think you have to like establish residency.

Like there's a whole, you basically have to agree to go to like divorce summer camp, which again, the movie does manage to make look pretty fun for most people. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to see a movie made now but set in whatever 30s, 40s, 40s, 50s. Agree.

About like Reno divorce summer camp, I think that would be a boat of fun. Yeah. Okay. But so, you know, Mary, the divorce is almost final. And she seems content about her choices and her life for the most part. Sylvia shows up. She's also getting divorced because her comeuppance has happened. Yes, yes.

Her husband has been having an affair with. with it turns out that Miriam woman we just met. I did appreciate this was the first time I really like clocked this but how because I really do love Mary. I hate that she goes back to that loser but I love I have a lot of love for Mary and I really appreciated that she was able to when when Sylvia showed up at divorce camp be like welcome instead of being like you fucking which would have been well deserved for Sylvia. She's just like, welcome, the water's fine here. Like, I just was like, wow, she's really good at being the bigger person.

She just shouldn't have gone back to that. Those hair. But 1939, we have to reinforce Hays code, haze code, haze code. Indeed, indeed, yes. So Sylvia pretty quickly finds out that this Miriam woman who her husband was having an affair with, or currently is, is right there. So they get in a physical fight. They're pulling each other's hair. They're ripping each other's clothes.

Sylvia Bites, Merriam, et cetera. Yes. And look, it is what it sounds like. Listen. Listen. It is what it sounds like I did appreciate, again, we get so defensive of every choice in this movie for no reason, that at least we get to see the other women enjoying the fight. We get to see them. This happens all the time.

Don't worry about it. Let's like get a drink. Let's see what happens. That was fun. There's a woman who I left out of the recap. I believe her name is. Lucy, she's sort of like, I don't know if she's like a cook at the summer camp or. I think she seems to be like, I guess I viewed her as sort of like, this is a poor comparison,

but like the house mother of like divorce camp. It seems like it. But yeah, she, I mean, I thought, again, a very, I think a very stereotyped character that the actor made their own in a way that I thought. And again, the details we learn are like, and it's, it's partially just like the very frank kind of cynical view that this movie has for the first two-thirds. But like we we do learn a lot about this character who we are introduced to as I believe a donkey, which is like, yeah, I am assuming a man's fault. Okay, Shrek vibes. Oh, okay. We're reclaiming donkeys. So it's actually a huge

compliment to be compared to a donkey if you're thinking about in terms of the context of Shrek. So a very Shrekian choice, but intended as insulting. But we do learn that like, you know, she is another working class character who is presented in a heavily stereotyped way. However, we do learn that like she, you know, has a very, I mean, speaking to your point, Ramsey, like a very specific perspective on where she is and what she's doing and how it connects to her own life. We learn that she is the victim of tremendous domestic abuse and has internalized it and decided to accept it. And like, that is a lot to learn about a character who is intended as comedic relief. But I don't think that, again, it's just like, I don't know if it's like the George Kukor of it all, if it's the writing, if it's a performance.

But I feel like as well as this movie can handle it, it's clear that she is intended as comedic relief, but the comedic relief is not that she's abused. True. Which is a difficult needle to thread. And I think, you know, could have been more sensitive? Sure. But like in the context of a big, you know, talky comedy, I think it does pretty well. Yeah, I agree. So, okay, so Sylvia and Miriam have had this big cat fight, and Sylvia is pissed at Mary for not defending her and kind of taking Miriam's sides.

So they have a falling out about it. Then it seems Mary's perspective maybe starts to change back to, well, maybe I shouldn't get divorced. maybe my marriage can work after a couple things happen. One is that she sees her friend Peggy, who has just found out that she's pregnant, and Peggy tells her, like, soon to be ex-husband, that she's expecting a baby, and he decides, oh, we shouldn't get divorced.

Let's get back together. So they reconcile in their marriage is, quote unquote, saved. So Mary sees that. And then she also has a conversation with Miriam, who tells her about the importance of a woman's role in a marriage, such as being a caretaker in all capacities, being a mother and a nursemaid and all these things, like very traditional prescriptive gender role stuff

by our modern standards, of course. Yeah. But Mary takes this to heart. Also, like, Miriam is like, you're a coward for not fighting for your man. You should have tried harder to stay with, Stephen. I actually love this conversation.

We're going to come back because I don't want to, I don't, I don't, I want, you're almost at the end. Yes. But we're going to come back. I actually love that conversation. I think it's so smart. Oh, I'm interested. It's the one that you have a hard time like recuperating.

Yeah. It is like so much. And it's like, I think that it's because this conversation happens when the movie is actively losing me. Oh, got it. That I'm like, I don't know how to feel about that. And then the movie moves so quickly through the end. Yeah.

I feel like I've never really fully. Yeah. understood how to feel about it. Yeah. Right. We'll talk about it. So Mary is like, hmm, maybe she's right. Maybe I do need to go back to being a wife and a caretaker to my husband.

Then Mary receives a call from Stephen and she's coming in with this renewed sense of love and hope. And it seems like she's willing to call the divorce off until she learns that the reason Stephen is calling is to tell her that he, married Crystal Allen earlier that day. So Mary is devastated all over again. Trey hurry. Night before. Night before. Why? Rude.

Aggressive. Like literally the moment she gets divorced, he goes out and gets married to someone else. Time to die. Life in prison without the possibility of corona. Anti-carceral except for Stephen. Except for Stephen. Okay. We cut to Crystal. It's, I believe, like, a year and a half later. Yeah, 18 months. She's in the bathtub.

And she, ooh, she's horrible. She's entitled. She's cruel. And she is cheating on Stephen with another man. And she and Little Mary have a chat because she's now Little Mary's stepmother. And Little Mary is like, oh, you think I don't like you. Well, you're right. I hate you. But I never said it. But I never said it because I'm polite. I'm polite. I'm polite. I'm proper. I didn't say it to your face, but you made me say it to me because now you said that I don't like you and you're right. And you're right. Then Sylvia comes in because she and Crystal are friends now. And Sylvia learns that Crystal's new lover is a man named Buck Winston, who is the current husband of the Countess de Love, Mary's friend who she met on the train to Reno, who has, who has basically fab, we later learned fabricated a career to make her,

loser cheating husband feel better and you're just like ooh oh okay antichristral but maybe not for buck Winston maybe yeah abolition but not for him maybe jail for him yes yes yes then mary has a conversation with her daughter where little mary reveals that stephen is miserable in his relationship with crystal and that crystal is clearly having an affair with someone else which once again gives mary a renewed sense of hope. She's ecstatic, thinking that she can possibly win Stephen back. So she rushes off to a restaurant where she knows that Sylvia and Crystal and Stephen are going to be. Yes. There's this convoluted thing that I was having a hard time following, but basically she gets Sylvia to admit that Crystal is having an affair with Buck Winston in front of,

and I don't know if this person is a gossip columnist or someone who just, okay. It is. The gossip. columnist. I was like, maybe she just like spreads gossip for fun. But rather than writing about it, this gossip columnist just runs into the room and loudly announces to everyone about this affair. That's how that job works, right? It's a does ex machina. I mean, I think you can call it that. It is gossip ex machina. Yeah. For sure. So now Stephen knows that his new wife, Crystal, is cheating on him. And so he wants to reconcile with Mary. So she runs back to his and then the movie ends with the implication that Mary and Stephen

will get back together. The end. I think it's important to remember also that the final shot is Mary putting her hands out super melodramatically, crying but with joy, rushing towards Stephen, and we are the first time that we get

that close to the subjectivity of a man. We are, this is like male gaze 101, right? We are in the position as the audience of Stephen. So while we never see him, we inhabit him figuratively as she's rushing towards us, which one

could use to argue either way that it's a deeply sexist ending or that it's actually kind of an amazing ending where really the romance stories between the audience and Norma Shewer and not Stephen. Sure, okay. And then before we kick to break, it's worth mentioning that that gossip

columnist is played by the gossip columnist of the day, Hadda Hopper, who comes up... Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's a really fun cameo in the movie. Okay. And with that, yes, let's take a quick break and we'll be back to discuss. The newest tracks. Let's go.

New music. And the next big thing. Always on the new music first. Your first place to hear it all. Because you're going to like it, love, or want to play it twice. Playing now. I heart new music. Your digital station for brand new drops, fresh vines, and tomorrow's bangers.

I think we need something new. Discover I-Hart new music. Always fresh, always first. Stream now on the free IHart Radio. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts,

and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic, Aquarian. visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives, and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A son and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house

spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want to chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Ready for a different take on Formula One? Look no further than no grip, a new podcast tackling the culture of motor racing's most coveted series. Join me, Lily Herman, as we dive into the under-explored pockets of F1, including the astrology of the current grid,

Lewis Hamilton, Capricorn Sun, Cancer Moon. Wouldn't you know it? Michael Schumacher is also a Capricorn Sun, Cancer Moon. The story of the sports most consequential driver strike. We have one man who, upon hearing that he was going to be fired, freaked out, and apparently climbed out the window of the bathroom. And was Daniel Ricardo's illustrious F1 career, a success story, a cautionary tale, or some combination of both?

He started getting all this attention, and he maybe started to think, I'm bigger than this. I'm better. And plenty of other mishaps, scandals and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent, gumster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby.

Lucy Lettby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, doubt the case of Lucy Lettby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it, to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing. of any skepticism or doubt.

It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Oh, my gosh. Where the hell to start? Can I, before we start with specifics,

can I do like a read, like a, I don't know, this isn't exactly a read, but I want to like lay out the case. Please. Sure, please. Please. Okay. So I want to start by saying, like, to anyone's current eyes, if you were to watch this movie today, on its face, it is so obviously sexist as to be like, not even a question. And let's lay out what those are. The comparison at the beginning of women to animals. Coming in a heart. The idea that women seem to live in a universe where all they do is talk about men and their relationships with men. Their entire life orbits around the desire of men, the money of men, etc.

the perception that women are against each other, that they turn on each other, that they are catty. It begins with another animal allegory where these two rich women are walking into a salon and their dogs are fighting. And the dogs fighting are symbolic of women fighting with each other.

Right? There is a continual blame the victim story in which women are made to feel that it's their fault that men cheat on them, that they aren't understanding enough. and of course the ending, which is a reconciliation with a cheating husband. That would appear to tell you, like, this is so sexist. However, what I want to say is that those elements are the movies pay off to Hollywood

to be able to do something feminist. Like, the ending is the way in which Hollywood gets its way so that women can take center stage. And if you think about it, the structure of that is completely undermined by the formal logic of the movie. So if the plot appears to be really sexist, everything about the form is not. It is a movie that is only about women. Women are the center of the screen. And they are presented in a way that both allows for the male gaze, but is really about the gays. and their gaze on women, right?

So, like, while we do see women in this pleasurable, fetishized way, it's usually to celebrate fashion. It's usually to celebrate the pleasure of a woman's form. So number one, there's that. Number two, it is a movie that is ballistic dialogue between women.

It costs, every single sequence is like a seven-minute extended moment in which women are talking. talking to each other constantly. And even if Pache the Bechdel test, they are always talking about men. What they're really talking about is what the feminist psychoanalyst, Dorothy Dinerstein, would call sexual arrangement. Interesting.

The movie continually presents different competing theories of what gender is. So like in every moment, there is a woman in every different class saying, well, I think gender is this. I think gender is this. The mom is like gender is compromise, right? Like other people are like actually gender should be about liberation. Actually, it should be about this. There are competing visions of what gender is. And the fact that a movie in 1939 is presenting a bunch of women talking about competing models of gender.

The reason it seems sexes to us today is because one of the models that is not acceptable in the moment is simply the idea that women could exist without men. Right. But the economic structure of American society does not even make that viable because to be without a man is to essentially be working class. And rather than make that invisible, we see it all over the movie. We see many single women who are working class who are like, the only way I can work within the system is to try to steal a rich woman's husband. Those women are very aware that the arrangements of gender are always temporary. And so part of like what is so feminist about the movie is that because the women talk so openly and honestly

about different models of gender, they always acknowledge that gender is sort of miserable. That gendered arrangements between men and women provide temporary security. The Countess DeLavre will have this amazing moment at the end where she's like she seems like she's happily married for a fifth time and she looks at all the women and she says, isn't it so lovely that we're all settled for now at least?

Right? And she is so aware. They're all aware that it's all bullshit. That the entire system is temporary. It's contingent. It's always being overthrown. And the working class women know it the best. Because when Crystal Allen, while she fights so hard to get her quote unquote meal ticket by marrying this guy, when she ruins it all and it blows up in her face,

how quick she is to say, ah, I guess I'll work at the counter again. She knows that all of these arrangements are temporary. And so at the end of the day, the movie is so unbelievably realistic about how the fantasy at the end of getting back with your husband or whatever is just that. It's a fantasy. And it's temporary. And so I think part of its genius is that it's honest about the fantasy. And the last thing I will say for the moment for the case is that it is one of the rare texts that we could say that this is really patriarchal. But that acknowledges that men are part of that arrangement and that men are also miserable with.

it, right? That, like, that's why I love that conversation with Marianne. Because Marianne's not totally wrong. She's like, Mary, what do you think your husband was going to do? He's now been publicly embarrassed by his infidelity. He has to make the infidelity legitimate. So he's going to do the silliest thing ever, which is what men always do. He's going to get married to this woman. He doesn't even love to make it look legitimate. And she's saying, like, you created the conditions. You were also part of the game. And I think what's important is we live in a moment today where we think that feminism means women are always right. They are always injured by men as opposed to like a radical feminist view in the 70s is like women are injured by men, but women also participate in injuring men and in

creating the conditions where they are injured by men. Well, I think that that is still a facet of modern feminism as well. It's like holding other women to account. Oh, for sure. I don't think it's the popular discourse of feminism. I guess I disagree. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's, I mean, I think my experience has been that men are basically like, their view of feminism today is like everything we do is wrong. Yeah, but men are always wrong.

So that's, I actually can go along with that. I think it's also fair to say that women are also wrong sometimes. No, of course. But that's what I'm saying is like that women, I do think that there is a lot of vital discussion among women in modern feminism holding each other to account and figuring it out. I don't think that there is like a through line of like, oh, we all agree with each other and we have only been injured by men and men cannot possibly be our allies. No, you're totally right. I think, tell me if you agree with this, I don't think that nuance has

been translating to the mass public. I definitely don't think it's translated to the internet. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, when I teach young men, even really progressive men, they have not received the message that there is a nuanced conversation going on within contemporary feminism that includes any of their interests or the idea that they might also be injured and that they might, like, I don't think they've perceived that. I agree, but I guess I, like, a lot of my read of why that is is not necessarily primarily because of how feminists are talking to or about men. It has to do with how feminism is presented to them by other men.

and like I feel like so much of like the, I don't know, I've done like a fair amount of like research and reprinting on the manosphere and how the ideas of feminism are twisted to seem completely exclusionary to men and then having it sold back to like don't even try to talk to women because they hate you. And I don't think that that's true. Totally. Yeah. No, I think that's totally fair. And but I like that the movie, it never really deeply investigates this, but it suggests that men and women are participating mutual. in a quite miserable and unhappy sexual arrangement. Yes, for sure.

That should be changed, but the movie doesn't exactly know how to change it. But it does have the conversation. Totally. Yeah. I would also add that like monogamy culture contributes to a lot of this. And like for some people, monogamy is very restrictive.

And it appears to me that a lot of the characters in this movie men and women alike are non-monogamous. They're not practicing it ethically, but they seem interested in having multiple partners at the same time because almost everyone in this movie is cheating on their spouse. But the expectation at the time was that everyone present to society as though they are monogamous. But if these characters were more open to like, I don't know,

like using older terminology, but like being swingers. Yeah. Like, where some of them kind of like soft R anyways. Oh God, right? Yeah. Well, that's also, it's so sexual.

There's so much sex happening without it being an erotic movie at all. And it does seem like everybody's cheating on everybody and it's kind of commonly known that that happens and divorces happen now. Right, right. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think going off of that was like, thank you for articulating that rooms. It was so good. So I just wanted to lay out the larger. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like for me, this movie is presenting a lot of stereotypes of the time that are, I mean, it is really bizarre watching this like 87 year old movie and seeing like, oh, a lot of this is making a really intense comeback right now, including the like values of marriage and what does it mean and all this stuff. Yeah. But what I, what I think like saves this movie from becoming impossibly dated is you're right. Like women writers and women lend productions at this time had to play ball to be released. And while I do think a lot of stereotypes and stereotypical misogyny are presented, almost all of it is commented upon. Yes. And like the characters are frustrated by it, even if they are playing into it.

That's part of why I find, I think Sylvia's my favorite character. Oh, interesting, yeah. I really appreciate her from a number of levels, but also like she just seems to me someone who, I think baby on the page is like internalized a lot of misogyny and is projecting it back. And it's like presented almost as like she's doing it for fun. Yeah. I think you can really find someone like who's very wounded in her. Yeah. Because she's never, the way she talks about her husband who eventually leaves her for another woman, she's very dismissive of him.

She's like, I don't care. Yeah. Fuck that guy. Blah, blah, blah. She's also like, I gave you my youth. It's resentful. But it's, I think that a lot of the ways, really with the exception of Mary, the ways that the women in this story talk about men, it's not about them.

It's about how it's about survival in an environment that is not designed for their independent survival. So it's like about survival. And it's about how they're perceived by the women around them, which is part of why, like, I kind of feel for Sylvia, where she's not trying to get a. man. She's not trying to keep a man. She is hyper fixated on what the women around her are doing and trying to like win their favor or not. How she like gloms on to crystal after her falling out with Mary feels so telling where it's just like, it's their approval that matters. It's not her

fucking loser husband. But losing her husband affects how women see her. And losing her husband affects her ability to survive. And it's just like, I don't know. Yeah. There's like so much interesting stuff going on that I feel like it's like let me know how you both feel about this but I think that like Mary is the only person in this movie who seems to genuinely have affection for her spouse and the rest is like it's survived because like you're saying Ramsey like how old are you going to survive at this time particularly before I mean and again this is a very white conversation yeah because white women were actively encouraged to not work and it was a shame like and and that was the case for any other racial demographic at the time that are completely ignored by this story,

partially because of the Hays Code, but also if you keep scrolling on Claire Booth's, I mean, I wanted to say, like, she's an incredible figure, but she gets pretty conservative later in her life. She was elected to office. She served in the House of Representatives, like started pro-Rosevelt, then later turns on him. How interesting. Also, groundbreaking. I mean, that's a pretty cliche. That's a pretty cliche arc. Right. Yeah, for a lot of people, for a lot of people in the culture industry.

It's very exact. Yeah, I was like, and we can, whatever, how many people can we think of now? I mean, we can start with J.K. Rowling, the, like, successful woman writer. Enough already. I mean. Evil, evil person pipeline. I know. What is going on?

So not to, like, endorse all of her views because she, to this day, there is, like, I'm seeing, like, a. loose, like conservative women's club that exist to this day, which is pretty diabolical. But anyways, getting back to, I feel like this movie, even though the tagline is, it's all about men. I don't think that's true. I think it is about how women

perceive each other at this time. And I wish that we got to see more of it. I wish that we got to, you know, like it would be I think there is room in this movie to have a better understanding of the working class

women's lives outside of how they perceive the upper class. There's room for a lot of different things. But I don't know. Yeah, I guess if you go with this movie's marketing, it's all about men, but it's just like it is. It just, it clearly isn't. It's about a lot of frustrated women trying to figure out how they're going to survive in a political climate that is designed to leave them reliant on men. Yes. And well, speaking to both of the, stereotypes present in this movie and the rampant whiteness. And to your point, Ramsey, like one of the reasons that this movie, again, looking at it through our modern 2026 lens, the way the women are presented and their interests and their behavior

so much of it is, again, very catty, very gossipy. Women are superficial. They're obsessed with their appearance and their beauty regimens, like all these very stereotypical things, but also we have to remember that most of the characters in this movie are affluent white women who are classist and racist and fatphobic and a number of other things. And the thing is like affluent white women usually are catty and superficial and cruel and harbor a lot of prejudices toward marginalized people. Yeah.

And I know that like there are, you know, you can read deeper into that and you, You know, there is a discussion about like, well, the context behind why these women are so catty is because there is a survival component and because there are so many constraints to how they are able to survive. So they have to sort of game the system or play the game or whatever. Yeah. That I think the movie, you know, a lot of it is like contextual and implicit. There aren't that many explicit conversations about that. And, you know, again, it's 1939. It's whatever.

But I kind of came away from it being like, yeah, we do see a lot of stereotypes about women, but it's a bunch of rich white women. And it feels pretty true to like how, yeah, like how women in this position would have behaved. I don't know. Because I do think like there are moments. Yeah, I'm curious what you think, Gramsie of like, I'm thinking of one specific class moment in the movie that I don't remember. I think it's Edith. there's 140 women in the movie I'm pretty sure it's Edith

it's after what I think because I like I love Rosal and Russell and Russell performances and her physical comedy is just like she's falling in trash she's like the Hillary Duff of her time she is Pratt falling and that I have always loved

that like weird Pilates scene where she's like whipping her legs around and delivering 40 pages of dialogue like it's unreal well and that's okay so this if I if I'm if my premonition is correct, you're going to talk about this, an amazing moment. Yes.

Where she has paid along with her friend Peggy, she has paid for them to have a class, an exercise class that is calisthenics, and she wastes it by gossiping the whole time and then kind of cutting it short. And the woman who's leading the class is like, are you sure you want me to leave? And she's like, yeah, I do. And finally the woman is like, this is such a waste of money. Yeah, she says, like, shut the hell up. She says, if you could relax your muscles from the chin up,

and you're like, ooh, okay. Right, but I do think that it is a moment in which a certain kind of wealth in the United States, like returning to Gilded Age moment, there are women who are watching this wealth being wasted and saying, like, oh, my God, like your emotional and sexual profligacy, like the fact that you guys are all miserable in your marriages and it's all sort of a sham is redoubled in the fact that you guys waste so much money.

Like in the service industry, and that is like shocking to people. But I want to also comment on types and stereotypes, right? Like, stereotypes are not all the same in the sense that some are more pernicious than others. We could say that stereotyping in all forms is pernicious, but the reality is that human beings inhabit types.

And not because we're innately or essentially so. But the problem with stereotypes, right, is that they say, well, this group of people is essentially like this. old black people are like this or old queer people are like this. If you have a different view of typology that says types are socially constructed, and we see them modeled for us the way gender is, right? Like the flamboyant gay man is a type.

And I have inhabited that type. I know a lot of people who have inhabited that. When you watch gay media like looking or fellow travelers, you're like, oh my God, that's that gay guy. That's that gay guy. I know that person, right? I recognize that person. What the movie does that's so great,

I think it drills down less into stereotype, although it's all over the movie, and more into types. It's about the product. There's a reason why there's so many women in the movie because it's multiplying the types of women that you see in a crowd like this. And one of the ways that typology is played out

is that different types are represented by their individual choices of the kinds of psychological, compensatory things they pursue to make up for the failures of marriage. Edith is the one that decides, I'll have an endless number of babies. Oh, yes. And that's a type.

Right? They keep making fun of her because they're just like, oh my God, like another one. She was eight children now? I was like, okay, Catholic coded. Totally. So the idea that like she is the type of woman who compensates for the failures of marriage

to live up to all of its promises by having a lot of babies. Rosalind Russell, Sylvia, compensates by taking everybody down a peg. Right? Like, that is her joy. Yeah, out of clear insecurity,

which I think is like clearly telegraphed in the performance and on the page. Yeah. I found the line I was looking for. It was a line from, again, I'm like one of the older women. I'm not totally sure because she's also covered in cosmetic.

But it's after that moment you were talking about Ramsey where like, yeah, the Pilates or whatever, the exercise instructor is like, all right, I'm going to leave. Yeah. And she's so clueless. And I think like it is a good pastiche of like clueless, like, clueless wealthy white women. Yeah. Where she says, honestly, the class feeling you run into, I'm so sick of paying creatures like that to insult me. Calling a working class woman a creature. And also fully not questioning that she may have been in the wrong.

Like it's just, it's just. And it's kind of fun seeing that played out by actors who are, we know, privileged white women. Yes. Yeah. Totally. Also in that scene because Peggy eventually comes in and starts doing the calisthenics with truly the worst form I've ever seen. Like the form of these.

The way they're like Frankenstining toward the camera. It's so funny. Yeah. It made me laugh. But Peggy comes in. So she's the one who is newly married. She seems to be a bit. naive. And it also seems as though she makes more money than her husband. And her husband

very clearly resents her for it. He makes her give him the money that she earns. He won't let her buy a car with her own money, like all of these things. And she tries to, so she is sort of in a in a different place class-wise than her peers because she has a job. We don't know what it is, I don't think. But she works for her own money. her husband, unlike all these other women, is not wealthy. So she's sort of in a different position in class than her peers. She tries to confide in Sylvia and then later in Mary about this financial situation she has had with her husband. Neither of them really know what to do in response to this. But I also like to speak to your point about types. Like we do see so many different types of, well,

not so many different types, but different types of women. There are various positions in life. There are various perspectives in life. Some of that is informed by class. Some of it is informed by generation and age and experience. Some of, you know, all these different things. And that is one of the things I appreciate about this movie. And I don't know if we want to turn gears to Mary's mother, but I feel like we all have

so much to say about her fascinating. She's major. Because she's one of the older. character, she's an older generation than most of the women who are like palling around together. Yeah. She is very much someone who like recognizes that like men's behavior is often questionable. A lot of them tend to lie and cheat, but she insists that you just have to accept it. So in that way, she's, she's upholding patriarchal expectations and like allowing men

to have the power to be shitty and to display all this horrible behavior. She's just like, that's how we have to survive. Don't even say anything about it. Don't do anything about it. Just accept it. Boys will be boys. And also reveals, I mean, yeah, that scene really always kind of stops me in my tracks. Because it also reveals that, like, it comes from a place of, like, a very personal place

because she experienced it. Yeah. Yeah. And that her daughter had no idea as ever. very much an adult. I just, that seems so much. It's so weird to watch now because I think that, you know, while it is cool to see Norma Shera's character stand up to her mother about that,

because it is clearly ideas that need to be pushed back on and exist in a larger conversation, but there is like a level of like pragmatism that a lot of this movie talks about that I think is, again, like you've both referenced at this point, there is no clear solution, but it's interesting. I'm like, I don't know if it's my, I don't know how to feel about it, but I definitely notice that there is this element of like Mary acts on her righteous anger and her righteous feeling disrespected.

And she acts on her personal politics and her personal values. And she suffers for it. And that is like a very, I think that that's something we don't often see in movies because movies are meant to show you that following your heart can only achieve a positive and uncomplicated result. This does not achieve a positive and uncomplicated result. She's very like, I mean, she finds, I like that we see her find herself over time, but it is not immediate. I still don't think she should go back to Stephen at the end. But I think that it is interesting watching her Reno narrative and watching the 18 months later narrative where you see her like learning.

to be okay, but the world is judging her for it. And that is, like, I think of more realistic view of people whose, you know, personal politics and values don't align with their culture acting on them. Like, it is a long and difficult road. And I appreciate that her mother is able to accept that, even if she doesn't completely agree with it. I was reminded, I don't know, like my parents like my it's it's just interesting that to know that that that line of thinking doesn't go away especially when it comes to like how do you manage this situation when there's children involved and I really love there's a line with Mary um that feels very just reminiscent of many divorces including my parents where it's like um she says something like well what good is it going to do little

mary if she grows up in this like miserable household that is full of tension and unresolved conflict. What is the point of that? Yeah. And she's right. And also that doesn't mean that this divorce isn't going to be very difficult and complicated for everybody. And I just like, especially in the, in like the context of like a pretty fast-paced talky comedy to have complicated ideas like that presented with the almost like realism of like, and we don't know how to resolve it. It's part of why I find the

ending so like, ooh, like even if there was a way under the Hayes code for, for the ending to be more ambiguous than it is. Whatever. It was 87 years ago, I get it. It's been 84 years. It's been, and then some. But, but like, it's just, it is really interesting to see these cyclical conversations that exist among women and within feminism presented so clearly.

Yeah. Yeah, because, I mean, if you think about that conversation, the part of it that is boys will be boys is when she says this is how men resolve their unhappiness women do it by changing their hair or remodeling their house so that part is essentialist right

she's saying well women have a way of doing it men have a way of doing it men be like women be like yeah yeah but the underlying message is actually way more complex she's saying men and women are equal in the fact that they're existentially both unhappy like that is such a a powerful thing.

And all I could think of when I rewatched it, if you put it in the current moment, is like if you think about the, you know, the brilliant psychotherapist as there Perel, who writes all about how like we now have in our current era this obsession with the idea that if someone cheats on you, it should destroy the whole relationship and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she says that's a completely new paradigm. The idea that people have affairs and that that's basically normalized, was completely, like, that was common knowledge, you know, before this era,

because the idea was security mattered more than sexual fidelity, right? That having a lot, like, right, like, the mom says, it matters who you end up, like, who's with you at the end. Right. Right. And Perel is not saying the earlier model is good and the new model is bad. She's saying each one of them are good and bad in their own ways. And she says one of the bad parts of the contemporary model is that we place such a premium

on sexual fidelity. that if someone cheats on you, there's no possibility for repair. It's not seen as the potential for the beginning of a new chapter of the relationship. And there is no attempt to understand why someone cheated. And I think that there's an amazing thing that the movie is saying that is like, maybe it's worth exploring that men do these things because they're unhappy. And women also do things because they're unhappy. The movie can't accept the idea that women also cheat,

that women also have a fair. Well, but Crystal, you know, like Crystal, I think is the character with that. You're right. I take that back. And Miriam. It's pretty accepted that Miriam does so. Yeah. You're so right.

It is interesting, though. Yeah. I mean, if we start talking about the politics of cheating, we'll be here all night long. Sure. But like, it is interesting how this movie approaches it. Because I don't know. Like, in my perspective, the way that cheating is handled culturally is like almost are relevant to the point where, like, it's, it's culturally relevant, but it's like, it just

depends on the people involved, right? Like, it's just like, there are some people who can, whatever, it's all circumstantial. Yeah. And for Mary, she can't tolerate it, you know, and that's, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she acts on that. And then there are relationships that can withstand that, can, like, handle that stress test. But, yeah, I don't know. It is, like, you're totally right, like that that can of worms is opened and it's an unresolvable can of worms. Oh, totally. And like that the movie doesn't pretend. I mean, again, the ending kind of feels like, nope.

I guess like that's part of why it's an idea introduced in this fascinating way by her mom in a way that is clearly personal and a way that is clearly pragmatic and a way that she doesn't want to see her daughter lose the security that she has. So it's almost like, you know, love isn't enough, but it's nice. 1939, so what are you going to do? It's an interesting idea I present, but then I feel like the end of the movie kind of overvalidates it by, I don't know. I guess the way that this movie is in conversation with like first wave feminism is interesting because obviously like first way of feminism was deeply racist and homophobic, like as is to some degree every way of feminism. But with regards to like marriage, first way of feminism did accomplish a lot in terms of like pushing. like pushing back on the idea that a man is essential to survival. And I feel like the movies that

we see in the years following women getting the vote are trying to interact with that idea while subtly being like, but you should still probably be married, you know, like that. And that's very much the ending. And let's add that they need to for economic reasons. I mean, something we haven't talked about is like the movie, it very honestly dramatizes the fact that this dysfunctional sexual arrangement between men and women that we call heterosexuality feeds our economy. Yes. Like it is absolutely important. The fact that women respond to feeling left alone, feeling undesirable, unloved, that they go

and spend tons of money on clothes, that they buy tons of things for the house, that they travel, that they go on vacation, the idea that like this arrangement keeps people in their place and keeps the economy running. Reno is basically, like, funded by the fact that tons of women go there and pay money to be in these, like, sort of halfway houses and all of this stuff. So I think that the movie is really honest about the fact that heterosexuality also feeds the economy. And I think it's an interesting historical context to think that the movie is right on the cusp of the moment when millions of American women will enter the workforce as part of the World War II effort.

Right. And they will end at the end of that, many of them will end up like Peggy, which is that they will be making their own money and they will start to be like, do I really want to go back? Right. The government has to go through a massive cultural effort. Yeah. To literally fund making people go back into the suburban. Like the GI Bill is the government saying we will pay you a check and pay for you to go to school and buy a house if you get married and if women stop working. Like that's the payoff. Yeah. Wait, so I think like the movie is at the cusp of that moment. Yeah, I don't, I, it's, it is such a weird historical moment for this movie to come out.

But it's so interesting. And like, yeah, unfortunately, because we're living in love fucking oraboras, like, it feels very relevant to a lot of stuff that we're talking about now where it's like, we have significant government forces trying to force marriage back upon women force comp, comp, head ideals and, and punish people. who resist that. And I don't know. It is interesting having a character like Mary who's pushing back on it. But the moral, I mean, the last words out of her mouth are like, I don't have time for pride. I'm in love. And you're like, no. Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But having that, like we've been talking about, like having that sort of like challenged by the working class girls where there is still, even though Mary's come so far as a person, there's always going to be sort of this baseline privileged naivete about her worldview. She can afford to, you know, be doing this.

Crystal is like survival-wise in this world, I have to go back to work if I, you know, and working sucks ass. And there's not a lot of like fun, interesting jobs available to women at this time. And so like, I don't know. I just, I have a lot of, I mean, Crystal is so, it's also just fun watching like a Joan Crawford villain character. Oh, sure. because she's just so good at being a bitch. She's like wicked.

She's like wickedness. The eyebrows. And it's just like amazing. I know. The fact that it's painted on is also kind of Hollywood saying like she's inauthentic. Her and Rosal and Russell. She paints on her eyebrows. Yeah.

Her and Rosal and Russell and Russell and anytime they're together on screen, I'm like, woohoo. It's just I love them. But yeah, like that, you know, she has to sort of go back. But it doesn't feel like, I don't know. No, like by the end of the movie, it almost feels like this weird handshake between the two women. Where she, like, it's not, they're never going to be friends. Like, why the hell would they be?

But it's almost like, all right, you in this round. We play the game. See you next time, bitch. Like, it's kind of, I don't know. And is that misogynist? Yeah. But there's, but we have, I don't know, it's just such a, it's such a beefy little text. It's also honest in a way.

Yeah. Right. Because it's like the world is not going. to repair in their favor anytime soon. So chances are we will be encountering this issue again until the world is different. Totally. Well, to me, there are three major reasons why the ending is so frustrating. One is that for a while, the movie seems to be on a trajectory where we think it's going to end with Mary, like fully realizing and coming to terms and being content with the decision she has made to leave her husband and not settle for a man who is dishonest and doesn't

meet her emotional needs. But then she goes back with him after he realizes that his current wife is cheating on him. So that's reason number one where there's a certain trajectory, a certain sort of expectation that the movie starts to set up for the audience. And then it's like just kidding, nope, never mind. Number two, and this is kind of part of this, but Stephen has done nothing to redeem himself. That's true. Earn her back or anything like that. It's just that he's gotten a taste of his own medicine.

He's been cheated on, and now he knows how it feels, so he'll go back with his first wife. And you're just like, that's not how that works. There is an element of like, he started it. She was not doing anything wrong. She was driving horses. whatever. She was doing what she was, quote, quote, supposed to do, which is also, I don't know, just like such a, I, whatever, my dad's dead. It's fine. Like my, but like, listening to how my mom processed infidelity within their relationship, it was like, not dissimilar

to marry. I mean, we didn't have fucking horses. We were poor. But the idea of like, I was doing all of the right things. How could this have possibly happened to me? And like, it's, it's like, it's the disappointment and anger of being cheated on, but it's also the like, I mean, questioning the entire view of the world where it's like, you've done everything right and your worst case scenario still happens. So what now? And I feel like, yeah, the ending does not really pay off on that because it's like, oh, she goes on this whole journey of self-discovery. She seems basically happy. And then she just goes back to where she was. Yeah, like the arc that the movie seems like it was setting up for her is just like completely abandoned. And again, Hollywood movies of this era had to adhere to the restrictions of the Hays Code, which was all about promoting, you know, family values, aka conservative Christian American values. Yeah. But it still makes for a frustrating conclusion to this narrative. And then the third reason that I find this ending to be frustrating is that Mary cooks up this little scheme where she exposes Crystal for having an affair.

And this happens at the expense of her friend, the countess, who is humiliated. She's devastated. And Mary does not seem to give a single shit that she hurt her friend. I think it's because Mary wants to exercise a degree of wickedness that she's never been able to. Right. Like the movie allows her this because she's been jilted. But like the countess catches a serious stray. Yeah.

I didn't even, I honestly hadn't really. fully connected that because the ending moves so fast. Totally. Yeah, it really does. But yeah, I'm just, like, my second watch, I was like, oh my God. Like, the countess is devastated. She's crying. She's been publicly humiliated.

Yes. And Mary's just like, it doesn't matter. I have my husband back. It's like she'll take one for the team. Yeah. Right. Right. But it's like, countess has, I don't know.

Like, I really like the countess, Lucy, like older, wiser women who are presented as types, but who are also just fundamentally want to be supportive to the younger women going through what they've already been through. And so it's like that in that specifically like in that context, that is so like they should be respect your elders, Norma Shearer. Yeah. Caitlin and Jamie jumping in with a quick pickup because we. Future us. Future us here. We ran out of time during our recording with Ramsey, but we just wanted to jump in here with just a quick pickup to talk briefly about a character named Lulu. So basically we see a character at the department store where Crystal works.

I believe it's one of Crystal's colleagues who makes a racist joke about this character, Lulu, who we see very briefly in a different scene, played by Butterfly McQueen. She, I believe, plays a maid who works for Crystal. Which I believe is true, but the fact that we have to guess tells you how much we know about this character. Precisely. And Butterfly McQueen was typecast very often as a maid, the way that for many, many years in Hollywood, black women were typecast in surface roles, black actors in general were very limited. And this same year, Butterfly McQueen famously played an enslaved character in

and gone with the wind. Yes, exactly. So I just wanted to share a quote from her that is relevant to her character in this movie because she says, quote, I didn't mind playing a maid the first time because I thought that was how you got into the business. But after I did the same thing over and over, I resented it. I didn't mind being funny, but I didn't like being stupid, unquote. As far as she's presented in this movie, I've, I mean,

We only see her in that very brief scene, and then we see white characters say racist things about her. And that's really just all we get. And unfortunately, this is like nowhere near. Again, it's like just speaking to Butterfly McQueen's 1939. This is nowhere near the most offensive way that this actor has been portrayed in this calendar year. So just again, to speak to it. And this is also still while the Hayes Code is in effect and it will be for me. years to come, which just inherently limited the roles that were available to black actors,

even if creatives wanted to provide better roles, which is, I mean, we could do a doctoral thesis worth of discussion about that, but Phil's important to reference here. Absolutely. So yeah, we just wanted to call attention to that and shout out butterfly McQueen. And then the last thing, and very seamlessly, we're jumping back into the episode, is to examine whether or not this movie passes the Bechdel test. Because there is a discussion to be had around it. It does. I think it does, too. It is mostly women talking about men.

I would say probably 90% of the conversations are women talking about men. However, there are short exchanges where women talk about performance. fume, dresses, hair, skin care, nail polish. Well, I also, I'll push back you a little more. I think that there are a number of conversations in this movie that are about how women perceive each other. Yeah. It is not the majority of the movie, but it is enough of it that I feel like I'm officially

against the tagline of the movie. It's not all about men. It is a lot about men, but it's not all about men. That's fair. Yeah. I actually agree with you both. I think that's exactly right. I also think, you know, the women, it's very meta.

The women talk about not just men, but their relationship to the problem of relating to men. Yeah. Like, right? Like that, I think is so interesting. I mean, the one thing I wanted to say in this episode also was like, the movie that this reminds me of the most is the boys in the band from 1970. Oh, I've never seen that.

It's astonishing movie. It's the first movie with all out gay men as main characters. The majority of the cast are gay men. There's two straight men in it. They're not straight in the movie, but they're straight in real life. And, you know, it was first also a play on Broadway. It ran for like a thousand shows sold out. And what's amazing is it has very similar structure that it is like about a group of gay men living in New York,

most of whom are upper middle class, not rich at all. Most of them work, but they're middle, middle upper class. And it's them screaming at each other for an entire evening about their experiences of homophobia. Wow. And so one could argue that it's a group of men talking about men. But really what they're doing, I have a whole chapter of my second book about the boys. That'll happen. And I'm obsessed with it.

They are talking about their emotional and effective relationship to the problem of male desire. Right? Like they're just like, desiring men puts us in this marginalized position, but also sort of is like sexy and makes life also kind of a nightmare because men treat each other like garbage. And like there's so much internalized homophobia. And it's them working that out. And they do it in a way that's very vicious towards each other. And what I love about the movie is it was panned in its moment as in as homophobic, as stereotypes and blah, blah, blah. And one of the things I argue in my work is like, but the G.

of the movie is that it's honest about the fact that when people who've been marginalized first start to unpack the depth of their oppression, they are going to be mean to each other. Like, it's going

to bring up so much unresolved rage that cannot be adequately projected onto the right sources, that they will do it to each other. And that's honest. And expecting people from jump to be super nice while they're doing that, right, is unrealistic.

And I love that the movie basically says, like there's a great moment at the end where after this one friend has basically like annihilated everybody, and he gets socially punished by his friends for it. And in the last moment, one of his best friends looks at him and like, just nails him to the wall. Like, just is like you, how you have behaved tonight is so disgusting. And then at the end of it is like, I'll call you tomorrow.

Oh. Right? Like, yeah. There's this amazing. Like, we know. And I think the women is an earlier version of this that is about women trying to relieve themselves of the amount of rage, irritation, and frustration they feel towards the way that men are treating them.

And they take it out on each other. But they also have a very thick skin. And their ability to survive it and to also sort of like, be like, okay, whatever, I forgive you. You know, like, I guess I'll see it. See you tomorrow. Right. There is this sense that that, I think, is the meat of the.

movie and I think the idea that it ends with her returning, the last thing I'll say about the end, I think it's fair to say there's enough of an intelligent audience who watch that movie and we're like, oh, that's ridiculous, but I love the movie. Yeah. Right? Who can see the ending as ridiculous. It is ridiculous. As ridiculous as fantasy.

Yes. And also, like, I think what it had to be to be released in the time it came out. Correct. Yeah. Totally. I mean, you could do a super cut. from this movie that's just all the lines of dialogue where women are saying something like men cannot be trusted men only want one thing men you're living in a fool's paradise across

generations across class that super cut would be like 10 minutes long like there are so many examples of this and so i you know we we we joke on the podcast sometimes that it does pass the bectal test when women are like shit talking men sure yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this is a movie where you could actually really make that argument. Because to some extent, it's like in the period you're writing and releasing it into, what can you get away with? And I think that this movie is doing almost everything it can. Not quite, but more than most movies and more than most popular movies at this time could to get away with a lot of stuff that even almost 100 years later, you're like, oh, that was a good one.

Totally. It's really amazing. The Bechdel test is one thing, but what about the world's only perfect media metric, which is the Bexel-Cast nipple scale? The Nipple scale where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. Now, here's the thing with this movie. To me, the Bechtel-Cast Nipple Scale is such a modern metric, and to apply it to a movie that's almost 90 years old, I just, what I'm, saying is I might, I might refrain from rating on the nipple scale because I have no freaking idea. Well, I will, I will, I will, whether we rate it or not. Yeah. I'm not overly attached to

giving it a rating. You know, Jennifer Nash, famous black feminist, she says, you know, in her book, Black feminism, we imagine. She's like, one of the problems with intersectional thought is that it has centered race so intensely that it leaves out of, you know, that it leaves out of, you the question of like, can you do an intersectional read where race is not the dominant category, right? And in this movie, race is everywhere without being talked about, in terms of whiteness. But blackness is not that which was centered or other forms of racialization. And yet it intersects age and class so intensely. Those two, you guys talked about the intergenerational competition. There's three generations.

of women, the grandmothers, the mothers, and the daughters, basically. And I think that class is everywhere. So I think whether you rate it or not, it is a deeply intersectional film. It's just not intersectional in the way that we associate with its origins of black feminist thought because it does not centralize race and or blackness specifically as a primary vector of cultural analysis. Which so few movies from this era did. Totally.

which is why it's like it's like it's hard to apply this scale yeah exactly yeah so well then we can we can we can we can say uh we're gonna forgo it and if you want to know what we think we just recorded over two hours about what we think yeah yeah yeah yeah just rewind and listen again yeah yeah so with that ramsie thank you so much for oh my pleasure this is such a gift thank you for having me come back for i would love it whatever you want okay there's a there's a million ideas i have we could totally yeah oh yeah yeah Perfect. Where can people follow your work, check out your writing, plug anything you'd like to plug? So ramsiefulaws.com is a phenomenal resource. I have all of my published essays available, open source for people there. I have links to all my books, to the special issues that I have edited. And I also have information there about my yearly or annual courses at the Esselin Institute. The Esselin Institute is an extraordinary world-famous consciousness expansion retreat on the edge of Big Sur, California. It's one of the most beautiful, miraculous places you could go.

And every year I offer a five-day seminar where I kind of take a lot of the ideas from my scholarly work and I package them in a wellness model. I kind of talk about how feminist thought can also benefit reducing your anxiety. Wow. And actually like changing your relationship to the world. So I'm teaching a seminar in June called the thrill of groundlessness, flowing through life without absolutes. People can find information about that on my website. Yeah. See you there.

That's so cool. Take a flow. It's such a beautiful environment. We're going to read a little short excerpts from different texts and we're going to watch movies. We're going to talk about them. And it's an amazing place. And I'm also a columnist for film quarterly where I write a columnist. every three to six months about a different media form.

I just published a piece about Andor. Amazing show. Love it so much. Revolutionary show. And I will be writing my next piece about heated rivalry. And so you can find all of that on my website. Hearts will be broken. I can't wait.

Hearts got to be broken. Listen, sometimes we got to get out of that fantasy. I'm going to be the Killjoy. I'm going to be Caitlin in that essay. Love it. Brave. Frames. Oh, a blessing.

I'm nerd from the future on Instagram. Yes. Perfect. Check that out. Listeners. And you can find us in all the normal places, which is really just two places. You can find us on our Patreon, aka Matrion, where for $5 a month, you can get access to two new episodes a month on a theme of your choosing with me and Caitlin, as well as back catalog going back like eight years. So a couple hundred episodes for your enjoyment, all for $5 a month.

A price that we might add has never ever changed. What a damn good special. Damn good. With that, should we all? all get on a train to Reno and drink a bunch of champagne. Oh, definitely. That sounds perfect. Honey, let's divorce from patriarchy.

Let's get a divorce from the patriarchy. Bye. Bye. The Bechtelcast is a production of IHeart Media, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtenen. And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them?

That's me. And our logo and merch and all of our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus, ever heard of her? Oh my God. And our theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan. With vocals by Catherine Voskrasinski. Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree slash Bechtelcast. Hi, it's Joe Interesting, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today,

I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast, starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Ready for a different take on Formula One? Look no further than No Grip, a new podcast tackling the culture of motor racing's most coveted series.

Join me, Lily Herman, as we dive into the under-explored pockets of F1, including the astrology of the current grid, the story of the sports most consequential driver strike and plenty of other mishaps, scandals, and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent, dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to No Grip on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security,

one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.