The Bechdel Cast - Toy Story with Sadie Dupuis

Episode Date: June 20, 2019

When no one is around, Jamie and Caitlin come to life to discuss Toy Story with special guest Sadie Dupuis! Recorded live at Good Good Comedy Theater in Philadelphia and The Rockwell with the Women in Comedy Festival in Boston!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @sad13 on Twitter.  While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. That's right. The challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season, y'all. And we are coming along for the ride. Woohoo! That would be me, Devin Simone.

And then there's me, Davon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Join us as we break down each episode, interview challengers, and take you behind the scenes of this iconic season.

Listen to MTV's official Challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Joe Gatto. I'm Steve Byrne. We are Two Cool Moms. We certainly are. And guess where we could find us now? Oh, I don't know. The iHeart Podcast Network?

That's right. We're an official iHeart podcast, and I'm super excited about it. I am too. I thought Two Cool Moms was such a fun podcast, but now it's even more funner and cooler and heartier. That's right. It's more iHeartier. I knew it.

Check your heart rate. We're here at iHeart. Yeah, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts or on the iHeart Radio app. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bechtel cast. Wow, here we are. My name is Jamie. And my name is Caitlin.

And what you're about to hear is a bit of a Frankenstein of an episode about the movie Toy Story. Ever heard of it? That's right, because we recorded two different live shows about the same movie about toy story on our most recent east coast tour one was in philadelphia at good good comedy theater and one was at the rockwell as a part of the women in comedy festival in boston with our wonderful guest speedy ortiz's sadie dupree so uh thank you to everyone who came to those shows. And I think we've got the best of both, to quote my Lord and Savior Hannah Montana, contained in today's episode. Yes.

So enjoy that. But before we get to it, we just have a few things to plug. Hot plugs. Speaking of live shows, we've got another one right here in sunny Los Angeles. Yes, we are going to be covering one of my favorite movies, Anastasia 1998, with Anna Saragina at the Ruby on July 13th. And it's your birthday show. It's my birthday show. And it's also our last LA Live Bechtel cast for several months.

So if you've been thinking about coming to a show and haven't done it yet, this is the one to come to because it'll be a couple months before we're back. And why is that? Well, gee whiz, tell me. Well, bitch, I'll tell you. We're going to be in Europe for a bit of the summer. I'm going to be bringing my show Boss Whom Is Girl to London and then Edinburgh Fringe Festival. You're doing a whole dang month at Edinburgh.

Doing every damn night for a whole month. So if you live there or you know anyone who lives there, please make them come to the show. I don't know anyone there. And that's what like first of august through the 26th or something like that so i'll be in london doing the show on july 27th and 28th at the bill murray yikes in london so and that's only five pounds to attend five pounds five pounds very affordable so so please come there'll only be two london shows and then i'll be in edinburgh from july 31st to august 26th every damn night at 10

45 p.m at pleasant's baby grand except for august 12th so don't come on that and my actual birthday is august 18th so definitely come to that that's the's the day to come. That's the one. And that's the European tea for me. Well, guess what, listeners? I will also be in Europe around this time. What if I didn't know? I was like, oh, what? I am joining up with Jamie in Edinburgh toward the end of August. I'm going to be doing some stand-up shows at fringe uh i'm doing

some shows in london and who knows keep your eyes peeled for perhaps another live show perhaps we're in talks perhaps if you listen to this podcast and you may want to you know see us live in a particular city that may be called london but for the moment you know just get tickets to everything to be safe right and keep checking our social medias and our website bechdelcast.com and click on the live tab because we will put any and all show dates including live Bechtel cast if there ever were to be one of those yes and then also Jamie's shows my shows all the the info will be there so we'll see you in LA in July we'll see you in Europe in August and we'll see you right now at our live Toy Story episode

wow we take you there to infinity and beyond minimum are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the beck del cay what the fuck guys who iced us oh my god mike's black cherry lemonade that's a flavor. That's in my top six or seven. Yeah. I'm sorry. There's more than... There's at least ten. Blood Orange is number one, but that doesn't come in bottles.

Anyways. Hey, welcome to the Bechdel cast. Thanks for coming. What's up? Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited. We're back at the Women in Comedy Festival. Yes, we are.

It's the best. We're in Boston. We've back at the Women in Comedy Festival. Yes, we are. It's the best. We're in Boston. We've got the hometown advantage. Yeah. Yes. Such a strange mix of people from all phases of my life here tonight. My divorced parents are here together. Yeah.

Well, the Women in Comedy Festival is special to us for a number of reasons. But it was also, I believe, our first ever live Bechdelcast show was at the Women in Comedy Festival is special to us for a number of reasons, but it was also I believe our first ever live Bechdel cast show was at the Women in Comedy Festival two years ago. It was. And then 20 people came and no one knew where they were. So

clap if you have listened to the Bechdel cast before. Yeah. Okay. That was the free applause section. Now, the question we're curious about, clap just as enthusiastically if you have never listened to the show before and were brought here by a friend.

Wow. Oh, cool. Okay, cool. So we will give you the rundown on what to expect. So our podcast is a feminist movie podcast where we examine the representation of women in movies.

Not that good. And we use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point to initiate that conversation. And the Bechdel test is the media test invented by cartoonist Alison Bechdel that requires that in any piece of media

there be pirate. There are two female identifying characters with names who speak to each other about something other than a man. Sounds like it should be easy.

But? But patriarchy is a thing. But the movie we're talking about tonight. So we're super psyched to be here and I'm really, really happy to bring out our guest. She is a writer,

a poet. She is the guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the rock and roll ever heard of it? The rock band Speedy Ortiz. It's Sadie Dupuis. Yay!

Hello. Welcome. Hi. Thanks for being here. Thank you for being here. Boston. The city where dreams sometimes come half true and then you leave. That sums it up for me too. I love it. Love that about here. So we're talking about Toy Story today. By round of applause, has anyone not seen the movie Toy Story? Ooh.

Yes. One person. Brave. Okay. Bravely applauded. Okay, great. So we picked a good movie. Yeah, no, I really, I always love the noise that the person who hasn't seen the movie chooses to make because it just is very,

there is a cowardly way to do it and a not cowardly way to do it. No, you owned it. Yeah, I loved, you were like, yeah, fuck that. So Sadie, tell us about your history, your relationship with the movie Toy Story. Yeah, I saw it in theaters. I think I'm probably the same age as the kids in Toy Story.

Okay. So I'm probably the same age as the kids in Toy Story. So I'm like the target demographic for buying a Mr. Potato Head in 1995. Loved the Randy Newman songs. Have gone to see the subsequent Toy Stories in theaters, but I don't think I've ever repeat watched any of them until last night. Jamie, what about you? I've seen it a million times the first time i saw it i don't know if i was fully forming memories yet i feel like those are the kind of movies that fuck with your head the most like the ones that you don't even remember seeing for the first time

and then you're like oh i internalized whatever fucked up thing happened in that one but yeah no i mean i i love all it's not my favorite pixar movie because i'm a monsters incorporated stan but i mean i mean i feel like i i'm just as attached to it as as any kid it's yeah it's good what's your history with it i guess i would have been nine when it came out so i I saw it right away. Grew up with it, watched it quite a bit. Love Toy Story 3. I've never cried harder in my life except for the beginning of Paddington 1 and the end of Paddington 2.

Toy Story 3, like in any other Disney movie, putting characters in a trash compactor about to die a fiery hell death would... I mean, in Toy Story, I feel like you're so emotionally attached that it's really sad. But in any other, like,

underthought Disney franchise, it would be kind of funny. Like, if Beauty and the Beast were in a trash compactor about to be lit on fire, I'd kind of be like, maybe go for it. So yeah, should we just jump in with the recap? Let's do the recap.

Okay, so we meet Andy. He is a young boy who loves playing with toys. He's very original. His favorite toy is Woody the cowboy. Yeah. And then we meet various of Andy's other toys, Slinky, Rex, Bo Peep, Mr. Potato Head. Ham.

Ham. Ham. I like ham. He's got all male toys except for a piece of his lamp, which I never realized watching this movie before. That Bo Peep is... How does she detach? She would shatter, right?

Like those three sheep are stuck together. Why is she not on that lamp? And then, yeah, and then it's like she's porcelain because like, well, she's fragile and delicate. They can't get down from the nightstand. That's a problem I always have.

God. Relatable. And then we learn that all of these toys are alive. They are sentient. They have more complex emotions than I do. That scene is still so fun. I don't know. Obviously, I know that the toys come to life.

Yeah. Right? But I sort of forgot. And then the moment where he shuts the door, and then Tom Hanks is like, hello? Well, because the first scene, they're getting battered around violently, like lifeless toys.

Yeah. And then suddenly, Potato Head's like, no more toddlers. Does that hurt them? I think it must. It must. On an emotional level, at least. Well, right.

I was like, they can't bruise, but they do hurt. Do they have a nervous system? No. For sure, no. But they have cognition. Like, this... How do you have a brain, but not a... system? No. For sure, no. They have cognition. How do you have a brain but not a nerve?

It's fine. I just have a lot of questions about the toys. Okay. So in a week from the day that we opened the story, we learned that Andy's family is moving but today is andy's birthday party which is concerning because all the toys are worried that andy will receive gifts that are other toys that will be cooler and that will replace the existing toys yeah and that like that whole like line of thinking i feel like just generated a whole generation of child hoarders right because in theory sharing

is good and like giving your toys away to someone else is in theory nice right but in this universe it makes the cowgirls sing a really sad song about you in the second movie yes but the toys are sitting there we've've got these like G.I. Joe stand-ins. I think they're called Combat Carl's. They're spying every toy that comes in on the birthday party. And the toys upstairs are like judging what comes in.

Potato Head's like, someone brings like bed sheets or something. And he's like seven years old. Who brought bed sheets to his birthday party? Yeah, that goes underexplored. Unless they're Buzz Lightyear bed sheets. Which we do see Andy having a new bed spread that is Buzz Lightyear.

So maybe that's it. But he changes his whole bed and the decor of his room a week before they move? I don't think so. That's true. Yeah. What mother would allow it? Mom's just doing whatever it takes week before they move? I don't think so. That's true. What mother would allow it? Mom's just doing whatever it takes to get through that move

with less crying children. Yeah. So everything seems fine at first during the birthday party, but then a surprise gift comes out. It turns out that it's a Buzz Lightyear figure. See, I like my version of the twist, which is that Tom Hanks peeks over the bed

and he's like, oh my God, it's Tim Allen, a Republican! And he gets really freaked out politically. Well, because there is what feels like a pretty complex power structure within the toy community. It's like a dictatorship. It is. No one elected woody he's just the leader because he's andy's favorite toy there should be a democratic election what

are they doing well they set woody up in the opening scenes as this gregarious boss of all the toys he's like if michael scott never fucked. But as soon as there's competition, Woody gets really sour. Yeah. And I guess the original direction of Toy Story was for Woody to be like a bully villain. They had Joss Whedon like doctor the script because Woody was too mean. And yet he is still very mean. He's a jerk. He still attempts a murder.

More than the movie. Right. And then probably casting Tom Hanks, they're just like, no one will notice. No one will remember the murder. I didn't. Well, Tom Hanks was still, when they cast him, he was like not really quite famous yet.

Like Forrest Gump came out after he'd already been cast. So he was like a relative unknown. Right, because this was like a movie that- This is 91 that they cast him right yeah because computer here i'm about to say something very intelligent computer movie take a long time wow thank you had no idea it just comes out of sometimes. But do you have a master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University? I don't like to bring it up.

So Buzz Lightyear shows up on the scene. He's this space ranger doll. And Woody goes and talks to him. And Buzz does not realize that he is a toy. He thinks he's like a real space ranger. And then the other toys are like immediately very impressed with Buzz. Bo Peep is horny, although that is her just...

That's her resting face. Bo Peep in this movie, like first of all, and we'll like really get into this later, she's the only female character really that like or the one who appears on screen the longest even though no woman in this movie has narrative impact but the way she talks it's like so horny that you don't really know what she's saying she like it sounds like she reminds me of jessica Rabbit if she were drawn good. Right, like a chaster.

Yeah. It sounds like her mouth never fully closes. You know, she's like, oh, I just want to hear. I'm just a couple of blocks away. Which is a funny pun. It's a good pun. Because we see some of those like toy blocks. I wouldn't get it. A really hilarious joke probably from Joss Whedon. So all the toys are obsessed with Buzz and so is Andy.

And it feels to Woody as though Andy might be replacing him with Buzz. So he gets worried. Then the whole movie just turns into like a toy dick measuring contest basically. Yeah. Because it's like I have wings that become immediately erect.

Woody's like I'm flaccid. He's like fingering his little string behind his back. Insecure. He's like why is string little string behind his back, insecure. He's like, why is string not hard? Just dangling behind me. Man, emasculating. Then meanwhile, we meet Sid, the scary neighbor. Okay, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He is the neighbor boy who tortures toys for fun. Is he torturingure or just... Is he torturing them or just building? Yeah, he's a maker. Sorry to double team you. Sid could go to Harvard on an independent study. I mean, he is creative. We have to give him that.

He does have a sign in his bedroom that says, I heart explosives, which is concerning it was literally when i saw that like the aesthetic of his room like the glowy poster i was like i've fucked future that guy for sure he's got like a fake marilyn manson poster it says like rocker dude or something like that okay so we meet sid and then andy's mom's like let's go to Pizza Planet Andy and he's like okay and she's like you can only bring one toy and Woody knows that Andy's gonna pick Buzz so he premeditates a crime okay the way that premeditation is shown though it's like in one

shot and you just see Woody look at Buzz look at a window and go hmm which is i guess premeditation but then he sends the rc car flying across the windowsill without its consent he yeah true not a lot making him an accessory to his crime not fair to the car right and then in his attempt to just like knock him under the bed, he accidentally knocks him out of the window. And all the other toys are like, oh my god, Woody, you're a murderer. Right. And he's like, it was an accident.

And we know. We're like, Woody, you are a murderer. Yeah. Mr. Potato Head pulls out an undercover cop badge and is like, I've been trailing you for years. It's also like, I think the Etch-a-Sketch at that point sketches a noose. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Etch-a-Sketch, when other people are involved, like Woody's, in the beginning there's this gag where Woody's like, draw with the Etch-a-Sketch and Etch-a-Sketch does a pistol. Yeah. Potato Head has him do a noose. When Etch-a-Sketch is of his own potato head has him do a noose when etch-a-sketch is of his own volition he's drawing buzz fan pictures fan art which is cute which is not good

like it looks like okay i'm sorry he's just am i wrong his only other options are to draw weapons of death let etch-a-sketch do his buzz fan art even though it's bad just don't understand why he's you like he's a good or sorry to gender etch-a-sketch yeah don't gender etch-a-sketch i did it first i did it first i mean all of andy's toys are coded male so i think it's you know except for troll and etch-a-sketch true so this whole accident happens or that's what like woody is trying to convince the toys uh that it was an accident um so now andy has to take woody to pizza planet but buzz like manages to hitch a ride along they get in a little scuffle and they get left behind right but then they make it to pizza planet and then before woody and buzz can get back to andy sid the scary neighbor

boy part about the aliens oh he climbs into the little claw and then the aliens are there and we're like that's what we go that's what i show up for the little alien scene really i'm like i can't wait till this is over oh i love it it's so annoying i love it there i feel like the the aliens are like a prototype for what the minions would later become it like looks great on a lunchbox they basically say the same thing except i think that maybe like the aliens were too christ complexy to to get their own franchise. Because I forgot they were like, the claw is God. I was like, I have been chosen, I love it so much. The minions are like lawless, but,

the minions are wild, and also I love them. They're so, they're cute. We're gonna do, can we do Minions Month on the Patreon? No. For my birthday. Oh, in August I get to choose. Minions August would be fun. That sounds horrible.

There's no, and they're all like dudes. All the minions. Yeah, so what would we even talk about? We're talking about the complex male dynamics and how they're toxic. I see, yes. So they get captured by Sid, who takes Buzz and Woody back to his house. And there are some other toys who have been... They've gotten plastic surgery and they look amazing.

He does baby spider things. Baby spider. We got Roll spider things. Baby spider. We got Roller Bob. We've got legs. We got Wind the Frog. Yes, little Wind the Frog. Ducky. Sid is taking these toys in for surgery,

and Buzz is observing this, and he's like, I don't believe that man ever got his medical degree. And I love, you know how like um cats think that everything is a cat like cats think you are a cat i know that cats have eight nipples and that's with caitlin what well i can't really think that every i think something like that i can't speak to how many nipples buzz has, if any. But Buzz thinks everything is like a man. He believes he's a full-sized man and Sid, in his mind, is a grown man. Not a real doctor.

So Buzz and Woody look at these toys and they think that they are cannibals. Because they judge a book by their cover. Which just goes to show how intolerant Woody is this entire movie. Yeah. No, Woody is unhinged. He's like a stand-in for white patriarchy that doesn't want to be replaced. Yeah. He's like, I don't recognize these toys.

Cannibals? They're trying to escape. And then Buzz sees a commercial for himself. And this is when he realizes that he is not the Buzz Lightyear. He is just a toy. So he has a nervous breakdown and gets very depressed. I like that Buzz Lightyear gets so

upset that he is not the coolest guy in the world that he allows himself to be strapped to a rocket to be killed. That is very, that's a very fragile move on his part. Fragile man. Yeah, I'm not the

fucking coolest guy ever. They fucking kill me now, man. Also, Sid is able to have rockets shipped to his home. And he's what, like 10? I don't know. He can't be. He's like 8 years old I mean he hearts explosives

He hearts explosives. Read the wall When we see the Buzz Lightyear commercial we see what we can only assume is Sid's dad passed out with like soda cans strewn around his feet. There's a lot of like coded stuff about Sid's life that I

He's doing the best with what he has. He seems truly like a neglected child that is turned into a villain. It's just so... There's so many... And with Sid's sister as well, but we can get into that. Yeah.

There's a lot. Yeah, so the rest of the story is Sid's planning to buzz up with the rocket, so Woody has to rescue him and get back over to Andy's before the family moves away. And then Woody's like, oh, wait, these toys aren't cannibals.

Hey, can you help me save my friend Buzz? And they're like, well, I guess, even though you... None of them can speak. Well, they fixed, they just like fixed Buzz's arm. And then he's like, oh, they're nice. Oh, you're nice.

Now let me deliver my show-stopping speech about friendship. Exactly. Yeah, steals the moment. He's got a friend in me. You've got a friend in me. Let's get out of this house. They successfully save Buzz. They use the rocket to get to the moving van.

They make their way back into Andy's family's car. And everything's great. And then it's Christmas. Christmas. The end. Yay. So that's the story of Toy Story. Yay. Thank you. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere,

a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged.

I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. so i basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown i was crying and i was inconsolable it was just very big sudden swaps of different meds what is wrong with me oh look at you giving me therapy girl finally a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with.

But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege

of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want to start talking with things we like? Because that's a shorter list, I think.

In terms of what there is to talk about with women at all sure do you have anything that you like is it i mean i like the movie don't get me wrong yeah i mean it's definitely one of those movies that like we all like but when you watch it with women in mind you're just like where are they i mean like the first toy story movie especially, and we have like some stuff to talk about with the other two, but the first Toy Story movie is like known for women being almost completely absent from the story. And especially like there is really no woman that has narrative impact in this whole movie

except for Andy's mom only because she has a driver's license. Right. Like if Andy's mom because she has a driver's license. Right. Like, if Andy's mom did not have a driver's license, women have no agency in this story. I was going to say, Laurie Metcalf is moving this whole family across the country. Right.

I mean, credit for this one person. Well, that is one of the things that I like is, like, it seems like, as far as we know, Andy and his sister are being raised by a single mom and there's not a lot made of that like i feel like usually in children's entertainment especially like if there is not the you know tv nuclear family that is pointed out to you a lot and it's pointed out as being a problem um so seeing like andy and his terrifying uncanny valley little sister oh yeah being raised by a single mom who was also terrifying uncanny

valley was kind of cool because it's not you know like drawn attention to of like where's their dad you know which i think would sort of be the default for that. So I liked that. So I was looking into this because I was also curious and I hadn't remembered that Laurie Metcalf in amazing 90s floral print leggings was a single mom in this movie until re-watching it. But apparently that was a financial choice

rather than a narrative choice because Toy Story is the first fully computer animated film. It's the first feature length for Pixar. Computer would take a long time. It took a long time. Exactly. Pixar hadn't worked with Disney prior to this and the only reason it was even considered

was because Nightmare Before Christmas had gone well. So they were constantly running out of money, coming with weird pushback from disney like disney wanted them to make it a musical they were not really having that thank god and they're like we're gonna split the difference we'll give you randy newman final perfect great randy newman plus hakuna matata for like 10 seconds oh yeah yeah yeah. Yeah. So the computer technology to build this movie was like not,

they basically couldn't have done it and they don't understand how they did and they were under deadlines that they couldn't have reached. So they didn't have the time or money

to build a second adult. So they just did the mom and if you look at Andy's birthday party, all of the other children are also Andy. They have his face. And if you look at Sid, the bully neighbor kid,

he basically is Andy with a different hair color. With a stretcher. Yeah. Damn. All the people in this movie are freaky looking. So they've never commented on Andy's dad because it wasn't a narrative choice designed to drive the movie. They just didn't have the money to make dad.

Okay. Fine. Some of the best worst internet rabbit holes to go down are pixar reddit theories okay people have a lot of time and there is someone who said that there's they're like oh no andy's parents are definitely not divorced because weeks before the events of toy Story 1, Andy's dad died of polio. Huh? A curable disease

that no one gets anymore? Well, the theory is that Andy's dad contracted polio as a child. How? And it came back. Wasn't it cured? What evidence is there

to support this theory in any way? How old is his father that he had polio? His only surviving possession was Woody. I hate it. I hate it. I feel nothing for the polio. Like, who? Is his

dad 300 years old? Why can't he just have a mom? A single mom? Why can't he just have a single mom? So yeah, good that the movie doesn't call attention to the fact that it's like, you know, what appears to be a single mom raising two children or like villainizes

that in any way because that's like another version of what we tend to see. But also, Andy's mom, yes, she does have narrative impact because she is the driver of the vehicle but that's not saying that much and then also we almost never see her face even like there might be one wide shot where like we see a glimpse of her face but usually it's like either her back and that might also be an animation is that Is that a Peanuts choice too, though?

That's what I thought. Adults are just irrelevant in this world. In the first one, but that changes in later ones. It doesn't super bother me that, I feel like you're not, because you only see the adults from toy angles in this movie, but I triple checked this.

As of the end of the third movie, we still don't know what Andy's mother's name is. Which is like, I mean, and we go back and forth on this. It's like, is mom a character name? In some cases, yes. In other cases, it's kind of unclear. But if you've been in three feature-length movies

and have not been given the courtesy of a first name, that is violent. But how would the toys even perceive an adult's name? I mean, it could be. But it's like, you know, how would they perceive Andy's name? It's just said. We were discussing. I mean, we went down a little rabbit hole before we got in front of all of you tonight.

But there's a theory that Andy's mom is the original owner of the toy Jesse. Yeah. In which case she does have a name. It would be Emily. That bitch. Is there anything else that we like about the movie in terms of its like representation of women? I guess. I like, there are two moments where the main macho toys

are made to play women for a second. So when Woody's running point on the toy opening party, they call him Mother Bird, which I thought was very sweet. Oh, I forgot that. And then we have Buzz later as Mrs. Nesbitt.

He's Sid's, I forget Sid's sister's name, Hannah. Hannah's only toy with a head. So she's really like she can put a bonnet on him. And so I feel like I like that they speak to the idea that toys can have a mutable gender depending on like what the kid playing with the toy wants. Yeah. Like we see all of Andy's toys as male because Andy's got daddy issues. I don't know. I mean, he's got a lot of things to sort out.

Hannah does not care that Buzz Lightyear looks like a spaceman. He's a space woman in a little bonnet. The Mrs. Nesbitt scene is polarizing. It's weird. There's a lot of different reads of that scene. I don't really know where to fall in it. I do like that

like the toy just becomes the gender of the child that is playing with it i think that's a cool philosophy to abide by and it there was like when that when that especially just because it's like 1995 when that scene came on and there was like a male coded toy that was dressed up like a woman i was like oh they're gonna make some like horrendous joke that's not gonna age well like there's gonna be like this panicky joke no the only joke is that buzz is really sick of drinking darjeeling tea yeah like and so i i was like i'm like it's not necessarily a win but i was just relieved that they didn't take the cheap, awful 1995 approach to that joke. Right. I guess probably because it was rated G and they

couldn't... I mean, the protagonist commits a murder. Yeah. I mean, I think there's perhaps a lot to not admire so much about this movie when it comes to the topics that we discuss andy's toys as we

already said like they're almost entirely coded as male they're voiced by actors who are men there's like a damseling scene in the opening scene of the movie right where bo peep like her sheep needs to be rescued by woody and it's like yes and the ransom is five bazillion dollars yeah so already we're just like well andy's certainly not a progressive six-year-old no because he's probably you know watching movies where women are damseled and he's like well that's what women do but i mean like bow pe Peep is the one notable female toy character who has lines at all because there is that little troll doll who is wearing a floral bikini.

But troll doll never speaks. That troll doll could be, just because of the outfit, we don't have to presume how Andy designated that troll how Trolldahl identifies. How Andy designated that Trolldahl. Definitely. But Trolldahl is just confident. I was like, hell yeah. There was, so apparently in the script, they wanted Barbie.

They couldn't get Barbie. Mattel was like, toy story who? They wanted Barbie, and Joss Whedon wrote this scene, which I really like. So we were talking about in the end when the toys are all at Sid's and they're escaping and there's this, like, I assume we'll get into it, like a horror scene

where they scare Sid straight to never mess with toys again. Initially, the way that the toys were meant to get out of Sid's was that Barbie was going to show up and do a Terminator scene and be like, come with me if you want to live, and Barbie was going to rescue everyone from Sid. But they couldn't get rights to Barbie, so they devised yet another weird Rube Goldberg toy situation

where they horror movie Sid into letting them free. Where Woody is the hero. Yeah, there was going to be a female toy hero. Joss Whedon tried for it. Mattel was like, poo-poo. That would have been pretty cool.

I mean, just like, I mean, to have like female characters doing anything that impacts the plot would have been nice. But Bo Peep is literally there

to either flirt or provide emotional support. Right. She frets. She also frets. Oh, you're right. She frets. She's worrying.

The three capabilities. I'm either fretting, flirting, or providing emotional support. Right. She's got basically no narrative impact. You can take her out of the movie. The plot remains essentially the same. If you apply the sexy lamp test to this character. Which is ironic because she is a sexy lamp.

Right. So like replace her with like the hot leg lamp from A Christmas Story and the movie is the same. Yeah. She's just there to flirt with Woody.

With Woody and like give him horny conniptions. She's like, his seams are busted. Oh yeah. She she's like witty i can get someone else to watch the sheep tonight and he's like and then there's a great this way i'm so bad right is this movie suggesting that these toys fuck i don't even like but then also bo peep seems like she's just made horny by any impressive male character because whenever buzz shows up and

he does his like falling with style thing she's like i found my moving buddy and then is like fanning herself and like so horny about it. So Bo Peep only exists in the story to be Woody's girlfriend. Most of the time we see her on screen, she's doing some sort of emotional nurturing, because women be nurturing. It's OK. Like, oh, Andy loves you, Woody. Don't cry, Andy loves you.

And it's like, they don't even give her i i for i was like maybe there's like one of those shitty throwaway moments that we hate but is something where like in like an action scene bo peep gets to do one thing and everyone's like whoa she just used that staff to stab someone in the eye like something less violent than that um but she doesn't even get like one of those corny ass girl power moments like like that i mean i was surprised there was just nothing right nothing for her to do yeah she's not even tokenized which when you're hoping for a woman being tokenized you know know your movie is fucking up. And then Bo Peep, I mean, she is

it's kind of like a weird character in this franchise in general because she's in the second one to some extent, but is very much sidelined because that's when Jessie the Cowgirl comes in. And then in the third movie, she's not in it at all. It's like implied she was given away

in a garage sale because they're like we don't know how to write female characters bye like they just have we shipped her away we all examined the toy story for plot summaries yes so she's about to be heroic right right well i've seen the trailer i haven't explored much beyond that though she's like a liberated toy now and she's gonna teach woody a trick or two i don't know, though. She's like a liberated toy now, and she's going to teach Woody a trick or two. I don't know about all this. There's like a... The new Bo Peep,

they do kind of like a number of things that I think are corny, and what dudes do when they're like, oh, I actually don't hate women because she's wearing pants now. How did she get pants on that lamp? She's porcelain and how is that possible but they i mean they gave her a new outfit she wears like a pantsuit now now her like sheep stick is like a like a way i don't know what but it but they basically did a post me to redesign of this character

to be like no she's actually empowered and cool and awesome now and she's gonna you know tell Woody a thing or two about a thing or two which is cool in theory but it almost just feels like moving from one shitty trope to like a Mary Sue trope

of just turning her from like this feminine to like a Mary Sue trope of just turning her from like this feminine to like a badass hashtag girl boss who doesn't take any nonsense from anybody. And it's like, we just want a character. There's stuff that exists in the middle of those two things that I don't, I mean, I'm excited to see it.

I just, anytime like male screenwriters are like we solved feminism like she got pants and she's mean like i i just don't i don't trust it right because i want to read a quote from an article in the la times about toy story 4 specifically about both peeps character it says she became someone as cooley says cooley is the director of toy story 4 who can stand up for herself has confidence and has seen a lot of things has lived through it she's more well-rounded we looked at different kinds of female characters. Mad Max, Fury Rhodes, Imperator Furiosa, Rey from Star Wars,

Marion from Indiana Jones is a huge one as well. End quote. I just think he's naming women he's heard of. Right. It just seems very defensive. He just described something impossibly vague. Like, you know, she's a woman. She's done things before.

She's woken up. She's fallen back asleep. She's gotten dressed. She's gotten undressed. She's washed a few times. Here's a list of three women I've heard of. Feminism solves. It does.

Fuck off. It feels very much like lip service. It's like, yeah, who do people think are the feminist characters again? Oh, yes, these ones. And then just like said it to a reporter. I really hope that I'm wrong and that they didn't just do this like very reductive like Mary Sue character that, you know, makes everyone feel like's story fixed feminism or something. But that, just strictly based on if you look at the visual of before, after, it seems kind of like a hollow gesture.

Sorry. Keep her in the same outfit. Why do I have to change my clothes to discover myself? What has never changed his damn clothes in his life? Right. But, I mean, the way she's originally designed is that she's... Attached to a lamb.

Attached to a lamb, but then in this, like, pink frilly dress. And, like, the caregiver of these sheep. I just... I mean, I don't hate the redesign. Why can't she wear her pink furley dress and still be... You're right. Badass sheepherder. I guess because female characters are just so often hyper-feminized in their look or wardrobe.

I agree with that. Logistically, she's porcelain. You can't change her outfit. And also in the redesign, they change her into a blue pantsuit. So I feel like they're just, they're like, oh, you didn't like pink dress? What about blue pants?

Like, it's just, it just seems so lazy. And I like, I just. It's an I'm with her gesture for sure. Yeah, like it just seems like if you have already written this character poorly, like since 1995, you've fumbled this. Like you can't just put a new outfit on and be like, duh.

Catch me up though. I remember she's gone in Toy Story 3. What is the Bo Peep arc in Toy Story 2? Other than being Woody's girlfriend. I think it's just that. I think that she does a few more like, I love it lines being Woody's girlfriend? I think it's just that. I think that she does a few more like I love it lines. Woody's girlfriend but Woody has a female friend now

and that's... And then Jessie, I mean we can talk about Jessie a little bit. She's not in the first movie but Jessie is awesome in Toy Story 2 and she's got this really detailed female arc with a Sarah McLaughlin song about the tragedy of being rejected

by andy's mom by andy's mom it's the only like woman woman relationship we ever hear talking to each other across space and time they're spiritually and yet toy Story 2 also fails the Bechdel test. But then in Toy Story 3, there's this bad storyline on a number of levels where Buzz loses his identity again, and then he becomes this Latin lover stereotype, and Jessie falls in love with him, and then she is just like... Well, there's already an ongoing flirtation established between jesse and buzz

that does not need to be in the movie but because it's like oh we have a female character we better make her like a boy because what else because what else is she gonna do it almost like reminds me of like a ron and hermione thing where where you feel like the writers were like, yeah, they're going to love this. But then when you see it, you're like, someone is clearly settling. Like, this is... Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered.

There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged.

I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in.

Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts

on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. These are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore.

The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current, available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can we talk a little bit about how much Woody sucks? He's terrible. Yes. I feel like there's a number of ways to look at the Woody and Buzz relationship. Ultimately, you know, it's like big picture i do like that there are two male

characters who learn how to have a meaningful friendship together i feel like it's like rare to like encourage especially like young boys to be like no you can be friends with other boys like and it's like a good positive thing. I like that, but their friendship is very fucked up. It is mostly a tick-measuring competition, and it's all about, I mean, both of those characters get pretty severely emasculated

and have to recover at different points, because Woody is emasculated by no longer being the favorite of andy and like he has to he lashes out from that rejection and pushes you know accidentally pushes buzz out a window right and buzz is emasculated by the fact that he is not the only buzz light year but to be fair imagine you thought you were like a hot shot space cadet and you learned you are an eight inch tall toy i'm like wait a minute i'm not the caitlin dorante host of the bechdel cast would you would you let yourself be strapped to a rocket um life would feel pretty

meaningless if i learned there were like eight million others of me made in a sweatshop. Right. Which the toys discuss very early on. They talk about that so much. I mean, I do kind of like how naive Buzz is. I think if they were both as antagonistic and like world weary as Woody appears to be. It would be a different movie. I mean, and when Buzz's character starts out and everyone's impressed by him,

he's a pretty nice, gregarious character. He is nice. There's that whole montage where he's friendly to everyone. He's teaching people how to lift weights. Well, I guess, so along the lines of Woody originally being a villain, they didn't intend for Buzz to not realize he was a toy. But when they heard how Tim Allen was reading the character,

they were like, he's not playing it like he's a toy. He's playing it like he's actually like Buzz Aldrin. So they wrote that whole thing of him not recognizing he's a toy because Tim Allen wasn't a nuanced voice actor. Being a man is wild. Tim Allen, I hate him so much. If you were,

if you were a woman, like, if you were, like, a woman voice actor, speaking from experience, they would say, you're doing a bad job.

They just rewrote the whole thing around. But they're like, oh, Mr. Tim, we are so sorry. We are going to have Joss Whedon

write you another draft tonight because you cannot do your job. Woody is, in retrospect, an antagonistic flaccid devil man. The way that Sid's family is presented, I feel

like there's a lot implied about Sid's family that is bizarre and dark and unnecessary where i mean it's first of all a wild choice to make like an eight-year-old the villain of the movie true but i mean i mean when i was a kid i fully bought into it and thought yes i hated sid i hated his adorable little bull terrier dog scud right scud yeah king scud like there when in retrospect i mean there's so much about sid's house and the way his family operates that just implies that he is maybe neglected by his parents a little bit and that he might be poorer than andy's family and there's i feel like there's

like a lot of weird coding going on with that family that just sort of translates to very young kids as like, poorer kid with less attentive parents equals bad villain forever, which is such a horrible thing to imply to any kid. And also skull t-shirt. Well, I think we really see how the toys are formed by who their owners are because early on when Buzz hasn't really had Andy's room imprinted on him, he sees Sid from the window from across the lawns. And he's like, that happy child.

He sees Sid destroying a combat car. And he's like, that happy, smiling child. And when I rewatched it as a 30-year-old and not a 7-year-old, I was like, he's just having a really fucking fun time with his toys. Yeah. Like he just like it seems like he's neglected to the point where he can have rockets shipped to his room. But that's not his fault. That's not his fault. I mean, I think that there are some things implied where like you never see either of his parents.

Other than asleep. Other than asleep other than asleep surrounded by cans like there's a lot implied about his family when buzz sees the commercial for buzz lightyear we know it is morning but buzz walks into a dark room where a tv is on and there are cans everywhere and someone is asleep on a recliner i think it is implied that sid has an alcoholic dad and that that is like it's just like the weird implicate like class and family implications of that character who is just outright the villain of the story like there's no sympathy empathy anything, anything presented for Sid. If you saw a nine-year-old kid who was acting out like that in real life,

you'd be like, this kid probably needs some guidance. Or someone to talk to. But in this, they're like, no, he just needs to be harassed by Tom Hanks. That'll show him. He truly didn't seem like i don't know why i'm like standing for sid so bad but like he seems like a little goth boy who like needs to be put on the right track and i just i don't like how they present that family yeah i mean he is a product of his upbringing and and they imply that because his upbringing is coded as being lower income, that that's what...

And that it's his fault, I guess. That they're like, he's just a bad kid. You know what bad kids are like. You know what they act like. But that never happens in a vacuum. And then they present Andy as like, and this is a good kid, because his mom pays attention to him and his sister looks scary.

His lawn is more manicured than Sid's is, so he's good. If we're putting pound for pound, Sid is more interesting than Andy. He's doing laps around Andy. What does Andy do? Does sexist act outs with his toys? Sid's doing full on like surgery.

Medical procedures. He's an aspiring surgeon and just needs needs a mentor to be like Sid these are very scary but there is a practical application of this interest.

And he's just a kid who is like fucking around with his toys like that's every kid i mean he's just interested in stem i had a couple i had a couple baby dolls as a child there was a baby doll that um it would like crawl a little bit and then cry and then crawl a little bit more and cry i don't know if anyone had a baby doll that it would crawl a little bit and then cry. And then crawl a little bit more and cry. I don't know if anyone had this baby doll. But it was very annoying. And the crying sounds were awful.

So I ripped its head off and threw it over my balcony. That's not all. I played with Barbiesbies did you cut hair i cut their hair off i wasn't i wasn't allowed to cut hair oh man i cut i would i had some barbies that i was like i want you to keep your hair but other ones i shaved their heads and the older i got the more the older i got and like the less i was like into playing with toys i was like well i might as well just ruin these i don't know what i was thinking so i cut all their hair off and then i would paint them with nail polish so i sort of related to sid in that way but it is like he's just treating toys like a kid would treat toys and is really

creative with them and creates like mutants that are fully operational. His toys are the best toys in the whole show. I want baby spider guy. Roller Bob and legs. And it does provide an opportunity for what I think is an important lesson where it's like, I don't know, don't judge things or people by how they look. Because they're like, oh, they look different from the norm. They must be cannibals.

Which is a wild assumption to begin with. Right. But yeah, it's like judging the other in any way. But even then, that lesson, you almost get all the way there. But Sadie, you were saying this earlier. Sid's toys help fix buzz without being asked they're very nice even though they've been treated badly by mostly woody buzz hasn't

been like outwardly mean buzz thought they were cannibals that's the one who might have said but they help him anyways and then what he's like oh're nice. Can you help us do this thing? And then they help do the thing in the big horror scene where Sid finds out the toys are real. He's the only kid in the fucking world that knows this. He's fucking Neo. My hot take here is that Sid is the only one who's really deserving of knowing that the toys are alive because all through the movie,

there's a semi-truck that almost runs over Woody because he's so committed to playing the role of toys not being alive. He lies down in front of the wheel. His hat even gets run over a little bit. But he'll break that toy code of silence to teach Sid a lesson. He does an exorcist head spin.

Sid deserved that. That was cool. I love that Sid has to go through life with that sinister knowledge. But anyway the toys help Woody and Buzz who have been cruel and judgmental towards them

and then instead at the end of them getting some sort of redemptive arc, instead Woody just goes, thanks guys, bye! And then they charge into the climax of the movie and they're never seen again. But maybe those toys like Sid and they like hanging out there.

I hope so. They're being played with in an engaging way, all of his toys. I'm really team Sid. I mean, I don't think it's Sid's fault. I think it's like Woody and Buzz and the way they treat these toys who are different from them

and then rely on them to do a bunch of shit for them and then are like, oh, thanks, see ya, and then just like dip. I guess the idea is that like they helped liberate the toys from like Sid's torment. Because Sid will never hurt them again because now he's afraid of his sister's little doll. Another character that I thought didn't get enough

or started in a cool place and then was kind of poorly written into Oblivion was Sid's little sister, Hannah. I really liked her when she first... I forgot she was in the movie, which never bodes well for the impact that she would have. But in the first scene,

she's seen challenging Sid right away. She's like, get away. They're doing a younger sibling, older sibling thing. She kind of creeps me out from the beginning. I like her. Well, I'm not saying I don't like that. But Sid is like, he terrorizes his younger sister.

He literally says that line when Hannah runs off to tell her mom that Sid did something. Yeah, where Sid's like, don't believe her. Don't believe anything she says. She's lying. Women be lying. Damn. Nutshell. But

I liked that Hannah was pushing back. She's the only person we see push back against Sid. Do Andy and Sid even know each other we don't know but you know Hannah pushes back and then I have a fight club theory about Andy and Sid oh damn I think they're the same I mean

they are literally the same character they're the same mold but then we see like Hannah is then when we see her again later the only other scene we really see her in is like when she like goes to like the most stereotypical

girl bedroom of all time where it's like it's pink pink pink she's having a tea party with her two beheaded dolls with her two beheaded dolls Marie Antoinette and her sister she starts out as her two beheaded daughters. Marie Antoinette and her sister. She starts out as this kind of cool character and then they kind of just throw her into,

I mean, I would argue it's better than Bo Peep who just starts lame and remains that way. Sure. But Hannah, I feel like you're given this cool little nugget of like, oh, she's argumentative and she's gonna fuck with her brother. There's versions of it where I could see her participating

in the plot and like helping Woody and Buzz. She like takes a liking to Buzz. She like turns him into Mrs. Nesbitt. But then she's just kind of written out instead of like, there's like this whole third act that takes place in her house, but she's relegated to a tea party

scene. I don't know. I just wish she was more involved. After the toys, it's called the Wine the Frog scene because Woody orchestrates this whole thing in the scene in which they would have had Barbie rescue all of them, which I think would have been cool. Instead, all the toys do this

horror movie reenactment for Sid so that he's now terrified of his toys. And Woody is like, there's a snake in my boot. Don't ever torture your toys again. And he runs screaming into the house, at which point Hannah's waving her doll in front of him. And Sid is horrified because now he knows the toys are alive and coming to get him.

So she's got a little agency there. She definitely does. I just wish that she had been used more because again, it's like as much as I like that character, you can remove her from the entire movie and how much actually changes. Sure.

Not too much. I think what makes a little more sense for the movie is just to like, the core group of toys that we meet introduce some other female coded toys into the group and give them just more of an active role in the story. Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of toys that could have gone either way. Like Rex didn't, I mean, I'm not going to say Walsh. I'm just going to leave any movie. But Rex didn't have to be male. Ham didn't have to be male. Right. I mean, really most of Andy's toys like there could have been like gender parity with Andy's toys and it wouldn't have changed anything

so really the movie is a critique on Andy's just dumb imagination I yeah Andy's an unoriginal chode and but I mean it's if you look at the hannah character where you know she's got a pink room and she has dolls and they do tea parties and there's nothing wrong with being interested in feminine toys but just that that is such an egregious default for a young girl that just is not really challenged or explored and then you've got Andy, who has all male toys. He does very misguided act-outs with them. There's a whole quick conversation that we can have about just the toy industry

and how toys are very specifically gendered and marketed and how that ruins children, basically. But lots of studies have been done on like the way children play and the toys that they play with and how that affects how a child's brain develops. Because these all, these things all have a very profound impact on children. Play is a large part of what gets a child to like understand the world that they're in and what

their role is in that world. And like developing morals and yes. Yes. So they've just found a bunch of stuff that playing with toys can help develop skills that influences a child's future, like what career they might go into. Right. So research by the Institution for Engineering and Technology found that toys with a STEM focus were three times more likely to be targeted at boys than girls. Hmm. Wonder if that has anything to do with how women are underrepresented in STEM. It's true. I mean, well, and then the same thing with sports, too. I've just like that's not something that is marketed to girls when they're very young.

And every kid is an idiot. That's the law. And what is presented to them is what they'll think, like, oh, that's what I'm able to do. So let me do that. And then there's also so many, I mean, this isn't in this movie, but like with the Mrs. Potato Head, there's so many versions of toys originally made for boys that they'll just slap a bow on and be like it for girls now or like legos are one of the few things that are for everyone but even when legos were first marketed at girls they were like

pink and pastel and they looked different because they're like well girls won't pick up solid colors women hate primary colors they can't see them legos are invisible to them we have to fem it up like they're and i do want the girl legos however because and that is like a gender-neutral concept that they still managed to gender through color and through marketing. There's so much. I did a brief stint as a toy reporter, which sounds like a lie. Wow.

But it is true because one must have many stupid jobs. And the time I was reporting at was when they were uh releasing barbies with different body types and there was so much written at that time of the way that children were reacting to them and and it is like the thing that i took away from research again and then and then writing about it is kids form ideas on how toys and then by extension what the world should look like so much younger than you would think because there were uh barbies with different body types given to a group of four-year-olds yeah and already like there were kids who didn't mean any harm but were saying like this like, this isn't right. Why would I want this? This isn't what I want.

And so it's just, like, the not challenging anything is such an insidious thing to do because your kid can be, you know, like, you can do your best and your kid can still be skull-fucked by the time they're four years old just based on what is around

and what is available to them, which is always, with some exceptions now, and I hope that, you know, like, kids that had Barbies with different body types before they were four years old will, you know, be less conditioned to feel that way. hits with you so young that like there needs to be priority to uh like representing a wider variety of of dolls of body types i'm talking about dolls specifically but like making them less gendered and less you know bullshit right um is like super important from the second you are born. A lot. Yikes. Well, because toys are so often exaggeratedly gendered. Yeah. Toys marketed to boys are like, Army men, G.I. Joe, like fucking monster truck, like very hyper, hyper masculine stuff.

And then toys marketed to girls are like, pretty, pretty princess princess and easy bake oven and like very it's just conditioning the most exaggerated versions of masculinity and femininity and when that's what you're giving children to play with who have like mushy play-doh brains who like don't understand the world yet like play-doh a toy for everyone. A gender-neutral toy. It's a lump. You can make at home. My mom used to make Play-Doh on my stovetop all the time.

I don't know what the ingredients are. Eat it. You can. I've eaten it. Yeah, I mean, it's such an important, and I hope that, like, in Toy Story 4, like, a full 24 years after their first movie came out, that that will be something that is more included. Because, like, movies like this are so merchandising-based. Like, how many actual Buzz Lightyears have you, and, like and how many squeaky aliens have you seen? These movies are literally designed to sell merchandise because capitalism. I had Woody and Buzz toys.

It's a genius move to make a movie about toys, and then you can sell those toys. It's a very normal thing to do, but if you write, if you take priority to write in characters that are more inclusive and less just like, this is a toy for boys, this is a toy for girls, a.k.a. we're not making toys of it, because that is how the toy industry works.

Even with the Avengers, it took nine million years for them to make a Black Widow action figure and to include her in marketing. Same thing with star wars whenever the new trilogy started coming out they didn't have ray toys with all the other ones even though ray is the main character another thing is that um toys across the whole gender spectrum mostly seem to be representing white people or they like dolls, action figures, everything are mostly white. And Toy Story reflects that. Yes, it sure does.

Another way in which a franchise about toys could challenge the toy industry, but instead just profits off of it. It's just, it is weird how like you know not surprising but just how backwards the toy industry in particular still is and but but if you're you know in a place where you are helping to write a toy story movie you can include something that you know will become a toy that kids can have and And that's like a cool power to use, not like a fucking loser. Well, guess who was behind this movie?

Because that might have something to do with it. John Lasseter? Yep. Also, so we've got written by credits from Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, Alex, I don't know, a man though. I don't know a man though. Almost the full production list of every movie. And then story by credits from John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and Joe Ramft. So it's a lot of men, believe it or not.

I mean, well, this was the first Pixar full movie, and if you're into Pixar lore, which I'm not, thank God, but I did my homework. There is, like, all this before John Lasseter was canceled and they were still allowed to let him wear his hideous shirts in public. He told the same story a million times about how he and i believe it was three other men who were involved in the you know the ground floor of pixar came up with all these story ideas all of which became very famous pixar movies i think that went from toy story all the way up to wally

like they came up with 13 they just went to fucking brunch and they planned out 13 years worth of movies. And it is extremely telling that that is the specific amount of Pixar history that was written by three, or sorry, three to four straight white guys because in that entire era of Pixar, that's all the movies are about.

That's literally, you don't get a lead female Pixar character until 2012 with Brave. That's the first time. And up until then, there are female characters, but they're never the driving force of the movie until after all those guys ran out of ideas.

Is Coco the first Pixar movie that's led by a person of color? Like, it's just, it takes... Yes, I think so. I think that that's true. Like, it just takes ridiculously long for anyone that is not, like, the standard that are the people who get to write movies

to be included in this universe because they're not included behind the scenes. It is 11 p.m. on a school night, so we should wrap up. There are preschool toys here. Does anyone else have any final thoughts about the movie? They wanted to call Bugs Life, Bug Story.

Oh. I think that would have worked okay. And then like A Toy's Life. It's their second movie. Works out okay title wise. Wally Life. Wally Story. What? Monster Story. Monsters. Rat Story. University Story.

Should we take some audience questions, comments before we rate? Yeah, does anyone... Did we miss anything? Here, we want you to come up to the mic so it can get on the recording. So come on. Yes, sir. Form a queue. Come on down.

Oh, that's perfect. Hi, what's your name? Hello, my name's Natalie. Hey. Hi. My question is, do we think that animation and, as an extension, CGI sort of softens or makes misogyny more cute? Sort of makes it easier for maybe children and all of us to digest?

That's my question. Ooh. I think that children's entertainment in general makes misogyny cuter i don't know if it's i mean i think it is probably easier to do when it's an animated character but i i mean there's very little like i wouldn't be like well live all live action children's entertainment is intersectional and like like i think that you could pull any episode of drake and josh and see some cutie pie misogyny i think yeah there's just like all children and teen entertainment really couch it and just like especially when it's like making characters that

you like dismissive of women and not including them in any way the way that like what he does but I think a lot of live-action characters too sure I definitely think that carts making cartoon anything I mean especially if you're talking like cartoon violence that definitely makes it easier to to go down than pushing a real wolf off a real cliff true thank you thank you thank you hi hello what's your name uh emily hi emily hi um with regards to the moral framework of a toy society um do you think that they got their sort of treatment of women, like they treat Bo Peep, from watching their human creators? Are they born with it, created by them? Or is there like some sort of, in their toy society,

is there some more? Is it nature or nerd? Yeah. Oh. Well, that's a great question. Well, I mean, if we're judging off of, if the toys are learning about gender roles from Andy, that makes a lot of sense.

Because maybe we are like, oh, Woody's an adult man, but we don't know that. Right. So maybe Woody has just only seen his owner treat women dismissively and damseled and just has this very narrow conception of the world. I don't know. But Andy is only that way because of the toys that are marketed to him.

It's a snake eating its own tail. Does that answer your question? I don't know. That blew my mind. I was just wondering if it was innate because I haven't seen the movie in a while, but when Buzz is first brought to them,

he's like a new toy. And I don't remember how he acted around Bo Peep, but, but it was, he already like, he was kind of a clean slate towards everyone. I mean, even based on that,

like, I don't know. I think he doesn't respond to her any differently. In fact, like he does, he does his whole like flying around the room thing. And then Mr. Potato Head says, oh, I bet the dolls totally go for you. And Buzz is like, where is fucking Zorg who I'm trying to kill?

I don't think he notices women, which is also a problem to not notice women. But I mean, there's really not many women around to notice either. I guess I'm down for the nurture argument there. Yeah. Thank you. Guys it's

11-11. Wow make a wish. You gotta. Hi. So those were some really great and thought provoking questions. I don't have one You gotta. Hi. Hi. So those were some really great and thought-provoking questions. I don't have one of those. That's okay. So when you cut the hair off of the Barbies, were they more in charge? Yes.

Oh, good question. Did they take over? They did, yeah. That answers my question. The Loftus rule is upheld. Yet again. Yes. That was thought-provoking.

Yeah, don't sell yourself short. Also blew my mind. Hi. Hi. It seems to me that both Buzz and Woody, their character arc focuses on them learning to deal with the fact that they're losing something that they didn't earn. So do you think it's fair to say that both of them have

two different sort of challenges of male entitlement? Oh, I think so. I think that, I mean, well... Basically, Woody is the incel and Buzz is the Chad. Oh my God, yes. Finally, in terms I can understand. Incel talk, yes. I mean, Woody is such an entitled character

where when his dominance in this fucked up society is challenged, he tries to kill someone. He's like Stalin. Like, he's scary. And then Buzz, I mean, I don't know. I guess that Buzz's deal is that he is very threatened and his masculinity is challenged by that he is not the one and only Buzz Lightyear

and that he is a part of like he is a part of something larger than himself and that upsets him. Yeah, I mean the Chad insult thing really does, right? Yes. That does, that hits. What do you think, Caitlin?

Yeah, no, I agree. The end. Damn. Thank you. Thank you. I got you to agree with me. Wow. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test gang one two three no it does not

okay okay there's a moment yeah there's a moment in Sid's house whenever um Hannah Sid's sister and then Sid's mother mom uh who we do not see on screen. And we're in the constant battle of like, is mom a character name? Because it's sort of treated the same as the way dad is. We don't know. In this case, I'm inclined to not cut them a break. But what is the exchange? So Hannah says, mom, have you seen my Sally doll?

The mom from off screen says what was that dear said your pop tart is ready and then hannah says never mind because she has just found buzz aka mrs nesbit yes um so i would say because we don't even see the mom on screen and that's like one of two lines she has the other one being pop tart related. I would, I don't really want to give that a pass, but it is,

it is about a Sally doll and it's not about men. But then Hannah says, nevermind because she sees a male toy. So she decides as Mrs. Nesbitt. But then Hannah says, never mind, because she sees a male toy. Who? She decides as Mrs. Nesbitt. That's true. But Buzz still identifies as male, as far as we can tell,

even when he is dressed as Mrs. Nesbitt. Yes. No, it doesn't pass. The second one doesn't pass either. But in the fourth one, they put pants on her, so problem solved. So we'll see. Oh, boy. Should we rate the movie on a nipple scale?

Let's do it. Nipples based on its portrayal of women. It's like between a zero and a half nipple. I think I'm going to go with a half just because the movie isn't outwardly hateful toward women. Because I feel like the movies that we give like a zero to. Yeah, zero has to be contempt. Contemptuous of women. Murder. This movie just ignores and or erases women's existence. Oh, that's fine.

So that's actually okay. Fine. And I like that. So fine. so that's fine so that's actually okay i like that so uh so yeah i'll give it i'll bump it up to a half nipple because of that but yeah this movie there was no reason why there could not be more you know female coded toys uh there was no reason the different of the other female characters who are introduced and exist in the story already couldn't have a more significant narrative impact. The toys are all white. Yeah.

As most toys are in real life, which is another extremely fucked up thing. I'll give my half nipple, I guess, to Sid's mom, who's just trying her best with what she's got. And she, there is a fan theory where she and Andy's dad alone. Yes.

Oh, I think it's that Sid might actually be the child of Andy's dad. Well, that's why they couldn't afford a second child. Well, also, I mean, between Sid and Andy looking pretty much the same,

there's some shared DNA there. There's one woman who is a producer on this movie. I'm forgetting her name. Oh. She has a theory that both Sid and Andy are John Lasseter, his inner children. Oh, gross. I don't want to know what that is.

That's a hard pass for me. I hate it. I'm going to go with a half nip as well. It's a bummer because I do, I mean, I think this is like a classic case of a movie that no one dislikes. Everyone has a soft spot for this movie. I still really love it.

I'm going to see the new one I'm going to cry when instructed I'm a fucking idiot I'll do what I'm told but I mean upon further I mean I think that this movie is just very thoroughly an unchallenging

product of its time where it's 1995 we're presented with like an upper middle class white family that challenges nothing um and has contempt for anyone poorer than them and thinks they're villains right um so you know i just like it's just it it doesn't really challenge anything but i but it i just think it's's kind of doofy and dumb. I don't think it's out to really get anyone, but it's clear that no one involved in the production,

or there are very few people involved in the production that had a different perspective, or very simple things could have been switched to make it a more inclusive and fun movie to watch. Totally. So I'll give it a half nippy. I'm going to give it to Hannah because god damn it, I think that there was more for her to do.

Justice for Hannah. Also, there's a flash forward scene in Toy Story 3 where Sid is like a very cheerful garbage man. Make of that what you will. There's another fan theory for that though.

So Sid is the only one who knows that toys can talk and this haunts him into adulthood. But then he develops an altruistic side that wants to rescue toys from the trash. He wants to save them from the trash and that's

why he's the trash man. What I think is that John Lasseter hates poor people. I'm going to second both of these. I'm giving a similar rating. Maybe I'm at like a.7. Whoa. I don't know.

Again, I don't know. Yeah. Again, I don't think it's meant to be hurtful, but so many times when people are excluded, no one's trying to be hurtful. They just have very limited world views. I'm going to give it to Mrs. Nesbitt. Very good. An icon.

Yes. I wish she had a spinoff with Rex. I think Rex is the best character in the movie. Anyway. Definitely the most emotionally complex. He feels sad that he has guilt when he turns against Woody. Very relatable. Full of regret and guilt for nothing.

Love it. Really the most close analog for a woman's experience. There's no reason that Rex couldn't have been. If we were going to make a woman toy. I mean, Rex is constantly apologizing

for no reason. Have you ever seen Jurassic Park where all the dinosaurs are female? Hello? That's true. Oh my God. Can I give you one more fact

to close us with? Yes, please. Joss Whedon saw Jurassic Park in the middle of making Toy Story, and that's why Rex is there at all. Oh, wow. And I assume that's why Scud the dog pops his nose out from around a door. It's got to be the raptors in the kitchen. There's a direct Jurassic Park reference in Toy Story 2

when they're riding through a toy store, and Rex is coming up behind them in the mirror of the, the side view mirrors. It's wonderful. Um, anyway, guys, I'm bored of these. Yes.

No, Jurassic Park is cool. Um, I think that's our show. Yeah. Thank you for coming. Give it up for Sadie. Thank you for having me.

Wonderful. Yes. Give it up for the women in comedy you for having me. Wonderful, yes. Give it up for the Women in Comedy Festival. For the Rockwell. Give it up for yourselves. Thanks for coming. Have a good night. Bye. Okay, that was

Toy Story live in both Philadelphia and Boston. Wow, magic. Yeah. So we want to thank Sadie for being our guest. You can check out her band Speedy Ortiz or her solo work. She's on Twitter and Instagram at sad13, S-A-D-1-3, get it? And her incredible band Speedy Ortiz is on tour right now. The next couple of dates uh if you happen to

live in any of these places they'll be in brooklyn new york tonight june 20th at industry city june 28th they'll be at logan square arts festival in chicago june 29th sleeping village in chicago july 7th rebel in toronto and july 8th warehouse concert hallert Hall in St. Catharines, Canada. They've got more dates. You can check out their website to find out more. What's their website? You can go to speedyortees.com to find further tour dates. And thank you so much

to Sadie for being our guest. Indeed. Hey, speaking of plugs. Oh, we got more? Well, we just have, you know, ours, the usual. follow us on twitter instagram facebook uh you can write and review us on what is no longer called itunes it is now apple podcasts yeah sure something happened there i don't know anyway using go there. And don't read what the MRAs leave in our comment section. Write nice things about us.

Please. We have our Patreon, aka Matreon, at patreon.com slash Bechdelcast. $5 a month. We'll give you two bonus episodes a month and access to the complete back catalog. So you're getting upwards of 50 additional Bechdelcasts. So many. So many. Including this month is Pregnancy June. Pregnancy. back catalog so you're getting upwards of 50 additional bechdel casts so many so including this month is pregnancy june pregnancy are we familiar with it maybe not there ever heard of it put them together you get pregnancy june and it's very fucked up we we have our knocked episode that

just came out and later in the month stay Stay tuned for Obvious Child. Yes. Also, we've got our merch store also on Bechtelcast.com where you can see information about us, about our upcoming live shows. And of course, like I said, our merch store. But you can also go to tpublic.com slash the Bechtelcast for all of the designs. So we hope you enjoyed the episode. We hope that you listened to the very end of the plugs or you're not a real fan. And we'll see you next week.

See you next week. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into

a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. MTV's official Challenge podcast is back for another season.

That's right. The Challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season, y'all, and we are coming along for the ride. Woo-hoo!

That would be me, Devin Simone. And then there's me, Davon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of the Challenge 40, Battle of the Eras. Join us as we break down each episode, interview challengers, and take you behind the scenes of this iconic season. Listen to MTV's official Challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Joe Gatto. I'm Steve Byrne. We are two cool moms. We certainly are. And guess where we could find us now? Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. but now it's even more funner and cooler and heartier. That's right. It's more iHeartier. I knew it! Check your heart rate. We're here at iHeart. Yeah, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts or on the iHeartRadio app.