She's All That with Anna Hossnieh

On this episode, Caitlin takes her glasses off and Jamie lets her hair down, and suddenly they are cool and popular enough to hang out with special guest Anna Hossnieh and talk about She's All That.  

(This episode contains spoilers)

For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. 

Follow @annahossnieh on Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP

 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Doe Cast, the questions asked if movies have
women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and
husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest
start changing it with the Beckdel Cast. Hello and welcome
to the Backtel Cast. My name is Jamie loft It
my name is Caitlin Dronton, and this is our podcast

(00:20):
about women. We talked about specifically how well or poorly
women are portrayed and represented in movies, and wouldn't you
know it, women are usually not portrayed very well. I
don't understand how could this be? And this economy, in

(00:41):
this society, this amazing society and economy, how could this
possibly be? So we use the Bechtel test as a
jumping off point for our larger conversation the Bechtel test
for us, The Betel test is invented by Alison Bechtel,
a famous cartoonist, interpreted in a lot of different ways.
Our interpretation of the Bettel test currently, as it is

(01:02):
always a faulting, is that there has to be two
female identifying characters in a movie that speak to each
other about something other than a man. They have to
have names, and it has to be for exactly two
lines of dialogue. How hard could it be? It couldn't
be hard because it's a very low bar. And yet
it only recently started passing regularly, and even then usually

(01:27):
tenuously between waiters with name tags on oh Stasia is
her name, and she asked do you like egg? Feminine
and then female identifying protagonist as me like egg over
easy please, great example of the same passing the battle test.

(01:49):
Do you like egg? Me like egg? Both have names?
It passes. Indeed, I'm so thrilled. Okay, we recorded two
episodes today, just a little peak behind the scenes, and
we could not be doing two more different movies today.
I am so excited on this movie. This movie is
fully activated me on every single human level it was

(02:11):
possible to. It took me two days to watch this movie.
I couldn't watch it in one scene because I was like,
it's so much. It's the cast alone. You're just like
Lillard's here, Ussure Easier, Kim's er Gabrielle unions here. The
stars are out, but like the b stars are out,
no a star is out for this movie. I would

(02:35):
argue at all the biggest star is Paul Walker. Rest
in power. That's literally it. This is like nineties, early
two thousands, b stars to the max. It's so I'm
so excited for you today. So to help us discuss
this wonderful movie, we have a guest, as we always do.

(02:55):
Thank you so much more in advance. Thank you so much,
thanks for bringing us this movie. She a producer at
How Stuff Works and she's one half of the podcast.
Ethnically Ambiguous and Hello, I just want to say this
is growing up. This was one of my favorite movies.
And yes, I p Paul Walker. Oh my god. Paul

(03:17):
Walker is such a wild character in this movie. He
takes you think originally like oh, he's not going to
come back, but he keeps coming back with increasing importance.
So you've brought us She's all that. Yes, when you
were like, granted me my wish of being on this show,
I was like, we will talk about She's It's the

(03:38):
perfect bectel Cast movie. I would argue it delivers on
every problematic level. It's a masterpiece of crap. Like it's
like somehow a Marvel in the worst postle. It's like
it's part of the Marvel extended. Well, that's the best thing.
It's it's so fast moving, like it just goes, goes goes.
Every senior like what why? And then they also I

(03:59):
learned a lot of lingo from this movie up like
wig in, like why are you wigging? And like it.
There are a few references that I was like, is
this too smart for this movie? Or am I stupid?
Like there are there's some high level and when when
Caitlin and I watched this within twenty four hours of
each other, I watched it a little bit after her,

(04:20):
like literally like twelve hours after she did. It took
us forever to watch it because if we had to
keep pausing to be like wow, there was a weird
amount to unpack and that single scene with Freddie Prince Jr. Yeah,
it took me like three hours to watch or more.
And it's only an hour and a half movie, Like
I had to keep it's a it's it's perfect, perfect length, couldn't.

(04:41):
I mean, this movie is weirdly perfect for everything that's
wrong with it. Well, yeah, I almost wasn't gonna watch
it again because I was like, you know, every goddamn
scene in this movie, and then I was like, nope,
I got to watch it again. I need my like
ten pages of notes and then every scene I was like, oh,
so good, so nostalgic of it, and like I watched
it like you in the morning last night because I

(05:01):
just had to. Like I was just like, you know what,
it's time. So when did you first see it, because
it came out. I saw it when I was in
junior high for the first time, and I think I
was like really discovering Paul Walker. At that time, Fass
and the ferries had come out, and I was like, well,
who goes and then I discovered she's all that. And
then I think I watched it maybe a thousand times,
Like I've seen this movie so many times. I own

(05:23):
it on DVD. I just just kept rewatching. I thought
it was genius. I was like, Freddy Wins Jr. I mean,
you got to make that girl beautiful. Art is weird,
you know. That's the big thing in this movie. Was like,
if you're an artist, you're a fucking weird weird and
I just love that. Also, the art is also very dark,
like it's like either like clown based, like it's like

(05:46):
a lot of weird. I was personally driggered, Yeah, this
is like oh yeah. Also, like the meme girl artists
like Clio Duval. That character she everything to me Like
I when I was scared to go to high school,
thinking I wouldn't meet a clear Duval who would like
tell me to kill myself so I could become a

(06:08):
famous artist, which is one of my I was texting.
I was telling Cale, I was like, this is one
of my new favorite because some well occasionally propose an
asterisk to the Bechtel test of like I feel, even
though it technically does pass the Bechtel test that if
two named female characters have a conversation about why one
female character should kill herself, it shouldn't pass the Bentel test.

(06:30):
That seems too violent. That's the first then that technically
passes the Bechtel test for me, where it's clear Deval
tells like that she should kill herself, just like who
does that? Right? I was just like, WHOA a new conundrum? No,
just the onion continues to reveal, Yeah, that's just the beginning. Crazy,

(06:54):
it was so that's so early in the movie, and
then it's and then the movie, Yeah, the whole rest.
There's no there's no character actor in this movie that
you're just not like, whoa okay, wait to hold on
a second. Where in the middle, I was like, Oh,
Karen Culkin is the child Karen my favorite Culkin. Karen's

(07:18):
pretty good. Also the dad character, Kevin Pollock Pollock probably
the best character. He has multiple podcasts on how stuff Works.
I see him almost like three days a week, and
I saw him and it just agreed. I was like,
holy sh it, that's Kevin. Now, I can't wait to
go this next week and be like, dude, well, last

(07:41):
time I saw him, I was like, oh, you're the
brother in Better Things that the mom doesn't like. And
he was like, yeah, now I get to be like, dude,
you're the checked out pool cleaning mother and she's all
that night never connection. Literally, Mr Pool. Kevin Pollock has
one especially really good scene in this movie, and then
there's one scene where he's like, yeah, Freddie Prince, come

(08:04):
into my ass. I'm wearing a baseball cap. Also, I'm
getting ready for bed, but I'm not going to take
my hat off. Also, I'm still wearing my name tag
this is Mr Pool on my bathrobe. Anyway, I Was'm
gonna let Freddie Prince Jr. Into my house and way
to French my daughter Karen Calkins also here if you're interested.
It's just like she may have also almost gotten raped,

(08:26):
right O. God the narrative at the end where it's like,
oh yeah, Paul Walker almost ripe me, but thank god
I had a foghorn with me. I'm just like, we'll
get there. But I have so much to say about
the whole third act of the movie. It's bananas come together.
I mean it comes together like the movie. Like my
top note for this movie. I scrolled back up to

(08:47):
my very long ever note for this movie and I
was like, Okay, this is the movie where in the
next last scene, ironically, the protagonist says, you know, sexual
harassment is still a big issue these days. Took a
screen grab of that and literally says it as a joke,
like it is wild. And you've seen this movie many, many,

(09:11):
many times, Jamie, you had never seen it. I slash
the night before it came out. I was like thirteen,
so like peak age to be watching this. I don't
think I saw it right away. I definitely didn't see
in theaters. I probably saw it maybe probably within the
year of it coming out, but I think that was
the only time I had two very specific memories from
the movie. One was the kid who eats the pizza

(09:32):
with pubs on it. I remember that being a thing,
and I like a reference to like a legal case
that happened in the early nineties. But oh, whoa, I
didn't realize that. I listen, I have an encyclopedic knowledge
of pupe related crime. So I did recognize that right away.
Good to let me just really quickly google and I
won't find out what I'm talking about. Continue, okay. And

(09:53):
then the other memory I had from it was Rachelie
Cook's line towards the end where she's like, am I
a bed Am? I a bed am? I? At second that, Yeah,
I just for some reason that steered into my memory
Anita Hill versus Clarence Thomas. That's what I'm thinking about
when I think about how in the nineties pube related
crimes do show up in movies again and again and again.

(10:16):
Because Anita Hill rightfully did sue Clarence Thomas because of
pubs on a coke can. But there you we see,
it's a huge case and it's something that I learned
about for some reason. I learned about it at a
very young age. On that v H one show I
love the nineties. Everyone's like, wow, it's not hilarious there,

(10:38):
like I need a Helen Pies and it's very pube shamy.
But as a lifelong pube's advocate, I was like, oh interesting,
and I was like that my antenna was up. So
throughout the nineties, especially in a shamy way, pubes are
brought up again and again and again as a form
of punishment. And I had never seen this movie, and

(10:58):
I was like, oh, weird. So and I n nine,
We're still punishing people via pubs and it does from
what I can tell, like Guanita Hill versus Clans Thomas
case was so big because it is, from what I
can tell, at least on a large scale, the first
time pubes are discussed in a court of law like
acknowledges a thing that every human being has in a

(11:21):
serious way. And the way that it was covered in
the press at the time is very like, oh God,
this woman's losing her mind about this dude putting his
put because it was like he was putting pubes on
her stuff as punishment and like coercion and ship like that,
and so anyways, we see in nineties culture. Anytime you
see pubes show up in popular media poste as a

(11:45):
way to punish someone. It is indirectly a reference to
this specific legal case. Just a fun the more you know,
thank you now you know? Now anytime you get a
pubes question? Oh boy, Well anyways, that's your new backtalk.
Hast Jamie's pupercorner? Uh should I do the reecap? Okay?

(12:12):
So she's all that is about. Rachel Leie. Cook's character's
name is Laney Boggs. They're on high school. She's an
art kid. She's a dork and she's not popular. But
who we should say? Recent episode the lead of jos
the Pussycash. Yes, a much better movie than this. Meanwhile,
there's a character named Zach Siler played by Freddie Prince Jr.

(12:34):
And he is the class president. He's one of the
smartest kids in the class. He's a star athlete. He's
super handsome and super popular and he's dating the like
hottest girl in school until she breaks up with him.
His poor fragile male ego is very hurt, so he's like, oh,
what do I new? He is coerced by Paul Walker.

(12:55):
Let's be straight, right, so Paul, but he agrees to it.
Which is he's coerced by Paul Walker. And I'm gonna
stand out for Freddie Prince Jr. Threat because, Okay, I
know that Zach and Freddie Prince Jr. Are not the
same person. I understand how monies, But every time I
see Freddie Prince Jr. On screen, I just am so

(13:18):
proud because Freddie to overcome so much adversity. He's the
son of Freddie Prince. Never met his father, who was
like a comedian who killed himself, never met him, died
before either right before right after Freddie Prince Jr. Was born.

(13:38):
Freddie Prince, who was like this prodigal, prodigal, prodigal, very good,
very good stand up comedian who's very involved in the
comedy store scene in the seventies, seventies and eighties, killed
himself when Freddie Prince Jr. Was very young. By all standards,
Freddie Prince Jr. Should never have es, you know, because

(14:00):
he came from tragedy, had this very difficult upbringing. Freddie
Prince Jr. I think, overcame so much. Freddy Prince Jr.
Has been in a thriving marriage with Sarah Michelle Geller,
who has a great cameo in this movie for seventeen years.
He has three children. I was reading about him last
night and I was just like, oh, I like had

(14:22):
a feeling in my stomach of just like, I'm just
so thrilled for Freddie Prince Jr. That he has a
stable life. He really owned the nineties. He really did
and he and I would say he's a charismatic guy.
He I mean, for this, for this terrible character he's playing,
I would say, Freddie Prince Jr. He knew how to
be the exact person he was in a few movies.

(14:46):
And then he married Sarah Michelle Geller after Scooby Doo.
And also this establishes a clearer I don't know why
I'm being okay. This also establishes a connection between Freddie
Prince Junior and Lillard, and we see them later in
the Scooby Doo franchise as fred and Shaggy. Another critical

(15:07):
So anyways, we establish the Prince Lillard aesthetic here, and
I just think, anyways, I'm very proud of Freddy and everything.
You can't help root for him in the film, Like
you know, he's doing a bad thing, but you're like, yeah,
you know what, get her to fall for you man,
and then you learn about as strangers, like he's his whole,
his whole like real like privileged issues of like oh

(15:29):
darkout dark, which I just like. And then his dad's
actually quite understanding well if it's really the stressful is
very hot understanding that Oh my god. The end the
way that that like side plot ends where it's like
Freddie Prince, your we found up very early in the
movie has been accepted to every college in a very

(15:53):
manic acceptance style where when he's like, there's no way,
unlike very cheap paper. They didn't even bother to print
it out. It was horrible, and it was just like,
oh you know, Harvard, Freddy, They're all like all caps congratulations,
like what. And then at the end, Freddy says something

(16:15):
like it's not that easy. You can't just sift through
a pile of papers and choose one. And then his
dad goes like, that's what being at all is. You
sift through a pile of papers and you choose one,
and you know what, he's not wrong, like, yeah, that's
what you do. And at the end I says like, oh,
his dad, you know. The whole time, it's like we're

(16:37):
really the plot is really trying to justify why Zach
is such an asshole, and at the end it is
not successful and being like well and at the end
he really was just being kind of avoidant and his
dad was pretty understanding about his choice. Is like, Dad,
I'm stressed, and his dad's like, well, why didn't you
say so it was like all the entire like it's

(16:58):
almost as if men have probably him expressing their feelings. Okay,
So the rest of the story, slash, the whole story
is that Zach Siler, you know, class president star of
the school, gets broken up with so he is coerced,
but he also agrees to it like a bet basically
by his friend Dean played by Paul Walker. Arrest in

(17:20):
Power is as I like to call him, and Dean says, oh, well,
is it Zack that suggests us where he's like, I
could make any girl here prom queen and you know
I don't need that much time to do, and he's like, okay,
I'll prove it. I'll bet you. So it's Freddie Prince
Junior's character who suggests the whole thing, So he's not
that much of a feminist icon is is Jamie, you

(17:43):
would lead us to believe I'm proud of him. I'm
not proud of this character. I'm proud of Freddy. Okay,
So Dean's like, okay, Dean and their friend Preston played
by jule A Hill, who is my favorite. He plays
Sam in Holes and he's the cutest. I can't wait
till we do holes and then I don't know who
plays kissing Kate Barlow in that movie. Who plays his

(18:05):
love interest? I forget her name? Oh let's say, um
British art God, what fun. I'm like I would pay
for that sex time. Okay anyways, okay, so um, Dean
and Pressed In to a lesser extent, are like, okay,
we'll but you we you know, we'll pick out a
girl for you and you have to turn her into
prom queen within the next eight weeks, just to see

(18:26):
if you're as big of a big man on campus
as you say you are. So they pick Landy Boggs,
the weird art girl who great art girl name? I
will say so. Zach starts to pursue her in an
attempt to like, befriend her and maybe think that he's
romantically interested in her, so that he can take her
to prom and make her prom queen. She's resistant first,

(18:48):
but for reasons we don't necessarily entirely understand, she starts
to be receptive to his basically stalking her, and then
they hang out more and more. He takes her to
a party. It doesn't go well. She gets makeover to
fix her quote unquote we'll talk about that. UM, I'm sorry.
Are you suggesting that being a relationship cannot fix someone?

(19:08):
Because if not, I have no I'm suggesting that all
women need to be made over to feel more confident
about them until I take my glasses off and lose
your mind. Just how beautiful? Will you let your hair down?
And you took your glasses off quite beautifully? Oh my god? Wait?

(19:29):
Did Anna pack win Body shamed you into characterization as
someone who regularly wears glasses. I find this movie very
offensive suggesting that women who wear glasses can't be hot.
Care for what if I told you had a moment
in the mirror this morning where I took my glasses
off and I was like, oh my god, who is that?

(19:53):
Like gaslight? She's But then you did a little pratt
fall and you're like, I ain't so speaking of Landy
Bugs falls no less than three times in this movie.
Oh God, such a weird, stupid thing that happens in
all of these movies. Is like, just to remind you,
even though she's hot now, she's still the whole Bella

(20:17):
Swan thing McGuire, etcetera. She's always wearing like ankle length aprons.
You took that apron off, you wouldn't be as clumsy,
you wouldn't be tripping on this floor length garment. You're
constantly right. Okay, So the rest of the story is it.
So she's hanging out more and more with Zach Siler.

(20:37):
He starts to realize maybe he's actually into her because
she's beautiful all of a sudden, and maybe she's also
into him, and also for reasons we don't necessarily understand,
because as far as we know, they're not compatible in
any way, but they like each other because they're both hot.
So he asks her to or he doesn't get to
ask her to prom. She finds out about the bet,

(20:58):
then she agrees again for since we don't understand, agrees
to go to prom with Paul Walker. Everyone gets winned
of the fact that he's only taking her out to problem,
so that he can try to score with her. Zach
finds out about this because Laney's friend Jesse I was like, hey,
you go save woman and why did you go to

(21:19):
save woman? And he's like, okay, I'll go save a
woman and then um, and then a bunch of scenes
that should play out on screen are just skipped over,
and then we see the scene at the end where
Zach is like, oh, I didn't. He doesn't even really apologize,
He's just like, you know, I made that. That does

(21:40):
not I went back to be like, wait to fucking second,
does he at any point even remotely apologized. He explains
why he did the bad things he did, but never apologize,
says I made the bet before I got to know you,
and what I lost in the bet was my best friend,
she being his new best friend. But never did he

(22:01):
say I'm sorry for manipulating you anything like that. No,
I made triple short that he didn't. He doesn't, right,
So then they kiss and they're fine and they're in
love and the movie is over. We don't mention the
thick male icon from The Mighty Ducks, who does appear
throughout this movie, Who I Really Love? Who Peers has

(22:21):
character Jesse James who ends up with Anna Paquin, who
dresses like a bride to the prom. Uh and they
do end up together. That is a couple I personally
am rooting for by the end of the movie is
thick kid from the Mighty Ducks and Ana that because
she fat shames him throughout the film everyone stop eating

(22:42):
that you fucking fatty, Like it's just like what a why?
They're the first scene on screen together. She's like, are
you really eating before ten am? And the thick kid
from Mighty Ducks is like, um I and then he
immediately started to apologize. I'm like, I'm on his side,
was like, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to eat before

(23:04):
lunch and he has some weird tweinaking. He's like they're delicious,
and she's like, you said you would lose weight. It's like,
back off, it's not a great president. It's one of
the first thing she says in the entire movie is like,
what about losing ten pounds? Right? Like, she immediately fat
shames her best friend, her best friend who's a friend,

(23:25):
her only friend, who's a thick icon And I really,
I really was like, oh my god, it's the guy
from the Mighty Dugs, and I'm just like, I haven't
attached me to him. I okay, I would argue there's
a lot of shades of gray in this film. And
I don't sorry for calling it a film. It's a movie.
It's a movie. Isn't that barely introduced by Miramax? By
the way, I hope anyway, Harvey and Bob and you're

(23:51):
just like, oh no, Harvey and Bob on the scene
for this one. They're the ones signing off on this.
But I I feel like, and again, there's so much
wrong with this movie. The few things it does right.
She does fat shame her only friend scene one after class,
shaming her brother for being like, there are kids in

(24:13):
I forget what country who have been working in factories
for three hours already. I'm going to spit in Kieran
Culkin's juice. And so it's like, Okay, she's a little uptight,
you know, Like that's how it. When he's like they're
at the beach, He's like, check out that water. That's
literally what he says, check out that water, which is

(24:34):
like every time do you know how much like like
gallons of waste is dumped into the ocean, and he's
just like, why can't you just be chill? She's like
sorry quickly, you know. Okay, I'll get to that in
a second. Remind me about intelligent shaming, okay, But first,
I do think it is slightly positive, even though she

(24:56):
is body shaming him the entirety of their friendship. It
is lightly positive to see a female male both straight
friendship in a high school movie that is non sexual
and involves no pining on either party, because that is
something that I feel like it's very rare to see
where Originally when you see this Jesse character, it's like, oh,

(25:18):
he's probably secretly in love with her, and you fall
into this kind of John Hughes like, oh he probably
loves her and she's unattainable and all this stuff. But
throughout the movie they do remain firmly friends, and at
one point it's like, well, I've none you for so long,
I don't know how to view you that way. It's
like a sexual being and he mostly pushing her to
Freddie Prince Jr. Zack Tyler, which is problematic, but ultimately

(25:41):
I feel like for a high school friendship that sort
of like, oh, date the popular guys why not. There's
no sense of like, oh, she friends owned me, which
is exactly which I think is a very common trope.
And I had so many friendships like that in high school,
with like two people who in theory could be attracted
to each other but just aren't. And and that being okay,
I feel like that does not happen in movies almost ever.

(26:03):
And I thought that was, like, oh, that kind of
reminds me of me and my best friend in high
school who just never had the desire to french each
other and felt weird about it because all media said
that we should want to french each other, you know,
So that I thought was good intelligence shaming. Next point,
in these teen movies, every time a woman is smart
and has very specific knowledge, like Rachel Lee One Piece

(26:27):
Cook does, it's made to make her look uptight, Whereas
every time in a rom com were a male character
is very smart, he is made to look sensitive. So
intelligence used is used to like demonize female characters very often,
where it's used to like give depth to male character.

(26:49):
That's very true. Okay, Sorry, so you're saying that does
not happen in this movie, That absolutely does happen almost exclusively.
So smart. Can you see how quickly he improvised that
this performance right right right? Whoa he is deep, which
is just just like it's just to happen. And that's also
that scene where Rachelie Cook's character is like, I'm not smart.
If you're coming to me because you think I can

(27:10):
tutor you, I can't because I'm not smart. I'm just
a dork but I'm not smart, and it's like artist,
but she is. She is, but she's constantly playing it off.
And then every time she displays it with those specific
facts of like check out that water and then she
knows a specific fact about that water, it's like, oh,
you're such a bit as opposed to like, oh she
just knows something, you know. Yeah, she's a bit of

(27:33):
a buzz kill, though she knows exactly what to say
to bring the moment down. And you're like, Laney, she
is a buzz I feel like is fully bogs? I
love that the dad like the Kevin Pollit character. Yeah,
I think his best scene is when he is doing
the jeopardy and then looks up to like random JV

(27:54):
soccer players and it's just like, who are you people?
Doesn't do anything else? Is I don't think there's that
much comedy in this movie, Like, I don't think this
movie is that funny, but that scene is very funny
to me because you're saying, like, what are probably like
deliberately wrong funny joke answers to all the Jeopardy questions,
but it's so deadpan about it. I'm gonna ask him

(28:15):
this week tell me about the inside. So the movie, yeah,
it does like maybe a small fraction of a good thing,
but for the most part, it's just like ripe with
like very problematic stuff because at it, at its core,
this movie is about a boy tricking a girl into

(28:38):
dating him so that he can quote unquote fix her
to turn her into the prom queen so that he
can win a bet, which is miraculously in spite of
the specificity you just gave something that happens in multiple movies.
It's a common premise, especially for like very Asian romance
kind of things like that, And I understand it makes

(29:00):
for a good story that has a lot of conflict
and there's a lot of secrecy and all that, but
it's not good storytelling and that it means that a
female character usually is being manipulated by a man who
will later end up being her love interest who she
ends up with, just a relationship built on lines. Yeah, exactly,
Like I think that this in some ways, And there's

(29:22):
so many variations on this exact theme of like altering
a woman to your specifications and then accepting her and
apologizing in retrospect or in the case of this movie,
not apologizing well. I made a list of all, like,
of many many movies where this happens, where a woman
gets a makeover to quote unquote fix her. We go

(29:42):
back to Cinderella at this one. Cinderella is at the
top of my list. She's all that clueless, Miss Congeniality,
Princess Diaries, Greece, Never Been Kissed, Devil Wears Product, Pretty Woman,
My Fair Lady, What a Girl Wants, Josie, and the Pussycaster.
There is a makeover seen. It's not as egregious as normally,
but Rachel is relevant, Working Girl, Sabrina, Breakfast Club, Jawbreaker,

(30:06):
Last goes On. I said that one. Sorry. There's also
like well visible because this movie is supposed is intended
to be an adaptation of which My Fair Lady is
so Yeah, There's there's also this aggressive amount of like
girl on girls shaming, like the women so mean to
each other, like the cattiness levels. There's a female friendship

(30:27):
that barely gets explored, and which it was explored much more.
But between Gabrielle Union's character and Josie, not Josie, Laney,
Laney and fort where like basically we don't ever find
out what Gabrielle Union's character his name is the Gabrielle
Union is fully twenty six years old. Her character's name

(30:50):
that we know via looking at IMDb is Katie. But
I don't think I find ever the same with Little
Kim's character. You do hear her name at the very
very end in the situation ceremony whenever. Her name is
Sebastian Seawater, and they call a number of wild names
that I wrote down for her name. So Little Kim's

(31:11):
character's name is Alex. And then Gabrielle is Katie, so
Katie and Laney. Katie basically decides that Taylor, the popular
girl who breaks up with Zach Siler, Katie's I would argue,
is to an extent and inadvertent feminist icon. I'm gonna
probably disagree, but I'm willing to hear your argument Taylor
is Taylor yet she's rough. We'll get there. But Katie's

(31:35):
have an argument for Taylor. But Katie's like, I don't
want to be friends with Taylor anymore. She's a bully
and I don't really like her. I'm gonna be friend
Laney and it seems like she's generally pretty nice to her,
And I wish that was explored more or at all, really,
but it hardly is. No, it's not a lot of
development within the character. That's a bit he's been she's weird,

(31:59):
he's hot, and Pope learned has a parking spot right
where It's like the plot doubles down on Laney in
a way that it's sometimes to me is confusing, to
the point where like even the art girls are very
aggressive and mean towards her in a way that I
don't think is fully explained. That's what I understand is
what is Clea Duval's character's problem, what her parents? Why

(32:21):
is she so fucked up everywhere? And why does she
Why does she appear so many times in the movie
to shame Landy when it's like, in theory, this is
Landy's circle, So why does everyone hate her so much?
It's just it's like just her, like she's just a
weirdo and that's that. Like when Taylor sees her at
the party's like walks over, like I don't think I've
ever seen a mean girl care that much about another

(32:44):
person being at a huge part. It's like without like
a very specific because I feel like the only time
we see mean girls and we're girls in conflict in
movies is when it's established like they used to be
best friends or there was some sort of context, but
there's no think, there's no connection between at that point.
It doesn't even seem like she knows that Laney's there

(33:05):
with Zach right because she's like appeared to her and
Matthew Lillard showed up wasted. So let's talk about the
scene where they Okay, so the bed is made between
Freddie Prince Jr. Who I left and Paul Walker rest
in Power Delay is also there, but he is of
course sidelined the entire movie, even though he is the

(33:27):
voice of reason in that friend group, and it is
repeatedly the one that's like, hey, this might be funked up,
and everyone's like shut up. But there is like there's
a scene where Paul Walker presents Freddie Prince Jr. With
the central challenge of the movie, which is like, oh, well,
you know, Taylor broke up with you. And first, the
central plot of this movie is based on the fact

(33:47):
that Freddie Prince Jr. Finds heartbreak emasculating, and he is
when Taylor breaks his heart, which I will argue it's
like not the worst thing you could do in the
whole world, and she's kind of ashamed for it. But
like you know, Freddie Pincr. Is hurt and emasculated and
feels bad about being broken up with this girl who

(34:10):
he dated, who he cares about, but he has to
prove that that is not the case. When Paul Walker says, well,
the only way you can show me that you're not
a fun game pussy is by choosing a random girl
and exploiting and gaslighting her into being hot to your
standards and going to prom with her, which is, you know,

(34:32):
a very specific ask from Paul Walker, which I think
reveals that Paul Walker's character is a full associated path
because he comes up with the top of the dome.
He's like, you know what you should do? I wrote
that in my notes as Paul Walker's a sociopath really,
because even at the end he was just like guys,
who got this hotel room four oh nine or like whatever,

(34:53):
which was like I'm going to fuck her, and you're
just like what it all seems very planned. Yeah, he's
a full on sextual. Like I just Paul Walker's character
is fascinating. But but basically he like challenged his friend like,
if your heart broken and if you show emotion, you're
a pussy, So do this instead, and Freddie Prince Jr.

(35:14):
Takes the bait says Okay, I'll do it, and then
there's a scene where it it's literally the male gaze
first like two minutes where they're just looking at various
high school female characters and criticizing. They're speaking about them
so actively as they like, I'm talking about you and
you're walking by me, and I'll be like, well, she's
interesting because she's got a nice rag kind of short

(35:37):
jelse Clinton vibe going it's right there, and she's like whatever,
I'm just like my own business. And like their objective,
they stayed explicitly, is to make her a prom queen, right,
and so because that's what all women strive to be,
and when they land On Landy Bogs, who I'd be

(35:58):
remiss not to notice, is hot but wearing glasses and
an apron and has extensions and the worst extensive America.
At some point it's a hair, it's a horse's mane
that she has Scotch tapes and even calls her like
it's a horse's mane or something like this Maine has

(36:19):
to go and it's like, we all agree it's not hers,
but there's there's a line. Or Freddie Prince, he has
already criticized five or six women, and he says, fat,
I can handle weird boobs, bad personality, maybe some sort
of fungus. I mean, scary and inaccessible is another story

(36:41):
which explicitly states the state of women at the time
of this movie in a very and just like there
it is, they really go out of their way to
be like these women are so thirsty for Freddie Prince Jr.
Because he remember, he like walks in looks at a
photo of himself. She's like, oh, looking good me and
then says hey, Connie, and some girls like, oh my,

(37:03):
come you talk to me. And she's already turned on
her friends to be like, you bitch, how dare you
point that out, say that almost passes the bactal test,
except we don't learn the other girls name, so it's like,
but they're all no, they're talking about a man, so
never mind. It creates this vibe that all the women
are like for themselves and they're out to get each

(37:24):
other over dudes, and it's just such that whole high
school is a bad vibe and you got ussher talking
ship over all of it, which is just like what
school would let this DJ continue? In defense of the
casting director of this movie, can you find in a
better cameo a Jason role for someone giving the school

(37:49):
announcements at a high school than Usher in the same
year that You Got It Bad comes out and then
he comes back in a Fedora to d J the
prom for one of the Like I freaked out during
this scene. I was like in my kitchen last night
watching this scene and had like ran out of breath headed,

(38:11):
like you know what the dance sequence, the Rockefeller skank sequence, Yes,
of course I had. Why is there five minute dance
scene and moving and there's not enough time to develop
a friendship between Gabrielle Union's character and Lady bog sc
scraping cut those scenes as a feminist. Give me more Rockefellers.

(38:36):
That's the second dance sequence in the film. Yeah, I mean,
I honestly think Matthew Lillard is so funny in this movie.
Like his whole character is the absolute worst human being,
is a tattoo of himself on his arm, like and
then he just continues to have no sense of reality,
like every line about him like he got paid to
eat his own toenail clippings, like there's no reality to him.

(39:00):
And he's an adult man dating a high school or
which no one no, yeah, no one has any like
none of these like rich kids parents care. And there's
also only one teacher in the entire film, which is
the art teacher who just like shames Laney's like aggressively
dark art. And this shows up every she shows up,
I think three times. It provides exposition. There's a scene

(39:21):
with her at the end that I really want to
talk about because it is wild. But yeah, like she
shows up, one of the few women of color in
the movie who shows up, and it's like, here's what's
happening in the movie. Anyways, gotta go. He disappears that
she appears in this scene, right before Rachelieu was told

(39:43):
to kill herself, right, She's like, hey, anyways, we're an
art class, gotta go. She's like, why don't you open
up to other people and express art about your self harder?
And then some other grouples like yourself. It's just like, God,
why would you keep going to this class? And then
this movie, this movie does like Disney Princess Rachelie Cook's

(40:05):
character by saying also her mom died, and Kevin Paul
like it doesn't know what to do because he has
a hat and it's Mr. Pool but he is the
most checked out father he and he calls her pumpkin nose.
But even when he comes down to talk to her,
he's kind of like, hey, you know like kids go
to the prom right, You're like, thanks, that did remind

(40:26):
me of I got emotional during that scene because I
was just like, my dad would also know how to
talk to her. Well, Landy's character there's okay, So there's
not there's a problem with Laney's character being written in
a way that she's an empathetic character that we want
to care about, and that she does a bunch of things,
whether she's either fat shaming her friend or making decisions

(40:46):
that make no fucking sense, like the fact that she
keeps agreeing to go out with guys who seem terrible
and I disagree. Okay, well, well no, keep going, but
I do disagree with But then there's also a problem
with the way that everyone else is treating her, or
just the way the movie presents her. Were like the
first thing you basically see her doing after the opening

(41:07):
credits when she's like painting and stuff, is like bringing
food to her brother, So it's like, here, girl, have
domestic chore, bring boy food. And then it's like another
way that they disney Princess her though, it's like now
she has to be the smartest person in the room
and mommy because dad is Mr Pool and him don't
know how to cook, you know. But iteels like he's

(41:28):
a business owner and we're so hard on him, like
what a loser. He's a pool guy, but he also
seems to own his own business. But that and also
he knows all the answers to jepardy, so he's clearly educated. Also,
he lets his children just use any booze in the
house to make like crappy Margarita's that has never challenged

(41:48):
when Kieran Clan dresses, Sir Freddie Prince Jr. Alcoholic beverages,
never question. A twelve year old is making an eighteen
year old boozy drink and everyone's like, he's just looking
at his cross work. Do not look up once to
know what's even going on inside his home. It's like
I'm wearing a hat. I'm busy and wearing a hat.
But I mean with Laney, like we hardly see her
on screen for the first eighteen minutes of the movie.

(42:11):
She's barely there because the protagonist of the story is
not her. Zach Siler Freddie Prince Jr's character is the
protagonist and that he has the strongest desire because Laney
has no like central goal. The story is happening to her,
so she has no agency. Things are just sort of
happening at her and she's going along with whatever. But
she's not doing anything really to drive the narrative. It's

(42:32):
all Zach and his story. So she's stripped of all
this agency. So that means then the sympathetic character that
we're rooting for the protagonist of this story is someone
who's actively manipulating a woman. So it's just like it's
really hard to get behind. But for some reason, like
everyone who watched this movie were like, yes, this is great,

(42:53):
I love this because they're like, but you never it's
all about him going to school, Like is she planning
on going to college? We don't know. Never at the
end that she has applied to a number of art
schools and has been recommended in the scene that I
find very interesting. See this is where I disagree a
little bit. And again I did not see this movie

(43:15):
at the correct time for me to see it. But
Lady Bogs to me strikes me as and at any
point if anyone feels differently, let me know, but as
like kind of an Avatar kind of character. Where this
movie in is not meant with the intention of, Oh,
a ton of boys are going to see this movie,
like this is a girl's movie, and it's a young

(43:36):
girls movie, and girls are meant to plug themselves into
Landy Boggs, who feels weird, who feels out of place,
who is not fully characterized, I think, very intentionally. And
then we learn more about this popular male guy who
like basically it's just like the oppressor coming down to

(43:57):
the weird girls level and change in her so that
they meet in the middle. But I do feel like
this movie is made with the intention of young girls
plugging themselves into landy box just like, oh, this is me,
And I feel like, like the cool boys in school
don't like me, and why is that? And maybe it
was I was really into performance art when I was like,
I'm not even joking, well yeah, and I was like,

(44:20):
I mean not her kind of performance And I I don't
think I necessarily understood that one, but right, But it's
something adjacent where it's like when I was in middle
school in high school in like formative years, like wearing
a fucking back brace and being like a weird like
a weird girl who genuinely like popular boys would never
have just because of how of high school works. You

(44:41):
don't know, you could have been someone that they're like,
should we do the bed on her nush? That back brace?
You seem like that girl, Like you seem like potential
bet reject. You don't know, like you seem like the
girl that someone could pick out of a crowd of like, oh,
this would be a very hard person to want to fuck,
like literally, And that's how Laney is presented to the audience.

(45:03):
And I feel like that, and because young girls are
brought up to feel so insecure about themselves as people
and to view themselves strictly based on their bodies, which
this movie does endorse by changing her body and her appearance.
I think that we're meant to go into this movie
thinking like, oh, I'm Landey bogged, and maybe if I'm lucky,

(45:25):
Paul Walker will rest in power take me out of
a crowd. It's like, here's the most unfukable person in
the entire world, and then maybe someone who is deeply problematic,
not fully like who we're glorifying this movie will dare
to take a second look at me, and and and

(45:46):
so it's like these movies for me, it's like it's
so fun, but it also breaks my heart because it's
like you will so easily see how you can be
pulled into this movie for all the wrong reasons. Sure,
and I get that, And I also like, I think
that using the excuses under developing a female character so
that a wide range of girls can plug themselves into
is like the avatar of the story is just bad

(46:06):
writing and not a good excuse for a character in
a movie. Like I think that like, you can still
depict a human experience and depict an experience that a
lot of people can latch onto and identify with and say, oh,
I wish I was in this scenario with also still
fully developing a character and like making her feel like
a real person. I agree, But I also think that
there's no like the way that this character is written

(46:30):
vaguely enough and broadly enough where it gets to the
point of like, yeah, like, performance are sure painting dead mom?
Like I feel like that's done very intentionally to bring
in as many girls who would identify as not normal
as possible, and that's done as a very intentional like

(46:52):
it is bad writing, but it also does feel very intentional. Sure,
I feel like a lot of movies in the nineties
did that, though that was their whole like the whole
arc of the film. It would be a poorly written film,
but a character you could somewhat relate to because she
was a weirdo or he was a weirdo or an outcast,
and so you're like, oh, I directly relate to the
outcast and the popular persons like, oh I relate to
Zach because God, what a life all these women want me?

(47:15):
Like there were characters, but because like they actually exist though, right,
but don't you like I never really hung out with
like popular people in school. Maybe, I mean, clearly there
were no popular kids like how they're portrayed in that film,
but there were still those people who you could kind
of tell definitely like we're peaking in high school and
then there's just nowhere for them to go after that.
It was a very yeah, that felt like a very

(47:36):
popular trope of the night, like I recently saw do
know if you've seen Love Simon, But I feel like
it was a much more accurate. I mean, I've been
out of high school for years. Um, I don't know.
I actually kind of just got there, so congratulations. But

(47:57):
like so I don't know what high school is like
now really, but um, if feels like a much more
accurate depiction of what high school is where there's not
And like with that movie, there's like several female characters
who feel like real people, but it's still a human
experience that like, even if you know people are watching this,
I saw this movie and I am not a gay person,
but like the experience of hiding something about yourself is

(48:19):
so universal that I feel like there's no excuse to
underdevelop any one character in a movie for the sake
of being like, Okay, well, it's because we have to
be able to the little girls have to plug themselves
into this, like I just and that I think kind
of comes down to, like the problem of making movies
for young people is like, at a minimum, if you're

(48:39):
at a point in your life where you can make
a movie about anything, you're like ten years out of
high school, your te and so you have like a
ten year amount of dissonance of like what it is
like to actually be a young person and feel those things,
and you have ten years worth of you know, bitterness
and additional life to heap upon whatever that experience it was.

(49:00):
So it is hard to make an accurate depiction of
high school life because by the time you're able to,
you're so far at Yeah, I don't know who she's
all that was made for, because I feel like I
was too young watching There's so much stuff like pubes
on pizza, Like that part is confused. There's just like
drinking and weird telling people to kill themselves. Like there's

(49:20):
a lot of dark stuff in this movie that I
don't understand why I was watching it at a young age.
The audience is like fifteen to eighteen years, Like, I
don't know, it's such a small demographic of people. Um,
I want to talk about like the third act, basically
the whole third act of the movie, where we are
basically robbed of a scene so it's prom. They're a prom.

(49:43):
We see this scene where Paul Walker is like, oh,
I'm totally going to nail her. I paid three hullars
for this hotel room, and then out of a flask
in the bathroom and Laney's friend, um Jesse overhears this,
so he runs and tells Anna Paquin's character, who is
Zack's tiler's sister to the troubled sister who has to

(50:04):
go to a private schools too, and then they run
off and tell Zach. So now everyone knows about this
plan for Paul Walker to try to have sex with
Laney except for Laney. Then we cut to a scene
where we're at Laney's house. We see her dad and
her brother talking about pools. Laney comes home, she's like, oh, man,

(50:28):
I did have fun. That was a fun night. You're
right I should have gotten to prom and I'm glad
I did. And then she's like okay, by I'm going
to go to bed, and then they're like, just kidding.
Freddie Prince Jr. Is here and then we see her
tell him about her interaction with Paul Walker. Why we
do not see this play out on screen is insane
because does this scene exist somewhere? I have to believe

(50:52):
it does and that it was just cut out, because
the reason we need this scene is that it's one.
It's just like a bad writing that it's not there
because it propels a story forward, and then to leave
it out is just like, Okay, wait, what the funk happened?
But then it would have given her an opportunity to
like display some agency, which we see her have almost
none of throughout the entire movie, and it would have

(51:13):
let us see her save herself from the manipulation that
she's been experiencing throughout the whole movie, where she's like, wait,
you're trying to trick me. No, don't do that. I'm
my own woman, and I am figuring this out and
I don't want you, like I don't want this. But
we don't see a play out on screen. We only
see her kind of mention it later on when okay,

(51:35):
Kevin polygraph, but like the scene where she's like sort
of slow dance like allowing Freddie Prince Jr. To not
apologize for gas lighting her and outside of her own
in ground pool pulls popping upright and left, and then

(51:57):
Kevin Pollock says, I'm still wearing my hat, but you
know what, I do have time to do pop on
this ambient light for you. And then he like winks
of like, yeah, Freddie Prince Jr. French my daughter, you're
not apologizing to And that's the last we see of
him in the movie. Yeah, And then maybe they were like,
we really can't have her attacking Paul Walker in this film,

(52:20):
so they cut it out because I don't get it,
because I remember the first time I saw this, like
I was like, she's gonna get riped. I thought this
movie was gonna take a whole another like angle and
just take a left turn and Paul Walker was gonna
go to jail, Like I don't know what I thought
was going to happen, But for the longest time, I
like would just be like, how come she doesn't react
like if that I had been in that situation right

(52:41):
to like blow a horn someone like Dad one up,
But I'm home and then he was like, well, good news.
I let Freddie Jr. In Already, So in case you
weren't triggered already, more dudes for you, I've let someone
else in. And then she makes the joke sexual harassment

(53:02):
a big deal and then says, don't apologize. We're dating bonkers.
It is bananas. Well, I wonder if there's like if
they did shoot that scene with Paul Walker and it
was maybe deemed too because you had like right, he
would have had to come at her in such a
way where she ear horn blows him in the ear

(53:25):
like we do see the repercussion of that in the
graduation because he can't because he's sitting next to I
think he's sitting next to a a little Kim and she's like,
you're calling. He's like, what, I tried to rape someone
last night and it didn't work. He's actually graduated disabled

(53:45):
him like he's in capable, Like he's like chewing, Like
there's something weird. Happy. I have a theory that yeah,
so good. Her brother, Simon, Karen Calkin's character is s
wearing what I think is Simon. He's wearing what I
think is a hearing age. But the entire movie, which

(54:05):
I have a theory. I have a theory that she
keeps that foghorn around and maybe when they were younger,
she blew it in his ear and she permanently also,
so I do question the relationship just because I grew
up with a little brother who I think would be
about the difference between Lady Boggs and her little brother

(54:27):
would to be like four or five years. And it
does bother me that it's like Kieran Culkins little brother
character ends up viewing Freddie Prince Jr. Zack character as
like an ally and someone he can really rely on,
where her family like, both the two males and her
family unit end up pretty clearly allying themselves with Freddie

(54:51):
Prince Junr. The person who it appears that they know
is lying to her as like, here's someone you should
end up with. And I found that to be like
kind of like jarring of like man if I was
only growing up with my dad and my brother and
they both push this same dude who was tricking me,
you know, like realistically, and again I feel like we

(55:13):
have to realistically plug ourselves into a sixteen year old
girl trying to relate to Laney Boggs at this time
in what world? But you'd be like no, like there,
It's like if everyone in your life is like here
he is. We led him into the house. We're turning
on the ambient line, and it was like, of course
you're gonna want to be with that person. They're like
just being like you're such a wet blanket. Like even

(55:35):
her best friends like need this, Like you need friend, yeah,
everyone wants like the little brother, the dad, the best friend.
Like everyone, even like Gabriel Union's characters like this is
good for you come to the party like you need this. Yeah,
even Orati's like come on, man, date like you fucking
need this. Your art will be better. It's like everyone
is telling her she has to get out of her

(55:56):
like bubble and date this popular guy and is that
and that's how you will make it out of here.
And if she doesn't, she's an uptight little bit and
she's obsessed with her dead mother and that's not okay.
She has to move that. There's a scene that takes
place at the prom that really stood out to me
in terms of like a scene that says so much

(56:18):
with allowing the protagonist to say literally a couple of
Words Maximum, where Landy is at the prom. She has
been hotified by Anna Paquin and Freddie Prince Jr. She
is completely altered from the first way we know her
to be. Her Our teacher comes up to her and
says that, like she has, is very talented and that

(56:41):
she's finally achieved her full potential. And she says, like,
I've been spending four years trying to open you up.
Laney Boggs, whoever it is that did it, don't let
them go and then access the scene because she is
the queen of exposition. And the only thing Laney says
in the scene is like when she's like, oh, I
recommended you to every school you applied to. This is

(57:02):
the first we hear that Landy has a played schools
at all and any interest in anything right, And Landy says,
you're kidding. That's all she says in this entire scene.
And then the our teacher sees herself out. We here
that you know we in theory teenage girls here that like,
whoever opened you up to accepting the fact that your
mom is sucking dead is like the person you should

(57:25):
have sex until you die. And then and then we
see the rest of the scene is wordless. We just
see this like lingering shot on Landy and she looks
over at Freddie Prince Jr. Who's also looking over at her,
and then she just looks and we see her again.
And in that scene we realize it's like he's what
made her art good for four years, even though she

(57:48):
has known him for three weeks and he's been lying
to her the entire time. Like that scene I found.
I watched it like three times or just like that.
There's so little dialogue in that scene, but it communicates
so much to its intended audience of like, no matter
how long you've been working towards a goal, and no
matter what your goals are, no matter what you're good at,

(58:11):
there is a way to credit it to a loser
who is lying to you, and people will find a
way to make that happen. And I just, oh God,
that seemed dropp me. Fucking That teacher could have easily
just been like did you get laid because you seem
so much more chill right like that. It was the
same idea like whoever opened you up, who man literally

(58:31):
opened you up? Whoever you into college? For years, I've
been telling you to just go get that dick so
you'ld start making depressing hard about your debt. Mom. It's like, okay, teach,
get the funk out of here. You've been nowhere. They're
literally students at parties going insane and you were just

(58:51):
show up to be Like Klige of All was like
passing out in a pile of her own vomit, and
I was like, how does it feel? Like? What was
that good? Like role models at this school because these
students are all trash, those visibly thirty. She's like, how
does it feel to make the best start as at school? Bar?

(59:13):
It's like, I don't know, Here's a few things I
want to say. At one point, Zach tells Laney would
it hurt you to smile once in a while? Telling
her to smile. There's a lot of those moments. Yeah,
And she's like, did you know smiling can lead to cancer?
They're like a faculty female faculty member surprise kisses Zach

(59:36):
after he wins prom king that's not okay, not on
the mouth, but like she grabs him and pulls him
in and kisses him on the cheek. Yeah, are we
to believe that? Sarah Michelle Gellar's cameo is her playing
Buffy and that that's some sort of like clever crossover
thing because she looks like Buffy the character in the movie,

(01:00:00):
just like she has no lines, though she has no
lines exactly right. I just have to believe it's some
like weird like oh, because they're like all in southern
California and like maybe this town is like adjacent to
Sonny of Dale or whatever. I think you're actually being
a big dork by asking a question because I've never
seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I don't know what

(01:00:21):
the funk it's about. Buffy is great, you gotta watch. Okay,
stop triggering me. But there's every loser I've ever met
is said that, Okay, sorry, guys, I'm sorry, a real
character in this movie. Guys, actually who you actually and

(01:00:44):
then grab your own toeth and be like. There's also
a scene where after um Laney is nominated for prom Queen,
Jesse is sort of like directing people where to hang
up their posters that are like, hey vote for Landy
for prom queen. And then there's just one moment where
he's just like you gay students, put yours over there.
And the banner says something like come out and vote

(01:01:06):
for Laney, and it's just like, whoa that, Um, it's
that's a bad ninety nine Joe. Not that that joke does.
I kind of thought maybe the best friend might be gay.
I was like, maybe there's like an angle where he's
also into Freddie Bruce. I don't know. That was like

(01:01:26):
one of things when I when I was originally watching it, like, oh,
maybe there's something we don't know. But then he gets
with Anna for Quinn. But then he gets with Anna
Quinn and they actually get to they hang out, but
then we don't see them like that because she seems
into guys. I think her exact line was, Oh, her
brother is there and he just got kicked out of
like military school. So that's her vibe. What I hope
for her is that she grows out of being her

(01:01:49):
own brother's stooge, because she seems way smarter and more
decisive than him, and so in the first thing we
see her like and this is again how movies constantly
discards like an initially strong female character's potential where we
see her initially. The first time we see Anna's character,
she's nagging him aggressively and it's like calls him a

(01:02:10):
bitch magnet. She calls him a bitch magnet, and she
says like, you gotta go for a different kind of girls,
blah blah blah. And then the next time we see her,
somehow something has happened that now she's full on willing
to give Lady Boggs a makeover, and it's like, this
is not the character we saw in the first scene.
This is someone who is suddenly very dependent on whatever
her brother asks, and she looks like a little dissonant

(01:02:33):
at yeah. Yeah, and then at the end it's like, oh,
maybe she's going to date the friend, which I and
again I'm rooting for them, but yeah, that character felt
very weird and underdeveloped, of like she was introduced as
someone who I thought I was like, oh, this is
someone who could talk sense into, like the Zach character,
but then she sort of just ends up folding to whatever.

(01:02:55):
One of the first things she says is, so, who's
the lucky rebound skank? Like she and I want to
know she's like a big brother icon. Yeah. So it's
mostly Paul Walker saying horrible things about women, but the
way several different characters talk about women in this movie
is bonkers because you have lines like Paul Walker saying

(01:03:16):
whoa whoa whoa Lucu's bag from spring break looking all
phone and ship and then uh dol a Hill, and
his defense says, in response to that, on behalf of
all black people. Shut up. Usher is talking about women.
He calls someone magically delicious, um Paul, which is also okay,
that's also how you would describe lucky Chtermsey, But he's

(01:03:37):
talking specifically about how a woman looks. Paul actual big
brother because he sees everything. He literally is a big brother.
Paul Walker later says, how does he see all this?
And we don't know what his social circle is at all? Right,
because you don't know if he has friends or if
he's even in high school. We don't know. Zack says,

(01:04:00):
there are two thousand girls in the school and I
can bump monkeys with any one of them. The lingo
in this movie, I think Paul Walker at one point
even says check out the bobos on Super says that
he says he's like talked about how he like nailed
a flight attendant like a third year old, right Guynestly,

(01:04:21):
he's talking about Taylor, and he says every girl wants
to be her and every guy wants to nail her.
But then do like Hill comes around, he's just like, oh,
she's basically you with tits. So not a feminist icon. Um.
So it's just like the fact that you see so
many characters, mostly males, some female when it comes to

(01:04:44):
and a pack when through the word skank around talk
about women so horribly, and it's almost always in the
context of how they look or just like how desirable
or undesirable they are two men, and it's really gross.
And and granted, like Paul Walker ends up being a
villain and we're not supposed to identify with him, but
the fact that like, but it's so light a hearing loss,

(01:05:08):
and the fact that like Zack stays friends with him
for so long and agrees to the bet that he
sort of initiates, and all that stuff is just like
any young like teenage boy who is seeing this movie,
it's probably like, oh, those guys are so cool, and
and that sees how they're talking to women. That they're
talking about women was sexual harassment to everybody in the room.

(01:05:28):
You cannot walk around naked, that is offensive and then
he volleyball, so you know, junk was straight out. So
it's like, hello, we're all here. We don't all don't
want to see you naked. You can't just like flash
the last frame of the movie. Its like god, and
if you're lucky, you'll be the girl who naked guy
throws his dick volleyball to any soccer ball. So sorry,

(01:05:55):
but I was like, whoa stead of like yo, like
put something. It's like, no one wants to see your
flaccid dick graduations consideration his hard day. Sure we don't
know how super hard to shape. Freddie Prince j Yeah,

(01:06:16):
the moral compass of this movie is crazy and we
are not. And I think you made a great point
just now. We are not given really an alternative to
any men and young men especially who are seeing this movie.
We're not given any alternative to like, oh yeah, and
you can also not be the coolest guy in school
and also be fine like where we sort of see Jesse,

(01:06:39):
but he is seen very much in support to the
main female character, and like, I mean, really, the only
male ideal we're given is Freddie Prince Jr. Which again
I'm so proud of him, and he's done so well
in his life, but Zach as a character h is
a bad person, goes on to be a full on

(01:07:01):
lax bro who does very problematic things for a very
long time. I wonder if the ending scene is him
getting arrested for public nudity, someone calling the police, like,
this is not at this high school or is thirty
Why is this happening? Jamie, you said you wanted to

(01:07:22):
come to the defense of Taylor. I would like to
come to the defense of Taylor to an extent. I
just think that at the top of this movie is
mainly Marie County Taylor's defense, because she does sort of
very quickly lapse into a violent female on female I
have to be prom queen character. But at the very

(01:07:42):
beginning where everyone's just like, oh my god, she's such
a bit, she made Zach sad, and then we find
out minutes later that Zach is willing to exploit any
woman on campus to prove that he's a man. So
it's I I sort of felt badly. I can't relate

(01:08:04):
with her in that I wasn't a girl like that
in high school that had access to unlimited men. If
you can possibly believe if I didn't have access to
unlimited thirty year old Freddie Prince juniors at this time.
But like the fact that she is made out to
be a villain at the jump to again in the
way that female characters are made to relate to male protagonists.

(01:08:27):
She exists to make us feel badly for Freddie Prince Jr.
So that we can get over the moral jump of
him being willing to exploit any girl. So it's like
we are using a female character to justify a male
character exploiting a second female character. So Taylor is the
first step in this insidious sequence, and I feel for

(01:08:49):
her because in retrospect, if you look at Zack on paper,
he's not a good guy. Why would you want to
be with this guy. Not that I'm saying that Matthew
Lillard's real world care is the better option, but I'm
just saying like the movie very quickly demonizes Taylor's character
for not wanting to be with Zack when we find

(01:09:09):
out a minute later that Zach is not a good
person and willing to do anything to get a girl
in order to prove his masculinity. So I just felt
like at the beginning of the movie especially, I felt
badly for Taylor, because I felt like she was you
know that character, and characters like that who don't exist
in real life at all, was used as a pawn

(01:09:32):
to characterize the male character, and that bugs me, and
that always bugs me, and her character worsens throughout the movie,
and that like all she wants to do is kill
other women to be promptly, but also you know, goal
oriented woman, so she has she has more of a
defined goal and desire than Laney does. Again, the story

(01:09:56):
just happens to her. She does, she has no agency,
she makes no choices, and the choices she does make
make no sense for her character, where she'll be like, no,
Paul Walker, I don't want to go to the promise
you except here, I am going to the problem with you.
Like it doesn't anything she does, I guess well to
be for Kevin Pollock did say there's a hot guy up,
oh yeah, and she's just like, well, I might as

(01:10:16):
well prom he'll send his daughter out with anyone, like
he didn't even make the connection. And another guy's here
and he's just like, hey, look these dudes well that
night and he's like, well, then I recognize him to
like him. I think in an ultimate world that Taylor

(01:10:39):
and Paul Walker's character should end up together because they're
both little conniving bitches and go at it. Let's talk
about whether or not this movie passes the Bechtel test.
Does it? Does? It does? A few different times. Women
actually interact a lot in this movie. Oftentimes it's only
for very very short exchange. Some himes, it's with women

(01:11:01):
whose names we don't know. Oftentimes they are talking about men.
But there are a few scenes that do pass. One
of them is the one where Misty character, although Laney
does not respond in that scene, but because there's another
woman there, Savannah, who's contributing to the conversation, I think

(01:11:21):
that there's a scene where, well, I don't know if
this passes are not, because again, we never learned Katie's
name in the movie. We only know this from looking
it up on IMDb. But Gabrielle Union, her character and
Taylor are talking about her tattoo and then her acceptance
speech and how Seene It's like, very clearly eight yard

(01:11:44):
Taylor is like, what I'm a I'm a shoe in
for a prom queen, I could win this thing in
fluorescent light and blah blah blah, my mom was a
prom queen. A good line. So that scene passes the
test because there's another character there named Chandler. I want
to say, that's the girl with the short hair, right,
she's also there talking. Chandler and Laney had one when
they're on the beach and she's basically telling Laney that

(01:12:05):
she's not fit and can't play so many body shaving
scenes that passive act. Yeah, that's that scene goes like this,
I've seen you in Jim class. You run like a girl.
Laney says, I am a girl. Chandler says, you know
what I mean. Randy says, obviously I don't passes the
test is not a good pass um the scene where

(01:12:28):
what the hell is Anna Paquin's character's name mac mackenzie, right, yeah,
when when they when they talk about makeup, it passes. Yeah,
that passes. Yeah. So there's a few scenes here and
there that technically passed the test. Most of them are
Taylor bullying Laney more than one time, more than one time,

(01:12:48):
and then lots of problematic passes on this movie, just
like this is the opening of the film really sets
a precedent and do we know the our teacher. I
feel like the our teacher is given a name at
some point. I don't think so, I don't think so. Okay,
So those scenes don't. Also, the movie, even though it
does pass the Backtel test, does not pass the DuVernay test,

(01:13:11):
suggesting that a movie should have characters who are people
of color and that exists to not just support the
white characters. Because in this movie, right there are like
Taylor has friends who are people of color, Zach has
friends who are people of color, but they only exist
in the story to support their white friends. Also does
not pass the Loftiest test. There is a bald woman

(01:13:32):
in the movie at the performance art show that she's
not in charge. Stupid movie I loved, I did not okay.
Rating the movie on our nipple scales zero five nipples
based on its portrayal of women, I'm gonna give it
like zero to one half nipple. Like it's just like

(01:13:53):
very low for me because the You're one female main
character in any Bogs has no agency, She has no
specific desire of her own. She exists to be manipulated
throughout the entire story. Also, there's uh I wanted to
say really quickly that um of the movies that like
have women needing to be made over and fixed so

(01:14:15):
that they can be more desirable to men. That never
happens in the reverse of that, where there's hardly every
movies where like men need to be made to be
more desirable to women. So it's just like, really, it's
almost as if men aren't held to that standard of
like it's because I feel like attend like you know, however,

(01:14:36):
many years ago, I'd be like, we should make a
movie like that. But it's like, no, no one should
make a movie ye that we should just stop making
movies like this. And the way that women are talked about,
the way that so many the female characters are really
nasty to each other, just a whole slew of problems
with this movie. I have to give it zero nipple

(01:14:56):
rating the end, I would give it one nipple just
for clear Duval being such a strong, like independent woman
who just talks whatever she wants. That's the only everyone
else is just trying to get by. I'm going to
give it a nipple as well, and as much as
I am trying to get myself out of the habit

(01:15:16):
of giving movies nipples on our iconic writing system for
having inklings of useful, valid female characters who are not
constantly exploited by the men around them. I do think
that there are a lot of seeds of good female
characters in that if you're a sixteen year old girl
watching this movie, you at least take away that it

(01:15:40):
is okay to like art. At least Landy is not
stripped of her ability to appreciate art. There are some
few paltry things that don't suggest you need to become
a tailor in order to be accepted by the norm,
but the fact that you are still conditioned to be
accepted by the norm is very insidious and bad. And also,

(01:16:01):
teenage girls should be conditioned to say, like, if someone
wrongs you, you should expect an apology from them, and
probably not end up with them romantically, and probably not
just be like let Kevin Pollack turn in some mood
letting and just accept your life for the rest of
what it is. But there are the seeds of valid characters.
I do like that there are movies out there that

(01:16:23):
teenage girls can plug themselves into. I just don't like
the direction that most of those movies take. I'm gonna
give it one nipple and I'm going to kick it
right back to Landy box An. Thank you so much
for being thank you, thank you for joy. Um. I'm
on Twitter at Anna host A N N A H

(01:16:44):
O S S N I E H. I co host
a podcast called Ethnically Ambiguous on the House Stuff Works Network.
I'm also a producer there and I produce a show
called The Daily Site Guys, which is daily it's news
and pop culture and Caitlin have been on it. Great episode.
Uh yeah, listen Ethnically Ambiguous if you want to hear
stuff about the Middle East and being a brown, a

(01:17:04):
modern brown woman in America. It's fun. So yeah, find
me somewhere awesome. You can follow us on social media
at Bactokast, Patreon, slash, Matreon, subscribe to it to bonus
episodes every month. Reviews, Yeah, I'm unemployed now, so please

(01:17:25):
give us your money. Um by our merch I we need,
I need your money, and other is also very nice.
It's so cute as buttons and stickers and it's so great. Otherwise,
thanks for listening. We love you all. And By