The Bechdel Cast - Emma. (2020)

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

This week, we are unlocking a Patreon (aka Matreon) episode on Emma. (2020). For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamielof...tusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.
Starting point is 00:00:22 Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.
Starting point is 00:01:01 To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I'm Joe Gatto. I'm Steve Byrne. We are Two Cool Moms. We certainly are. And guess where we could find us now?
Starting point is 00:01:20 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
Starting point is 00:01:34 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. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast.
Starting point is 00:02:05 Hello and welcome to the Bechdelcast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens. Using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. That's damn right. Have you ever heard of it? I haven't heard of it. Which is really embarrassing at this point i know i've been bluffing my way for over half a decade now yeah we've been doing the show for six years jamie really really a long time um it is march which means it's
Starting point is 00:02:38 international women's history month i honestly don't know why international has to be like specified because if you eliminate it the meaning is much the same but anyways true we uh we we wanted to make sure we were featuring women directors this month obviously and we had in the works an episode on the women king that will be coming out but it won't be coming out until april because of a bunch of scheduling stuff so we wanted to make sure we were featuring um women directors this month yeah and that is why this week we are unlocking a patreon aka matreon episode that um i'm rather proud of honestly we did so much homework for this one and by that i mean we read a book but for a movie podcast reading a book is not easy extra credit it's hard yeah it's hard and
Starting point is 00:03:31 reading is hard um no but uh yes this is part of our matrion theme january aka austin august aka aka Austin August, aka Jane Austin Month. Yes. On the Matreon. We did it last year. We also covered the Joe Wright Pride and Prejudice adaptation with Keira Knightley and Tom from Succession. However, Joe Wright is famously a man,
Starting point is 00:03:58 so he doesn't qualify for this. And so what we are unlocking is the 2020 adaptation of Emma starring Anya Taylor-Jolie that's directed by Autumn DeWild, also written by a woman, Eleanor Catton, which we will discuss in the episode as well. But two great, in my opinion, two great Jane Austen adaptations. Is it and is it is it clueless grade greatness? Nothing is. That's the best adaptation of Emma.
Starting point is 00:04:27 However, this is my second favorite. And we really enjoyed the movie. And we think that you will too if you haven't seen it. You should check it out. Yeah. Go watch it. Gee whiz. What are you doing?
Starting point is 00:04:39 Also, one other quick housekeeping thing. If you are listening to us for the first time right now because you found us through Apple Podcasts, welcome. We're the Bechtelcast. Hello. Hello. Hello. It's us. Hi.
Starting point is 00:04:59 We're being featured on Apple Podcasts this month. We're highlighted as featured creators. So if you happen to find us through the podcast search feature, welcome. We've been around for a while. We've been doing the show for over six years now. And we hope you enjoy the show. We've been, you know, learning, growing, and watching a shitload of movies for a long time. It's true.
Starting point is 00:05:24 It's all true. It's all true. So welcome if you're new. Welcome back if you've been with us for a long time. Welcome medium if you came kind of recently, but you're like, well, I'm not new. It's a spectrum, the listening to something. Like, well, I'm not new, but I wouldn't say I'm old. Well, guess what? there's not a word for that but you're welcome here yes we we appreciate you we appreciate everyone who's listening right now also if you enjoyed this um if you enjoyed this episode feel free to check out our patreon aka matreon at patreon.com slash bechtel cast um You'll notice the discussions are a little looser,
Starting point is 00:06:05 a little goofier, and normally we have a guest on our main feed. But on the Patreon, it's just Caitlin and myself shooting the shit and having a nice time. So we hope you enjoy it. Yeah, just to foreshadow a little something on this episode is
Starting point is 00:06:20 how much we talk about Pokemon. Really? Yeah. All right. Well, look, we were still somewhat locked down when we recorded this, so you may notice that energy present in whatever's going on.
Starting point is 00:06:37 All right, Pokemon, fine. Yeah, fine. It's not against the law. No. So please enjoy this unlocked episode of emma 2020 okay it's still january aka austin august aka jane austin vember yes it is and we are closing it out with an episode on emma period i did not know at first that this movie has punctuation unnecessary punctuation oh i in the title i know did you read the reason why too it's pretty corny no no no no i believe
Starting point is 00:07:21 it's autumn de wilde was like it's a period piece. So I put it back. I was like, that's kind of funny. And also, the director of this movie, it was such a pleasure getting acquainted with her as a person and an idea. Because I'm now fully just like, I will go wherever she takes us forever. She's so cool. But yeah, because maybe it was in an interview I was reading with her. But yeah, there's a period in it because she's like, it's a period piece. So I put a period at the end.
Starting point is 00:07:55 Wow. I'm like, well, of all the reasons to do that, that is at least a pretty funny reason. I'll allow it. Yeah. Right. Okay. Right. Okay. So we're covering emma period from 2020 it's one of the last movies that was released in theaters before the covid 19 pandemic ever heard
Starting point is 00:08:17 of it i remember i almost saw it and then i didn't and then i experienced regrets you know i saw it instead oh you know what? I saw Invisible Man and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. It wasn't too, you know, I could have done much worse. I liked both of those movies. Yeah. One of the last movies I saw in theaters pre-pandemic was, oh my gosh, what's it called? Is that Pixar movie about the like fairy tale creature people
Starting point is 00:08:48 onward oh the one with the chris pratt pants dad yeah dad pants my dad is pants and i'm chris pratt right yes yes what the fuck was that movie there's gonna be a million people at the comments like that movie changed my life and i'm sure i'm sure it's great but i only know that movie is like chris pratt's dad is pants so you're like and i just like i'm sure that like most pixar movies are very heartwarming this one did make me cry i'm sure i mean all like most pixar movies that's like what they're genetically engineered to do i just like the way this one was marketed specifically I just thought was so weird I was like I don't want to see the Chris Pratt pants dad movie and I reserve that right and I and and you know maybe I'll see it sometime I think did you hear a glass shatter am I like what just now no not things are all is all is not well there you know
Starting point is 00:09:48 astebuary is uh really bringing out in me is i want we should go back to like naming our houses i know that it's because no one owns property and all these all these books are about rich but even like middle-class families name their house in Jane Austen world, which is also like, I'm sure that just happened. Yeah, I didn't realize that was a thing. I mean, I guess I knew from like, Downton Abbey because their huge mansion is called Downton Abbey. And then there's like, right.
Starting point is 00:10:19 I was like, what's it called? That's so funny. I was like, what's the house called but then um mr knightley in this story has an abbey as well i forget what his abbey is called what constitutes an abbey like what i don't know when you say abbey i feel like it means like extra big but like i'm sure it means something specifically like there's a mill or there's like a church or there's a farm or something right what's the difference between like an estate and an abbey and a palace and a castle because all of these structures are big so i don't know what's what bing bong i don't know you know i have no fucking
Starting point is 00:11:03 clue he's got an abbey. I just this. Okay. Yeah. So I'm going to start thinking of places, you know. I like that they named the houses, but all the ways that they named the houses suck. It's like cornwall. And you're like, okay, that's just a compound word. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:11:19 Let's just work on it. Sure. Because look, we're never going to own anything. But I'll, you know know i'll name my my half of the duplex that i rent sure i'll name that why not yeah until i'm evicted any day now i hope not well no my whatever but you know they they can i'm on a month-to-month lease they can just they try it do you remember matrons over the summer my landlords are like we going to sell the house and you'll just kind of be shit out of luck. But like, we don't know when, but you could be shit out of luck at any second.
Starting point is 00:11:51 So I was like, oh, and then they failed to sell the house. Oh, okay. So I have a home. Good news for you. For now. Just, I don't know. Landlords should just fucking explode in Minecraft, of course course which i know is something that you have to say um well we're talking about more rich people from england today because we're talking about jane austen's emma period period yeah okay we're not talking about
Starting point is 00:12:18 gwyneth paltrow did you watch gwyneth paltrow you want you re-watched clueless right correct and i really thought about watching for the first time because i hadn't seen uh gwyneth paltrow you want you re-watched Clueless right correct and I really thought about watching for the first time because I hadn't seen uh Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma so I was like yeah I should watch that just in case it's helpful but what did I do instead is play Pokemon okay well uh yeah matrons we're working really hard for your five dollars over here Jesus Christate no it's like you in my defense yeah it's for my mental health that's not a good excuse i think it's a great excuse for my mental health i have to play pokemon for 85 hours there yeah sorry i'm feeling spicy today it's fine it's good um okay i saw gwyneth paltrow gwyneth paltrow, Emma back in the day.
Starting point is 00:13:06 We were talking about this with the Pride and Prejudice episode where it was like, oh, there was like Gen X, Pride and Prejudice, and then Keira Knightley is Millennial Pride and Prejudice. There's kind of not a Millennial Emma.
Starting point is 00:13:18 I think that they did Gen X was Gwyneth, and then this is fully Gen Z Emma. This does not belong to us us but we're allowed to enjoy it and look at it but like anya taylor joy she belongs to them she does not belong to us just because she's so young yeah and just like the aesthetic of this movie i mean this movie is so aesthetic it's beautiful yeah anyways this is gen z emma period and i really like it what is your experience with the story emma in general not much i had seen clueless a few times oh yes but i don't think i knew the first few times i watched clueless that it was a Jane Austen adaptation. I definitely didn't the first. Yeah, I don't think I knew that until like, at least college.
Starting point is 00:14:09 Right. But I haven't read the book. And I haven't seen the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma. Yeah, so this is my first exposure to this story. I've seen it three times now. I had some time between my Pokemon hours that I was putting in to watch Emma three times. So I did that. But yeah, I did not read the book for this one. I read Pride and Prejudice. So I filled my book quota of reading one book per year so um i don't have much exposure to emma but jamie you did read the book reread the book i reread the book i and by that i mean of course i listened to the audiobook at 1.5 speed and yeah i guess i i'm like uh fully uh too too much emma this week for old jamie too much but i'm glad i read the book because i because the the changes that the movie makes is really really really interesting to me but like i saw clueless starting in high school didn't know
Starting point is 00:15:20 that it was a jane austen adaptation So it's almost like it doesn't really even count in my brain. Sure. And also Clueless is so different in a lot of ways. And I would say many better ways. But I read the book in high school. I saw the Gwyneth Paltrow movie in high school. I think I liked it. I don't really remember.
Starting point is 00:15:42 And then I was, I think this has also been like you know mini series did and all this stuff but I was really excited for the 2020 Emma period because it was uh you know an adaptation that was directed by a woman it just looked really I don't know like you know I was just genuinely excited to see it because sometimes you're like, this movie just looks beautiful. Like, it just looks delicious and I want to watch it. And it was, you know, like written and directed by women. I like Anya Taylor-Joy, who I feel like this was like, this movie came out like right before she popped off because this was pre chess netflix what am i talking about queen scambit yes chess netflix uh that's that's so funny i feel like i should be dating a guy
Starting point is 00:16:34 named chess netflix oh my gosh that's a great character please write something yeah chess netflix he's like my new rich boyfriend i'm like guys this is chess chess netflix we met at a party i don't know you just slid into my dms and now it's been four months wow congrats speaking of and mr chess emma or mr netflix i guess emma actually hooked us up she's she does these things sometimes she's a matchmaker like that i'm her harriet and she hooked me up with chess netflix he's awful um okay so anyways i like anya taylor joy uh i had only known her in the vavich i think and i hadn't even seen it at that point but i'm like oh it's the the vavich girl that has those big old eyes and oh oh i was mostly excited to see this movie because fucking Bill Nighy of I Frankenstein fame is in it.
Starting point is 00:17:29 So that was there's that. I feel like we texted about it when we both first saw the trailer because there is that great trailer moment slash movie moment in general where Bill Nighy hops down the stairs and goes like, I caught like best part of the movie. And I really liked the movie, but it's like the best part of the movie. Absolutely. So I was very stoked to see the movie. I watched it on HBO when it was on HBO. And then I was excited to revisit it for this. I think it's an it's a good adaptation. I really like what they changed because the book is very bizarre I'm excited to talk about that a little bit as well the book is like it's it's good in like the literary sense and you know whatever it changed the shape of the novel forever blah blah blah like I get it sure book heads don't come for me but just like this the way the story plays out is interesting to me
Starting point is 00:18:26 because i i feel like and then i frantically googled my own opinion to see if i was uh you know if your opinion was correct yeah to see if my opinion had been corroborated by someone uh who know who can read a book and it has been corroborated is I think the Emma of the book ends up regressing by the end of the story but the way that it's been adapted for 2020 which I think is smart in terms of like you want as a moviegoer to get some payoff and feel like the character has grown in the book I don't think that she really grows very much because the ending is different and by the end you're just like it just is sort of one of those i feel like this is like a victorian novel or just like sometimes a novel thing in general where like things move slow slow slow slow slow
Starting point is 00:19:20 and then it's like whatever the protagonist is at they're low they're at the whatever the second act the end of the second act of a novel is the low point yeah but then but then in some but but then like things just kind of like very abruptly work out sure and it has kind of nothing to do with any action that the protagonist takes right well let's take a quick break and then we will come back for the recap. the only Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you.
Starting point is 00:20:16 Oh, my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song?
Starting point is 00:20:31 Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. Not hawk the slalom. I gotta hawk this slalom, Rudy. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my
Starting point is 00:20:52 slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017
Starting point is 00:21:10 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts
Starting point is 00:21:25 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.
Starting point is 00:21:35 And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. 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
Starting point is 00:22:22 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.
Starting point is 00:22:54 Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back. And here is what happens in the movie. Emma Woodhouse, we get some text on screen that she is handsome, clever and rich, and has lived nearly 21 years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. We meet her. She's Anya Taylor-Joy, of course. Her whole thing is that she loves to matchmake for other people. And she has just done this for her. I wasn't sure exactly who this was at first. I think it was her former governess, Miss Taylor. I also don't know what a governess is like a like a tutor or like a governess. Yeah, it's like a combo tutor and nanny basically okay yeah got it
Starting point is 00:23:48 and they like live in so it's like a permanent in the house yeah right so miss taylor is about to get married and become mrs weston and she is therefore about to leave the estate where Emma lives with her father, Mr. Woodhouse. And that, of course, is Bill Nighy. So at the wedding between Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston, we meet such people as Miss Bates, who Emma thinks is very tiresome. Can I? Yes, there is a thing. And I think it's because we've been doing jane austen and cinderella adaptations and i say this as a woman with a uh kind of a longish thin head anytime in a damn period piece they want to telegraph this woman is annoying and not very smart they cast someone that has my head shape and i don't like it the actors who play there's always
Starting point is 00:24:53 one stepsister in cinderella that has my head shape and then miss bates my head shape there look what i'm saying is um you can cast me as obviously supposed to be annoying because i have the correct head shape what is that i know what it is we don't need to talk about it but i'm like fuck you it's rude leave my head alone yeah sorry miss bates so miss bates is there mr elton is there he is the vicar who marries this couple. And there's also talk of the groom's son, Frank Churchill, coming. But he never shows up. Who do you think is the hottest guy in the movie?
Starting point is 00:25:36 Oh, good question. My answer sucks. For me, it's probably between Mr. Mr. Martin is pretty cute to to me just as far as looks goes not personality but frank churchill i would maybe kiss i also um i like the actor who plays mr weston and oh he's fun i like him i don't know if i would kiss him or not i would kiss bill nye probably what's your answer do you remember when bill nye he said mew too uh yeah i will never forget the first time i heard bill nye say mew too i like lost my fucking mind. Well, now that I'm a Pokemon expert,
Starting point is 00:26:26 after playing 5 million hours of Pokemon, and I think it's Arceus, Arceus, Arceus, Arceus. I don't know. I don't know how it's pronounced. I'm roasting you, but I know I would get just as into it. Wait, I, hold on. Okay. I can't stop thinking about him saying it now.
Starting point is 00:26:45 But we've talked about this on the Matreon before. I think about how Bill Nighy didn't know anything about Pokemon. And then he started playing Pokemon Go. And then he was like, I know. Then he became a sentient Pokedex. And he just, I just love, I love that. Okay. Think about this.
Starting point is 00:27:04 Probably, probably on the set of Emma, Bill Nighy played Pokemon Go. Oh yeah, definitely. Because he would have been into it by then. Yeah. Anyways, when he said Mewtwo, he just, it's because he said it like a theater actor and you just never expect to hear someone say it that way. Anyways, where are we um oh oh who would you kiss mr elton josh o'connor he's also in the crown he also plays a fucking he plays young prince charles uh you know another famously loser guy but guess what he's got he's got a head shape that i like and he's having also i
Starting point is 00:27:50 think he's very funny and he's having such a i think a good time in this movie being the most annoying man to ever live oh yes in no sense i don't i didn't understand that joke i'll say it that joke was in the trailer and i was like what's the joke it's just bill nighy repeating something no he mispronounces it and then bill nighy is like no it's innocent he should have said mew too okay so those are some of the main characters we also meet mr knightley mr kieran knightley also i don't know who that actor is but i kept thinking referring to him in my head as slightly less hot heath ledger oh interesting you know who i think is mr nightly in the gwyneth paltrow one is is nightly in that one which is i get it this guy's name what is his deal his name is johnny
Starting point is 00:28:59 flynn his wikipedia picture is weird it looks like it was taken on a fucking point and shoot 15 years ago well i guess i don't have much to say he was definitely hot but i you know he was too conventionally hot to hold my attention i want i want a mr elton i want bill nye saying mew too give me something interesting yeah yeah yeah yeah so mr knightley visits emma and her father okay so what is the relationship between emma and mr knightley in the book they're like brother and sister-in-law uh because emma's sister is married to mr knightley's brother emma's i think that that's the case in the movie too it's confusing because they keep saying we're siblings but it's because. Emma's. I think that that's the case in the movie too. It's confusing because I keep saying we're siblings, but it's because Emma's sister married Mr.
Starting point is 00:29:49 Knightley's brother. So they're in-laws. No blood. I wasn't sure if it was the same thing as it was in clueless where they were former step siblings. No, I think I always found really weird. I think it's weirdly less weird in the book from the 1800s than it is in Clueless.
Starting point is 00:30:05 I think I kind of forgot. Yeah, that there it was like a weird like step sibling porn line. They're definitely. Yeah. No, they're they're in laws. They're brother and sister-in-law. Okay. Yeah, that's never made very clear in this movie.
Starting point is 00:30:19 Right. Either way, Mr. Knightley and Emma have a like flirty, but like teasing, negging type of banter. Yeah. Emma befriends a young woman named Harriet Smith. Mia Goth. Fun casting. Emma kind of takes her on as a project and plans to matchmake for her harriet fancies a young man named mr martin but emma doesn't think he's good or interesting enough for harriet so emma tries to encourage harriet to like mr elton the vicar right he was kind of funny and weird is like so harriet's like a local student but the way that autumn de wildild chooses to style the students is like they're in The Handmaid's Tale. So you're like, well, wait, wait.
Starting point is 00:31:10 I'm sure that that's like historically accurate, but it's just as a modern viewer, quite jarring to be like, oh, my God, where are they taking these women? Should we help them? I know I had the same thought, but it's probably just like, oh, they're just, you you know young women who go to a boarding school look like little red riding hood slash the women from the handmaid's tale very weird who knows not us we're not scholars no we have one brain cell and we have to share it okay so emma and harriet get closer they run into Bates, who is like carrying on about her niece, Jane Fairfax. We see them hanging out with Mr. Knightley. They also hang out with Mr. Elton, who loves a painting that Emma did of Harriet.
Starting point is 00:31:58 And it seems like he really likes Harriet. Then Mr. Martin proposes to harriet via a letter which harriet reluctantly rejects because of emma's kind of subtle persuasion to not accept his proposal every time someone says persuasion in this movie i'm like that's another jane austen book i know that oh that's funny because at least once they say prejudice it is I know I was like I remember that and then they're also talking about sense and maybe sensibility anyway and they said they boy do they say Emma a lot and they really say Emma a lot but there's no mention of Mansfield Park is that a Jane Austen novel or did I make that up
Starting point is 00:32:47 no you nailed it you nailed it wow yeah well I am a scholar after all okay Harriet rejects Mr. Martin which upsets Mr. Knightley especially since it was he who encouraged Mr. Martin to propose to Harriet I think right he it is it is and so that's like call that more in the book too of like mr knightley's like emma you shouldn't meddle i'm like you literally just came from mr knightley's house to be like you know who you should marry so he's like meddling with his boys too but no one ever calls him out on that good point emma's sister isabella visits with her her husband who is apparently brother yes had no idea and then their baby and there's also another small child i think um a bunch of them have dinner together after which mr elton professes his love, not for Harriet, like Emma is expecting,
Starting point is 00:33:48 but his love for Emma herself. And she turns him down. She's like, I don't want to get married. And he does not take this rejection well. He acts like a big baby and like dashes out into the snow. He, oh my gosh, he's dashing through the snow. Fun, fun Josh O'Connor. I like in this movie, there's like a few times when someone just starts like yelling and you're like,
Starting point is 00:34:17 they like just where he's like, open the carriage. You're like, oh shit. Oh shit. It really takes you by surprise because it does normally these rich people are so proper and not yelling anyway so harriet is disappointed to learn that mr elton never liked her then emma and harriet spend some time with miss bates again the woman that emma thinks is super boring as well as miss bates niece jane fairfax who emma is also not fond of and maybe even jealous of which is not as clear in the movie as it seems to be in the book meanwhile harriet bumps into mr martin the man who she
Starting point is 00:35:01 had rejected farmers only that's that's harriet until emma starts meddling she's on farmers only and then emma's like no you got to get on jane austen yeah oh wow yeah we've heard of a thing or two um so that interaction is super awkward and it's clear that they are still in love with each other but they don't do anything about it and then emma finally meets the elusive frank churchill they make eyes at each other it seems they like each other and also one of the things that i think that this movie and this book do very well is that's like i feel like you don't see it very often executed effortlessly like this is like seeing two characters that bring out the worst in each other and that is so Frank and Emma where
Starting point is 00:35:52 like separately they're like like they still kind of suck both as in Frank sucks worse but like they both kind of suck as individuals but when you bring them together you're like these two cannot hang out together they're going to like hurt someone's feelings and then they do and then they do yeah hate them hate them cancel the friendship right then there's a new lady in town she is the new wife of mr elton emma also does not like her we will come to find out that emma does not like her. We will come to find out that Emma does not like most of the women she encounters. Then Frank Churchill's father, Mr. Weston, throws a ball in Frank's honor. Emma dances.
Starting point is 00:36:37 I thought I was like, he does what? Sorry, you meant like, I was like, he doesn't, I don't see him throw a single baseball. Okay. He does not throw any pokeballs. Bill Nye, which is a shame because I bet Bill Nye has 500 at his damn house. I would love what if Bill Nye has a pokeball room and that's where he keeps all his Pokemon. I hope so. Me too.
Starting point is 00:37:04 Me too. ball room and that's where he keeps all his pokemon i hope so you too we should cover detective pikachu on the podcast literally let's cover it i mean i don't know what we really have to say is there anything to actually there are a couple things to say okay and i will say them when we cover it maybe for my birthday birthday this year, maybe I'll do Detective May and then we'll do Detective Pikachu and another detective movie because every movie is about cops. Yeah. Anyway. Or we could find, well, I guess, oh, I had this, oh God, i had this thought the other day and then you ever have a thought that you're like i probably don't even want to know the answer and it i don't need to go
Starting point is 00:37:51 there right now and so in my own for my own protection mentally i don't want to know the answer to the question yeah my question was uh-huh is nancy drew a cop corrupt like is she a nancy drew works independently but is does i don't remember i don't remember i feel like she probably then reported to the cops i don't remember either and i've read so many nancy drew books she worked independently 25 years ago she right oh god we're old uh that she like she worked independently but but when she solved the mystery would she tell the cops i don't remember same with the same with the mystery team or the mystery machine that all those cartoons that got in that car the scooby-doos the scoobies what were they god i can't remember a damn thing today the scooby did the scoobies collude collude that's the word i'm working with oh did the did the scoobies collude with the
Starting point is 00:38:53 was there a situation there you know what i guess we're just gonna have to cover scoob no scoob or 2002 scooby-doo we should cover 2002 scooby-doo i watched i watched scoob in at a at a low point in my life and it was stinky stinky stinky not no no lillard right no lillard if it doesn't have lillard in it i don't care do you remember when Lillard got so he got so sad when they recast him he because no one told him and then they're like Will Forte voices Shaggy in this one and I love like Will Forte is the best but my love of Will Forte is outweighed by my discomfort of the idea of Matthew Lillard like having a bad day so how much do I love Will Forte I don't know I really love him wow enough talking about random white guys in their 40s let's move on okay so Frank Churchill's
Starting point is 00:39:57 father throws a ball the dancing kind not the Pokemon kind and at the ball emma dances with frank because they're you know canoodling or whatever right but harriet has no one to dance with so mr knightley asks her to dance which emma thinks is very kind and harriet thinks is very kind and then emma and mr knightley say some nice things to each other and then they dance together and we're like oh what's happening this is another thing i like that the movie does that the book doesn't the book kind of plays out more like a detective novel and like who loves who you don't know that like you you can tell on like a reread that knightley clearly likes Emma the whole time but Emma has no idea she likes Mr. Knightley until like very late in the book and something that I learned about Jane Austen by reading these books
Starting point is 00:40:53 and literally following along with the spark notes to make sure that my I was listening correctly is that like she has this bizarre tendency that I don't even really like but in terms of like adaptation it opens up a lot of creative license for writers or like screenwriters but like the most important moments in the book she'll like summarize instead of writing dialogue for characters where it'll be like like that whole like mr darcy like you've bewitched me body and soul like that's not in the book right in the book's like Mr. Darcy professed his love ardently and Elizabeth finally reciprocated. Like it's she doesn't say what they're saying. Show don't tell Jane Austen.
Starting point is 00:41:36 Geez, have you never taken a screenwriting class? Yeah. Why didn't literally and that's so she actually was a bad feminist. She canceled. But anyways, because she writes like that, it opens it up for a screenwriter to do kind of whatever they want. But but I just thought it was funny how how that plays out with Emma realizing that she loves Mr. Knightley is when Harriet is like, yeah, no, I love Mr. Knightley. I don't feel a damn thing for Frank. Frank kind of sucks, which also like Emma didn't even seem to understand.
Starting point is 00:42:09 Harriet knows that Frank sucks. She's like, no, I love Mr. Knightley. He's awesome. He's cool. And there's a single line that's like, Emma realized suddenly that Mr. Knightley could marry no one but herself. And like, that's how you're told that she loves him. Like, that's how she realizes it. And then she sends harriet to the dentist for a month i'm just like oh my god
Starting point is 00:42:30 i don't know how long the dentist took back then but not a month not a month i didn't even know there were dentists back then so that's where i'm at sick burn uh the i actually i wouldn't have like i don't know but she got sent away to the dentist long enough that she got engaged like that's too long to be at the dentist oh yeah anyways weird okay so emma and mr nightly's relationship is evolving much like how a pokemon evolves oh she's going charmander to what's the middle one what's the middle one oh i don't know enough about it yet this is my first pokemon game she goes charm okay well i'm gonna skip the middle then she's there's that shot of him touching
Starting point is 00:43:17 her waist where she goes charmander to charizard like that she's like you're like oh ah oh like it's a good i oh god i mean when there's a horny a good horny moment in a period piece it's exciting it's nice oh a touch of the waist full charizard like that's that's how i'm gonna that's what i'm gonna call boner moments now full charizard it works it hits yeah it works i'm thank god bill nye was in detective pikachu or we wouldn't be on this gorgeous train of thought well it's also thanks to me playing eight billion hours of it's true pokemon arceus right it's or whatever they're now officially billable hours me too me too it's so funny so after the ball mr nightly runs all the way to emma's estate presumably to profess his love for her but before he can frank churchill
Starting point is 00:44:17 shows up carrying harriet who is injured harriet tells emma that she's in love again. And Emma assumes Harriet means she's in love with Frank. And Emma promises not to interfere this time, like she's done in the past. Then Mr. Knightley invites several people to his estate for an afternoon, during which Emma lets it slip that she thinks Miss Bates is very boring to her face to miss bates face horrible miss bates is extremely hurt by this she all but like burst into tears shit like evil so evil and mr knightley is also taken aback by Emma's cruelness and confronts Emma about it. And she feels awful.
Starting point is 00:45:08 Then Emma learns that Frank Churchill is engaged to Jane Fairfax and secretly has been for quite some time. So Emma feels horrible on Harriet's behalf because she knows that Harriet is in love with Frank. But then Harriet is like, no, Frank isn't that Harriet is in love with Frank. But then Harriet is like, no, Frank isn't who I'm in love with. I love Mr. Knightley, which like started when he asked Harriet to dance at the ball when no one else would dance with her. But then Harriet realizes that Emma also loves Mr. Knightley, which drives a wedge between them.
Starting point is 00:45:50 So when Mr. Knightley professes his love for Emma and proposes to her, she's like, well, we can't do anything about it because Harriet loves you and I don't want to hurt her anymore. And he's like, okay, well, I have to go convince Mr. Martin to propose to Harriet again. And Emma's like, no, I have to be the one to do it I have to display character growth because the book doesn't do that yeah yeah I will say the addition of Emma's nosebleed makes the movie the two Emma's nosebleed and Bill Nighy hopping down the stairs makes it a must watch for me. Warts and all. It makes it a must watch.
Starting point is 00:46:29 Yes. So Emma goes and does this to convince Mr. Martin to propose to Harriet. It works. Harriet accepts his proposal. So now Emma and Mr. Knightley are free to be with each other. So they canoodle, they kiss, and then the movie ends with them getting married. The end. Slurp.
Starting point is 00:46:53 Cue. Okay, let's take another quick break and then we will come right back to discuss. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Han is joining us on Lost Culture East.
Starting point is 00:47:17 That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to.
Starting point is 00:47:37 No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person?
Starting point is 00:47:55 I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my flock, you Harlem. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:48:18 Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,
Starting point is 00:48:57 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple 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,
Starting point is 00:49:30 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.
Starting point is 00:50:08 Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so I'm going to be talking about the book and movie back and forth throughout this episode, because boy, is this a long book, and it's got to be worth it for me, okay? Please, by all means. So the main difference, and we talked about this in the Pride and Prejudice episode too, where it's like there's a lot of trimming out excess characters,
Starting point is 00:50:40 storylines that are just going on forever stuff like that which makes sense um but the the big change at the end is in emma period in 2020 emma has to like make things right with harriet because she has like fucked up harriet's life under the guise of like i'm such a good person right and then it turns out that like if she had just left harriet alone harriet would have made the right decision on her own months ago and would have gone through much less emotional distress and gaslighting and all this kind of just being fucked around by weird rich people right and so in the movie i think it's really smart that emma has to like atone for that it still is pretty abrupt but at least they
Starting point is 00:51:26 have her you know she has to say I'm sorry she has to go and apologize for being an asshole right in the book that is not what happens uh in the book when Knightley proposes to Emma, she says yes right away. And then she says, yes, but let's not tell Harriet. What? She's so mean in the book. She says, she's like, absolutely. Yes. Love you so much, my king. But don't tell Harriet because whoopsie daisies, she's in love with you.
Starting point is 00:52:00 And Knightley is like, oh, yeah, let's not tell her. And then Emma sends Harriet away. with you and nightly is like oh yeah let's not tell her and then emma sends harriet away emma is like harriet don't you have to go to the dentist you should go to my sister's house in london like get the fuck out of here she like disappears harriet so that she can tell her society like i'm engaged to mr nightly but don't tell Harriet yet. She's going to be so pissed off at me. Like she feels guilty about it. It's not completely evil, but like she sends Harriet away. And then, you know, in the movie, Emma, she gets a nosebleed, which is so funny. She gets a nosebleed and she's like, I want to marry you, but I have to make some things right first,
Starting point is 00:52:43 which totally makes more sense for the character demonstrating growth and then she has to go you know tail between her legs she has to go to Mr. Martin and say I fucked up I meddled too much you and Harriet clearly belong together and really care about each other and like make it right she does not do that in the book either so she sends Harriet away. And then just kind of while Harriet's away, she runs into Mr. Martin and is like, hey, do you still love me? And he's like, yes. And then they get married and Emma doesn't find out for like, or Emma goes to the wedding in the end. But like, it just all happens. Like, Emma doesn't have to do anything. She's like, rewarded for sending Harriet away.
Starting point is 00:53:27 Because if she hadn't sent Harriet away, then how would she have gotten back in touch with Mr. Martin or whatever? Like, it sucks. And then at the very end of the book, in the last, like, what I find so bizarre about Emma. And, again, I'm nowhere near a Jane Austen, like, I don't know, even like a fishy and like, I'm sure we have listeners who have a better understanding of this than I do. But I just found it so bizarre that like, in this book, versus Pride and Prejudice, it's a lot of like Jane Austen reinforcing the class status quo. By the end of the book, everyone marries within their class. And that was the right and morally upright,
Starting point is 00:54:12 like it was like socially and morally correct that everyone remained within their class. Whereas in Pride and Prejudice, that is not the case. That novel pushes against it. It's interesting because now that we know that like jane austen had a lot of complicated feelings on class and and definitely some class resentment that comes through in her work and then other times it's like she's kind of reinforcing a status quo we're not scholars we don't know but like i just think it's so interesting that like because it does feel true to like born into wealth kind of richness that it's like all of her problems are extremely temporary and that is like how it plays out
Starting point is 00:54:56 in real life very often but it's so frustrating to see it like like it's just anya taylor joy is like oh i was being such an asshole blah blah blah and then Mr. Knightley runs up he's like I love you oh well I guess it all worked out yeah I feel like Emma comments on gender pretty effectively but I find the way it deals with class weird because at the end of the book I think the movie does it better i like the things that the movie does but in the book at the end emma and harriet do meet up one more time she finds out that harriet's father was like a tradesman in blah-de-blah england and instead of saying like i'm sorry i love you you're what you and mr martin are welcome at wall corn or whatever her house is called anytime
Starting point is 00:55:45 yeah in in the book she says okay well bye and then in like whatever the narration jane austen basically says like emma and harriet quickly fell out of touch because it would have been socially improper for emma to hang out with a farmer's wife that would have sucked and like their friendship ends like they're just like within a few months Emma and Harriet didn't talk anymore and that was the correct thing to happen because you know you can't catch Emma dead like hanging out with a farmer's wife and uh the end and so there's a lot of there have been some scholars who argue that in the book emma is both like limited in a weird it almost kind of reminds me of like bell from beauty and the beast where she has this dream of like living and doing all these things she wants much more than this
Starting point is 00:56:42 provincial life, perhaps. Yeah. And then she ends up moving four feet from where she came from. So why even sing that song if you're going to end up getting her married four feet from where she lives? She literally still lives in the province. So why did that happen? And it's not that Emma, like Emma is like set on being with her father. And like, that is, I mean, there's gender stuff in there. But like, she wants to stay with her dad. But it just seems like the argument is like, Emma doesn't, you know, the only thing that's really changed for her at the end of the book is that she's now like well married so her like whole independent i never want to get married thing is gone and she is still pretty aggressively classist so there's a lot of arguments for book
Starting point is 00:57:36 emma to be like well she learned a lot of lessons but whether she actually applied them to her life is pretty unclear. It was bizarre. Well, I find some things about the way the movie ends not as bizarre as what you've described. Yeah. The book ending, but still kind of bizarre where like Emma owes several different people apologies that she does not deliver and yeah just some i do i was wondering about mr knightley is like i have to go find mr martin and like get him to propose to harriet and emma is like no i've got to do it yeah neither of them do that they're like um yeah send harriet to the dentist and then harriet's gone for a month they're like they sent harriet to the dentist for a whole ass month because they like are too chicken shit to be honest that said
Starting point is 00:58:32 there are more apologies issued in the book than in the movie and i feel like there are some like particularly between emma and jane jane has a much, much larger role in the book. Okay, wait, who is? Oh, Jane Fairfax. Jane Fairfax, who ends up getting married to Frank, which I'm just like, fuck Frank, can't stand Frank. But at least at least the book, the book very much knows that Frank sucks and that he like, is just so like, Mr. Knightley, I he they kind of do it in the movie, but I thought it was funny in the book where Mr. Knightley is constantly and I've always so like, Mr. Knightley, I he they kind of do it in the movie, but I thought it was funny in the book where Mr. Knightley is constantly and I've always been like, Mr. Knightley is much older than them, which maybe is not obvious in the movie. That age gap is present between the
Starting point is 00:59:15 actors. The actor playing Knightley is 13 years older than Anya Taylor-Joy. But in the book, it's very like Victorian to the point where it gets creepy where he's 36 in the book emma's 21 and he's like oh i knew i was in love with you since you were 13 and you're like that's enough of that like so they make it out i mean even though that age gap is more or less present in the movie i feel like there's no attention call to it and the actor in his 30s looks pretty young but yeah the nightly in the book they really like jane austen is very much pointing out like oh she's marrying a father figure too which also just doesn't seem very i get why mr nightly and emma like each other but i didn't i didn't love
Starting point is 00:59:59 in the book how they were just like yeah he knew know, she was a child and he was a man and now she's a woman and he's still a man. But sometimes the point is, and I'm about to say something I like, which is so I'm being all over the place. But in the book, Mr. Knightley, he's like at least 10 years older than all of these like people in their early twenties and like late teens. And so sometimes he'll talk about them the way that like a 30 something person would talk about a 21 year old's decisions. And he was just like, Frank fucking sucks. I can't believe that everything like works out so well for him. Cause he's an asshole to everybody.
Starting point is 01:00:40 Uh, Jane Fairfax is like way too good for him. I don't know what she sees in him he's so lucky that he could treat her so poorly and that she would still come like mr knightley does explicitly say all of that stuff so i'm like okay jane jane austin knows that this is not how you treat a woman who is like intelligent and cool the way that jane fairfax is but it still has like it's just so bizarre like it's just a weird book i mean i i really i don't know even though it's like aesthetically like whatever and time period wise similar to pride and prejudice the stories
Starting point is 01:01:18 are are very different it's weird and yet there are some similarities who did you think needed apologies i thought that miss bates was owed a major apology and even though emma does bring her like a basket she doesn't really address what she did yeah and barely says i'm sorry she gets an apology in the book which is weird that they scale that back she apologizes profusely in the book i thought that was going to happen in the movie but instead she's like here's a basket gotta go and then miss miss bates is just like you are so you're too kind you've always been so kind and it's like she just made you cry for saying something really mean and insulting to you, Miss Bates. Right. And Knightley was right. Like, I'm glad I am glad that Knightley like gave her shit for that.
Starting point is 01:02:12 That is such a Jane Austen. And I guess maybe it's just like a Victorian male hero thing in general. But it's like the fucking binary in this situation. It's like guy with charisma, dirty liar liar don't talk to him guy who's sort of mean to you now that's the love of your life like right and then the other major apology that I thought needed to happen that didn't really is is Emma apologizing to, and maybe, maybe this does happen better than I remember. But so Emma goes and makes things right by approaching Mr. Martin and convincing him to propose again to Harriet, which again, I like when I saw that in the movie, I was like, that's a very active thing
Starting point is 01:03:02 for a female character to do in a story written in this time period it seems a little too modern for that to be the case and it turns out yes correct um yeah they they girl boss that part but i i do like i do like that she i think that that's way more effective oh definitely yeah i don't i don't i like the change. I like the adaptation change. I like, you know, in general, making a female character more active and giving her more agency. Okay, so then when she does that, she meddles one last time, but it worksdling in Harriet's life and her, you know, romantic situation, like her romantic life. And Emma does not really give that apology. So I feel like, you know, Emma needs to hold herself accountable more than she does in general but yeah that's just me it's all weird like it's all in the book I I things I was bummed about that didn't make it from the book to the movie mostly but the movie clearly is choosing to focus more on the emma and harriet
Starting point is 01:04:27 friendship like there's a lot of emphasis given to it which which i do like and i think it's like almost well i don't we'll get there but what i was bummed about was my i think my favorite character in the book is jane and jane does not get a lot of playtime in the movie and I wonder if she maybe did in the Gwyneth Paltrow one I'd be curious but I really really really liked Jane in the movie in the book because like you were sort of saying like the people in this like in the movie everyone acts a little silly because it's like whatever Mr. Woodhouse is a good example of an upper class character who acts very silly he's a hypochondriac he's very particular like there's always a draft there's always a draft and Bill Nighy is like king like love him so it's not
Starting point is 01:05:19 like only people of the lower classes are written to be goofy but it feels more point like the way miss bates's character is written where you do get that moment where it's like no of course she knows when she's being insulted yeah and it hurts her so it's like it's not like those humanizing moments aren't there but i feel like between harriet and miss b, you're sort of like led to believe that like women of the lower class are silly and less intelligent. And like, because I would guess I mean, Ty is the Harriet of Clueless, right? And yeah, I feel like that is more effectively done in Ty gets more humanizing moments than Harriet does. Because I do feel like it's like ultimately Harriet is so and also she's a teenager like she's very impressionable she's being thrown into this world but the I don't know
Starting point is 01:06:11 I don't know maybe I take it back because like Mrs. Elton is a rich lady and she's the goofiest woman alive right and Elton himself is I mean I guess they're like upper middle class like climbers because they're always like my friend Mr. Knightley and Mr. Knightley is like rich enough and powerful enough to be completely you know an ass in the way that Mr. Darcy is where I feel like those are very similar characters but just very different heroines which is interesting right to the point where I'm like I don't really know like I get why he he but I'm just like, is this a good match? Anyways. What was I going to say?
Starting point is 01:06:48 Oh, but Jane Fairfax. So Jane Fairfax, I feel like is a really, really good antidote to how silly Harriet and Miss Bates are written. Because she's from that same class. And what they get rid of in the movie, I think, correct me if this is like referenced in a scene in passing but that like Jane's situation is that she is firm like she's a bait she's of that class she's related to them but when her parents died she ended up like going to stay with a rich friend of her father's and so she grew up in the upper class, but she's not of them. And so her situation is that
Starting point is 01:07:29 she can hang out in the upper class, but ultimately when she turns 21, she has to become a governess or like she has to have a working class job. Do they mention that in the movie? Because like the stakes are pretty high for her. Right. So it's like the way she appears in the movie? Because like the stakes are pretty high for her. Right. So it's like the way that she appears in the movie,
Starting point is 01:07:47 I found a little confusing because it's like in the book, her stakes are very high in terms of like she's grown up a certain way. It's clear that she doesn't want to leave everyone she knows because her parents happened to be middle class, but she's going to have to. And then, you know, she's secretly engaged to frank for most of the
Starting point is 01:08:07 book but frank treats her so badly that she's like at the end she's like fuck you i'm gonna become a governess and that is what motivates him to yeah like all of that like there's a lot of jane stuff that goes on in the book she and em Emma have a lot of scenes together in the book that I really liked where Jane you get moments of it in the movie but like Emma is jealous of Jane because Jane is just as whatever refined if not more so is just as talented if not more so than Emma and is from the middle class and so that's what bothers Emma about it is like Jane doesn't have a lot of the advantages that Emma did of birth but is kind of like better than her in a lot of ways and so Emma kind of like weaponizes that insecurity about like how is Jane so good at this this and this and kind of flings it in her face and and Jane responds and like there's this interesting tension between them and by the
Starting point is 01:09:05 end emma grows a little bit and once she realizes like jane was in love with frank and like emma was totally off about everything she goes to jane and gives like a really sincere apology and is like i wish that we had been friends all of these years but we were pitted against each other when we were so young and also i was jealous of you and like i'm sorry and i hope that you have a happy life marrying this fucking jerk but like it was just i thought it was a very satisfying jane was my favorite yeah because she just she did what she had to do but she did it with class and she didn't meddle and i just wish she was like ended up with someone cooler than frank but she loved frank so i guess sure fine i guess sure justice for jane no no yeah also there's too many janes because there's jane and pride and
Starting point is 01:09:59 prejudice too and there's she jane austin there were like seven different names back then, I guess. It's an interesting adaptation because it's been, I guess, pretty thoroughly debated whether Jane Austen even likes Emma based on the way she's written in the book. And the fact that she some people view Emma the novel as like a full on class satire because Emma learns all these things about the world and still acts like a rich person at the end of the day and so like emma gets everything she wants because of course she does she's fucking rich like no matter how much you force onto the like genteel class about the reality of the world things are still going to work out for them and like so there is a way of looking at it from the book of like yeah emma sucks the author knows that and like to some extent that's the point but because of how movies work in our soul you can't really do that or you can but like
Starting point is 01:11:02 most adaptations choose not to over like having emma display learning like i feel like this movie takes the i don't think this is like unusual but like this movie takes the route of like she learns about class and successfully applies that to how she lives her life and she stands as this like symbol that she does in the book as well of like you can have the most privilege it's possible for a woman to have in this time and still be basically fucked, which is which is something that I think is touched on more effectively in Pride and Prejudice. So I don't know. I mean, I don't like Emma, but I like watching Emma. And I'm constantly frustrated by like the lack of consequences she experiences. This movie has to add consequences to get her to a place where it seems like she's grown. And it still feels like she kind of gets off easy for whatever. Right. She doesn't grow or arc as much as I would want to see a character grow.
Starting point is 01:12:11 But also, you know, she does come from this extremely rich and privileged background. So like kind of what do you expect from someone like that? You kind of just like, I would have to like suspend my disbelief more that she does have a significant arc and that she lets go of some of her perhaps prides and prejudices that and i think it is more believable that she kind of stays a pretty static character right i mean if it is satire i mean the movie i don't think the movie
Starting point is 01:12:47 is satire the movie i feel like definitely isn't satire the book arguably could be seen that way but also we're not talking about the but the movie i don't i think the movie tries to kind of plays it pretty straight yeah and and like adds in moments to give emma growth and i thought it was like interesting i i read some and watched some interviews with the director of this movie who I, man, hope she's listening. She I'm like, she's so fucking cool. The director, Autumn DeWild. It was her first feature.
Starting point is 01:13:18 She directed her first feature in her late 40s. She walks with a cane that has a shot glass built into the cane which she's just so fucking cool like it's unbelievable and she started as a a music video director she's like of that pipeline but unlike many male music video directors who i feel like direct you know like i'm thinking of like your david fincher's your uh spike jones's who direct a few successful music videos and then are directing movies by the time they're in their late 20s early 30s she had to fight to make not this movie specifically but like to make a movie of her own for decades because uh you know misogyny and what anyways sorry we haven't talked about this on the show before excuse me
Starting point is 01:14:06 and i don't have time uh hang on but she fucking rocks like all of her interviews are like she's just she dresses she just oh you'll like this she described her personal style as oscar wilde meets paddington bear and it totally tracks she's just she's so fun like she sort of made it her mission statement of the movie to like create a very beautiful movie which like mission accomplished that i hear based on all of the fucking costuming youtubers i watch because i'm a dork is a very period accurate nice because all the all the costuming youtubers they're like this is 1804 and it should be 1804 and a half like whatever but this one apparently like the attention to detail is like on point it's beautiful it looks like a music video in a way that isn't distracting whatever
Starting point is 01:14:56 but she said like oh i you know you have this flawed heroine in the form of Emma and I'm like that is true but I and yet I really like and this isn't even a criticism of the movie or the book I just I'm like yeah I don't like Emma I don't like Emma I'm like not I'm interested in what happens to her and I want her to display growth but I like don't really it's so obvious that she's going to be fine and then at the end she's fine right yeah where it's like with lizzie bennett the stakes are relatively high like she you know and it is like we talked about in the last episode where it's like you know the middle class is not a death sentence but but in the society that they're in it it you know the misogyny was much more intense and there's all this stuff right but emma doesn't really it's made very
Starting point is 01:15:50 clear early on that even though emma remaining single there is some discrimination against her which you get in those few moments of like well wives first like single ladies to the back right and emma never wants to get married so this is how she'll be treated her whole life but it's made clear very early in the book and i think in the movie too that like even though this is an unconventional decision her immediate support system fully accepts it and accepts her and thinks she's amazing and she'll be able to do it without her quality of life being sacrificed right because as we talked about in the last episode, one of the reason that so many women were so concerned about like, oh my god, I have to get
Starting point is 01:16:32 married and I have to get married right now. And it has to be to a man who has a big income, because that was literally a survival thing. Right. More than the very tropey women just love romance and they love getting married for the sake of being married thing so so it's just like when lizzie bennett refuses someone's hand a rich person's hand it's a way bigger deal than when emma refuses anyone because she's gonna be fine no matter what right which just for me makes it like her uh like rich girl learns a lesson is just not a very compelling narrative to me let me pronouncing the t in narrative what a bitch um sorry uh but it isn't like i just i don't know and again it like i i'll be damned if i could tell you why it works for me and clueless
Starting point is 01:17:24 maybe i just like the outfits better. But like, yeah, rich girl learns a lesson is just not interesting to me, especially because it's like there. I just think I don't know. I'm just like Jane Fairfax is more like her story is more like I've in my mind. Emma is a B character and Jane Fairfaxax's story which is more layered and more interesting it has more to say about class and gender and like how people interact with each other i but yeah i see what you mean i i don't think it's the most compelling story ever told sure
Starting point is 01:17:58 which is my standard for every movie um but if we do have to watch movies about rich people which many movies are i'd rather them learn and and have an arc and see the error of their ways but the thing i think what emma learns more than like i should be more empathetic to people of a lower class than me. What she learns more than that lesson is she just learns to stop meddling in other people's lives. Right. So for sure, if she learned something that had more to do with like, oh, I should stop treating poor people like they're a little project of mine and treat them like human beings or i should spread my wealth meaningfully or something like that i would find that way more compelling than her just being like oops i played matchmaker one too many times or whatever right and it's like hard because it's
Starting point is 01:19:02 like i know that that's why the story is like light and fluffy and fun is because it's like, this young woman is clearly like, I thought it's like, Emma's clearly projecting. Like that's so much of the movie is like, I don't want to deal with my or maybe it's clear in the book. I don't know. Like, it feels kind of clear that it's like Emma, part of the reason Emma meddles in other people's lives is because she is not able to see herself as the protagonist of her own life which is interesting like she keeps casting herself as like Judy Greer in her own life and it's like interesting choice because you're literally a millionaire and like I wonder I'm sure someone's done Emma's astrological chart because it's so like, she does have this like superhuman ability to like, that I know like people have, but it's just not relatable to me at all of like, which I think, which is why I wish that, I guess that that's part of why I ultimately kind of walk away disappointed that there's
Starting point is 01:20:08 not more said about class, because she is very obviously arranging people and doing this like puppet master thing based on class, like the reason that she wants Harriet, like, and then there's also this theme in the book that is not touched on in the movie where it's like or she she says it about mr martin i think that that's the most you get at the beginning of the movie she talks about like well i don't give a shit about mr martin because he's not poor enough for me to look like a hero if i help him right he's not rich enough that he can actually hang out with me so why would i give a shit about him and she's basically like the middle class is useless to me because. Right.
Starting point is 01:20:49 And so it's like she's she's an extremely classist character. And that is like canon to the book and the movie. And like explicitly says like and she says this to Harriet, which makes it clear that Emma's like, yeah, I consider you someone worth helping because. Because you're so poor. Right. You come from nothing and you don't even know who your parents are but let's pretend like your father is a gentleman that's just what we'll say right and then like so it's a game to her like poor people are pawns and a game that she uses to elevate her own profile a game of chess netflix A game of my boyfriend chess Netflix.
Starting point is 01:21:27 What a fun name. Mewtwo. Mewtwo. I'm so tired. Okay. So. Same. Oh, so like Emma is like the medalliest meddler that ever was. And part of it's because she is like, you know, like she says, I don't want to get married.
Starting point is 01:21:49 But then it turns out that that's not actually the case. Fine. That happens. Whatever. But she's she's matching according to class. Like she wants Harriet to class jump. Like she wants Harriet to jump a tax bracket. And that is why she keeps trying to convince
Starting point is 01:22:05 harriet that she's in love with all of these men and harriet is very young and very impressionable and kind of out of her depth in many ways in this story and so she ends up like experiencing a lot of emotional pain as i think like a late high school early college student right because this rich girl is like I want you to jump class you know which which is in the context of this society like you could argue you know Emma wants to secure Harriet a better future than she would have if they hadn't met sure however once Mr. Knightley comes into the picture obviously that's not the case because when she figures out like and this is more explicit in the book but like once emma figures out that harriet is in love with mr knightley technically that is exactly what emma
Starting point is 01:22:57 was trying to do make a match for harriet that was above her class that harriet felt good about right but emma's like no no not no that's actually he's mine so you have to go to the dentist like for a month and then she like possibly fucks her friend over permanently and then thankfully harriet gets to marry the guy she wanted to marry the whole time and emma she doesn't apologize to her i mean she does apologize to harriet in the book but then she never speaks to her again so it's like right what was the point i do like in the their friendship in the movie i think is more effective but it's still just because of like the source material it's i feel like it's just never going to be super satisfying because harriet is just so forgiving of emma everyone is everyone she loves emma it could be like effective commentary
Starting point is 01:23:49 maybe if it was like approached differently but just like people's tendency to give rich people so much leeway and like forgive them for all of their you know horrible misdeeds but the movie isn't really commenting on that it's just like presenting well the book isn't either like right again a lot of the problems with the movie's storyline are part and parcel to what the like i think that the i do think the movie does the most it can with the story without straying too far from the story sure shout out to screenwriter Eleanor Catton who is a novelist who has more recently gone to screenwriting which is fun love that for her I read what was the book of hers I read I read oh the luminaries it was good anyways but there's yeah there's just like so much like Emma is I
Starting point is 01:24:42 guess considered one of Jane Austen's more conservative novels because it ultimately kind of ends up upholding the status quo in most ways. Where viewed from one side, it's like, oh, that's great that Harriet married Mr. Martin because that was who she liked the most the whole time. So, like, that's her following her bliss but also jane austen made these people up and she made it that in every case everyone married for except for the only couple that is like has class disparity and the way that like darcy and lizzie bennett do is jane fairfax and frank churchill that's the one couple actually that is worth but the movie kind of chooses not to it doesn't really make it clear that that that happens because of jane fairfax erasure right glosses over what jane fairfax's situation is i'm gonna write one of those horrible god i'm so sick of this happening but i think it would be
Starting point is 01:25:40 fun for jane fairfax you know like when I feel like it like peaked with like Wicked and like those Gregory McWhatever's guys books where he's like, remember this B character? Well, I wrote a whole book about them having sex. And you're like, I don't want I don't think I wanted that. But they were all bestsellers in like the mid to late 2000s. Like, yeah, remember the, like he wrote a book about the stepsisters. He wrote Wicked. They're just like, yeah, remember this B character?
Starting point is 01:26:13 They're so fucking horny. And you're just like, ah, okay, whatever, I guess. A matron pointed out, shout out to Abigail, pointed out on the comments of our Pride and Prejudice episode that an author named Janice Hadlow wrote a novel called the other Bennett sister to flesh out the character of Mary Bennett. Since she was so, see, that's the one acceptable answer.
Starting point is 01:26:41 So that's fine. Right. Mary Bennett and Jane Fairfax are the two side characters who are underdeveloped in the books and adaptations that I want to write. Oh, I want to read that Mary Bennett book. Yeah. Oh, also, someone tweeted this at me. I don't know how we missed this.
Starting point is 01:27:00 You know how we were like, oh, the who plays mary is the least famous of everyone apparently she was married to elon musk twice twice they got married and then divorced and then married again and then divorced again so she was busy doing some probably fucked up stuff yeah so that i guess that's why she's not acting because she's she was look you're we all on this planet have one job and it's to like not marry elon musk and and many people have um simply failed the assignment you hear that grimes is that who's married to him right now uh she did not marry him and then she broke up with him but she did have a baby with him oh right okay okay and that is unfortunately
Starting point is 01:27:53 way too much information that i knew but i'm a recovering grimes fan i really was i was a huge fan of hers in college and i was like wow she's so cool and then you married elon musk disappointed oh you know what what what i should have said instead of that actor who married elon musk twice i should have said mu two times boo boo too uh anyway go on oh my goodness okay uh i guess i'm not sorry i don't know i anyways jane fairfax rocks emma is emma is fine but she's not the most interesting person in the story i don't think sure the couple things that struck me about her since I wasn't encounters with the exception of harriet but that's also an interesting relationship because emma sees harriet and mrs weston right yes yes yes yes oh right okay so harriet emma sees more as a project than a friendship.
Starting point is 01:29:26 A person, yeah. Especially in the book, as you've described it, she was just going to be like, sorry, Mr. Knightley's mine. You have to go to the dentist now. Right. In the movie, they do change that, which humanizes Emma's character more. But even so, Emma spends most of the movie not really treating Harriet as an equal and being like I'm the teacher I teach you things and you have to do as I say yeah and if you make choices
Starting point is 01:29:54 that I don't like then I'm not going to want to be your friend so that's a peculiar relationship with Mrs. Weston well Mrs. Weston is like basically her like surrogate mom. So that's, I think, why that relationship goes the way it is. Yeah, with Emma, there is this kind of strong like she has a bit of a guy's gal energy about her where she's much more forgiving and even like celebrates the faults of the men around her and is very, very punitive and judgmental of other women around her i feel like again in the book and in the movie to an extent that's contextualized a little better where you know like part of why lizzie bennett is amazing is because there's constantly this pressure on her to dislike other women and she's like no fuck you this is an important relationship to be and that's why
Starting point is 01:30:45 lizzie bennett's the best emma on the other hand i feel like experiences that same pressure of like we live in a small community everyone's in competition with each other blah blah blah and she gives into that i feel like in a major way in a way that probably wasn't unusual for that time and still happens now right but yeah emma doesn't really push back on that until at the end of the book where she issues a series of apologies and makes things right which like sort of happens in the movie i don't know i wish that had happened more in the movie because if the movie is asking us to be endeared and empathetic toward emma yeah she needs to grow more and she needs to apologize yeah because the way I was
Starting point is 01:31:26 seeing it she starts out hating a lot of the women around her but then sees the error in her ways like especially if she after she's cruel to Miss Bates she offers her a basket and I guess that's an apology but she like kind of she comes around on Miss Bates. She doesn't really come around on Jane Fairfax in the movie. I would have liked to see more of Emma acknowledging that she was being very petty and jealous and classist toward Jane. But we don't really see that in the movie. Which is weird because I feel like it would help the movie and it definitely happens right right with harriet obviously that's a major change in this adaptation and i think for the better because it again does yeah make emma more empathetic and more active so i'm pro that choice but i think a more effective film overall and like adaptation
Starting point is 01:32:28 would have shown emma being prejudiced toward the women around her at the beginning but then reconciling with them and like growing and having those relationships become more positive by the end for sure versus like in the beginning she's favoring a lot of the men around her and like thinking they're awesome she thinks mr elton is awesome at first she thinks frank churchill is awesome before she has ever even met him you know she thinks all these men are awesome and this is i think done pretty effectively in the movie where she as she gets to know them realizes they're actually way worse than she thought. So basically like the arc for Emma should have been like,
Starting point is 01:33:11 she starts out as a very bad, very poor judge of character. And then by the end she becomes a way better judge of character. And maybe that's, and which is like also kind of what Pride and Prejudice is about. But it's just better. Better. I mean, I know that not everyone can be Lizzie Bennet, but I'm just like, damn, Emma, Lizzie
Starting point is 01:33:33 Bennet, no contest, honey. I would so be friends with Elizabeth Bennet. I don't want to be friends with Emma Woodhouse. No, I wish her no ill. But I do want to be friends with Jane and I want to talk Jane into divorcing Frank and eloping with me because she's awesome but also it's I don't know I in the in this world Jane ending up with Frank is it's funny because it's like I kind of in some ways I kind of like and again I'm I may be talking more about the book here but like I kind of like Mr. Knightley
Starting point is 01:34:05 more than I like Emma which feels like a betrayal but like Mr. Knightley no I see what you mean like Mr. Knightley it has the same amount I mean he has more privilege than Emma because he's a man right so like inherently but personality wise Mr. Knightley is way more willing probably also because he's older way more willing to be like you can't treat people like that or like in the book especially he goes on some you know too long tears but like he's he's I think more often than Emma presents the morally correct standpoint towards the character where he's very quick to be like Frank is a bullshit artist like something isn't quite right there he's like courting you but it's weird like he catches on to that very quickly he also catches on quick to like
Starting point is 01:34:53 emma why are you being mean to jane she's like a perfectly nice person and i think you're maybe a little bit jealous of her and emma's like no which is which is pointed coming from a man because it's like what does he know but also he's like correct in that situation and then he also is the person that's like you can't treat miss bates like that and and he lays out a pretty like i thought like and this is in the book too but like a pretty gender and class aware argument as to why he's like not only is it mean but you need to keep in mind that she does not have the same amount of privilege that you have right and because of how our society is structured her situation is going to get worse with time so like how dare you talk to her that way right which is also like well nightly you could always help her out you're a fucking bajillionaire but but just
Starting point is 01:35:40 the fact that he he sees and understands gender and class issues better than Emma in some ways. And then obviously there's other ways that Emma, like, Emma seems hyper aware of the fact that she will be treated differently her whole life if she never gets married. And she's already said, like, I'm fine with that. It sucks, but I'm fine with that. Which is, I think, one of the only points that that character has to make that was interesting to me. I don't know. I guess I'm anti. I i don't know i guess i'm anti i'm i i just don't like whatever like you don't have to like her i don't in in many cases
Starting point is 01:36:12 like she's supposed to be hard to like and it works i found it hard to like her right yeah because it's also mr knightleyley who sees through Frank Churchill right away, too. And is like, Emma, this guy sucks. How do you not notice this? And Emma's like, no, he's awesome. And then in the book, Emma forgives Frank. Frank sends her this long letter and he's like, hey, sorry, I was like aggressively flirting with you all that time. I assumed that you knew that I wasn't serious about it.
Starting point is 01:36:44 And which in the book is true. So she like oh yeah i do but it's like imagine if she didn't know how evil that is and then he's like yeah it was really mean of me to be like aggressive like because he does it once in the movie he does it all the time in the book he's constantly calling jane weird looking like to throw everyone off his scent that he secretly engaged to her. He's like, Jane Fairfax, what a weirdo, hate her, can't stand her. And like eggs Emma on to do the same. And then she forgives him. And I'm just like, Jane, baby, let's get out of here. Like, I don't know. It's so bizarre. Like Frank sucks. And and nightly nightly then oh so in the book emma reads the letter and she's like oh well you know frank you know he he made a lot of mistakes but i'm glad he
Starting point is 01:37:31 apologized which is true men don't usually apologize for anything in uh fiction or real life so there you go that's good you know he did more than most people would but it's still not enough because he did a lot of bad stuff and nightley reads the letter after her and is like all right well I guess it's good that he apologized but like I still think Jane is way too good for him and I don't want to hang out with him and I was like yeah Mr. Knightley well the other big thing for me with this movie is the romance between Emma and Mr. Knightley. I mean, we've already touched on some of this stuff, but, you know, it starts out not unlike the way that like the Lizzie Bennet and Darcy relationship starts out where they are, you antagonistic toward each other with Emma and Knightley it's a little more like teasy and like they're acquainted already so they have like a rapport that they've had for many years yeah it's cute it's cute and what I find, maybe this is just me, but if I like someone, I'm very acutely aware that I like them.
Starting point is 01:38:51 I've never experienced the thing that seems to happen a lot in movies where someone realizes that they've been in love with someone for months or years. Does this happen to other people where they're like they're just completely clueless that they're in love with someone and then like one day they're right clueless one day a light bulb goes off and they're like wait a minute i've been in love with this person the whole time is that a thing i i don't know i mean, I don't think like in this way, I think I find that more. I think that that happens more often than enemies to lovers. Like, I do think that it's like, I know, I mean, I guess you could argue that that's sort of what happened with my parents. They were friends for like, I mean, granted, they're extremely divorced, but my parents were like friends for seven years and then they started dating. But were they like secretly in love with each other that whole time? And then they find they like suddenly realized it or is it just. Probably not, Caitlin. But do I.
Starting point is 01:39:54 I think that Knightley has had a thing for Emma forever, which is gets problematic because she was a kid for a lot of that. But I don't know. I do think that they're like I don't think it happens as often as it happens in books but i do think that like there's plenty of examples in real life of people being friends for a long time and then falling in love well yeah that i think that's a definite thing but i'm saying not like realizing i've loved you the whole time i don't understand how that would right yeah that sounds made up i mean again maybe maybe there are people out there that that happen but I don't I'm just like I don't know maybe I'm just so aware of my feelings brag that I just know if I love
Starting point is 01:40:33 someone I don't know I anyway I guess that that well I know you know what I think it happens I do because I was just like wait I think that that is that's actually kind of what happened in my first major relationship I well I the point I was going to try, I think that that's actually kind of what happened in my first major relationship. Well, the point I was going to try to make was because I like realistic representations of romance in media because it so rarely happens. Yeah. So many romantic movies just like make up a thing that doesn't seem to happen ever in real life. And that's like the crux of the relationship and then convinces people that that's how stuff is going to go in their life and that it doesn't and then they're just like well and then they're
Starting point is 01:41:10 30 and then they're like wait a second I guess that wasn't a thing right so I was just curious so sound off in the comments also matrons if if it's happened to you where you've loved someone for a long time but it took you a very long time to realize it and you had no idea about your feelings because if that is a thing then i will i will hold my tongue i think it does happen but not as often as it does in fiction sure that's my that's my i don't know sorry that's my little pet. That's my little... Should we just end the episode? I don't have any other... Yeah, things are going off the rails.
Starting point is 01:41:54 I don't think I have anything else to say, honestly. I will say that in the comments of our Patreon, someone mentioned that Miss Bates and Emma, or their opinion was that miss bates and emma was as close to um jane austen's financial situation which was that she like had some money as a young person but then when certain relatives died she was dependent and was single because her income from writing wasn't significant enough to like elevate her to like emma status so god just more more gristle to chew on um yeah do you have anything else here just one last really quick thing this
Starting point is 01:42:33 is something we talked about in the ever after episode yes okay i know this is another movie that paints romani people as dangerous thieves it's not as egregious in this movie as it is in Ever After I would argue but there's a definite mention of it and that's something that's in the book that I was shocked made it to the movie shocked yeah because this movie was made two years ago and everyone involved should have known better uh because it's like this movie does take creative license with a lot of plot points. Why not that one? PP, poo-poo, bad job. Yes.
Starting point is 01:43:11 Other than that, yeah, I think, I guess my parting word, my parting thoughts are that this adaptation could have lent itself to a character in Emma that I would be more empathetic toward had she demonstrated more growth by the end, a better judge of character by the end, gotten rid of her prides and prejudices by the end, especially because so many of the people that she was quick quick to judge or mistreat are other women and had Emma not ended up such a classist anti-woman character which is how she starts it's so hard because it's like I don't think that Emma's like anti-woman per se but like it's just like it's a very weird complicated thing that the way that this story has been adapted makes it hard to be on emma's side as much as the movie would like you to be i think right in the in the book i i feel like my i forget what other but i like i find it
Starting point is 01:44:19 very easy to believe that the the book has elements of satire to it of like rich people are going to be rich people and like look at all these i don't know this one is kind of tough because i i always want to be resistant towards like why doesn't this movie that takes place in 1812 have the morals of today it's like well we know why right but then also why choose to adapt something from back then in the 2020s and not really say anything or do anything about i felt that way with like well i think that she tried like i i not to like come to the but i do think that they tried i think they changed elements and they tried to like put you more in the friendship with emma and harriet and they try and they did like i mean and they were successful in putting
Starting point is 01:45:04 you more in emma and harriet's friendship and demonstrating more personal growth on Emma's part than takes place in the book I just think it gets a little dissonant and it gets into what was Jane Austen's intent with this character and does the movie telegraph that same intent so I think it's just like right adaptation wise for me it's a little messy because I don't think my read of the book was that you're not really supposed to be like woohoo Emma got everything she me it's a little messy because i don't think my read of the book was that you're not really supposed to be like woohoo emma got everything she wanted it's more like and obviously emma got everything she wanted where the movie wants you to be more like woohoo emma got everything she wanted and it's just hard when someone is that privileged and most of her growth happens
Starting point is 01:45:41 through minor inconveniences that affect other people more than herself. It's hard to root for her. And it's hard to be like, well, who she got what she wanted, because you're told in the opening line, she's clever, handsome and rich, she gets what she wants. Right? So why am I supposed to be cheering at the end when she gets what she wants? So I just, I don't know, I've, it's weird. And it's like, I want to be careful to not like project 2022 morals onto this story. And in the same way, you're like, but Jane Austen has done a better, like we just covered a story where Jane Austen did.
Starting point is 01:46:17 I think like a much more effective job of discussing these same topics that feel weird in this adaptation. Right's just weird i don't know my opinion is it's fucking weird who knows i mean honestly i have had such a good time prepping for the it's not to brag but it's taken uh way longer than it usually does uh when you're reading a whole book and then watching a movie a billion times but i i feel really something revisiting jane austen's work and like having to engage with a period piece like this critically because it is challenging to be like okay you know we're a intersectional feminist podcast but what does that mean with this work and like how can we analyze something without coming to the table with a completely unreasonable expectation and like how does adaptation to i don't know it's been a
Starting point is 01:47:09 fun little brain puzzle that everyone's going to view differently but i've enjoyed it i don't know but i i mean pride and prejudice way fucking better and i don't think that that's the fault of the filmmakers of this movie this movie movie is gorgeous. All the performances are well done. The only thing that I would really criticize about this movie is the treatment of Romani people. And also just like, I mean, scaling back Jane, I didn't love. And removing more effective apologies that were in the book but were left out in the movie i thought was bizarre but but the third act changes even though some of them like you were saying were like a little too modern uh even so i liked the third act changes they made i thought it was like a cool
Starting point is 01:47:57 it kind of reminded me of another white girl reboot we saw recently with uh little women where greta gerwig was was doing all sorts of fuckery with the third act of that movie and it worked out in this really fun cool way that had something to say this one maybe didn't have quite as much to say but i thought it was like a cool i don't know i'm happy it exists i would rather see more adaptations of pride and prejudice than of emma and also you know I don't know I mean I don't I don't even know that I necessarily feel like no more Jane Austen adaptations I think it's kind of cool that there are these properties that get a generational reboot it's kind of like
Starting point is 01:48:37 Shakespeare in that way like where and Autumn DeWild says that in an interview where the first question an interviewer asked her was like so why an emma reboot why now and she's like no i've literally never heard that asked of a shakespeare reboot so i i don't know how to answer that question right and so i don't i don't know it's it's all it's all weird should we cover pride and prejudice and zombies no it sucks i never saw it it sucks it's so boring but uh joel kim booster and boad yang are in that pride and prejudice reimagining called fire island that comes out next year oh that's a pride and prejudice i didn't realize that was i had no idea see so it's like this is like these are fun stories to reimagine and readapt.
Starting point is 01:49:26 And like still like Clueless is the most fun, I think, in like insightfully adapted version of Emma. But I liked this movie. I thought that they did cool stuff. And it like it's so beautiful. It is. I liked it. It passes the Bechdel test. It does. It sure does does what would you rate it
Starting point is 01:49:47 on our nipple scale because i don't know i think i'm gonna go with like two and a half or three like something like maybe three given the time period because it's like centering a complicated woman at the center of a story in a movie that's directed and written by women that's adapted from an old ass book by a woman a woman it bears saying that it is all white women you know right down the line there right however it's like it is it is rare in that regard and i feel like that's a lot of the reason why this story has endured and so for its time specifically yeah a complicated female character at the center of a story whether i like her or not is something sure she's no elizabeth bennett honey but i think even jane austen knows that you know so it's like it is it's it's complicated i don't like emma i i
Starting point is 01:50:42 just don't love i don't know these are just like like i think that ultimately like emma doesn't she understands what she's done but there's not really any consequence for it in a way that i find so frustrating she's like fucking with the like she could have ruined harriet's life it's like it really like she could have like in this society specifically Emma is trying to make herself feel like she's doing something like she's whatever insecure about whatever it is it's never even quite clear to me what it is and so she needs to feel like she's doing something but she's ruining the life of someone much poorer than her so I hate that but I do like I mean
Starting point is 01:51:23 in terms of the class spectrum there is a lot of women of different classes that i think are all i still think that miss bates and harriet are made to look silly because of their class and made to seem like undereducated yeah but you do get humanizing moments with them it's not like they're total cartoon characters i it's just all so complicated i don't know i but like emma is handsome clever and rich it's on the fucking poster she starts the story that way and she ends the story that way and she does learn a lesson about meddling but i think given the fact that she's meddling on a class basis i just wish that this movie had more to say about class yeah it's uh so it's hard i guess i'll but but
Starting point is 01:52:07 because autumn de wilde is really fucking cool i want to see more movies from her i thought the screenplay was was pretty well done before like anya taylor joy is you know chess netflix she she's she's great um bill ny, no notes like I guess I'll give it three nipples and I'm giving them all to Jane Fairfax. Give her a spare. Put it in her pocket like a tire. Nice. I will agree on three. just echoing a lot of your thoughts on it definitely could have especially again an adaptation coming out in 2020 I feel like and I mean maybe this is just because we've been doing
Starting point is 01:52:55 this podcast for over five years but I'm of the mind that if you're going to adapt something with such old source material accompany it with some interesting commentary or make adaptation changes that update the story in interesting and meaningful ways. And I think this movie does attempt that to some degree, but I agree that it doesn't do quite enough. Yeah, like I don't necessarily want to see like an 1800s story with 2022 morals but like maybe i do but also i'm like i i think i just like want to see new stories right i don't know and i guess some things are just there for entertainment and we don't need big. Whatever. Whatever. Mew two. Mew two.
Starting point is 01:53:49 Oh my God. Remember when the lady said Mew two. I was about to make a terrible joke. Go. About the Mew two movement. Anyway. Okay. Sorry everyone. The hashtag Mew to move it you're evil oh my god that's so funny
Starting point is 01:54:11 okay you got three nipples i will give i'll give one to harriet i'll give one to miss bates because she deserves way more of an apology than she got from Emma and I'll give my final nipple to Bill Nighy because I'm dying you literally said the Mewtwo movement it's the worst thing I've ever said maybe
Starting point is 01:54:42 I need to take a nap that was unbelievable. Wow. Wow. Well, everyone, I hope it was worth waiting five years because Caitlin just said the Mewtwo movement. I'm going to get canceled for that. No, I truly like we said it in our Pride and Prejudice episode,
Starting point is 01:55:04 but this was uh very rewarding very cool uh you know we're not going to read a book for another five years but thank you we'll we'll do weathering heights in five years um i don't know about that i take it back uh you know it's just uh we're not a book podcast it really takes a lot out of us but we will be back we'll be back we'll be back next month talking about who knows maybe detective pikachu do you do y'all want that do y'all want that sound off in the comments all right well there you have it that was our unlocked emma episode from our patreon aka matreon where you can subscribe to find even more episodes like that you'll notice we mentioned the pride and prejudice episode that we had also covered that month um that's only on the matreon. So why don't you just, you know, scoot on over to patreon.com slash back to cast for that episode and many, many others.
Starting point is 01:56:11 Over 100 bonus episodes. Come on. All for $5 a month. Yeah. And we have such a fun. We have such a fun community over there. You also get to kind of at least when we choose to not ignore the results of polls which we've only done once or twice but and but yeah but it's because you're all bullies um but anyway
Starting point is 01:56:32 um you also get to vote on a lot of the movies that we cover um you'll get discounts for live events when we're in your area and a bunch of fun benefits it's a really fun community over there kinds of perks it's a blast it's blast and a half so um we hope to see you over there um or we'll just see you back here on on the main feed we got a lot of exciting stuff coming up we sure do and with that um have a great i'm trying to think of a fun fun Emma way to, but I can't really remember. I mean. Beep boop. Um, fare thee well, something, something.
Starting point is 01:57:13 Imagine, no, we're, we're Bill. Oh, now I remember where we talked about Pokemon because Bill Nighy. Because Bill Nighy is in Detective Pikachu. And because I was playing a lot of Pokemon on my Nintendo Switch at the time. Yes, that was your Pokemon era. And that was my talking about Bill Nighy playing Pokemon era. So that paired pretty nicely. Well, we're Bill Nighy jumping down the steps
Starting point is 01:57:33 in that amazing moment in the movie Emma 2020. Yes. And with that, we fare thee well. Bye. Bye. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you.
Starting point is 01:57:46 You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.
Starting point is 01:58:04 Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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,
Starting point is 01:58:38 Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I'm Joe Gatto. I'm Steve Byrne. We are two cool moms. We certainly are.
Starting point is 01:59:01 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.
Starting point is 01:59:17 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.

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