The Bechdel Cast - Julie & Julia with Summer Farah

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

On this episode, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Summer Farah finally pass the Béchamel Test while discussing Julie & Julia.  Check out Summer's website at summerfarah.com and buy her book, I could die today & live again, at https://www.gameoverbooks.com/store/p/i-could-die-today-and-live-againSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, listeners. Big announcement. We have officially added the Dublin show to our Shrek-tanic tour. So come see us in Dublin on May 29th at the Irish Film Institute. We are covering Titanic, and we are so excited to be able to finally confirm and announce that show. So please come to it. And then speaking of Dublin, I am putting on a stand-up comedy show in Dublin on my birthday on May 17th at Hysteria Comedy Club, there are going to be some amazing local comedians on the lineup, and then I'll be doing a longer stand-up set.

So please come to that as well. It's my birthday, so you kind of have to be there. And then we'll all go out for a little birthday pint at a birthday pub after the show. It's going to be so much fun. And then tickets are, of course, still available for birthday pub after the show. It's going to be so much fun. And then tickets are, of course, still available for the rest of the tour. The two shows in London on May 22nd, the show in Oxford as a part of the St. Audio Podcast Festival on May 24th, the show in Edinburgh on May 26th, and the show in Manchester on May 28th, and then again Dublin on May 29th.

All of the ticket links for all of these shows can be found at linktree.com. We're so excited, and we can't wait to see you there. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bon appétit. Oh my God. This movie is so silly.

I think my favorite part in the movie is when Jane Lynch and Meryl Streep are just yelling in Muppet voices for like 20 seconds. And they're like, woo, woo, woo. You're like, that is sort of like the experience of having a sibling. But just like on a noise, strictly noise level. I love it. I love it. Yeah. I love their sister relationship.

Can you imagine how thrilled Janech must be every time they're making a movie about a woman that's six two like she's like i'm in i'm cast done yeah you can't not put her in a movie that requires there's so okay let's can we start i'm just excited bonjour my My name's Chef Jamie. And my name is Chef Caitlin. And this is the Bechdel cast. Although, so we get this sent to us a lot where people are like, if one something something cooking ingredient speaks to another blah, blah, blah, then it passes the Bechamel test. What? Maybe I don't read the messages we get.

I don't know if i'm saying it correctly bechamel sauce question mark is a thing right okay and there's this like i don't know meme where people are like if one something or other talks to another something other because bechamel looks very close to bechel when it's spelled out just a few extra letters so okay okay people are like ha ha ha and so i feel like this episode this movie is the most relevant episode to bring that up on it's true we did it we did it um do i know what bechamel sauce is or what any of the ingredients are. Absolutely not. Wait, what's your, not to be like first day of college, but like what's your favorite food?

What's your favorite food? Icebreaker time. What's your favorite food? Oh my gosh. I don't even know how to answer that question. I love food though. I eat it every day. I'm realizing I don't think i know the answer either

i think obviously hot dogs hot dog from waltz but i think also is the philadelphia roll the least respected sushi roll because it's my favorite i feel like sushi heads are like sure you know but but i don't know. I might be projecting. I mean, it's very tasty, but I feel like it might be like a very like Americanized bastardized. Is it kind of for babies a little bit? Could be. Well, I like it. Wait, what's in it?

Salmon, cucumber and cream cheese. Oh, okay. Yeah. And the cream cheese. I think the cream cheese is where they're like, do you really need it? And like, I need it badly. It's important. I want my sushi to taste like a bagel. Yes, exactly. Anyway, so yeah, I don't know. I mean, I love food. Indian cuisine is probably my top. But also I love Thai food. And also I love sushi. And also I love Mexican food. And I love Peruvian food. And I love love French food and I love Brazil. I like basically

every food. Wow. I always forget until I rewatch this movie what we mean when we say French food. So that's okay. Anyways, great opening to the episode. This is the Bechdel cast where we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens. But Caitlin, we don't know what the Bechamel test is because we have unrefined palates, but what's the Bechdel test? The Bechdel test is a media metric commonly called the Bechdel-Wallace test because it was sort of co-created

by Alison Bechdel and Liz Wallace. And it is a media metric that has many different versions. The one that we use is do two characters of a marginalized gender, do they have names? Do they speak to each other? And is the conversation about something other than a man? And then a little caveat that we like to add is, is it a narratively relevant conversation or is it kind of throwaway dialogue? So that is the Bechdel test, the Bechamel test. We don't know. Yeah, let's introduce our guest. We're so excited to have her. She is a Palestinian American poet and author of the book I Could Die Today and Live Again with Game Over Books. It just came out. It's Summer Farah.

Hello. Welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to talk about this movie. Oh my gosh, we're so excited. What is your relationship with this movie? Yeah, to Julia, to Julia. Also, we covering julia and julia have we said that yet oh yeah probably didn't say it we're covering julia julia so yeah summer what's your history with this movie or to either of the food people in it yeah so i did not see this when it came out in theaters but i think my family rented it on DVD as soon as it did come

out and basically since then I don't know I think that was like 2010 maybe it was on the DVD I've watched it every year since it is my biggest comfort movie and it also has shaped a lot of like it was my first exposure to food writing, I think, and like understanding food writing as something that people do and care about. And I mean, I'm not a food writer, but I am a poet who writes a lot about food, both in my poetry and in my critical work on poetry. I look at food as image and motif. And I think cooking and the kind of culinary stuff is very important to like my identity formation as a Palestinian, very like kind of typical daughter of immigrants, like my mom cooks food for our culture. And those are the only words I

know in Arabic kind of thing. But yeah, and I think a lot of this movie kind of made me start thinking about that critically and like, oh, well, this is actually something that could be important outside of the home in the kitchen. And then I think later now when I watch it, I think about parasocial relationships. Yes. Yes. It's a movie about parasocial relationships and how they're good. I don't know. To be determined. Yeah.

Well, we're going to figure it out today. Yeah. Wait, Summer, we didn't get to ask you, what is your favorite food? Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh. Okay. Top of my head. Shishbarak, which is like lamb dumplings cooked in yogurt broth, is my favorite food. It is not that labor intensive, but it's more labor intensive than like other things because you got to like make the little dumplings and fill them. But it's so good. The broth is like with garlic and lemon and mint. And it is my favorite food in the world. That sounds incredible. And most of the time, Arab restaurants do not have it. And so it's very much a thing that I only have at home. But yeah, and so now I write a lot

of poems about parasocial relationships, because I want to recover from them. And so this movie is like, it's got everything for me. Nice. Jamie, what is your relationship with the movie? I saw this movie when it came out. I don't remember if it was in theaters or shortly after, but this was a movie I definitely saw when it came out. I was sort of wondering, I think that they're like on the rewatch because I haven't seen this movie in years,

but I think I have seen it like four or five times now. It's a fun movie to have on. And I was wondering, I'm like, is this the viewing that Julie is going to win me over? And I also like want to be careful to separate real life Julie from movie Julie. And this was not the time. I feel like since I saw this movie for the first time,

I was just like, wow, this Amy Adams story keeps interrupting this Meryl Streep story that I'm way more interested in. And yeah, I still honestly do sort of feel that way. Every time they cut back to Amy Adams in that goddamn wig, I'm like, here we go. The wig is, I have questions about the wig. We need to talk about the wig.

However, I really like this movie. I think especially talking about it in the context of this show, there's a ton to talk about. I'm really interested in Julia Child's life. I couldn't get through. Did either of you give the new HBO series from last year a try? Yeah. Yeah.

I thought it was weird. Well, we can talk about it later, but it's not. I mean, like, watching that made me appreciate Julie and Julia more. Because ultimately, we got Meryl Streep playing Julia Child. Like, that feels like a victory in and of itself and this is Nora Ephron's final movie and I think like Nora Ephron is I don't know like so many themes from her work and her writing are coming together in this movie whether I like Julie or not where it's like women turning their lives around and women connecting with food and the cities they live in. And, you know, very little diversity, just like things that are inherent to the Nora Ephron canon.

And I love Nora Ephron, especially I think more so than any of her movies. I really love her essay collections the most. Everyone should listen to a Nora Ephron audiobook. They're very soothing. But yeah, my issues with this movie have been very consistent but I think they are really fun to talk about because you get to be like, you're never going to believe

what Amy Adams' character talks about all day at work. And it is 9-11. You don't expect 9-11 to be such a major plot point in the julia child movie but right that's why this movie's built different caitlin what's your history with this movie i will tell you in a second but first i looked up bechamel sauce oh my gosh i'm gonna tell you what it is thank you so much in my finest julia child impression yes Bechamel sauce is one of the mother sauces of French cuisine.

This sauce is made from a white roux and milk seasoned with ground nutmeg. The main ingredients are butter, flour, and milk. The end. That's what I pulled from Wikipedia. That was really good. we're standing and cheering that sounds pretty good anyway my relationship with this movie i had seen it once before not long after it came out and i was like wow i like meryl streep you're also part of the movie Julie Hater Patrol. Well, sorry if this is blasphemy, but I've never been a fan of Amy Adams.

I find her a bit irritating in most roles she's in. Sorry, everyone. That's really fucked up to say. Can't help it. We've done whole Amy Adams months on the Patreon and we've never talked about this. Wait, did we? Yeah, we did Amy Adams She Can do it all month oh whoa wait okay arrival and enchanted because she can do it all yeah I guess I was just like holding my tongue because I was like this is shocking to me

this was like two years ago. Yeah, I remember now. But yeah, I don't know. I've always found her a bit. I don't know. Just not for me. Not for me. Look, it's OK. Speak your truth.

Thank you. Really brave to come forward with that. Honestly, really brave because Amy Adams fans don't fuck around. Yeah. There's like a whole section of YouTube that's dedicated to discussing why Amy Adams does not yet have an Oscar. And I've watched a lot of videos.

Well, don't ask me that question because I'll be mean about it. Anyway, but I do love Meryl Streep and I love Stanley Tucci. So I'm having fun when they're on screen. I generally like the movie you know i like nora efron's work and i'm excited to talk about although if it's a movie about like french

food making i'm going to choose chocolat every time i mean okay alfred melina alert alfred melina chocolate coma like hard to top. I think that there's like a bunch of actor pairings in this movie where like Meryl Streep had just worked with Amy Adams on Doubt the year before. So they're like engaging in a pretty severe vibe shift in this movie. And then she had also worked with, I mean, more famously, I guess, worked with Stanley Tucci and Devil Wears Prada a few years before this. Right.

Anyways, that's six degrees of barrel. I do think it's weird that, yeah, Doubt and then this movie coming out less than a year apart is bold. Yeah, truly. Yeah. But in any case, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap. 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.

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We meet Julia Child, played by Meryl Streep, and her husband, Paul. Wait, I kept meaning to look up how tall Meryl Streep actually is. I was just going to ask. Because I thought that there are so many like funny, practical camera tricks to make her. Yeah, she's 5'6". Julia Child is 6'2". I appreciate that the movie is like she was 6'2". And we'll prove it.

Jane Lynch is her sister but I feel like the whole movie Meryl Streep is standing on an apple box in a lot of shots and she's often standing a little closer to the camera than everyone else so she looks bigger and I was like wow

movies are amazing it's just like Lord of the Rings it's true Gandalf is so tall Movies are amazing. It's just like Lord of the Rings. It's true. Gandalf is so tall and the hobbit. And so in this scenario, Stanley Tucci is a hobbit. Meryl Streep is Gandalf. Brutal.

Brutal. This is a good short king movie. Absolutely. And also it's I was looking at the Letterboxd reviews for this movie, and one of the top ones was like, this movie takes place in a fictional world where husbands are supportive. And I was like, oh, I cannot wait to talk about the husbands. Hold on. But anyway, so we meet Julia Child and her husband, Paul, played by Stanley Tucci. They have just moved to Paris.

They are Americans, but Paul is a diplomat. So, you know, he's abroad working. He's in the CIA, which I feel like is really, he's in the literal CIA and they didn't call it the CIA yet. So I feel like the movie really gets away with not being like Julia Child's career is brought to you by the CIA. Much like, here comes my bummer thing I love to bring up, Ina Garten's career is brought to you by the Blackstone Group, a.k.a. some of the darkest, most fucked up Wall Street money in the world. Ina Garten's adorable husband, Jeffrey. Right, Jeffrey. He worked for Nixon, Ford, and Carter,

and then went to Wall Street working for lehman brothers and the blackstone group that can't be good like there's just so there's just like two extremely iconic women chefs who got some kickback from some of the worst institutions in the world but the julia child cia pipeline i don't know we'll talk about this in the context. But the Julia Child CIA pipeline, I don't know. We'll talk about this in the context area too, because this movie is not going to touch the CIA stuff. They're like, well,

they're the good part of the CIA. Right. So already we're struggling. I was unclear what his job was because in an early scene, he seems to be at like an art exhibit for art that he made question mark i was like okay he's an artist but wait a minute he works at the embassy but also he's a spy question i don't i don't know season two of julia on hbo is very much about their past catching up to them look at you watching season two i had like a fever for like four days and i was like well my school

that's what you do yeah that is how you end up watching something like that wait do they get into it in a meaningful way i still walk away from it uncertain of both what they did during World War Two and what their politics were after World War Two. But basically, the last half of the season is about the TV station where like the Julia Child show is made getting investigated by the FBI for leftist dissidents. And they rally everyone together to thwart the feds so that they can all keep on doing their progressive work got it yay but it's very much like we believe in anti-war movements we believe in fighting against uh institutionalized racism but we do not believe in communism don't think that we do it's very funny um not like funny

haha but like oh i don't understand what's happening yeah so like tell me what do you believe in yeah run it back i really don't know i think personally i like to like imagine paul child was a bisexual communist yes god i would love that i want to believe i mean it's like this movie certainly succeeds in making you want to believe the best in him because you don't cast Stanley Tucci if you want to be rooting against him unless you're watching the lovely bones and in that case very much so but yeah I know I the history stuff it's so the CIA origin story we can get more into it she like had to do with the invention of shark repellent. It's all very bizarre. We'll get back to it.

Yeah. Okay, still on the first sentence of the recap. Julia Child and her husband have just moved to Paris, France, ever heard of it? And they are eating delicious French food, and Julia is just like reveling in it. She's making noises. She's like, oh. So many cummy noises in this uh in this movie across the 20th century people are making cummy noises it's true that's because

eating is like basically better than sex i would say in almost every example. Damn. Yeah. Take that, all of the men that I've had sex with. Take that, sex. You weren't very good. It's a tight race for me. I don't choose between my passions. That's brave of you. Anyway, we cut to 2002 and we meet Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams, and her husband, Eric, played by Chris Messina. They have just moved to Queens.

She works at this government call center answering, like, devastating phone calls all day from people affected by 9-11. Her job is 9-11. Yes. Well, Summer, you've read the book like i don't quite understand the movie i don't think does a great job of telling you what her job actually is from what i remember it's like she's processing insurance claims of people affected in the various aftermath of 9-11 but what's fun about her book is she doesn't care about 9-11 she's writing very soon after the events and with an apathy that i have only seen in like shit posters in the 20 teens

that is a great way to yeah there is like a moment in the movie where it's like oh no she cares but most of it is like these phone calls are so annoying and the people that are trying to get their insurance claims processed are bombing her out and they're rude and you're just like yeah now julie like and it it is a department made specifically after 9-11 to deal with 9-11 which I think is interesting in just like how do you get into that and it was as temping which you know temping is a great way to get a full-time job but you often don't care about it totally into it yeah and her job is established to basically be like what a hard job she has so she comes home and finds comfort in cooking yes because that becomes her whole thing and then after a string of events where julie's

mean friend writes a rude article about her and then starts a blog this sort of also happens in sex in the city too yes do you remember this from sex this happens to carrie bradshaw at one point where they're like you're so cool and yet you're 30 and then there comes out like this woman sucks like on the cover of a magazine yeah so julie is inspired to start her own blog about cooking because she's like well if my mean friend can have a blog i can have a blog she doesn't have a nice friend like not really and also she's not a nice friend no it's interesting and i was like nora what are you getting at with this i don't understand any not sure but yeah that first thing with her friends, all of her friends are like, Julie, shut up. Like anytime she opens her mouth, they're like, can you stop talking?

They're just like calling her a loser. And then you're like, I feel for Julie. And then later on, I'm like, she is the worst. Wait a second. Would I bully her? I don't know. Movie Julie. In any case, she decides to start a blog about cooking. And specifically, she will blog about cooking her way through Julia Child's cookbook entitled Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And she'll do all 524 recipes in the book over the course of one year. We then cut back to Julia Child in Paris. Again, Paul is a diplomat and he's busy with that. And so Julia wants to find something to do with her time. She tries a few things like making hats and playing bridge. But what she really loves to do is eat. So she decides to take up cooking. She tries to buy a French cookbook in English, but no such thing really exists. So she decides to go to culinary school. We cut back to Julie Powell. She has started her blog and she started cooking the recipes from Julia's cookbook. It's a rocky start. It seems

like no one is reading her blog. her mom is not supportive of this project who can relate who can relate you're writing for no one and your mom doesn't understand what your job is also one of the recipes requires that she bone a duck and she's dreading doing that. And that's going to pay off later in a not very significant way. Chekhov's duck. Yep. Meanwhile, Julia starts at Les Codons Bleus and she ends up in a class with men who judge her because her skills are not as advanced. So she works extra hard to prove herself. She's chopping onions about it. And then soon she outperforms everyone else in the class.

Back in Queens, Julie's readership is growing. People are leaving comments on her blog. We mostly hear about people that as her blog is growing through something that I remember noticing the last time I watched this movie, the only non-white character in the movie whose face we see once. We see her face once. It's aggressive. She has a friend, I guess. Do we ever learn what her name is? We do learn what her name should we do learn her name but she's on screen for a total

of maybe five seconds and that might even be generous part of it is doing a cute little like hand clap they're good enough friends to have a secret handshake she also works at 9-11 that's all we know her name is Ernestine yes and I And I'm going to try to figure out. Oh, she's played by Crystal McCreary. Again, she's on screen for five seconds. But yes, that is one of Julie's friends. And she's talking about this project, Julie feels like she and Julia Child have this like deep spiritual connection. And that it feels like Julia is always in the kitchen with her watching over

her. But also along the way, Julie has several meltdowns because, oh, she's got to murder a lobster. Oh, some of the recipes are hard. Oh, she drops food all over the floor. But then she gets a call from a journalist at the Christian Science Monitor who wants to arrange a dinner with her and a very special guest. Paris Julia Child meets two women Louisette and Simca who are teaching French cooking to Americans and they invite Julia to join them then there's this whole sequence where Julia's sister Dorothy played by Jane Lynch comes for a visit oh god the economy of Jane Lynch's time is so amazing. She's in there for like a weirdly really long scene that just seems to be there so that she and Meryl can be like yelling together. And it's really fun. And then they're like, we're going to introduce you to a tall guy. And then instead she meets a short guy.

Cut to they're married and then she's gone from the movie. Right. Wild. they're married and then she's gone from the movie right wild but before she's gone well i get after she's gone she sends a letter to julia saying that she's pregnant that dorothy has gotten pregnant yes and this is basically there to establish something that's not like explicitly stated but it seems like julia has she's like struggling with infertility. And yeah, she really wants to have children, but she and Paul are not able to. And so like learning that her sister is pregnant is bittersweet. Obviously, she's happy for her sister, but she's like,

but I want to be pregnant too. And she's sad. Which I think is true to her life as well. Yeah, I believe so. Meanwhile, Julia's friends, Louisette and Simca, ask Julia to collaborate with them on their cookbook. Their publisher had rejected them saying that they need to make the book more accessible to Americans.

So they asked for Julia's help in doing that, and she is delighted to help. We cut back to Julie, who reveals her mystery dinner guest. It's Judith Jones, the editor who was responsible for getting Julia Child's cookbook published.

And Julie is making bouffe bouguignon. I love trying to say. I'm like, how do you say this bouff Amy Adams doesn't sound 100% fun no I love the like legend of that dish recurring throughout the movie I've never eaten that in my life

I've only heard of it in this context of this movie speaks to my ignorance towards French cuisine I do not care it's beautiful it's a mystical dish I just love the word boof boof boof it's like how it's like trying to say even regret it wouldn't boof

and good for boof yes we salute you so julie is making this dish and she prepares it the night before the dinner but she falls asleep while it's still in the oven and it gets all burnt and ruined and she's freaking out we cut back to julia she's working on the cookbook. Right now, it's just a bunch of recipes. There's like no fun or flair. And so she's trying to like liven it up, I guess. Julia sends some of the pages of the book to her pen pal, Avis, who then we learn is a literary scout or something. She works in publishing, and she shows them to an editor at the publishing house Houghton Mifflin in Boston who loves the book and wants to publish it. Julie, meanwhile, makes a new bouillon for her dinner with Judith that night. And Julie is hopeful that maybe she'll get a book deal after meeting with judith but then

judith cancels at the last minute and they never reschedule i guess i know i was like damn wow like yeah she really ends up getting her ass handed to her julie is very upset and her husband eric is frustrated by this whole project and all of her like mishaps and meltdowns and he can't wait till this year is over he feels like she's being very self-absorbed and that she's focusing more on her readers than their marriage and they argue and he storms off and she's very upset she keeps blogging but she stops cooking for a little while what i think is interesting and this like is kind of dropped within the movie but like he makes a point i think reasonably to say like well please don't write about this argument or me in your blog and then she almost does and then she doesn't

and you're like okay she's like learning how to set boundaries a little better but then she just does anyways and then he's like all right I'm back I was like she didn't you made one request like and I don't know I was kind of on his side on that I was like yeah if someone doesn't I feel like it's the same deal like if you're in like stand-up I'll always like be like is it okay if I talk about you on stage if not I won't do it and he's like don't blog about me and she's like okay but what about in one day and he's like okay it's fine okay so back to Julia she and Simca go to Boston to meet with Julie's pen pal Avis in real life for the first time. They also meet with the publishers at Houghton Mifflin, but they think the book is too long and complicated. So Julia and Simca

get to work on revising it. Meanwhile, Julie and Eric make up and she starts cooking again. And then a writer from the New York Times comes over for dinner to do a piece on her. And once it's published, people are calling her left and right. She's got publishers, lit agents, TV producers, they're offering her deals. And then one person calls her who is writing a piece about Julia Child's 90th birthday. And apparently Julia knows about Julie's blog and thinks that Julie is not serious or respectful. So crushing. I know.

So she's like speculating as to why Julia thinks that. She's so sad. Her real life comments were not as bad. What did she say so the piece that i am pulling from is from tastingtable.com i don't know if this is a historically verifiable source and so i can't vouch for tastingtable.com but it seemed like the comments sounded very cruel and they like certainly weren't nice but it had more to do with julia child didn't understand what a blog was yeah she's 90 and was like why would she cook all of my recipes like so she said she must not be much of a cook meaning like she must not be able to write

her own recipes why would like she didn't understand the concept of a stunt blog because she was 90 so i but i believe obviously that like if you just heard that quote out of context in your julie crushing miserable horrible never meet your heroes hope your heroes never learn you exist yeah i don't know i guess i think it had more to do with her being old and grouchy and being like, what? What is this? Yeah, this scene did instill like a deep fear in me. Just like, oh, like I never want anyone that I ever admire to ever know about me or see what I do or comment on my work ever because I won't be able to handle it.

And I think it's like interesting, too, at least for the script i don't know where the book lands on it but like where the movie lands on it where chris messina is like all that matters is the julia child that lives in your head and i was like hmm i don't know that i agree with that at all it feels kind of like a bizarre moral i don't know yeah i was having difficulty with where because it's like it is crushing and i think it's like it is crushing and I think it's like really interesting thing to explore but then she's just like well I guess I just am gonna go with the fictional character Julia instead right but that's the parasocial relationship conversation we get to have I guess and then Julia Child I think dies before Julie Powell ever gets a chance to meet her in real life.

And then I'm just like, oh, I did feel bad for Julia in that moment. But yeah, what I wrote in the recap here is Julie's very sad about Julia Child thinking that she's not like respectful or serious. But then Julie realizes that what Julia thinks of her doesn't matter what matters is what julie thinks of herself question mark or something sort of really unclear i don't know i was like okay if i had like made all of act cast right and then found out that kathy guys white was like you're not a serious person it would be crushing but i feel like it would just be really weird to be like i actually don't care what she thinks because it's like so obvious that i really do or why would i have done any of this but then it's i don't know i feel like maybe it's just like the chris messina line of dialogue sort of being like and this is the lesson because julie it seems like julie at the end she goes to

the exhibit and is like i love you julia but like which julia the one in her head or the real one the real one we'll never know we'll never know. book comes across the desk of a publisher named judith jones the one who was supposed to meet with julie and then it was raining so she canceled and then they never rescheduled question mark not sure but anyway i mean i'm i'm on judith's side there me too i'd love to cancel plans i know truly she's like yeah it's a little far, sorry. But yes, we meet Judith Jones when she's a young publisher and she loves the cookbook and she wants to publish it and she thinks it's going to revolutionize cooking in the U.S. And Julia is ecstatic.

Back to Julie. It's her last day of this year-long project and the last of her 524 recipes, where she has to bone the duck and it is presented by the movie as though it's gonna be this big event because they keep referring to it and it feels like it's really building up to something. But then she's like, I did it. The end. And there's no special moment or anything. Anyway, yeah, the cooking scene I remember is the lobster scene from this movie. Yeah.

The lobster scene is fun. That seems much scarier to me. Yeah. Especially, I mean, hygiene doesn't really matter in a movie, right? But, like, she's, like, touching the phone with her raw chicken hands. She's, like, laying on the ground with raw chicken residue. And she's very brave, very unafraid of that. And so the grossest thing to me about deboning the duck is touching raw meat.

She seems fine with that. So I don't know. The live lobster thing, I was like, I simply would never do that. But yeah, the raw meat is gross. The raw meat is pretty nasty. Yeah. The lobster. I think the lobster scene sticks with me mainly because I would be petrified to do that.

And because I like the music choice, like putting like it's so silly. It's really fun. Yes. There's talking heads in the Meryl streep julia child movie that's fun anyway so she bones the duck and it is fine there's no problems and she celebrates with her friends and then julie and eric go to the julia child museum in cambridge massachusetts Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ever heard of that? And then text on the screen at the end of the movie says that Mastering the Art of French Cooking is in its 49th printing. Julie Powell's book, Julie and Julia, was published in 2005 and then made into a movie. And we were like,

I'm sorry, you mean the movie that we are watching right now? What? Yeah. Which is sad because it's like the last frame that Noria Afran ever produced. But my boyfriend was like, oh, fuck you. Like when they show at the end

where they're like, and it's a movie. You're like, I know. I know where I've been the last two hours. Yes. So that's the movie. Let's take another quick break

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This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. And we're back. Is it cool if we talk about the real life women before we get into certainly because this is the first time i've seen this movie since julie powell passed yeah she passed away very young she was 49 it was a brief sudden illness and so i want to be clear when i'm talking

about the julie of movie, I'm not talking about Julie Powell, by all accounts, she's a lovely person. And God help you if you are judged by blog posts from the early 2000s for the rest of your life. Yeah. So I just wanted to share a little bit about her. There were a number of lovely essays eulogizing her when she passed in 2022 that also touches on something that I memory hold, but vaguely remember about the time that this movie came out,

which was that Julia and Julia came out in 2005. It was a very successful book. It was turned into this movie in 09 and Julie Powell released her only other book shortly thereafter. And she was torn to shreds over it. Because it dealt with the marriage that we see presented very lovingly, and they remained married until her death. So I don't I don't know about but there was a lot of infidelity between the two of them. And Julie Powell wrote about it. I haven't read the book, but I guess pretty honestly, in this book that came out three months after the movie. So I think the idea was, the movie is going to really endear everyone to Julie Powell, and then we'll want to read her

new book. But I think it sort of ended up in a way that feels very connected to late aughts misogyny. Yeah. Kind of blowing up in her face in an unfair way where she's writing very, I mean, I hope with her husband's permission, they remained married. Let's hope so. But, you know, being too imperfect or writing about something that was so at odds with the movie character that had done so well over the summer. Yeah. And I vaguely remember that. that was so at odds with the movie character that had done so well over the summer.

And I vaguely remember that. And it seems like in retrospect, it was like very unfair to her. But I wanted to just share something from an essay by a writer named Emily Ferris in Bon Appetit that was released in late 2022, shortly after she passed away. That seems really kind because I guess Julie Powell became very well known for mentoring young writers, which not enough people do. She said, when I was broken in between apartments, she paid me to house it when I probably should have been paying her to sublet. When I cracked the screen on my laptop a few weeks before my book was due, she took me to the Mac store and fronted me the money for a new one until I got my next advance check from my

publisher. And when I found myself without a place to stay while covering a food blogging panel, she sent me to her parents house. Even when her life got messy, both personally and professionally, she continued to give to me to her other friends and families to animal rescue organizations, and to a public that seemed to turn on her when she showed them more of who she really was so yeah I just wanted to shout out Julie Powell and yeah gone far too soon that's so sweet oh my goodness I know I was like anytime I read about like mentorship in general but especially like mentors between like women and femmes I'm like she seemed like a really lovely person and I'm kind of curious about her second book me too I never read it I read her first one and you know she writes about her husband so wonderfully I

think that's like honestly bummer but my favorite part of the book is the way she writes about her husband and I think it'd be I don't know i kind of do want to read the second one and just i don't know if you're gonna read blogs and personal essay writing and then be cruel to people when they're honest it's like well maybe read a different genre right right it's like they only like the version of her that is rom-com her and actual her is not acceptable yeah the book is called cleaving a story of marriage meat and obsession which according to scholarly journal wikipedia details her experiences learning to butcher at fleischer's butcher shop in new york and the effects of affairs by both her and her

husband on their marriage and yeah it seems like most of the negative reviews were just like, how dare you talk about this? So fuck that. And then we have Julia Child, who was in the CIA, like just, she's in the CIA. Unclear.

I also like don't trust anything that is published on the cia website julia child has her own like clickbait page on cia.gov you're like this doesn't feel good jesus so if there's ever been a time to consider this source it's here but yeah the julia child cia landing page says that she was with the so it was called the oss at the time that turns into the cia the office of strategic services it is said that she joined the ciaia website working as a research assistant in the secret intelligence division julia typed up thousands of names on little white note cards what what are the names what happened to them why that's all it says about what she was up to and then it gets to the fun part which is the shark repellent julia then worked with the oss emergency sea rescue equipment section where she worked in

close proximity to offers who developed shark repellent and that she met her husband in the CIA. And then he got promoted in the CIA, and they got to move to France for the CIA. Okay. So it feels like this very bizarre two hander where on one hand, she is a, you know, woman in the early 20th century, who clearly very much wants a career in a way that was not acceptable at the time and then the career is in the cia and so it's like a real girl boss pickle that we're getting ourselves into with all this and she's also comes from a lot of money and is basically rich her entire life which i think is the way that class is dealt with in this movie i think is really interesting that's my context corner nora afron not much to know other than she's like i love food

and so that's why she wanted to make this movie she loved food to speak to the movie because a lot of that stuff especially with julia child is like pretty glossed over as far as her like former work in the cia and what paul's job is again i thought he was like an artist or an architect or something because they're like he designed the rooms that won world war ii and i'm like what is his Anyway, so as far as what the movie presents, I do appreciate that this is a movie largely about women finding purpose and pursuing something that they love and sticking with it despite obstacles along the way. those obstacles are lobsters maybe they are McCarthyism you know who's to say but I also appreciate that it's very rare that there is a movie where we can talk about a female character and her husband because it's almost always talking about a female character because she's his wife so yeah I like the kind of framing of everything here. And I do want to talk about the husbands and their level of support. But yeah, I just I like that this is a movie where it's like, wow, women should pursue their dreams. Or even just to like speak to the even lower bar, a movie where like women are eating as much as they want the whole time. And it's like two women who love to eat and they're not like caught in like Gilmore Girl syndrome where they still look like they go to 40 Pilates classes a week, even though all they do is eat.

Like, you know, and it's still very movie-fied but that yeah like there's so few stories about like women and food that is like celebratory so right and i think there's minimal there definitely is like just mentions of like oh i'm gaining a lot of weight because i'm eating fattening food you know but there's way less like kind of yeah body shamey or like language that would lead you to have an eating disorder in this movie that i think you would expect right which is fun it's another reason why i like it so much it is so much about the indulgence and enjoying food and allowing yourself to enjoy it you know like julie doesn't stop cooking because she feels tired from eating a lot of butter she you know yeah thatie doesn't stop cooking because she feels tired from eating a

lot of butter she you know yeah that happens and yeah it feels very counter to other films of this type and time you don't really walk away from it being like oh god like you want to you want to eat the chocolate cake yeah you don't leave the movie being like they should have eaten less more you should have eaten more yeah there are definitely like dated and it is a period piece even at the time it's coming out yeah like dated ways of talking but it was mostly negative self talk i can't think of a lot of examples i don't know if any of like someone commenting on julie and julia's body it was more of mostly julie being hard on herself but i mean again bar on the floor but i think you know like a lesser movie would have had like the husbands

commenting on their bodies true and the fact that it was mostly relegated to some good old fashioned negative self-talk felt at least like a less bad version. And I also don't know from Julie's book if that is like something that is from the book. I just don't know. A little bit. Yeah. She was funny, you know, like she has the quippy, bloggy early 2000s voice. And I think that kind of self-degradation that is mostly a joke is just like kind of part of the flair, you know. But I think in the context of the movie, it adds like a realistic character dimension.

It makes Julie feel like, yeah, she's messy. It's fun. Yeah. She's just like me. She hates herself. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

I mean, just the idea of a movie about women and food. And I mean, I get like the parallels between the two of them are significant. I think that an interesting big chasm between them that the movie doesn't really look at. And also it's like, I don't know. I don't go to Nora Ephron for thoughtful commentary on class but this movie yeah it's it's interesting because of the stories they're based on class has to be present and we're still firmly in the middle to upper middle class when it comes to julie but there is a not insignificant class difference between julie and julia and i feel like a lot of how like listening to julie be like why can't i be more like julia

and i kept being like money yeah money kind of your personality but it's a lot of it is money like where julia child for all of her valid struggles never had to worry about money and that tends to make you a more pleasant person if you never have to worry about jack shit like and the ways that class colors Julia's story it is kind of a Cinderella story where she has to write her way out of her insurance claims job but even stuff with like she can't afford to live in the area of town she wants to and that has an effect on her career when she gets canceled on because it's too far which again right i celebrate that cancellation but like there's a little class stuff in there and i don't know it's not perfectly done i just

thought it was like one of the more bizarre parts of this movie to me is that doesn't seem to really register in the constant comparison between these women's life trajectories right i think julia child is often used as like fake deep inspiration of like julia didn't learn to cook until she was in her 40s and it's like well it's because she lived a very privileged life in which she didn't have to learn how to cook for herself and then had an incredible abundance of time in which all she had to do was what she wanted right and I don't see that really being engaged with culturally until recently, maybe even. It's a bummer.

I think a lot of us are very distracted by the reality of what growing up wealthy can do for a person and trying to like we don't all have the same hours in the day. The like bouffe bourguignon part, especially like coming home to cook six hour meal. Like that's so commendable. I would, I, when I did have to go to an office, when I came home, I would never do something that would take that long and just thinking,

well, if you have a husband who's supporting you, you have theoretically family money. Although, you know, she doesn't have a great relationship. Julia didn't have a great relationship with her father as we see, but you, of course you can do the thing that takes hours and hours

and hours right it's not glamorous to think about that I guess right yeah but it's like with Julie you do see that like it's taking more of a toll on her life than it took on Julia's because she has to have a normal job and commute and do all the things that most people need to do. And she's still privileged to be able to, you know, find the energy to have the hobby. Like there is still a degree of privilege in that, but yeah, they're operating in different levels of privilege, which feels kind of wild to say, because they are, you know, they're both white women that have, you know, sort of the world bows to them both eventually anyways. And again, like Nora Ephron, this is not really any more than I'm not trying to compare them

outside of this. But Nora Ephron also grew up very wealthy, you know, the odds she had to beat had a lot to do with misogyny and not a lot to do with class. And I feel the same way about Emerald Fennell, where you're just like, here's a director that I'll always give their stuff a shot, but I'm not going to them for valuable insight on class because they're just like not equipped to do it. What? You didn't think Saltburn had important commentary? No, I'm kidding. Well, it's like she's like a jewelry heiress or something. And you're just like, yeah, this is not the director I'm going to for this. But I like to look at pretty thing.

I do like the way that PayPal is a detail of a plot point to show that Julie's readers love her. Yes. I love the early 2000s-ness of it. I love the beginning of blogging and just hearing those things it's so fun i love when uh chris messina explains blogging it's really great and just like the herculean effort of beginning a blog on salon.com you're like wow what a moment in time or when she gets competitive with her friend who's, it just is like the way that female friends work in Julie's world is weird to me. In Julia's world, I kind of love it.

Like, I don't really have any notes there. Julie's world, I'm like, what is Nora trying to say to us here? Or Julie, I'm not sure where it's coming from. But the friend that humiliates her also has a blog about having sex in a plane question mark and yeah yeah yeah honestly not out of the i don't know early blogging was so wild people were just saying whatever yeah yeah well to speak a little bit more to julie's friends oh my gosh yes what's going on she has the mean girl boss friends who are very condescending one of them is casey wilson love that the other one writes this like rude piece about julie becoming 30 or something i

don't even know what the topic is. If I were Julie, that would have affected me far worse. I was glad that for Julie, she was like, Oh, I need to start writing again. I was like, Oh, my takeaway would have been far more negative. How could a friend write a hit piece on you? And then you just keep going. When it happened on Sex and in the city it wasn't her friend no it was a person it was a person i don't know i really love viewing this like incredibly inaccessible version of female friendship to me i'm like i simply do not this doesn't register to me just incredible like coterie of girl bosses i don't know yeah i don't know. who is kind to her. And we like that, especially in contrast to her mean friends. And then she has these other friend that we mentioned,

Ernestine. It's Julie's one black friend. It's like the only person of color on screen with any sort of speaking role. Truly shot for shot. You see like her eyes. You see the back of her head several times. And then you see her whole face

in the final shot she appears in like it could not be more careless yeah the movie doesn't care at all about her character but then so there's a scene where i think it's julie eric and her friend sarah sarah comes over and Julie's like, what do you think it means if you don't like your friends? Referring to her mean girl boss friends. Right. Who she's right to not let.

Like, right. That seems so confusing. And Sarah responds with, it's completely normal to not like your friends. And then Eric says, well, men like their friends. And then Sarah says, we're not talking about men. Who's talking about men? to not like your friends and then eric says well men like their friends and then sarah says we're not talking about men who's talking about men which i think passes the bechdel test but

anyway it does i also i'm like okay eric where are your friends at haven't seen them in the movie yeah where are these friends you like so much right doesn't seem like they're really around are they yeah that felt very boomery logic to me. I couldn't quite get my head around it because it was like, if we're talking about that friend, yeah, she shouldn't be your friend anymore. They're mean. Like she betrayed you and like humiliated you in a national magazine. I don't think that has to do with like friendships between women.

It has to do with this woman being a bad person right and to julie's credit it seems like they're not friends anymore at least in the context of the movie they don't hang out after that but who knows what the real life situation was like do the other girl bosses cut her out like what it was really interesting in all of the dinners when she has people over yeah those women do not return and i wonder if it was like would they not eat the food they wouldn't let her have a breadstick oh yeah they were like stop eating yeah that whole scene i watched it a couple times because it's like way all over the place it's just really bizarre it feels atonal for the rest of the movie too yeah i agree it feels cartoonish but then the way that friendships between women are in julia child's world i thought were like really thoughtful and gentle and

like not without conflict but right still there's a ton of support and like there are friends of julia childs that are you know on equal footing of like narrative importance as her husband and that's really nice i mean i love the scenes with julia and simka i love that they're like we're gonna cut our third friend out of it and then they experience a little pushback and julia's like never mind because i would have done the same thing yeah because they're confronting louisette because she's not doing her share of the work and julia and simca are frustrated rightfully so because they're doing all the work and they sit louisette down and then she's like i'm going through a divorce and they're like oh yeah okay but then they still kind of negotiate her down

to like only receiving 18 or something like that yeah and they're like your name has to be small but then julia's like no your name can be big on the cover it's fine i love a fellow conflict avoidant yeah sure but i do appreciate like i i really liked that dynamic between those three friends and how they like have to confront the one friend and yeah it felt authentic and then she also has a deep friendship withvis who she like is pen pals with for eight years and then they finally meet on screen the Avis reveal is so good honestly it's really sweet and also so weird

because you're like wow it's Avis and then it's just like a tiny Avis I love that so much I feel very close to Julia Child in that way. I have many friends I've only communicated with online for many years. Free Tumblr.

A pen pal. It's so sweet. I think the Julia story just is less messy in general. But like the Julia story navigates like, yeah, meeting a friend you've only written to for the first time in this really sweet and cathartic way but the parasocial relationships in julie's worlds are weird and confusing julie's world is weird and confusing yeah in general i think she should divorce all of her friends i did like the marilyn riseco character. Like she is a sweet, supportive friend, but also, yeah, you're being a bitch. Like, I mean, you know, language choice.

But she is being unbelievably self-centered in that scene because she's like, by the way, I'm going through a really big breakup. And Amy Adams is like, oh, my God, I totally forgot. Anyways, back to me. And I was like, bad friend. So funny. She is like not a great friend either I don't know messy is that a good transition to talk about the husbands because that's yeah Julie's husband Eric's big problem with this whole project and I have okay here are my thoughts on it

what do you think okay so we see him being generally supportive to Julie, especially at first. He helps her set up the blog. He encourages her verbally and with compliments and stuff like that. He loves her cooking. But then there's that rocky part in the middle where he gets frustrated and he bails for a little bit and he calls her narcissistic and all this stuff and i feel like we are not given enough information to know if him you know being pissed off and accusing her of being self-absorbed is justified or if it's just a man expecting certain behavior from a woman and also another component of it which the movie doesn't like frame it this way at all or examine, but this happens a lot in real life

in hetero couples where men feel threatened if their wife is doing better than them professionally or financially, or if they're like, you know, their wife is having success in some regard and men feel very threatened by that a lot of the time. And I was like, okay, is there a component of that with the Eric character? Is he threatened by this success that his wife is finding kind of suddenly? And again, the movie doesn't examine that or really acknowledge that. But I was like, hmm, this does happen a lot. So I wonder if that was part of it, or if it's just Julie being selfish

and uncompromising. But you know, who can say? Yeah, I was also struggling to Yeah, summer thoughts. I don't know. I think every time I watch the movie, I feel a little differently about their fight. I watched it twice before this. And so I watched it last week and I watched it last night. And between those different times, I felt differently. I think it is very alienating for someone who you love and who supports you to make you feel worse when you're having a meltdown by responding in a way that is like, you know, like she's she's very upset because something is very important to her. And his response is kind of brushing it off. I don't even think I feel like it wasn't kind of a twist of like, well, let's be positive. We have good food and you can reschedule, you know, like with Judith Jones rescheduling. It was a little like, why is this important?

And that can feel really devastating and horrible, especially if you are someone who is prone to meltdowns. And I think having a meltdown when something goes wrong valid it happens especially cooking yes oh it is very devastating and overwhelming in the moment and so I don't know every single time I watch it I wonder where that comes from like whether it is not believing what she's doing is important and it's like yeah no one will be mad at you if someone canceled on you for dinner. And I think that's something that she needed to hear, this projection of responsibility on her readers.

It's warped and it's unhealthy to feel like you owe something to other people when you don't really. Because otherwise, I think he's a fantastic husband. He's so kind. He's having such a good time with her and he's very supportive and I I think sometimes I wish we'd seen maybe a little bit more of a build-up of his frustration or in what ways is she distracted from their marriage outside of like she spends all her free time making really good food I don't know yeah it feels like it comes

out of nowhere I wonder if there's like a missing scene or something i just feel like i it's really hard to fall on like a hard interpretation because i just feel like i don't have enough information because it's not like we haven't seen examples of julie brushing off other people in favor of herself and her own problems. We saw her do that with her friend. So it's not like there's no precedent for this. But also, we haven't really seen her do this to him. We don't really know. I mean, I feel like we're usually having this conversation in the reverse, but like, we don't really know much about him. Like, I don't really know, like, does he feel like her pursuing this dream

there's no space within the relationship for him to pursue his like what would he rather this time be used for because it also is such a valid and common thing to be like actually you know this started fun but now you're getting too much attention and I'm not comfortable with it yeah but that wasn't really who I understood that character to be up to then. So it was just feels honestly like an end of act two contrivance. Yeah. Where he leaves and then comes back three days later, in spite of the fact that the one thing he asked for, she blatantly ignored, which also made me be like, maybe he was right to pail on her for a while. Cause he's like, please just don't write about me in your blog right now and then she did and then he's like actually i don't care and you're like this is just bizarre is the implication being that like she writes in a way that is like i had

a fight with my husband who wasn't being supportive enough and then she deletes that and then she writes in such a way that it's like she's acknowledging her own fault in the fight as it relates to what her husband is concerned about. And then he reads that and he's like, wow, she's acknowledging that she was wrong. And that's why I'm coming back to her. That's the impression I got. Yes. But it's like that also is so dissonant because he's reading about it because she didn't do what he asked yeah i think that they're both acting very weird in that sequence and that it felt like a contrivance that this movie is too good for kind of i think like a kind of overall issue with the movie is that it doesn't affirm.

It's very much about external validation on the Julie side, not on the Julia side. Julia is so confident in herself. But everything with Julie is she is performing like for her readers. Like I am. Yes, I am a selfish person and a bad wife sometimes for her readers. And it's not for her husband. It's not for herself. Right.

And it's in that, like, ending monologue where Eric is like, the Julia in your head is what matters. It's still not about, like, finding confidence in your art and your life in yourself. It's still this sort of manifestation of external validation. And throughout the movie, her mother is like, this isn't important. She needs to know it's still this sort of manifestation of external validation and throughout the movie her mother is like this isn't important she needs to know it's important herself and that's kind of what their argument feels like it's about but it doesn't land because she doesn't find value in the work she's doing because she's doing it she still finds it because people are reading her right yeah which is again like that's an interesting thing to explore. And so many, I mean,

I've been that writer at various points. 100%. Yeah. You're given something interesting, but then it turns into this bizarre, the way it's like touched on, it has to do with the relationship. And all of a sudden he seems threatened

and frustrated by her and he has never seemed that way and we're like what am I supposed like am I supposed to think this was in him the whole time and then like you're saying Caitlin like it's unclear like does she owe anyone an apology in this situation it feels more like this is a battle that needs to happen internally for her and they turn it into a relationship battle instead in a way that's confusing hard to say i don't know yeah i felt weird about that too other than that though it's like the two romantic relationships in this movie are pretty lovely they're beautiful they're like my favorite romantic relationships in movies i think especially meryl and Tucci come on come on yeah so Paul and we've already talked about the like level of privilege that Julia Child experiences that allows CIA legendary the CIA romance of the

century right but the thing with Paul is that like he's only ever shown to be completely supportive of Julia he's never calling her narcissistic or anything like that. And that feels especially unusual considering this is like the 1940s slash 50s. This is when women were not encouraged to have careers, especially married women. So for him to be like, yeah, do whatever you want. Try making hats, try cooking, do anything. And then she pursues that dream. And he's like, so supportive along the way. I'm curious to know if that's how that relationship actually manifested or not. But at least as far as what we see in the movie, Paul is like, unwaveringly supportive of Julia Child. And I appreciated seeing that. It's not as though

other men around her are unwaveringly supportive, because you have that kind of series of scenes where she starts that cooking class at Le Cordon Bleu, and it's all men in the class. And it's all people who are like already professional chefs. I guess they're honing their skills or something, but they judge her. You know, she says something like, you should have seen the way those men looked at me. Like I'm just some frivolous housewife looking for a way to kill time. And that is probably what they assumed when they saw her. And she is shown having to put in extra effort and work extra hard to prove herself the way that many women and marginalized people in general have to do to earn any level of respect or to have access to the same opportunities as their counterparts who are more privileged. And so we see Julia doing all of that

extra work to try to like fit in and prove herself and all that stuff. And then in a letter to Avis later on, she says something like, and now I'm way ahead of the others in my class, all men, all of them unfriendly until they discovered that i was fearless so then they come to respect her because like she displays a trait that is traditionally considered masculine right it's like you have to be exceptional to deserve respect kind of right yeah you know she's brave and she's fearless she's not this like you know quote-unquote timid woman that the men expected her to be but she's like i, I'm going to kill this lobster. And they're like, wow, she's so cool.

And then she, you know, garners their respect. I thought all of that was like, you know, not a huge part of the movie, but I'm glad it was touched on to some degree. Yeah, I get it. It's like it's a very like rom-commy way of touching on it, but it touches on it. I was curious more because, again, I just like mainly know about Julia Child through this movie and through what is largely considered to be a wildly historically inaccurate miniseries. Yeah, there's literally a scene in the miniseries where Betty Friedan yells at Julia Child and is like, you're not a real feminist, which never happened. And they're like, well, it's like, we wanted to explore. You're like, you can't do that. That's cheating. She was a person. Anyways, I was curious, especially after seeing how wildly like over the top the miniseries went, what Julia Child's relationship to feminism was because she was prominent as second wave

feminism was becoming a conversation and second wave feminism we can save that for another day however it was interesting where Julia Child never really allied herself with a feminist movement but she also in her time caught some shit from feminist movements because it was characterized as like she's encouraging women to stay in the kitchen which i see the thinking behind it but i'm kind of grateful that most feminist movements have moved past that because what julia child was doing as we see in the spoofy was extremely difficult for women to do even with the degree of privilege that she had and cooking does not have to be an inherently oppressive task but it has been put on women in that way but Julia Child was cooking for

joy she was producing her own stuff she was like by all accounts I guess she was a reproductive rights champion like she you know wasn't a full-blown feminist but I think in her time was kind of unfairly criticized for pushing something that it didn't seem like she was ever pushing really like she was a woman who enjoyed cooking and wanted to make a show about it. And it was, I don't know, I think kind of like unfairly politicized to make her look worse. I think cooking and having the ability to cook and the skills to cook well, and in a way that is like pleasurable, if you're creating something for yourself that is good and creating something for others that is good there's very interesting conversations around that being like a bougie thing or a privileged thing when it feels like it should just be the most basic human right like knowing how to use ingredients where to get them from

how to use them and to nourish yourself and others it is a very interesting contentious sort of conversation and you know there's degrees of course again, like having 10 hours a day to slow cook something is a different kind of conversation. But the act of cooking and being able to cook for yourself and especially not relying on, you know, like the scene when they're in the first publisher meeting and they have the book of like the quick housewife kind of things i think being able to break out of sort of mass consumerism notions of feeding yourself and food is a radical act and not just you know not to say like julia child's methods are radical but i think that a lot of relationships in like anarchist food movements is knowing what you're using, how to use it and how to not use things that are destroying the planet and our bodies. Right. Well, there's also a difference between the expectation for women to do these

domestic chores, such as cooking and, you know know nurturing and nourishing her husbands and children and stuff like that and cooking as a career because historically men are chefs women are housewives who cook for their family yeah yeah so for her to pursue being a professional chef and as we see in that scene where she like, goes to that class with other professional chefs, who are all men, and like, that's still a cultural thing, but it was certainly more pronounced back then. So for her to be like, yeah, I'm a woman, but I'm like a professional chef who can teach it who can like, create my own recipes and like sort of innovate different ways to do certain things like that was not the most common thing for women to be doing back then. So again,

the movie doesn't necessarily like examine that that thoroughly, but, you know, just from the context that we know about it, it's like, oh, that is cool. Yeah, and I think there's so many ways to look at what Julia Child, I don't know, it seems like we're all fans in the chat. But like, there's like so many ways to sort of talk about it. But yeah, I feel like what a lot of the criticism of her missed was also that like,

what she's doing is cool from a class standpoint. She's teaching you how to make fancy seeming food that I think a lot of people with less money would assume that they wouldn't be able to have at home. And, you know, her whole thing was anyone can cook very ratatouille. Like anyone can cook with ingredients that are affordable. I mean, the real cost is time, but also that she's broadcasting on PBS so anyone can watch her do it. Like I think that from a class standpoint, while she benefits from all this privilege, I feel like in her later career, she kind of pays it forward by making what she's learned very accessible. And that's really cool, too.

Yeah. There's also a small conversation that the movie kind of has in regards to who the cookbook is targeted toward, because it's specifically for American housewives who don't have servants to cook for them. And this is like 1950s, like to me, peak housewife era. Particularly like white housewives culture. Yeah. And so the publishers of the book in the various scenes where, you know, they're meeting with publishers and being like, well, this isn't going to work because housewives want something quick and easy. And this book is 700 pages of sauce recipes and like how is that and so there's like this battle that the characters have to deal with as far as like catering to this specific demographic that has all of these like gender roles and gendered presumptions you know foisted upon them right and like how the people telling her who her book is for is a room full of men right yeah yeah you don't want to work with someone who belittles your assumed audience right yeah she's cool i love that meryl street played her she's so good at it i just wish she had gotten to do it for the whole movie sorry julie i just wish it had been the whole movie I think the gender dynamics with

Julie and Eric as well are interesting in that she cooks dinner for them truly because she likes it at least the movie doesn't sort of imply that she's doing it because she is the wife right I don't remember how that's depicted in her book or in real life and you know there's always going to be the pressures of who does that in a heterosexual relationship. But it sort of kind of knocks it out of the way that it's like, she's doing this because she finds joy in it. And they both eat with such like gusto. The way that like Chris Messina eats is like kind of gross. But it's so too enthusiastic. They're having so much fun. He's going for it. Yeah, yeah, it feels like a good kind of like efficient way to kind of knock that like she's doing this because she thinks cooking is fun.

Right. Yeah. Is there anything else that y'all wanted to touch on for this? Do you want to talk about parasociality? Yes. Yes. Let's do it. I mean, I am someone who gets hyper fixated on things pretty easily. And that often lends itself towards a pair of social relationships.

And it is something that is when I was a teenager is quite damaging to your psyche. The belief that people that you do not know are your friends or owe anything to you outside of maybe like if you saw them on the street maybe a basic respect as you would treat your other human kind of thing but i'm so fascinated with the way that this movie decides in the end what is good in these sort of relationships both with julie and julia and then julie towards her readers the reliance on her readers for validation, as well as the continued like mantra of you're not a writer until you're published.

So interesting. People don't say that anymore. The over affirmation of you're a writer if you write is very prevalent. Also, you're a writer if you don't write and if you just want to, you know, but I walk away with it with feeling very strange. You know, I do think that thinking that someone you look up to doesn't respect your work is quite crushing. And I think a lot about in Gilmore Girls, when Mitchum tells Rory she's not a journalist and she steals a boat. Like think that's appropriate response um yeah on my most recent rewatch i was like wow i really turned on her when she did that the first time but the benefit of time i'm like it was a victimless crime yeah everyone should steal a boat i think

so they're nagged by a hero but in the case of this, like, I don't know, what does it mean to value the image of someone in your head over their actual personhood? If she did meet Julia in real life, and they did have some sort of working relationship? I think Julie Powell went on to do like a Julia Child show on Food Network or something. I don't know, maybe like a docuseries or something. I don't quite remember. But what does it mean to hold on to that? And I think it is dehumanizing in a way that in this case seems harmless in the context of a film, but it can have greater ramifications towards celebrity, towards art. Like what do we expect from someone? And I don't know, can you continue a relationship with the person in your head if the real person does something legitimately harmful

it's really tricky I don't know like the movie has a very light touch with it and I find it a little frustrating but I'm also like that is such a especially in 2009 if like that conversation like wasn't even really happening yeah and I've been in the position of Julie as well where it's like you're really evangelizing about someone whose work you really love that's really been formative to you and then to find out you know it's different to find out who they really are is troubling or even just not who you doesn't square with what your image of them was. I think on this viewing,

what I felt, I really felt for Julie because it wasn't like she was actively asking what Julia child thought. Like she sort of found out what Julia child thought about the project against her will, which is a risk, you know, doing it and it becomes,

but I really felt for her where it wasn't like she was banging down julia child's door being like do you like me she just got a cold call that was like hey just so you know she doesn't like that is devastating yes you know but also on the julia child part what is her responsibility to julie powell who objectively i mean we could talk about this in the context of this very show like if we found out Alison Bechdel fucking hated us right it would hurt but we would have to deal you know like it's not like yeah us doing this show for seven years doesn't invite some sort of response from her should she choose to and yeah it is like that

parasocial question of like how do you navigate like how can you love so because I think what Julie is doing is beautiful in its way where it's like she's drawing inspiration from another person to navigate a really hard portion in like her life. And that's what art can do. And that's amazing. Yeah. And, you know, I guess the only way to get around it is to just never become famous enough for the person to hear about what you're up to. And then you're safe. But I don't think Julia Child owes her anything because at that point Julie Powell is profiting off of perceived proximity between the two of them which is also

a valid discussion to have but I also like feel really awful when Julie finds out that Julia doesn't like her against her will that is devastating I don't know complicated yeah anyways anyone who has a parasocial relationship with any of the three of us we're so normal and cool we're so keep it up nice and actually well to tie it all

together if anyone wants to see me in paris because you feel like you have a parasocial relationship with me and you're a fan of my comedy. Paris social. Whoa. I can't even continue after hearing that. Sorry. I will be doing some stand-up comedy in Paris in early May ahead of the shrektanik tour that jamie and i are doing but i'm going to paris early and i'm doing comedy so everyone should come and see me sorry i'm just plugging my shows i'm going to paris after the tour wow and leave me alone i don't i don't want to i want to be alone i want to be alone fair that's to be alone. Fair. That's totally fair. Okay. Any other thoughts? Nope. That's everything I had.

I don't totally mean that. I mean it like mostly though. Yeah. No, that's fine. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. Let's see. I think that's everything that I had, honestly. Yeah. I'm good. Yeah, I could talk about parasocial relationships forever. But then sometimes it works out because that's like how, like, I admired your work before we met. Like, it all kind of worked out. Yeah, I fully had a parasocial relation with the both of you.

I've been a listener to this podcast. And now you're here. Wow. And look at us. Sometimes it's fine. Well fine well folks this movie passes the Bechdel test a whole lot oh yeah yeah all the time it's mostly women talking about food and publishing deals yes what a life kind of rocks oh wait okay uh the mrs joy of cooking paid fifty seven thousand dollars to get her book published. I

can't. Or what was her name? Irma? Irma Rumbauer. Yeah. That scene was so, I didn't fact check any of that, but like so yeah. That was like such a great

Nora Ephron scene where it was just like, I feel like Nora Ephron movies sometimes it was just like i feel like nora efron movies sometimes you're like and here's women being really weird to each other for five minutes you're like huh all right it was awesome yeah but yes it does pass the bechdel test lots and lots but as far as the one true metric our nipple scale where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples, based on examining the movie through an intersection that they love. And they have men around them who are supportive. And to some extent, friends around them who are supportive, except when it's Casey Wilson and all the mean girl bosses.

I love, I was like, wow, peak 2012 is Casey Wilson in one scene. And you're like, should have been more. I love Casey Wilson. So on the surface, you know, there's some nice things going for the movie that I appreciate. But as we've discussed, there's other things that the movie either kind of glosses over and doesn't examine very thoroughly in a very like Nora Ephron movie kind of way, such as like the class component and the level of privilege that the women and especially Julia Child had access to that allowed her to do all of these things. Because like, yeah, this conversation is happening more and more. I see a lot of it just like, you know, people on

TikTok and Instagram examining how like, oh, yeah, the things that we used to think were like a brave thing to do, like, oh, you moved to a new city or you pursued this dream of yours or you did X, Y, Z. It's not because you were like brave. It's because you had access to money that enabled you to do that. And that feels very much like the Julia Child of it all. But in any case, you know, there's things like that. There's the one character of color who has five seconds of screen time. Things like that. I do appreciate Julia Child's relationship with her sister, Dorothy. I would have liked to see more of it. They seem really sweet together. So it's things like that. It's different relationships.

And again, women pursuing their dreams that I like to see. But it is a very like middle to upper middle class white woman version of all of that without the movie like really acknowledging any of it. So there's that and with that in mind i'll give the movie uh maybe like two and a half or three nipples i think is where i'm landing and i'm gonna give them all to julie's orange cat i'm gonna go higher i think i'm to go 3.75. Wow. Because I agree with everything that you said, Caitlin. I think the whiteness of this movie is undeniable. It's like showing you class, but not the kind of just leaving everything on the table, if you will.

Right next to the bechamel sauce. Yeah, exactly. But this movie is written and directed by one of our most iconic women directors and also based on the writings of two women. You know, and I think that that is unusual enough. And also the fact that this movie did very well. It's uneven and in some ways flat out weird. But I think that there is a lot being explored here. A lot of it isn't fully explored. But yeah, a story about women and like their ambition and how that ambition is interpreted in different historical periods. There's like

little touches where you don't really get a lot of beats about fertility in movies that doesn't then consume the whole movie where you're shown that like, this is an element of Julia Child's life, but it doesn't define her. What defines her is her relationship to people and her relationship to her work and I thought that was like very subtle and well done yeah it's all over the place but I feel like there's a lot to love here and yeah so I'm gonna give it 3.75 maybe that's too many but it's just how I'm feeling today I'm gonna give one to Jane Lynch I'm gonna give one to Meryl I'm gonna give one to Mary Lynn Reiskub and I'm going to give one to Meryl. I'm going to give one to Mary Lynn Reiskub. And I'm going to give the rest to Simka.

Yeah. Nice. Summer. I think I will go 3.5. It is a movie about two real white women. And so I think my expectations towards racial diversity is like, well, that's kind of probably who they filled their life with. But yeah, similar reasons. I think that there's like a hint of class analysis. I think it is mostly beautiful and loving towards the act of cooking and what it

means in a gendered capacity. I will give all of my nipples to Judith Jones because I love women who edit books as a woman who is technically an editor, an unemployed one, but someone... You are an editor. God damn it. My sister in arms in book publishing. But I want to recommend a book to your listeners. Please. Is it Raw Dog? Okay, so I mean, I do have a food writing section on my shelf. And I do have Raw Dog next to a book by Alicia Kennedy called No Meat Required. And it's a really beautiful dichotomy of a book about like cultural history of plant based eating next to Raw dog, which I love. But it is called Tastemakers by Mayuk Sen.

And it is a group biography of seven immigrant women who changed cooking in America. And so if you're interested in non-white women who kind of created foundational texts in culinary history in the U.S. and introduced different cuisines to home cooks, I would highly recommend it. It's beautiful. There is a little Julia Child interlude in it just to kind of affirm her importance as a not immigrant woman, but kind of the reverberations of her influence on those who came around and after her. I just placed a hold on it at the library. Wow, brave. Shout out.

The libraries. Yeah, it's really good. And tell us before you go, please tell us about your book, which is currently out. Yeah, I wrote a chapbook of poems that are inspired by the Legend of Zelda. They are weird and sad and about Palestine. And yeah, you can get them on GameOverBooks.com or you can check in with your local bookstore. They should be able to order it. And I'm doing a mini tour. I'll be reading in LA in March, late March, and

then maybe I'll, you know, I'll be around. But yeah, it's my first book with an ISBN. And so I'm very happy. Oh, congrats. I'm so excited to read it. Congratulations. And where can people where can people establish a parasocial relationship with you online? Yeah. Please find me at Borders Bookstore on Instagram. Someone had to take up the mantle. If Borders ever makes a comeback, they owe me two point five million dollars for the handle. That's the only way that we're going to be able to be homeowners is by getting the good handles and then twitter and far more active at some of this nice yeah oh amazing well thank you so much

for coming on the show thank you for having me come back anytime please yes hopefully i can come back for the zelda movie oh my gosh You're both going to have to school me because I know that you're both well-versed. I just restarted Tears of the Kingdom because I'm sad and I was like, I need something that I can do for 10 to 14 hours a day. Yeah. All in one chunk to take my mind off of that. So I'm replaying Tears of the Kingdom brag. Anyway, you can follow us at Bechtelcast on social media. And speaking of tours, we will be in London, Oxford, Manchester, and Edinburgh. And we're doing the Shrek-tanic tour.

What does that mean? Well, sometimes we're doing a Titanic show. Sometimes we're doing the Shrek-tanic tour. What does that mean? Well, sometimes we're doing a Titanic show. Sometimes we're doing a Shrek show. Yeah, it's not that complicated. You'll just have to go to linktree.com to find out more details, but we will be doing those shows in May. And then, like I said, I'll be doing stand-up in Paris, Berlin. I'm working on some shows in Copenhagen. I don't know if you know anything about the Copenhagen comedy scene. Listeners, please let me know. I'm also going to be doing some shows in Dublin.

So be on the lookout for all of those. And you can also always sign up for our Patreon, aka Matreon, where you get for five bucks a month access to two new episodes that are exclusive usually just me and caitlin and access to 150 episodes of back catalog if you can imagine we're doing a bunch of classic movies this month and you can also get our merch over at tpublic.com slash the bechdel cast. Follow us on Instagram or Twitter if you're so inclined. You'll know how to find us. And with that,

oh, actually, wait, Summer, you're going to be like Julia Child at the end of the movie today when you open your book for the first time. Yeah, oh my gosh, I'm doing my unboxing. You're going to have your Julia moment. And there will be a freeze frame for no reason. I it it's like the breakfast club for some reason sure okay the bechdel cast is a production of i heart media hosted by caitlin dorante and jamie loftus

produced by soph Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskrosensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus. And a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.com. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, please visit linktree.com. into a mathiest state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you.

Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

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