The Bechdel Cast - Moana with Natalie Baseman

Episode Date: March 30, 2017

Jamie and Caitlin and guest Natalie Baseman discuss Disney's Moana. What can we say except "You're Welcome."(This episode contains spoilers)Follow @NatalieBaseman on Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @hamburgerphone   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and I'm the host of On Purpose. This week, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Andrew Huberman. Dr. Huberman is a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, known for his research on brain function, behavior, and neuroplasticity,

the brain's ability to adapt and rewire itself. The expectation on us is not perfections, being able to toggle between these different states. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. Back in 1969, four young musicians from Texas were hired to impersonate Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. are available now. Listen to the true story of the fake zombies on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search true story of the fake zombies and start listening. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their

discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hi, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie. My name is Caitlin. And this is the Bechdel cast. This is a movie podcast where we talk about the portrayal of women in movies. Oh yeah, I forgot.

First, we wanted to, it was announced recently. Some housekeeping things. Some housekeeping things. Some cool things. It was announced recently. I found an article on engadget.com. Cool website for tech heads. Oh, I am not super familiar with it. I'm going to pretend to be.

Cool. The article is, IMDB adds an F rating to help users identify feminist-friendly movies. Does that seem a little bit condescending? The F? Yeah. Or just confusing, like, oh, this movie has an F, but it's good. It should be A for ally.

So that was cool. I like that. I like it, too. I like that a lot. So be on the lookout for that. I'm not sure when they're launching that exactly. And then the other thing that we learned about since our last episode is the sexy lamp test, which is sort of a contemporary spin on the Bechdel test. And the sexy lamp, that's a reference to A Christmas Story. Is it not?

Okay. So the sexy lamp test is none of the women can be replaced by a sexy lamp and have the plot remain intact. So it's basically just like a lesson in objectification. Right. Which we're down for. We're down. There's so many variations on tests. I mean, on this website alone, Bechdel test, sexy lamp test, the Meiko Mori test. The Meiko Mori test, it says a movie has to have at least one female character with her own narrative arc that is not about supporting a man's story.

So it has to be her own. She has to have her own story that doesn't have anything to do with a man's goal or desires. And then there's the Furiosa test, which I think is mislabeled here because I'm pretty sure I created that test. And it's more the Furiosa rule, which is that the baldest woman in the movie is in charge and I think that that rule pretty much holds up name me a movie with a bald woman who is not in charge I don't know if I can name you a movie with a bald woman apart from Mad Max Fury Road and G.I. Jane oh damn it I was was like um trump card there's another one the anti-freeze test says that no woman assaulted injured or killed to further the story of another

character so that cannot happen or else it does not pass the anti-freeze test so um someone had tweeted at us a while back letting us know about the sexy lamp test. I wish I could remember that person's Twitter handle. I don't. Sorry. We'll put it in the description. Yeah. Anyway, a few of these tests were brought to our attention.

So now we got some other litmus tests to apply to the movies we talk about if we want. Anyway, let's get this moving right along. All right, let's do it. I want to introduce our wonderful guest. Yeah. She's a screenwriter, and she has written for Reductress, Natalie Baseman.

Hi. Hi. Thanks for being here. Oh, it is a pleasure to be here. Oh, my God. Thank you for having me. So one of the things we often mention on the podcast, and I don't like to bring it up,

is that I have a screenwriting master's degree. How many? Guess who else has a screenwriting master's degree? What up? Not me. Natalie does. Oh, goddammit. Are you serious?

So two against one. Are you serious? It's an MFA. Guys. I'm triggered. So Natalie. I'm triggered. I'm going. So Natalie, you know you understand my struggle.

It's hard. I went to film school because I love movies and it made me so I can't watch a movie without destroying it. I have a much more critical eye when I can see the screenwriter's hand in every decision

that's made when I'm watching a movie, but I'm still able to enjoy them. Yeah, well, if the movie's good enough, I'll forget about it. Like the movie we were going to talk about. I went to radio school to kill my New England accent and develop a very smooth delivery voice. And it's working. Thank you so much i used to i used to host a late night r&b

show and be like this is 88.9 at night if you have any calls feel free to call in for your loved one and then it would be like cvs brand delilah it was nice i was like i hope people are fucking to this and sometimes it would just be like horny older guys would call in and be like, play a song for my wife. And I'd be like, this next song goes out to Louisa on her 30th anniversary. I definitely would have listened to your show then. Thank you so much. I also hosted a show called The Playground where I only talked in a nasal tone. So that's what I did.

That's why I'm in debt. Good job. Thank you. My mom told me today that she has a hard time distinguishing our voices whenever she's listening to the podcast. I have sometimes too. Really? Do we sound enough alike? Maybe I should start talking in like

an Australian accent. Hey, are we calling? It's me, Kylene. Is that how it sounds? That's really good. Thanks. I only have like two voices, which is tricky. I can talk like my former co-worker, Nick,

and then I can just talk it. Let's hear it. Hey, Nick, what's going on? Hey, what's going on? My name's Nick Hanson. Oh, I know Nick Hanson. Yeah, Nick Hanson. He's like, I have a blog about turkey sandwiches. I live in Minnesota. I'm the nicest boy alive. And I used to write sketches about Nick.

Everyone follow him on Twitter, at Nick Hanson, MN. I used to write sketches about Nick when we worked together. And I would always make him a vicious murderer. And kept his name. There was one I used to do where I would be wearing a wig, and I'd have a gun under the wig. And it would be just Nick going from table to table being, Hello, I have a gun under my wig. Do you be just Nick going from table to table being, uh, hello, I have a gun

under my wig. Do you believe me? And then people would be like, no. And he'd be like, take off my wig! I defy you to take off my wig! It was so much fun. I miss it. That is a pretty good Nick impression, though. He and I went to grad school together. Again, I don't like to mention it.

I don't like to talk. Oh my god, Caitlin, I went to grad school. again i don't like to mention it i don't like oh my god caitlin oh my god guys in spite of the fact that i've been making cartoons about nick being a murderer and the cartoons are making fun of his turkey sandwich blog he sent me and my dad a christmas card he's a class act he's a very nice man he's he sent me a me a DVD of Ferris Bueller's Day Off on my birthday. I don't even have a DVD player. I love it. Hey, speaking of DVDs, let's talk about the movie that we're here to talk about. Oh, okay.

Don't sound so defeated because it's a movie that we enjoy. We really like it. We really like it. We're talking about Moana. It came out last year, so it's not as though any of us have a huge history with this movie. But you saw it in theaters, right, Natalie? I saw it at a, it was a special preview at my grad school. Whoa.

Wait, you went to grad school? Tell me more. Oh, my God. Sometimes they do special previews. They had a special screening of Moana that was presented by the Pacific Islanders group at the school. Oh, cool. Which was really great because there were a lot of students there who are either from the Pacific Islands, Hawaii or around there or are descended from there and now live here.

And so they were all super pumped for it. So it was just a really great vibe going into it. And then there was an interview with the screenwriter after. Oh, very cool. Yeah. And was this before like the theatrical release? Yeah, just a couple of weeks there. And I didn't know that the screenwriter of this had a hell of a year last year because he also wrote and directed Zootopia.

Oh, no kidding. Yeah, he was like a woke-ass animator last year. And he looks like just the whitest dad. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he for sure golfs, but he also had an amazing 2016. Yeah. So you saw it a little bit before, because it came out in 2016, around November, was it? Yeah, it was right before the holidays. And I just kept thinking about it.

I left the theater and I went in with very low expectations, maybe a little bit higher because I did enjoy Frozen so much. And then I was just so blown away and just listened to the soundtrack forever after, and it's still stuck in my head, and I rewatched it for the third time last night in preparation for this, and it's just a beautiful movie. It's almost everything I ever wanted out of a Disney princess movie, but never knew I wanted. Yeah, exactly. Every time I've seen it, I've been so emotional because it's like, this is what Disney movies

should have been like all along. Yeah, Caitlin didn't cry, but she did sing. I did, right. So I watched it twice in the past day and a half. So the story is Moana is the daughter of a chief on an island called Motunui. And we learn about this sort of creation legend in the very beginning where this demigod Maui

has stolen the heart. I like to call it the heart of the ocean. Titanic reference. Totally. But don't they call it the heart of the ocean? I don't think they ever actually do it. They always call it the heart of the ocean i don't think they ever actually do it they always call it the heart of tafiti oh right because i mean i feel like that would be like a very i would have loved if there was an overt titanic reference well she wears it around her neck if it was true and maui draws her naked no that doesn't happen that would be gross yes it was that yeah so maui steals the heart from this mother island and then

it creates this sort of plague that is spreading to the other islands and like diseasing the crops and all this stuff so this starts to happen to the island that moana lives on with her family her mom and her dad and her grandma she also throughout the course of her childhood is drawn to the ocean and her dad's like you can't go out it's dangerous you have to stay on the island you can't go out sailing and she's like but i wanna so i think it'd be funny if we subbed in cocaine for the ocean she's like i can't away. I was born with this desire to snort coke. And then she sings the same song about it. It would explain how she got to the island so quickly.

Right. She's just very focused. She's like, I gotta go right now. I'm pretty fast. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she's got that coke-addled brain. Yeah. So she's drawn to the ocean and the ocean sort of chooses her

to, it like delivers her this heart, this little rock that's the heart of the ocean when she's a baby, but she doesn't really know about it. Turns out her grandma found it for her and has like been keeping it for her. And then when the crops start to get too diseased

and there's no fish, she's like, I got to go and fix this. Oh, there's a whole global warming climate change narrative to this. Oh, I've made notes about it. So she decides to, she gets the call to adventure. She goes off and she takes a boat because she learns that her ancestors were all voyagers. And so she's like, I've got to get on these boats. I'm going to go off and I'm going to go to Maui, this demigod who fucked everything up.

I want to back up a little bit to say 10 minutes of topless baby. We do see some baby's nipples. We see baby nips and progressive in every way. I'm like, you know what? Loving, not aroused by these baby nips, just happy they're here. I didn't even think about that. And I'm so happy that's the case. I think I literally shouted baby nips. We they're here happy they're out i didn't even think about that and i'm so happy that's the case i think i literally shouted baby nips right we watched it together this is a we did movie we watched together oh we're so in love ellie's hottest couple oh and when the grandmother

when she's sick and dying she brings moana close and says go go. And she says, grab Maui. And you tell him, I am Moana from Montanui. And you will do this. You will sail across the ocean and you will do this. And just so forceful and beautiful. Oh, it was great. So she goes and she kind of self-teaches herself. I do feel like with the death of the grandma, they do shoehorn in a maternal death as a motivation.

But I wasn't bothered by it. I wasn't either, but it just felt worth mentioning. Yeah. So she goes, she finds Maui. He is a dick, but we love him. And he agrees. Good job, Caitlin. He agrees to reluctantly help her after she convinces him. And he agrees. Good job, Caitlin. He agrees to reluctantly help her after she convinces him, yeah, you thought you were great, but no one likes you anymore.

So you have to redeem yourself. And they, you know, encounter some coconut pirates along the way. He only agrees so he can go get his magical hook back. Right. And then they go do that. And there's a very sexy song. Shiny? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, my God. Yeah, the Jermaine Clement pulling a Bowie. I loved that. That was so good. And You're Welcome, which is the ultimate mansplaining song. Yes. The rock just really delivers on every level. So, right, he's a shapeshifter, but he needs a magical hook that was bestowed

to him by the gods to be able to shapeshift. So they go and they get his hook, and then he, again, reluctantly agrees to help her restore the heart. And they go, and there's a lava monster they have to defeat, and she questions who she is the whole time. Like, am I the right person for this?

Why was I chosen? And he's just egging her on, being like, yeah yeah why were you chosen and so she has all this self-doubt um but she's very driven throughout the entire thing and then finally they get to tafiti she restores the heart she's the one who does it even though the whole time it's like now you have to be the one to do it and then she realizes no i have to be the one to do it. And then she realizes, no, I have to be the one to do it. So she is integral in the actual climax and resolution of the story, which is great. Last night I was watching it by myself and I was basically crying the whole time. So what are your cry moments? Because I cry every time I've seen this movie and I've cried listening to Soundtrack.

And it is, last night I tried to write down when I cried so we could compare it. So what are the big moments? The biggest one that makes me the most emotional is toward the end after Maui has decided to leave. Like they attempted defeating. I forget what the lava monster's name is. Taka. Taka. The name is Taka.

They attempt defeating her once and they fail. defeating, I forget what the lava monster's name is. T'Ka. T'Ka. The name is T'Ka. They attempt defeating her once and they fail. So Maui's like, I'm going to get out of here. And Moana's like, I've made a mistake. I shouldn't even, you chose the wrong person. Please choose someone else, Ocean. And then her grandma shows up and they sing a song together. And she's like, I am Moana. That's such a good song.

Waterworks. The lyrics of that song, because I was singing along and then realized I actually don't know the lyrics of this. I'm just singing the emotions. But then I looked up the lyrics and was bawling because they are beautiful. It's like there's a line about how the scars make you stronger.

And I mean, we might as well jump into it. But I really think this movie is so much about overcoming trauma and overcoming these hard things that can happen to you. And and even though Moana doesn't necessarily she's she's the savior of the victim. Yeah. And it's in that moment, she is so defeated and then overcomes it by just repeating who she is. Yeah. And it's beautiful. The Disney movie that it most closely reflected for me was Pocahontas, which was my first favorite movie. I believe that there are hours of home video footage of me just screaming colors of the wind

at a mountain in New Hampshire at age three. But for a couple of reasons, even though Pocahontas is hinged on, she falls in love with the man, but also she lets him go at the end. But more so like this young woman who goes on an adventure and then at the end she learns about herself she learns about a b and c but then decides that her place is at home with her family and there's some sort of duty connected uh to her

home and to family which i i wasn't sure where this movie was gonna end i wasn't sure if moana was gonna leave home or stay. And I think I would have been happy with either. And it didn't bother me one bit that she returned home after this journey, all wise and coming of age. Well, she returns home, but then she's like, guys, let's all be voyagers again. And she teaches her dad how to be a wayfinder and stuff. It was beautiful.

Caitlin, what was your Disney princess movie growing up, if you had one? The ones that I connected with most were Little Mermaid, Aladdin, which, I mean, Jasmine is a princess. It's kind of a Disney princess movie. She's like, yeah, she's barely in it. I also really loved Being an Abysmal Mermaid, but those are both so problematic that I don't even want to admit to any more. Yeah, I was a big Cinderella girl

and I would watch both the Disney version and then every other version I could get my hands on. Rodgers and Hammerstein, baby! The brandy version of Rodgers and Hammerstein! What is so great about Moana is that they really play with the tropes

of the fairy tale and of the Disney princess movie and turn it on its, on its head, but in ways that are not jarring, but in ways that make sense. So like the fairy godmother in Cinderella saves the day. And also Cinderella would still be there. The fairy godmother never came and the fairy godmother saves her over and over again, whereas the fairy godmother in this movie, I would say, is the ocean.

And yes, she is saved by the ocean over and over again, but the ocean is presented as very dangerous at the start of the movie. Right. Almost kills her and she saves herself. Right. She gets her foot caught underneath a rock and then breaks it away and swims away and she whenever i was trying to pay attention to it this last time i watch it that every time the ocean saves her she has done something to try and save herself before the

ocean does right right right yeah i mean i was worried about the ocean kind of becoming a device to get her out of the joint but it never really came to that. It was always, I mean, there were times where it came in as an assistant, but, you know, she was always the one taking action. Yeah, she does all the heavy lifting. Yeah, yeah. There was, oh man, it was so good. And I totally agree with you, Natalie,

that, like, all the displacements of the basic Disney Princess tropes were, didn't feel shoehorned or forced or, like, overdone, which they totally could have been. And the fact that, I feel like it's worth mentioning, that Moana's body type is, like, normal. Actually, mildly realistic, yeah.

As close to proportional as probably a princess-style character has ever been. Which is really, really cool. No two-inch waist and all this stuff. She seems strong, physically strong and able, which her character would need to be. And we see her doing these pretty amazing feats of strength. Every time she'd pull a rope, I'd be like, well, I couldn't do that.

She's kind of like Aladdin in that way. She's, from the beginning of the movie, she is doing these feats of strength and these kind of acrobatics. And she runs up and fixes the palm fronds in the building and stops the leaking. And then everything with the ship requires so much physical strength. On the same topic of like the bodies and stuff. One of crime moment number one, the first time I saw it was so the grandmother was like just a beautiful character and their relationship is wonderful. But the grandmother's arms like hit something inside of me that I didn't know was there. Really? of me that I didn't know was there. And it was like, you know, even when they show different figures on TV, it's often larger

hips, a larger bust, even a larger waist. But, you know, something like arms are still very skinny and trim and like. Or like sleeved. Or sleeved. And to see this like woman's skin that is alive, that is an old woman's body. That was like, oh, my God, those are my grandmother's arms. Show me that decay, baby. I was actually going to bring up the grandmother, too, because that was the other big thing that reminded me of Pocahontas.

Except the role of the grandmother is a tree. But that tree is dope and very helpful. Like Moana's grandma. My mom, we had like a tree that it was not a willow tree. It looked nothing like the tree. But I was so into Pocahontas as a kid that I think she like brought a sharpie out to her tree. And there was like a little hole in it like grandmother Willow's face. And she added a little smiley face with eyelashes.

And then she'd be like jamie look and i would just go talk to the tree it was maybe to get rid of me for a while because i would just go confess to the tree that's amazing oh a thing i wanted to mention about her just being physically strong which that is oftentimes when movies want to like show that a woman character is not your typical lady. Not like the other girls. They'll make her stronger than normal. Or a trope you see over and over again, which I don't really understand, is she's good at fixing cars. Megan Fox and Transformers.

And something I forgot to mention in Runaway Bride, Julia Roberts knows how to fix cars and that makes her cool and quirky. She's vaguely handy. But anyway, it wasn't like, oh, what a stupid trope to rely on in Moana. Like, she lives on an island and, you know, they're farming and harvesting crops and, like, she would have to be strong. Right. It's so justified. And we see her getting trained for it. So it, like like comes from somewhere and it doesn't feel like one of those lame ass like action movie tropes of like you know this

is great i think it's a mick sweeney's piece that i think about at least once a week about like i'm the woman and i can kick and it's like you know like the one amazing thing the woman can do and then the guys turn to her like what the woman can do a thing and she's like whatever i guess i can and that's like the one display of female strength she like kicks open a door and they're like wow we're more horny now you know and it's just like so infuriating and you can feel the screenwriter like grabbing his crotch in a congratulatory fashion oh of course yeah there's a moment when maui abandons her on the island about maui yeah we have oh there's so much this episode may be two hours long what a beefcake i have so much to talk about so she gets trapped

on the island because maui traps her in a cave and there's like a statue that he clearly made of himself yeah and she like crawls up it and then like kicks it over and like uses it to jump into which is very like raiders of the lost ark yeah uh and then she like has to climb out of this like hole in the ceiling and stuff and i'm just like fuck yeah dude she's yeah she defies maui so much i love it yeah i love i love her and maui's relationship i was the whole time i was like caitlin will they kiss and will i feel okay about it because there were moments where i was like is this daddy or boyfriend you know like there's moments where their hands would touch and i'd be like hmm he is one million years old am i okay with this and then by the end i was

sort of like you know what i am okay with it but then nothing happened but that's like one of the amazing things about this movie is there is a complete void of romantic interest and and that is part of oh my god i'm doing a great job there's applause coming from the showroom downstairs. That's like part of what makes this movie so amazing. And because I think I'm so, first of all, trained to expect. And second of all, genuinely love princess movies that I was sort of waiting for a love interest to arrive and it never happened. And in retrospect, that's great. Had she kissed Maui, I would be like would be like okay oh i would have been furious i would have i would have the first time i thought i would have come immediately the second time i'd

be like hey maybe that's not too big hey he's a million and she's 15 and i think that's i think that's a real um the only reason why we like Maui is because the rock is amazing. And because Maui, like when you break down what he does, he steals the heart of this island, which is a god who made him. He essentially rapes her, takes her power, uses it to do all kinds of shit it becomes his power and then moana is tasked to bring that heart back to the island and all he does is try and kill moana he is constantly trying to throw her off a boat in the middle of the ocean multiple times times. Just leave her on this island that he was deserted for years and years. He talks down to her. He is rude.

He derogatorily calls her a princess, which is very interesting because I found that to be a little heavy handed that, you know, they wanted to get the princess thing in there. But the way they did it, I liked because she stood up for herself and was just like, I'm not a princess. Yeah, there's a line where he's like, if you wear a dress and you have an animal sidekick, you're a princess. And she's like, no, I'm the daughter of a chief. I see his point. Fuck off. You know what? I see his point.

And it's both. Yeah, can't it be both? I almost found it to third wave that she know what? I see his point. And it's both. Yeah. Can't it be both? I almost found it to third wave that she's like, I'm not a princess. I was like, you can be a princess. You can just be a better princess. This is the final wave of feminism. And it's invented by me. Moana is a new wave of feminism.

She is the final wave of feminism. It's the last one. It's, is there, I was, oh, I was going to try to make a pun about ocean waves. Speaking of bad pun, fuck the Twitter joke in this movie. Oh, yeah. Maui makes a Twitter. Every time there's like a, I was like, why? This movie is dated in no other way except for that horrible joke.

Yeah. And so that Twitter joke in so many ways encapsulates his character. So he makes a joke that's dumb and bad. He makes a bad joke, which is you know, You're doing a great job, Natalie. Oh, thank you. When you write with

a bird, it's called a tweet or it's called Twitter, which is a real groaner. And then later on on they get attacked by these coconut things oh my god this point of the mind and we'll get there too because it's a lot of violence the emoji coconuts but he she loses the heart which is the whole reason why she's doing everything the heart of this ocean which, which is this green stone. And he smiles and he's like, but you got one right here. And he holds up the paddle where he etched that stupid Twitter joke

where he signed his name and a heart. And it's like, you piece of shit. You are not taking her seriously at any moment. And I love Maui. I love him. He's charming and he's got a hot bod. His tattoos are ridiculous. He's a beefcake. He's a beefcake beyond. He's a demigod. He's Hercules. And everything he does when I write

it down is like, I fucking hate you. I hate you. You are the villain. You are the villain of this movie. This is the point where I would usually say in the podcast i could fix it i could fix him with my love of my body and i would like jamie no to be afforded that opportunity no okay i it is the rock plays a major thing in what makes me horny for maui and also probably some internalized misogyny but the rock is the most talented man to ever live if he ever turns out to be a fucking monster i will throw myself off a building because he is perfect i had the same thought today and like what does that say what does that say about us that we are waiting for the other shoe to drop on these

men that we love i mean more often than not yeah like it you know every time i feel like every time i mentioned being a fan of a straight man of of any distinction someone goes like oh no but didn't hear like yeah he killed 45 people using a shank he made out of soap but he's not in jail you know and then i'm just like oh great now my you know i can't love kelsey grammar anymore oh kelsey grammar nick he's a creed yeah them all fuck you know have we lost alex alex trebek yet can i keep him i see a good boy i haven't heard anything have you ever him? Is he a good boy? I haven't heard anything about him. Have you ever seen him? Is he a good boy?

By a good boy, I mean not a felon. If you're listening right now and you haven't seen pictures of shirtless young Alex Trebek, treat yourself. Oh my God. He has the same mustache. Your Spank Bank is so eclectic. Incredible abs. It's weird. Amazing. i have a real thing i would

like to say great as we tend to find again and again in spite of the fact that this is so well done in regards to how it treats its female characters obviously it passes the bechdel test with flying colors it is directed by and written by straight white men, which is kind of par for the course when it comes to stuff like this. But I went into watching it with you blind and didn't do my research until after I'd already finished because I didn't want to find out anything that would disappoint me in advance, such as some regards, it's encouraging that straight white men at least, you know, giving them the least benefit of the doubt, understand that it's now marketable to be reasonable great that these guys understand that people are interested in a movie with a female protagonist with a normal body and ambition and, you know, like a really grounded character, but come on. I mean, there are plenty of women screenwriters and directors and other filmmakers.

Boy, are they. There's two of them in the room right now. Excuse me. I know. So we are hired. I'm here too. You are a very talented animator and editor

and filmmaker as well. When I went and saw this at school and there was an interview with the screenwriter at the end, it was very disappointing to see him walk on stage and see that it was another white guy who works at Disney, looks like the same. And I do wonder, I think you make an interesting point, Jamie, in that how much of corporate

interest kind of goes into those decisions. Because one of the interesting things he said, someone had asked, you made the decision to have Moana's mother be alive because most Disney princesses have dead mothers. And he said, oh yeah, well, she was dead to begin with. Then someone pointed out that it was dead mother and we had to change it. I was like, oh, okay. So how many other points did you have to change because someone was like no you can't you can't do that maybe this is jaded but i i would say oh probably a lot like if they thought that feminism and positive portrayal of women characters was in no way marketable i there's no chance to me that this would have been

like a major disney release like they've received so much criticism over the years and i'm like i feel like you know with the internet that's only grown larger and and more pervasive and it's i don't know i mean it really is kind of the best case scenario where it's like well at least this movie was made and it's really good and it's corporate interest aside it sends the right message to the right people which is young girls seeing this movie um it's a start it's a good start and it means that there are like, let a woman get a fucking job for once. Jesus Christ. And what's upsetting is that...

So there were women in this process. There were tons of people worked on this film. So there were dozens and dozens, if not more, women who worked on this movie. And they obviously listened to them. Because if they were giving that kind of feedback... And I know their process is very collaborative. But when it comes down to it, when you give the man the writing credit, when you give the man that paycheck, it sucks. That does suck.

And I know they are changing a little bit. But the infrastructure of how Disney works is you have to work your way up. And you have to be with them for so long. And they test you over and over and over again. And that then becomes a systemic problem. I'd be interested in learning more about that process because that definitely makes a lot of sense that if, even if women are being mentored and groomed for these kinds of jobs now, we won't see it until, you know, 10 years from now when they're given the opportunity

to finally do it but my question is are women being mentored i feel like so often and and i don't know how much of this even factors into prejudice but like people gravitate towards you know you remind me of a younger me to mentor and if everyone working at a high level there is a white guy and custom sort of trains you and this goes for powerful women training younger powerful women as well but like if you're drawn to someone who reminds you of a younger version of you with potential then who is supposed to mentor these like younger women animators or like aspiring i mean it's something that's brought up again and again but it's so fucking frustrating i'm like does does a woman need to just completely self-educate herself and

not be guided along in the same way that that uh you know a guy would be and it seems like that might be the case of just like okay you've got to work twice as hard to get the same thing and you're gonna have to take all the shit along the way i'm just like i'm just ranting yeah no you're making uh all the right points because yeah then women are put in a position where they yeah like you said have to work so much harder it takes them so much longer they don't have the same connections as someone with a powerful mentor it does have so them having those same opportunities is just so much less likely to happen. are you not going to get the mentor opportunities that this person working on an equal level as you, who's a man will, but also like, show me what you can do in spite of the fact that you don't have the same amount of access and you have to work twice as hard to get the same thing. And I mean, it is nitpicky to an extent because Moana does so well, but I would hazard to guess

that so much of the success of this movie comes from gentle guidance or hinting, heavy or not, from, I would guess, women that eventually the credit ends up going to these men. was dead in the original draft is like a fucking course she was and it's just another example of like okay the the woman's gonna actually know the right thing to do but someone else is gonna get credit for it and just oh i'm gonna flip it it's very frustrating yeah i just ran it for maybe 10 consecutive minutes can we talk about the climax of it. I always want to talk about the climax. This is 88.9 at night. Let's talk about the climax. The climax. Yeah. She realizes, he says, you have to return the heart to the spiral.

And so she goes and she makes, she's running from Takah, the fire monster, and she runs up to the top of the island chain, and she looks and sees that it's missing. And then she looks at Takah and sees that there's a spiral on her chest. And when you're watching this scene, you can kind of see leading up to then that it has a human form, the monster, but also a very feminine form. Yeah, totally. And so she realizes that it is Te Fiti and bawling.

And she sings this lullaby, this mournful song saying, I sorry you were hurt you were victimized and i'm here to make that good again yeah and i know who you are right right and she listens like yeah i was so prepared again i feel like you're conditioned by these types of movies for that villain to be killed right and not somehow reformed or revealed to have good qualities because the lava monster, again, to harken back to another princess movie, vaguely reminded me of

the part in The Little Mermaid where Ursula gets huge, where she steals the crown. She's like, I'm huge now. And she gets harpooned by a man, by Prince Eric, the hottest prince, and she dies and then everything is fine.

But this seemed like, okay, here's this other monstrous, villainous female character, and not only is it resolved by the female protagonist, but no killing happened. I don't think anyone is killed in this movie, except the coconuts. Just some coconuts. The coconuts. It's just a broad representation of male violence. It's a massacre. The coconuts is a massacre.

But they're adorable. So cute. What I thought was more Indiana Jones illusions were when they're finally escaping the coconut pirates, two of their ships start to collide and they have to escape through them, which is what happens in Last Crusade. And I was like, fuck yeah. Now that you say that, I'm sorry to keep going back to the mother character, but now that you say that she originally wasn't there, that totally checks out because

she barely plays a role in this movie. That was one thing I noticed where all the criticism of like, Moana, don't go, is from the dad. And so it makes sense that that mother was sort of written out because we have a few moments between her and moana but nothing plot changing or significant that i can think of most of the oppositional force is her dad it is her mother who gives her almost gives her permission to leave yeah that brings her

brings her food for the journey and says right maybe even doesn't she see she comes in yeah she comes in and she sees moana packing for this trip that she has to go on and like realizes what's about to happen and we as audience might expect oh she's about to try to dissuade her from this or tell her she can't go and instead she like gives her gesture like yes here you go here's the food you need off you go she understands the drastic nature of of what's happening to their island right dying and the father will would have just let it die yeah chief would have just let them all die male pride it yeah basically the metaphor i came up with is that the heart was is the the EPA and all the men in the story

are like the Republicans who are like, we don't need this. It doesn't matter that the world is dying. We're fine. And I think a white man wrote it. Wild. At the end, I would like to say that Moana receives

a Georgia O'Keeffe seashell that she... Oh, the conch shell. The vagina conch, yeah. That's beautiful. I was like, it's perfect that this movie ends on a beautiful vaginal note. I liked it a lot. They did not need to make it pink.

However, they were like, you know what this should look like? I think that's what conch shells look like, though. They're usually pinkish. They're sometimes white on the outside and pink on the inside. But this was like deep pink. Just like me. You could also see the clay. This is a puss.

Yeah. And the shell did come. It just squirted salt water. I was like, all right, we get it. It's all over that stack of rice. This is a hot movie. Moana fucking rules. She's the best um i like that

she's such an empowered character that they didn't need to give her the standard best friend character um which i feel like a lot of disney princesses have is like a female friend to be like hey you're great and you know moana is great and that just comes across we don't need this ancillary person to be like you're hot we like you it's like of course we like you you're Moana and she knows it too she's so confident she screams

I am Moana I was like oh god I want that for one second I want to feel that way she's confident but it's also balanced by like I said the self doubt that she has about is this mission the thing that I'm supposed to be doing am I capable of this which is just very realistic it justoubt that she has about like, is this mission the thing that I'm supposed to be doing? Am I capable of this? Which is just very realistic. It just shows that she's a dynamic, well-written, interesting character and not just like what a lot of Disney princesses have been, which is pretty just one dimensional and flat and boring.

One of my favorite moments of the film, and it's a film, it is a a film is right after she sings i am moana and she dives down to get the heart back because she's thrown it into the ocean like rose at the end of titanic right giving it back she goes and she gets and she and it's the music swells and she bursts back up and the music cuts out and the ghost of her grandmother is gone. Her boat is broken and she is alone in the ocean. And it is just this beautiful moment of, oh my God, this is still so dangerous for her. And this is the moment where she has the most confidence and where she is about to kick ass. Yet it is stark and quiet and she is alone.

And it was just, it's just like a punch in the gut, but then like a good, a good punch in the gut. And we have stupid chicken to provide. Oh, stupid chicken. I love stupid chicken. It was clearly for like the younger kids who went to see the movie who like aren't smart enough. It's the Ice Age squirrel. Right. Yeah.

Right. They're like, this is a goofy physical. Speaking of Ice Age, that's the voice I can do. Stick with that one. Hey guys! I don't know what to do with myself right now. I did some research on the directors

and I know we touched on the fact that they're straight white men but I think their history with Disney is also super interesting because they also directed, I guess, what is considered the second most groundbreaking Disney princess movie, which is Princess and the Frog. First African-American Disney princess. So I guess it sort of makes sense that they were selected to do this other female progressive movie. I would also argue Brave did a lot of great things. So I thought that was interesting. And then years and years back, they directed both The Little Mermaid and Aladdin,

which I think we've referenced in different ways in both of these. One of the interesting things that the screenwriter talked about, is it John Wells? Is that his name? John screenwriter talked about it is it john wells is that his name uh john let me look it up it's there's a few different writers yeah the one who's who's kind of credited jared john musker oh oh wait no that's one of the directors jared bush yes that is right jared bush okay i said john wells so it was not right i don't know who john wells was um but one of the things he was saying was Disney overall, because they had these basically patriarchs of Disney animation who were working on this project, that they wanted to have some of that kind of old school Disney animation in the film and so specifically it was their idea that when during you're welcome the song when it switches to both 2d animation and 3d animation that was their ode to kind of

hearkening back to that time because they were so good with it i that's so funny because i remember thinking when we were watching that that that number vaguely reminded me of Friend Like Me when they kept switching to different backgrounds and that sort of carried through as oh that and they were the directors of Aladdin. There you go. Also, we've got to talk about Lin-Manuel Miranda. Love Hamilton. As a person, I think Lin-Manuel Miranda is so obnoxious. Hate watching him talk. Respect the fuck out of his work.

And that is my stance on Lin-Manuel Miranda. But I would like to take a moment to brag and say I once went to a college party with Lin-Manuel Miranda. Wait, where? It was at UMass. And his improv team, Freestyle Love Supreme

Of course. Jesus Christ. His beatboxer went to UMass and so they came back. Of course he is a beatboxer. So I don't remember anything about him from the party, but I remember he was there.

That's pretty cool. And I loved In the Heights. That's pretty cool. And I loved In the Heights, his first musical, so good. And he's so good in it. But he's just, as with any major figure, it reaches a point where it's like, okay, you're too present. Take a step back, pull in

Adele, have a baby. Get your life together. Take a step back and then come back and we'll be like, oh, we missed this guy. Right now it's like, get out of my targeted ads. I'm sick of this. But no, he didn't write all the songs. He wrote some of the songs in this movie. And I feel like you can sort of tell exactly what they are once you know that he wrote on this movie.

Like, you're welcome. Like, stinks of Lin-Manuel Miranda and his style. In a good way. In a good way. It stinks of him. Can we talk about top knots in this movie? Yes. I loved the role of top knots in this movie.

What is that? The hairstyle of, like, when it made sense for Moana's hair to be out of her face. It was fucking out of her face. It was great. Same with Maui, though. Same with Maui. He's a little man by top knot. I had no idea

that's what that hair style was called. Beefcake top knot. That's the name of my new really bad improv team. Beefcake top knot. One of the things, this is a little off topic, but going back to the beginning of the story where she's poised as she's going to be the next chief, even though she's a

woman, she's a girl. Right. Never questioned. Yeah. Never questioned. She's just like, you're our daughter. You're going to be the chief because you're the daughter of the existing chief. She's the only child for crying out loud.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's never like, oh, but you're a woman, So you need to marry a boy so that he can be the chief. No curriculum introduced. Right. Exactly. So I love that. That's just never a thing that's brought up. It's just like, yeah, you're the chief because you're the descendant of the current chief. Doesn't have anything to do with your gender. Right. Love that. And you see her making she's like kind of in training when she, before she leaves, uh, the island to go off on the journey. And she's like making important decisions about the crop.

Oh, these trees are diseased. So we have to plant a new grove over there. And here's all my suggestions about how we can fish differently and all this stuff. And she's like giving sound advice and really like making important decisions. And it was just like so refreshing to see. She was, yeah, she was never really questioning herself.

Yeah. No, she only really started to question herself when she got into the ocean, when she explicitly had her father's and that not opposite of permission. And that, and that made sense in context because she genuinely did not know what she was doing at the first time. Where it's not like she's not doubting herself because she's a woman. She's doubting herself because she doesn't know what she's doing.

She's never done this before. And then when she figures it out, that doubt more or less goes away. So that was dope. Loved it. Another thing I wanted to point out is that it's so seldom that when there's sort of like a chosen one in a story it's almost always a man you got your harry potter matrix you got your yeah neo from the matrix you got your uh your frodo bagginses and your luke skywalkers men are chosen as the one. Yeah. The second time I watched this, I watched it with my boyfriend

and halfway through he was like, oh, so this is Star Wars. Yeah. Yeah. It's Star Wars. Sort of, yeah. I mean, just like in the hero's journey, power of myth kind of sense.

A classical call to adventure. But so often it's a man who's doing that. It's just, again, so refreshing to see it as a woman because we so rarely see that. Although I do, when someone says chosen one, I do automatically think of Buffy. But that's because Buffy hit me real hard at a very specific age. And so that's just stuck with me. I think it is cool that, because this, when you map it out it really is a very very very standard hero's journey but a hero's journey that is usually for a male character like it's not

a princess's journey it's a hero's journey yeah which i mean i don't know if this were a story about a man it would be boring it would not be super interesting to see a man be like i can do things but sometimes i'm sad you know uh but when we see moana do it it's i it's so crazy and like reflective of our own culture that we're like what this is the coolest thing ever because if we made her a man i don't know how much i would have liked this movie probably not that much it would have just been like okay cool, cool. Okay, cool. Yeah, another one. Good for you.

She really didn't have any major flaws that were, you know, kind of preyed upon for story or as faults of her own. Do you think that's a bad thing or an okay thing? I don't have any problem with it in this movie i mean i think the only person who really goes after her is maui and she's gone she's gone after mostly for youth and inexperience right i feel like that's the most commonly cited thing of he doesn't toss her out of the boat to certain death because she's a woman per se but rather because he doesn't see value in her skills right because she's he keeps saying because you're mortal right you're a human right right regardless she is tossed out of a boat multiple times left to die constantly yeah yeah yeah the ocean saves her uh but he gets a tat of her at the end i know it's really i was like oh my god aspirations there's a couple so when the coconut pirates attack them, there's a couple of different times where she either saves Maui or saves herself.

And then toward the end of that scene or that sequence, she's like, all right, you're not going to help me. I'm going to go do it. And she has to be the one. Because she knows coconuts. She knows coconuts. They're just sentient. It's interesting. It's when they were far away and when there were

lots of them and when they were approaching and they were menacing, she was scared. And then when she found out that there were coconuts, she lost her fear and she was like, oh. I can handle that. I can handle this. Even though they still were dangerous. They still were shooting things at her. Those coconuts had darts and knives.

Also, talk about, like, and not to take away from the value of the coconuts as characters. Not that that scene could have easily been taken out. But for me, that was like, what an excellent marketing move. Let's introduce these adorable emoji-like characters that are slightly violent, but ultimately very cute that we can put on a backpack. I think

when we were watching it, I equate them completely to the aliens in the Alien toys in Toy Story of just like, here are cute things that people will be like, oh, the little coconut guns. I want to buy this little toy for my little boy. I want this pencil case of the Coconut Boys.

This movie can make more money in merchandising. Give me a backpack of the Coconut Boys. Give me a little alien backpack. That's it. I would get a backpack of the Coconut Boys. Oh, for sure. I already have a whole collection of the figurines. Oh, my God.

That's not true. There was the one part of the movie that felt like, oh, this feels like for kids. That could have been, yeah. But also it's a kids movie, so that's okay. Right, true, true, true. That was the one scene that I was like, eh, how different would the movie be if that were, you know, there's so many scenes where Moana takes action and agency that I feel like, eh, that's the emoji coconut scene. That was for the backpacks. Can we talk about her going to the monster realm?

Yes. Yes. Because it's again, she is told to stay put but she's not going into the monster realm and she immediately follows him up this giant mountain

made of these pillars like the giant's causeway and goes there. And then he's like, all right, are you going to jump in with me? Doesn't think she's going to. And then does, which is awesome. And it was very scary. And all these cute, scary, crazy monsters and then we meet this like amazing crab who is another version of greed and masculinity in that in in this pompous way but also in a very lovable way yeah what a lovable villain song so sexy the disney villain songs are always the best disney songs always always i was worried i mean i was telling

you i was like is there not a villain song because if there's not a villain song where's the best song this is a this is a great song yeah i really enjoy it jermaine crushes it he's so sexy how many times am i gonna say so he's the horniest person alive. Every time he speaks, or especially when he sings, I'm just like, you're for sure rock hard. He's singing this song as a crab, but he's for sure erect. Are you sure that's not just how he makes you feel? No, I don't get erect. It makes me feel that way, too. I'm a sexless being.

I see. I don't see sex. I'm a person of sex i'm a person of sex but like i don't see sex uh but but he's he's extremely he's deeply horny and in that scene it's moana who saves the day yes again she does not get horny she does not get no She does not get horny. She does not get horny. She does not get distracted by horniness. By the sexual glam rock at play. Yeah. She saves Maui and she allows them to escape. This is another example of one of the very few movies with a woman lead that the stakes are life and death because so often if there's a female lead

in a movie, it's a rom-com where the stakes are very low. Am I going to get a date? Is this guy going to fall in love with me? And the stakes are related mostly to men and the stakes were not related to men. Right.

I feel like a lot of times with the princess movies too, it's like the biggest risk for the female character is just going back to where she started. Where, like, had Aladdin not swept Jasmine off her feet, she would just still be a princess. She'd be married to that Prince Ahmed. Right. Who was a jerk. Who was such a punk. And then Ariel, if she couldn't get Eric to kiss her in three days, well, I guess she would have turned into a weird Ursula shrub.

I guess that was a little bit higher stakes. But she risks her whole life for him. The whole thing starts because she has a bone for Eric, which, get it. But grow up... Grow up. I'm 15 years old. I'm not a child. They're both 16. Moana is 16, so it's nice to show

I wasn't sexual at 16. I was thinking about things, but I didn't know what... I had no tangible idea of what sex actually was. Moana is a much more relatable character to me because that's I didn't get my first kiss until I was 16 it was scary I didn't know what an erection felt like I was like oh no wait why was your first kiss on him I don't know it was on him it was it was on him I think he told this story. You guys were standing on a rock or something. Yeah, Boner Rock.

We're standing on Boner Rock as it was henceforth known as. And the first saxophone player of the band was like, I think you're great. I was like, thank you. And then he kissed me. And then I was like, what's going on? Because we stood up and we should not have stood up. But also, I was so undereducated about sex that the first time someone went down on me i was horrified and thought it was his idea like he had made it

up oh he invented he invented oral sex on a woman because i was you know he was what like 17 18 he wasn't good at it and it was happening i was just remember thinking like this is deviant behavior like why would someone do this i am i'm just i feel far away from the action did you not learn about i feel like i did not get sex education oh i got like abstinence plus education but i think they mentioned oral sex yeah the first time someone went down on me i was i fully i consulted someone younger than me i consulted a sophomore in high school i was like have you ever heard of this like what or do i need to call the police and she's like no that's extremely common and actually is considered like maybe a good thing and i was like oh okay well i don't want it again but glad that i don't

need to call an ambulance for myself i wish i'd called the cops um someone's face is on my vagina and i don't like it should we send a should we send a patrol car like what how old to see um sorry gang there's a moment there's a moment where moana has to stroke Maui's frail, fragile male ego. Yes, because he's like, I'm not Maui without my hook. Blah, blah, blah. And she's like, just grow up. Yeah.

And yeah, he just. Well, I mean, I would argue he sort of does the same thing for her when she's feeling insecure. Not to say he is like this terrific character, but I think that that is almost a mutual thing where there are times in the movie where Moana needs to be pumped up a little bit and made to feel confident. And the grandmother character serves as that boost a lot. But there is at least one instance where Maui is like, no, you know what?

You're doing a good job and you're ready and you're capable. It doesn't come to later in the movie. Right. It takes him a long time. That didn't bother me too much that she encouraged him once. It almost felt like... No, it didn't bother me. I'm merely just pointing it out that it's a thing that needed to happen because... Right. He needed to be able to return. Yeah. Just very fragile egos that need...

Right. And he owed her more than... He owed her more of like a boost than she ever owed him because he was not great to her oh he again i love maui i'm so glad everything works out at the end but if it wasn't the rock he gets forgiven he gets elated into being this demigod again and forgiven because he helps moana restore the heart to Te Fiti, which is great. But it is interesting that Te Fiti forgives him and gives him his hook back, gives him a new hook. And I think that is incredibly female, not just forgiveness, but forgiveness on such an incredible scale right um because he he doesn't really deserve it and even at the end moana has to like hit him to like bow to her yeah yeah show

some goddamn respect and it's and we're supposed to have empathy for him because his parents tried to kill him or threw him into the ocean when he was a baby and then he was saved by gods and it's like if that isn't such a male narrative i don't know what it is the same thing happened to it's like because of this because of this horrible thing that happened to you very early on you immediately got incredible power and then you abused it and abused it and abused it and were punished for it and are now punishing the world trying to get it back that's a shrek narrative if ever i heard it shrek is isolated by his parents at a very young age as is the ogre tradition

shrek strikes out on his own establishes his own swamp to his credit you know he comes from nothing he's got his own swamp now he's a small business owner he's a small business owner he's got his own swamp he built a life for himself but he's kind of mean he's kind of resentful towards the world and he's a bully to all the other fairy tale creatures uh and then you know and then the rest of the movie takes place yeah kind of a shrek narrative yeah shrek another beefcake but it's i mean it's a relatable narrative, both for men and women. And ogres. And ogres. Ogre people. Ogre Americans.

Ogre Americans, we call them. Right. Bottom line is that all of her actions and her choices drive the narrative throughout the entire movie. Like everything she's doing doing it has a consequence it has a bearing on the story she is the driver of the vehicle that is the plot and like i mentioned before she's the one who determines the outcome of the story like she's the one who restores the heart and like more often than not it's like a man who's throwing a wrench into things rather than swooping in as a savior like maui for the most part, he does play a role and he does help and there's teamwork.

But more often than not, I feel like he just presents a problem. Yeah, he's there often to create obstacles for her. One of the reasons why I cried so hard when I saw Frozen for the first time, and then again when I saw this, was just thinking about a generation of children, of young women who get to see this movie. Yes, I had the same thought. And it's beautiful. And it's beautiful for them to see Moana as a hero, but also to see Maui, how to interact with Mauis, because we all, you are going to come up against Mauis for your entire life.

And if the lesson of this movie is that you have to grab them by the ear and tell them what you want and make them do it, it's in this world that has to be done. Yeah. Right. It's great how defiant she is toward him and toward her father. Her father kept being like, don't go off beyond the reef. It's too dangerous.

And time and time again, she just, and it got to the point where it became the inciting incident where she then ventures off into the great unknown. Again, sub out the ocean with heroin he's like no and she's like i am naturally inclined to enjoy this beautiful natural element that is black tar heroin anyway why haven't any princesses been addicted to drugs where's that movie i'll direct it i my my goal in my life is to make a a movie about conjoined twin royalty and then they try to get separated and like one dies and then the inciting incident is that she's gotta go and there's a whole i I have an outline. I'll send it to you.

Okay. I'll give you, I'll give you notes. Thank you so much. Yeah. Hey, here's something I thought this is a, just a dumb fun thought I had is on the,

the coconut ships, there's this big drum and they're all attached to ropes and they like come down on the drum and beat the drum. And I reminded me of Mad Max Fury Road. The drum guy! The steampunk drum guy! Another fun thing in the outline of

this conjoined twin princess movie that I've outlined the surviving conjoined twin is a woman in STEM. Oh good. Oh my god. So it really

is the most empowering movie of all time and she's also a lesbian. Because she has to dedicate her life to science. She also can fly a plane. She's pretty amazing. That's great. I will definitely watch this. It might be extremely bad.

Cool. Does anyone have any like final thoughts about the movie I just love it it's amazing it's an amazing movie it's beautiful I was worried

you might not like it Jamie really because you just saw it earlier today yes I did so yeah I don't know

I had hyped it so much that I was afraid that it wouldn't live up to the hype that I had created yeah I mean I knew you loved it since you hyped it so much that I was afraid that it wouldn't live up to the hype that I had created. Yeah, I mean, I knew you loved it since you saw it in theaters. But no, I mean, it's like, it's so good on every level. Like, we don't even need to talk it and it had been too worked up and they did not like it. And the thing is, I didn't care.

I was like, it's not for you. It's not for them, exactly. It's not for you and I don't care. I want little boys to love this movie, but it's not made for them. See, I think it is important for them to at least see it and understand the, and like

at least take away something from it because it might put a damper on toxic masculinity that is part of why the patriarchy is still a thing. So I think the more, you know, little boys can become enlightened to struggle. Oh, I think so too. I mean, I got something from Toy Story, but that movie wasn't made for me. Right, I mean, and we as little kids were

forced to see all fucking manner of male heroes journeys, or like, this beautiful French woman's fucking a dog in a suit. Like, we were presented with very few options. I'm sorry, which one was that? That's Beauty and the beast there's like but there's you know it's i would love for little boys to be forced to watch moana

but there's so many other options for them where they can be like oh i'm really i'm great and i hope that that goes away it's hard i mean it it's hard because I don't know how Moana was marketed, but so often like these really good, empowering, female-driven movies are sort of Barbie marketed to the point where it's like, oh, if you were, you know, the everyday parent, you wouldn't think, oh, I should bring my little boy to this movie, you know? And I don't know what the solution to that is. I mean, you can un-Barbie-fy it, but I don't know how much inherent prejudice goes into that. Well, I think Maui's character was kind of big in every marketing piece. I remember that. They were selling The Rock pretty hard on it. I mean, when you've got The Rock, you've got to sell the rock.

I do kind of want to talk about the scenes that pass the Bechdel test, though, just for, one, consistency of our podcast, and two, because they're great. The first one comes when Moana and her mom are talking about Moana's desire to just be out on the ocean and to venture off. And her dad is mentioned, but the context of the conversation is not really about him. It's more about just her desire and her longing to be on the ocean and in the ocean. A similar conversation happens a little later on between Moana and her grandmother, where Moana's talking about putting the stone on the top of the mountain, which is symbolic of her accepting her role as the leader and the chief of the community.

And she's questioning like who she's meant to be. And again, her dad is mentioned. But again, that's not really what the conversation is about. It's more about like her destiny and her desires. And then another conversation between her and her grandma happens. Oh, I think it's just like after she discovers that her ancestors are voyagers and um and her grandmother shows her that right yeah her grandmother's like bang on the drum and your questions will be answered and then after that

her grandma's like on her deathbed and that's when she's like you have to go find maui and tell him to restore the heart also they they uh do a rare displacement of the horny grandma trope. This grandma doesn't get horny, does she? Mm-mm. Just horny for sea creatures. That's right. Well, that's true. For stingrays.

Oh, goddammit. Because the other grandma character that I can think of besides Grandmother Willow, who can't get horny, she's a tree, is the grandmother in Mulan, who is very horny. Also very helpful. Helpful and horny. Well, I don't think it's actually fair to say that she's horny. For these stingrays, she wants to be one. And she admires them and doesn't mean she wants to fuck them.

She's empowered by the stingray. Okay, I really want to give this grandma every benefit of the doubt because I really love her. And all the other grandmas besides the tree are horny. Hey, should we rate the movie let's do it so we rate each movie on a scale of 0 to 5 nipples and then we describe the nipples if we

so choose okay I'll go first is 5 is the highest grade in like great yes yeah yeah which I think might be what I give this movie. This might be the first five nipple movie. This might be the first five nipple movie.

The only thing that would make me hesitate about it is the fact that the filmmakers, the directors and writers, were white dudes, but that doesn't really seem to have a bearing on the story the way we might think.

So if you're just isolating the narrative itself and not thinking about the filmmaking aspect of it, it does such a terrific job representing women in a way that Disney movies and movies that young girls are seeing haven't really done before. The relationships between the women characters are so wonderful and strong and refreshing to see moana just has so much agency and she's so active in all of her decisions and she's just a great dynamic multi-dimensional very lovable character and i love her so much five nipples describe them well i'm not okay describe them five of them at night so i know that crabs don't have nipples but five nipples belong to um pinchy nips tell me tour jermaine the crab oh maybe i

wrote jermaine the crab hello jermaine the crab it's me austria and kaitlyn where's brit britain jermaine brit i give this movie five nipples as well great uh i would be interested if anyone's listening um in how if anyone is familiar or integrated into pacific islander culture um how you felt the movie represented that because i really don't have a context for that in a layman's sense it seemed like it was pretty respectful of the culture but again if if you have more knowledge or outsiders yeah I did love to hear it I was trying to read about like whether or not Moana was based on any folklore or mythology or anything like that and Maui and the different creation stories and stuff like that.

It seems that they took a combination of different like Polynesian and Pacific Islander things and sort of like molded it into one thing and I think there was some criticism about that from those communities that like, oh, why did you mesh them all together kind of thing. Because Disney has a resort in Hawaii.

There was also a Maui costume that was released that was considered disrespectful and was pulled from the shelves. A real merch mix-up. Regardless, I give it five Moana baby nipples. I would also give it five nipples. I love it. Well, Natalie, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much. I think this might also be one of the first times that all three of us, Jamie and Caitlin and the guest, love the movie that we're talking about. Genuinely. Yeah. So thank you for bringing us such an exciting movie to talk about. About to blast the soundtrack in my car. Yep. Oh, yeah.

Blast it and cry home. I'm frothing for it. Yeah, I'm so excited. Where can people find you online? I am on Twitter at Natalie Baseman. And I'm on Instagram, too. And I am off Facebook for mental health. Well done.

My Twitter right now is mostly just retweeting angrily. But my Instagram, I post pictures of things I cook. Wonderful. Perfect. What about you, Jamie? Do you have anything you want to mention? I'm Hamburger Phone on Twitter. You can watch my cartoon every week on Cafe. It's called Boston PD's Zamboni Crimes Division. It's very funny.

Thank you. Caitlin watched me make one today. Yeah. It was fun. It was so much fun. That's all I've got. You can follow me at Caitlin Durante and you can follow the podcast at Bechtelcast. You can also listen to us on iTunes.

You can also rate and review us there. We really appreciate it when you do that. Yes. And Libsyn and Google. Google too. Google, too. Also, I don't know if I use the Overcast app for my podcasting needs, and it's amazing, and you can get anything on there. And then it's just a quick hop to iTunes to rate things. I love it.

I use the standard podcast iPhone app as well, and I get a little ping every Thursday morning when it's like, hey, remember this thing? Remember that thing you did? It's you did it's now available to the public yeah love it so keep listening thank you for listening we appreciate you we value you you get five out of five nipples yes you all do thanks and bye Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated Crooks Everywhere unnerves 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. Huberman. Dr. Huberman is a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, known for his research on brain function, behavior, and neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to adapt and rewire itself. The expectation on us is not perfections, being able to toggle between these different states. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. Back in 1969, four young musicians from Texas were hired to impersonate the British psychedelic

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