The Bechdel Cast - Soul Food (1997) with Nydia Simone

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

This week, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Nydia Simone gather for Sunday dinner and discuss Soul Food. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @blactina on Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.

Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.

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if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. Do you want to come over for Sunday dinner? I don't think I have a choice. I think I'm disloyal to the family if I don't show up.

It's true. It's true. But I do want to get into a petty argument because that's what family dinners are all about. Exactly. Exactly. And sorry in advance for my cooking being terrible, but you'll probably make a snide comment about it anyway. So that's okay. I'm bringing something from the grocery store and heating it up in a pan and saying that I made it. Hell yeah. And bragging about it until someone catches me. So wonderful. Kind of this thing I've been getting into. Sounds great. Well, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie

Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. We're just using it to initiate larger conversations about representation and things. But Jamie, what even is the Bechdel test? Well, the Bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It's sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. It was a test that she originally wrote into a comic collection she published in the 80s and 90s, Dykes to Watch Out For. It was a bit, it was a joke to point out how infrequently women in movies talk to each other about anything but men in the movie.

But it has since turned into a metric that people use as sort of a soft jumping off point for discussion about representation in movies and that's how we use it our version of the test requires that there be two people of a marginalized gender with names who speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue it's not that hard it's not but and yet if you're christopher nolan it's he's goddamn near impossible he's never heard of it and he won't hear of it this is so wildly off topic but i feel like i so i saw oppenheimer bravely um and i just like at this point i view christopher nolan's women as like camp masterpieces because i'm like he's never gonna get it I can't I don't have the energy to get mad about it anymore I'm like yeah sure that's that's what

we're like all right you got us pegged Florence Pugh sitting naked in a chair for no reason that's camp bless his heart I mean you know I know, I genuinely do think that he's doing his best in that department. And that is kind of tragic. Okay. Anyways, it's not Oppenheimer Day. Thankfully, we have an incredible guest and I want to get her in the mix. Yes, let's do it. She's a filmmaker, curator, and founder of Blacktina Media, a community which elevates

and amplifies the voices of Afro-Latinx and Caribbean people. It's Naidea Simone. Hello and welcome. Hey, y'all. What's good? Welcome. I'm like, I wish I would have practiced my intro. Oh my gosh. You nailed it. The landing has been stuck. Hola.

Hola to you. You nailed it. The landing has been stuck. Hola. Hola a ti. I'm like all the slang terms. So today's movie is Soul Food. So tell us about your relationship with the movie Soul Food. Wow. Okay. So first, like my mom is African American.

My dad is Panamanian. I'm black on both sides. So, like, that movie is actually popular in, like, both communities. And all of the themes just flow so well with both of the, like, families I have. And that movie is a true black classic. That's an african-american classic like and so many people i've like recited the lines when um vanessa williams character is like fuck the family like that whole sequence like everybody knows every single line and it's so real And it's so real. And it's so realistic. Like this has happened to multiple fans. Like you had a party.

It was an argument. In a kitchen. In the kitchen. It's always the kitchen. It's always the kitchen. And it spills out. It was like, it's a beautiful moment. I love the movie.

I love all the themes. Like it represents. I know it passes the bachelor test. With line quality. For for sure i'm having a hard time pronouncing that word but yeah a lot of the movies though i watch are like a bunch of women so i love that they're sisters i have sisters lots of drama good food like i just i have a strong relationship with the film themes of the film are still relevant to me and my family today and yeah all the actors i love all the actors i grew up watching all those great actors vivica fox vanessa williams mckay pfeiffer like dreamboat not his character but oh yeah yeah but he's a cool dude like yeah human wise nice

yeah i was like i've never heard a bad word about mckay pfeiffer and i hope i never do yeah same jamie what's your relationship with the movie my relationship with this movie isn't super extensive i feel like as an avid tnt watcher I've seen bits and pieces of this movie. I feel like that's my answer half the time on this podcast is like, I probably watched it on TNT when I was too young to understand anything happening in the movie. But I am a fan of this director, George Tillman Jr. Like he's wonderful, still very much working i mean i think i definitely saw all the barber shops and beauty shop and um most recently the hate you give um and so i'm a fan of his work but i had never actually sat down with soul food and i certainly haven't seen this movie since i think i was cognizant of how wildly stacked this

cast is right down to like gina rivera from the closer which was another tnt staple that i did watch also we talked about her recently because she was in showgirls yeah this cast is absolutely nuts it's great yeah and so i mean i i really enjoyed learning about what this movie meant to george tillman jr because he wrote and directed it which he doesn't always necessarily do he usually directs and so i really enjoyed it i love i love a family drama and i especially love a family drama that centers the sisters instead of the brothers because brothers are not as interesting to me but it's also very much a product of the 90s so there's certain elements where I was like let's discuss but I'm very excited to talk about it and there was a spin-off tv show yeah another different before I was doing

research who I think she played the same it It's so confusing, because in the black community, we talk about Vanessa Williams, it's like, what? The light-skinned one or the dark-skinned one? And that's like, it's because it's like, they are in the same circles and stuff like that. Well, I don't know in real life, but you see all of them in different films and stuff like that, but.

Right, the same era too. The TV show was very popular too. So I feel like uh this director does not get he did not get his flowers he's not getting his flowers he's still pretty young like so yeah maybe he'll get some flowers soon after his solo return his second solo return so oh my god i was reading about 54 so my saturn i'm i'm finishing up my saturn return which is also why i'm blaming everything in my life going on um yeah george tillman's is coming up he's 54 so his renaissance has yet to come but he's so accomplished too it's really right right he directed the i did not see it uh

the george foreman biopic that came out this year. Yes. Just a fun fact. It's true. I vaguely remembered that was a thing, but I didn't see it. I should see it. Caitlin, what's your history with Soul Food? I had never seen it.

I knew about it, but it is not something that I watched. I'm not as big of a fan of family drama films. I'm more like, let's watch characters go on a little quest kind of person. So I missed this one. But yeah, I wasn't fully aware of the stacked cast until I started watching it and researching it. And I was like, wow, look at all these great actors who are also so good looking. And I enjoyed the movie and I'm really excited to talk about it. There's lots to discuss.

So should we get into it? Yes, because there's many characters. Yeah, yes. There's a lot of story. I feel like some family dramas really over or undershoot like balancing the characters. But I thought this one was so well done where it's like you, I feel like every character got a satisfying arc. Or like when I say satisfying, I didn't necessarily love how all the stories went, but they all happened. Like no one got lost in the shuffle, which is so impressive.

True. Yeah. Definitely. got lost in in the shuffle which is so impressive true yeah definitely okay here is the recap of soul food so we open on a wedding a family is celebrating bird played by nia long getting married to lem that's mckay pfeiffer and bird has two sisters, Terry and Maxine, played by Vanessa Williams and Vivica A. Fox, respectively. And we learn about each of them. Maxine is married to Kenny, played by Jeffrey D. Sams. They have two kids plus a baby on the way one of the kids is this young boy named Ahmad and he's like the narrator of the story the whole thing is told through his point of view which was so cool like to see it through a child's POV yeah I was a kid too at the time because I was like seven in 1997

so it was like I could it was a really great way for me to connect with these adult themes you know and in his relationship with his mom okay yeah oh i know it's really sweet i love ahmad especially because i don't know i feel like there's so many like wise child tropes where it's like for sure this kid is beyond his years which which Ahmad is but he's also still very much a little stinker telling weird lies to get his family to hang out with each other and I was like that is the right amount of little stinker he's like let's go on a treasure hunt in the house it's like yeah that's a very like you know I don't know how old he like 11 year old behavior or however old he's supposed to be but he he also was like, oh, they want money?

He was like, oh, okay, where's the money? Yeah, he knows how to get adults interested in his scheme. That's how you get adults to care. Yeah, for sure. And then they're like, oh, no, yeah, we came here because we love each other. Right. You're like, yeah. They all show up and they're like oh

right we're a family oh yeah yeah yeah okay so the story is told through ahmad's point of view and we also get to know more about terry she's married to miles played by michael beach they're both lawyers they're like the wealthier members of the family. And he wants to be a musician. Yeah. And she is not supportive. Sometimes, and this is just my current moment, but I'm so triggered by like, and triggered, I mean, extremely like triggered by husbands who want to quit their jobs and become musicians i'm just like enough is enough it reminds me of jason bateman and juno where it's like it's not gonna happen babe best of luck though

i have a quick aside which is for the whole time i was watching this movie i was like ahmad looks so familiar ahmad looks so familiar and it's because he's to me anyways he's accomplished child actor but baby Michael Jordan in Space Jam oh and I did not make that connection and he's the one that is outside doing shooting the hoops all night long I just I've seen Space Jam 5,000 times I was like it's baby Michael Jordan I did not make that connection. I was looking at his IMDB and apparently he's in Mars attacks, which we do need to cover someday. Oh my gosh.

Jamie, I think you'd love it. I think I would too. Just based on the poster. I don't know how I haven't seen it. Yeah. I wanted to be with the aliens. I was like,

I'm with y'all. Let's go. Seriously. Anyway, so yes, he's in a lot of stuff. Okay, so then we meet Big Mama Jo. She is Bird, Terry, and Maxine's mom. Jo, because their last name is Joseph. She's played by Irma P. Hall. And also her name's josephine so it could

really oh oh that makes more sense yeah joe josephine joseph is her name yeah she's just hell yeah love that okay so there's already drama because at the wedding, Lem is grinding on the dance floor with another woman who is not his bride. And then Bird's ex-boyfriend, Simuel, shows up and he's bad news. But Big Mama always knows what to do to dissipate the drama in the family and set things right. So she does that. Then we cut to their weekly Sunday dinner, a 40-year tradition where the whole family gets together at big mama's house sorry i had to say it starring martin lawrence and she cooks a bunch of delicious soul food fried chicken collard greens cornbread mac and cheese chitlins ham hocks things like that And the food always brings the family together.

And I love that they show the food. Sometimes I feel like they're like, the food at dinner was amazing. And then you don't see it and you're like, was it? Where is it? Beautiful food views in this movie. Great spread. So then Ahmad in his voiceover narration

is talking about Big Mama and her husband, who passed away some years before. He ran a few successful businesses, and there's this family rumor that they had saved up money and stowed some of it away in the house somewhere. So there's like this kind of underlying like secret stash of money that no one really knows where it is if i was old and had money i would want to do that just to fuck with my family it's like there's always money in the banana stand kind of thing but it's like there's always money in uncle pete's television set, the third act is really loaded in this movie. So many things happen in a row where if you blink, you're like, what?

The house is on fire. Uncle Pete's TV is full of money. It's thrilling. Yeah, because also in the house lives Big Mama's brother, Uncle Pete, who is a recluse who never comes out of his room. Okay, so the women, they're preparing Sunday dinner. By the way, Terry and Maxine don't get along because when they were younger, Terry was dating Kenny, who left her for Maxine, and Terry never forgave her for it. Then as they're like preparing the meal, we get a reveal that big mama has diabetes,

but she brushes it off. She says, I don't need to go to a doctor. Everyone sits down to dinner and then cousin faith shows up played by Gina Rivera and big mama is delighted to see her, but no one else in the family seems thrilled. They seem like they don't really like her because she's got kind of like a quote-unquote bad reputation right which they're like she moved to la i was like yeah

bad sign evil thing to do just then maxine who is pregnant as heck goes goes into labor. So the family rushes to the hospital. She has a baby. Also at the hospital, I think in a separate day, separate situation, Big Mama is told that her leg needs to be amputated because of complications due to her diabetes. She again kind of brushes it off meanwhile simuel shows up to bird's work uh she runs a hair salon he gives her a wedding present and but he clearly has ulterior motives he has like resting villain face big time like yeah handsome a handsome resting face but resting villain face nonetheless it's like why you with him again why you didn't just what's the issue what was the problem with this guy like right it's never quite clear clear hmm maybe i just i truly was i was just like just the way that the actor was carrying himself in the part and i was like oh it's the guy in the suit that's up to no good got it right and it's what a man wants they want the woman to be with the freaking

dude they have to do all the work to help them it's like yeah you know it is written by a man you know boy is it Okay, so Simuel shows up to work. He's being scheming. Then Lem shows up at Maxine and Kenny's house. And he tells Kenny that he lost his job because he had lied on his application about having been convicted of a crime because he spent time in jail. He recently got out of jail, but he lied about this on his application. His employer found out and he got fired. So now he's looking for a new job and he wants Kenny to help him. And Kenny's like, don't worry, I got you. Then we check in with Terry and Miles. He tells her that he wants to invest more time and money in his music.'s not happy about it she's like you're a lawyer just

be a lawyer she's also not happy about cousin faith i can't tell if i'm not supposed to be on her side there but and maybe it's just because i'm on finesse but i was like i'm on finesse williams's side men shouldn't follow their dreams everybody now is like she was right terry was right terry was in the right the entire time she was being taking advantage of she's literally holding everything together but she's supposed to be the bad person but nobody else is taking care of the house nobody else is paying the taxes you know but she's like the villain i was very team terry. Yeah, I was like, she just wants a little bit of appreciation. Thank you.

Like, I understand that sometimes it is like not presented in the most tasteful way, maybe. And I understand why her sisters would be frustrated with her. But I'm like, it's not absolutely out of the question that she would want to be acknowledged for how much she's doing and i just don't think her husband should follow his dreams he was annoying to me i wanted i or at least i don't know whatever we'll talk about how the story goes but i feel like yeah the way that terry's story went was like kind of treated as like well of course this would happen because look how terry was telling him to stop playing the keyboard and you're like stop playing the keyboard man yeah she's portrayed as being very frigid but yeah she's like actually making sure the family is like being held together she's also like very elitist about it she's like

i'm richer than all of you and i went to to law school. And I'm like, okay, someone who's always talking about their advanced degree. Certainly not me. Someone who went to Boston University to get a master's in screenwriting. Because I never mentioned that. I've never heard that before. But she's always mentioning her law degree anyway. And doesn't she mention also that she put her sisters through school? I don't know if I'm remembering that right.

She does say that she pays for Bird's wedding. She mentions different things she has paid for to like, you know, and she, oh, she gives a loan to Bird also to open up the beauty shop. To open the shop. Yeah. Different things like that. Yeah. the beauty shop yeah different things like that yeah so she's like to me like she's a parentified child like even though she's a sister she was being very maternal to her sisters because she's the eldest too the way a lot of like eldest siblings often take on a role like that yeah

okay so we check in with terry and miles she's not happy about him pursuing his music. She's also not happy about cousin Faith crashing with them. Then Big Mama is convinced to have the surgery. So she goes through with the surgery, but she has a stroke during it and falls into a coma. And the family is devastated. And her not being around sets off this kind of chain reaction of things going wrong in the family. For example, the 40 year tradition of Sunday dinners falls apart, especially because Terry and Maxine get in a fight about it because they're never getting along meanwhile Terry and her marriage with Miles is on edge again she does not respect his musical ambitions and then I kept up being on her side about this I just refuse also one night, Miles and Cousin Faith are flirting. Later, he helps her with a dance audition she has.

And then eventually they have sex and Terry comes home and sees them. Miles doesn't know that she saw them until she confronts him at a party later that evening and chases him around with a butcher knife again she did nothing wrong she right she did nothing wrong i mean she didn't kill him nope yeah she just had to make a point no they're you know technically what she did was wrong but he cheated in their marital home in view of a full open window he had i'm just like cheaters in monogamous relationships gross hate it but especially when they're bad at it or like lazy about it i'm just like oh my god you're not even good at this you didn't even try to conceal this a child almost saw it like right because ahmad was because she's doing more that's not even her kid she don't have she can't even have kids she's busy working all the time if it's not work it's homework yeah and it's like ridiculous yeah

she did nothing wrong i'm ten times down ter Terry. But really quick back to Gina Rivera, because just like the mid 90s, there are so many good Gina Rivera dance scenes committed to film because we just covered Showgirls. And so I just wanted to shout it out. I liked and also thought it was like very 90s that anytime that there's music or dancing in this movie, you see like a lot of it so much like you see the whole song and you're kind of like, huh, why? I'm not mad about it. But okay, great. Like when Miles is in his band, you see them play the whole song. And you're like, okay, great. Sure. Good job, you guys. But I also feel like that's like, like in black film like art is so important like in black film like

even prayer like no who like oh I pray that's like you see people actually praying you hear them it's like you get the whole experience and with the dance like I feel like that like I've seen so many specifically like African-American films see the entire dance and also people will get upset if it doesn't feel real so like in sure you know the show like pose r.i.p pose got canceled like uh when he had that audition and people were like he would have never been accepted with that audition what the heck like and you know um because i feel like we have this history of like if you're like usually black film them people dancing it's like janet jackson's background dancer and like they have actual dancers actual singers and i mean in this you know that gina

rivera did that entire routine because they're not doing any fancy cutting. I mean, the dancing in particular was beautiful. I didn't know that that was like a feature of black film. That's cool to know. Definitely. So then we get that chunk of Terry and Miles' subplot. Meanwhile, we're checking in with Bird and Lem. She finds out that he was fired from his job and he can't find another one. So she calls upon her ex, Simuel, to hook him up

with a job. And then Lem finds out about this favor she called in and he feels emasculated and he goes ballistic on both simuel and bird we'll talk about this whole subplot in more detail later on um but then terry calls another cousin of theirs to basically like go rough lem up and when that happens there's like this bar fight and Lem pulls a gun and gets arrested and ends up back in jail. Then the sisters and their spouses have this conversation about how they're going to pay for Big Mama's hospital bills. Terry wants to sell, once again, Big Mama's house, starring Martin Lawrence. And Maxine is opposed to this. And no one really knows what to do. And little Ahmad goes to visit Big Mama in the hospital. And while he's there, she comes out of the coma and tries to tell Ahmad something that she wants him to do.

But she can't finish. She starts coughing. Doctors rush in. And then we get a something that she wants him to do, but she can't finish. She starts coughing. Doctors rush in, and then we get a reveal that she has passed away. So the family grieves. Everyone's a mess. Bird finds out that she's pregnant. Terry calls in a lawyer favor. Classic lawyer. Classic lawyer behavior. She gets Lem bailed out of jail meanwhile ahmad thinks that what big mama wanted him to do was to get the whole family together again for sunday dinner so he goes to each member of the family and tells them that before she died big mama told him about that stash of money that's hidden away somewhere in the house and that he needs their help to find it.

And he's like, I'll give you a finder's fee, you know, like sweetening the deal. Little stinker. Right. Because what he's really trying to do is just get everyone in the house at the same time for family dinner. So everyone shows up and they realize that it was just a ploy to get everyone together and they feel uneasy about it. But they roll with it and they sit down to dinner. During the dinner, some grievances are aired. And then they're also like, well, what about this stash of money though? And Ahmad is like, yeah, I just made that up to get everyone together again, because all you do is fight. And he's crying. And then there's a fire in the kitchen. And everyone's scrambling to put it out.

And then suddenly, Uncle Pete, the elusive relative who lives upstairs, shows up in the kitchen holding a suitcase full of that cash that was there all along. And the family is like, weee. And then the movie ends with Ahmaud's voiceover saying, now I understand what soul food is all about. Because during slavery, black folks didn't have a lot to celebrate. So cooking became the way that we expressed our love for each other. And that's what Sunday dinners meant to us. It was a time for sharing our joys and sorrows. And then we flash forward to see the family getting along. They're having a nice time. They're in a better place.

They didn't sell the house. They didn't. Yes, exactly. Because that's why they had the fight in the kitchen was because Terry's like, I'm selling the house. Right. So the house stays in the kitchen was because Terry's like, I'm selling the house. Right. So the house stays in the family and everyone is just doing pretty well. And that's the end of the movie. So let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.

Hey, everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Han is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself.

Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing.

Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge.

Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente.

And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets

the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And we're back. We usually defer to our guest. Nadia, is there anywhere you in particular would like to start the discussion?

I guess, like, with this film, there's so many things, so many things. I really like how it's like a play. Like there's a lot of setups in the first act. Like everything like means something and it comes back. Like even at the end when the fire happens there's a reason she specifically said you don't put anything on like big mom said don't put anything on the stove because that's how fires happen and he accidentally and it was like he didn't think of it he just put it by the stove because they they like ahmad come here and that's when they realized y'all here for some money i'm here for somebody you know and they and that's how like the y'all here for some money i'm here for somebody you

know and they and that's how like the whole fire got started and they all had to work together to like put it out and the and which led to uncle pete coming out his room because he thought he's about to die because he smelled the smoke and then dropped he held a tv he wasn't gonna steal the money i didn't even know that there was money there maybe he knew there was money and then he was like oh I gotta get my money unclear yeah yeah because the TV appeared to be bursting with money and then we you know now the money's flying everywhere and it's like oh my gosh we don't have to sell the house anymore we got it but I love that film because it's a complete story beginning middle and end um and as like i guess like a black child it felt like very relatable like oh my god i would love to get my family together you know

however she died because of diabetes due to some of that food. Some of that food needed to be substituted. And this is actually a big, big area of contention for a lot of Black communities with people calling soul food bad. And it's not that it's bad. It's just some people will not have greens or they will have greens with the meat inside. You can substitute some of these things. And then also everybody's not making stuff from scratch anymore. So that's really the issue because back in slavery days, people were literally killing the chicken that night. And like, we're making, we're having chicken. That's how we got this chicken. Nowadays, there's so much crap in the food. Like it's not

this, we're not eating the same food. Like there's no, I don't want to say there's so much crap in the food. Like it's not this, we're not eating the same food. Like there's no, I don't want to say there's no people doing it from scratch, but it's like a completely different world. So processed. Yeah. But that's how she died. And I really wanted them. I know they had the garden because they're like, oh, we have the garden. Like Terry's in the garden, like at the end and everything. But some of those things like, OK, like we eat in the same food that led to her getting the diabetes

and also like having more conversations about health in our communities because there's a lot of fear of doctors, which is why like a lot of elderly people especially black men will be like i'm not going to the doctor i don't want to go like i've had horrible experiences at the doctor like you know like at the gyno with like white women so like i get why you would be like well it's my time like if it's my time it's my time i'm old like so i I get that but like I think about that when I think about the movie is just like black health food health and also like families like how do you how do you communicate with your family and it was really messed up it was really messed up you don't take your sister's man you really don't that's like written by a man written by a man because that's like written by a man, written by a man, because that's their fantasy is like sleeping with everybody in the family.

Like, so I need to get around to all the sisters. Right. Well, I want to talk more about the theme of food. Obviously, it's the name of the movie. I think it's like super well contextualized within the movie that not only is soul food integral to this family but to black culture in general but yeah the way that it affects mama joe is like i was like what is he trying to get at there like i i guess that it's open to discussion i was looking up interviews to see if george tillman jr had spoken to why he made that choice for her character.

And I was kind of unclear on it. Like, I don't necessarily object to it because it's like, of course, diabetes like is an issue that a lot of people have and you don't see it put on film very often. I went down a rabbit hole of like, how often do you see a diabetic character and usually whenever you do which i guess this movie isn't an exception to it's as a plot point where eventually they will be severely affected by or die as a result of diabetes there's very few examples of a character that just has diabetes and is treating it or is just sort of living as a person with diabetes right i feel for mama joe so terribly because of her understandable issues with doctors and but the way that yeah i was how did everybody feel about the way that that plot point was

treated i feel like sometimes in family dramas in general, there's a lot of like, well, we have to sort of take out the matriarch or the patriarch and watch the rest of the family go wild in their absence, which at least, I don't know, like that feels true to life. That's certainly been true in my experience where, you know, like your grandparent dies and all these traditions go with them if your family is messy and can't keep up with them um no that happened in my family specifically choosing diabetes it was an interesting choice and i

didn't quite know what to make of it yeah especially because that's the thing that basically like tears the family apart like you said it's the the plot point that instigates a lot of this family melodrama and i feel like a lot of depictions of diabetes come with some form of shame like oh if the character hadn't eaten this way or had this diet or you know made this this and this choice they wouldn't have diabetes i don't think the movie is explicitly shaming her but i don't know like the optics of like she has diabetes and then that explicitly does say that though i don't remember if it was voiceover narration or a character speaking to her where they're like mom we told you to blah blah blah

blah with the food i think taking right right the medicine too was she like not taking her medicine or something yeah i think they say like you're you need to take your insulin or something along those lines and again it's super understandable that Big Mama would be wary of doctors because there is so much institutionalized racism in the medical field. But it does almost feel like the movie's kind of shaming her for her choices with health and diet and things like that.

Yeah, yeah. And in a movie where I felt like not a ton of plot points were really dropped, that felt like one of them where I was like, that's sorry, my cat's walking through my armpits. That's one.

Yeah. He's going to be also pretty loud because he's going to want some attention. He's hungry for Sunday dinner. Yeah. Yeah. He wants some cow greens. Yeah, he wants some caldrons. Yeah, I guess it was

just, I don't think it was done maliciously, but it just felt like a plot point that could have been explored a little bit more in a way that would have been more fair to the character, who's clearly a character that everyone in the story loves. And if she

wasn't taking the insulin, it would have been at least interesting to explore why. Because I feel like it's presented sort of in a more judgmental way than maybe was intended. But I don't know, I could be overthinking it too. I think also we didn't have those conversations. I don't want to say we didn't have those conversations, but in the public sphere, we're having those conversations way more than we were.

Like it was like certain communities were having these conversations. And now like, we're all talking like black maternal health, like everybody's talking about it. It's not just black women anymore. So I think the time, the times have changed as well. For sure. Yeah. Cause yeah, So I think the times have changed as well.

For sure, yeah. Because, yeah, we're in, this movie came out 26 years ago now. 97, the same year that Titanic came out anyway. Wow. I just have to shout that out, obviously. So interesting. But, yeah, I do appreciate that there's such a strong focus, though, as you were saying, Nydia, on the sisters and their dynamic becauseer for a movie written and directed by a man. But he, like George Tillman Jr., very deliberately wanted to make a movie that had a focus on female characters.

He wanted it to be about the importance of family. He told the Chicago Tribune in an interview, quote, I wanted to make a movie about a black family in middle America. I wanted to make a film where everyone can look at them and say, this is my family, unquote. So he, you know, he just he wanted to make this movie about a relatable family, and one that focused on the sisters and not only their like interpersonal relationships but then their subplots with their other you know their spouses and their careers and things like that so I appreciate that there's just like so much focus on all of that in a way that feels extremely authentic like their relationships their conflicts you could argue that it's that tired trope of like two

women not getting along because one like quote-unquote stole the other's man I feel like that I not to because I do think that there are elements of how women are written in this movie that feel very like boing a woman did not write this and I can tell. But I don't know, I'm gonna jump to his defense a little bit there because they're sisters. And like how we very often see if there's infidelity, and there's a woman and a man and it's like someone's husband cheated on them with another woman we see in movies, especially of the 90s, that she is only mad at the other woman and the husband is like, well, he couldn't help himself. She tempted him. And that's the story we kind of hear over and over. I do think the dynamics

are different if it's someone that you've known your whole entire life, because it's almost like you would want more loyalty from your, I would expect more loyalty from my sister than from my husband I also agree and I did appreciate like that Terry was more upset she wasn't upset with Faith not really yeah there's a quick moment where when she has the butcher knife that she's wielding at her husband she kind of like pivots a little bit and kind of waves it at faith but other than that she's like well i don't know there's a few moments where she's like you know i let like fuck the whole like monologue where she's like fuck the family i let the family into my house and my family fuck my husband so she is targeting some of her anger but i don't think it's necessarily that

thing that you were talking about jamie as far as like oh i'm directing my anger only at the other woman because there's this i mean we've talked about this quite a bit and we i think we talked about it a lot on the like waiting to exhale episode where the one who had been cheated on targets all of her anger to the other woman and like letting the man who did the cheating mostly off the hook, which often has just like sexist implications as far as like, well, women can't get along and women are so petty. So obviously they're going gonna find any excuse to be mad at each other that's not quite what's happening here because it's like well she's just mad at everyone for betraying her she's right she doesn't she's like you're my family you can't betray me like that

you're my husband you can't betray me like that yeah and then also like what did she have to give up to be everything to everybody in this family because everybody has their own little things that they're into uh with bird in the salon like she's working but i get the idea that she's working at this job because it's very lucrative and it allows her to like fulfill her responsibilities but like if she didn't have to have that role how would she be because in the position she's in she's not gonna be like hey guys what's up like you know like she has to remember dates doctor's appointments when we have to pay all these bills like you know her husband's out doing jazz club things and like fucking the cousin like you know she's taking a mod when even though maxine took her man she's the aunt that takes him out and does you know make sure he has what he needs so it's like that's how she's gonna be considering the environment

that's the thing where like I feel like so many women are blamed for like just doing the labor that it takes to keep a family together because she she's like, she's doing household labor. She's doing familial labor. She's like financial. She's like the main person. She's out here trying to scare this man. So he don't beat up her sister. She's,

she's doing all the things. Like she's like, she's like, I need, I need you to do something because he not going to up on her like that and then she gotta go and find a lawyer to get the man she's doing literally everything and but it's the way that like a woman like that will often be perceived either just in real life or in media as being like frigid i really think the movie wants you to think that, oh, she's got to stick up her ass.

She's like, not only do like her family not acknowledge everything she's doing for them, but like neither does the movie. It feels like, but also not in a way that it's like we should be grateful for everything she's doing to help. It's true. And then also the world like to be a black woman in a corporate space like that. Who do you have to be to be actually successful she has a corner office she's not she doesn't have a cubicle like she's a boss for real for real she's like about to make partner and stuff right so like what does it take to be that person but i think a lot of the audience like nowadays like back in the day it was like

oh terry you know now everybody's everybody's on terry's side everybody's like yo yeah we've said it before we'll say it again terry did nothing wrong but the the movie is treating her as though she's this uppity frigid woman and yes she is like again holding her degree and her accolades and her money over people the way that like, oftentimes a family member with more money will kind of try to exert that power in a way, which is like, not great. We don't love to see it. Right. And I totally understand why family members that had less than her would be somewhat resentful of that like i think i don't know if you've been on any side of that family

dynamic it's always going to be really tricky it seems like sometimes terry wants to be acknowledged for what she's bringing to the table and it's being taken as punitive or insulting in a way that just feels like more of a communication issue because I don't think anyone is necessarily wrong like I don't think Bird is being an asshole by being like I don't need to thank you every second for investing in my beauty shop which is very successful and I also don't think that Terry is a monster for wanting to be acknowledged for having done that. And so it just feels like sisterly communication. For sure.

But also, it's also on the mother. A lot of times, like, the mom put Terry in that position. She should have never been in a position where she had to be maternal to her sisters, especially if they had a father like why is terry doing all of this you know if you have a husband we didn't even get into that like the movie doesn't get into that they don't address that like because terry's a parent child like she didn't get to be just a sister like she has to take care of her mother her sisters her sister's kids her uncle her husband

like so yeah that isn't addressed um and i just think people don't realize like how much work it is to be like the oldest daughter yeah yes for sure do we have any oldest daughters in the house i'm an oldest okay same I'm a middle child. Sorry about that. Unbelievable. I know. So rude. Again, it's just like a very specific stage of life thing.

But I do feel like, yeah, like oldest kids, it's a very unique dynamic. And sometimes you come off as maternalistic and like you're trying to take care of everybody. But usually, like sometimes sometimes and it seems like with terry this was the case at different points like you saw kind of the worst of it where it's alluded to a few times that girl's father joe's husband had a gambling problem and that this was something that really deeply affected their family and i think based on the timeline that's described, that the eldest would have been the most exposed to that and how it affected the family in a very particular way.

And I do think that when you grow up in a family with addiction or infidelity or just a very strong core issue, the eldest absorbs a lot of that and the way that they process it is not always good but i do think it is like relevant to who terry is that it makes total sense to me that she both wants to and seems like she like genuinely wants to take care of her family like she doesn't dislike her family she just feels unappreciated but also like it's also because she's a woman because if there was an older boy he would not have the same responsibilities like i even have friends who are they're the oldest girl and they have older brothers and they take care of their older brothers you know so it's like they don't get to be the middle kid you know or the youngest if they're the oldest girl because oh now you're a

mother now you have labor to do exactly that's actually familiar to me because i have an older brother oh and a younger sister and so so you're technically so we're all yeah spirits yeah yes yeah parents about children here hello we need a break we need a massage i wish there would have been there would have been more acknowledgement of like everything that terry does for the family every like it's contextualized why she is the way that she is, but it's not necessarily explicitly, those connections aren't necessarily explicitly made. And it's just like, Terry needs to lighten up.

And it's like, well, let's explore maybe what she's going through. Right. Can we? Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for more discussion. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you

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and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke.

What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. I'm not going to hawk this slalom. I absolutely love it.

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And we're back. Could we talk about the aspect of the story of Lem losing his job and his difficulty finding another one? Because there's an awful lot to talk about here. It's a pretty big focal point of the movie that Lem has gotten fired because his employer found out that he lied on his application about having a criminal record. And then Lem has difficulty finding another job because he starts telling the truth on his applications about having been convicted of a crime. And so he's having trouble landing another job, not only because he has a criminal record, but specifically because he's a black man with a criminal record. Because I mean, black people with the same qualifications as their

white counterparts are often less likely to be offered jobs than white people. And then black people with a criminal record are statistically way less likely to be offered a job than white people with a criminal record. So we see this manifesting in Lem's character. And he's talking to Bird about how like, I lied on the application, like I'm doing this. And like, I'm struggling with this because it's about this bullshit system. He says something like, they lock you up and expect you to do something better with your life. But when you get out, there isn't anything better because the white people who have everything don't give you a second chance. And then Bird is like, that's bullshit. Stop using the white man as an excuse, which surprised me that she took that stance because

like lem is absolutely right it has everything to do with systemic racism but i also feel like bird's response to that is her holding on to these biases when it comes to rigid gender roles and what she expects of a man having to be like the provider because that becomes this whole other component of this story where lem goes to kenny and kenny's like don't tell your wife that you're unemployed like never tell a black woman that you don't have a job you know it's all right for them to lie around the house um but like not the man and even if you're doing household work like they won't respect you unless you have a job out in the world earning money which again like just like speaks to like these rigid gender roles that both that like men and women harbor because like patriarchy conditions all genders to hold on to these like certain expectations where i don't know like the men the men have some messed

up values in this movie but so do the women like women like bird not valuing like uh her husband doing household labor and she's convinced conditioned to think like well that's like a woman's work and men shouldn't be doing that men should be going out and earning so i don't know like the movie starts to comment on this but then where it lands feels kind of dissonant because it comes down on the side of like reinforcing those gender expectations because of like how forgiving it is to various male characters after they've displayed some pretty nasty behavior right so i don't know it's it feels like all over the place i wish it had like kind of made some more definitive statements about how like wow these gender roles that are forced upon us and these expectations based on

gender, they're so rigid. Can't we like just do whatever we're able to do to participate and help with the family unit. But certain characters are just like holding too tightly onto certain expectations. and then you have like lem like being abusive to multiple people and everyone's just like that's just his personality yeah like but i also feel like

it's respectability politics like it's like you have to be a good boy and a good girl in this world and this is what it looks like for a black person to be good. Like Terry is good. You know, she does a good job. She's making a lot of money. She's a lawyer. She gets a check with Maxine. I think Maxine is a stay at home mom.

Yes. She's a stay at home mom. But I do think she is smart. Like I always thought like why is she a stay at home mom? She could think she is smart like I always thought like why is she stay-at-home mom she could do so many cool things like she has all of these skills but she's a stay-at-home mom and that's like her role and with Lynn like I was like I understand Bird is like okay you gotta don't use that as an excuse because growing up like like I grew up with a lot of guys in and out of juvie and they would make so many excuses. But you would give them an opportunity like, oh, why don't you try this?

You have this skill here. Like go a little further. And they wouldn't do it. They wouldn't even put the effort in to make those changes. So I'm a little mixed on that, but definitely chock full of respectability in the society. There are a lot of boxes that people are stuck in, like with Terry's husband not being allowed to be an artist, not even being a serious conversation. Because he's actually very talented, which is why Faith and him connected, because they're both very talented which is why faith and him connected because they're both very talented artists um and i think was it casey and jojo at the hey it was like this is crazy like you're really good like

so it's like but that wasn't even a real option because it's like you can't be a musician even though you are good like he could have probably been one of the top pianists or whatever like traveling the world making a bunch of money but that wasn't accessible where like he lived and stuff like that so i feel like there's a lot of respectability in a movie but that also like reflected those times and what people were proud of what you could be proud of like ah like i can't be proud of you as a musician because like i'd rather you do your corporate job like you you have more value there you know instead of like being an artist terry even puts a number on it she's like 31,000 of the blah blah blah in our joint account is yours right yes

she's like putting a value on him monetary like specific number value on him well she would know she's paying all the bills yeah right he's not paying no bills so it's like it's like yeah but if he was a musician

who was handling things, what if he was handling things? What if he was doing shows and he was like, I got it. You can make a lot of money. Don't worry about the house. I got it. Don't worry about Ahmaud's tuition or whatever she's doing because I know she's paying bills for the next season. But it's like i got it like so it's also you want to be this musician but you're still leaning so heavy we got to get away from terry because we're like it's becoming this so

hard terry is a nuclear rod but it's like but with that i'm so invested in Terry. Where I wonder, in her relationship, would she have been more willing and amenable to supporting her husband's musical ambitions if she felt appreciated by him in the first place? Because it does seem like with Terry, there is this inherent, I don't know, and I think that this is something that exists in a lot of successful women, an inherent insecurity of like, how am I viewed? And if someone is threatened by me,

what is the quote unquote consequence of that, which I think is very much a thing. And it shouldn't be, but I, I, it like Terry's reactions as, as I think sometimes harsh as they can seem. And I think as they are perceived in the movies, I don't know. Like I, I do wonder, and we don't have a ton of context for that of like, well,

how has he behaved for this entire relationship? Is he saying that I am not that it's her place to block his dreams, but they're in a partnership and she has to take on some financial burden and she deserves to know if that's something that is happening and it feels like that goes unexplored a little yeah he took five grand out of their account to like build his at-home studio without consulting her and that's not just their money that's also their house you're like you can't just do something like that to the house yeah right and it's like yeah yeah it's like you can't just do something like that to the house

yeah right and it's like yeah yeah it's like it would be one thing if he was like hey babe i'm interested in pursuing music like would you entertain the idea of like me building this home studio it's gonna be an investment but like i'll use my money and like you know having just an open conversation about it but instead that discussion yeah he just goes behind her back and doesn't have an open conversation about it at all and then he resents when she's not more supportive but it's like well like you put her in this position where you're not being open and honest with her so yeah i understand her not being fully supportive. And even though this is not Miles' fault, we have context for Terry that she has serious trust issues with people

because of this experience with her sister. Right. And so that is not on Miles, but that is context for how Terry behaves in situations like that where I feel like she shuts down and like absorbs a lot and comes off really defensive i feel so much for terry justice for terry we see her get cheated on in two different scenes by two different people let her have her butcher knife that are supposed women and these are women in her family these are not her friends this is not her

teachers is that her the girl who works at the dairy queen it's like this is my sister and this is my cousin yeah right and i do think that yeah like the way that this conversation goes around infidelity would be different if it was the girl at the dairy queen or like someone that we don't know and don't see again because then it feels more woman versus woman. But it's like Terry, I don't know. And then even at the end, I was like, wow, no justice for Terry, where they're like, Terry and Miles broke up, but Miles was still around a lot. I know.

I was like, why are you around? Why? Get out of here. Yeah, does Terry want him there? Does anyone care? Anyway. It's probably Ahmad just being like, hey uncle miles i know i know it's like amad quit inviting people who no one else wants around paying for your boarding school right now

yeah who's paying for basketball practice right so because you want to be a basketball player like because he wants to be he wants to be baby michael jordan right right that's his dream and it works spoil alert for space jam yeah he did a great job good for him shout out to terry and all the work she did so he could become an nba basketball player it's true without terry we wouldn't have Michael Jordan. And no one talks about that. Terry going under appreciated again. Yes.

Damn. I think another clue that this was written and directed by a man is, and I alluded to this already, but how easily so many of the men are let off the hook by the end. As far as like, I mean, mean to me the biggest example is lem where he like goes ballistic multiple times like beating people up shoving his wife like being so emasculated and acting out in violent ways like and then everyone's like well even like maxine defends him she's talking to bird and she's like you can't go behind your man's back and have your ex get a job for him like a man has to be a man and he if he feels like you took that

away from him then he has nothing which like again don't go behind people's backs and do things that's the thing that it seems like everyone in this family needs to learn because Ahmad does it Miles does it Bird does it everyone's doing it all the time so really this family just needs to learn how to communicate but I'm just like Maxine like we all why are you defending this guy who like feels so emasculated for like, I mean, pretty dated reasons. Of course, like this was the mentality of the time. Not that that excuses anything, but I don't know for her to like lightly defend.

Yeah. I mean, as far as Lem goes, I found it frustrating because I feel like we were just talking about Lem's character illustrates so many realities about incarcerated Black men trying to re-enter society in a way that is fair and how there's so much. I mean, I think we see him encounter the most direct racism of anyone in the movie. And I appreciated at the beginning of this conversation, the dynamic between him and Bird, where it's like she doesn't quite get it, but she wants to. And it seems like this is something that they want to work on within their

relationship. And that all felt like, wow, that was like really well done. But then I was really frustrated with where they took his character from there because he is abusive towards her like outright and then when he comes back at the end of the movie he even talks with ahmad a child and is like i would never hit a woman and you're like um but i've been watching this whole movie and i don't want to like put it squarely on this movie or this filmmaker because i do think it's

like an of the time thing but like the definition of what constitutes spousal abuse and assault very off like he there's no question i think in like a modern lens that what lem did to bird was extremely abusive and then he came back and was like well i didn't you know strike her across the face and i would never do that and that's my boundary so it's fine and i should be welcome back which he was immediately and everyone agrees. It made that character so frustrating. Yeah. And I know like some of the things that like Bird couldn't understand was also because of how supportive her family had been to her. And she's the baby.

You know, she's so protected, which is like, why? Of course, you're going to go find this dude. Like, you know, you could have been anybody else. Everybody wants you. And you could have been anybody else. Everybody wants you. And you, how'd y'all meet? Was he in jail? Like, I was always like, did you meet him in jail? We did not have any of that.

Yeah. Like, because I feel like, you know, women meet people in jail. Like, which is. It happens. How'd you meet this guy? Okay, cool. But I think Lim doesn't have family. And I think that has become his family. And he has to learn how to be in a family. Because he's so used to defending himself, even to people who I'm sure are supposed to be in his corner. And I get that. I've seen that a lot in like, some of the people I know, who've been in and out of jail, they have a hard time trusting people, you know, and believing that somebody loves and cares and stuff like that.

So they kind of like do the same things and they know it's them. But it's hard to like break that cycle within yourself. So I feel like he definitely was abusive and that would be in a hard household to live in. Like to bring if you like you're literally're literally trying to intimidate her physically. Like, you're trying to scare her. You're trying to intimidate her physically. You're doing it. All these people know who you are.

We see what you're doing. And he needs, I don't want to say more than therapy, but I felt really annoyed that getting him a job was supposed to be a bad thing it's like isn't that proof that you love this person so much and you want them to be okay that you would literally go to the person you shouldn't be going to to give him a job and she's not sleeping with the man she's not she's not giving him no punani to get the job she's just gonna go to dinner with him that's you know which is also like not a fair no punani to get the job. She's just going to go to dinner with him. That's, you know.

Which is also not a fair position for her to be in and a huge concession on her end because we know she does not want to be around this guy at all. Exactly. And I can get as far with Lem in that situation of him being angry about the lie and angry about feeling like, because it feels like Lem has a deep-seated issue

with feeling like someone's doing him a favor he wants to feel like it's just happened organically or and i understand that like that makes sense and i can understand like finding that out especially from the asshole that did it who was clearly egging him on and clearly wanted him to be angry and clearly wanted to fire him i can understand why that would be upsetting but it's like how is the answer to attack your wife without talking to her first but it just feels like lem's really left off the hook for yeah like okay like we know you can't you're a jailbird so we know that's what to expect right like it seems like it's unfair to bird and to lem because it's like lem is playing into the exact stereotypes that his character has been pushing against the entire movie and then bird and the whole family are like oh well he didn't strike her across the face. I know.

He didn't punch her in the face. He's a good guy. Which I was really, yeah, that was like, I think that was like the big thing that stood out to me as like a really dated view of abuse. And then Maxine, it's so interesting because she's a very important character, but I feel like she gets the least screen time of the sisters and she doesn't have quite the same arc or subplot that bird plus lem and terry plus miles get and i mean maybe i'm just like in discourse brain wormhole here so stop me if this feels off but i i was feeling like because maxine has sort of less of an arc than the other sisters she's pretty consistent in um her views story her her marriage is stable like it seems like she's generally like, okay. And her as sort of the mother of the family, and she's told you are the wise one.

She seems sort of like the chosen one by her own mother as like the new matriarch of the family. And she's also the character to deliver this kind of like retro view of gender at the end of the movie. And it felt pointed to me that it's like the new matriarch and the only mother of this group of sisters thus far is also the one that thinks that you should let a man be a man and don't get in the way of him being a man it just felt like symbolic in a way that felt a little icky to me like and it didn't wreck anything but it just it feels like again team

terry of like how it sort of i don't know i think led to believe that like terry's professional life is part of why her marriage doesn't work right and it's maxine's commitment to her family that is why she is the chosen one. And that she, because she lets a man be a man, she's the only one that has a stable marriage. And she don't have a job. Right.

Which is fine. But it's like, it just felt weird for the one sister that was the stay at home mom to be the moral authority in. Who's not in the actual real world doesn't have to pay any bills doesn't have like if shit goes to fans she's just gonna call terry like you know so that is true i feel like her role in the movie is totally mom like like even when she has that scene with ahmad talking about like what he wants to do and how he wants to get the family together when they're walking

I love that scene too like I was like so cool she's like I was in labor with you for 23 hours 45 minutes and 10 seconds and he's like recites it along with her as if she tells him this at least once a week classic mom behavior my mom used to do that

too with my sister she's like you guys are not three years apart. You're 11 months, 12 days, and, like, what is it, 13 minutes? Or something like that. It's like she has all of the, like, how far apart we are. So, like, I love that. But I'm just like, her role is really mother. It's like mother, but it's not real without the responsibility of mother.

I don't even have an issue with her being a stay-at-home mom. I feel like any time, though, that you have a spread of characters and you have a stay-at-home mother and you have a professional who doesn't have kids or you have like a spread of different kinds of characters when any one character is made to be like the moral voice of the movie because i feel like there's a lot of modern movies that have the reverse problem where it's like being the childless professional you are the moral authority which is also unfair to people making other choices but it's just like any any time one character has made the moral authority it feels pointed even if it's not quite intended that way i couldn't tell if it was intended but i felt like the stay-at-home mom being like i'm doing the right thing because i'm doing what a woman is supposed to do and it just felt like it erased other stuff which is an oversimplification but

no but i agree and not only like her being poised as the moral authority character, but her being the only one of the three sisters to not have a more distinct arc and like thing that she was dealing with. So to me, it feels like, oh, the mother character, like, we don't really need to check in with her and see what is happening in her life. She'll be in scenes, but like we don't really need to give her like a fleshed out storyline. She's doing mom stuff. Right. Which probably has to do with a man writing the movies. Like, ah, she's doing mom stuff. Yeah, he probably literally has no clue what a new mother is doing. He probably literally couldn't even tell you

like what their life would be like as a new mom. Right. Because she has two young kids. Ahmad's sister. I know we learned her name, but also she's such a nothing character. She's like in a couple scenes where we see her eating, but I don't think she has any lines. Maybe it's just because like she's six and they're like, we don't child actors. I know.

Like enough, enough enough lines we give the grown folks get lines she's so cute already yeah she gets no anything and then but yeah why isn't there a story where maxine is dealing with something in her life whether it is related to motherhood whether it's related to her relationship with with Kenny, maybe it's her relationship with her son. Like, why isn't there something more that we're given? But instead, she just is kind of like popping in now and then to be like, let me reinforce rigid gender expectations. Okay, bye.

Yeah, and it felt also pointed that that conversation is between Maxine and Bird after bird finds out that she's pregnant because now bird's gonna be a mother and she's like let me pass down this institutional maternal knowledge let men do whatever they want bye like in a way i don't know it felt very that scene specifically even though i like the felt very, that scene specifically, even though I liked the sister dynamic, but that scene specifically felt the most obviously written by a man to me.

Because even if that is the way that a woman feels as a writer, I feel like there would be more nuance to it than just like a man needs to be a man and what's happening to Terry and what happened to Terry is because she didn't let a man be a man needs to be a man and what's happening to Terry and what happened to Terry is because she didn't let a man be a man. And you're like, that's your sister, dude.

Come on. I feel like the advice should have been like, look, sister, like men are so fragile and they're so easily emasculated. So you need to find a therapist for your husband or like convince him to go to therapy or something like that should have been the advice yeah and it would be like or yeah i need to have better communication right because i need to really talk because yeah on different pages yeah yeah because that scene also felt like maxine was like tacitly okay with how abusive Lem was towards Bird and right a way that also felt unfair to a character we love I don't know yeah Maxine was a all over the place for me because

it's like it's Vivica A. Fox so I'm on board right it's gonna be really hard to turn me against this right but her actions to me are way because it's like she's obviously a great mom and it seems like she really enjoys being a stay-at-home mom which is great but it yeah there is like this sort of edge of judgment towards women who are not stay-at-home moms and i feel like that also tied into i think mama joe is a stay-at-home moms and I feel like that also tied into I think Mama Jo is a stay-at-home mother as well and she was the person who held the family together and she passes that role on to the stay-at-home mother and the and it just is I don't know I mean I'm sure that that does happen in families but it would have been cool to see it explored a little more than it is oh we do get a little mention from Mama Jo that she she said like i worked on my hands and knees

like i think she said something like cleaning up after white folk oh yes yes but it feels like maybe she did that in response to her husband's gambling and they were in debt so maybe she was a stay-at-home mom for a while but then had to start working um for those reasons unclear we we don't get a whole lot of the details of her backstory but and then is it also maxine now i feel like i'm becoming anti-maxine it's not how i actually feel but isn't it also maxine who's like well when our father got us deep into debt gambling mom took care of it and she didn't say a thing about it and she didn't humiliate or emasculate him oh i think it is for having caused that problem and she was right to do that and it's like it is not women's responsibility to clean up the

messes that men make right right and that wasn't fair to mama joe but it felt like the movie felt like it was right like that was her responsibility as a wife right very um 90s and before mentality for sure the other man who i feel like is really let off the hook is reverend williams who is a pervert he's always trying to kiss women without their consent. He's always saying gross, like very sexually charged things. Such as meat. He calls them meat at one point. And he's like, oh, we're about to eat these delicious legs under the table.

I mean, on the table. And it's like, sir. But this is like played as a joke by the movie. Like, oh, yeah, Reverend, he's a creep. But isn't it funny? And it's like, no, get this guy away from them. That felt very 90s to me. I was like, that's very like 90s comedy.

90s for sure. Because y'all remember Martin? You remember Jerome? I had Jerome in the house watching my... That's all he did was being nasty. That's all his character was being a nasty man. And it was a joke. Like, it wasn't like, yo, like, we need to talk to this dude.

He's feeling all the girls in the club. Like, we got to stop you. Like, you know, what are you doing? They're not going to come back out if you keep treating them like this. Why are you treating women like this? And's your whole personality that's that was his personality yeah to be a creep yeah that's so many it's like god i feel like across like for generations there have been so many famous like comedy characters or just sitcom characters that are just like man who sexually harasses people i mean it's it's the quagmire um paradox to bring things to family guy for no reason but it's just like that's the joke

is that he's creepy and awful to women which is not unique to this movie certainly but it's like well if the cast didn't confirm that this movie is firmly 1997 that character does i want to rattle off a couple other very like 90s mentality things that appear in the movie we've got let's see bird's real name is ryla but there's voiceover that says we call her bird because she used to be skinny and it's like uh i'm sorry i'm looking at Nia Long right now and she's thin. What do you, I don't, I don't know. There's like a very sex work, shamey mentality because there's a reference to how Faith used to be a stripper and everyone's very, very judgmental of that. And she's also and we've talked about this before, like, because there's such a huge stigma around sex work, and even people who have done sex work may internalize that shame because

of just all the external shame, because she says at a certain point, like, she's talking about her career goals with miles. And she's like, I want to dance. No, I mean, really dance like i want to dance no i mean really dance like i want to do broadway musicals as if like doing erotic dance is not quote-unquote real work kind of thing so she's like internalizing that i think there's like a number of tropes attached to her as a former or current it's unclear stripper or sex worker to any capacity because it's also implied that like i think this is another common trope with sex workers is like they're gonna steal your boyfriend where it's like they're at work all right they do not want to fuck your weird husband like believe it um

and also that they're like reckless and bad with money and these agents of chaos and the way that i think faith is pretty uncritically shown and i think that faith is a bad cousin like she is and i understand why terry fucking hates her but it feels like the way that she's characterized is also like pretty steeped in a lot of tropes around like erotic dancers and strippers in general where it's like realistically in the real world like i don't know i think it's more interesting if it's just like she is interested in miles because he takes her art seriously and she takes his art seriously and there's no one in their family that feels that way so that connection even makes total sense to me but it feels like there's just like tropes around it that made it

messier than it needed to be for sure and i think she carries that shame too like she you know when she goes in the house like i think mama joe's like you can stay like and everybody's like you can stay you can stay like she knows she's not wanted she knows like you know she's kind of not supposed to be there. And she has to be, like, validated in that space. I think it's, like, Maxine who validates her. Yeah. And, yeah, it is a little all over the place with that.

It's like, okay, now, but you're going to let the whole stay? Like, y'all are obsessed with the approval of men, but she can stay? It's confusing. And also, it's just like, God like god faith if there's one thing you shouldn't do is first of all don't of all the husbands with any of them but much less the person who has agreed to host you like no no beautiful dancing though i almost feel and maybe i'm just reading this incorrectly but it almost feels to me like her little affair with Miles is like, see, Terry, this is what happens when you're not more supportive to your man, you know, and because even she at the final family dinner when I think Maxine is says something like Terry you need to worry about your own husband because he's out there sleeping around and she's like was that it like did I not

like care for you well enough was I not a good enough wife kind of thing and then he says like you know we just haven't been happy in a long time we used to have fun with each other and she replies with like yeah I guess I don't know what happened but like i guess it's dropped as if because it's like all of that can be true in a relationship and it doesn't justify what he did and it doesn't mean that terry brought it on herself like they weren't happy so i said i know it's overly simplistic to say talk about it but like you can't just be like well so i had no choice but to fuck your cousin like yes you did you did miles you did can we talk a little bit more about the gina rivera character and i want to especially talk about it as it relates to a piece that you wrote in pop sugar

called the struggle for afro latinx visibility in media still exists highly recommend everyone read it we'll uh link it in the show notes but the reason it's relevant here is so the actor gina rivera who plays faith in the movie this actor is mixed african-american and puerto rican her character does not appear to be afro-Latina in any way. So it's an example of an actor's Latinidad being erased, which is what your piece is largely about how Afro-Latinx people are erased from media about and from Latinx communities, because the media favors lighter skinned Latinx people, how Afro Latinx people are erased from black communities, because like in the US, for example, black people and I mean, this happens all around the world,

but black people are lumped together as a monolith and just treated as though they all have the same culture and the same background, the way that many marginalized communities are treated as a monolith. And you talk about how, you know, a lot of prominent Latinx folks in media artists, athletes, you know, things like that, their Latinidad is erased. And this is just another example, because I feel like her character could have easily been Latina, because she's related to them on her mother's side, but like, her dad could have been Afro Latino. So I don't know if you want to speak to that any further, but it's just something I wanted to bring up. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Check it out.

I really enjoyed writing that piece. It was like a lot of drama even getting there because of so like, it's like such a charged conversation in the global black community, like all the nuances. Like I went viral in the preparation of that in a negative way. Like I got dragged on Twitter oh now it's x but and you lived and I lived and I lived so yeah like that's an interesting conversation like personally my mom's African-American my father is the Latino one and a

lot of times I always like press Puerto Ricans because it's like okay you're Puerto Rican but are you black Puerto Rican or white Puerto Rican because like you know Loisa exists like it's like a black town you know like which part Arturo Schomburg was from San Jose Puerto Rico like and we have the Schomburg Museum that's in Harlem right now and a lot of people don't even know that he's Puerto Rican and like he came from Puerto Rico. And that's where he started archiving Black history. I think the conversation is new a little bit. And I don't know why, because when we think of history, Langston Hughes was working with Afro-Puerto Rican artists and like building with them. And we have this history of collectives.

But in modern times, it doesn't feel that way. It doesn't feel like you can talk about Blackness on a global scale. And in media and film, it's very, very tricky. I notice, like, when it's a Latinx character, they're usually, like, they can't be Black. It's, like, supposed to be that afro-latinos are not supposed to exist you know and if you are black you are african-american that's all you get

to be i can think of exactly one mainstream movie that prominently features an afro-latino character that is identified that way and it's into the spider-verse and across the spider-verse and that's morelis that's not even a perfect situation because the guy is an African-American character. And a lot of the characteristics, like his family is technically not an Afro-Latino family. Like he has a white Latina mom and an African-American father. So he's kind of Afro-Latino, but-latinos have black parents that's normal like it's normal to have black parents in latin america like that's like a very normal thing and i think it goes down to just like the storytellers it's really difficult for afro-latinx people to get into

these opportunities as you guys know holly Hollywood is a grind for any person. But having all these different identities, it gets really difficult to explain to Americans who you are when, as a Black person, you're not supposed to have all of this stuff going on. For me, that's why I started my company, Black Dina Media, because I wanted us to be celebrated. I wanted our stories to be acknowledged.

When it comes to this, I'm happy she was cast for the role, period. And a lot of Afro-Latinx people in general, if they are Black presenting and identify as Black people, they usually are playing African-American characters. Right. And a lot of people don't know the distinction between someone who is Afro-Latinx and African-American. I mean, I will fully admit that I did not have a good understanding of Afro-Latinx representation

because I hadn't seen it really. And because, like you were just saying, Nadia, like the only sort of allegedly Afro-Latinx character that we have in pop culture right now is still pretty muddled and misunderstood because who are the storytellers? It's still mostly white people. They're there.

Like Celia Cruz, I feel like she's the most known Afro-Latina in the world sphere. Like her music is all over the world. Like she is a world renowned name. Christina Milian, she's Cuban. She's Black. But she's also lumped as like African-American. But like, oh, she's mixed.

It's just like, oh, she must be mixed. You know, and the fact that she is Cuban is enough to make her mixed. She doesn't actually have to be like, not because she's mixed for real, for real. But to be mixed is to not be African-American. Like there's like that. I've noticed that because people are like, oh, you're mixed. It's like, I'm not mixed. Like my father is a dark-skinned black man my mom is a dark-skinned African American woman but it's like oh no you're mixed because your dad is Panamanian right and it's like be black and Panamanian man you need to go to and see all the black people that you think don't exist like yeah so that and then in hollywood i think like it's the erasure of like just blackness in general like we're not

supposed to have culture like we're not supposed to have nuanced culture because even in african american film and television it never gets that deep um unless you're talking about Daughters of the Dust where they talk about Gullah Geechee ancestry and that they wouldn't let her make another move for 20 years after she did that Julie Dash Julie Dash is killing it now also

is it Casey Lemon oh Casey Lemons yes we've covered that on the show before yes so she did Ease Bayou which talks about like the Creole Oh, Casey Lemons. Yes. Okay, good, good, good. We've covered that on the show before. Yes. So she did Ys Bayou, which talks about like the Creole ancestry. We have some of these films, but blackness in film is supposed to be like you from the South. And in the South, it's not all the same. It's still not a monolith.

It's not the same from Alabama, not the same as Louisiana. Which part of Louisiana are you coming from Alabama not the same as Louisiana which part of Louisiana you coming from not the same Texas like you got the black appellations too black appellation history like Toni Morrison talks about like all these black appellations so I think in general when we talk about blackness we're not allowed to have nuance and when black people get a little bit of power there's all of this pressure to just like get like a tap on the shoulder by like the white executive and be like good job black person um so people kind of erase themselves and this happens in the latino community all the time like people will erase themselves before they get a chance to even be like

erases like i don't even want to go there because I don't want to have to have a conversation or I don't want them to say no. Or maybe I've tried and somebody else said no and I don't I don't want to have to go there. I just want to go straight to the top. I want to get the budget and I want them to say yes. So there's a lot of things going on, but I think we need more nuance in black film in general. For sure. Also, is George Tillman Jr., is he qualified to have an Afro-Latinx character? A lot of African-Americans are so confused when it comes to Afro-Latinidad.

I've worked with African-American production companies. They didn't get it. They couldn't understand how a Black person had an immigrant experience. Because the immigrant experience is usually like you're not allowed to be an immigrant if you're Black. So it's like, how could you? You don't understand what's going through, even though the people who are getting deported the most are Black people. It's Haitians. It's literally Haitians getting deported the most at the border. So it's crazy. Isn't it crazy? I just think about how many immigrant stories we get in mainstream media that are like hyper specific white immigrant

communities where you can have a whole movie about swedish immigrants you can have a whole movie about italian immigrants about irish immigrants and there's famous movies across the board about very specific groups of white immigrants in the u.s and you don't get that for a movie called brooklyn about sorry i don't get that for- A movie called Brooklyn about, sorry, like, like, have you been to Brooklyn and see what it looks like? Right, right. But yeah, it's, Nadia, I know it's, like, inherent to what you do and you know it better than anybody, but it seems to have just so much to do with who holds the institutional power and who holds the money. And those are white people who have no understanding of these

issues and so it puts so much pressure on afro-latinx creators like it's an unfair amount of pressure to be under it's and also we have to take accountability for how we present ourselves like i've seen stuff created by the latin community. It's full of tropes and, you know, stereotypes. And it's like this, you got the budget and this is what you made. This is where you decided to put the budget, you know? So it is, I don't want to just say, oh, the white people, they got all the control. They always doing this to us, you know? Because it's also white Latinos.

White Latinos have a lot of power. They have a lot of money. You know, why aren't white Latinos supporting black Latinos? The same reason why white Americans don't support black Americans. It's like it's the same thing. But I think we have to hold ourselves accountable because I've seen just living all around the world for the past like four years and being in all these different communities. It's like I'm like, oh, wow, I see how our own actions are negatively affecting us. Like we are invested in the same systems killing us because we think this is going to help us.

You know, it's like, oh, let me play the game. It's like, no, you're getting played. You're just getting played. So I don't it's not like I have like an answer to it we just need more diversity people need to like be more confident and be more bold in storytelling and take more chances and also people want happy films everything doesn't have to be like the next spex american screenplay it's just like people want to laugh can we be entertained and do you have to kill us to entertain us do we have do people have to die you know like why can't we have entertainment that's like just purely

entertaining with no trauma because a lot of the stuff I've seen in the last like five eight years everything is so sad and everybody's dying you know and it's just like can we just be happy and but people are like no I want to show that Latinos the only thing is not party dude we a party people what's wrong with having a party like it's like we're a type people like that's what we do is kiki all right now i'm in martha's vineyard and what the trini doing with the jamaica i'm doing with the black people do we having a cookout on the beach there's a cookout bringing grill making like this is what we do this is our culture like it's okay like you know so I feel like just looking deep into ourselves and be like where am I seeking white validation why do I need

to present myself in this way like who is this for is this for me am I and I feel like as humans we have to always be you know critiquiquing ourselves so we can be authentic. And that's like... Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective on all that. Thanks for asking. Of course.

We're fans. We're fans. Does anyone have anything else they want to talk about? I just wanted to shout out, because we obviously have discussed George Tillman Jr., prominent Black director still working and during his second Saturn return. A lot of things to love about George Tillman Jr. I was looking into the production team and I think this is a rare example of we have a majority Black production team on this movie as well. I will say it skews heavily male.

However, it seems like George Tillman Jr. was very invested in having a heavily black production crew as well. I don't know about the actual crew, but in terms of the highest level, we have majority black producers. I believe we have a black cinematographer, but there's two Paul Elliotts who are cinematographers. So I'm not totally sure which person and most interestingly to me this movie has a black editor a man named john carter and i read a little bit about him and he's like historically significant and really fucking cool he was the first african-american film editor to work in new y ever. So he was working since the 50s. And he's like a famous figure in the editing community, which I am not a part of. So I had not heard of him before. But I really enjoyed learning about him. He like started on the Ed Sullivan show and then transitioned to

majority black film later in his career and is just like this very famous respected guy who who just died five years ago at the age of 95 so i just wanted to shout out john carter because yeah i just i hadn't heard of him before that's beautiful shout out to him i think a lot like uh i heard because when i was a little kid you know how they say oh i never saw myself like a lot of like black actors would be like i never saw myself on TV and that's why I'm acting um so when I started said oh I'm gonna be an actor I really thought I was like I'm gonna be in all the dopest films because I saw so many dope like black films black people in TV my mom she watched a lot of television and she loved watching like black characters, but also like women.

So Xena, Charmed, The Parkers, Girlfriends, Half and Half, all those UPN. Like I didn't realize that it was so bad because that part of my life, I was like growing up, the Steve Harvey show, you know, and I didn't realize that these actors were grossly underpaid. I didn't realize they were not getting invites to Emmys, even though they had they all had hit shows. Like, I didn't know they weren't being treated the same as like their white counterparts. But I learned like a lot of it was independent and they would have different deals. And the way the business worked was different in the 90s.

And now, even though Black people are working at, I guess, higher levels in a way, there's almost like less creative control in a lot of spaces and so it's like you're not gonna have like a black film crew because this is not your show like you're the showrunner but you have to hire like this whole white crew that's your crew so everything is being translated differently whereas like we're half and half it's like it's like all of these, they get to change the lines. Like, live and single. They were really involved in the writing and stuff. Even in Charmed, who's Phoebe? What's her name?

Melissa Milano. Oh, my God. Melissa Milano. Yeah. She was talking about how they were really integral into writing things in Charmed. And Charmed had a lot of normal Black characters. They weren't a bunch of tropes. It wasn't like, oh, the scary Black man is going to come from the street.

One of the episodes was a guy who had lost his wife. They had recently lost a wife. And the little boy developed powers and technology. And the father was held hostage. And that's how they ended up finding the sisters getting little chills obviously i love movies with sisters um and they had to like save him and like tell him like hey your powers are good like you don't have to hide this you don't have to feel bad about having these powers and i don't know if they like stripped the powers or made it but the father was like a corporate guy like a nerdy corporate dad who had no clue how to handle all of this stuff

he was not in the magic and there were many instances of like black characters you know I in my opinion even even when they had like the the African like even though they made the African stuff a little scary. I think they made one of the guys, the Voodon priestess, was scary. But it didn't feel like, I felt like I had a space in that show too. I could be friends with one of the sisters. I didn't feel like I had to go over here because they wouldn't let me in the house and they wouldn't kiki. I was like, oh, Phoebe's going to be my bestie.

Like, me and Phoebe are going on, like, a spa day. Like, I'm going to get Prue to like me and work so hard, you know, because she only likes hard workers. Like, so... I was obsessed with Phoebe, but I feel like I'm more of a Piper, and it breaks my heart. Piper was dope.

They did a good job with her art. Yeah. And she made shit happen. Someone had to do it. She became that big sis. She did. I've never seen the show. I'm so sorry.

Oh, my gosh. It's so good. It doesn't all hold up, but the parts that do are wonderful. It gets depressing after a while. It's like, okay, guys, whoa, like, what's happening? Everything is sad. Everybody's dying all the time. Like, what happened to, like...

Bring back the warlock boyfriends. Like, I want sister conflict, and I want warlock boyfriends that disappear after a week. That's what I want. And fairies. We want fairies. We want to find gold. Yes.

Like, come on. Like, enough with this scary underworld magic school who wants to steal this kid what kidnapping like remember when like why it was getting like i'm getting now it's becoming a charm it's sending me back yeah well speaking of soul food though um yes does the movie pass the bechdel test yes it does quite a bit they're talking about food they're talking about cooking they're talking a lot of it is conversations between characters who like don't necessarily get along very well and it's terry being like hey maxine i'm better than you because I went to law school but not all of those

conversations are like that and it passes a lot yeah and there's like a huge I think just like speaking to the spirit of the Bechdel test there's so many women in this movie and so many like different there's such a wide variety of women perspectives and they you know while they have to deal with the men in their orbit that's not what it's solely focused on so right indeed i'm satisfied yes and then as far as our nipple scale our scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens uh i think i'll give this, I'll give it three nipples. I'm docking it for some of the, like, of the time kind of characters reinforcing pretty rigid gender roles

and not really doing anything to challenge those characters. Like Lem, you know, engaging in some really awful behavior and being let off the hook very easily by the end and things like that. But I love that there's a movie that centers on sisterhood and specifically black sisterhood and the joy and struggles within that it's like a nice balance of examining these characters lives the positives the negatives and just like showing well-developed very distinguishable from each other women and I think that's really cool. There's other things the movie handles not so well that we've discussed, but I don't know. Overall, it's really cool. And I appreciate that there's a male director like this one who wanted to center women. And I think his first

short that he made, I don't know if he made it when he was still in film school or shortly after he graduated, but it was about a single mother. Or am I getting that right? It's about a woman. So he seems to have a vested interest in telling women's stories. Yeah. And I think that his career has sort of continued in that where it's like it's not uncommon at all i mean i think it's maybe an even split but for a male director even that's kind of incredible where he is not shy about centering women and i think that you know especially the further back you go in time

there will be the issues that we talked about where it's like yeah i think it's good when male directors want to center women and also they should maybe you know get a co-writer who's a woman so that women talking to each other makes sense I wanted to speak to that because earlier I wanted to say how things have changed because Tyler Perry gets a lot of flack for sisters because there's no writers it's just him and like in the black community a lot of these black male directors they do a lot of talking about black women but tyler perry has also financed black women directors so i feel like you know good on tyler perry uh but i feel like things have definitely changed now whereas people are like okay if you're gonna speak for us you need

to have a woman writer like it can't just be y'all just telling our lives so with right recently like there was the best man tv show uh with malcolm d lee and gosh i forgot this woman's name and he had a co-writer that was a black woman and And that, I think, is, like, we're going in the right direction. Because there have been, like, there's a lot of films that are written by Black men about Black women that don't necessarily authentically speak to the Black woman's experience. So I feel like it's great. And I love soul food. But I also love that, like, in the future now like black women are gonna are a part of that experience you know yeah and I and I think yeah things have totally changed because

like Tyler Perry has gotten so much like negative vibes for sisters and people are like why are you writing a show about four women in a way that if it was the 90s he would have been praised for doing that yeah true i think also of mike white with um writing every season of the white lotus completely by himself and everyone's like oh these women characters are so involved and we're like but i don't think it is like overly nitpicky to expect him to hire a woman and to hire especially that's like a whole other conversation because there's a lot of shit going on by that show but it feels like the difference of wanting to appear inclusive and actually having a vested interest in it and wanting to you know not only like bring appropriate like writers and perspectives into your project but also get people into the industry because you

have institutional power which i guess to be fair george tillman i don't think did at this time this is his first big movie so maybe there wasn't a budget for that like whatever but i think now it's it's good and it's also i think if when it's good people have less of an issue if it feels like but if it's like the reason that it wasn't is because you don't have no women like you know so so that's that's that's a thing too but do we live in a world where a bunch of women can get away with writing about a bunch of brothers and men would they be able to do that like i'd like to try though yeah i'd love to try like but honestly i was like i'm i'm rather right about girls but like you try i'll watch a movie and watch your TV.

I want brothers across the world to go ballistic when they see how I think brothers talk to each other. Oh, wait, the nipple test. Can you explain a little bit more about nipples? Because I, with intersectionality, I feel like it, for me, if it's a lot of nipples, if they lose, like I would give it a lot of nipples if they lose or maybe just one nipple. If the nipple is like less nipples mean less intersectionality because queer women, I feel like I don't see a lot of representation when it comes to queer women and queer lesbians have such a big part of our lives, like a part of our literature, film. I don't think we see enough support of queer women we don't see a lot of queer women on like screen unless like they're getting raped for being lesbian and like a man you should be with a man why you don't want to be with a man like you know so yeah so that i feel like he like docks some points for that um but yeah i wouldn't say that because i was like there's no queer definitely no queer visible well except there's

um the guy who bird works with at the salon we don't know his name he's queer coded but um probably straight he's right i'm like but i was like i loved watching him when he was on screen but yeah we know nothing about him including i don't even think his name so but yeah could definitely be more queer visibility in most movies the nipple scale you're trying to apply logic to um something a very logical scale like it's yeah it's um we just sort of make it up as we go but that said I will definitively give it three nipples and I will give one to Terry because justice for Terry I will give one to Uncle Pete because I I feel like some tropes about elderly people were used with his character and I you know didn't love

to see that so justice for Uncle Pete and then yeah I'll give my third nipple to queer icon the guy with dyed red hair who Bird works with at the salon who was fun to watch so that is that Jamie how about you I'm between a three and a three and a half because I respect this movie's place in movie history and specifically black movie history. I think that especially with family dramas, it is very rare to see a middle-class black family drama that is like something that we don't see a lot even now.

And I like that there is sort of i mean i think that terry sort of gets the lion's share of the judgment for it but there is commentary on class that takes place within a black family um in ways that i feel like in movies that are you know that get wide releases at least in the u.s is not something that we see very often and i think i just i really like george tillman jr i feel like the best is yet to come from him and i think this is just just strictly from like a writing filmmaking standpoint like it's so wild that this is his first movie like it's so i mean i know that he had a previous movie that didn't end up coming out. So it was technically his second movie. But for his first Y release, holy shit.

It's so good. And I think that it's very, again, I don't want to like overly hand it to him. But as a first time male director, choosing to center sisters in this story, I think is really cool. But there's everything else we've talked about. I think I'm going to go, I might go 3.5 and I am going to give one to Terry. Obviously I'm going to give one to bird. I'm going to give one to face because I feel like her character was similarly kind of a little all over the place in a way that wasn't always fair to her. Although don't have sex with your cousin's husband i do feel that strongly um and i'm going to give the last half nipple to john carter who i really enjoyed learning about

and who would go on to uh edit future george tillman projects including Barbershop. So there you go. Very cool. Nadia, how about you? What would you rate it on our perfect, awesome nipple scale that makes so much sense? I'm like so confused about nipples. So I'm just going to give them to who I want. You guys gave nipples to Terry. I'm going to give a nipple to Terry. I'm going to give a nipple to Bird. I'll give a nipple to Lim because I feel like it was kind of tough his situation was pretty tough we don't know where he came from um and then i want to give enough a nipple to amad i don't know what that means but they're all getting nipples so nice perfect it's just a showing of your favorite characters basically okay Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been such a treat. Come back anytime.

And tell us where people can check you out online. Read your stuff, plug anything you want to plug. Okay, so you can find me at Blackthina on Instagram. And really, like I own the trademark for Blackthina. So anywhere there's Blacktina like it's gonna be me most of the time that's spelled b-l-a-c-t-i-n-a uh also my website blacktinamedia.com I also have an art business where I sell art from like Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic Blacktina Galleria. That's on Instagram. That is like kind of a slow cooking situation. Plugging, Hispanic Heritage Month is coming,

is right around the corner. So hire me for your panels, for your schools, like for your promotions. If anybody wants to give me a budget to work on a TV show or film, either in the United States or Latin America or the Caribbean, happy to do that. English or Spanish or Portuguese, happy to do that. Just moving the conversations forward so we can have more nuanced entertainment when it comes to blackness because it's so nuanced. And we have such an amazing culture it's

crazy like that it's put in this box because the black experience is is so like diverse globally and within the Latinx community I believe what is there like 200 million Afro-Latinos in Latin America um I'm not sure how many in the United States and like Western countries, but it's super diverse. It's really, really fun. And we're missing out on a lot of entertainment right now. So thank you again so much.

You can follow us at Bechtelcast on various social media platforms. Whatever they're called now, we don't fucking know. It could be different by the time you hear this. We're on the things, except for Facebook, because that is a stressful place to be. So we're not there.

But definitely follow us slash subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com slash spectralcast. You get two bonus episodes every month, plus access to all the back catalog episodes, all for $5 a month. Imagine. And then if you want some merch, if you have merch needs, you can find us at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. Wow. And with that, let's get all the money out of this TV and have a happy ending.

Wow. And nom, nom, nom on some delicious soul food. Get all the money out of this TV and have a happy ending. Wow. And nom, nom, nom on some delicious soul food. Bye. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you.

You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs,

the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadson. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in.

Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.