The Bechdel Cast - The Road to El Dorado with José María Luna

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

This week, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest José María Luna "discover" all the problems with The Road to El Dorado. Check out José's video "Decolonizing Adventure: A Cinematic Road to El Dorado" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4gWOpSvyQ&t=36s  and here is the article we cite, "‘Road to El Dorado’ Has No Respect for History" by Olin Tezcatlipoca, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-apr-10-ca-18071-story.html  Follow José on Instagram at @josemlunad and on YouTube at youtube.com/josemarialuna See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a Mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I'm Renee Stubbs, and I'm obsessed with sports, especially tennis. Tune into my podcast each week to hear me and my friends in the community break down the latest matches, including the US Open.

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Hey everyone, this is Jimmy O'Brien from John Boy Media. I want to quickly tell you about my podcast. It's called Jimmy's Three Things. Episodes come out every Tuesday and for 30 minutes, I dive into three stories in Major League Baseball that I wanna talk about or I do a stat deep dive. Sometimes I create my own stats. It gets weird.

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I'm Steve Byrne. We are Two Cool Moms. We certainly are. And guess where we could find us now? Oh, I don't know. The iHeart Podcast Network? That's right. We're an official iHeart Podcast, and I'm super excited about it.

I am too. I thought Two Cool Moms was such a fun podcast, but now it's even more funner and cooler and heartier. That's right, it's more I Heartier. I knew it! Check your heart rate, we're here at I Heart. Yeah, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcast or on the I Heart Radio app. On the Peck Del Cast, the questions asked, if movies have women in them? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism?

The patriarchy's effin vast, start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Our glorious podcast was built by divinities by us. We are gods! We are mean. I love how this movie opens with just like, they're like, let's get into the false history moment one. Let's not waste a shred of time. Let's not waste a microsecond with the truth or scene setting.

Let's just cut to the shit we made up. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus, AKA God. My name is Caitlin Durante, also AKA God, and this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. Jamie, what is it though?

Oh boy, not that it's gonna come into play today, but no so so everyone knows It is a media metric originally created or co-created by Alison Bechtel a queer cartoonist Co-created with her friend Liz Wallace, which is why it's often called the Bechtel Wallace test because that makes sense Wallace which is why it's often called the Bechtel Wallace test because that makes sense. It originally appeared in her really funny classic comic collection Dykes to Watch Out for. It was originally used in a queer context and has since been sort of co-opted to examine how people of marginalized genders speak to each other in general. So the version of the test we use on the show is that there should be two characters of

a marginalized gender with names who speak to each other about something other than a man for at least two lines of dialogue. And you think surely that's not too much to ask, but then the movie says, no, no. Yes it is. It's actually far too much to ask. It's too much to ask.

Grow up. And here's another Elton John song. The problem, okay, we're getting to a popular request, extremely difficult movie to cover because there's just so many angles from which this movie is fucked up and the soundtrack is imprinted on my brain and I can't, like I can never remove it, unfortunately.

It is like one of those movies. We're talking about the road to El Dorado today. And we have so much to talk about that I think we should just get our guest in here. Let's do it. He's a filmmaker and video essayist. You know him from our episode on Dora and the lost city of gold.

So our resident expert on stories about gold cities. It's Jose Maria Luna. Hi. Welcome back. Welcome back. Thank you so much.. Hi. Welcome back. Welcome back. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be back here. There's so much to discuss.

I am the resident Gold City expert. Just about any friend group I'm in, that's always my job. I do. Yeah, if people are listening aren't on the matriot, it is one of my all time favorite matriot episodes. It's a blast I think we will we really we unlocked it didn't we yeah, we unlocked it on the main feed a little while later It's simply that good. Yes. Okay. Well, you can also listen for zero dollars and isn't that a treat? Yeah, they were so excited to have you back you have made

almost, you know two or three years ago now, I think you made a fantastic video that touched on the road to El Dorado significantly called decolonizing adventure, a cinematic road to El Dorado. So there was absolutely no one else we were considering for this episode. You've covered the topic so thoroughly. So if anyone hasn't seen the video, we're going gonna link it in the description. But yeah, I want to know about your history with this specific movie and also what inspired you

to put together that video, because it's so thoroughly researched. There's multiple locations. It's just wonderful. Well, thank you so much for the kind words. I have an interesting experience with this movie. I might have seen it in theaters, but I was like three years old. But I did have it on VHS and it was on regular rotation because ever since like in kindergarten

or whatever, we learn Colombian mythology. And one of the most popular myths originated in Colombia is Or the territory that later came to be known as Colombia because it is older than the country is the one about El Dorado and I was always very happy as a kid that there was a movie talking about it but even as a kid it made me very mad because talking about it, but even as a kid, it made me very mad because even when I was very young and I was like very nerdy, I could tell that the movie at no point really touched

on the actual history behind the myth, which is, it's a whole very interesting story altogether. So I would watch the movie a lot, especially because it is very charming on a surface level, then the animation is very pretty to look at. I remember that the textures of the CGI gold are like ingrained in my brain. I just wanted to reach out and touch that. And even rewatching now it's wild. I'm always like thinking about how much it influenced my games, my play time, the whole thing with controlling the Jaguar thing. I remember the ledge from which they throw the gold. I remember recreating stuff inspired by that on the bathtub with the faucet.

I don't know, a lot of the stuff is ingrained in my brain, but I remember as a kid, the movie frustrated me. So I have a long history of really engaging with the mythology. And this myth is very particular because it's not an indigenous myth. It has a whole different story altogether, but it is still like a myth. And it was originated here. And it is so often as I remark on my video divorced from its setting I enjoy talking about it and we hear particularly in Bogota we have uh I'm Colombian I don't know if we I mentioned that the subtext but we have a very close relationship with the concept of El Dorado and that inspired me to make the video in the first place because I was like oh this is a cool little history that I would love to share. Right. And I also have an interesting relationship with a lot of the stuff that I talk about in it.

So it was like yeah we should re-examine these things especially because it is such a it is one of those movies that is like very beloved by a certain millennial demographic. It's like very nostalgic to them. And including, I guess myself, it is nostalgic to me. I don't, I don't beloved it, but it is one of those movies that people treat as if it was like a, like a hidden gem.

Yeah, that is sort of like- Or an underrated classic. The narrative, yeah, because it flopped in its time and now, yeah, it feels like in the last, even like five years, there's like a huge contingency of people who are like, actually, it's awesome. You're like, no, we can leave it- To the point where- A flop, it's okay.

To the point where, when I was on the Shrek Tanik tour a few months ago, doing the show in London on Shrek, I was doing this section on the co-director of Shrek, which is a woman, and what's her name? I don't remember, oops, but she had previously worked on The Road to El Dorado, and as soon as I said that in front of a crowd of people, everyone was like, woo. And I was like, wait a minute, do people like that movie?

Cause as we'll discuss in a moment, it like missed me. I I'm like too old of a millennial to have cared about it. So I was like, wait a minute, should we cover this on the podcast? And people were clapping and cheering. So here we are. I mean, it, it really does. Yeah cheering. So here we are. I mean, it really does. Yeah, like there is a huge, I mean, most of the videos that exist about the road to El Dorado on YouTube, it was interesting going back

are pretty uncritical and are like, it's like a canonically queer movie, which it isn't, but I get why, you know, but like they're like, look at this, like it's actually good. And the best I could say for it is that it is unusual for a children's movie of that era. There's a lot of things that are not in most children's movies, including just, I mean,

the theme of colonialism in general is very prevalent, but also I think one of the hornier cartoon movies I've ever seen in my life, like it is absurdly horny. Two of the characters canonically fuck. Which I also- Multiple times. Yeah, which I do remember.

Sorry, Jose, we need to cut you off. Yeah. Oh, I just thought the conversation was flowing. We just wanted to talk about the fucking as quickly as possible. When I was showing this movie to my boyfriend who had never seen it, at one point I was like, why does the villain have like such a slutty waist?

And he was like, they all have slutty waist. Yeah, they're snatched. It's wild. It's also the fact, I mean, this movie ticks all of the boxes of colonial, completely under thought story. But the thing that really struck me this time was I was like, okay, let's look into the voice cast because it is just like nonsensical top to bottom.

Like the guy who voices Chekel Khan is Irish Italian. You're like, what? Like it was like so absurd. And then even the colonizing characters, like they couldn't be bothered to find even a Spanish actor. Like it was like, no, a British guy and an American guy. And they're in love. And then that you're just like, uh-huh, uh was like, no, a British guy and an American guy, and they're in love, and then you're just like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Jim Cummings plays Cortez. Cortez, yeah. Also the fact, I mean, of this movie is many crimes. The fact that Hernan Cortez, who you can trace 20 million deaths to, is the secondary villain of the story. Wild. Absolutely nuts. Well, okay, okay.

Caitlin, what's your history with this movie? I had never seen it before. Interesting. It came out in 2000. I was a teenager at that point, so I was like, I can't be watching animated movies right now. I'm too cool for that. I ain't a baby.

And then as I've discussed on the show before, a few years later, I came back around and I was like, no, actually animated movies are awesome. I'm 18, but I'm a baby still. And I've loved animated movies ever since. But there was that period of a few years where I missed like Mulan, I missed any movie from like 1998 till like 2003 or four,

with the exception of like Pixar movies and any other, like as soon as a lot of animated movies moved to CGI. Adults were allowed to see, I mean, I would argue that WALL-E is not for children. It's for adults, it's boring. I've never met a single, I mean, not that I'm around meeting children all the time, but like my niece, my cousin tried to put on WALL-E

for my niece and she was like, what the fuck is this? Like Hotel Transylvania 3 again please. Like that's a movie for children. Yes, yes. WALL-E came on when I was like 11 and I saw it in theaters and I cried and I remember telling the kids at school, oh, I loved WALL-E so much.

And someone was like, nothing happens in WALL-E, weirdo, and I was like, I'm sorry. It's beautiful. I mean, we should cover it. It's basically an art movie being marketed as a children's movie. But yeah, Hotel Transylvania 3. I passed a restaurant the other day that it was so genius.

They just had Hotel Transylvania 3 playing just on the TVs. And it was full of families because there is something really potent about Hotel Transylvania 3 to children. And it is the third one and I don't know why. But my cousin, I mean she's really sick of it and she's like, they put something in this movie. They put something that is, it's like a whistle

that can only be heard by dogs. Like adults cannot understand the raw appeal of Hotel Transylvania 3. Listeners with kids, please let us, I'm just curious, you can just DM me directly. Does your kid also watch Hotel Transylvania 3 five times a day? Because it seems like a common and under discussed plague

that is affecting our culture. Get there on that. Oh, sorry, and I should say, it's Hotel Transylvania 3 summer vacation. So, yeah. Oh my gosh, we should have covered it this past summer. Well, next summer, I guess. Dracula at the beach.

I understand. Hilarious. I understand why I would be laughing if I was seven. And maybe I would just be laughing in general. I don't know, I don't know. Well, let me tell, I'll tell a very quick story and then we'll get back on track. I went to go see Paranormal Activity 3, I think, in theaters with my friends, this was many years ago,

and I quickly discovered that there were creepy children in Paranormal Activity 3 and I can, I can't do creepy children in movies. So I walked out, I almost never walk out of a movie in a theater, but I was like, I can't. And I walked into a screening of Hotel Transylvania 1, I believe, and the thing is, it was in 3D and I did not have 3D glasses. So I sat through a 3D screening of Hotel Transylvania 1,

walking in probably like 20 or 25 minutes after it had already started and sat through the whole thing. And did you love it, question mark? Did you love it? It's my favorite movie now, yes. Anyway, that's my exposure to Hotel Transylvania. Incredible.

I am now looking at, and it was made by, oh gosh, I hope I'm saying his name right, Gendi Tartakovsky, and now I understand because he made Dexter's Lab and Samurai Jack, and he does put a secret ingredient in his stuff. He did Powerpuff Girls, like, okay. So they, yeah. I had no idea.

Yeah, he's directed all three, all four. What? Four? There's four? Hotel Transylvania's. That's how many Shreks there are. It's wild that he's like. Until Shrek five comes out soon. I would say he's like a really, he's a fine artist.

And yet he is also, okay. Anyway, now that we've fully talked about Hotel Transylvania 3 Summer Vacation. It's time to get back to El Dorado. I had never seen- I should have known I had to watch it for the podcast I didn't prepare. Sorry.

It's part of the prep. Part of the homework. It's part of the prep. No, but I had never seen The Road to El Dorado before and I was expecting bad things from a movie from 2000 but not as bad as what we see in this movie so I'm very excited to talk about it. Jamie, what's your history?

So unfortunately this is a three bearers situation where I was the exact right age to, I think this movie was marketed to me. I was like six or seven when this came out. So yeah, I am assuming I saw it in theaters. I remember that my, really my main takeaway was I loved the soundtrack to this movie so much. I remember that like my aunt somehow found a,

like I loved it so much that I received a karaoke CD that was like unlicensed. I have no idea where she found it. But my aunt like gave me and my brother the karaoke CD to the road to El Dorado for Christmas that year. Yeah, it's weird. I mean, it's weird because I didn't feel super attached to the story. I remember thinking like parts were funny. I generally liked the movie But it was the the soundtrack hit really hard for me my brother and I still yeah my I have like a memory of my brother who was like three when this came out and He used to sing the theme song by heart, but like with baby brains, so he would he would sing like

1000 years. Oh Like you just couldn't do the g sound um so i i have i have a lot of nostalgia attached to this movie because it was something that my brother and i both enjoyed together however it is i mean what is i think really why i'm glad the film failed I think really why I'm glad the film failed is because while, you know, if you learn and you educate yourself as you get older, it's really quickly clear that this is a pretty like dangerous approach to storytelling

and it is completely based in colonial narratives. There's narratives here that are just taking 400 year old colonial texts as reality. There is the idea that it is canon to this world that Miguel and Tulio are smarter than everyone around them. I mean, all of these things that we'll get into today. But what struck me is that at the time, I had not seen any media

that would contradict this narrative. So I just didn't know. And it's like embarrassing to admit that, but it is true. I think it's true for a lot of Americans. And just like, I mean, and just like they were poorly educated, intentionally so, on indigenous culture and on colonizer narratives. And I mean, my first favorite movie was Pocahontas,

which is a movie we will one day cover on this show. And so I was like, I was drinking the colonial Kool-Aid with these kinds of stories. And it's embarrassing, but it's also like, it's on you. I mean, Jose, you sort of say this in the conclusion to your video. It's on you to educate yourself and remove your, like I would never in my life

show Pocahontas or The Road to El Dorado to a kid now. You know, it's because I think part of the problem with these movies is that they are well made. I understand why people like them and that's what makes them dangerous. So I'm hoping that, yeah, by like having these discussions and by like continuing to educate myself and encourage other people,

like it's that the legacy of these movies will be single generation, and that we're not going to have to have decolonize this movie that was just like, it had an addictive soundtrack because Elton John, like why? There's, yeah, so I did, I really, I had a lot of nostalgia for this movie

and have intentionally not revisited it in at least 10 years because it's so deeply uncomfortable to watch and also have like, you know, your little baby brain being like, this song is awesome. And then you read the lyrics and you're like, no, it's not. There's a song in this movie called 16th Century Man. I don't believe it shows up in the text. It might be during the credits or something,

but it is like unbelievably racist. And it is just like Elton John singing one of the most racist songs I've ever heard. Yeah, this movie, like it's bad for the world. And the that it is so I mean let's get into it but yeah that's my that's my confession. I mean we are products of our environment so let's take a quick break and then we'll come back to do the recap. the recap. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

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that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiral'd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Here's the recap. I will place a content warning as we will be discussing anti-Indigenous tropes, racism, violence, things of that nature. We open on a sequence slash Elton John song about how the gods built El Dorado, which is according to this movie

and many other stories, a real place. It's a marvelous city made of gold. Then we cut to Spain 1519, where Cortes and his conquistadors are about to travel to the New World to quote unquote search for gold, aka to colonize, steal land and resources to rape, murder. This is a wild trend during this period of animation because we, like, you know, Hernan Cortes was a very real person and murdered millions of people, like we're talking a Hitler-grade villain

appearing in the cartoon movie, but this is something that I also, it reminded me of Genghis Khan in Mulan, like a real-life character. It's like, well, if you're putting this movie in such a specific moment with a real life, famously colonial murderer, would you not want to get a single fact right?

Like, why put it in such a specific context if you weren't gonna bother? I don't know. And I think like on that same note, it is interesting how from the very first moment, the movie is already having that loose approach to a very delicate history in a very subtle way. And it is that the city canonically is named El Dorado, which is a Spanish term, in which we'll probably get into the whole detail later. But it is interesting how from the very get-go, it kind of like acknowledges that it is a white perspective on ostensibly

a story set in like pre-conquest Americas. So with that and the immediate introduction of Hernán Cortés, who's not like necessarily portrayed in a positive way, but it is so loose with very real history without ever taking that seriously. It's all like a fun romp and whatever, but the undertones are very, they're sinister in a way. So sinister. I agree that it's not like he is shown as a good person. I mean, this racist song I was talking about,

16th century man, they're like, Cortez bad, Cortez, we don't like him. But he's never shown to be worse. It's implied that Chekel Khan is worse. For sure. Than a real person who was a career genocider. Yeah. Yeah.

It's absurd. And also going through the history behind this, it was like, I learned stuff because I have been so under educated about this period of history. because I have been so undereducated about this period of history. Yeah, so we learn about this upcoming conquest. Meanwhile, we meet two Spaniard dudes, Tulio, voiced by Kevin Klein,

and Miguel, voiced by Kenneth Branagh. Which, why? Wild pairing. Weird. I will say they do have chemistry together. I guess that like, I just, as an animation head, I was like, it sounds like they're in the same room together and they were, which is a good approach to animation.

That's how they record the dialogue for Bob's Burgers. I feel like you can feel it. Oh yes, yes. That said, the movie is dangerous. Yeah. I feel like you can feel it. Oh, yes. Yes. That said the movie is dangerous so they are gambling via some dice game and They win a map to El Dorado so already side note here, but the movie starts out very similar to the way Titanic starts out because we

open on a Hidden treasure of sorts either the city of Valderado or the Sheprek of the Titanic. We meet the rich villain, Cortez slash Cal, and we meet a couple of scrappy guys, one of them's blonde, one's brunette, and they are gambling and they win something that gets them closer to this treasure, a map or tickets to the Titanic. Oh my god, yeah, and they're departing from Europe to the New World. To get on a ship, to go to the... Yeah.

Oh. Whoa. Oh my god. Makes you think. I hope they end here. I hope the parallels end here. That is where the similarities end, because the... So the townspeople discover that Tulio and

Miguel had been cheating and playing with loaded dice, so they have to run away and they end up on Cortez's ship where they are discovered and imprisoned for being stowaways, but Tulio and Miguel manage to escape in a lifeboat along with Cortez's horse, Altivo. Who is voiced by Scooby, sorry. I know that we've- Oh, Frank Welker? Yeah, we've brought up Frank Welker quite a bit in the show and it is fun to find the Frank Welker where it's like, and this horse, there's one man and he can be any animal.

So, yeah, I think we should be asking Frank Welker to issue a statement disavowing himself from the movie. But I was like, of course he's the horse. I do love the design of the horse. He's like a little chunky and he has like this like his face almost looks like a cow face in how they overemphasize that. Yeah. I don't know. I love the expressions on that horse. I also had the Burger King toy of the horse as a kid. And I think I had all the toys. And watching the movie, I just feel like I'm more familiar with the toys than with the

animation design. So it's a little bit weird. Anyway, I love the design of the horse. And Frank Wilker did a great job. Should dis disavow it as you say. He should distance himself. The other beloved Bactel cast um standby that is in this movie is Tobin Bell and wait Caitlin that's Jigsaw is in the road to El Dorado and we like do have to talk about it's a small part because I have no idea who this is. Tobin Bell as Zaragoza, a sailor on the voyage to the new world of El Dorado

and the original owner of the map, which he loses to Tulio. So he's in the dice game. Oh yeah, he's the guy who discovers the ruse. Oh, which is kind of wild because in the road to El Dorado, he's playing a little game. Oh, he loves to play a little game. Tobin Bell was not reading the script carefully enough.

He's just like, oh, a little game? This is my wheelhouse. Yeah, I'll be in one scene and there's gonna be a little game. So that's where the fun facts end. But yes, Scooby and Jigsaw managed to be in The Road to El Dorado. Amazing. Yeah well okay so the characters Tulio and Miguel they end up on the lifeboat with the horse

they spend a few days stranded at sea and they nearly die but then they eventually make it to land. The movie isn't very specific about where they are but Jose Jose, you mentioned in your video that it's meant to be present-day Mexico. I think it is the, I mean, the aesthetics are a bit all over the place. I noticed that at one point they get like attacked by piranhas, which you don't get those in Mesoamerica. But I think like the implication, especially because the ship was headed to Cuba,

is that they are somewhere in the Mexican territory and all the aesthetics of the culture are very much like this Mayan, Aztec, Olmec even like hybrid. So I think it is, that's why I say it's in present day Mexico. I, but it is vague. Like the movie is not specific about. Yeah, it does feel, I mean, and Jose, I'm interested in talking about it more in the discussion, but that there is a lot of yada yada in the way indigenous culture is represented and multiple cultures are rolled into each other in a way that it's just

like, well, how are, how is like a white American gonna, will this seem authentic to a white American that has never learned anything about this? Right. And it probably will. Yeah. That's the whole. Speaking from experience, I was not,

I did not have questions at the time. Like, so yeah. So they land and Tulio still has the map to El Dorado. So they embark on a quest to find the legendary city and steal its gold. That is like their specific goal here. They are literally colonists. Yeah, for sure. Big time. And they just so happen to very conveniently land exactly where the starting point of the map is. So that's nice for the plot of the movie. And we get a montage of them traveling, they're

following the map, they're reaching the different landmarks, and they finally arrive at what they think will be the city of El Dorado, which turns out to be a big statue with some images carved into it. And I think they've been duped, but it turns out that the entrance to the city is concealed. Just then a group of Indigenous warriors show up. They are chasing a woman who seems to have stolen something. And the warriors take Miguel Tulio and the woman. This is Chell, by the way, voiced by Rosie Perez. They take them into El Dorado, this magnificent city of gold inhabited by a thriving community of indigenous people. Miguel and Tulio are seemingly taken as prisoners,

but then Zekulkan, the high priest of the city. Yeah, famous Irish Italian villain, Zekulkan. Unbelievable, just like, just flagrant, flagrant anyways. Mm-hmm, so he announces that these two men are actually gods whose arrival they have been awaiting for a long time and also worth mentioning here we'll talk about it later as well, but everyone can understand each other because the pre-contact indigenous people are speaking the same language as the Spaniards

Which is English. We all speak, yeah, I mean, it's Pocahontas all over again. Where it's like, oh, we all speak contemporary American English. Right, right. Got it. Well, Pocahontas was like bold about it. It was like, it's magic. They can understand each other with magic.

Here, they don't even bother. They don't even bother to explain it. Yeah. But magic is real in this world too. Like it's very fast and loose with like when magic is and is not real. Smoothie socks. All right, well let's keep going.

Anyway, you're right. So then Chief Tennebuck, voiced by Edward James Almos, introduces himself, though he is skeptical that Tulio and Miguel are divine beings, and he wants them to prove it, and then by mere coincidence, Tulio and Miguel seem to stop a volcano from erupting, so the people of El Dorado now fully believe that they are indeed gods. they are indeed gods. Meanwhile, Chell is let off the hook, claiming that she was trying to help these gods find their way to El Dorado. And then she overhears Tulio and Miguel revealing themselves to be not real gods, saying that if they maintain this facade, they can live like kings and steal the gold. So she tells them she won't rat them out as long as they let her in on their scheme

because she wants much more than this provincial life. And we'll talk about that as well. But yeah, I mean, but they're like, oh, well, has she lived here all her life? Does she have family? Does she have family? Does she have friends? Or does she just exist in this? Does she have this experience?

Why does she want to leave? Well, yeah. All questions, if you had them, will not be answered. Correct. Yeah, it's just like, yeah, I'm bored and the end of the conversation is like, okay, okay. It would have been even great to get that you know it's like i'm bored and horny right i'm too horny for this place i'm too horny to live here

yeah we don't know um so tulio and miguel embrace their god status and everything seems awesome until they realize that the high priest Zekulkan is About to make a human sacrifice to pay tribute to these quote-unquote gods So Tulio and Miguel swoop in to be like no no no we don't want you to kill people How about gold as the tribute? So the people start throwing in gold into this kind of whirlpool-y entrance to the spirit world, Shobalba, but then they're like, no, no, no, we want the gold near us. We want to be able to bask in it. So they agree. And then they're like, by the way, we're going to take that gold with us back to the heavens, which we're gonna do soon.

So please build us a boat so that we can get to the heavens via boat. And the chief is like, no problem. We'll build a boat for you in three days. So now Miguel and Tulio have to figure out how to keep up this ruse for three days. Tulio wants them to lay low during this time, especially because Miguel has a tendency to like cause a ruckus. And sure enough, he does not lay low. A ruckus is caused. He's causing a ruckus. He goes out into the city and he makes friends with everyone in a sequence that suggests these indigenous people

don't know how to have fun until this white colonizer comes along and teaches them how to enjoy themselves. Not only that, but these indigenous people are under the tyranny of this death spot and the white guy needs to come in and be like, hey, chill. Yeah, don't kill each other. Right, they're like me as a grifter

from a colonizing culture that aspires to steal from you and leave, listen to me, I know what's going on. It also, I mean, we're about to get into this part, but as they're found out, it's like the way the indigenous characters are treated is so baffling. I cannot get into it's Heavily hinted that the chief knows That they're con artists and he's like whatever though. Okay, take the gold you can stay in the position of God

like What it just doesn't yeah, it's yeah. Yeah. So while Miguel is out having fun on the town, Tulio and Chell are fucking. Yeah, it is not subtext, it's text. It's text that they are fucking. Canonically, yeah. They're simply fucking. This is where Chell's character goes off the fucking rails.

I don't understand why she's like, let Miguel go, like why does she do that? And then I guess because she wants to fuck Tulio. And then the second she fucks Tulio, all of her agency as a character turns into vapor. Yes. Well, that's happening. Cortez has landed in the same spot that Tulio and Miguel did, and he and the other conquistadors are making their way toward the city.

Then there's a scene where Zucko Khan makes Tulio and Miguel play sports with a bunch of these like warrior athletes, and the two guys end up cheating via an armadillo so that no one will realize that they're not gods. I honestly, I did love that armadillo. I thought that armadillo was hilarious. I loved the armadillo. The armadillo who can fly and manipulate the laws of physics. Yes, yes, yes.

And it's somehow bouncy. I love him. You're like magic. is the armadillo magic or is he just awesome? Like we don't know. We don't know. Even the, it's so weird that like even the like animal friend, if we're going into like the Disney model,

this is clearly pulling from, even the animal friend is kind of like weird and horny. You're like, why? Why? There's so many questions. I'm like, were people just too horny to make a movie that made sense? I don't know.

I don't know. And this is when Zekal Khan really starts wiling out. He's obsessed with human sacrifices and quote-unquote cleansing the city and he keeps trying to get Tulio and Miguel to sacrifice people but they always refuse. So Zekulkan is now starting to suspect that they are not gods after all. After three days the boat is finished, but Miguel is having second thoughts about going though Tulio invites Chell to go back to Spain with him and She's like what about Miguel and he's like forget Miguel which Miguel overhears So they're love a plot contrivance like this and eavesdropped

late second act this happens in Shrek. Wow. Sorry. True. There are Shrek-tanic parallels. It's one of the laziest plot contrivances, you're like, and then he was in the doorway, and he's like, my boyfriend broke up with me,

which is the subtext to it. He's like, my boyfriend broke up with me. And also, Miguel takes it so literally, where it feels so clearly like, ah, forget him, which is hurtful, but he's like, I've been dumped. He's about to move because he over-perceived breakup, which I've done, I don't know. I mean, we all have.

So now they're kind of feuding. Meanwhile, Tz'kel Khan makes some potion or something magical happens, and he brings this huge stone statue to life, which attacks the city and goes after Tulio and Miguel. But they outsmart Zekulkan and he falls into the whirlpool entrance of Chibalba, which spits him out in this lake right at the feet of Cortes. So now he gangs up with Cortes, but they don't know that and Miguel and Tulio have white savior style saved the city for now,

but they're still feuding and Miguel still wants to stay in El Dorado and Tulio still wants to go back to Spain with Chell. So he makes arrangements to leave on the boat with a ton of gold, but before he goes everyone learns that Sekel Khan is leading Cortes to the city. So Tulio comes up with a plan to destroy the entrance to El Dorado by crashing the boat into the pillars so that Cortez won't be able to find the city. Even though it'll mean they'll lose all the gold, but it's a sacrifice that Tulio is willing to make.

Which is like, it's an interesting, I was like, don't they like trade with other people? Like that was the entrance to their city. Yeah. Like what are they going to do now? Also the fact that the like all of a sudden the chief is able to almost single-handedly hold up a pillar. Oh the column? Yeah.

That weighs tons and tons and tons. He's like, yeah, no problem. This plan makes sense. Again, just like a moment where there's like 500 ways where that, and it's like, it's bad writing. And also it's just like, at no point is Chell going to give a passing shit about everyone she knows. Like it's so weird that this moment is,

I understand why, but it's like, it just reveals the flaws. It's like, well, this is the first character growth we've ever seen in Tulio, but it's ultimately, it's his idea to actually- To white savior the whole city. White savior the place that he was in the middle of colonizing. Like, yeah. It's just like very sloppily put together. the White Savior, the place that he was in the middle of colonizing.

It's just very sloppily put together. The climax is very evidently sloppily put together and it in hindsight makes the seams of the rest of the movie show a lot more. It's like, oh, it's a very contrived movie in general. It's so weird. And also, just to shout out a very 2000 element, there's clearly like, it's a mix of 2D and 3D animation in a way that's very jarring.

There's just like barrels and like CGI gold. You're like, why just the gold? Like there, it's very, I feel like there's a million early 2000s movies that are like, they won't notice, they'll love this. And you're like, like, it looks bad. Yeah, Jose, I know you said you remembered the gold, like it was very memorable,

but like seeing this for the first time, I was like, this looks like shit. Like it looks bad and weird. Like it's one of those things that I find charming because it's like, oh, it was very in its infancy, this like bland, but like there's like a lot of things that I feel like because I watched them when I was very young, like the textures really stuck with me.

Like the clouds in Hercules also have that effect on me. The jungle in Tarzan as well. I was very fascinated by that because like I could tell that they were like using something new. And I was like, I was very fascinated by it. But I was saying that, but my boyfriend who hadn't. And I was like, I was very fascinated by it. But I was saying that, and but my boyfriend who hadn't seen the movie was like, it's very weird.

It is trying. Yeah, I get it. You're not attached. Right, right. I mean, this movie, like an attachment to it does make all the difference, which is why, Katelyn, I'm kind of glad you like didn't grow up with it because there is like things that I will be like,

well, but this, and you're like, well, no, not really things that I will be like, well, but this, and you're like, well, no, not really. And I'll be like, no, no. And I was like, wow, Kayla's being such a bitch today. Classic me. It reminded me of like Star Wars prequel stuff too, where you're just like, there's all of a sudden something that is like so old, computery looking,

or when they, like when you see prequel Yoda or whatever and you're like what yeah yeah anyway so they collapse the gate the gold is spilled but El Dorado is now safe from the conquistadors and Miguel decides to join Tulio and Chell on their adventure back to Spain. The end. Very abrupt ending I will say. Yes, that too. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. My name is Manuel de Lilla. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that

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So much going on. Yeah, Jose, does anything stand out to you? Where would you like to begin? I think that obviously like removing ourselves from the movie itself, I think that the most interesting scene in it for me as the the Shibalba scene where they show the tribute, they start throwing the tribute to the whirlpool, because that is, weirdly enough, it's the only accurate scene in the whole movie regarding the myth that it's based on. In that just for, I guess that's a good place to start as any, that the myth of El Dorado is not a myth that is indigenous to the Americas. And it is rather the result of the projections that Spanish people arriving to the continent had of it, and its clash with the local culture. So basically there's this Colombian historian,

her name is Diana Uribe, and she has this history podcast, she's incredible. And she describes it as this clash between all the projections that the Spanish had of a world that ultimately ended up challenging their ability to imagine the universe. Right. These people arrive to a continent who have no notion of civilization that they have, every single notion of like geography and history and even religion. And what they end up finding does not mesh with their expectations of it. So both of those things end up clashing together and they start to see all of the local population, the local customs, everything, the culture, they start to see it through this very Eurocentric lens, like in a very literal way. So what happened when the Spanish people arrived to the Caribbean coast of what is now Colombia. So they arrived to what is now Santa Marta and Cartagena, these two coastal cities, and they start making their way down the Magdalena River to the Andes, up to the Andes.

Wait, I've always struggled. In English, people say the Andes, I think? Yeah. We say the Andes. We say the Andes. Our dumbasses say Andes. Okay. Uh, okay.

Now I just wanna say that that's what I'm talking about, because obviously I'll pronounce them like in Spanish. So they make their way through the Andes and they start hearing of this population farther down south that has a lot of gold. And they begin to process that as like, they think that gold has the same value there that it has in Europe. They think it's also monetary, when in fact the cultures here had a very different relationship with

gold. If you ever make your way to Bogota, there's the Gold Museum, which is the largest collection of gold artifacts in the world, and it is established as a way to recontextualize gold not as a commodity, but rather as an important cultural good akin to painting or sculpture. It's very much a part of their everyday lives in a more spiritual and cultural way than just money. But obviously that Eurocentric lens creates this distortion of it. And so they're like, oh, they're very rich people. And the farther down south they get, they keep hearing of this place called the Muiscas. It's called, it was the Muiscas Confederation. It was a series of populations, native populations that fell under the Muiscas government. And they

occupied present-day Bogota in like central Colombia. And either they witness or they hear or they start hearing of this ritual where in Lake Guatavita, which is this lake, it's like two hours away from Bogota, it's gorgeous, another thing that people should visit. And it's this perfectly circular lagoon that kind of looks like a meteor fell and just fill up with water. That's not what happened, but that was a theory for a while. But it kind of looks like that. It kind of looks like this big crater full with water, and it's this gorgeous like blue-green water. So it is a very mystical place in a lot of ways. And what happened there was that that lagoon was a sacred site. It was the origin of life for the Muiscas. And every time that a new leader would ascend, he would cover himself in gold dust, cross the lagoon in a raft, and submerge himself in the center of the lagoon. And then the people all around the lagoon would offer gold and would throw the gold into the lagoon,

because it was a way of, it was like a religious ceremony of tribute to the gods and to the origin of life itself. And people start hearing of this golden man or how they would call it in Spanish like El Dorado, like the golden man or the golden period because in Spanish you have tacit nouns. So this is where the El Dorado concept is born. It's from Spanish interpretation of the traditions of the indigenous population, specifically of the Muisca population. And their imaginations start running wild and they're like these people are so rich in gold that they just throw it into this lagoon so not only is there a lot of gold at the

bottom of that lagoon there's also probably a lot of gold elsewhere and again because they were expecting kind of like reserves of gold like this like piles and piles of gold like stored up instead of everyday items that they used if you go to the gold museum you see that they would wear a golden jewelry but also like I guess a lot of like different jewelry like chest plates, belts, crowns, but jars were also made of gold like the jars where they stored food and coca leaves. All these things they expect a reserve, they expect a place where gold is stored, and they keep looking for it, and they don't find it, because again, that is not the relationship

that these people had with gold. And so they begin to believe that it must be hidden somewhere, and that is how it snowballs into the perception of a city made out of gold, that is hidden somewhere in, of a city made out of gold that is hidden somewhere in, first in the area that is now Colombia, but later on the whole continent became subject of that search to the point where there were myths about it being like deep in the Amazon rainforest or even in like more like North America, seven golden cities of Sibola.

I think it's one of the ones that was in, I think like the Southern United States, Southwestern. All this to say that the one thing that stays from the origin of this myth is the scene where everyone starts throwing gold for tribute into the lagoon. Yeah. Which was what I found very fascinating as a kid

because I was like, well, they knew what they were they were adopting but like why is everything else so weird and they make a specific reference to Shabelba which is the actual name of the underworld in Maya mythology. Oh, yeah, right, but that's kind of the only thing that seems vaguely rooted in something that was actually part of actual mythology from that area.

It's really bizarre to be what this movie, because that to me demonstrates, this production had the capacity to do their homework, but even the way that that is presented is, well, how foolish is this? You know, like it's presented from the colonizer's perspective of like, well, why would you do this? You know, this is so, like it's presented in a very,

I think like pejorative way. It's- And even Shell is like, it's like kind of like, she's in on it and like, oh yeah, this is no, don't do that. Don't let them do that. Right. Like my own people are so foolish. Yeah. And it is silly in that regard, because a lot of the things that they are throwing are in fact, like the kinds of stuff that I was describing that were like of common use, like jars, pottery, well, I guess it's not pottery,

if it's not ceramics, but that kind of thing. It's like the civilization itself is kind of in that mindset of gold not as currency, but it is still being processed from the point of view of gold as currency. So it has this clash that makes it very inconsistent internally, I guess. And from that outside point of view, like you said, like they had the opportunity of like, they did research, they investigated this, but it feels like they were playing off from the very start to like the expectations of what a movie like this would be.

And the aesthetics of El Dorado within the movie are all like Mesoamerica. And it's like this like pyramids, which you know there were not pyramids around here specifically. And all these like this artistic motifs that you see a lot in Mesoamerican art, like in Aztec and in Mayan art, the designs of the gods, that kind of stuff is very much all rooted in that kind of like conglomerate of cultures, even though they are talking about something that originated in a place where the aesthetics were much different. But you know, it's not as marketable, I guess. People here didn't live in like huge, exciting pyramids. So it's not as cool to portray.

It's not as cinematic, quote unquote, you know. And Indiana Jones does the same thing in the fourth Indiana Jones movie where he also discovers the city of gold. They do the same thing, but they're in the Amazon and suddenly there's like pyramids there. I don't know. Right, all that Mesoamerican architecture.

Classic. Mass. It is, I feel like that scene is in retrospect, a clearer tell that it's like this production had the capacity to do their which is obvious you know it's a multi-million dollar production but any creative involved with this that were like well we didn't we didn't know it's like well you knew enough to authentically present something but you

presented it as if it were full it like and the rest is essentially made up it's really frustrating and I guess Jose I I wanna encourage all of our listeners to watch your full video, but I did wanna ask about where this sort of falls in, because you cover in your videos so thoroughly how frequently El Dorado comes up in the adventure genre in general, generally with white protagonists.

And where does this movie fall? Where had we seen these? Like, why did no one blink when this movie came out unless they were, you know, aware of actual history or indigenous themselves? Well, I think that part of the interesting thing about this, where this movie is at, is that it is right at the end of that wave of like 90s more sympathetic portrayals of indigenous people in movies which I think

arguably probably started with like dances with wolves in which it was like kind of like that like Hollywood notion of like why can't we all just get along you know like we're not so different which obviously it doesn't mean that the art was less flawed. It was just flawed in a different way in which we were no longer dealing with like racist caricatures, like in a lot of like Westerns. Yeah, that's something that the documentary Real Engine, which we covered a while back on the podcast examines, like this sort of shift in media for a little while as far as the way Indigenous characters were represented on screen. Still, by and large, not respectfully

or responsibly, but with a little bit more empathy. Yeah. You know, you see that a lot in like Pocahontas and then in Roe to El Dorado in that it was so that it was also meant in movies that were going to be accessible to children. It was not just going to be serious dramas like Dances with Wolves, but it was also going to be a thing that everyone could talk about in a way. And that kind of shows how naive it was from the get-go. It does have that kind of children's movie mentality of things are not as complex as they seem.

We're more similar than we are different. This can all be solved by just talking to each other, which is kind of like the resolution in Pocahontas to a very complicated conflict. Yeah, that it has no interest in portraying. Yeah, exactly. So it's just the movie comes out at the end of that wave of attempting more humanistic approaches

to portraying indigenous people. But it still has all the baggage of its predecessors. And more importantly, it carries on the tropes that by that time time people were already realizing that they were outdated. I mean, it's not like when Pocahontas came out, there wasn't any controversy there was. Probably when this movie came out,

there wasn't because nobody saw it in its original theatrical run. It was a flop. But- It was a flop compared to its budget, but it made $76 million at the box office. Oh, that's more than I thought. Yeah, it made a lot of money,

but it's just the animated movies are so expensive and comparatively, I feel like it was like, yeah, used as an example of like, Jeffrey Katzenberg doesn't know what he's doing, which is true. It almost always is. Yeah, yeah. But this is, we are counting down to Shrek. Shrek comes out in 01 and then Katzenberg says,

fuck you for all eternity, even though he's like, you know, one of the most ridiculous people to have ever lived. True. Oh, nice. But I think that it is very telling that this movie kind of on the Katzenberg end, it wanted to have it all in regards to the last 10 years of Disney. It was like, we're going to try to be more serious like Pocahontas, but we're also going

to have like the writers of Aladdin make it into like a fun adventure. And we're going to have Elton John do the songs. Elton John kind of like winging it. I'm not as, I guess I grew up with the Spanish dubs of the songs and it wasn't until very recently that I listened to the ones in English. I was like, it kind of sounds like he's making them up as he goes, but.

See at the time I was like, wow, fight, I mean, they're earworms. Look, this is where I get to find out. They're earworms. Look, this is where I get to like they're earworms No, they are very catchy a child might want the karaoke CD. It's not inconceivable They're boring there. Well, you're you know, you're not six I Do think it's I mean that is like well worth mentioning. I wanted to get to that where this writing team Ted Elliott and Terry Rosio,

they sort of specialized in this kind of colonizer narrative because they were, or in Disney in general, where the opening sequence, the way we meet Miguel and Tulio, I was like, oh, this is like a ripoff of Aladdin. And you're like, oh, well, it's the writers of Aladdin. And they also wrote The Mask of Zorro. They are credited on Trek.

Sorry, it's true. Pirates of the Caribbean. And then they went on to the Pirates of the Caribbean, yeah. Yeah, so it's like, this is kind of their bread and butter. It's like misrepresenting history to create successful or attempted blockbusters. Yeah. And you can definitely tell that they were going for that kind of Aladdin tone,

but with the added Elton John of it all, and the more serious topic, quote unquote, with Pocahontas, which was famously Jeffrey Katzenberg's attempt at Oscar gold. So yeah, it is kind of like trying to have it all in regards to that while still borrowing the problematic aspects of not only those stories, but also the ones that came before,

because it is kind of like in a way, an update on the Bob Hope and who was it with Bob Hope? Oh yes. That they would have this adventure movies, like the duo. Bob Hope and who was it with Bob Hope? Oh yes. That they would have this adventure movies like the duo. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Bing Crosby, thank you. Famously unproblematic. Yeah.

Yeah, you know. So it imports so much stuff from previous movies in an attempt to do something as good as them, quote unquote. But it does not, in doing so, it imports all these like problematic elements that also feel end up feeling incredibly disjointed, like narratively. And every one of the three main indigenous characters are like a different stereotype, like infamous stereotype in a way. Like, you know, you have like the jolly kind of like himbo-ish chief who is just wants everyone to get along

and you have like the fear mongering evil priest who's magic and magical, generically magical and mystical. It is a pretty comprehensive, you know, indigenous tropes 101, like most are present in this. Yeah. Right. And like even Pocahontas had like, you felt like it had like actual characters, even if they were like surrounded by a baffling movie

in hindsight in a lot of ways. But you know, you could feel that they were characters. Here, they just feel like these tropes that by then were already feeling very tired. For sure. And obviously the cornerstone of the whole conversation because this is the Bechtel cast after all is Chell. Right.

Who is... Who's just like has a colonizer's brain put into an indigenous body out of context. Like why? It even goes to her design. She is the only indigenous character in the movie that does not have a cartoonishly exaggeratedly pronounced nose.

You know, because Sekel Khan looks almost like the Native Americans in Peter Pan, levels of cartoonish exaggeration of racial features, like the cheekbones and the nose and like the forehead, they all feel very reminiscent of that like racist cartoon caricaturization of a whole like ethnicity. Right. Yeah, her features are anglicized. Yeah, I mean, my boyfriend, when he first saw her, I'm gonna steal a lot of jokes from my boyfriend. Sorry, I watched it with him.

What are boyfriends for? Yeah. He was like, why does she look like New Yorkan? I was like, she's voiced by Rosie Perez, and he's like, called it. Right, they designed the character around Rosie Perez versus the story. She's the only one that does not have

overly pronounced indigenous features, but she's just the right amount of like, exotically designed, so as to be sensual and seductive and very sexually available to the first white man that she meets. Unbelievable, yes. Let's get to that. I just wanted to really quickly mention how,

just in terms of like where this falls in animation, I think the, I've never, I don't know, maybe I just haven't looked into it enough, but this movie does feel very much in conversation with a Disney movie that makes a lot of the same choices that came out at the same year and was successful, The Emperor's New Groove, which also, I mean, it's down to the production changes that were made

because The Emperor's New Groove, you know, like you've have maybe seen it, another movie I have a lot of nostalgic attachment to. Same, that one I did love as a kid, like an adulterated love, and I still have a lot of love for it. Unfortunately, it is funny. And it is a better movie than this.

As a movie, it is a lot better. No, it's definitely a more fully realized story, but it also is still a Americanized, colonial lens view of the Incan Empire. I think that something that kind of saves it is the fact that there is not a colonizer narrative. All of the characters are Peruvian, even though they are voiced by David Spade and John Goodman.

But what I thought was interesting is, first of all, that these movies came out the same year. There was clearly some internal interest in representing indigenous cultures badly, and that there is the same change at a certain point in production, where I didn't know this about The Road to El Dorado. I knew it about The Emperor's New Groove,

because there's a whole really interesting documentary about it. A sweat box, incredible. Yes, really great. If you haven't seen it, I'm pretty sure it was made by Sting's wife at the time, which is wild. But there's so many similar things that I think are very much pulling from the success

of The Lion King in Toy Story, where it's like, I mean, especially The Lion King, where it is a group of white creatives presenting a very serious story about a culture that is not their own, and then bringing on a huge pop star to write the music. That is the Lion King playbook, To a T. It was very successful with the Lion King, and you see these sort of failed attempts

to recreate that magic in a way that gets increasingly offensive over time. And so by 2000, you get The Road to El Dorado by Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was involved in The Lion King. And then on the Disney side, you get The Emperor's New Groove. And both of these movies were pitched as very serious and were meant to be more like The Lion King

in like the culture they're representing. And this isn't to say that The Lion King got it right. You can listen to our episode about it, but the movies were pitched with a very serious tone, tested horribly, and then were switched to be American comedies that took place in indigenous cultures, but presented a completely colonial, Americanized,

Western sensibility and sense of humor, and that happened to both of those movies. This movie was originally in, The Road to El Dorado was in production for a long time. It was not pitched as a comedy and then it was changed when they're like, well, this movie's a fucking mess, which I'm sure it was, but they're like, okay, we're just gonna turn it into a comedy

and kind of forget everything else. We'll turn it into a different mess. Yeah. I think it is also, it is also interesting that you bring that up because yeah, I was also thinking of Empress Negru, but they both came at a time where right after like the Latin invasion in terms of, you know,

you have Ricky Martin and J.Lo and all this like the Macarena. You have all these- Top three. Yeah, exactly. That's cultural exports, important cultural exports. Exports, both Ricky Martin and J.Lo are American. But it is like the Latin invasion of in mainstream culture of like music and stuff. And they start to realize that like the Latin invasion in mainstream culture

of music and stuff. And they start to realize that the Latino public in the US is not negligible. They can't cater to it. And I think Emperor's New Groove was actually the first Disney movie to open in Spanish in the US as well as in English. There was this notion of, in some way,

that this desire to cater to Latino audiences without really getting Latino or Latino adjacent voices and in a figurative way, not like literal. Although in the case of Emperors New Groove, very literal, they didn't even get any Latino voice actors. But you was unlike later on when they would try this again with Coco or Encanto or all these other pieces of media that were in some way courting a Latin American perspective, a Latin American public, I mean, with a perspective.

They didn't have that here. So those two movies are very good examples of that, right? Of what happens when you have this desire to explore these other cultures without giving a seat on the table to the people who come from those cultures. And it gets even more complicated when it comes to indigenous cultures, because obviously there is a difference

between the Latino population and the indigenous population of Latin America. And that is something that a lot of Americans and like the mainstream, those were not the conversations that we're having. So that's why the Hispanic characters in the movie are voiced by white guys and the indigenous people are voiced by Latinos. Well, two out of three. Right, there was the Irish Italian guy. Yeah. Let's not forget.

Yeah. So it is an interesting moment in regards to all the conversions of all these different waves and ongoing desires of the industry that aged very badly because they were not done with like that kind of openness to perspective, just openness to consumers. For sure. Yeah, let's unpack all of that via starting with Chell first.

She is the one woman we meet in the entire story. Shell exists in an unprecedented void. Like a void heretofore unseen in movies before and since. Truly, so it's not even though she's like, not like the other girls because she's, has a colonizer mindset. She's the only girl. We don't even meet the other girls.

We don't have a comparative, you know, we don't meet. There's another woman mentioned, but she's very much like, what is the name of the character? Like Mrs. Smurf. Like I'm like, are there, we see other women in passing, but I don't think that another woman really speaks. Yeah, I mean, we don't think so. Yeah.

Nor do they have a name. Like this fails the Bechdel test on every single possible metric. An attempt was not made. It's wild. No, not even. We don't even learn her name for a while. We learn very little about her and her backstory. The only thing we really learn is her interest in capitalism and colonialism. We'll get to that in a moment. And having that presented as agency too is really tricky. Yeah. Right. She is hypersexualized the way that many indigenous women and women of color in

general are represented in media, especially compared to their white counterparts. And then like part of the way she convinces the two men to let her in on their scam is that she's, you know, being hyper seductive and flirtatious and, you know, influencing them using her feminine wiles, that kind of thing. So not only in her character design and costuming, but also her behavior as she hypersexualized. And earlier versions of the script, I read, that she was sexualized even more. She had even steamier love sequences. She was even more scantily dressed as far as her clothing design. Unfortunately, you can find a lot of early concept art

of Chell and early half animated sequences with her and Tulio. And you're like, it's wild. It is. Yeah, I actually, maybe don't. Maybe don't. Don't watch it. But it is true, yeah.

Yeah, and then during some rewrites of't, maybe don't. Don't watch it. But it is true, yeah. Yeah, and then during some rewrites of the script, the romance between her and Tulio was toned down and new clothing was designed for her. And worth repeating that the hypersexualization of indigenous women in media has real world consequences where indigenous women are raped, abducted, murdered at disproportionately high rates.

I feel like this trope that we see all the time encourages the interpretation that this abuse, this disproportionate abuse is brought on by them and brought on by their presentation. And that, which is frustrating because women should be, maybe not in a kids movie, but like, women should be able to present however they like. But it's because these are white guys, these are the guys that wrote Jasmine,

who are also writing Chell. I know a different animation company, but there's a lot of the same players. And I do feel like when people are presented in children's media as more promiscuous than white European people, that it is like the subtext to it is like, so if anything happens to them,

it's because they were presenting this way. They were not, whatever, enough. And that is, I feel like, really present in Chell. And then you're like, well, at least her character. And then you're like, well, just kidding. Just kidding, because her character also, I think, I have seen some reclaiming, but it goes with, Jose, what you were talking about earlier,

the narratives that have sort of popped up in the last half decade of this being a gem, a hidden gem of like, well, you know, Chell, sure, there's a lot of tropes present, but is she not an active character? And the answer is like, well, she's active to a point. The second she's in a relationship with Tulio, her agency completely goes away.

And the ways in which she's active is with a colonizer mindset. So it's like, I don't think that, you know, like she's particularly reclaimable is like, well, you miss watched it. Right. Yeah. You miss watched it. Right. Yeah. You miss watched it.

With Shelly in particular, I think she calls to, there's this figure in Mexican culture named La Malinche. I don't know if you know about her. I don't think so. So she was, this is Mexican culture, so it's not my own forte. But yeah, OK, just confirmed it. She was the indigenous woman, like the Aztec indigenous woman who served as Cortes' kind

of like guide and interpreter. And at first she was kind of like framed, like during the colonial era, she was kind of like framed like as an ideal, like kind, almost like a noble savage kind of thing. And she ended up marrying, I don't want to get this wrong. Again, not my culture, but it is something that I am. Okay, she ended up marrying a colonizer from the expedition, not Cortes himself.

That was almost the mistake that I made. Oh, she actually had a son with Cortes, actually. Oh, but so for a while, it was kind of like she was kind of like a noble savage figure. And then after the Mexican War of Independence, she became reframed as more of a kind of like a traitor. Because she aided in a lot of ways to the colonization of what is now the Mexican territory and like the end of the Aztec empire. And to this day in Mexico, it is kind of like an insult. Like when someone calls someone a malinche, it's specifically a way of calling them like

either a traitor or like to use internet slang, kind of like a white man's whore in a way. So I feel like Chell in a way is very much a Malinche figure, which is weird. I don't even know if they were aware of that, but she kind of plays us one as kind of like this woman who in my opinion, she didn't necessarily be be demonized or anything because she was also part of a probably very,

like she was probably coerced in a way into all of this. We can't know. Right, because I think that she was a teenager when she met Cortez and all of these things where it's like, I'm sure that she is inappropriately maligned, but that's the way like this movie is so in conversation with Pocahontas where, I mean, and Pocahontas almost,

I mean, I don't wanna say that Pocahontas does this better. It does it wrong in a different way, but like, I feel like Chell is presented so uncritically as like, you know, playing into third wave feminism tropes around like, well, she's sassy. And she like pushes back and she stands up for herself. So she is a feminist character. And it just like falls under a microsecond of scrutiny because she is presented yet hyper sexualized with a colonizer mentality that I have no idea how she would even, you know, like it's just, it's like nonsensical where even if she were, you know,

a rebellious teenager coming from El Dorado, like rebellion would not look like a place she doesn't know exists and like fully, and like, you know, they're like embracing their, and like fundamentally understanding know, they're like embracing their and like fundamentally understanding from moment one, their values and goals. Like it's just she's so underwritten. And, and yeah, ultimately, I think like you're saying like presented as like, it's the right thing for her to go to Spain in the same way that it's presented at the end of you know, Pocahontas.

Well I guess it's not for I guess, I'm talking about Pocahontas two, where it's way that it's presented at the end of Pocahontas. Well, I guess it's not, I guess I'm talking about Pocahontas 2, where it's like, it's Pocahontas moving to England, she's just a fish out of water. This is funny, this is weird. And I feel like these narratives are, I mean, not only is the history done, not at all, and presenting the colonizer's mindset, I mean, not only is the history done, not at all, and presenting the colonizer's mindset,

but it also presents in the same way of what you were saying before, Jose, of, well, we just need to talk to each other. And that completely erases any previous historical power dynamic between, it presents all cultures as having experienced equal power throughout history and like erases any reason why these comp like it's just it's like fantastical thinking right and to an earlier point as far as

like her being kind of mapped on to that woman who was later considered a traitor, that is very much what Chelle is doing. She's betraying her own people by like sneakily helping the Europeans because her intentions are capitalistic even though she would have no frame of reference for that ideology, but she wants a portion of the gold for herself. She negotiates, girl boss. Right, like the ways in which she is an active character and who has agency, like the context for it is like very girl boss stuff. So it's not good or feminist.

You know, she's helping these white Westerners do colonialism, she's presented as believing that her people, her communities, customs are just too quaint. They're too, they're uncivilized actually. And she wants to join these Westerners, these colonizers on their adventures. Because she's like, I wanna go to Spain with you. But historically, when indigenous women

were taken to Europe, they were being stolen and trafficked. And then again, she's shown as seducing Tulio and they're having consensual sex in the movie. But again, in reality, white colonizers were routinely raping and murdering indigenous women. So it's just rewriting all of that history. It's just like a complete void. It's yeah. And because she's positioned as a love interest for Tulio because women can't exist in a story without being the love interest of a male hero. This movie does not pass the Ali Nadi test created by friend of the pod Ali Nadi, which if listeners aren't familiar,

it is a test that in order to pass a piece of media has to have a main character who is an indigenous slash Aboriginal woman who does not fall in love with a white man and who is not raped or murdered at any point in the story. So because she falls in love with a white man and has a colonizer mindset, huge failure of the Ali Nadi test.

And she has to be saved by him at the end. And then she's removed from the action toward the end whenever like the giant statue is attacking Tulio and Miguel. So just like tropes on top of tropes on top of tropes. I think that like what characterized that specifically this moment that we were talking about in terms of indigenous representation, I guess with a lot of also ethnic and racial minorities, it was this condescension of kind of like not, not giving these characters the opportunity

to be like real characters. And they just had to like wholly depend on these other narratives that were empathetic in name. But again, that condescension kind of makes it all fall flat. It just ends up feeling, which I think it's like, I think one of the movies that tried to do this and succeeded to like more than the others, I guess, is Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame,

in which a lot of the problematic elements of the depiction are kind of written into the story, but the way the character herself is portrayed does not necessarily fall into this condescension. I think that's what makes Esmeralda in Hunchback of Notre Dame kind of like an outlier in this specific era of animated movies, animated children movies about racial tensions.

What a wild subcategory. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird that it happened so many times. Yeah. But, and I know that portrayal that I'm referencing positively also has a lot of issues, but here you don't even get like that kind of actual agency or taking the character seriously in a way that kind of makes her memorable beyond. Her design is very memorable for not great reasons. You can trace a lot of like, I mean, I think so much of why this movie is thought of like

pleasantly in retrospect is because it seems like connected to the three main characters. A lot of people had sexual awakenings connected to those characters. Which I can respect I guess, but. Yeah. It's like that's your truth, that's your truth. It does not make the movie good.

Or a hidden gem or underrated classic. Yeah, I feel like there is so much of movie criticism. It's just like, just because it made you horny when you were 10 doesn't mean that it is a good or culturally valuable movie. But I think that that is a lot of unfortunately, and I'm sure we've been guilty of this at some point, a lot of millennial film Criticism boils down to it made me horny when I was 10 and therefore I will do it Olympic backflips to find a way to declare this movie as

Technically great and you're like that's no you got horny when you were 10 stop that congratulations like Where a lot of us are in the same boat. The characters are hyper-sexualized. I think Chell obviously is, because she's the only woman and she is very scantily clad, which also the other women we see but don't hear speak are not. So she's also othered in the way that she,

like she's not wearing the same kind of outfit that others are. And it kind of ties into that her features are also not as sure right like phenotypically indigenous as the other unspeak like non-speaking women. Yeah that's the word that I was looking for. Who are all presented as, I think, mothers, because we mostly see them around children. But there's no other woman in the story that not even has narrative agency, but just does anything. It's wild. They're non-entities, essentially.

Yeah. It's incredible. Even at that point, that must have felt very dated. That tapers into something I wanted to acknowledge, which is that there were always haters of this movie. And from the moment it was released, there were protests done on the representation of indigenous culture outside of screenings.

I don't think that that was the reason that this movie failed financially. Most of the criticism you can find from the movie at the time was like the movie isn't very good versus it is perpetuating a very colonizer racist viewpoint. So it suffered from a lot but I wanted to just revisit this op-ed published in the LA Times When this movie came out from a writer named Olin Tuscali Poca who was at the time the director of the Mexica movement and Indigenous rights education organization specifically about people of Mexican and Central American descent And this was published around the same time

that there were, I think, driven by, but not defined by the Mexica movement, protests of this movie and the way that it portrayed indigenous culture in general. And I wanted to just read from it because I feel like it's really easy for us to characterize now like, oh, well, in hindsight, we can see that this was wrong when very often

those criticisms were very present and just not talked about very much when the movie actually came out. So the piece opens by, well, I'll just read from it. There's a lot worth reading. Imagine you're living a couple of centuries in the future and have never heard of World War II or Nazis. Further imagine that you're

being shown a movie about the Nazi commandant portrayed as a happy-go-lucky romantic guy at a concentration camp. This is a recreational Jewish camp where everyone is picnicking and having a great time. Fritz, who is the character that the writer is naming, whatever, is constantly looking to get rich off the Jewish campers and they freely offer him their gold fillings, Swiss savings accounts, and other valuables. He meets an evil rabbi who wants the valuables for himself and a beautiful Jewish girl who offers herself as a sex toy. Without ever mentioning World War II,

Nazis, or the Holocaust, the film ends with Fritz living happily ever after with the wealth he has acquired from the Jewish people at the camp. This racist sexist scenario of lies is the equivalent to what is being done to us, the indigenous people of Mexican and Central American descent by the new animated film, The Road to El Dorado.

Steven Spielberg's dream works and Universal Studios present the story of two Spaniards who stow away to the new world in the 16th century and wind up saving the village of El Dorado from a powerful priest intent on carrying out human sacrifices. This is an outrage given the reality that the Spanish conquerors were responsible for the genocide of 23 million of our people killing 95% of our population. The film makes it look as if we were immoral and evil when it was the Spaniards who were immoral. They stole our gold, labor, and land. They raped and culturally castrated our population, enslaving us to

their Spanish names, language, and interests. DreamWorks is claiming that the film is a complete fantasy fairy tale, but the scenario of the concentration camp above would never be accepted as a complete fantasy fairy tale by anyone. DreamWorks thinks it's acceptable here because the story is only about indigenous people. They have no respect for our people, no shame. And the piece goes on, we'll link it in the description to this episode, but it's clear that since this movie came out, people have been understandably outraged

about it and hearing it compared to the Holocaust in that way. I mean, we are talking about a genocide of equivalence and the fact that one is, you know, that because it is an indigenous population, everyone is happy to accept the narrative being presented. Right. It's like so sad because we are already coming in at the end of like, not at the end, but like at the,

we are coming in after like decades and decades of stories that perpetuate those exact like mistruths surrounding the colonization of the Americas that have become so normalized to the point that people just assume that certain things were, are as depicted in these kinds of stories, which were started relatively shortly after the conquest in order to perpetuate this idea of civilization, this idea, like this kind of like white man's burden-esque idea that I feel like is very present in the movie.

That is literally one of my notes that is super white man's burden codedesque idea that I feel like is very present in the movie. That is literally one of my notes that it's super white man's burden coated. Not even coated. It's just straight up kind of that. Textual. It's very textual and the way that these stories keep perpetuating things that are assumed, like just taken for granted. Like the whole human sacrifice aspect that has become a huge component of stories about indigenous people, which like in a lot of ways they exaggerate and if human sacrifice was happening indeed in the Americas, like, yeah, that is, I guess, bad, obviously, but it is not a thing where the Europeans coming in had any moral authority in regards to handling it, because not only did they carry out a genocide, but like human sacrifice to appease gods is what the Spanish Inquisition was all

about. And that was in full swing at the time that this movie takes place. So it always reframes things in a way that when you hear about the Spanish Inquisition, it's like, oh yeah, that's messed up. But you hear human sacrifice and it's like, oh yeah, that's messed up. But you hear human sacrifice, and it's like, oh yeah, it was a battle between two evils. There's this whole series of myths that are told to justify it.

Oh, but so many tribes allied themselves with Cortes to take down the Aztec empire. And it's like, yeah, but do you know that because of stories written by the Spanish people that were like, probably forcibly recruiting soldiers, native soldiers in order to do this, or like they were welcomed as gods things, which has never been present in indigenous narratives about their own history, but is always present in these kinds of stories when there is no actual historical evidence

that Europeans were ever taken in as like gods when they arrived to the new continent. Right, that's a story that they indicated, yeah. They told themselves, it's like this thing where in, I don't know the specifics of it, but in certain indigenous narratives, I don't remember exactly where, I know they were Mesoamerican, but in certain indigenous narratives, I don't remember it totally well. I know they were Mesoamerican, but the whole thing was like, oh, they thought they

were being received as gods because they were being received with these ointments and this incense type things and stuff. But in reality, it's just that they just got off a ship and they smelled really bad. And so they were kind of purifying the air around them and they thought it was a sign of honor. I don't know if this is like actually based on historical narrative, indigenous historical narrative, but it kind of demonstrates that like, notion that there are always going to be different sides to this official story regarding the colonization of the Americas. And it does not do anyone any favors to mis-portray them, even if you're elevating them to the realm of fantasy. Which it's not like, it might be a fairy tale.

It might be like a fantasy story, but you are participating in not only the retelling, but the perpetration of this, is perpetration a real word? Sorry. Yes. Perpetrating. I think so. Yeah. You're perpetrating the stories in the first place.

Like you're making sure that they keep getting told, that these lies or these like racist myths keep getting told. And that is just a disservice to the victims of the genocide that was brought forth by colonization, but also to the ongoing consequences of it. The fact that, you know, indigenous people in all across the Americas are still subjected to systemic discrimination, to disproportionate poverty, to sexual violence. These are all, all in one way or another, part of this story that is like this animated kids movie. Like in any other movie, I would like this kind of ending of like,

oh, well, we don't have anything, but we're going to keep going and adventure and whatever. It's like, I like that sentiment. But if it follows like 90 minutes of these people taking their white man's burden over this fictional indigenous culture, it just ends up bringing very hollow. Like the people did not venture there with nothing and just make their luck. They actively stole, they actively ravaged, they murdered, they kidnapped, et cetera. And it just makes me kind of angry, despite how charming the movie might be at points.

That's like, it's the friendly colonizer that, again, it's like, because we know that these characters, they're being presented in a way that's palatable, they're being played by white movie stars. Like, everything is setting us up, or setting up an uninformed audience, which I think the majority of this audience would have been.

To their children. Right, to swallow it whole, because you're like, oh, well, this is the funny guy, because the music and the animation and the focus is telling me that this is the person I should be rooting for. And yeah, it's like giving, I mean, even Cortez receiving I think at

best neutral press you know over 400 years later is unbelievable it's that he is not the primary villain and that an indigenous character is yeah a heavily trope the primary villain yeah the magical sinister right right perpetuating that trope of the magical, mystical, indigenous person. The elements of El Dorado's culture that we are shown, some of which is pulled from real indigenous culture, some of which is made up, is like it's ultimately shown to be beautiful, but silly. And the Jebaba sequence is like played for comedy.

It's played for like, why would you do this? And does no examination into why this was a real practice. Or I mean, Jekyll Khan's character, any element of the religion that's present is shown to be a force of evil. And the reason that we are supposed to like Shell, she has no connection to her culture at all. The reason that we're rooting for her is because,

and like the times we are laughing is because she's engaging with capitalism. Like that is like her only like he, he gotcha moments are her Negotiating right it's ridiculous. So even when we are shown, you know an attempt at culture It's always like with this implied eye roll of like well, of course, this doesn't work Of course, this culture is not present today Because it's silly not because it was willfully extinguished. Eradicated.

Yeah. Right. And the idea that in some way two white guys participated in preserving a part of this, the culture. Right, by stealing off the city from the contested or... Protecting it from exactly, it's just so in poor taste. The example in the op-ed that you mentioned, Jamie, really drives a point home. Just because these figures are so historically separated

from us by time does not mean that they are fair game for this. Right. And in fact, it ends up being in very poor taste when you realize the consequences of the events portrayed in the movie, even if they're portrayed from like this whimsical fictional point of view. Yeah, I want to, unfortunately, I do want to call back to that song 16th Century Man, that I'm glad doesn't have greater prominence in the movie, but I feel like it just really betrays what this movie's beliefs are rooted in because Elton John wrote and recorded

This oh, it's great to see our homeland breathe the iberian atmosphere just because we're we are hispanic doesn't mean we're oceanic Quite frankly, we've had water up to here We've made waves to last a lifetime. We've been saturated almost drowned We are spanish not caribbean. We are Spanish, not Caribbean. We are human, not amphibian. We'll seek our fortunes on Spain's solid ground." Just on the soundtrack of this movie. And it's unbelievably violent and dismissive

and like comparing Caribbean people to- People to amphibians? Yeah, to animals. Animals? Like just saying like Spanish people human, indigenous populations, not. Not. That's just In-N-Out and John song.

I need to talk to, who was this? Tim Rice who did the lyrics? Let me check, that is a good question. It was Tim Rice. Okay. I need to have a conversation with Tim Rice. You have to sit him down. Sir Tim Rice, we need to talk.

Well, even a song that is in the movie and not in whatever, like a credit sequence, I think it's happening when they are like montaging their way through the forest and the lyrics are about how they're blazing a trail and going into uncharted territory, which like pushes that false narrative of Western discovery, erasing the fact.

And they're coming upon like clearly manmade structures. And it's like, we are the first to be here. And it's like, well, who made those? Like, it's just erasing the fact that indigenous people had already been there for millennia, but that doesn't match up with their narrative that they have to push that, no, we discovered this. Well, Jose, that I think connects back to

what your video from a few years ago is about, that so many, even though this movie wasn't particularly successful, that Hollywood adventure movies are rooted in this very colonial mentality of discovery, not claiming something that is not yours. I mean, I know you talked about Indiana Jones, you talked about Tintin,

you talked about all of these sort of famous, I know Tintin's not American, but all of these famous Western and European narratives that present this very uncritically. Yeah and it it hurts a little because you know this is a genre that I've always really enjoyed. I've always liked the idea of it and it it pushed me to like learn about like geography and about like all these like ancient wonders of the world and stuff like that because I like the idea of these journeying to different places and for the sake of adventure and all. And obviously growing up you start to realize that a lot of it pushes these

colonialist narratives of discovery, of pillaging, of all these real world atrocities in a way that are just kind of, you don't think about that much because Harrison Ford is incredibly charming and hot. And Harrison Ford, please call me. But apologize for some of your movies. But I do love Indiana Jones movies. And I do think that it is interesting that my favorite one is The Last Crusade.

And I mentioned this in the video. It is the best one. See, and that's something I have no attachment to whatsoever. And you're like, these are racist, next. But what I like so much about that one specifically is that he kind of realizes that not everything needs to be discovered, that not everything has to be in a museum, that you can leave things alone. And he only discovers that when the item in question is like the Holy Grail, it's

like part of, in a way, his upbringing, his Catholic or Christian upbringing. I really like that, and I feel like that opens the doors up for all sorts of different stories that can indulge in all these fun things that we love about the adventure genre that this movie clearly has a love for, in that whole song about blazing the trail and everything. That's the charm of these stories, But we can engage with them in a way that does

not alienate real cultures that does not like treat them as the reason why I made the video specifically surrounding the city of gold narrative and the Eldorado narrative is that it is a great encapsulation of, you know, Europeans just made up a place and then just destroyed like the continent looking for it. And now it has become like this like stand in for a lot of real cultures, a lot of real places that were lost to colonization. They're not lost geographically, they're lost

because they were destroyed by colonization. And there are a lot of ways to indulge in the, in the genre, to explore the genre in ways that reconnect real people with real lost things instead of having to make them up instead of having to, to make up these cultures to make fun of them. Such as Moana, which I know you bring up in your video and you're big fans of that movie. But even that- I mean, not without its problems. It was made by white filmmakers. But it is the step in like, oh, she's discovering something about her own past, about her own

culture and she's setting off to find it because it was at some point stolen. And it was at some point like misplaced or something like that. I love that. I love that angle. And obviously, Moana was still made by white guys and by the Disney corporation, but it is a way of having more of being aware of the art that you're making and the consequences, the real world consequences that they have. Right.

I do love Moana. I know. It's so good. I'm so excited for Moana too. I know, but I, well, this is a whole other thing, but they did not get Lin-Manuel Miranda to write the music. The only thing he's good for writing music for Moana. Oh, they got like TikTokers.

Yeah. Or something. Yeah. They got like TikTokers. Yeah, I was like, prospects, if they fuck up Moana, I just, I don't know what I'll do. Yeah, I don't know. I guess, yeah, I don't understand more than ever. I mean, like the reclaiming of this narrative is never quite tracked for me.

I understand that there is a nostalgia, but I wish ultimately that there was a step back in general from conflating nostalgia with morality, which is what I think a lot of these reclaiming narratives have to do is like that it is the morally upright and correct thing to, you know, say that this movie is doing something that it very clearly is not, or that like you're just not watching it correctly. It's like nostalgia should be removed from a critical view. That's like what we attempt to do all the time,

and it's fucking hard, you know, but this movie feels like a particular one where it has been aggressively reclaimed, I think by focusing on elements of the movie that are more fun and kind of yadda yaddaing the rest of being like, well, sure, it doesn't hold up. Well, sure, it is racist. Well, sure, it is technically really sexist as well, but they're basically gay, right?

And like, that is the thing. That is what you see. And I agree. I agree that, yeah, they are boyfriends. They are, like, there is a very bisexual energy. I guess to shout out that element that definitely seems to stand out to people is like, they, I don't know, maybe they have this weird colonial polycule by the end of the movie where the only canonical couple

is a hetero couple. But I get it, Tulio and Miguel are boyfriend coded. They're taking naked swims together. They are weeping and saying, you made my life an adventure. You made my life rich. They are very touchy,, you made my life an adventure, you made my life rich. They are very touchy, I think more than you would see a lot of, you know, a lot of cartoon characters in general. They're very touchy with each other.

They're very, like, I totally understand, and like, I can't, like, it is a very horny movie. I understand the argument that these are by characters. Obviously, they're not, not like canonical by characters, but spiritually I get it. But the takeaway being that like bisexuals can also colonize is just such a non-starter. Like, yeah.

But does that make it a good movie to show to children? I just don't think so. I don't know. to show to children, I just don't think so. I don't know. No. Yeah. I mean, again, I understand. I have my movies that I get sore when someone critiques

them in a way that it hurts my nostalgia. But I've never understood the impulse to be just overly protective about them in a way, to morally justify them. Yeah, right. Like, yeah, we all liked problematic things when we were kids. A lot of kids' media doesn't always age well.

It's like, might be all you had, like whatever. Yeah. You form a relationship with it and that's like perfectly fine, but I don't think it does ourselves any favors to just act like that makes them secretly great and moral. And I don't know, I like breaking apart things that I like, so I can't relate to the impulse necessarily.

That's why we do this podcast. Yeah, we love to ruin others good times. But it is like, I mean, it does feel very, yeah. This movie feels like a standout of like, it's unusually bizarre at that. And not even moral, but a lot of the reclaimings are like, this is actually a well-structured way, which is like, there's, as far as I'm concerned,

there's no argument there. It's poorly written. It is very badly written. Like everything in the plot happens out of like a coincidence. Yeah, over, it's all, and I guess because we have co-writers of Shrek, they also recycle the convenient eavesdropping.

It is also there. Woman who exists out of contact. I mean, Fiona may be a more fully realized character and isn't that a shame. But yeah, these writers love to have two men and a lady. I mean, a lot of writers love to have two men and a lady. Or a man, a donkey and a lady. Right, I guess, yeah.

Or a man, a monkey and a lady in the case of Aladdin. I mean, this is- Tales as old as time. They've got they've got a playbook. It is generally successful but I think like these are not the writers you hire to talk about colonial history. They're out of their depth and you can feel it and also I mean I don't know because this movie was said like the Emperor's New Groove again, was said to be heavily rewritten. So it's really hard to trace things to even a single person or the credited writers.

I mean, kind of, this is a movie where it's like, God knows who wrote this. Jeffrey Katzenberg himself just at one point said, fuck it, and sat down at the typewriter with his Diet Coke. He worked all night. Yeah. He jailed for him.

I just got Jeffrey Katzenberg a couple of years ago. I feel like this didn't make, you know, this didn't break out of the local sphere. But like Jeffrey Katzenberg marched down to Los Angeles City Hall saying that he had the, he knew how to solve the homelessness crisis. And I was like, shut up, walk into traffic. Like shut up, you fucking loser.

Yeah, part with one of your billion dollars. Like, but he marched down to city hall and he's like, folks, I've figured it out. And you're like, you're like burning hell. No one should ever listen to Jeffrey Katzenberg about anything, let alone heavily systemic social issues. Just like the fucking gall. I hate him. Anyways, anything else to say about the road to El Dorado 2000? Chief Tanabuck is, I believe, the only fat character in the movie, and he

is depicted in a way that- That has a speaking role, at least. At least it has a- Right. And he is depicted in a way that has a speaking role at least at least that has right and he is depicted in a way that many fat characters often are in media which is that you know he's very jolly and and friendly and kind of a doofus and even though he seems to realize that these characters aren't gods he doesn't care he's too good natured to care about that. And it just felt like a very tropey depiction of that. It frustrated me when Miguel is like, Oh, yeah, sorry, my mistake or something. And the chief kind of like cheekily is like, Oh, it's great to where is to be human or to where is human, whatever. Because in any other movie, I would like that callback a lot I think like that little moment between them is very cute but also it's like dude why are

you going along with this ruse how does it benefit you yeah what is what is the point of this right you're just basically endorsing him stealing your materials your gold and like and and it's very telling that the two indigenous characters we are meant to have an emotional attachment to are the chief and Shell who both are pro their community being colonized by these random fucking liars. Like that scene, I did not remember that scene and you're like, not that it is much better to play

that he is so ignorant that he could not see what was happening, but they're like, why bother saying that? And he knew and he thought it was actually really cool what they were doing. But he also instinctually knows that what Cortez is doing is bad, but he's taking political advice

from the other colonizer who is good. And this is all just unspoken in the game of 5D chess being played in this chief's brain. It does not scan at all. Why would he hate Cortez and love Miguel? The goal is the same. I guess that with Cortez, it's almost made to seem like, well, Tulio and Miguel's goals are non-violent,

so it's fine. They're just sort of little rascals. Let me actually just trust the guys that have been lying to us for three days. I just do not understand, even from like a plot standpoint, why you would indicate that that character was well aware of what was happening. Like what does that add other than confusion?

I mean, I think- I mean, it does add more pro-colonial, like it's actually like, wink, wink, really awesome. And maybe indigenous populations were completely open to this. Right, it's an extension of the idea of indigenous people don't understand what's going on in the world around them.

They don't know any better. They're uncivilized and they're not as smart as Westerners and therefore they need the guidance of Westerners to exist. Condescension that makes the whole movie so frustrating. Yeah. It's like, yeah, this little indigenous paradise that also is ruled by a evil priest who needs to be stopped.

Yeah. And it's like by the white. By the white saviors. Right, right. Which just goes on to, again, like demonize a native religion while, you know, we're not really hearing how obsessively religious Spanish colonizers were. That's not brought up. It's like-

Oh, which is actually very interesting because I did have a point about that. In the opening scene when they introduced Cortes, he says, for Spain, for glory, for gold. And it is incredible because it is constantly said that the three tenets of Spanish colonization was God, glory, gold. And they specifically changed the God for Spain in order to remove the evangelization aspect of the colonization, which I was like, oh, whatever. They wanted that out. But as soon as you said that, I was like, oh my God,

they are literally downplaying the religious sellotry of the colonizers while demonizing the religious figure in the indigenous culture. And that just makes it like straight up kind of evil. Yeah, I honestly, I didn't know that, but that makes, I mean, there is like a flattening of what the colonizers culture was motivated by. I honestly, I didn't know that, but that makes, I mean, there is like a flattening of what the colonizer's culture was motivated by.

It's made to, which almost feels like a weird Americanization of it, of like it's strictly capital. It's strictly nationalism and capital that is driving this, which is- And those things are good. Right. And we can't have anything that demonizes Christianity.

Yeah, it's such a mindfuck. It's well because like, I mean, Americans love like demonizing Catholics. They could have taken that angle. Yeah, it's true. It's true. It was a national pastime for a while. Cowardly Protestantism strikes again. My old foe. Okay, now do we have anything else to say? No, I think I'm good. We forgot there is also a religious... The movie does not pass the Bechtel test.

Not even close. An attempt was not made. Again, it does not pass the Ali Nadi test. And on the Bechtelcast nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, I give the movie zero nipples.

Yeah. Not a nipple in sight for the road to El Dorado. Yeah, hard to argue that point. I will meet you at a solid zero. Jose? I mean, I have to concur. No, nothing in this movie is nipple worthy. I haven't a nipple to give.

No. Well, Jose, thank you so much for joining us again. Oh, as fun as last time. I love this. Thank you so much for thinking of me and having me. Oh my gosh. Thank you for joining us. Come back for a movie that isn't about a city of gold

next time, whatever you want. We're running out of them. It's true. Because we already did National Treasure Book of Secrets, Jamie and I and the two of us. And... Oh, I need to listen to... You just released My Best Friend's Wedding

and I love that movie. I'm very excited to listen to it. Well, sorry. We don't love that movie. No, that's okay. Again, I love it. My mom loves it. And I watched it with my mom a lot.

But I love conversations about it. I feel like it's one of those movies where even people who don't like it, even if I do really like it and I have a lot of positive things to say about it, like from form, I love hearing people's takes about it, like negative takes, because I feel like it is a movie that was kind of designed for that kind of conversation.

True. Yeah, it is a litmus test. At least that was an attempt. Can't say that for the road to El Dorado. My best friend's wedding was an attempt. I'm excited to listen to the episode. Well, truly come back anytime. We're so happy to have you.

It's always like fun, chaotic adventure when you're here. Thank you so much. Yeah, the real, just like with them, the real adventure was the friends we made along the way. Oh my God. And we didn't have to colonize anyone for it. No, and that's commonly misunderstood in popular narratives.

You can just have a, you can just be normal and not scary. And have a friendship and not colonize. Not colonize. You can. Sh normal and not scary. And have a friendship and not colonize. You can not colonize. Shocking but true. Jose, where can people follow you on social media, check out your stuff, tell us everything. So I'm on Twitter at Jose M. Luna. And I am on YouTube as Jose Maria Luna.

It's my full legal name because I couldn't come up with a name for a channel. So it's just, you know, it is hard. And I have a really exciting video coming up. So I hope people will check that out. It's going to be fun. It does not have to do with gold cities or colonialism. Love that.

So yeah, but it'll be fun. It does not have to do with gold cities or colonialism. Love that. So yeah, but it'll be cool. And thank you so much for having me really. It's a pleasure. Oh, please. I mean, yeah, listeners, if you are not subscribed to Jose's channel, you are missing out. It like is truly just like some of the most thoughtful work

on YouTube, which is, you know, found few and far between. So congrats on that. And as for us, you can find us in all the usual places. You can follow as mentioned our Patreon, aka matrium, where for $5 a month, you can get two bonus episodes a month hosted by Caitlin and myself and occasionally a guest based off of a very specific theme we force upon our audience. We can be found on Instagram and occasionally Twitter

when we feel like it at Bechtelcast. Indeed, you can grab some merch at tpublic.com slash thebechtelcast. Oh, you wanna find some treasure? You wanna go on a treasure hunt? Well, go to Tpublic and buy our merch. Yeah. And with that.

Let's end this episode as abruptly as the movie and be like, well, yeah. Bye. Bye. The Bechtel cast is a production of I Heart Media hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus produced by Sophie Lichterman edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskrasensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus

and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash bektelcast. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16thth 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.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I'm Joe Gatto. I'm Steve Byrne. We are Two Cool Moms. We certainly are. And guess where we could find us now? Oh, I don't know, the iHeart Podcast Network? That's right, we're an official iHeart Podcast and I'm super excited about it. I am too. I thought Two Cool Moms was such a fun podcast, but now it's even more funner and cooler and heartier.

That's right, it's more iHeartier. I knew it. Check your heart rate, we're here at I Heart. Yeah, you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts or on the I Heart Radio app. Hey everyone, Jake Storielli here from John Boy Media. I want to tell you about my podcast, Wake and Jake. I've been a sports nut my whole life and there's nothing I love more than talking about it. If you're a sports fan, Wake and Jake is the place for you covering all the hot

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I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture.

Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. On my podcast Table for Two, we have unforgettable lunch after unforgettable lunch with the best guest you could possibly ask for. People like Matt Bomer, Emma Roberts, and Colin Jost. Did you say a Caesar salad with lobster? Yeah. Wow. Our second season is airing right now so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate and often hilarious.

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