The Bechdel Cast - The Witches (1990)

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

Secret witches Caitlin and Jamie take off their wigs and discuss The Witches (1990). (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello, Caitlin. It's me. Okay. You know, I'm not a witch, but do you want some chocolate? Do I want some? No, I'm just in my treehouse here. Don't worry, I didn't poison it with any formula that's going to turn you into a mouse okay sorry do you have a snake do you have a snake um

yeah i have a snake but that's just because i know you love playing with snakes okay pointed and none of your business what I do in my spare time. Well, I guess I'll think about it. But only if you promise to only appear in one scene and never come back. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Welcome to the Bechtel cast. Another perfect introduction. Flawless. No notes. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante, and this is our show in which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point to initiate a larger discussion about representation in cinema.

Do you have one of those Twitter like scary halloween names do you have you ever done that i've never done that i have done it in the past i forgot to do it this year slash couldn't think of anything clever enough have you have you done i know you've done caitlin burante right burante yeah which doesn't even really make sense i had one well one year i did nine tit dracula because that is an anagram of my name who could forget nine tit dracula and then there was another one i did that i was like i'll never top this this is genius and i'm so smart but i couldn't i can't remember what it it was oh so this is not a good story i've never i've never had one i don't i've never been able but also i'm notoriously like

not good with puns i just don't have a good brain for it and so i'm like maybe there's one that's just been sitting in front of me my whole fucking life but i've never boo doesn't fit any any damn place in my name ghost doesn't fit what rhymes with jamie scare scare me loftus no that's it that sucks that sucks um scare me i hate it. Think about it. Wait, okay. I actually, I think I can come around to this. Okay. Can I tell you what the Bechdel test is? Please. That all passed the Bechdel test, by the way.

It sure did. Which is just proof that it doesn't, although you could argue that that was not a conversation that moved the episode forward in a meaningful way. I disagree. I completely disagree. So the Bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel-Wallace test. It was originally made as a kind of one-off joke metric in Alison Bechdel's

comic Dykes to Watch Out out for which here's your occasional reminder that you should uh read that comic i have the full collection and it fucking rocks yeah and there's a lot of different versions of of this metric the one we use requires that two people of a marginalized gender with names such as caitlin burante and scare me loft have a conversation about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue and it does need to move the podcast the bechdel cast forward in order to count yeah this this movie i Yeah. This movie, today we're covering The Witches 1990. Yes. Not to be confused with The Witches 2020, which no longer exists, has been wiped from the record.

And I have like just a little, it doesn't have to do with intersectional feminism, but it does have to do with predatory capitalism. So sort of, it does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll get there later. But the 1990 Angelic Houston The Witches is the topic of, it does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll get there later. But the 1990 Angelic Houston, The Witches, is the topic of today's discussion. And I thought it would pass the Bechdel test a little more handily than it does. I'll be quite honest. But it's a discussion for later.

Yeah. Jamie, what is your relationship to this film slash intellectual property? Nothing, nothing at all. I don't I couldn't tell you why I didn't watch this movie growing up. But I have no nostalgic attachment to it. I think the most nostalgic attachment I have to this movie is just the idea of Angelica Houston. Sure, and that's a powerful thing. Yes, and I always, like, she is so campy and, like, I think she's really fun in this movie. I think it is, like, I didn't know Jim Henson was involved in it. Like, I truly knew basically nothing.

I just knew it was a Roald Dahl book that I never read. And this is a movie that I'd never seen and so uh this has been a request we've been getting for some time and I think we there was an uptick in it when the reboot was released which I've only seen clips of but is by all accounts so like also whatever not good and no one has any nostalgic attachment to it either. Right. So whatever. Zemeckis is in his flop era, baby.

Oh my gosh. He's been in his flop era. I know. Because what is it? He welcomed us to Marwen and we were like, I'm leaving. And then what did he do? He said, what about Anne Hathaway and the witches and you're like that sounds so phoebe waller bridges right there like what are you what what are you doing no and then most recently he

was like how about pinocchio we were like no thanks but and then we were like but also but also soft plug for uh the matreon when we will be covering the 2022 pinocchio wars which robert zemeckis in his flop era has already managed i think to lose in advance the battle has not even started right and he's already lost because i everyone hated that damn movie and it looks so scary this movie also looks so scary but in a very different way i will say right at the top uh apologies to people with a nostalgic attachment to this movie i did not like this movie uh and i i think it shows all of and this has like been a criticism since the book came out the book was released in 83 we famously don't read books but i did research the differences and adaptation

changes yeah yeah and then this came out in 1990 and roald dahl who we'll get back to we've just we've covered we covered this last year on our matilda episode but it is even more relevant in this adaptation than it was in matilda i think of just oh yeah this is just like late era roald Dahl like all of his famous prejudices against women and Jewish people in particular yeah and Jewish women in particular are just all like canon to the story and I uh Angelica Houston is great but I just really had a hard time with this one yeah Caitlin what's your history with The Witches 1990? I had not seen this movie either something that it seems like I would have seen as a kid growing up but I don't think it was on TV a lot well I guess you didn't watch a lot of TV and I didn't even have

cable yeah and I didn't watch much TV as a kid also I think like my family is just like not a spooky movie family I missed a lot of spooky movie like I had never seen Hocus Pocus until like well into my adulthood not that that's like a scare but like even just like I mean it is like you know kid kid kid and I think this movie is like kid scary oh my god yeah and also like kind of adult scary also i do think like there's so much wrong with like i i don't like this movie i do think it was a kind of cool bold and interesting choice cool bold interesting wow good words um oh jamie that they thank you that they hired uh a horror like a famous horror director to do this movie like right he he took the assignment and he's like i'm just gonna do this like i do my grown-up movies is that cool and you're like i don't know um the

main thing i knew about this movie going in is that it traumatized every child who had ever seen it yeah and i understand why because the horror imagery in this movie is horrific and i brutal yeah yeah and i'm sure if i had seen it as a child i would have been similarly traumatized and I read that the director Nicholas Rogue cut scenes from the movie that he thought would be too scary for children after he saw his like son's reaction to the original cut so it was going to be even scarier whoa and he cut some of it out that is so gnarly uh I want like just being the kid of a horror director and then just being like all right so if this trauma like your you being traumatized today could save other children from being traumatized in this exact same way do you accept the assignment that's so

oh i want nicholas rogue's kids to tell us what was in the scenes. That's how, what would they, what? I guess. Okay. I don't know. Sorry. Finish. So,

so your history is, so I hadn't seen the movie, but I did read the book as a kid. Oh, okay. We had a few Roald Dahl books lying around the house. And so I probably read this book when I was maybe like 10 or so. I also read Charlie and the Chocolate factory around that time but i think

those are the only two roald dahl books i ever read but i liked the book the witches and i thought it was very scary reading it as a kid um so i i have i would say not even nostalgic attachment to this story but i went into the movie knowing what it was going to be about and what would happen in it and remembered the story pretty well so like when the events of the movie were unfolding i was like oh yeah that does happen the ending is um quite different in the book right we'll talk about that but uh yeah yeah i um i kind of i mean i for all the dramatic imagery that nicholas rogue because he was like originally a cinematographer but like yeah like for all the traumatic imagery he offers up i kind of liked that they changed the ending i'm like we because

the i mean i didn't realize the ending of the book is brutal i think that that's how the reboot ends where it's just like what they're like the kid is gonna be a mouse forever and he has nine years to live and he knows that you're like oh yeah rough yeah so all this to say i had i was familiar with this story going in but i hadn't seen the movie definitely would have been traumatized by the imagery as a kid because as even as an adult i was like oh my like the transformations like the scenes of like humans transforming into mice that is some of the scariest shit i've ever seen it's so yeah it this movie would have fucked me up i'm glad i didn't see it when i was a kid yeah um shall i do the recap and we'll go from there let's do the recap and then you know what let's go from there

okay fine all right we will okay fine now we're fighting okay so we open on a grandmother telling her grandson, Luke, who is... Oof. We were like also recently talking about how we do not know how old children are. I would guess he's like 9, 10. I guess he's canonically 9. Okay. Oh, maybe I'm better at this than I thought. She is telling Luke about witches.

They are evil. They hate children. They basically hunt children for sport and she's lost a finger yes to to a witch encounter we presume yeah maybe that's the scene that got cut maybe you got to see angelica houston bite grandma's finger off oh maybe it'd have been cool be cool so grandma tells luke that witches dress in ordinary clothes they look like ordinary women they live ordinary lives but there are ways to spot a real witch one they're bald so they wear wigs which itch and give them a scalp rash now if the baldest women aren't in charge in this movie... I mean, this movie follows the rule.

It enforces the rule. I didn't even exist when this movie came out and people were following that damn rule. Yeah. The second telltale sign is that their eyes have like a purplish hue to them. Real witches also don't have toes. And so their feet are just square.

So they never wear pointed shoes. Fine. Sure, I guess. They also have a very keen sense of smell. And they can smell children. And children smell very bad to them and the cleaner a child is the stinkier they are to a witch also grandma tells luke about the grand high witch which is like the the leader which is the leader of all the witches get it anyway i get it i get it so grandma also tells this story about her childhood

best friend named erica who was abducted by a witch so we get all this backstory about witches you know i i was thinking i was i was trying to put myself in like baby brain and i think that i would have been afraid of the horror imagery but i but i wonder like and for i am genuinely curious for for those who have a nostalgic attachment to this movie were you more scared by the horror imagery or were you more scared by uh ever looking at a painting again and ever seeing someone in a painting being like that they're going to die there yeah that was the scare i was like that would have fucked me up that's very creepy because i had that haunted mandy moore poster right oh my gosh and she still lives there in your poster in my poster yeah it's one of it's one of those conspiracy theories where

the actress who's been on this is us for 500 years is a a double, switched out by the government. Oh, sure. The real Mandy Moore is still in my childhood bedroom. Yep. Yeah. No, I believe it. Yeah. Oh, okay.

So one day, Luke's parents die in an accident. So grandma becomes... Oh, they Batman him. Right? Yeah. Luke Wayne over here with his parents being like they're like bye and then yes and then like the police have her dress or something i was like what happened to them i'm not sure what we were looking at but uh luke luke is orphaned and grandma becomes his primary caregiver so she takes him to england

where a woman with purple eyes tries to give a snake to luke and a chocolate bar and i'm like is that a willy wonka chocolate bar are we you know are we what's happening here we're gonna really i mean we talked about it matilda too but just like the way roald dahl turns food into weapons is so oh gosh yeah i will say this first witch i liked her a lot and i she had perfect teeth okay yeah another telltale sign of witches i guess i have shitty i have i think i just have gum disease so when someone has nice teeth, I'm like, ooh. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay.

Who are you, a millionaire? Okay, so then on Luke's birthday, grandma gives him some mice, which he names William and Mary. Horrible gift. Bad gift, bad mice names. There, I said it. Are they kids? I don't think so, because they can't talk. They're just mice.

Oh, right. And they're not from the Henson. The creature shop, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're just straight up mice. Yeah. Yeah. But, oh no, grandma collapses. She has fallen ill.

Turns out she has diabetes. But when she recovers, she luke and his mice on a little trip to a hotel by the sea to casa de mr bean mr bean is the hotel manager also at this hotel dozens of women show up for the convention, for the royal society, for the prevention of cruelty to children. And that's the most prepositions I've ever said in a single sentence. That is, of all the, that got a chuckle out of me because I was like, that's the witch. Did you pick up on, this is so goofy but um they made a diabetes joke in this movie i was like could that's the most there's not a lot of things about this movie outside of the wild number of

tropes that are used in a bad way but like yes this movie isn't like especially dated to me i guess a little bit with the clothes but most role doll movies kind of feel a little bit like out of time but they just drop a diabetes joke like yeah and that commercial didn't exist till 1987 I was like damn you're showing your hands you couldn't you couldn't resist making a nine-year-old say diabetes yeah tomfoolery indeed okay so Angelica Houston has entered the film yes uh she seems to be the leader of this royal society for the prevention of cruelty to children and she's so hot and she's very hot her name is miss ernst and the women adore her oh and then there's some little clues that seems like maybe these are not women who want to prevent cruelty to children but maybe they want to cause cruelty to children because maybe they're witches oh there is i mean i i you know exploiting the inherent sinister nature of a hotel convention is kind of fun yeah that's a fun idea um i'm trying

to figure out is this this movie came out this is the year before the adams family so this is i feel like angelica houston's she's just she's just warming up for the main event for more tisha yeah definitely okay so then luke explores the hotel he meets another boy named bruno uh luke gets yelled at by mr bean for having loose mice and we're literally like mr bean it you can't you can't unsee it yeah and then we're also like i guess this is for all these these mice are like foreshadowing check out his mouse yeah okay so luke is like running around the hotel and he winds up in this big room where the women from the society for the prevention of cruelty to children aka the witches come in and gather for a meeting.

And Luke is hiding in the corner, and he watches as all the women remove their shoes and their wigs, because guess what? Confirmed. They are witches. I thought it was really funny that she has her, like Angela Houston takes her face halfway off before being like, oh, wait, is the door closed?

Yeah. That was when I started coming up with my toy story theory where I'm just like, this is applying the logic of toy story. But instead, it's just leaving a bunch of women over 35 in a room alone. And then they turn into evil witches. And that is true. That does happen in real life so miss ernst takes off her face mask because she's the grand high witch with a scary face miss ernst is like you witches are a disgrace you're not killing enough children and that's why i created formula 86 which turns children into mice another toy

story parallel much like the character sid miss ernst is a scientific genius who just needs her energy directed in a more positive direction elsewhere yeah she could really help people much like sid's parents should have just been like you're a creative kid let's let's take you to an after-school program anyway wow okay i'm starting to see the toy story parallels that's it that's the end of the similarities yeah okay so she's talking about this formula that turns children into mice and she demonstrates it on that kid bruno who she has lured into the room with chocolate she has already given him the formula it works on like a time delay and then the witches and luke who is still hiding in the corner watch as bruno transforms into a mouse that transformation is also like truly one of the

scariest things i've ever seen yeah i mean that the the raw fucking body horror and this um is just like it is and that i mean that whole scene that is so long that was the other thing where i was just like wow this movie gets a lot of mileage out of like very very few locations but uh in in any case that scene is so loaded but just even on its face is oh that would have scared the shit out of me as a kid truly and roald dahl hates when children are hungry what is wrong with him he he's like if you're hungry you're gonna explode yeah you're gonna be a mouse too bad oh he's such a fucking asshole like oh i did to say the least but like yeah that was um that was brutal and to have like this was i think this was like the last movie that jim henson was well enough to work on yes and he's really uh he put the creature shop to work it's so

fucking scary oh yeah so again we like listeners if you happened to see the reboot while it was still available for streaming we couldn't watch it but i'm assuming that it was probably less scary in the new one because there's like you can just sort of do a boring cgi like i am a mouse but like right with the practical effects it is so gnarly it is brutal truly yeah okay so the meeting is about to disperse but then one of the witches smells luke they find him they chase him around for a bit and eventually catch him and miss ernst gives him 500 doses of formula 86 which transforms luke into a mouse immediately and the witches try to step on him and kill him but mouse luke runs away he finds mouse bruno

they can both still talk so they scurry through the hotel talk about bruno in this movie they never hesitate to talk about bruno yeah that was the exact laugh i was hoping for and grandma especially is trying to talk about bruno she's trying to tell his parents about bruno and they are not having. The parents are sort of like, we don't talk about Bruno, not during whiskey and Sherry time. And she's like, we needed to, wow.

The parallels. Did you recognize Bruno's mom? No. She is played by Brenda Blethen, AKA Mrs. Bennett from Pride and Prejudice 2005. Wow. I did not. Wow. I did not. Wow.

I guess that she was really in her 90s hair bag because I didn't notice. That's like, I have a thought on that character as well, too. But like, yeah, for now, all I'll say is she really knows how to give a surprised face. True. All right. surprised face true all right so the two mice boys scurry through the hotel back to luke's grandma's room and luke is like hey grandma so i got turned into a mouse by some witches and also is it just me or did grandma barely react i do the information that her so grandson is a mouse now i thought that too and then i'm just like she's been i guess ostensibly hunting witches for years does she like

no this is on the table angelica houston sounded like it was a new thing so i feel like she should have been more surprised but i'm like maybe maybe this is in their playbook i don't know i don't or maybe also the thing that and i don't think that this story has any interest in exploring this side of it which is like fine but i was just like also you know in a realistic world which this obviously isn't these two would be like overcome with grief because her daughter just died and his parents just got bruce waned and so i've just i'm like maybe she's just like still emotionally she's like sure sure what next right my grandson's a mouse great she could be just numb she could just be in shock yeah could be a lot of stuff. We don't know. We don't know. But Mouse Luke has a plan.

He wants to put Formula 86 into the witch's soup at their dinner that night and turn all of the witches into mice. So grandma helps him get into the Grand High Witch's room, though her cat makes it a little tricky. I liked that part. Me and Flea were cheering. We were cheering for the cat. And it's a cat that looks a bit like Flea. Oh, well, because, yeah, I mean, Flea is the classic witch's cat. True, yeah.

Okay, so then Luke manages to get the formula and scurries back to grandma's room so she takes mouse luke and mouse bruno to bruno's parents and tries to explain the situation they don't believe her bruno's mom is like and you know screams at the sight of mice uh because you know well women be hysterical well it's blonde women and women with children generally with the exception of the maid who is brunette and we don't know if she has kids um but generally blonde women and mothers are afraid of mice women with dark hair or non-white women are witches they want more mice more mice more mice that's the rule. So then Mouse Luke goes into the hotel kitchen and puts Formula 86 into the Cress soup. No idea what Cress soup is.

But that's the soup that will be served to the witches. And then he runs up the pants of the chef, a.k.a. the butler from Downton Abbey. So that was a fun little thing. Oh, really? Yeah. I never from downton abbey so that was a fun little oh really yeah i never i never did downton abbey and it's coming it's been you know i've heard it's great is that a hot take in 2022 i'm hearing good things about this downton abbey i mean i generally like it yeah um okay so then the soup is served the witches eat it and then chaos and horror ensues as the witches turn into mice and then also the grand high witch turning into a mouse is the other scariest thing I've ever seen oh my gosh I like how right before that happens um Angelica Houston I mean she is uh there are a few moments the one of the

moments that i really i genuinely was like wow that was cool was when uh the first witch who is like in the kitchen realizes what is happening is the first to try the soup is the first to turn into a mouse she scurries out in mouse form to try to warn everybody and angelica houston just steps on her and she explodes into goo green goo what are the rules um but that was um that was awesome because yeah i guess angelica houston assumed that was a child mouse and so she's like well let me just kill this but uh it was just like wow wow she really uh what what's my shittiest clickbait um the lack of empathy that angelica houston's character demonstrates in the witches is shocking write it it writes itself yeah okay so the hotel staff are trying to squash and kill the mice Rowan Atkinson chops and kills mouse Angelica Houston

with a cleaver it's chaos but things kind of settle down and mouse Luke and grandma say goodbye to Bruno and his parents and then they leave the hotel and go back home and Luke is like hey being a mouse isn't so bad and grandma is like yep and oh that friend is really sad yeah it's good to know like oh also i wanted to mention why does mr bean get the kill like why does mr this has been grandma i i have a theory as to why i think it's because she has to be the good one. And so we can't see her actually killing or harming anyone. But that directly, I wonder what happens in the book. I actually didn't check who kills her in the book because it just feels like logically grandma has been hunting this specific witch for decades. This woman took her finger off.

Like why? witch for decades this woman took her finger off like why but she just puts a little dish over her and is like turns around and then mr bean get i was like mr bean's got no you know he's got no stake in the game like yeah right but he uh whatever the the whole premise is is flawed from the jump but i'm like if i'm watching this movie let grandma kill angelica houston what are we doing yeah for sure um okay so then they're like coming to terms with luke being a mouse forever but wait a minute there was one witch miss ernst secretary i think who was not turned into a mouse and she has been following luke and grandma and it seems like she might be up to no good but it turns out that she's like a good witch or she doesn't want to participate in child hunting and she with magic turns Luke back into a human and that's how the movie ends which is a big departure from how the book ends which is that he stays a mouse knowing that he will die soon it feels

like a major departure to because of how abrupt and out of step with the rest of the story it feels because it's like that maybe i was like i mean i've watched the movie twice i was paying attention i was like but that witch is sudden like I'm nice now and like and then she's like Glinda the good witch and then he has to like it's so shoehorned into the last 90 seconds of the movie that Luke literally has to yell out the window Bruno next yeah like don't forget about Bruno don't't forget about bruno no no and like i'm glad for the children i'm glad that that change was made but just watching it in with like movie logic you're like oh yeah this uh this doesn't match up with anything else that happens it makes sense they changed it right okay let's take a quick break and we will come back to discuss.

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Okay, where to begin? I would like to start, if it's okay, with how, and this, I mean, this, it's all sort of like part of the same conversation of how Roald Dahl's personal prejudices are very much on display yeah in this the three main areas that stood out to me that are also like i mean so we'll probably be repeating some stuff that we've mentioned in the matilda episode previously yeah but i think it really does bear repeating so a quick trigger warning for particularly anti-semitism and fat phobia but i think that the three areas that were really jumping out to me was something that we've discussed in doll adaptations before which is fat phobia he but also uh misogyny and anti-semitism i think are just like just running rampant the story can't happen without that right so i just wanted to start by going over roald dahl again so if

you've heard this information before you already know if you haven't heard this information before you know sorry if this is at least you're finding out from your parasocial friends uh but just uh-huh but you know like Roald Dahl was unlike I think that there's a lot of creators that people will go to the mat for where they're like well we don't know for sure if they were but like Roald all of Roald Dahl's prejudices he was very vocal about he literally said I am an anti-semite like there is no no room for any argument even if you wanted to fucking straw man this issue he was very very anti-Semitic he was known to be horrible to his first wife in particular but also a lot of women in his life he was known to be extremely volatile and mean. He also said to his wife, his wife,

his wife on their first date. Let me, let me pull up the quote. I'd rather be dead than fat. Unquote. He's just like a piece of shit person, like demonstrably. So, and if you have attachments to his works,

I would say like most people do who are at least in our age range. But like it's very relevant information because they're going to continue to adapt his work. Netflix paid a billion dollars to license his entire catalog in the last couple of years. But anyways, I just wanted to start by saying like we're going to be taking a look at this. And also it is very

inherent to the author the way that women and the way that anti-semitic tropes are presented in this work and in this movie are definitely not a mistake intentional yeah to the point where this book was when it came out in 83 I mean normally, normally, in most cases, I'm very skeptical of like a banned book. Because that usually. They're usually banned for the wrong reasons. Right, right. And it's like a puritanical thing. But there was a lot of controversy about The Witches when it was released in 1983, the book.

Because people were like, this is really misogynist. Like the first page is all about how, I mean, I think that he's also like going on this weird tirade about childless women and like just all of his shitty politics are so on display here. I don't want to really read any of his specific comments about women or about Jewish people. You can seek those out.

They are out there. Yeah. He has also said a number of racist things. There's I this was my I don't think I found this in my Matilda research, but apparently like he was like let go by his editors at one point. Like one of and this is an incredibly lucrative author, obviously. But it was like he was to a extremely mean and bad to work with and be editors at especially at this point in his career when he was older. Like he would refuse to write out racist and misogynist stuff and his editors were like pleading with him and he would say no

so they were like well we can't work with you anymore if you are like i i refuse to publish the children's book without misogyny like yeah it's just absolutely wild and gross and um so i so but as it pertains to the witches specifically i do want to share what he said to his editor because it was flagged by the editorial team of like this seems like maybe a you're working through some stuff buddy seems more like a scary diary entry but his editor um whose last name is roxburgh i don't have his first name here, said that, you know, he pushed back. And he was like, next draft, let's take it easy on those damn witches a little bit when it comes to the misogynist tropes or like let's mix it up. And Roald Dahl replied, quote, I don't agree with you about women coming in for a lot of the stick all the way through.

The nicest person in the whole thing is a woman the grandmother so I have not changed anything and so he like really you know doubled down on every I mean he's he had issues with the NAACP who came out against some stuff he wrote I think as it pertains to the BFG, an early draft of the BFG that he did have to fix and was forced to fix by the editor. But like, it's just like on almost every marginalized person you could imagine, he has said something deeply cruel. And this is like one of the most famous children's authors of all time. Also, his granddaughter became a very famous plus size model so fuck you world all but anyway so so that's all i mean did you have anything else you wanted to jump in to add to that i just like i don't want to share specific comments but no but i will share a very a very quick excerpt that i pulled from the book because i went back and skimmed through parts of it okay um this

is from the book and I believe the context here is that it's the grandmother talking to I don't well actually no I'm not sure if it's this is what the grandmother is saying to Luke or if this is just sort of like omniscient narration huh not entirely sure but okay what it says is quote a witch is always a woman i do not wish to speak badly about women most women are lovely but the fact remains that all witches are women there is no such thing as a male witch on the other hand a ghoul is always a male so indeed is a bargist i don't know what the fuck that is both are dangerous but neither of them is half as dangerous as a real witch right unquote so i get why you could read that and be like that's pretty cool like women are the most

fearsome and terrifying of everybody that's's fun. I don't know. I was trying to read through, like, because this has been a divisive work. I'm talking more about the book than the movie when I say this. But, like, it was a very divisive book. And there are a lot of people who, like, reclaim it on the basis of that. Sure. Where they're like well you know he's created a world where like this group of women are like the most fearsome powerful people in the

entire world yeah like they are all powerful and um what i will say about those reclaimings is they uh conveniently don't mention any of the anti-semitism uh but right that passage is cool like that's that i i wish that i don't know like there there are a lot of also like demonstrating like yeah i'm saying that i think that most women are lovely but i actually secretly find women scary and think that a lot of them are evil witches right like i mean you can take it a few different ways but it's just so wild like yeah there's no there's no um defending it and also like there's i'm pretty sure that well because matilda was recently turned into a broadway musical i believe it's being um and then do you remember there was a big emma thompson was cast as miss trunchbull there was a

controversy about that because they didn't cast a fact actor in a fat part right so like all that to say that there's like there's another rollout of Roald Dahl's work and we talked about this in the Matilda episode but his family released an apology post-mortem right after making a billion dollars that was also divisive um the apology i think is like not a bad one i think it was the timing that people were a little more suspect about sure quote the doll family and the roll tall story company deeply apologize for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by some of roll doll'sahl's statements. It goes on from there. It is good that his family and company can acknowledge it. But also, I think it was, in my opinion, rightfully speculated that that was just so no one would yell at them for taking the 1 billion Netflix dollars so that

these could be adapted again. And there's no quality. I mean mean I don't know how much say the Roald Dahl company will have if you're to take the new adaptation of the witches um that came out it seems like a lot of the tropes were not improved on at all right and so it's no guarantee that they'll do better right because again the whole story is rooted in one big anti-semitic stereotype so yeah and we'll talk about that should we let's get into that yes let's all right so the grand high witch when angelica houston takes her angelica houston face off face off yeah and then we have the grand High Witch as she actually is. The character design here very closely resembles anti-Semitic caricatures that have been illustrated of Jewish people throughout history. No ambiguity about it.

Right. You know, various features, the large hook nose being perhaps the most obvious one those anti-semitic caricatures that have existed throughout history visually speaking feels like it was just like mapped on to the character design of the grand high witch yeah and and also like they it i i've read some analysis that was like they go out of their way to like give the witches like reptilian features and just like it just seems like they do the absolute most you could possibly do yeah it's upsetting and then there is the again the premise that the movie is based on which is that these witches want to hunt children and if you consider the fact that the main character of this movie luke the you know the little boy luke he is a you know blonde haired blue-eyed kid and. And these witches are hell bent on like chasing him.

Right. Norwegian. And like, yeah. So I'm going to read a quote from a piece by Shelley Jay from 2020 entitled looking back on the antisemitism in Roald Dahl's The Witches. Quote, attributing Jewish features to quotequote bad witches goes back centuries in an article about the origins of archetypal witches ellie buford writes the stereotype of the jewish nose is often used in anti-semitic media including nazi propaganda such as the eternal jew while in early folklore it was likely not initially tied to anti-Semitism, the feature is used in modern times to code characters as Jewish. Shelley J. goes on to say, The child-snatching and blood libel tropes of the witches also have their roots in folklore, going all the way back to Chaucer.

Buford notes, Blood libel was a charge frequently leveled at Jewish people during the Middle Ages. People believed that any time a Gentile, parentheses, non-Jewish child went missing, that Jewish people had kidnapped and killed the child either for ritual purposes or to use for food, unquote. And what does the Jewish-coded Grand High Witch do in this movie? and what does the jewish coded grand high witch do in this movie and what does she want all the other witches to do kidnap and kill aryan looking children they're also portrayed as having unlimited money and resources right that's that's what i meant when i said like it is you know cool in theory that Roald Dahl's presenting

these women as all-powerful but through the lens of anti-semitism he is and had and literally like textually said yeah a bunch of really stereotypical comments about Jewish people and money and that is also a part of the witches right because the grand high witch has a trunk full of cash and she is like throwing money at the other witches and saying here take this and buy buy up all the candy stores in england offer people three to four times what the shops are actually worth just so that you have this way to lure children in to capture them and kill them yeah i i saw and i genuinely i mean just a reminder for our listeners caitlin and myself are not jewish so our perspective is limited and so if there's uh stuff we're missing we always want to know because in fact in a recent episode we uh missed originally that there

was an anti-semitic trope and animation tropes being used in uh mother gothel from tangle so yeah we want to get shit right and we want to continue learning so if we're missing anything please um we are always you know do people still say bang my line? I've never said that. I was like, bang our line. I've never heard that at all. What do you mean? Bang my line?

It's been said. Okay. I think it's like a landline. Like landline. Bang my line. Ring it. Give me a call. Drop me a line.

I've heard that. God god we're so old okay um i think that that's an older phrase though i think that phrase predates us bang my line it was when people were calling each other's landlords landlord landline let's move on um okay so another uh thing i read because i was like coming through uh pieces i was coming through reddit i just was like what you know i want to be brought up to speed here it was also i thought i saw speculated in a few places that the accent that angelica houston takes on has been generally interpreted as german but there are plenty of jew Jewish people in Germany, as well as some people would argue that it is more of a Yiddish accent. I don't have the know-how to say one way or the

other, and I wasn't able to find any production notes on what she was doing, right I wanted to mention that and then for me where the anti-semitism and the misogyny sort of started blending overlapping yes yes the intersection of misogyny and anti-semitism which unfortunately is a very very real thing yeah but I think that where it like overlapped most severely for me was in that like opening sequence of the description because i honestly didn't put this together as an anti-semitic trope until i read it let me get the name of the writer so i can credit them for this insight. So this is from a piece that was written for Vox by Aja Romano when the new witches came out. So this is a reflection on just the story at large, not specific to this movie, but it definitely applies here. Quote, the anti-Semitism Dahl himself professed doesn't necessarily play a role in most of his other works, but

it's directly relevant to The Witches, a story that's explicitly about detecting imposters in the midst of society. This is, to be blunt, the theme of most anti-Semitic conspiracies throughout history, and has led in its most extreme form to the idea that Jewish people

quote, hide in plain sight while essentially controlling the world, unquote. I did not put that together on my viewing, but I completely agree. And like, no, knowing Roald Dahl's feelings, I'm sure that that was his intent. Just inspired his whole narrative. He is, he's a bad man. He sucks. a hot take uh and and i think also within that same um i think where i got thrown off in addition to just like i i don't have a jewish perspective but i um i mean like it is an inherently scary idea that something is hiding in plain sight and can hurt you like that's whatever you used in

horror all the time sure but i thought it was like you know where it sort of crossed into more generalized misogyny for me was like the ways in which the witches had to hide the parts of them that were seen as grotesque where it was all very like stuff we've talked about before but like this might be the most extreme example that uh we've ever covered where you know like the trappings of classic femininity with like the wigs you know your hair has to look a certain way your makeup has to be on point you have to like look good you have to look glamorous you have to wear high-heeled shoes like all this shit and the implication that which is just like galaxy brain the implication that the story has is that women are doing this to fool you so you don't notice that they're evil and there is no whatever there is no implication that uh this might be something that is demanded

of uh of many women especially you know the further back in time you go right so it's just like again it's like oh it's uh if you feel pressure to look a certain way, that's your fault. And also, it removes the possibility that you might just enjoy presenting feminine. Like, there's just no, there's no nothing. The rigid expectations are rigid. Yeah, something that really struck me was the, I would say, casting and makeup choices for the witches, because there's a room full of like 100 of them, give or take. And the people that were cast as witches and the kind of just character design of the witches in general carries some troubling implications. So many of the women who are cast as witches are middle-aged or older. Which is actually, I guess, a deviation from the book. The ground witch is described in the book

as being 25. So I think that this is like specifically a movie issue and i feel like what it's implying is what i jumped to was implying like women without children are more likely to be evil scary yeah and like and it's not that i it's not just that i don't want children it's that i hate children and i want them to die which is, whatever. It's just everything is so fucking absolutist in this specific world. Yes. There's that. There is, similar to what you were just talking about,

certain markers of quote unquote femininity are like removed from the witches where they make them bald. They have rashy skin. Certain choices are made for for like their like makeup and costuming uh in addition to that there's like some of them are given like prosthetic teeth yeah basically they are made to seem unattractive by traditional western beauty standards which i think is like supported by like virtually every cinematography choice in the movie like is supporting that like

which is again it's just like i don't think that there's any way to adapt this story that isn't offensive and i think some of the cool like if i'm just thinking like jamie likes watching a movie brain i think some of the cooler choices are in the cinematography because it's like it's really fucking scary but like yeah you know all of the like movie language choices totally support what you're supposed to not like about them like unflattering camera angles unflattering lenses like fisheye lenses kind of stuff yeah and then something i noticed and we couldn't find any information about how intentional this was as far as casting goes but several of the witches who are in the group at the meeting are men so i and this is speculation here but i would speculate that that's just another thing that contributes

to this idea that if you're not adhering to a very, you know, traditional binary standard of beauty, then you're evil. If you are a woman with masculine features, that's scary, that's bad. The implications here are, you know, a whole number of, you know, just very harmful, queerphobic, transphobic implications. There's just a lot done in this movie that I feel like was probably intentional. Again, we couldn't find anything to confirm this.

Yeah, we really did look. I mean, and even fans of this movie have speculated something very similar yeah yeah i mean there's kind of like as far as i know like there wasn't a lot available in terms of like finding out about the production process of this movie outside of kind of like the basics because i have all these questions but nicholas rogue is dead so i don't know a lot of the answers but yeah i i genuinely i didn't notice that on my viewings but once you pointed it out i uh i see what you're saying i agree right and we had a similar discussion on the matilda episode with the uh miss trunchbull versus miss honey characters

where if you are a woman who presents as traditionally feminine and traditionally pretty and who has like mothering type of qualities, you're a good person. And if you're a woman with masculine features who would not perhaps be considered as attractive by Western standards of beauty, you are a mean, bad person who hates children. Right, right. But it's, well well i don't know see i haven't i haven't revisited anything remotely charlie in the chocolate factory in a very very long time i know that like willie wonka is like a villain but he's a villain in a different way than the witches are villains and in a different way than miss trunchbull is presented as a villain i've i so take this with a grain of salt because i haven't revisited in a while but just my memory of because i read those books and watch the movies and he's definitely a villain

but he's more of like he's a trickster uh you like him but you are never you know like miss trenchpole and um i think angelica houston's character are highly reclaimable characters but they're meant to be despicable like from the first moment you see them where i feel like willie wonka you're no matter what form he appears in you're supposed to still kind of like him even though he's an asshole so that's you know uh a very rolled doll thing it's so wild to me i mean it's like i love i love the character of matilda and the fact that jim henson was so deeply involved in making these like horrific anti-semitic prosthetics and yet this is the same person who gave us miss piggy i just am like uh hello like it doesn't oh whatever i'm not i can't lose sleep sleep over it at this time um we're too tired yeah but i mean and and just to sort of close the loop on the misogyny of it all

so this is i mean this is a very very white movie i believe that there are some women of color in the background uh who appear i think that there are a few witches who are not white but you only witches first of all um even outside of that like i feel it feels just like yeah most of the women who are afraid of mice are maternal or blonde. All of the like any woman who expresses anything is either maternal or blonde. And that's just how the world works in Mr. Bean's hotel. I don't like it. Yeah, I do want to.

Well, let's let's talk about grandma really quick sure because there's a lot of ways to come at grandma i do think that she and angelica houston are the most motivated characters in the movie sure which is which which which is like you know whatever for me all the fucking anti-semitism uh cancels out anything that i would like about it but you know i i can i can respect that the two most motivated characters are women i sort of wish that if that's the case then like lean into that rivalry more like i don't know why we're with i i know whatever like you needed a child protagonist it's a real doll book but right i'm just like i don't really give a shit about luke uh he's very just there and i guess that the mouse practical effects are cool but like i just didn't i don't know i was like the grandma

is the more interesting character but also she's the one that's like sharing this misogynist theory. She's been forming for her entire life at the beginning. So you're like, well, that's, I don't know. I, I,

I didn't hate the grandma character. Like I thought it was cool that at every step she did believe her grandson when he and no one ever believes children in books. True. Also very often in real life. I think that that is always a valuable thing to include in children's media of like just a kid, something weird, specific, horrible happening to a kid and having them be believed by an adult they love. That's very important. That's nice. But she's a spirit like this. happening to a kid and having them be believed by an adult they love that's very important that's nice but she's a conspiracy like it's it's all very weird but she basically says like be wary of

any woman you come across little boy because there's a chance she might be a witch so have a fundamental distrust of women right right and literally. And literally, and at first I was like, you go, Luke. Luke was, he was like, that can't be true. I was like, yeah, Luke's living in the year 1990. And then she's like, no, we got to roll that clock backwards. Don't trust a woman in the entire world. It's so bizarre. I do like there.

And the other thing i'll hand to to gram i guess in the book she's grandmama they give they give people names in the movie they didn't give them in the book i guess everyone it's like boy grandmama grand witch um but she's named helga and this she has a name okay and when the action of the movie because this movie is like kind of like a has some funky pacing too like it takes longer than i thought it was gonna take for him to become a mouse whatever uh but once that is happening you know like she is very active in basically everything moving forward they're working together she believes him uh i think the only if the story has to go the way it has to go the only thing i wish had gone differently

was that she should have gotten to kill angelica houston after all of that so weird that they let mr bean do it that especially because it's been suggested if not overtly stated, that her injury on her hand was caused by Angelica Houston, which and like they have a rivalry. They recognize each other, you know, so. Right. It would have been so much more cathartic if grandma was able to land the killing blow. It's so bizarre to me that that didn't happen because yeah i think that angelica houston kind of like confirms that when she goes to see like she first of all triggers a diabetic attack she's so evil in poor grandma and like walks in she's like oh this bitch again i she's old now i know

who this is blah blah which also implies that the witches are immortal I guess I don't know oh yeah yeah hard to say but yeah I think it I think that we're supposed to believe that Angelica Houston something whatever happened with the finger was her yeah and she didn't even get to kill her what's the point why am I watching this movie um I would the other thing with the grandma character is that so she learns toward the beginning of the story that she has diabetes and i feel and maybe this is me misinterpreting or reading too far into this but i feel like the movie implies that her diabetes is making her a bad caregiver and it's like the fault of her diabetes that is why luke got caught by the witches and turned into a mouse which obviously has very ableist implications if true um because like there's

a scene where she's like laid up in bed and luke even says like i'm not sure if it was the witches or if it was her diabetes but she was like not able to look after him and that's why he got caught by witches and turned into a mouse i don't know i that did not occur to me but i think it is interesting i don't know yeah i i honestly sort of just like anytime i see a kid just like running around and you're like there should be an adult there i'm like oh this movie came out in 1990 uh that was probably just allowed i don't know but but that is an interesting point i didn't think about that uh there are a lot i mean there's like mostly female characters in this movie another one i would like to uh talk about really quick is the one that was changed and i think

maybe added with specificity entirely for this movie which is um susan the good witch i didn't hear her ever be called susan but apparently her name's susan i think that this is like head for me like whatever i'm old and this movie's for kids so i'm not handing it to myself but i feel like you're told immediately that like this witch isn't like the other witch because she's wearing white all the time and she's blonde. And she's blonde. And none of the other witches wear light colors or have these Aryan complexions, which in Roald Dahl's shit is always intentional. So she's the only that I could spot anyways, the only like blonde witch and she the few times you see her uh eva angelica houston's bossing her around being an asshole to her and then at the end she's fed up and she she leaves

the dinner so she's the only witch that doesn't eat the soup and turn into a mouse and then she goes like can you help me trace what goes on there? Because she goes, we see like, there's like, I don't know if this is, I haven't seen Nicholas Rogue's like film. I haven't seen others of his movies. I'm like, I don't know if this is his style, but there's like occasionally in this movie, just like really quick shots that are like supposed to be a whole scene. And then, and then you're like, wait, what? They cut up to susan the good

witch at some point in the middle of like the peak of the movie and it's just like her in her hotel room by herself drinking a cup of tea by herself she doesn't even speak but you hear her thoughts for a second which doesn't happen anywhere else in the movie yeah i noticed that and it just goes like well i didn't want to hang out with them anyways, or like whatever it was. I was like, what was that? That was so bizarre. And then like, that's the only it's that. And then when grandma and Luke Mouse are leaving Mr. Bean. Sorry, Lukey Mouse.

Lukey Mouse are leaving Mr. Bean's's hotel she's like looking at them and then that's the only information you get before you find out oh actually she's so good and you're like what i could not i think it's implied that the grand high witch who her boss, mistreats this quote unquote good witch. And so she just was fed up with being mistreated. So she decides to rebel against this evil witchery and use her magic for good is the logic that I could kind of track. Yeah. I mean, I'm not opposed to the change made to the ending these poor children have uh suffered enough I don't mind there being a random happy ending but

it is a very gendered happy ending that that um even though it doesn't align with the story logic it aligns with the view of women that we've seen this whole time which is that um blonde women are nice yeah so that i just wanted to uh just even just to unpack i was like they really half-assed uh letting us know why she was good yeah and who else do we have we have the maid there's not really much to say there i think as far as uh oh this is a fun transition um bruno's mom aka lizzie's mom i think she's just like she's characterized as very shrill shrill and hysterical yeah yes uh and that's kind of unchallenged both to be fair like a lot of rolled doll parents they're just kind of incompetent assholes um the both of them but the way that they're incompetent assholes is very gendered for sure yes but they are

bad parents speaking of bruno should we talk about Bruno? There we go. We simply have to talk about Bruno, no, no. Yeah. Actually, let's take another quick break and then we will talk about Bruno. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere,

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't worry worry we promise to avoid any black holes most of the time okay we're back and we're talking about bruno so bruno i didn't realize i was sort of wondering i'm like is this the one role doll movie where there's not a whole sequence or and or character dedicated to fat phobia it is not the character is still there um yeah this is a very common theme in raul doll's work we talked about this

extensively on the matilda episode there's a similar character in charlie and the chocolate factory i guess if i'm remembering this correct yeah so he's a kid who is fat and who is obsessed with food, which leads to his demise. And also they, much like they do with Bruno, in the case of Augustus Gloop, not only is the child punished and there's all of these tropes that we'll talk about, but Roald Dahl also specifically blames the parents in every case because Bruno's parents are also covertly blamed for

their child not being rail thin which is for some reason Roald Dahl is like so in love with that idea of like restriction and control but there was I was reading there's a really good slate piece about roald dahl and the way food is presented in his entire oeuvre it's by annalisa quinn and

it came out in 2016 um and she she points out a lot of different stuff but she even like i i appreciate she mentions the inverse as well because Augustus gloop much, whatever I'm sure we'll cover Willy Wonka at some point, but all the kids in that movie represent what Roald Dahl perceives to be a societal evil, usually related to consumption and puts that blame on children that he kills. Cool.

Yeah. Except for Charlie, who is famously boring. and puts that blame on children that he kills. Cool. Except for Charlie, who is famously boring. But the way, so Augustus Gloop, you know, meets his demise. There's extreme body horror with him. He basically eats himself to death. Like, it's just, it's really blech. But the inverse is also true, where he talks about people and children, in this case, Charlie, who like restrict themselves from eating as a very virtuous thing to do. So like when Charlie first gets a candy bar, like Roald Dahl spends a whole page describing how slowly he eats it and how like much control

he exerts over himself and that is like not the reason but one of the reasons that he is perceived as a more virtuous character yeah which is just like you fucking weirdo piece of shit of a hungry child you're like and that's praxis like what the fuck are you talking about um anyways i'll reference that piece a little more but let's talk about bruno yes so bruno is a little chubby and this is something that he is punished for by the story throughout the entire movie and the movie leans into a number of fat phobic stereotypes for example we meet him when he's scarfing down food he is lured in by the witches with the promise of several candy bars he loves food so much that he doesn't notice that he got turned into a mouse because he's too distracted by food yeah um when the so

there's not a single line with him that passes without him noticing the nearest food he is not he's he's like i mean i guess like i wanted luke to be i wanted all the kids to be more upset that they were mice why are all the kids so fine with being mice literally at the end luke to be i wanted all the kids to be more upset that they were mice why are all the kids so fine with being mice literally the end luke is like oh yeah i'm probably i could i'm gonna die any day now but it's all good and you're just like what the they're both like oh we don't have to go to school or do homework anymore being a mouse is awesome it's like and you're never gonna have sex like what they did was something that i i was like i that's what i mean it may be that they're nine that's not on their minds but i'm just like damn that sucks but anyways uh but but yeah i mean bruce the way that bruno is unbothered about it is by only talking about

food which is also the only thing that he talked about when he was a human child. Yes. There's also when Mouse Bruno and Mouse Luke are running away from the witches. Bruno complains about having to run. He says it gives him indigestion. He doesn't like it. He says something like, no more sports because they're running away to safety. And then the last time we see his character on screen is luke's grandma telling bruno that he needs to go on a diet and then i know and then bruno's saying to his mom oh mom you always wanted me to lose weight well now i'm a mouse and she is if to say i lost a

bunch of weight because i'm a rodent now. And she's like, I'm hysterical. So I can't respond to that at this time. And I think that like when I mean, everyone's transformation into a mouse is horrific. But I felt like the way that Bruno is transformed was also pointed in the way that it was designed. Because his like belly is exposed. Whereas when Luke is transformed into a mouse, you don't even really see it. in the way that it was designed because his like belly is exposed right whereas when luke is transformed into a mouse you don't even really see it you're just kind of like the camera is untransformed and he's naked question naked and you're like did i what did i just see i was like

i'm not going to rewind that but i'm i i'm like i like that one i was just like i'm not touching that one i don't what the fuck uh i hope i was wrong but yeah i'm like well i'm not sure what i saw but he's definitely naked and we maybe saw too much um basically the point is this story and it seems like most, if not all, of Roald Dahl's work are making very harsh judgments against fatness and saying that fat people and fat kids especially are ravenous. They're greedy. They're lazy. It's their fault that they're fat and being fat is a bad thing. And that's a common theme throughout his work. And it's very much on display here in this story.

And it's a very common theme across everything, but like across children's literature. I did a little bit of research to this end because with Roald Dahl, the examples that came to mind were, I forget the name of the character in Matilda, but the cake scene in Matilda, Augustus Gloop, and now Bruno, who I recently learned exists. But fat phobia is so rampant in children's literature, especially like, and it's something that unfortunately, like we still need to be very mindful of because all this shit is getting readapted because you're not allowed to write a new story anymore so whatever i'm being a drama

queen but you know this is being readapted yeah so i found a piece by rebecca rabinowitz she wrote something called who's that Fat Kid? Fat Politics and Children's Literature for the Children's Book Council Diversity blog. And she kind of unpacks a lot of tropes that are leveraged against fat or just not thin children in general in books. They're often characterized as of lower intelligence. They're characterized as hyper fixated on food and defined by hunger and or fatness and they're very often found to be either bullies or the victims of bullying and i honestly as i didn't i i don't know if the bully trope ever really like clocked for me.

But then when she unpacked it, I was like, oh, that actually makes sense. She's basically every bully in the Harry Potter books is fat. There's Dudley, Crabbe and Goyle are all kids that are not real thin like Harry Potter and or Luke. And then there's also a lot of fat characters that are bullied. It's just whatever. It's just like defining someone by their experience. It's been found that anti-fat attitudes begin as early as age three. And another study found that children are less likely to want to be friends with fat characters, which is not the fault of the children. It's the fault of how fat characters are presented to them.

And also that they're very rarely main characters. They're either a best friend or a bully or a side character that a thin hero needs to rescue from bullying so i just wanted to shout out that um rebecca rabinowitz piece it was very helpful also just roll tall um loves to talk about food like james and the giant peach also like there's just uh there's just so much. What is his obsession with people's body sizes and food and the restriction thereof? I'll say it. I'm glad he's dead.

Well, he would rather be dead than fat. And so he got his wish. Okay. Bye. Yeah. Good riddance. So, yeah. Yeah. The last thing I want to just touch on a bit more is just witches and the representation of them in media.

We've talked about the portrayal of witches in other episodes, such as The Love Witch and The Vavitch, of course. The Vavitch, yes. I think that that's probably where we did it the best. The Vavitch of course the vavitch yes i think that that's probably where we did it the best the vavitch the the vavitch and the love which is which yeah yeah iconic episodes sorry i was just thinking of other movies we've covered that had witches but i don't think that we got as in depth uh hocus pocus uh the craft witches of eastwick the craft we've covered a lot of witch movies there's a there well because all women are witches. And that's a fact.

I love the right kind of witch media. You know, it can be some of the greatest shit in the world. But that is not often how witches are presented in media. So we've talked about the various tropes that surround witch characters and stories about witches we've unpacked a little bit the historical context of people usually women who have been perceived as being witches and the literal witch hunts that have happened throughout history yes i've referenced this book before. I'll recommend it again.

The book, Witches, Sluts, Feminists by Kristen J. Soleil, which dives into that historical context and among other things, but basically, again, people and especially women throughout history who have just not fit the mold of very rigid gender roles and expectations and that ranges from anything to like interests or profession their sexuality their just physical presentation all manner of things and just a fundamental misunderstanding of women in their bodies has led to the perception that a bunch of women must be witches yeah this movie leans into a lot of those tropes because it you know it demonizes women who don't want children it demonizes older women it demonizes it the movie doesn't come out and say this really but if it seems like all these women are also unmarried i think that kind of comes with

a territory of like yeah i guess that i i can't prove that they are unmarried and childless but i would i would put money on that that's what we're supposed to believe because any woman we know that has a child or married we see them with their husband or their kid. Right. I think that there's also just like a thing with which is that I'm sure we've talked about this at some point, but not only is it, you know, a way to rationalize not adhering to the rigid expectations of women across cultures and that's like another thing where it's like we are so focused on um you know characters who are white who are witches when which culture uh is with with i think very few exceptions a universal thing uh misogyny really uh is everywhere in most places and has been forever but i think it also is like in uh meant to inherently discourage or to imply that um women talking to each other means something bad it is

like a force of evil for women to talk to each other because you whatever you don't want them to start getting ideas and talk to each other about how scary the men around them might be. Well, I literally was thinking about, because I'm always thinking about hot dogs. But there's a thing that I, there's a story that I talk about in the hot dog book, which you can pre-order now. Yeah, do it so one of the anecdotes that really stuck out to me that i know i've told you before um is the creator of auntie ann's pretzels who are famous for their pretzel dogs was from an amish community um where women are you know not encouraged to talk to each other especially about something traumatic and there's a lot of shame as there are in across most

religions i'm not trying to target the amish community specifically sure yeah she you know she she was being abused by a priest in the community and it wasn't until she spoke to the community of women that she found out everyone was being abused by the priest and the priest was weaponizing the inherent shame that came with religion and also communing among women that you know protected him well if women commune they become a coven and they are witches right i mean it's just fucking but it's like it's true it's just it's ridiculous but yeah yeah all this to say that uh women have been perceived as witches throughout history and punished and killed for it uh time and time again because they defy gender roles and expectations and then harmful tropes in media and and you know entertainment and literature cinema etc have arisen arose i don't i don't remember it sounds

good how to speak um but they've emerged over the years without like challenging all the sexism inherent in perceiving women as witches and they're just like yeah no witches are evil and a lot of women are witches and therefore a lot of women are evil and this movie this story just presents that as a simple fact so yes and i i think that it is just like a i don't know i i understand why and also it's like i i i hate i need to stop thinking of like what are people going to be mad at us about now um but just for the sake of saying it we understand that this is a very campy movie there are a lot of elements of this movie that are really really reclaimable like sure but it's our job to look at the text and this is you know uh based on a really anti-semitic children's book so um you know i i understand why people like this movie i understand why it's campy but we just don't have any attachment to it i fear

right that's it's true um another like trope that gets leaned into is like the woman or the witch as a seductress to like kind of lure someone in this happened in the vavich where sometimes the vavich presents as you know of a traditionally beautiful seductress who's like walking around naked in the woods to lure people in. But then when you see her in her quote unquote true form, that's leaning into another trope, which is an older woman who does not, you know, have a Victoria's Secret model body is evil and scary yeah uh so the director uh nicholas rogue deliberately costumed angelica houston to like have you know she's wearing like a sleek black dress which like shows cleavage she's more tisha hang out yeah right and um that was a very deliberate choice

he like wanted the grand high witch when she's like Angelica Houston and not a horrible anti-Semitic stereotype, to have sex appeal. And then you see, is it Bruno's dad who's hitting on Angelica Houston in various scenes? Yes. And then you get a dirty look from Bruno's mom. Yeah, I mean, that's at least if I'm going to reclaim one of those elements, I guess that that's one of the more reclaimable things to me is like, you know, I feel like whatever, that's a two prong thing for me where it's like, sometimes it's like, yeah, especially because this is written, script scripted designed and shaped entirely by men i feel like there is this assumption that it is scary a scary thing a woman can do is like manipulate you with her body and sexuality but also i like when uh when that does happen because all of the men to if nothing else all of the men in this movie are pretty incompetent and and horny yeah horny and incompetent and like a horrible combination useless like it's the kids and um the women are fully the only like, you know, active characters.

Like there's things that like Mr. Bean tries to do, but he's not really successful in any of it. And the same goes for Bruno's dad. And those are kind of the only male characters. And so sure, that's fun. And what I, I mean, Angelica Houston, I just love her so much. I just, yeah, but this movie is not

not good do you have anything else? I don't think so me either yeah this movie does pass the Bechdel test not as much as I

would have thought there's a lot of Grandma and Luke Grandma and Luke Luke, Bruno and Luke. And then Angelica Houston will talk to other witches, but we don't know who most of their, what most of their names are. True. I would say that the only witches that are remotely characterized are her, Eva, and kind of Susan, and a few of their exchanges would pass. But in such an overwhelmingly, you know, women-driven movie,

I kind of thought it would happen more. It does happen, though. Yeah, true. But how about that nipple scale of ours? Well, that's what really counts. That's a really major metric here. Oh, boy. I mean. So zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through

an intersectional feminist lens. Yeah. I would, I would say between the blatant anti-Semitism, sexism and fat phobia, you know, not, not going to get very high marks. If you don't have any attachment to this movie i wouldn't watch it i don't know there's so many better movies that have the themes that this movie is mishandling like i love body horror i just don't like when it's anti-semitic right you know like there's there's just for anything that that people hold on to for nostalgic reasons to this movie, there is a movie that does the same thing better. So if you haven't seen it, honestly,

I wouldn't bother. Skip it. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess, you know, I like the little mouse puppets. They're kind of cute.

I mean, the Henson's, yeah, they're, uh, whatever though. No, fuck the mice.

I don't know. I'm just like, this movie, this movie movie i didn't like it it's uh it's doing a lot of bad things um i'll give how many nippies i'll give it one nipple for its potentially reclaimable stuff mostly i just love angelica houston but maybe it doesn't even deserve a nipple i'll drop it down to a half nipple and i'll give it to angelica houston as morticia adams yeah uh i'm gonna do a half as well uh i just uh it like is is not that this super matters but just personally griping it annoys me when there's like a movie that i feel like i should like because i love body horror and i love cast of women doing evil shit and i love angelica houston and so you know on its face but it's just like i it just pissed me off to watch i didn't like it

for all the reasons we've been talking about for two hours now yeah so i'm just going to give it a half nipple for camp and i'm going to give it to the mom who gets you know nuked in the first two seconds of the movie um didn't know what her name was but she was i did appreciate that she was like grandma stop telling luke all your misogynist conspiracy theories and grandma's like yeah yeah yeah so i'll give it i'll give it to her but um yeah this this bummed me out this bummed me out so uh that's the witches uh oh the the thing i was gonna say we'll we'll talk about it in on a matrion episode but the reason that we cannot because i honestly i would have watched the 2020 movie so here's a little postscript i would have watched the 2020 movie to prepare for this episode

but you literally at least in the u.s i'm pretty sure this is true across the board you literally cannot it is media that came out less than two years ago that is no longer available to watch streaming anymore you can't watch because there is like this horrible thing going on right now that is like i i research it very intensely because the production of a show I'm working on is like really tied up in all this shit. But Warner Brothers and HBO, they're like legally making existing, you know, art, whether it's good or not. Because I hear that the 2020 movie sucked. But you shouldn't be allowed to disappear. You know, a movie that came out two years ago.

It's just absolutely, and it's not being done because it was offensive. It was not being done because it wasn't good. Bad movies exist fucking everywhere. It's being done because it is like a corporate loophole that was just made possible by the Supreme Court a couple of years ago that allows huge companies like Warner Brothers

and like HBO to make stuff disappear in order to not pay taxes in order to consolidate money and not pay taxes so it's all a fucking like if you watched the 2020 uh movie and hated it I wish I could have watched it and hated it too because it's just like I think it's corporate evil and i think it's really disrespectful to people who worked hard and made a whole fucking movie even if that movie sucks you shouldn't be allowed to disappear something like that um and it's been happening to a lot of people so i'm just personally pissed off about it and literally as we were recording this cartoon network got shut down so what yeah i'm a fucking animation writer i just like i i hate this shit so much um so the witches you know the witch is

2020 will it be missed very much probably not but but you know ceos shouldn't get to decide what art exists in the world and what doesn't that's a fucking nasty precedent and i hate it uh and on that note goodbye yes uh thanks for listening um you can follow us on social media at bechtel cast on twitter and instagram hey because it's just us i'm gonna plug my social media you can follow me on those same platforms at caitlin dorante and hey jamie do you have anything that you want to plug maybe like a book about hot dogs or anything like that if you want to buy my book about hot dogs it is available for pre-sale now it's called raw dog the naked truth about hot Jamie Loftus. Wow, that's you. That's me. It comes out in stores on May 9th, but presales are cheaper and really helpful.

I would recommend, and we'll link this in the description, I would recommend you buy it on bookshop.org. It's a really cool website. That's where I got mine. And it connects you to your nearest local independent seller. And you save money. Please don't buy the book on Amazon. I'll be so sad. So there you go. And I really hope you watch it.

And you can get our merch at tpublic.com slash Bechtelcast. You can follow. You don't have to follow me online. I need to get off that fucking thing anyways. It's toxic. We're the first people who have ever said that But hey you know what's not toxic Is our Matreon

Our Matreon's a little toxic It's a little chaotic I would say You can subscribe to that At patreon.com Slash Bechtelcast where you'll get Access to two bonus Episodes every month plus the entire Back catalog of all the matron bonuses

we've done and it is five dollars a month wow what a deal what a deal what a steal what a bargain and i'm not even joking it's a good deal we've we're only releasing the hits yeah so and and this month because it is the scary month um we did Final Destination 3 and we're doing Malignant, a James Wong movie and a James Wan movie. You're going to love it. Five bucks a month. Iconic. Truly, I feel like we can really cut loose on the

Matreon. It's exciting. Oh yeah. So that was The Witches. Thank you for staying for my corporate rage post script and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist

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