The Bechdel Cast - Y Tu Mamá También with Adriana Ortega
Episode Date: September 14, 2023Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Adriana Ortega hop in the car and discuss Y Tu Mamá También while heading to La Boca del Cielo. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for ou...r Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @adriana_oa9 and @espanolconadriana on Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Hey, y'all. Niminie here.
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Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti.
And I'm Jemaine Jackson-Gadsden.
We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career.
That's where we come in.
Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.
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app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just
boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it
with the bechdel cast hey jamie hey caitlin do you want to go on a road trip with me to a beach
and then we'll kiss at the end how old are you? How old am I? You and I are the same age in this scenario.
Okay, but so we'll hook up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, yes, yes, yes. Okay, let's go. Let's go. And let's just go just us.
Okay, that sounds great.
The end.
Wonderful story. Hello, and welcome to the Bechtdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante.
My name is Jamie Loftus and this is our podcast where we examine your favorite movies using an
intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion. But
Caitlin Durante, what the hell is the Bechdelchdel test well it's a media metric created by queer
cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test which first appeared in
allison bechdel's comic dykes to watch out for in the mid 80s as a goof as just a little bit in the comic. And it has since become a widely used metric.
And our version of it is that two characters of a marginalized gender have to have names,
they have to speak to each other,
and their conversation has to be about something other than a man.
And we especially like it when it's a juicy, meaty conversation.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, that was gross. I'm sorry.
No, it's good. It's a what do they eat? They eat scallops.
They have some different types of seafood. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. We have to have a meaty, seafood-y kind of conversation.
Exactly.
Nice. to have a meaty seafood kind of conversation exactly nice yeah so that's what we use as a
springboard to talk about movies and the representation therein today's movie is a
movie from 2001 directed by alfonso coronaron. Y tu mama tambien.
And we have an incredible guest joining us.
She is a Spanish tutor.
She's a former university professor, an educator all around.
She's also a Mexican immigrant who moved to the U.S. four years ago.
And she's my personal Spanish tutor.
It's Adriana Ortega.
Hi, I'm so excited to be here. Welcome. We're so stoked to have you.
First of all, English is not my first language. So this is going to be a ride, but be patient with me.
Of course. arrive but be patient with me of course yeah and I love this movie it's very important to me yeah tell us about your relationship with the movie well this movie came when I was in high school
when I was in my last year of high school and I have two very good friends.
One of them I don't talk to very much,
but the other one is still my best friend.
And the one that I don't talk to anymore
had like a cool mom.
Everyone has this friend who has the cool mom.
So her mom took us to see.
Y tu mamá también.
My parents would have never.
Okay.
And since she was a cool mom,
let's take the kids to see a movie with sex.
Every parent has to at some point for some reason.
Yeah.
So we loved it.
We quoted the movie.
It was like, I don't know, American Pie.
Okay, yeah.
I don't know if there's an equivalent.
Because we didn't have that before.
Like, Mexican movies were boring.
Like, movies about people our age, like young people movies, had to be American to appeal to us.
So this was like the first Mexican movie made for us as an audience.
And of course, as girls, as young teenage girls,
seeing Diego and Gael was like...
Oh my God.
It's sickening.
Unfair.
Attractive.
Those men are.
They're so beautiful. And they were so young.
They were so young. Now that I see it, they had baby faces. 20 years will do that. I'm always shocked at I mean, it's like, Diego Luna is not old, but he has been famous for so long. It's wild. Because he was like a teen
idol before this movie.
No, no, he was a child idol.
Diego and Gael
have been in Mexico. They were
soap opera stars
since... As children?
As little kids, yeah.
There's this... Oh, even younger. Wow.
They were 11 years old
when they were in a soap opera named El Abuelo y Yo.
So Grandpa and Me.
Yeah, and everyone had a crush on Gael since he was 11 years old.
So they were big and Gael disappeared for a while.
Diego kept being in soap operas.
So when we saw them in this movie, well Gael
had already filmed Amores Perros
but Diego
was still in our minds a
child soap opera actor
so they blew everyone's
minds with this movie
yeah
suddenly they're naked
and they're masturbating
and they're kissing each other.
Spoiler alert.
Yeah.
And acting like.
So good.
They're such good actors.
So talented.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The way they change the tone, it blows my mind.
So that's my story with the movie.
I've been a fan of those two since i was a kid i've always
liked movies and i've always been aware of directors names and all of that so alfonso
cuaron directed great expectations with winnet patro and ethan holland i've not seen that. It's good. It's very good.
So he was coming back to Mexico and everyone was like, oh, it's a famous director who's already working in Hollywood. And now he's doing a movie about Mexico.
And everyone was excited about that, too.
Yeah, I was that annoying teenage person who knew the director's name.
He had also directed The Little Princess before this, too.
Yeah, yeah.
I haven't seen The Little Princess.
I grew up with that movie.
I'm sorry.
It's okay.
Look, we'll all be completionists one day.
One day.
I'm also a little princess head, but I'm not a Cuaron completionist.
I have some gaps.
I think it's just great expectations and gravity.
But I always confuse gravity and interstellar because it's like two of our most famous living directors directed space movies so close together.
I don't know.
True.
Jamie, what is your relationship with Ito Mama Tambien? Now I think I may be the exact age of the older member of the main cast.
So it was very different viewing experiences.
And I was, I think, watching it with friends the first time.
But I do remember, to me, as a doofus American New Englander, that I first learned of this movie when Harry Potter 3 was announced and Alfonso Cuarón was
the director because in my like 10 year old world, they were like, and this guy has directed
A Little Princess, which I loved. And also this very sexy movie that I'm not allowed to watch.
Cause I, you know, I was eight when this movie came out.
So I definitely wasn't allowed to watch it. And I don't think that my parents did either,
because they lack horny movie depth, I guess. But yeah, I sure this movie had like mythic status
in my head. So I watched it when I was in college. I remember really liking it in college. And this is the first time I have revisited it in, I think, at least 10 years.
And I mean, holy shit, there's so much to talk about.
And also, I mean, I remember when I watched it in college.
And again, this is like goofy American kids will know that I saw Diego Luna.
And to me, I'm like, it's the guy from Dirty Dancing Havana Nights that I
had a crush on. Because I was really into Dirty Dancing Havana Nights. I don't know how well that
would do on this show. But that was like a sleepover movie. Dirty Dancing Havana Nights
was canon to me. And so that's where I knew Diego Luna from at the time. And now, you know,
everyone in this movie is such a legend.
It's so well acted.
I think it's one of the most interesting road trip movies I've ever seen.
Because, I mean, there's so many ways to do a road trip movie.
I feel like often there's goofiness.
Often coming-of-age movies are either, like, overdramatic or overly goofy.
I associate them with like gross out
comedies a lot i feel like a lot of american road trip movies are like gross out comedies i mean
this movie yes not that this movie isn't very gross at points which it is but i also think
like the alternate to that i'm thinking of like i don't know why this movie is coming to mind but like a road trip that is like rooted in mourning from the jump right where it's like i'm on a road trip
to go see my sick relative or i'm like on a road trip to do something sad a goofy movie a goofy
see and the most serious coming of age road trip of all.
But like this movie is so like,
I don't know,
when movies are trying to be profound,
I feel like it rarely hits for me.
But this movie is so messy
and it's silly and it's serious
and there's a lot to talk about.
But I feel like it's just like,
it made me uncomfortable at times,
and I wonder how I would feel watching this
at a different point in my life,
because it made me uncomfortable
because it's about all of the things
that you don't say or acknowledge in the day-to-day,
even when you're having a goofy movie experience,
and everything that is stewing under you
that is just so inherent to who you are.
And how you can see characters in this movie doing something that on its face is unkind or confusing or bizarre or sad or funny.
I don't know.
This movie, I've never seen anything like it.
And it made me, I think, squirm in a good way because you're like, oh, people are so hard. Anyways, this is an interesting
movie to revisit. Caitlin, what's your history? I saw this movie a few years after it came out.
I think I saw it in 2004 when I was a freshman in college, a friend showed it to me and I immediately loved it.
I was like, okay, these people are so sexy.
And that was my first introduction to both Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna.
And I've loved that Gael Garcia Bernal.
I've mentioned this on the show before he is my future husband I love him so much and you've been saying this for years I've been saying
it for years also now as a huge Andor head I think I just need to enter a thruple with the two of them. I haven't seen Andor yet.
Audrina, have you seen it yet?
It's so good.
It's so good.
Damn it.
I was like, okay, I'm alone in not having seen Andor.
I do have to watch it.
It's incredible.
It's the best Star Wars product that has ever come out.
I agree.
So I love both of them.
I do want to make both of them my husbands.
And it all started with this movie. And then just as a piece of like storytelling, this is such an incredible movie.
I'm not big on your more like slice of life character study type movies. I tend to prefer like big out of this world genre film, but this is like such a well
done, incredible movie with interesting characters and just like the way it examines
life in Mexico and the little snapshots you see of people who are not like the main cast,
but I like that it takes the time to tell little narratives,
little kind of vignettes almost about different people or like historical
events and things like that.
Just,
I think it's a really interesting way to craft a narrative.
And I love this movie.
It's one of my favorites.
There's lots to talk about and I'm excited to get into it.
So let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap.
So, y'all, this is Questlove.
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Okay, so here's the recap of the movie.
We are in Mexico City in the late 90s. I think it's 1999. And we open on Tenoch, played by Diego Luna. He's having sex with his girlfriend, Anna. She's about to leave on a trip, and they're promising each other not to cheat on each other with other people while she's away.
Then we meet Julio, that's Gael Garcia Bernal.
He's also saying goodbye to his girlfriend Cecilia via having sex with her, because she and Anna are going to Italy for the summer together.
They're best friends and Tenoch and Julio are best friends.
So we see them like bidding their girlfriends farewell at the airport.
And then they're just kind of hanging out.
They're goofing around.
They're enjoying their lives as like, quote unquote, single guys for the summer.
Farting in the car.
Farting a lot in front of each other as a goof.
There's a lot of like, triggeringly teenage boy content at the very top of this movie
where you're like, all right, you're lying, you're insecure, you're farting.
You're wearing a puka shell necklace right your whole personality
is driving a weird car you're like i've seen this guy yeah and i've fallen in love with this guy
yeah of course that's what my notes i had crushes on these guys oh my god they're so unlike the
other guys we think at the time yeah so they're like hanging
out they go to this party they swim in a pool we see their penises in the locker room it's a thing
also i did not realize how i thought they were college age The first like many dozens of times I saw this movie.
We just learned that they are still in high school.
So that we'll talk about that.
But anyway, I'm like, oh, God, I feel weird now.
The actors were like in their early 20s when they filmed this.
But like, yeah, but there's just we talked about this for Adrian.
You said this may have been a translation thing because yeah at the beginning of the movie i thought it was the
classic like summer trip after senior year kind of thing that we've seen in movies a lot but you're
totally right at the end of the movie we flash forward a year and they have just gotten out of
high school so this is the end of their junior year of high school there yeah so in mexico there are three years of high school and they're about to
start their senior year because when they're in the car farting they have this is not in the
subtitles but tenoch says that his dad is mad at him because he doesn't want to study area tres which means so the last
year of high school in mexico we get to choose which area of studies we it depends on on what
you're studying in university so he wants to be in area four he wants to be a writer and his dad is mad at him because he
doesn't want to be in area three so that's how we know they're about to start their senior year
i see okay got it well yeah we'll uh dive into an age gap uh later. But anyway. God damn it.
But some people start their senior year at 18 in Mexico.
Okay.
So they may be 17 or 18.
They're not like 14 or 15.
They must be about to turn 18.
Okay.
Let's pretend that that's true
for the sake of our ability to enjoy
the events that transpire.
For everyone listening, I guess, yeah,
full transparency, we are not sure.
And the movie does not.
At least the translation that I watched,
it was not totally clear.
Right.
Anyway, so we see them hanging out. And we're also getting a lot of
voiceover narration about each character we meet. So we learn, like you said, Adriana,
that Tenoch wants to be a writer. He comes from an upper class family. His dad is a politician.
Julio comes from a lower class family. He lives with his mom and sister. He hasn't had contact
with his father in many years. So we're learning things like that. We're also throughout the movie
getting voiceover narration, like I said, with these quick little anecdotes about different
people in the community. Maybe it's like something that happened at a location that they are at years prior just again
these little like snapshots about different characters or situations um then Tenoch and
Julio go to a wedding where they meet Luisa played by Maribel Verdoux she is married to Tenoch's cousin Hanno, and Tenoch and Julio immediately
take a liking to Luisa, who tells them that she's going to be hanging out by herself for the next
few days while her husband Hanno is away, and she wants to go to the beach. And Julio is like, ooh, we're going to the beach.
Isn't that right, Tenoch?
And Tenoch is like, yes, yes, it definitely is.
We are going to the beach.
A beach that definitely exists.
Exists.
And it's definitely called La Boca de Cielo, which translates to Heaven's Mouth.
Which is a great joke.
Yeah.
One of the things this movie does in a fun way, and then also goes back later to give it a little more layer,
is just like how much specificity that they make Hano seem like a real drip
and like a real piece of shit, annoying, up his own ass guy.
Baby.
Right.
And then you get the narration that is like okay he comes by it honestly like whichever
asshole technically comes by it honestly but then you get to go back and you're like well but also
he's a he's an asshole yeah we are not meant to sympathize with him no and i like when we get
all of the context for a character and we still don't sympathize with them that's like super rare it feels like
yeah so anyway they're talking to Luisa about this fake trip that they are going on and they're
clearly just making all of this up and they invite her along knowing that she'll probably decline
and she does brush them off so the next day they just carry on with their lives. They are fantasizing about
having sex with Luisa while they are jerking off side by side at the swimming pool. Meanwhile,
Luisa gets a call from Hano who admits to cheating on her. And she's devastated. And I think the next day she calls Tenoch and is like, hey, you're still going to that beach, La Boca de Cielo, right?
And Tenoch is like, yeah, duh, we're leaving this afternoon.
And she's like, great, I want to come with you. So now Tenoch and Julio have to scramble to put this
trip together so that they can take Luisa with them. They borrow a car from Julio's sister,
they grab some groceries, they get confusing directions from their friend Sabo, and then they
pick Luisa up and start driving toward a random beach.
Basically, they're just like going toward the coast.
On the way, the guys get to know Luisa
and they tell her about them,
how they call each other charolastras.
Charolastras.
They have a manifesto.
On their manifesto is stuff like there's no bigger honor than being a
charolastra never fuck another charolastra's girlfriend jerking off is awesome oh my god
unlike fight club they have 11 rules and fight club is frustrating enough but i'm like there's 11 rules and some of them
contradict the other rules and no one follows the rules yeah but two of them repeat yeah they hate
what is it the like american club football or something
i don't like this word but but slur for gay. Club America
is a soccer team in Mexico that
everyone either loves or hates. There's no middle ground.
No one is indifferent. Felt that way based on how they talked about it.
Yeah. But my family
is, they like America. So we're on the other side. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But my family is, they like America.
So we're on the other side.
Okay.
So then that night they stop for some food and drinks.
And Luisa admits to them that Jano has been cheating on her.
And later on, when they're at a hotel, they go and like try to spy on her,
but they see her crying. So they kind of scurry back to their room. And the next day,
they set off for the beach. She calls them out for spying on her. And then the conversation turns to sex. She wants to know how many people
they've slept with. She asks them how they make love to their girlfriends. And at the exact moment
that she mentions putting a finger in someone's asshole, the car breaks down. And so they have to stop for the day. We see Luisa crying in her room again. We will come
to understand why she keeps kind of breaking down and crying. But anyway, as she's doing this,
Tenoch barges in to borrow some shampoo. And then she's like, hey, drop your towel and come here. And he's like, teehee, what? And then they start fooling around
and they have sex and he comes very fast. And then we pan over to Julio in the doorway,
who has seen the whole thing. And now he's very jealous. And he's like, by the way, Tenoch, I fucked your girlfriend, Anna. And now Tenoch is super jealous and upset.
And he interrogates Julio all night with all these questions about this affair, basically.
I have so much to say about that scene where it's like even in these moments of true profound hurt it's like the women are incidental
and talked like as if they're symbols or objects and not people and they like are slut shaming
their girlfriends yeah like using really disparaging language yeah yeah well we'll come back to it but yeah yeah so the next
morning in the car while Tenoch is driving Luisa climbs into the back seat with Julio and starts
kissing him to sort of like restore the balance because she can tell that there's a lot of tension
between them so Tenoch is pissed off he pulls over and runs off while Luisa and Julio have sex
in the back seat yeah Luis is like there's only one way to resolve this having sex with a second
teenager you're like Luisa god damn it no we'll come back to it so they have sex and then he also comes very fast and then she goes to
tinoch and she's like well this is what you wanted right like you were both trying to fuck me that's
why you invited me on this beach trip and she realizes that she shouldn't have had sex with
either of them but she's like well too late now let's go So they set off again. They're driving. And Tenoch is like, hey, Julio,
me too. I also had sex with your girlfriend, Cecilia. And then they get in another huge fight.
They're screaming at each other. Luisa is like, you guys are pigs and you're babies.
And I'm leaving. So she storms off. but they convince her to get back in the car,
but only after she's like, okay, we do this my way or the highway. I'm not going to fuck you again.
And you can't fight with each other or be annoying. And you have to leave me alone
whenever I want you to. And they're like, fair, understood. so they're still trying to get to the beach and that
night they pull off somewhere and get stuck in the sand so they just call it a night and pass out in
the car then the next morning Luisa wakes up and discovers that they are very close to this beautiful, you know, secluded private beach.
And so they start to enjoy the beach.
They meet this couple, Chewy and Maybel, who take the three of them on a tour in their boat.
And Chewy is like, oh, up here is a good place to swim.
This beach is called La Boca de Cielo, which is the same name that Tenoch and Julio made up
earlier. So they're like, wow, what a coincidence. So they're hanging out. And then that night,
Tenoch, Julio and Luisa are eating and drinking. They're talking about sex again. they're toasting to blow jobs and toasting the clitoris and all this stuff and then
tinoch and julio drunkenly confess that they have had sex with each other's girlfriends multiple
times and then julio is like eat your mama tambien meaning i had sex with your mom also
hence the name of the movie and at this point they're like
yeah they're like yeah dude awesome
and then the three of them start dancing and they go back to their room and they have a threesome
i think one of the most famous threesomes committed to film although upon the
rewatch i was like this doesn't i mean it's like steamy but i'm like i remember this being way more
i don't know like pornographic almost than it is like caitlin's like i've seen so much hardcore
porn at this point that it's like this was so tame to me and it's weird you're not wrong um
but anyway so the next morning Luisa tells the guys that she's going to stay with Chewy and
Maybel for a few more days so she parts ways with Tenoch and Julio who return to Mexico City and
then drift apart as friends.
We cut to months later where they bump into each other for the first time in like a year,
because it's like the following summer.
They decide to get coffee and catch up, and Tenoch reveals to Julio that Luisa passed away not long after they parted ways she had cancer which she found out about right before
she went on that road trip with them or that i thought that was a little unclear that it was
like i think that she maybe found out that the cancer was past the point of no return or something
like that maybe yeah i wasn't clear and the way that she talked to Hano on the phone, like, if he knew that she had cancer, but that it wasn't terminal or like to what degree that he knew.
But I think that maybe he didn't know because otherwise he probably would have caught on.
So like she knew that it was terminal and maybe it was like trying to hang in the relationship as long as she felt it was possibly treatable.
Or I don't know.
I'm not totally sure.
I feel like it was left pretty open.
Who knew what?
No.
Yeah.
I think Hannah didn't know.
And she finds out like right before the trip.
So she finds out.
Because we see her at a doctor's appointment where she's like picking up test results and I feel like it's at that appointment where I don't know if she learns about the cancer for the first time in that moment or if she just
learns that whatever she's going to illness she had was terminal yeah but I think it's implied
that she learns that she only has very limited amount of time left prior to the trip, which is sort of what motivates her to go on.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Anyway, so they discuss Louisa having passed away, and then they part ways again. And that
meeting is the last time they will ever see each other. The end. And then I'm crying.
So that's the movie.
Let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss.
So, y'all, this is Questlove and I'm here to tell you about a new podcast I've been working on with the Story Pirates and John Glickman called Historical Records.
It's a family friendly podcast.
Yeah, you heard that right. A podcast for all ages. One you can listen to and enjoy with your kids starting on September 27th. I'm going to toss it over to the host of Historical Records, Nim podcast for kids and families called Historical Records.
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Nine months before Rosa, it was Claudette Colvin.
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Hey, everybody.
This is Matt Rogers.
And Bowen Yang.
We've got some exciting news for you.
You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right?
Well, this week we're taking it to the next level.
The one, the only,
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that's as hilarious as it is
insightful. Tune in for all the laughs,
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I feel some Sandra
Bernhard in you. Oh my
God, I would
love it.
I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so it. I have to watch Lost.
Oh, you have to.
No, I know.
I'm so behind.
Katherine Hahn can sing.
Oh, I'm really good at karaoke.
What's your song?
Yeah, what's your song?
Oh, I love a ballad.
I felt Bjork's music.
I just was like, who is this person?
I got to hawk this slalom, Rudy.
Not hawk the slalom.
I absolutely love it.
It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it.
It was somehow gorgeous.
Yee, my slok, you hollum.
Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Where shall we start?
I want to start with the kiss.
Okay, yes.
The kiss between them was like a very big deal in Mexico because, as I told you, we knew those guys as kids, as child actors.
Yeah.
And it was like the first time I think that a cultural product that I saw was like criticizing toxic male friendships.
Well, I don't know if it's a criticism,
but it was the first time I saw something that implied that these toxic, corny guys who are like hyper-masculine and hyper-sexual
are in the closet or something like that it started a
conversation and and I was just reading an interview with Alfonso Cuaron that said that
some people at the cinema in Mexico started booing oh wow when that happened yeah because it was a big shock but I loved it I think it was
very bold and I was like 17 years old when I watched it and it made me think it made me like
wow all these guys in my high school who are like very toxic and very macho, secretly want to kiss each other.
So, yeah.
I haven't seen an awful lot of Mexican cinema.
Are depictions of queer romance or sexuality pretty rare?
Or at least at this time?
No, they didn't exist.
Everything in Mexican cinema before this
was either charros with their big sombreros
and guns and stealing women and singing
or there was a period in the 80s and 90s
when all the Mexican movies were raunchy comedies and women
were barely there they were objects they were wearing bikinis and having no dialogue or in the
60s 70s the luchador movies that were like superhero movies like our mexican superhero movies where
the luchadores were heroes and rescued women maybe there were there were some
not very popular movies that were about gay romance but we didn't see anything like that before.
Not in the mainstream?
No.
I mean, that's not dissimilar from American cinema. But I think it is really, I mean,
I listened to a few interviews that Alfonso Cuaron did
when this movie came out,
and then also at the 20th anniversary point of this movie.
And it is really fascinating to hear i mean i think
it's really admirable that such an established successful director wanted to go back and create
a movie that engaged with masculinity engaged with the politics and class politics of his home country and like engage with queerness in a I
think good faith way at a time where like no one anywhere was doing that and like it could get you
booed and it just feels I know on the show we hate to hand it to a man but I really do I mean I think like especially
because of how established he was in Mexico in Hollywood and everywhere at this point to go back
to tell a story that is clearly very personally important to him and also knowingly risky for the time is really cool and i don't know i feel like this movie engages with ideas
of masculinity and puts it in context with the politics of the time and place without excusing
the behavior in a way that is like i think better than a lot of movies try to discuss masculinity now yes
it's not fight love yeah i agree and i think we've talked about this before in different episodes
how there's this weird disparity between like almost every movie being about men but so few movies actually centering
a compelling male friendship in the way that i think this movie does and yes these characters
are pretty toxic they have a lot of love for each other but it comes unraveled because of their insecurities and, you know, their
toxicity and their fragility, all of that stuff. But it's just interesting to see that closely
examined in a way that just feels so extremely grounded and real. Like, so many many you know whatever 17 18 year old boys are exactly this way and their friendships
are exactly this way and it's just really interesting to me to see a male friendship
portrayed so authentically in a way that like yes these characters they're likable to me but i can also absolutely acknowledge
and recognize that they're like yeah like because they're teenage dipshit exactly like there's such
a juvenile like anyone who's ever been around teenage boys with something to prove can relate
with us where it's and this is something i remember from my teenage experience in people of all genders to sort of deflect their own complicated feelings towards the people around
them because it seems like for julio and tanach exploring their sexuality is not allowed and like
it is not just like a societal block. It's also a mental block where
it's like, you cannot allow yourself to think that this is something you could explore. And so
there's like this deflectiveness that I feel like we probably all experience as teenagers that
instead of being honest with how they're feeling about themselves or about their own experiences it's
easier to default to what you think you're supposed to say and how you think you're supposed
to treat other people and in the case of these teenage boys as i think is still common like it
ends up being deflective in a way that is cruel to girls and women that they know in a way that is cruel to girls and women that they know,
in a way that is like because they're unwilling or feel unable,
in ways that can be understandable,
but it doesn't make it the fault of the women in their lives.
And it's like in the way that it's written
and the way that it's performed in this movie,
it feels clear that that's what's happening.
And that it's pretty incredible because I think sometimes when
we see those narratives played out it's presented as well you know this is how guys are because
dudes rock but the way that this story and this friendship plays out demonstrates that they are
not just projecting and being unkind to the people around them they're also
trapped in a like vision of themselves that they can't fully be themselves like and it's just
everyone in this movie is both experiencing joy and experiencing connection but is also still in
like a prison of themselves in a way that feels
like i think that was why it was like hard at some points to watch because you're like oh no
that's everybody and the narrator does a great job of explaining to us what the inner conflicts are with those characters.
Yeah, and the outer conflicts,
because the political climate in Mexico at that time is so important.
It seems like it's not that important,
but it is because it happens in 1999,
where 1999 was the last year of the PRI.
That was the political party that governed Mexico for 71 years.
So the Notch's father is a politician from the PRI.
And their reign is ending.
The castle is crumbling.
Yeah.
And they are being groomed.
I hate that word nowadays.
But since they are kids, they are like, so you're going to be in office.
And they're preparing them to follow the steps of their parents.
And I know who these guys are.
So the part when he says he wants to be a writer,
it's very important because you know he will not,
since the narrator says he's the son of a politician in power.
And the president is at the wedding.
I don't know if you remember this.
Yeah, I didn't mention it in the recap, but yeah, he's there.
And there's a moment where the father says,
Did you go say hello to the president?
Like, you will be working for him.
But then the next year, that political party doesn't win the elections.
It's like the start of the real democracy in Mexico.
And it's very symbolic of the journey. Because at the same time, the system of government in Mexico crumbles.
Their friendship crumbles.
It's something like that.
Wow.
Symbolism.
I had questions about that for you, Adriana, because, yeah, I did some reading into, like, what is the political moment that we are falling into here?
And this is, again, like, doofus American where I read scholarly journal Wikipedia. But that's fascinating to know because it does feel like there's a lot of different ways to approach the dynamics in this movie.
Where obviously I think we sort of default to looking at the gender dynamics in the movie and the class dynamics.
But we don't fully understand the cultural dynamics.
And it's clear that Cuaron wants us to engage with all of those things at once, which I think is like part of what makes this movie challenging and brilliant.
If you're not originally from Mexico is that it just feels very clear where you hear how the characters talk.
You sometimes find out what happens to them in the future sometimes the narration in this movie
is so fucking cool because it will just stop the action of the movie and draw your attention to a
character sometimes that never comes back to contextualize where you are and also contextualize
what the main characters of the movie are either ignoring or just sort of taking in stride in a way that
you wouldn't question unless the movie is taking you out of it to say like hey this is so normalized
or the privileges that these characters have are such that they can just ignore this right and then
sometimes it's about people sometimes it's about the history of a place
that they fully don't know or couldn't possibly intuitively know and i think it's really cool that
i don't know it seems like coron has an interest in literally everything in this movie and it has
like in a way that i think most road trip movies i mean i think of like american road trip movies
where it's like okay we have to stop somewhere in the South and we're going to do a really cartoonish depiction of the American South.
And then we're going to stop in Vegas and we're going to do a really cartoonish depiction of Vegas.
And they're all set pieces, but there's no intellectual interest in who lives there or what the history is. And this movie will interrupt a silly scene about blowjobs
to tell you something about the history of the land they're driving over.
It's really cool.
Almost always with an emphasis on class disparity
or like the little stories will be a working class person
or a person living in poverty dealt with this or is dealing with this or you'll see
examples of like people being detained by probably corrupt cops and things like that and then there's
one scene in particular that really sticks out to me where they're driving past this small village called uh tepel meme where
tinoch's nanny leo is from we get voiceover about how she immigrated to mexico city when she was 13
she is the person who raised him from birth he called her his mom for the first four years of his life
you also see a scene with her earlier in the movie where like the phone's ringing off the hook
Tenoch is right beside it he doesn't do anything to answer it he's like expecting her to answer it
she has brought him food and then he also kind of like very dismissively sort
of shoes her away so it's just like showing the way that this rich kid son of a politician is like
so dismissive to like a woman who helped raise him also she's an indigenous woman and another fun fact he's wearing a zapatistas t-shirt in that scene
where his nanny brings him the sandwich he's wearing the zapatistas i don't know you've heard
about them are like an indigenous rights movement in mexico they're very important. Yeah, so while he's treating his nanny like garbage,
he's wearing the face of an indigenous leader in his T-shirt.
Okay.
Hypocrisy, sir.
That moment was a huge moment for class
that I feel like Cuaron revisits in Roma,
which is a whole other discussion and a whole
other episode because I know that that's a very separate discussion but Alfonso Cuaron it seems
like the experiences of the teen boys are closer to what he experienced growing up he grew up with
a lot of privilege and sort of continue to explore that in Roma, which we'll cover down the line. And he also wrote it with his brother, which also feels telling.
It seems like, and the interviews would sort of indicate, it's not autobiographical, but there's a lot of themselves in the way that the two young men are presented.
And the other class moment that really hit for me was in the way that the boys relate to
each other and just even in touching on how they react to each other's bathrooms in a very class
driven way where one when the working class character is in the rich character's bathroom
he you know tries to erase the smell of shit and then when the rich character is in the
working class character's bathroom he doesn't want to touch anything because it's like you know he
seems to feel that it is dirty less or whatever and i think that that is like a complicated class
dynamic that literally can exist in the same you know know, half a mile in any neighborhood.
And it seems like it does for these guys.
And a way that I think it's very easy to say, like, I'm a class hero because, like, sure, I have a lot of privileges.
But look at my friend over here.
It's like these very intimate moments that are actually telling.
And this is in my notes julio's his underwear he's always wearing
like tighty whities yeah and then the brand the brand he's wearing is rimbros this is not sponsored
like yet like rimbros underwear is, the cheapest underwear brand in Mexico.
And it was very deliberate.
Okay.
I saw a documentary.
I saw it on YouTube.
I don't know if it was, like, a DVD something.
But Gael didn't want to use them, didn't want to wear them because they're, like, the cheapest.
But it was delivered
and during the wedding scene he's wearing like a shirt that looks like
from the 70s with waves like those like roughly yeah yeah he's he's wearing that, like clearly something that was like from his father or.
Yeah.
And when they get in the fight, in the second fight, when Tenoch says that he slept with Julio's girlfriend, Julio spits in the window of the car.
Do you remember that?
Yeah.
The subtitles don't express what the notch says
but he says something horrible he says like a like a very classist slur in spanish
is this what translates to hillbilly the version i watched the English translation translated it to hick. So he's like, oh, you're such a hick.
What's a hick?
I think it's all sort of
the same thing, but it's not a slur.
It's an insult. It's a class-based
insult, but it's not a slur.
Oh, no, but in Spanish
he says a slur.
He says, te tenía que salir.
You had to show off
you being a slur. a classist slur.
And it feels like it's been inside of him.
I don't know, the way he delivers this line is like, he's been...
Oh, he's been like holding it back their whole friendship?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's how it feels to me.
And there's another moment when Luisa is telling them that she wanted to travel, but she couldn't.
Julio says, yeah, yeah, traveling is cool, or something like that.
Tenoch says, you haven't even been on a plane, something like that.
So they build up to this moment it's really interesting to watch like
what their dynamic is like and what they are willing to put out in the open versus
withhold because for example like they will jerk off near each other and they will eventually kiss each other in its while they're drunk it's unclear if
they would be willing to do that if they were sober it's unclear exactly what their sexualities
are that was just sort of like a moment of experimentation but there's like a sexual
component to what they are willing or not willing to do around each other and then there's like a sexual component to what they are willing or not willing to do around each other.
And then there's like we said, those sort of class things where they're best friends and they're very close, but they are harboring these prejudices and or insecurities about their class difference in a way that again, like boils to the surface.
Sorry, i missed my
hilarious joke oh sorry what was it prejudices and or something and or and it makes you fake
doesn't it um it really does no i again like this movie does so much with not just how masculinity is this big performance.
And, you know, femininity is a performance.
But in this movie, it's like masculinity is a performance that hides and obscures and avoids and deflects all of these other things.
And like you're just saying, Caitlin and Adriana, because I also was like how is this being translated what is hillbilly in this context where it's like that is what is actually being held back in someone
that they very obviously love but don't have the maturity or life experience to be able to like
square next to how they've been conditioned to see the world and they clearly
love each other but their classes are so different that they inherently are judging each other
and they clearly love each other but they can't get into this conversation without
using a woman as a vessel for the conversation in this weird way with their girlfriends or with Luisa or with whoever.
And I wanted to ask you both how you felt about this.
There was a friend that we never see.
Who is gay.
Who is gay.
Danielle.
Yes.
Who comes up over and over and also I thought most tellingly
comes up in the final scene of the movie
that I thought was an indication
that these characters
we don't know
and maybe they don't even know at this point
they're very young but like seem to
at least think
about what it
would be like to be able to identify
safely as queer in some way.
Yeah, because in that last scene, they're asking about people they know.
They ask about Saba.
Yeah.
That is the one.
The stoner friend.
Yeah, the stoner friend.
The guy who gives them the bad map.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then, I don't know who asks who, but they ask about Daniel.
And I think Julio says, no, his father threw him out of the house. And Tenoch says, oh, that's bad. And Julio says, no, no, he's very happy.
Yeah, he's happy because he has a boyfriend. And, you know, a romantic relationship will fix all your problems teehee well no that conversation felt i don't know audrey i'm curious because it felt like that yeah that conversation was like
also politically loaded because they were like oh danielle is really happy and they also in the
translation i watched that they're like well he's full queen now so he got kicked out of his parents house so i feel like it also
like indicated there is a level of like he had to sacrifice his family in order to live authentically
and it feels like that is like a little bit of what is at the core of the problem with julio
and tinoch is like it extends beyond their sexuality it's a very multi-layered issue
but there are all of these things some personal some political some both that are preventing
Julio and Tenoch from living as themselves authentically and I feel like anytime Danielle
was brought up especially because it's not a character we meet or know and it feels like he's brought up more as a symbol is like well we have a friend who's out
who is living authentically but there was all of this loss and shame heaped upon this person we
care about as a result of them living authentically and is that something that I'm prepared for and I think for
them the answer at least in the time of their life that we're seeing that answer is no and it's
presented non-judgmentally but I don't know yeah I feel like the specter of Danielle was really
interesting to me yeah because they ask each other which universities they are enrolling.
And Tenoch says ITAM, which is, Tenoch is going to study economy at ITAM.
That is, every politician in Mexico has studied economy at ITAM.
So when he says ITAM, economía like he's going to be a politician.
So there we know that he's not going to be a writer. And Julio says biology at UAM. And UAM
is a public university that is free. Some universities are free in Mexico, Brad I'm so jealous
and biology in that university is like
they're not hippies
they're kind of
they go camping
they have this fame of going camping and living in nature
so when they tell each other what they're going to
study that's how you know that that they will that they never be friends again they they're
on very different paths yeah that's so oh god there's so many layers to this damn story it's so good like i that's so fascinating
to know because it's like you can sort of get a whiff of that if you don't know that but if you
have the knowledge you're like oh yeah that is exactly what he's trying to say oh and have you
read about the names the characters names no oh no tell us okay so Alfonso and Carlos Cuaron named their characters all of
their last names are from Mexican historical figures okay so Julio's last name is Zapata
Julio Zapata and Zapata was like a revolutionary leader andenoch's last name
is Iturbide and Iturbide
was
like another historical figure
but he was like a
rich historical
figure like another revolutionary
but like a high class
person
like a rich
revolutionary
I should have read more about person. Like the more privileged. Yeah. Like a rich revolutionary.
I should have read more about these characters before telling you this.
We know
nothing, so this is great.
But Luisa's last name
is Cortes.
It's the last name of Hernan
Cortes that was like the biggest
conquistador.
And then they mentioned that, was it Tenoch that was almost named Hernan Cortes, that was like the biggest conquistador. Oh, yes. And then they mentioned that, was it Tenoch that was almost named?
Hernan?
Hernan, yes.
Oh, yes.
The narrator says his father came with a lot of nationalism
because he was just elected for office and then he named him Tenoch.
Yeah.
Yeah, so this is like another thing from Mexico
we grew up with this idea that all the races are mixed and there's just only one Mexican race
which is a lie and racism exists so a lot of white rich people believe believe that they own indigenous Mexican traditions and names.
And you see basically blonde women wearing indigenous clothing
because they believe they own it.
They have as much claim to the culture as indigenous people themselves and it's it's a
mess yeah but you see these rich people naming their kids the notch or which is because that's
an indigenous name right yeah it's a now what the name so it's very common so when you know
his name is the notch it's like, it's one of those.
Okay.
That's something I actually wanted to touch on a little bit as well.
Because, I mean, Diego Luna and Gail Garcia Bernal are white people, right?
This is something that I, I mean, I've had a lot of confusion about this throughout a large chunk of my life.
I think a lot of Americans in general, especially non-Latinx Americans, assume that if you're from Latin America, you are not white.
That, like, Latinidad is a race and it is not white and i think that there's a lot of confusion about that there are
white mexicans and white people across all of latin america because i've like had conversations
with people where they'd be like oh no they're they're not white they're mexican and i'm like
well you can be both yes but like what i wanted to mention that I think is worth mentioning is that it is cool that this movie of puts those characters in the background and still
focuses on these white characters with european features and european backgrounds and that is a
very movie thing to do but um yeah i just wanted to explore that a little bit because I think there's still so much confusion
about race and ethnicity as it relates to Latin American communities and people yeah so yeah
there's a lot of diversity there's Afro-Mexican people and there are indigenous Mexican people and there are indigenous Mexican people
and there are people who are descendants of European
and there are all the mixes in between because...
You described it to me before as like in the U.S. colonizers,
there was a lot more genocide.
And in Latin America, it was a lot more...
Rape. The word is rape.
Yes, right.
And forcing their Eurocentric and Christian values
onto the indigenous population
versus in the northern part of north america it was more um just
eradication yeah unfortunately like indigenous people here in the north don't exist we don't
want them to exist we put them away and in the south it was like oh indigenous people want to be like us let's give them kids that look like us
jesus and it's yeah it's both are bad horrible it's no i mean this is like i don't know like
as i was listening to your conversation it was just like oh yeah of course that's the most
american thing you could do is also feel like oh, we did the main way of how to suppress an indigenous race, which is the worst.
Caitlin, I mean, I'm very much in the same boat as you where I feel like I was conditioned to view Mexico in a very particular way that was very homogenous and in a way that was I was like not conditioned
to consider gradients like race class gender that I was not encouraged to look at here and
of course like everywhere is going to have their separate issues and that the issues of oppression
are going to be unique to where you are and I wonder because I haven't seen Roma since
it came out I remember some of the criticism that it was met with and it seems like this is an issue
that this specific director has an interest in and also has a lot of criticism around his attempts to tackle it because as far as it pertains to this movie
i think that there's based on what we were just talking about it seems as if he wants to
acknowledge the diversity in mexico without centering it in any way and that's why he is like centering these characters that sort of more closely
represent his experience as well as a woman from spain who is like an outsider in mexico and so
adriana maybe you disagree and i i'm not fully understanding it doesn't feel quite like set
dressing but indigenous
characters and characters
that represent any sort of
diversity within race
or class in
Mexico seem like it's
to contextualize
versus to give any
arc or story
it's just to tell us where we are versus give us a character.
And I think Cuarón, for people like him and the characters and me,
because, yeah, I grew up in Mexico, but I grew up with a lot of privilege.
So you know you live in a country with problems
and with inequalities.
I think what Cuaron wanted to reflect in the movie
is that when you're a stupid, privileged teenage person,
you see those problems as background.
Yeah.
And I'm not saying it's okay,
but you live in a country with so much problems that you just mute them yeah i think that like squaring that on quaron or any one person is not fair and i
do feel like that that comes across and that most movies would not even draw
your attention to what its centered protagonists are ignoring or missing and I think that there's
some value in that and again like doing this episode it made me want to revisit Roma and and see how this director's attempts to address diversity evolved over time.
But with Roma, it's because in this movie, I'm not saying it's okay,
but it feels honest.
He was a privileged kid.
So he's telling a story about privileged kids
who ignore all the problems around them and with roma
he feels like he can talk about things that are not his stories to tell
right i don't know i like roma is a beautiful movie and it's beautiful. And Yalitza is amazing in it.
She's so good in it.
But so many people say, and I agree,
that it maybe wasn't his story to tell.
Yeah, which is like so much of the criticism
that I feel like came up around this movie.
And we'll get into Roma when we talk about Roma.
But also, Yalitza was so incredible in this movie and she has get into roma when we talk about roma but also yeah that's it was so
incredible in this movie and she has barely worked since right that i wasn't lost spookies
she wasn't one of our greatest television shows of this time but i i it just it really it is like
a personal thing that i think we've seen over the years in this show and just in movies where
an actor gives an incredible performance and has a huge cultural moment but it ends up seeming like
it's in service of the director's moment and then they are not given the opportunities down the line
in the way that you would think she is an oscar-nominated actress she turned in
what everyone says is an unbelievable debut performance and we haven't really seen her in
the five years since and i just find it so frustrating what she says is that she has to
decline roles because they're super offensive jesus uh it's not that she hasn't been offered work
it's just that the work she has been
offered is racist
yeah right something like that
and you're just like this is not
an issue that the Timothee Chalamet
of the world are encountering
and it's like you can be
a very very gifted actor and
perhaps and I am I guess
subtweeting but like a better actor and struggle to find the roles that you deserve.
That's not what we're talking about with this movie.
But yeah, I was just sort of brought back because I forgot about this from when I had seen it in college, how indigenous Mexicans were acknowledged within this movie, but not centered and how that sort of evolved
throughout quarren's work yeah however we have not really talked about luisa luisa yeah let's
talk about luisa let's uh i really like her character at least just from like a superficial point of view. I think that she's more well-rounded
of a female character than you would generally see in just kind of any given movie, and especially
one from a movie that was written and directed by men. And I also appreciate that as the movie goes on and the more you learn about her and her circumstances the more
her choices and actions make sense because again you learn by the end that she had a terminal
illness that she found out about uh not long before she knew she was going to die so she was basically like okay
i need to make the most of what life i have left and this opportunity presents itself
with these teen boys yeah wouldn't have been my choice but you know
nor mine i would have been like hmm where are my female friends at and can we go on a little trip
versus two strangers but on the other hand they're diego and gael i know i just wish i wish the story
had aged them up to i don't know 21 and then it would not be a really gross thing yeah well that's one of the most difficult parts
of this movie for me is the age ambiguity because i think that there is a way to look at this where
you're like luisa is even in context of what she's doing abusing the power dynamic between
for sure and these questionably aged young men.
Yeah, because she knows they're willing to do whatever she wants.
Yes.
That was what I was confused.
Like, I don't know if that was a question that the movie was trying to get me to grapple with
or if it was just like, it was 2001.
Who cares about the age of consent kind of thing?
Like I genuinely was unclear on it because it made me uncomfortable.
And I didn't know if the movie wanted me to be uncomfortable about it.
The way that I read the original reviews and the synopses of it seemed like it did not want me to be uncomfortable about it.
And it's frustrating because their age and their naivete about the
world around them is inherent to who they are like i think if you age them up too much
their level of naivete doesn't make quite as much sense but because of the situation they're in
it's necessary for the plot like and so it just kind of became a a clusterfuck for me and i'm like if
they are like theoretically if we take out so many things we've already discussed and they are you
know 23 22 23 and they're young but they're you know consenting adults that are just doofuses. Sure. Which, I mean, plenty of examples
all over the world of that.
It happens every day.
Then I feel like there's a way to view
Louise's actions as cathartic
and as like,
oh, I am pitting your assumptions about me
against you
to just like feel good in the time I have left.
But because of their dynamic,
it just gets,
it gets really fucking.
In a way that it,
again,
like I mentioned,
it didn't even occur to me or I didn't,
I wasn't even aware or I didn't realize what that gap was the first several times I saw
this movie because while the movie does call attention to the fact that she's older than them
and you know more experienced the way that you experience life more when you are older I don't
think it's trying to make you uncomfortable about like, oh, it's this, you know, older person exploiting this power dynamic.
It's more just like a, haha, look at these young doofuses who have this awesome opportunity to get with this sexy older woman.
I feel like is how everything is framed.
And if that is the way we're supposed
to read it the ending bugs me a little more because I guess like I just maybe it's a personal
thing but like once you see her at a doctor's office I was like with all due respect she's
fucking toast like that felt clear to me very early in this viewing which is the first viewing in 10 years
i didn't fully remember the ending but it was like okay she is just not operating on anything
other than i want to feel as organically good and cathartic and connected to life as I can in the limited time I have left, which is a beautiful
premise. But then the way you're just like, Oh my God, I don't know. Adriana, how do you feel? I
just like, she's so challenging. Cause I love Louisa and like from certain viewings, I,
I want her to have everything she does. I am amazed and sometimes kind of like, how
can she send me notes of like her capacity to forgive? Something I really loved about her
and was like, wow, this is, it just felt like very unique. And I was like, wow, men wrote this who told them um was that how she clearly feels it's like her last days and she
feels the need or desire to provide grace to people in her life specifically hano who has
cheated on her she has known about this for a long time and she both doesn't want to be with him and she doesn't want him to lose her
feeling that she is angry with him but it's killing her and it's like it's so again in a
lesser movie it would be horrible because you would just be conditioned to be like oh and
women are inherently graceful and women are forgiving and women are
capable of blah blah blah blah but you can see and i appreciate that the movie took the time to say
that she feels it is her choice to provide this grace but it is also very very painful for her
yeah and that was like i don't know I appreciated them showing both of those things.
There's a lot of interesting, like you said, Jamie,
like there's this complexity that Louisa is written with that a lot of women
characters are not in a way that like, again, in a lesser movie,
if there was a female character who was
often crying as we do see louisa do yes you know her pain wouldn't be contextualized it would be
almost made a joke of like women are so emotional and they're always crying over everything but you come to learn like why she's in
all of this emotional pain and this like push and pull of wanting to reclaim her autonomy and like
her freedom in her last weeks of her life and you know make active choices and just like go on an adventure
almost while she still can and right but she's also dealing with an active breakup she has left
her partner and she knows what that's going to do to him. She knows how much it is already hurting her.
You know, there's all these components.
It's so hard because it's like, I do think that Luisa, some of her actions on its face,
especially the first quote unquote seduction is, I think, like actively coercive, at least.
Where he comes in looking for shampoo and she's like, no, take your towel.
And I think that based on our conversation, I don't think for, you know, 2001 or 1999 where the movie is taking place that we're supposed to feel like this is a coercive situation.
But I think on its face, it is.
Yeah.
And I don't want to shy away from that and in the same way we're given a full
complicated context for this character that i feel like really leaves it to the viewer to decide how
they feel about her actions right and i think every viewer is going to feel some gradient about
her actions based on their own life experience because we are given i was like impressed at the amount of information that were given about luisa where she lost her
parents young she became the caretaker of a sick relative who she loved very dearly
very young and that influenced the compromises she made throughout her life and it just doesn't
seem like she has gotten to have her big adventure and now she suddenly finds out that her life is
ending after having one serious relationship that ended in a partner's death and a second serious relationship that ended in devastating infidelity and so it's there's no
like i'm not trying to excuse her actions and i also think that we are given so much information
about the context of her actions that i just i really love her. And it's like, in many ways, she didn't have a shot at what she deserved to have.
And it seems like she knows that to an extent and wants to end life on her own terms.
And I also really appreciate that this section where she is hooking up with even if they're elder teenagers that's objectively weird
no matter where you're at in your life it's objectively weird like at very least it is weird
if you're an adult you should not do anything with anyone who is still in high school i think that's
a rule to live by,
regardless of how old they are. Especially if you've gotten to know them
and you're like, yeah, they're obviously kids, spiritually.
At some point, she says that she remembers him
when he was a kid and he was crying
because he wanted a Thundercat.
A Thundercat, yeah.
Right, which is, I feel like we most frequently see
that dynamic posed against young girls
in a sexualized way where it's like,
I knew you when you were a child
and now you are my wife.
Now you're all grown up.
Hubba hubba.
Wa wa wee wa.
Now that I think about it,
it's also that back in 2000, when this movie was filmed,
we never thought about older women being with younger boys or teenagers as predators.
This is like a recent conversation, and maybe the writers weren't thinking about it that way which is a
problem but well that's the thing that like i wrote down in my notes because i watched the
movie twice to prep and like pretty like midway through the movie and my first viewing i was like
as uncomfortable it is i remembered like at my core that luisa is a character that I really liked throughout the
movie but if the gender dynamics of this movie were flipped I would have a much harder time
yeah with this movie and again I'm not pro gender like flipping movies because that is very prescriptive in itself.
But it was something I thought about where I was like,
if this was a man in his late 20s, early 30s,
at the end of his life on a road trip with two teenage girls,
would I feel differently?
And the answer was absolutely
yes i would feel differently and so i wanted to acknowledge that in this episode because
that is not the way this movie was written i think very intentionally but i think it is
important to consider the dynamics even if he was an older man with two teenage boys
it would be weird it would also be weird yeah right either way you see
it's weird yes but i think you're right about the cultural climate of the time did not perceive
relationships between older women and younger men or teen boys as predatory it was always framed as like sexy oh look at these
cool young studs like getting with this older woman isn't that awesome there was an episode
of Dawson's Creek do you remember that yes yes I didn't watch that show oh god i'm trying to think of there's a book written by recent guest
of the podcast alissa nutting that sort of examines this same dynamic it's a book called
tampa about an abuser that is an adult woman who abuses younger men and so i think that like it is something that absolutely happens
and is still not really culturally understood because there's such a shame dynamic of like
if you are a young man or a man in general that has experienced sexual abuse from a woman that there is something emasculating about that versus something that is just abusive
and the expectation that if you are a man you are just supposed to be so horny and so ready
at any time to receive the you know sexual attention of a woman
because of heteronormativity
and just, yeah, that very harmful expectation
that strips men of their agency
and their ability to withhold consent and say no.
Yeah, my guess is the writers and the director
were not really thinking about any of that.
And I'm guessing they're like, well, we showed these guys as sexual beings.
The movie literally opens with one of them having sex.
And then moments later, we see the other one have sex.
So I'm guessing they're like, oh, you know, this is not predatory or abusive.
They're sexual people.
And they also come on to her. Like they approach her at the wedding. I'm guessing they're like, oh, you know, this is not predatory or abusive. They're sexual people.
And they also come on to her.
Like, they approach her at the wedding.
They, like, almost comically charge at her.
They, like, lunge at her at the wedding.
So they're probably like, all right, we did enough to suggest that this was all totally fine and consensual and blah, blah, blah.
And Luisa is desperate also like yeah not that that excuses you know predatory behavior but yes she is acting out of
desperation yes she's like oh these guys are hitting on me they invited me to the beach I
have nothing else she has nothing to lose I mean she's she knows she will die soon. Again, not an excuse.
It does seem like before this was a cultural concept,
she's like, who's going to cancel me if I'm dead?
And that does kind of seem like her vibe.
And again, this is like the eternal knot
that we find ourselves in on this show and in the world
where it is very
difficult to rationalize a complex female character that is written by two brothers
you're like okay this woman is not real and i love her but she is not real and so it's difficult
and i have to keep reminding myself of that but i guess I want to like take a step back from what the intention of the movie is, because it's very hard to know.
I think especially for me, because like I am not these two Gen X brothers.
And I also am not familiar with the dynamics in Mexico at this time. And so with Luisa, like there are moments where Luisa is
really calling them out in a way that feels very telling. And depending on how you view these
dynamics can kind of ring hollow. But I felt like Luisa almost acts as, and I'm curious of how everyone feels about it because she knowingly enters
this dynamic with these two teenagers who she knows are kind of full of shit and i'm not convinced
that she knows that they have a destination in mind when she gets in she just wants an adventure
and that's great and so she's like, I'm going to get in the car.
And where we end up is where we end up.
Fuck it.
And we'll just see what happens.
Yeah.
But because she wants to know about them and she wants them to know about her,
I feel like she ends up teasing out all of these toxic qualities of them and challenging them in a way that we don't usually see in movies where she asked them like ways that I think could be seen as pretty
creepy questions about like,
again,
if we flip the dynamics,
if we have a 30 something year old man asking two teen girls how they have sex,
I would be like,
blip,
uh,
get me out of here.
I would not want to see it but with these dynamics
it's like there's a way to look at it where she's having them challenge their own naive masculinity
and trying to understand how they view women because they view women horribly throughout
and i think that that's like one of the sad slash true things about this movie is
that i don't necessarily know that having been on this journey improves tinoch and julio's
opinion of women i think that they just meet one that they liked and then she died. No, they will be as old as their lives.
Yeah.
I don't have proofs, but I have no doubt.
We've all lived.
We have theories.
Then at the ending, the narrator says that they broke up with their girlfriends
as soon as they came back from Italy. And the notch started seeing his neighbor right away.
And to Julio, it took him nine months to date someone.
Yeah.
I think there should be a sequel or just like another movie in the
Ito Mama Tambien cinematic universe that follows anna and cecilia while they go around
europe having fun adventures and where's that movie anyway back to luisa i wish that this like
exploitative and predatory dynamic was absent from the movie because it would just make it so much easier to
like but also you know women are complicated too but i don't even know if i want more movies in
this universe because it is so uniquely complicated to this moment but you're just like i don't know
if i want cuaron to like try to course correct on some of the more glaring aspects of this movie.
Like, they are what they are.
And they're fucked in some ways.
And it's interesting to talk about it because of how the world has changed.
But I don't know.
Luis is dead.
What are we going to do? Honestly, I think normally at the end of a movie, if you're like, and the woman dies,
you're like, well, that sucks.
Because that always like the woman has served her purpose and now she can disappear into
vapor.
But in this movie, I did not feel that way.
I felt like independently, there are two really strong narratives in this movie one is
Luisa's and one is the friendship between the two guys and they're both equally impactful
and again I feel like when I watched this movie for the first time I was way more invested in
the guys and then this time I am like Luisa coded and i'm way more invested in luisa
sure same and when i saw it way back i was like oh they're so fun and i love them and
i was like a teen movie finally a mexican teen movie and now that i saw it it's not a teen movie. And now that I saw it, it's not a teen movie. Right? I mean, it is,
but it's not. It's a movie about death and growing up. But I think it's cool that it can be seen as
a teen movie too. Like there's so many layers to it. It's like you can watch this movie as a
teenager and be like, Oh, yeah, that's how teen boys view teen girls generally
based on my lived experience and then you can grow up and watch it and be like oh they were
trying to say something by allowing those teen boys to talk about teen girls this way and i
don't think that that excuses it because again we only see what are the girlfriends names anna and
cecilia yes at the very very beginning and that is where it passes the battle test no where the
the two girls are talking about like i can't wait to be on the plane and the other one's like i know
because they it i feel like it's implied that they're kind of also sick of the guys. Yeah, for sure.
It passes when Luisa talks to the old woman.
Yes, yes.
And when Luisa talks to Mabel.
Yes.
And before the guys wake up, Luisa's having breakfast,
and she's asking Mabel and her daughter about the names of the towns.
Wow.
It does pass.
Feminist masterpiece.
I mean, there were moments,
I mean, I'm not trying to say
that there were not moments
where women connected in this movie,
but most of them were like
not thoroughly included on screen
or like mostly told
that they had happened by the narrator.
But I feel like that's
right i think again we most recently came across this specific issue in our virgin suicides episode
where often many conversations between girls or women were very fleeting because the main narrator seemed to be an adult man remembering something
and so which is like what the virgin suicides is and that's like part of why and i think luisa
suffers from this less but i do think to some degree where it's like we don't know who the
narrator is but they seem to be recalling something and they have some
godlike knowledge of what happens to these characters down the line or what has happened
to anyone we encounter or any place we encounter before we get there that like it is a man
remembering or presenting something and so sometimes they will present what happens between
women and then we only see what happens
between women in kind of a fleeting way which is a weird specific thing but yeah that's also
the virgin suicides yeah so now that i think about it anna and cecilia weren't very good friends
either they fucked each other's boyfriends i mean yeah right which i kind of like that they like because i it's like i do think men
have an issue with infidelity but i do think it's also a human problem yeah sure i think everyone
feels different about this but i like that there it was acknowledged that it's like the boys were
so quick to be like our girlfriends are faithful but if we are horny and want to cheat on them that's
awesome like it's just like classic it's allowed and it's great yeah yeah it's like classic
misogyny 101 where it's like if a woman does what i do she's a slut but if i do what i do i fucking
rule which is very much their like creed it's like in their fucking creed i was gonna say that that's very mexican but
i think that's universal yeah totally yeah just a few other things i want to shout out about
luisa i really liked the little narrative we get mostly in voiceover that also sort of addresses her class and circumstances where again we learned that she
had to start taking care of an ill relative and she had to become i think like a dental technician
yeah something like that uh when she was 16 and then she met hano not long after that, and then they got married. So she didn't really
have the opportunity to go to university and get the education that Hano and all of his friends
have, because there's the voiceover that explains how she would be with them, and they'd be talking about, you know, philosophy or politics, and either to
earnestly try to include her or with mal intent try to expose her, they would, you know, be like,
oh, what do you think about this, quote unquote, intellectual topic? And then she would always say,
you know, I don't know anything about that. And how she wished she could be like, well, yeah, you're talking about all this fancy schmancy philosophy stuff, but can
you name all the teeth? And how just like, again, her circumstances led her to this situation where
she now can't help but feel insecure about the situation she often finds herself in and how
again that's like just a relatable thing that a lot of people experience and I like that her
character was enriched with that detail yeah I love her monologue where she's being like you
guys are babies and pigs and you're hypocrites and here's my manifesto
if you want to keep hanging out with me here's everything you have to do and just how she rattles
off all of these rules I just thought was it's great I loved it and I also wasn't maybe I'm in
a cynical phase of life but like I felt very cathartic when she rattled
off the rules and i also was very unsurprised when it blew up in her face because men are
horrible and like that's a misandrist statement that I just made. But I just feel like she took, I think in a like 2017 movie, it would be like, I'm taking control of this now.
And now I make the rules and the history of patriarchy is erased and everything works out in my favor.
And you're just like, well, what have we learned in the past 10 years?
If not not it is
more complicated than that and we have to engage with that idea in order to make actual progress
I don't know I'm bringing a very 2023 thought process to that but it was interesting that this
2001 movie was like I'm taking control of this oh you're still driving the car you still have the power you still have
the class dynamic over me and i can want this and still have to try another way to live the way that
i want to live right i hate it yeah but also it feels. But also unpopular opinion. She takes charge just after the two teenage boys do what teenage boys do.
It's like, well, you kind of knew what you were getting into.
Well, I think, again, it's like I think that if the gender dynamics were swapped, that would be like what we would automatically say.
Right. were swapped that would be like what we would automatically say right it's like she is very
much an adult woman who i don't know yeah like in that moment you're like we know well i guess we
don't technically know that she is going to die but again i mean maybe i'm just using my
big old 30 year old brain to be like, yeah,
I knew she was going to die.
But it felt pretty clear that like she was not acting normally in this
situation.
This is not something she would do every day.
Yeah.
And the movie wants to trick you into thinking that she's doing everything
because Hano cheated on her.
And then the big twist comes which I think is
excellent screenwriting because even though we see this scene that foreshadows the information
that she passes away because we see her at the doctor's office and the doctor kind of like
ominously closes the door like right in the camera's face and once you find out what happens to her at the
end you're like oh yeah that was foreshadowing but what seems to be the function of that scene
is her taking that quiz at the doctor's office and like learning about how much she's a strong
independent woman which i think is like a brilliant piece of screenwriting because it's like all of
these things are happening the audience is tricked into thinking that one function is being served but
it's also like multiple things are happening and being foreshadowed and you don't realize all of
it until the very end and it's great writing. Caitlin you know so much about screenwriting
why is that? Oh my gosh I wonder why well it wouldn't be because i
got a master's degree in screenwriting from boston university because i would not mention that surely
there's no way adriana had knowledge of this so that's like incredible i had no idea and now i'm
learning yeah anyway but yeah i feel like all of this speaks to like i think that this is a movie that
is like i want to watch it again in another 10 years and see how i feel about it then because
it's again like i know the difference between 20 and 30 is big but it's like my feelings about
this movie changed drastically not just because of like my
stage of life but just because of the world and because of the basic knowledge that I had
about countries that were not the one I grew up in and this is a really fascinating movie to come
back to and I'm looking forward to coming back to it again and I also think that like we've
touched on that multiple times but I guess I just wanted to say one more time that I think that very
often in coming of age movies about young men that they speak very dismissively and objectively and horribly about young women in their life in a way that is deeply uncritical
and presents it as if like, well, of course we all feel this way. I think that's like how
movies about young men have been presented for generations. And I appreciate that while the young men view the women around them oppressive
and horrible and offensive and insulting it is also preventing them from being people and it's
like it i feel like it presents it in a way that because we do care about Tinashe and about Julio it's like a far more difficult
thing to grapple with where you're like you're almost dealing with masculinity and patriarchy
as a concept as opposed to like patriarchy the guy which we're always talking shit about right
true also Jamie not to call you out but you sound so tired because i know it's like late
where you are i'm sorry it's 10 22 p.m and i am horizontal do i sound horizontal
leave this in i want people to know yeah no how hard i've worked so horizontally for this show um i actively have covid right now i know i hate and look at us working so hard
to bring people the bechdel cast we're fine i just mentioned that because we should wrap up we should
but just a rapid fire list of little things i want to say i love when they toast to the clitoris.
That's her last supper. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Toast to the clitoris at her last supper. Like,
what more could you want? Damn, right? I think it's hilarious that Julio named his dick Rasputin.
So Jamie, that's something that's a little treat for you, I feel like. I appreciated it as a Rasputin head.
Right?
I love that you get horny women representation because between Anna, Cecilia, and Luisa, they're horny.
And I love the final thing I want to touch on briefly is just comparing American movies,
representation of Mexico versus a Mexican director and his portrait of Mexico and how widely different they are.
Because in so many like Hollywood movies, Mexico is depicted as this like homogenous, dangerous, just all of these like things that carry all these horrible connotations.
And I don't know how much we've dived into this in the show, but that like yellow filter that often is placed anytime characters go to anywhere in Latin America. This also happens when characters go to the Middle East,
just to sort of suggest like,
oh, what a foreign land we're in.
And isn't it so bizarre?
And then when you have filmmakers
who are handling their own stories
and setting a movie in their own country.
The difference is night and day when you have someone who is taking the time to represent and paint a portrait of their home with respect and nuance the way that, again,
so many Hollywood movies do not bother to do when setting a scene or a whole movie in another country so I just
wanted to touch on that yeah I love that too I love that there is a movie out there that is
about high school students that came out when I was a high school student and I had these road trips.
I was a nerd, so they were more boring than this road trip.
But yeah, I went to Acapulco with friends
and stayed at these really cheap hotels
and it brings out many memories
and that's the way I spoke.
That's the way I lived my life.
So it's a movie about people like me.
Well, not me, me.
Because I was more like Cecilia and Anna.
But more like people I knew.
And I'm really grateful to Guarón for giving my generation a movie about us.
And how we grew up
and how we saw the country change from having like a disguised dictatorship
and seeing it turn into a democracy.
And we were so hopeful when that happened, when the same political party lost.
Everyone was shocked and happy and hopeful.
And if you want to know what came next,
read the news, read the book.
Wasn't very good.
So it's like a portrait of that moment
when people like me were finishing high school,
becoming an adult,
and the country was becoming a democracy
and all that hopefulness.
It's portrayed in this film and I love it.
And it has its problems.
Yeah, and also Diego and Gael.
In Mexico, we're so proud of them.
We love them so much.
I mean, I don't think I speak for all of Mexico,
but they've done so much for Mexican cinema
because all the money they earn in Hollywood, they spend it producing good movies in Mexico.
And they have festivals.
They pay for festivals.
And they bring those festivals to all of Mexico.
And they're, like, unproblematic as far as I know.
We always have to say, as far as we know. We always have to say as far as we know.
At the time of this recording.
They're okay to like.
As far as I know, they're unproblematic and they're really cool.
And they help a lot of the community and they have nonprofits.
And I love them so much.
But Diego is my favorite.
Mine too.
Oh my gosh, they're the best yeah we already talked about
the movie passing the bechdel test in the specific ways so should we just move on to the nipple scale
our famous yes flawless scale on which we rate the movie based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, zero to five
nipples. I suppose I would kind of do like the Bechdel cast cheat code and sort of split this
down the middle. Because as we've discussed, I think it does a lot of interesting things to examine a really complicated and extremely grounded and authentic male
friendship and the way that high school boys tend to be and how they've especially in this era of
like the early I guess this was taking place in the late 90s, like attitudes towards women.
They're very casually throwing around homophobic slurs and calling each other homophobic slurs.
They make disparaging remarks about sex workers and different things like that.
Like these are classic late 90s teen boys but the movie is examining that in a way that feels critical
and often by way of Louisa calling them out for their behavior and their toxicity and fragility
and things like that I don't even want to get back into the whole age gap dilemma, but it is
there and it does cast a big nasty cloud over the movie for me. But yeah, if you're able to set that
aside, Louisa as a character is a really cool, well-rounded,rounded dynamic interesting character that again we don't often see afforded
to women in movies so there's a lot of things going on some good some bad again the centering
of like these white characters and only while it does point out and tell little vignettes about other characters that they encounter or,
you know, pan over to an indigenous person, the movie is still centering these young,
privileged people. So 2.5 nipples, and I'll give one to my first husband Gail Garcia Bernal I'll give my second nipple to
my other husband Diego Luna and I'll give my half nipple and I should just give all two and a half
to Maribel Verdue yeah so two and a half nipples and the cast gets them yeah i'm gonna go i'll round it up to
three for this movie i think that the two things that are most challenging for me is the very
ambiguous age gap at least in the translation that i watch regardless of her life circumstance, which is dire.
And we know that,
but it's like,
there is a very predatory way to look at the dynamics in this movie.
And I don't want to shy away from that because it is a woman with two young
men.
Cause I feel like that is a very common thing that the culture at large is
still struggling with.
And I don't want to reduce that and i think it is
complicated by the fact that this is a fictional woman like and i say older woman but a woman who
could very well be younger than everyone on this call like right written by two adult men in their
40s and so there is the complication of when we have women characters written by men that you're just
like i cannot judge all of society by how these two brothers chose to write this woman who doesn't
exist it becomes a clusterfuck however that dynamic is very real and especially in like one
specific 20 minute chunk of the movie, it was uncomfortable.
And I don't want to shy away from feeling uncomfortable about it because I feel like that is inherent to it.
That was difficult for me. in a way that is more mindful of what or condescending in any other teen movie,
coming of age movie, road trip movie that I can think of off the top of my head. And so I think
that it is sort of doing a lot of what we've seen in movies of this genre before, but doing it at a higher level a more thoughtful level and in a way that didn't
feel as fucked up or totally just erasing people and that's not to say that it is perfect it
definitely isn't which is part of why it is losing two nipples in my estimation. So I'm going three nipples. RIP Louisa. She was a real one. She
deserved better. And I too feel like foam, ocean, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I do feel like this
is something that I am going to figure out at some later point, but I feel like very often,
I just want to like examine last words in cinema because I have a feeling that most of them mean basically nothing.
Nothing.
But it could be a translation issue here.
But in this one, I was like, what the hell is she on about?
And I can't ask her because she was never real.
And also she's fictionally dead so anyways i guess i'm giving one nipple to each
member of the main cast because all of these dynamics aside the performances in this movie
are is like universally unbelievable so one to each awesome i'm gonna give it three one for maribel verdun who is also in pan's labyrinth yes yes and who is also in
flash oh yeah that's right really mom yeah oh i've never seen that well it's that dc movie that
came out oh it was the bad one yeah well that's not not her fault that Ezra Miller's a fucking evil criminal.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, now we know.
She has to hug Ezra Miller in the movie.
Yeah.
I hope they paint her one.
Me too.
Yeah.
One for Maribel and one for both Charolastras.
Because in Mexico, we still call them los charolastras.
We kept the nickname.
Nice.
And one for the pigs.
The pigs.
Yes.
That invade the camp.
Leave the pigs alone.
They did nothing wrong.
They did nothing wrong.
They're just being pigs.
They were just being pigs.
Leave my feral hogs alone.
Yeah.
And I think I agree with what you say.
I mean, there's only one woman as a main character in this movie
and the rest of the women come and go.
But for 2001 to be a movie about toxic masculinity
and the way it still holds up at least that part the way it
criticizes their friendship and the hypocrisy and and the shallowness is that a word shallowness
yeah yeah did i just made it up no shallowness the shallowness of their friendship. Yeah, I think that part at least holds up very well.
And I hope more men think about it.
Yeah.
I wish more men learned something from that movie.
Because I still know a bunch of people who are in their 30s and 40s
whose friendships are still like that.
And I'm like
what are you doing no we can do nothing to help them they have to find out on their own
yeah oh my gosh well adrena thank you so much for coming on truly to cover this wonderful and
extremely complicated movie we really appreciate it, thank you guys for inviting me.
This is a dream.
I've been a fan of the Bechdel cast since I lived in Mexico.
I wish I could go back to the past,
until past Adriana driving her car to work,
listening to the Bechdel cast,
that someday she's going to be in it.
This has been wonderful. Thank
you. I admire you both so much. You guys are great. Likewise. Thank you so much. Thank you.
And tell us what you'd like to plug. And may I say before you even do that, that I would like
to give a ringing endorsement to Adriana's Spanish tutoring. If you
want to improve your Spanish or start learning Spanish or anything like that,
I highly recommend Adriana's classes and services. And she's incredible. So take them. Anyway, Adriana, what would you like to plug?
Yeah, I'm on Instagram at Espanol con Adriana.
That's E-S-P-A-N-O-L-C-O-N-A-V-R-I-N-A-A.
Maybe you can put it in the show notes.
We will definitely.
Don't you worry. Yeah, you can find me on Instagram and you can DM me in the show notes. We will definitely. Don't you worry.
Yeah, you can find me on Instagram and you can DM me if you're interested.
I can teach in person around the LA area or through Zoom, wherever you are.
I think Caitlin has a good experience.
See?
Hell yeah.
Yay. Well, thank you again so much for joining us and come back anytime please you can follow us on all of those horrible social media platforms you can find us
at bechtelcast you'll find it there yeah and then we've got our matrion at patreon.com slash spectral cast,
where you for $5 a month can have access to two bonus episodes every month,
plus the entire back catalog.
And we always have just amazing,
hilarious,
awesome themes that should be nominated for awards,
you know,
and you know, I think history will give us a word for that.
But unfortunately, we will be RIP'd by that time.
We will be, yeah.
And the cities we currently live in will be underwater.
However, while we are above ground,
you can get our merch at tpublic.com slash Bechtel cast and with that let's all meet up in a diner
but this time let's continue to speak to each other we're changing we're changing things this
time and we're actually gonna get that coffee absolutely all right bye adios
hey y'all niminy here i'm the host of a brand new history podcast for kids and families called
historical records executive produced by quest love the story pirates and john glickman historical
records brings history to life through hip-hop. Get the kids in your life excited about history by tuning in to Historical Records.
Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated.
Crooks Everywhere unnerves the plot
to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks.
She exposed the culture of crime and corruption
that were turning her beloved country
into a mafia state.
Listen to Crooks Everywhere
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Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti.
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We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career.
That's where we come in.
Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.
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