Speaker 1: On The Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they
Speaker 2: have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zeff, and best start changing
Speaker 2: it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 1: Hey, Jamie, Hey Caitlyn, do you want to come over
Speaker 1: for Sunday dinner.
Speaker 3: I don't think I have a choice. I think I'm
Speaker 3: disloyal to the family if I don't show up.
Speaker 1: It's true, it's true, But I do.
Speaker 3: Want to get into a petty argument because that's what
Speaker 3: family dinners are all.
Speaker 1: About, exactly exactly. And sorry in advance for my cooking
Speaker 1: being terrible, but you'll probably make a snide comment about
Speaker 1: it anyway.
Speaker 3: So that's okay. I'm bringing something from the grocery store
Speaker 3: and heating it up in a pan and saying that
Speaker 3: I made it. Hell yeah, and bragging about it until
Speaker 3: someone catches me. So wonderful kind of this thing I've
Speaker 3: been getting into sounds great. Well. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3: My name is Jamie.
Speaker 1: Loft, my name is Caitlyn Durante, and this is our
Speaker 1: show where we we examine movies through an intersectional feminist
Speaker 1: lens using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point.
Speaker 1: We're just using it to initiate larger conversations about representation
Speaker 1: and things. But Jamie, what even is the Bechdel test?
Speaker 3: Well, the Bechel test is a media metric created by
Speaker 3: queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It's sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test.
Speaker 3: It was a test that she originally wrote into a
Speaker 3: comic collection she published in the eighties and nineties, Dikes
Speaker 3: To Watch Out For. It was a bit. It was
Speaker 3: a joke to point out how infrequently women in movies
Speaker 3: talk to each other about anything but men in the movie.
Speaker 3: But it has since turned into a metric that people
Speaker 3: use as sort of a soft jumping off point for
Speaker 3: discussion about representation in movies. And that's how we use it.
Speaker 3: Our version of the test requires that there be two
Speaker 3: people of a marginalized gender with names who speak to
Speaker 3: each other about something other than a man for more
Speaker 3: than two lines of dialogue.
Speaker 1: It's not that hard, it's not.
Speaker 3: But and yet, if you're Christopher Nolan, he's goddamn near impossible.
Speaker 1: He's never heard of it, and he won't hear of it.
Speaker 3: This is so wildly off topic, but I feel like,
Speaker 3: so I saw Oppenheimer bravely, oh brag. I just like,
Speaker 3: at this point I view Christopher Nolan's women as like
Speaker 3: camp masterpieces, because I'm like, he's never gonna get it.
Speaker 3: I can't. I don't have the energy to get mad
Speaker 3: about it anymore. And like, yeah, sure, that's that's what
Speaker 3: we're like, all right, you got us pegged.
Speaker 1: Florence Peugh's sitting naked in a chair for no reason.
Speaker 1: That's camp Bless his heart.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, he's I genuinely do think that
Speaker 3: he's doing his best in that department, and that is
Speaker 3: kind of tragic. Okay, anyways, it's not Oppenheimer day. Thankfully,
Speaker 3: we have an incredible guest and want to get her
Speaker 3: in the mix.
Speaker 1: Yes, let's do it. She's a filmmaker, curator, and founder
Speaker 1: of Black Tina Media, a community which elevates and amplifies
Speaker 1: the voices of Afro, Latin X and Caribbean people. It's
Speaker 1: an idea simone Hello and welcome by y'all.
Speaker 3: Welcome.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I wish I would have practiced my intro.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, no, you nailed it.
Speaker 4: Stuck all I'm like all the slang terms.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: So today's movie is soul Food. So tell us about
Speaker 1: your relationship with the movie Soul Food.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: Okay, So first, like, my mom is African American, my
Speaker 4: dad is Panamanian. I'm black on both sides, so like
Speaker 4: that movie is actually popular and like both communities and
Speaker 4: all of the themes. Uh just so well with both
Speaker 4: of the like families that I have, And that movie
Speaker 4: is a true black classic, that's an African American classic.
Speaker 4: Like and so many people I've like recited the lines
Speaker 4: when Vanessa Williams character is like fuck the family, like
Speaker 4: that whole sequence, Like everybody knows every single line and
Speaker 4: it's so real and it's so realistic, like this has
Speaker 4: happened to multiple fams. Like you at a party, there's
Speaker 4: an argument and a kitchen in the kitchen, it's always
Speaker 4: the kitchen. It's always the kitchen, and it spills out.
Speaker 4: It was like it's a beautiful moment. I love the movie.
Speaker 4: I love all the themes like it represents. I know
Speaker 4: it passes the Bachelor test with Cristure. I'm having a
Speaker 4: hard time pronouncing that word. But yeah, a lot of
Speaker 4: the movies, though I watch are like a bunch of women,
Speaker 4: So I love that there's I have sisters, lots of drama,
Speaker 4: good food, Like I just I have a strong relationship
Speaker 4: with the film. Themes of the film are still relevant
Speaker 4: to me and my family today. And yeah, all the actors.
Speaker 4: I love all the actors. I grew up watching all
Speaker 4: those pastors, The Hookah Fox, Vanessa Williams, Macay pif Forer like.
Speaker 1: Dreambone, not his character, but.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, but he's a cool dude, Like yeah,
Speaker 4: you wise nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's like I've never heard a bad word about
Speaker 3: Mackay Fifer, and I hope I never do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie.
Speaker 3: My relationship with this movie isn't super extensive. I feel like,
Speaker 3: as an avid TNT watcher, I've seen bits and pieces
Speaker 3: of this movie. I feel like that's my answer half
Speaker 3: the time on this podcast is like I probably watched
Speaker 3: it on TNT when I was too young to understand
Speaker 3: anything happening in the movie. But I am a fan
Speaker 3: of this director, George Tillman Junior, Like he's wonderful, still
Speaker 3: very much working. I mean, I think I definitely saw
Speaker 3: all the barber shops and Beauty Shop and most recently
Speaker 3: The Hate You Give, and so I'm a fan of
Speaker 3: his work, but I had never actually sat down with
Speaker 3: Soul Food, and I certainly haven't seen this movie since
Speaker 3: I think I was cognizant of how wildly stacked this
Speaker 3: cast is, right down to like Gina Rivera from The Closer,
Speaker 3: which was another TNT staple that I did watch.
Speaker 1: Also, we talked about her recently because she was in Showgirls.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this cast is absolutely nuts. It's great. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: so I mean, I really enjoyed learning about what this
Speaker 3: movie meant to George Tillman Junior because he wrote and
Speaker 3: directed it, which he doesn't always necessarily do. He usually directs,
Speaker 3: and so I really enjoyed it. I love I love
Speaker 3: a family drama, and I especially love a family drama
Speaker 3: that centers the sisters instead of the brothers, because brothers
Speaker 3: are not as interesting to me. But it's also very
Speaker 3: much a product of the nineties, So there's certain elements
Speaker 3: where it's like, let's discuss but I'm very excited to
Speaker 3: talk about it.
Speaker 4: And there was a spin off TV show. Yeah, they're different.
Speaker 4: For Willis who I think she the same. It's so
Speaker 4: confusing because like in the black community, we talk about
Speaker 4: Vness Williams. It's like what the light skin want or
Speaker 4: the dark skin want. And that's like it's because it's
Speaker 4: like they are in the same circles and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: I don't know in real life, but like you see
Speaker 4: all them in like different like films.
Speaker 3: And stuff like that, but right the same like era
Speaker 3: to the.
Speaker 4: TV show was very popular too, Like so I feel like, uh,
Speaker 4: this director does not get he did not get his flowers.
Speaker 4: He's not getting his flowers. He's still pretty young, like
Speaker 4: so yeah, maybe he'll get some flowers soon after his
Speaker 4: solar return, his second solar return.
Speaker 3: So, oh my god, I was reading fur my Saturn.
Speaker 3: I'm finishing up my Saturn return, which is also why
Speaker 3: I'm blaming that everything in my life going on. Yeah,
Speaker 3: George Tillmans is coming up. He's fifty four, so his
Speaker 3: renaissance has yet to come. But he's so accomplished too.
Speaker 3: It's like right, right, he directed the I did not
Speaker 3: see it, the George Foreman biopic that came out this year. Yes,
Speaker 3: just a fun fact, it's true. I vaguely remembered that
Speaker 3: was a thing, but I didn't see it. I should
Speaker 3: see it, Caitlin, was your history with self?
Speaker 1: I had never seen it. I knew about it, but
Speaker 1: it is not something that I watched. I'm not as
Speaker 1: big of a fan of family drama films. I'm more like,
Speaker 1: let's watch characters go on a little quest kind of person.
Speaker 1: So I missed this one. But yeah, I wasn't fully
Speaker 1: aware of the Stacked cast until I started watching it
Speaker 1: and researching it, and I was like, Wow, look at
Speaker 1: all these great actors who are also so good looking.
Speaker 1: And I enjoyed the movie and I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: talk about it. There's lots to discuss, so should we
Speaker 1: get into it?
Speaker 3: Yes, because there's many characters. Yeah, there's a lot of story.
Speaker 3: I feel like some family dramas really over or undershoot,
Speaker 3: like balancing the characters. But I thought this one was
Speaker 3: so well done where it's like you, I feel like
Speaker 3: every character got a satisfying arc, or like, when I
Speaker 3: say satisfying, I didn't necessarily love how all the stories went,
Speaker 3: but they all happened like no movie lost in the shuffle,
Speaker 3: which is so impressive.
Speaker 1: True. Yeah, definitely. Okay, here is the recap of Soul Food.
Speaker 1: So we open on a wedding. A family is celebrating
Speaker 1: Bird played by Nia Long getting married to Lem that's
Speaker 1: Makai Pfeiffer, and Bird has two sisters, Terry and Maxine
Speaker 1: played by Vanessa Williams and Vivica A. Fox, respectively, and
Speaker 1: we learn about each of them. Maxine is married to
Speaker 1: Kenny played by Jeffrey D. Sam's. They have two kids
Speaker 1: plus a baby on the way. One of the kids
Speaker 1: is this young boy named Ahmad, and he's like the
Speaker 1: narrator of the story. The whole thing is told through
Speaker 1: his point of.
Speaker 4: View, which was so cool, like to see it through
Speaker 4: a child's POV. Yeah, I was a kid two at
Speaker 4: the time because I was like seven in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 4: so it was like I could. It was a really
Speaker 4: great way for me to connect with these adult themes,
Speaker 4: you know, and in his relationship with his mom.
Speaker 1: Okay, yep, oh, I know. It's really sweet.
Speaker 3: I loved especially because I don't know, I feel like
Speaker 3: there's so many like wise child tropes where it's like,
Speaker 3: for kid is beyond his years, which a mod is,
Speaker 3: but he's also still very much a little stinker, telling
Speaker 3: weird lies to get his family to hang out with
Speaker 3: each other, and I was like, that is the right
Speaker 3: amount of little stinker.
Speaker 1: He's like, let's go on a treasure hunt in the house.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's like yeah, that's a very like you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know how old the like eleven year old
Speaker 3: behavior or however.
Speaker 4: He also was like, oh, they want money, Like he
Speaker 4: was like, he was like, oh okay, money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he knows how to get adults interested in his scheme. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 3: And then they're like, oh no, yeah, we came here
Speaker 3: because we love each other, Like yeah.
Speaker 1: They all show up and they're like, oh right, we're
Speaker 1: a family. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So the story
Speaker 1: is told through a mod's point of view, and we
Speaker 1: also get to know more about Terry. She's married to
Speaker 1: Miles played by Michael Beach. They're both lawyers. They're like
Speaker 1: the wealthier members of the family.
Speaker 4: Is to be a musician.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she is not supportive sometimes.
Speaker 3: And this is just my current moment, but I'm so
Speaker 3: triggered by like and triggered, I mean extremely like triggered
Speaker 3: by husbands who want to quit their jobs and become musicians.
Speaker 3: I'm just like, enough is enough. It reminds me of
Speaker 3: Jason Bateman. And Juno where it's like, it's not gonna
Speaker 3: happen to be the best of luck. Though. I have
Speaker 3: a quick aside, which is, for the whole time I
Speaker 3: was watching this movie, I was like, a mod looks
Speaker 3: so familiar. A mod looks so familiar, And it's because
Speaker 3: he's to me anyways, he's accomplished child actor, but baby
Speaker 3: Michael Jordan and space jam Oh I did not make
Speaker 3: And he's the one that is outside doing in the
Speaker 3: house all night long. I just I've seen it's basically
Speaker 3: him five thousand times.
Speaker 1: I did not make that connection. I was looking at
Speaker 1: his IMDb and apparently he's in Mars attacks, which we
Speaker 1: do need to cover some days. Oh my gosh, Jamie,
Speaker 1: I think you love it.
Speaker 3: I think I would too, just based on the posters.
Speaker 3: I don't know how I haven't seen it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, I wanted to be with the aliens.
Speaker 4: I was like, let's go.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 1: Seriously anyway. So he yes, he's he's in a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. Okay. So then we meet Big Mama Joe.
Speaker 1: She is bird Terry and Maxine's mom Joe because their
Speaker 1: last name is Joseph. She's played by Irma p. Hall
Speaker 1: and There's.
Speaker 3: Also her name is Josephine, so it could.
Speaker 1: Really Oh oh that makes more sense. Yeah, Joe Josephine,
Speaker 1: joseph is her name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's just wearing Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Love that. Okay, So there's already drama because at the wedding,
Speaker 1: lem is grinding on the dance floor with another woman
Speaker 1: who is not his bride. And then Bird's ex boyfriend
Speaker 1: Samuel shows up and he's bad news. But Big Mama
Speaker 1: always knows what to do to dissipate the drama in
Speaker 1: the family and set things right, so she does that.
Speaker 1: Then we cut to their weekly Sunday dinner, a forty
Speaker 1: year tradition where the whole family gets together at Big
Speaker 1: Mama's house. Sorry I had to say it, starring Martin Lawrence,
Speaker 1: and she cooks a bunch of delicious soul food, fried chicken,
Speaker 1: collar greens, cornbread, mac and cheese, chitlins, hamhocks, things like that,
Speaker 1: and the food always brings the family together.
Speaker 3: And I love that they show the food. Sometimes they
Speaker 3: feel like they're like the food at dinner was amazing,
Speaker 3: and then you don't see it and you're like, was
Speaker 3: it where is it? Beautiful food views in this movie
Speaker 3: great spread.
Speaker 1: So then Ahmad in his voiceover narration, is talking about
Speaker 1: Big Mama and her husband who passed away some years before.
Speaker 1: He ran a few successful businesses, and there's this family
Speaker 1: rumor that they had saved up money and stowed some
Speaker 1: of it away in the house somewhere. So there's like
Speaker 1: this kind of underlying, like secret stash of money that
Speaker 1: no one really knows where it is.
Speaker 3: If I was old and had money, I would want
Speaker 3: to do that just to fuck with my family.
Speaker 1: It's like there's always money in the Banana Stan kind
Speaker 1: of thing. But it's like, yeah, there's always money in
Speaker 1: Uncle Pete's television set. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The third act is really loaded in so many things
Speaker 3: happen in a row where if you blank, you're like, what,
Speaker 3: the house is on fire. Uncle Pete's TV's full of money.
Speaker 1: It's rerilling, Yeah, because also in the house lives Big
Speaker 1: Mama's brother, Uncle Pete, who is a reck loose who
Speaker 1: never comes out of his room. Okay, so the women
Speaker 1: they're preparing Sunday dinner. By the way, Terry and Maxine
Speaker 1: don't get along because when they were younger, Terry was
Speaker 1: dating Kenny, who left her for Maxine, and Terry never
Speaker 1: forgave her for it. Then, as they're like preparing the meal,
Speaker 1: we get a reveal that Big Mama has diabetes, but
Speaker 1: she brushes it off. She says, I don't need to
Speaker 1: go to a doctor. Everyone sits down to dinner and
Speaker 1: then cousin Faith shows up played by Gina Rivera, and
Speaker 1: Big Mama is delighted to see her, but no one
Speaker 1: else in the family seems thrilled. They seem like they
Speaker 1: don't really like her because she's got kind of like
Speaker 1: a quote unquote bad reputation, which they're.
Speaker 3: Like, she moved to La and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that sign right evil thing to do.
Speaker 1: Just then Maxine, who is gregnant as heck, goes into labor,
Speaker 1: so the family rushes to the hospital. She has a baby.
Speaker 1: Also at the hospital, I think in a separate day,
Speaker 1: separate situation, Big Mama is told that her leg needs
Speaker 1: to be amputated because of complications due to her diabetes.
Speaker 1: She again kind of brushes it off. Meanwhile, Samuel shows
Speaker 1: up to Bird's work, she runs a hair salon. He
Speaker 1: gives her a wedding present, but he clearly has ulterior motives.
Speaker 3: He has like resting villain face big time, Like, yeah, handsome,
Speaker 3: a handsome, resting fence, but resting villain face. Nonetheless, why
Speaker 3: you wear him again?
Speaker 4: Why you didn't? Just what's the issue? What was the
Speaker 4: problem with this guy? Like?
Speaker 1: Right, it's never quick, clear clear hmm.
Speaker 3: Maybe I just I truly was. I was just like
Speaker 3: just the way that the actor was carrying himself in
Speaker 3: the part, and I was like, Oh, it's the guy
Speaker 3: in the suit that's up to no good god right, And.
Speaker 4: It's what a man wants. They want the woman to
Speaker 4: be with the freaking dude. They have to do all
Speaker 4: the work to help them. It's like, yeah, you know
Speaker 4: it is written by a man, you know, why is it.
Speaker 1: Okay? So Simuel shows up to work, he's being scheming.
Speaker 1: Then Lem shows up at Maxine and Kenny's house and
Speaker 1: he tells Kenny that he lost his job because he
Speaker 1: had lied on his application about having been convicted of
Speaker 1: a crime because he spent time in jail. He recently
Speaker 1: got out of jail, but he lied about this on
Speaker 1: his application. His employer found out and he got fired.
Speaker 1: So now he's looking for a new job and he
Speaker 1: wants Kenny to help him, and Kenny's like, don't worry.
Speaker 1: I got you. Then we check in with Terry and Miles.
Speaker 1: He tells her that he wants to invest more time
Speaker 1: and money in his music. She's not happy about it.
Speaker 1: She's like, you're a lawyer, just be a lawyer. She's
Speaker 1: also not happy about cousin Faate.
Speaker 3: Tele not supposed to be on her side there, but
Speaker 3: and maybe it's just but I was like, I'm in
Speaker 3: finesse of Williams society. Men shouldn't follow.
Speaker 4: Their treat everybody now is like she was right, Terry
Speaker 4: was right. Terry was in the right the entire time.
Speaker 4: She was being taken advantage of. She's literally holding everything together.
Speaker 4: But she's supposed to be the bad persons taken care
Speaker 4: of the house. Nobody else's paid a tax, you know,
Speaker 4: but she's like the villain.
Speaker 3: I was very team Terry there. Yeah, I was like,
Speaker 3: she just wants a little bit of appreciation than you. Like,
Speaker 3: I understand that sometimes it is like not presented in
Speaker 3: the most tasteful way maybe, and I understand why her
Speaker 3: sisters would be frustrated with her, But I'm like, it's
Speaker 3: not absolutely out of the question that she would want
Speaker 3: to be acknowledged for how much she's doing, and I
Speaker 3: just don't think her husband should follow his dreams. He
Speaker 3: was annoying to me. I wanted, or at least I
Speaker 3: don't know whatever. We'll talk about how the story goes,
Speaker 3: but I feel like, yeah, the way that Terry his
Speaker 3: story went was like kind of treated as like, well,
Speaker 3: of course this would happen because look how Terry was
Speaker 3: telling him to stop playing the keyboard, and you're like,
Speaker 3: stop playing the keyboard man.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She's portrayed as being very frigid, but yeah, she's
Speaker 1: like actually making sure the family is like being held together.
Speaker 1: She's also like very elitist about it. She's like, I'm
Speaker 1: richer than all of you, and I went to law school,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, someone who's always talking about their
Speaker 1: advanced degree certainly not me, someone who went to Boston
Speaker 1: University to get a master's in screenwriting, because I never
Speaker 1: mentioned that.
Speaker 3: I've never heard that before.
Speaker 1: But she's always mentioning her law degree anyway.
Speaker 4: And doesn't she mention also that she put her sisters
Speaker 4: through school. I don't know if I'm oh that right.
Speaker 1: She does say that she pays for Bird's wedding. She
Speaker 1: mentions different things she has paid for to like you know,
Speaker 1: and she oh, she gives a loan to Bird also
Speaker 1: to open up the beauty shop. Different things like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so she's like me, like she's a parentified child,
Speaker 4: Like even though she's a sister, she was being very
Speaker 4: maternal to her sisters.
Speaker 1: Because she's the eldest too, the way a lot of
Speaker 1: like eldest siblings often take on a role like that. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So we check in with Terry and Miles. She's not
Speaker 1: happy about him pursuing his music. She's also not happy
Speaker 1: about cousin Faith crashing with them. Then Big Mama is
Speaker 1: convinced to have the surgery, so she goes through with
Speaker 1: the surgery, but she has a stroke during it and
Speaker 1: falls into a coma, and the family is devastated, and
Speaker 1: her not being around sets off this kind of chain
Speaker 1: reaction of things going wrong in the family. For example,
Speaker 1: the forty year tradition of Sunday dinners falls apart, especially
Speaker 1: because Terry and Maxine get in a fight about it
Speaker 1: because they're never getting along. Meanwhile, Terry and her marriage
Speaker 1: with Miles is on edge again she does not respect
Speaker 1: his musical ambitions.
Speaker 3: And then I kept up being on her side about this,
Speaker 3: I just refuse.
Speaker 1: Also, one night, Miles and cousin Faith are flirting. Later,
Speaker 1: he helps her with a dance audition she has, and
Speaker 1: then eventually they have sex, and Terry comes home and
Speaker 1: sees them. Miles doesn't know that she saw them until
Speaker 1: she confronts him at a party later that evening and
Speaker 1: chases him around with a butcher knife.
Speaker 3: Again, she did nothing wrong.
Speaker 4: She did nothing. I mean, she didn't kill him.
Speaker 3: Nope. Yeah, she just had to make a point there.
Speaker 3: You know, technically what she did was wrong, but.
Speaker 5: She did in their marital home.
Speaker 3: The view of a full open window he had. I'm
Speaker 3: just like cheaters in monogamous relationships gross hate it, but
Speaker 3: especially when they're bad at it or like lazy about it.
Speaker 3: I'm just like, oh my god, you're not even good
Speaker 3: at this.
Speaker 1: You didn't even try to conceal this. A child almost
Speaker 1: saw it, like.
Speaker 4: Right, because a mod was because she's doing more and
Speaker 4: that's not even her kids don't she can't even have
Speaker 4: kitchen busy working all the time. If it's not work,
Speaker 4: it's homework. Yeah, and it's yeah ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a she did nothing wrong. But really quick
Speaker 3: back to Gina Rivera because just like the mid nineties,
Speaker 3: there's so many good Gena Rivera dance scenes committed to
Speaker 3: film because we just covered Showgirls, and so I just
Speaker 3: wanted to shout it out. I liked and also thought
Speaker 3: it was like very nineties that anytime that there's music
Speaker 3: or dancing in this movie, you see like a lot
Speaker 3: of it, so much like you see the whole song
Speaker 3: and you're kind of like, huh, why, I'm not mad
Speaker 3: about it, but okay, great, Like when Miles is in
Speaker 3: his band, you see them play the whole song and
Speaker 3: you're like, okay, great, sure, good job you guys.
Speaker 4: But I also feel like that's like normal, like in
Speaker 4: black film, like art is so important, like in black film,
Speaker 4: like even prayer, like no who like, oh I pray it.
Speaker 4: It's like you see people actually praying, you hear them.
Speaker 4: It's like you get the whole experience. And with the dance,
Speaker 4: like I feel like that, like I've seen so many
Speaker 4: specifically like African American films, see the entire dance. And
Speaker 4: also people will get upset if it doesn't feel real.
Speaker 4: So like in sure you know the show, like Poe's
Speaker 4: Ripeople's got canceled like when he had that audition and
Speaker 4: people were like, he would have never been accepted with
Speaker 4: that audition. What the heck?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: And you know, because I feel like we have this
Speaker 4: history of like, if you're like usually black film, them
Speaker 4: people dancing, it's like Janet Jackson's background dancer, and like
Speaker 4: they have actual dancers, actual singers, And I.
Speaker 3: Mean in this you know that Gina Rivera did that
Speaker 3: entire routine because they're not doing any fancy cutting or
Speaker 3: I mean the dancing in particular was beautiful. I didn't
Speaker 3: know that that was like a feature of black film.
Speaker 1: That's cool to know, definitely. So then we get that
Speaker 1: chunk of Terry and Miles's subplot meanwhile, where we're checking
Speaker 1: in with Bird and Lem. She finds out that he
Speaker 1: was fired from his job and he can't find another one,
Speaker 1: so she calls upon her ex Samuel to hook him
Speaker 1: up with a job. And then Lem finds out about
Speaker 1: this favor she called in and he feels emasculated and
Speaker 1: he goes ballistic on both Samuel and Bird. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about this whole subplot in more detail later on. But
Speaker 1: then Terry calls another cousin of theirs to basically like
Speaker 1: go rough Lem up, and when that happens, there's like
Speaker 1: this bar fight and Lim pulls a gun and gets
Speaker 1: arrested and ends up back in jail. Then the sisters
Speaker 1: and their spouses have this conversation about how they're going
Speaker 1: to pay for Big Mama's hospital bills. Terry wants to
Speaker 1: sell once again Big Mama's House, starring Martin, Lawrence and
Speaker 1: Maxine as opposed to this, and no one really knows
Speaker 1: what to do. And little Ahmad goes to visit Big
Speaker 1: Mama in the hospital and while he's there, she comes
Speaker 1: out of the coma and tries to tell Amd something
Speaker 1: that she wants him to do, but she can't finish.
Speaker 1: She starts coughing doctor's Russian and then we get a
Speaker 1: reveal that she has passed away, so the family grieves.
Speaker 1: Everyone's a mess. Bird finds out that she's pregnant. Terry
Speaker 1: calls in a lawyer favor and classic lawyer, classic lawyer behavior,
Speaker 1: she gets Lem bailed out of jail. Meanwhile, Ahmad thinks
Speaker 1: that what Big Mama wanted him to do was to
Speaker 1: get the whole family together again for Sunday dinner, so
Speaker 1: he goes to each member of the family and tells
Speaker 1: them that before she died, Big Mama told him about
Speaker 1: that stash of money that's hidden away somewhere in the
Speaker 1: house and that he needs their help to find it.
Speaker 1: And he's like, I'll give you a finder's fee, you know,
Speaker 1: like sweetening the deal, and little Stinker love right, because
Speaker 1: what he's really trying to do is just get everyone
Speaker 1: in the house at the same time for family dinner.
Speaker 1: So everyone shows up and they realize that it was
Speaker 1: just a ploy to get everyone together, and they feel
Speaker 1: uneasy about it, but they roll with it and they
Speaker 1: sit down to dinner. During the dinner, some grievances are aired,
Speaker 1: and then they're also like, well, what about this stash
Speaker 1: of money though, and Ahmad is like, mm yeah, I
Speaker 1: just made that up to get everyone together again, because
Speaker 1: all you do is fight, and he's crying, and then
Speaker 1: there's a fire in the kitchen and everyone's scrambling to
Speaker 1: put it out, and then suddenly Uncle Pete, thelu relative
Speaker 1: who lives upstairs, shows up in the kitchen holding a
Speaker 1: suitcase full of that cash that was there all along,
Speaker 1: and the family is like, we and then the movie
Speaker 1: ends with Ahmad's voiceover saying, now I understand what soul
Speaker 1: food is all about. Because during slavery, black folks didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot to celebrate, So cooking became the way
Speaker 1: that we expressed our love for each other. And that's
Speaker 1: what Sunday dinners meant to us. It was a time
Speaker 1: for sharing our joys and sorrows. And then we flash
Speaker 1: forward to see the family getting along, they're having a
Speaker 1: nice time, they're in a better place.
Speaker 4: They didn't sell the house.
Speaker 1: They didn't, yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: Because that's why I had the fight in the kitchen,
Speaker 4: was because Harry's I'm selling.
Speaker 1: House, right, So the house stays in the family and
Speaker 1: everyone is just doing pretty well. And that's the end
Speaker 1: of the movie. So let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: we'll come to discuss, and we're back.
Speaker 3: And we're back. We usually defer to our guest nah
Speaker 3: an idea. Is there anywhere you, in particular, would like
Speaker 3: to start the discussion.
Speaker 4: Hmmm, I guess, like with this film, there's so many things,
Speaker 4: so many things. I really like how it's like a play,
Speaker 4: Like there's a lot of setups in the first act,
Speaker 4: like everything like means something, and it comes back like
Speaker 4: even at the end when the fire happens. There's a
Speaker 4: reason she specifically said, you don't put anything on like
Speaker 4: lying bomb said, don't put anything on the stove, because
Speaker 4: that's how fires happen. And he accidentally and it was
Speaker 4: like he didn't think of it. He just put it
Speaker 4: by the stove because they like, ahmad, come here, and
Speaker 4: that's when they realize, yeah, here for some money. I'll
Speaker 4: hear somebody, you know, and they and that's how like
Speaker 4: the whole fire got started and they all had to
Speaker 4: work together to like put it out in the which
Speaker 4: led to Uncle Pete coming out of his room because
Speaker 4: he thought he was about to die because he's about
Speaker 4: to smoke, and then dropped he holding TV.
Speaker 5: He wasn't gonna steal the money, but I didn't even
Speaker 5: didn't he know.
Speaker 4: That there was money, and maybe he knew there was money,
Speaker 4: and then he was like, oh, I gotta get that.
Speaker 3: Money unclear, Yeah, because the TV appeared to be bursting
Speaker 3: with money.
Speaker 4: And then we you know, now the money's ride everywhere
Speaker 4: and it's like, oh my gosh, we don't have to
Speaker 4: sell the house anymore. We got it. But I love
Speaker 4: that film because it's a complete story beginning, middle.
Speaker 5: And end.
Speaker 4: And as like I guess like a black child, it
Speaker 4: felt like very relatable, like, oh my god, I would
Speaker 4: love to get my family together. You know. However, she
Speaker 4: died because of diabetes due to some of that food.
Speaker 4: Some of that food needed to be substituted. And this
Speaker 4: is actually a big, big area of consistion for a
Speaker 4: lot of black communities with people calling soul food bad.
Speaker 4: And it's not that it's bad, it's just some people
Speaker 4: will not have greens, or they will have greens with
Speaker 4: the meat inside. You can substitute some of these things.
Speaker 4: And then also everybody's not making stuff from scratch anymore.
Speaker 4: So that's really the issue because back in slavery days,
Speaker 4: people were literally killing the chicken that night and like
Speaker 4: we're making we're having chicken. That's how we got this chicken. Nowadays,
Speaker 4: there's so much crap in the food, like it's not
Speaker 4: this we're not eating the same food. Like there's no
Speaker 4: I don't wanna say there's no people doing it from scratch,
Speaker 4: but it's like a completely different.
Speaker 1: World so processed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's how she died. And I I really
Speaker 4: wanted them. I know they had the garden cause they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: we have the garden like Terry's in the garden like
Speaker 4: at the end and everything. But some of those things
Speaker 4: is like okay, like we eating the same food that
Speaker 4: led to her getting the diabetes, and also like having
Speaker 4: more conversations about health in our communities because there's a
Speaker 4: lot of fear of doctors, which is why like a
Speaker 4: lot of elderly people, especially black men, will be like
Speaker 4: I'm not going to a doctor. I don't want to go,
Speaker 4: like I've had horrible experiences at the doctor, like you know,
Speaker 4: like at the guy, know with like white women. So
Speaker 4: like I get why you'll be like, well, it's my time.
Speaker 4: Like if it's my time, it's my time.
Speaker 5: I'm old.
Speaker 4: Like so I get that, but like I think about
Speaker 4: that when I think about the movie, it's just like
Speaker 4: black health food health, and also like families, like how
Speaker 4: do you how do you communicate with your family? And
Speaker 4: it was really messed up. It was really messed up.
Speaker 4: You don't take your sister's man, you really don't.
Speaker 5: That's like.
Speaker 4: Written by a man, written by a man, because that's
Speaker 4: the fantasy is like sleeping when I buy in a family,
Speaker 4: Like so.
Speaker 1: I need to get around to all the sisters, right, well.
Speaker 3: I want to talk more about the theme of food.
Speaker 3: Obviously it's the name of the movie. I think it's
Speaker 3: like super well contextualized within the movie that not only
Speaker 3: is soul food integral to this family, but to black
Speaker 3: culture in general. But yeah, the way that it affects
Speaker 3: Mama Joe is like I was like, what is he
Speaker 3: trying to get at there? Like, I guess that it's
Speaker 3: open to discussion. I was looking up interviews to see
Speaker 3: if George Tillman Junior had spoken to why he made
Speaker 3: that choice for her character, and I was kind of
Speaker 3: unclear on it, Like I don't necessarily object to it
Speaker 3: because it's like, of course, diabetes, like is an issue
Speaker 3: that a lot of people have, and you don't see
Speaker 3: it put on film very often. I went down a
Speaker 3: rabbit hole of like how often do you see diabetic character?
Speaker 3: And usually whenever you do, which I guess this movie
Speaker 3: isn't an exception to it's as a plot point where
Speaker 3: eventually they will be severely affected by or die as
Speaker 3: a result of diabetes. There's very few examples of a
Speaker 3: character that just has diabetes and is treating it or
Speaker 3: is just sort of living as a person with diabetes.
Speaker 3: I feel for Mama Joe so terribly because of her
Speaker 3: understandable issues with doctors, and but the way that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I was how did everybody feel about the way that
Speaker 3: that plot point was treated. I feel like sometimes in
Speaker 3: family dramas in general, there's a lot of like, well,
Speaker 3: we have to sort of take out the matriarch or
Speaker 3: the patriarch and watch the rest of the family go
Speaker 3: wild in their absence, which, at least I don't know
Speaker 3: like that feels true to life. That's certainly been true
Speaker 3: in my experience, where you know, like your grandparent dies
Speaker 3: and all these traditions go with them if your family's
Speaker 3: messy and can't keep up with them.
Speaker 4: No, that happened in my life, specifically, choosing diabetes.
Speaker 3: It was an interesting choice, and I didn't quite know
Speaker 3: what to make of it, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Especially because that's the thing that basically like tears the
Speaker 1: family apart. Like you said, it's the plot point that
Speaker 1: instigates a lot of this family melodrama. And I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of depictions of diabetes come with some
Speaker 1: form of shame, like oh, if the character hadn't eaten
Speaker 1: this way, or had this diet or you know, made
Speaker 1: this this and this choice, they wouldn't have diabetes. I
Speaker 1: don't think the movie is explicitly shaming her, but I
Speaker 1: don't know like the optics of like, she has diabetes.
Speaker 3: And that explicitly say that, though I don't remember if
Speaker 3: it was voiceover narration or a character speaking to her
Speaker 3: where they're like, Mom, we told you to blah blah
Speaker 3: blah blah blah with the food.
Speaker 4: I think taking the medicine too. Was she like not
Speaker 4: taking her medicine or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they say like, you need to take your
Speaker 1: insulin or something along those lines. And again, it's super
Speaker 1: understandable that Big Mama would be wary of doctors because
Speaker 1: there is so much institutionalized racism in the medical field.
Speaker 1: But it does almost feel like the movies kind of
Speaker 1: shaming her for her choices with health and diet and
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And in a movie where I felt like
Speaker 3: not a ton of plot points were really dropped, that
Speaker 3: felt like one of them where I was like, that's sorry,
Speaker 3: my kat's walking through my armpits. That's funny. Yeah, he's
Speaker 3: gonna be also pretty loud because he's gonna want some attention.
Speaker 1: It's hungry for Sunday dinner.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess it was just I don't
Speaker 6: think it was done maliciously, but it just felt like
Speaker 6: a plot point that could have been explored a little
Speaker 6: bit more in a way that would have been more
Speaker 6: fair to.
Speaker 3: The character, who's clearly a character that everyone in the
Speaker 3: story loves, and if she wasn't taking the insulin, you know,
Speaker 3: it would have been at least interesting to explore why,
Speaker 3: because I feel like it's presented sort of in a
Speaker 3: more judgmental way than maybe it was intended. But I
Speaker 3: don't know, I could be overthinking it too.
Speaker 4: I think also, we didn't have those conversations. I don't
Speaker 4: want to say we didn't have those conversations, but in
Speaker 4: the public sphere we're having those conversations way more. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Like it was like certain communities were having these conversations,
Speaker 4: and now like we're all talking like black maternal health,
Speaker 4: like everybody's talking about it. It's not just black women anymore.
Speaker 4: So I think the time times have changed as well.
Speaker 3: For sure. Yeah, because yeah, we're in this movie came
Speaker 3: out twenty six years ago now, so.
Speaker 1: Ninety seven, the same year that Titanic came out. Anyway, Wow,
Speaker 1: I just have to shout that out obviously, so but yeah,
Speaker 1: I do appreciate that there's such a strong focus though,
Speaker 1: as you were saying, an idea on the sisters and
Speaker 1: their dynamic, because.
Speaker 3: It's just so so different, like.
Speaker 1: Super different, very distinguishable, and it's just rare in general
Speaker 1: for a movie to be about a group of sisters,
Speaker 1: and even rarer for a movie written and directed by
Speaker 1: a man. But he, like George Tillman Jr. Very deliberately
Speaker 1: wanted to make a movie that had a focus on
Speaker 1: female characters. He wanted it to be about the importance
Speaker 1: of family. He told the Chicago Tribune in an interview, quote,
Speaker 1: I wanted to make a movie about a black family
Speaker 1: in Middle America. I wanted to make a film where
Speaker 1: everyone can look at them and say, this is my family. Unquote.
Speaker 1: So he, you know, he just he wanted to make
Speaker 1: this movie about a relatable family and one that focused
Speaker 1: on the sisters and not only they're like interpersonal relationships,
Speaker 1: but then their subplots with their other you know, their
Speaker 1: spouses and their careers and things like that. So I
Speaker 1: appreciate that there's just like so much focus on all
Speaker 1: of that in a way that feels extremely authentic, like
Speaker 1: their relationships, their conflicts. You could argue that it's that
Speaker 1: tired trope of like two women not getting along because
Speaker 1: one like quote unquote stole the other's man.
Speaker 3: I feel like that. I not to because I do
Speaker 3: think that there are elements of how women are written
Speaker 3: in this movie that feel very like boying women did
Speaker 3: not write this, and I can tell, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna jump to his defense a little bit there
Speaker 3: because they're sisters, and like how we very often see
Speaker 3: if there's infidelity and there's a woman and a man
Speaker 3: and it's like someone's husband cheated on them with another woman.
Speaker 3: We see in movies, especially of the nineties, that she
Speaker 3: is only mad at the other woman and a husband
Speaker 3: is like, well, he couldn't help himself. She tempted him,
Speaker 3: and that's the story we kind of hear over and over.
Speaker 3: I do think the dynamics are different if it's someone
Speaker 3: that you've known your whole entire life, because it's almost
Speaker 3: like you would want more loyalty from your I would
Speaker 3: expect more loyalty from my sister than from my husband.
Speaker 4: I also agree, and I did appreciate like that Harry
Speaker 4: was more upset. She wasn't upset with Faith, not really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a quick moment where when she has the
Speaker 1: butcher knife that she's wielding at her husband, she kind
Speaker 1: of like pivots a little bit and kind of waves
Speaker 1: it at Faith. But other than that, she's like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's a few moments where she's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I let like fuck the whole like monologue
Speaker 1: where she's like, fuck the family, I let the family
Speaker 1: into my house and.
Speaker 5: Family, my family fucked my husband.
Speaker 1: So she is targeting some of her anger, but I
Speaker 1: don't think it's necessarily that thing that you were talking about, Jamie,
Speaker 1: as far as like, oh, I'm directing my anger only
Speaker 1: at the other woman because there's this I mean, we've
Speaker 1: talked about this quite a bit, and we I think
Speaker 1: we talked about it a lot on the like Waiting
Speaker 1: to Exhale episode where the one who had been cheated
Speaker 1: on targets all of her anger to the other woman
Speaker 1: and like letting the man who did the cheating mostly
Speaker 1: off the hook, which often has just like sexist implications
Speaker 1: as far as like, well, women can't get along and
Speaker 1: women are so petty, so obviously they're gonna find any
Speaker 1: excuse to be mad at each other. That's not quite
Speaker 1: what's happening here, because it's like, well, she's just mad
Speaker 1: at everyone for betraying her.
Speaker 4: She's right, she's like, my.
Speaker 1: Family, you can't betray me like that. You're my husband,
Speaker 1: you can't betray me like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And then also like what did she have to
Speaker 4: give up to be everything to everybody in this family
Speaker 4: because everybody has their own little things that they're into
Speaker 4: with bird and the salon, like she's working, but I
Speaker 4: get the idea that she's working at this job because
Speaker 4: it's very lucrative and it allows her to like fulfill
Speaker 4: her responsibilities. But like if she didn't have to have
Speaker 4: that role, how would she be Because in the position
Speaker 4: she's in, she's not gonna.
Speaker 5: Be like, hey, guys, what's up?
Speaker 4: Like you know, like she has to remember dates, doctor's
Speaker 4: appointments when we have to pay all these bills, like
Speaker 4: you know, her husband's out doing jazz club things, and
Speaker 4: like fucking the cousin, like you know, she's taking a
Speaker 4: mod when even though magazine took her and she's the
Speaker 4: on that takes him out and does you know, make
Speaker 4: sure he has what he needs.
Speaker 5: So it's like that's.
Speaker 4: How she's gonna be considering the environment.
Speaker 1: That's the thing where like I feel like so many
Speaker 1: women are blamed for like just doing the labor that
Speaker 1: it takes to keep a family together. Because she's like
Speaker 1: she's doing household labor, she's doing familial labor. She's like
Speaker 1: financial she's like the.
Speaker 4: Maazing's out here trying to scare this man so he
Speaker 4: don't beat up her sister.
Speaker 5: She's she's doing.
Speaker 4: All the things like she's I need you to do
Speaker 4: something because he not gonna beat up on her like that,
Speaker 4: and then she gotta go and find a lawyer to
Speaker 4: get the man out.
Speaker 1: She's doing literally everything. And but it's the way that
Speaker 1: like woman like that will often be perceived, either just
Speaker 1: in real life or in media as being like frigid.
Speaker 1: I really think the movie wants you to think that, oh,
Speaker 1: she's got to stick up her ass. She's like not
Speaker 1: only did like her family not acknowledge everything she's doing
Speaker 1: for them, but like neither does the movie, it feels like,
Speaker 1: but also not in a way that it's like we
Speaker 1: should be grateful for everything she's doing to help.
Speaker 4: It's true, and then also the world like to be
Speaker 4: a black woman in a corporate space like that, who
Speaker 4: do you have to be to be actually successful? She
Speaker 4: has a corner office, she's not she doesn't have a cubicle.
Speaker 4: Like she's a boss for real, for real.
Speaker 1: She's like about to make partner and.
Speaker 4: Stuff, right, So, like what does it take to be
Speaker 4: that person? But I think a lot of the audience
Speaker 4: like nowadays, like back in the day, it was like, oh, Terry,
Speaker 4: you know, now everybody's everybody's on Terry's side.
Speaker 5: Everybody's like, yo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've said it before, we'll say it again. Terry
Speaker 1: did nothing wrong. But the movie is treating her as
Speaker 1: though she's this uppity, frigid woman. And yes, she is,
Speaker 1: like again holding her degree and her accolades and her
Speaker 1: money over people the way that like oftentimes a family
Speaker 1: member with more money will kind of try to exert
Speaker 1: that power in a way which is like not grey.
Speaker 1: We don't love to see it, right, And I.
Speaker 3: Totally understand why family members that had less than her
Speaker 3: would be somewhat resentful of that. Like I think, I
Speaker 3: don't know, if you've been on any side of that
Speaker 3: family dynamic, it's always going to be really tricky. It
Speaker 3: seems like sometimes Terry wants to be acknowledged for what
Speaker 3: she's bringing to the table and it's being taken as
Speaker 3: punitive or insulting in a way that it just feels
Speaker 3: like more of a communication issue, because I don't think
Speaker 3: anyone is necessarily wrong, Like I don't think Bird is
Speaker 3: being an asshole by being like I don't need to
Speaker 3: thank you every second for investing in my beauty shop,
Speaker 3: which is very successful. And I also don't think that
Speaker 3: Terry is a monster for wanting to be acknowledged for
Speaker 3: having done that, And so it just feels like sisterly
Speaker 3: communication for sure.
Speaker 4: But also it's also on the mother a lot of times,
Speaker 4: like the mom put Terry in that position. She should
Speaker 4: have never been in a position where she had to
Speaker 4: be maternal to her sisters, especially if they had a father,
Speaker 4: Like why is Terry doing all of this? You know,
Speaker 4: if you have a husband. We didn't even get into that,
Speaker 4: Like the movie doesn't get into that. They don't address that,
Speaker 4: like because Terry's a print to child, like she didn't
Speaker 4: get to be just ae sister, Like she has to
Speaker 4: take care of her mother, her sisters, her sister's kids,
Speaker 4: her uncle, her husband, like so yeah, that isn't addressed,
Speaker 4: and I just think people don't realize how much work
Speaker 4: it is to be like the oldest daughter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, for sure, do we have any oldest daughters
Speaker 3: in the house?
Speaker 1: Okay, saying I'm an old child?
Speaker 3: Sorry, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: Again, it's just like a very specific stage of the
Speaker 3: life thing. But I do feel like, yeah, like oldest
Speaker 3: kids a very girls, and sometimes you come off as
Speaker 3: maternalistic and like you're trying to take care of everybody.
Speaker 3: But usually like sometimes, and it seems like with Terry
Speaker 3: this was the case at different points, like you saw
Speaker 3: kind of the worst of it, where it's alluded to
Speaker 3: a few times that girl's father, Joe's husband had a
Speaker 3: gambling problem and that this was something that really deeply
Speaker 3: affected their family. And I think, based on the timeline
Speaker 3: it's described, that the eldest would have been the most
Speaker 3: exposed to that and how it affected the family in
Speaker 3: a very particular way. And I do think that like
Speaker 3: when you grow up in a family with addiction or
Speaker 3: infidelity or just a very strong core issue, the eldest
Speaker 3: absorbs a lot of that and the way that they
Speaker 3: process it is not always good. But I do think
Speaker 3: it is like relevant to who Terry is that it
Speaker 3: makes total sense to me that she both wants to
Speaker 3: and seems like she like genuinely wants to take care
Speaker 3: of her family, Like she doesn't dislike her family, she
Speaker 3: just feels unappreciated.
Speaker 4: But also like it's also because she's a woman, because
Speaker 4: if there was an older boy, he would not have
Speaker 4: the same responsibilities. Like I even have friends who are
Speaker 4: they're the oldest girl, and they have older brothers, and
Speaker 4: they take care of their older brothers, you know, so
Speaker 4: it's like they don't get to be the middle kid,
Speaker 4: you know, or the youngest if they're the oldest girl,
Speaker 4: because now you're a mother and now you have labor.
Speaker 3: To do exactly.
Speaker 1: That's actually familiar to me because I have an older
Speaker 1: brother and a younger sister and so.
Speaker 3: So you're technically so we're all spirits.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, yeah, children here, Hello, we need a break,
Speaker 4: we need a massage.
Speaker 1: I wish there would have been there would have been
Speaker 1: more acknowledgment of like everything that Terry does for the family.
Speaker 1: Every like it's contextualized why she is the way that
Speaker 1: she is, but it's not necessarily explicitly those connections aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily explicitly made, and it's just like Terry needs to
Speaker 1: lighten up, and it's like, well, let's explore maybe what
Speaker 1: she's going through, right, Can we let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and then we'll come back for more discussion. And we
Speaker 1: are back. Could we talk about the aspect of the
Speaker 1: story of Lem losing his job and his difficulty finding
Speaker 1: another one, because there's an awful lot to talk about here.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty big focal point of the movie that
Speaker 1: Lem has gotten fired because his employer found out that
Speaker 1: he lied on his application about having a criminal record.
Speaker 1: And then Lem has difficulty finding another job because he
Speaker 1: starts telling the truth on his applications about having been
Speaker 1: convicted of a crime, and so he's having trouble landing
Speaker 1: another job not only because he has a criminal record,
Speaker 1: but specifically because he's a black man with a criminal record.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, black people with the same qualifications as
Speaker 1: their white counterparts are often less likely to be offered
Speaker 1: jobs than white people, and then black people with a
Speaker 1: criminal record are statistically way less likely to be offered
Speaker 1: a job than white people with a criminal record. So
Speaker 1: we see this man infesting in Lem's character and he's
Speaker 1: talking to Bird about how like I lied on the application,
Speaker 1: like I'm doing this and like I'm struggling with this
Speaker 1: because it's about this bullshit system. He says something like
Speaker 1: they lock you up and expect you to do something
Speaker 1: better with your life, but when you get out, there
Speaker 1: isn't anything better because like the white people who have
Speaker 1: everything don't give you a second chance. And then Bird
Speaker 1: is like, that's bullshit, like stop using the white man
Speaker 1: as an excuse, which surprised me that she took that
Speaker 1: stance because, like Lem is absolutely right, it has everything
Speaker 1: to do with systemic racism. But I also feel like
Speaker 1: Bird's response to that is her holding on to these
Speaker 1: biases when it comes to rigid gender roles and what
Speaker 1: she expects of a man having to be like the provider,
Speaker 1: because that becomes this whole other component of this story
Speaker 1: where Lem goes to Kenny and Kenny's like, don't tell
Speaker 1: your wife that you're unemployed, Like, never tell a black
Speaker 1: woman that you don't have a job. You know, it's
Speaker 1: all right for them to lie around the house, but like,
Speaker 1: not the man. And even if you're doing household work,
Speaker 1: like they won't respect you unless you have a job
Speaker 1: out in the world earning money, which again like just
Speaker 1: like speaks to like these rigid gender roles that both
Speaker 1: that like men and women harbor because like patriarchy conditions
Speaker 1: all genders to hold onto these like certain expectations where
Speaker 1: I don't know, like the men, the men have some
Speaker 1: messed up values in this movie, but so do the women,
Speaker 1: Like women like Bird not valuing like her husband doing
Speaker 1: household labor and she's conditioned to think, like, well, that's
Speaker 1: like a woman's work, and right, men shouldn't be doing that,
Speaker 1: should be going out and earning. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: like the movie starts to comment on this, but then
Speaker 1: where it lands feels kind of dissonant because it comes
Speaker 1: down on the side of like reinforcing those gender expectations
Speaker 1: because of like how forgiving it is to various male
Speaker 1: characters after they've displayed some pretty nasty behavior, right, So
Speaker 1: I don't know, it feels like all over the place.
Speaker 1: I wish it had like kind of made some more
Speaker 1: definitive statements about how like wow, these gender roles that
Speaker 1: are forced upon us and these expectations based on gender,
Speaker 1: they're so rigid. Can't we like just do whatever we're
Speaker 1: able to do to participate and help with the family unit.
Speaker 1: But certain characters are just like holding too tightly onto
Speaker 1: certain expectations. And then you have like Lemb like being
Speaker 1: abusive to multiple people and everyone's just like.
Speaker 4: That's just his personality. Yeah, Like, but I also feel
Speaker 4: like it's respectability politics, Like it's like you have to
Speaker 4: be a good boy and a good girl in this world,
Speaker 4: and this is what it looks like for a black
Speaker 4: person to be good. Like Terry is good. You know,
Speaker 4: she does a good job, she's making a lot of money,
Speaker 4: she's a lawyer. She gets to check with Maxine. I
Speaker 4: think Maxine is a stay at home mom. Yes, she's
Speaker 4: a stay at home mom, but I do think she
Speaker 4: is smart. Like I always thought, like why is she
Speaker 4: stay at home mom? She could do so many cool things,
Speaker 4: like she has all of these skills, but she's stay
Speaker 4: at home mom and that's like her role.
Speaker 5: And with Limb, like I was like I understand.
Speaker 4: Where it's like, Okay, you gotta don't use that as
Speaker 4: an excuse because growing up, like I grew up with
Speaker 4: a lot of guys in and out of Juvie, and
Speaker 4: they would make so many excuses. But you would give
Speaker 4: them an opportunity, like, oh, why don't you try this,
Speaker 4: you have this skill here, like go a little further,
Speaker 4: and they wouldn't do it. They wouldn't even put the
Speaker 4: effort in to make those changes. So I'm a little
Speaker 4: mixed on that, but definitely chuck full of respectability in
Speaker 4: the society, Like there are a lot of like boxes
Speaker 4: that people are stuck in, like a with Terry's husband
Speaker 4: not being allowed to be an artist, like it not
Speaker 4: even being a serious conversation because he's actually he's actually
Speaker 4: very talented, which is why faith in him connected because
Speaker 4: they're both very talented artists. And I think was it
Speaker 4: Casey and Jojo at the hand, it was like.
Speaker 5: This is crazy, like you're really good.
Speaker 4: Like so it's like, but that wasn't even a real
Speaker 4: option because it's like, you can't be a musician even
Speaker 4: though you are good, Like he could have probably been
Speaker 4: one of the top pianists or whatever, or like traveling
Speaker 4: the world making a bunch of money, but that wasn't
Speaker 4: accessible where like you lived and stuff like that. So
Speaker 4: I feel like there's a lot of respectability in a movie,
Speaker 4: but that also like reflected those times and what people
Speaker 4: were proud of what you could be proud of, Like, ah,
Speaker 4: like I can't be proud of you as a musician
Speaker 4: because like I'd rather you do your corporate job, like
Speaker 4: you have more value there, you know, instead of like
Speaker 4: being an artist.
Speaker 1: Terry even puts a number on it. She's like thirty
Speaker 1: one thousand of the blah blah blah, and our joint account.
Speaker 5: Is yours, right, yeah, And she's.
Speaker 1: Like putting a value on him, the monetary like specific
Speaker 1: number value on him, or she.
Speaker 4: Would know she pan all the bills.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, he's not paying a bills.
Speaker 4: So it's like it's like, yeah, but if he was
Speaker 4: a musician who was handling things, like what if he
Speaker 4: was handling things, like if he was doing shows and
Speaker 4: he was like I got a lot of money, don't
Speaker 4: worry about the house. I got it, don't worry about
Speaker 4: amadituition or whatever she's doing because I know she's paying
Speaker 4: bills with Mexican Party.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but like I got it.
Speaker 4: Like so it's also you want to be this musician,
Speaker 4: but you're still leaning so heavy. We got to get
Speaker 4: away from Terry because we're like.
Speaker 5: It's becoming this so hard.
Speaker 3: Terry is a nuclear Rod, But it's like, but with her,
Speaker 3: I'm so invested in Terry, where I wonder in her relationship,
Speaker 3: would she have been more willing and amenable to supporting
Speaker 3: her husband's musical ambitions if she felt appreciated by him
Speaker 3: in the first place, Because it does seem like with
Speaker 3: Terry there is this inherent I don't know, and I
Speaker 3: think that this is like something that exists in a
Speaker 3: lot of successful women, an inherent insecurity of like how
Speaker 3: am I viewed and if someone is threatened by me?
Speaker 3: What is the quote unquote consequence of that? Which I
Speaker 3: think is very much a thing and it shouldn't be.
Speaker 3: But I it like Terry's reactions as as I think
Speaker 3: sometimes harsh as they can seem, and I think as
Speaker 3: they are perceived in the movies, I don't know, like
Speaker 3: I do wonder, and we don't have a ton of
Speaker 3: context for that of like, well, how has he behaved
Speaker 3: for this entire relationship? Is he saying that I am
Speaker 3: not that it's her place to block his dreams? But
Speaker 3: they're in a partnership and she has to take on
Speaker 3: some financial burden and she deserves to know if that's
Speaker 3: something that is happening and it feels like that goes
Speaker 3: unexplored a little.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he took five grand out of their account to
Speaker 1: like build his at home studio without consulting her.
Speaker 3: And that's not just their money, that's also their house.
Speaker 3: You're like, he just do something like that to the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, And it's like, yeah, It's like it would
Speaker 1: be one thing if he was like like, hey, babe,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in pursuing music, Like would you entertain the
Speaker 1: idea of like me building this home studio. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be an investment, but like I'll use my money and like,
Speaker 1: you know, having just an open conversation about it.
Speaker 3: But he did that discussion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he just goes behind her back and doesn't have
Speaker 1: an open conversation about it at all, and then he
Speaker 1: resents when she's not more supportive. But it's like, well,
Speaker 1: like you put her in this position where you're not
Speaker 1: being open and honest with her, So yeah, I understand
Speaker 1: her not being fully supportive.
Speaker 3: And even though this is not Miles's fault, we have
Speaker 3: context for Terry that she has serious trust issues, right people,
Speaker 3: because of this experience with her sister, right, And so
Speaker 3: that is not on Miles, but that is context for
Speaker 3: how Terry behaves in situations like that, where I feel
Speaker 3: like she shuts down and like absorbs a lot and
Speaker 3: comes off really defensive. I feel so much for Terry.
Speaker 1: Justice for Terry. We see her get cheated on in
Speaker 1: two different scenes by two different people.
Speaker 3: Let her have her butcher knife.
Speaker 4: That are supposed to women, and these are women in
Speaker 4: her family, are not her friends, betraying that her the
Speaker 4: girl who works at the dairy queen. It's like, this
Speaker 4: is my sister and this is my cousin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, And I do think.
Speaker 3: That, yeah, like the way that this conversation goes around
Speaker 3: in fidelity would be different if it was the girl
Speaker 3: at the dairy Queen or like someone that we don't
Speaker 3: know and don't see again, because then it feels more
Speaker 3: woman versus woman. But it's like Terry, I don't know.
Speaker 3: And then even at the end, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: no justice for Terry, where they're like Terry and Miles
Speaker 3: broke up, but Miles was still around a lot.
Speaker 5: And you're like, why who's out of here?
Speaker 1: Didn't care anyway, it's probably Ama just being like hey
Speaker 1: uncle Miles.
Speaker 4: I know, I know.
Speaker 1: It's like inviting people who know one's.
Speaker 4: Around paying for your boarding school right now? Who's paying
Speaker 4: for basketball practice? Right? Because you want to be a
Speaker 4: basketball player?
Speaker 3: Like he wants to be right right, that's his dream
Speaker 3: and it works well alert for a space jam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good for him.
Speaker 4: Shout out to Terry and all the work she did
Speaker 4: so he could become the NBA.
Speaker 3: It's true without Terry, we wouldn't have Michael Jordan, and
Speaker 3: no one talks about that.
Speaker 1: Terry going underappreciated again, damn. I think another clue that
Speaker 1: this was written and directed by a man is and
Speaker 1: I alluded to this already, but how easily so many
Speaker 1: of the men are like let off the hook by
Speaker 1: the end as far as like I mean to me.
Speaker 1: The biggest example is Lem where he like goes ballistic
Speaker 1: multiple times, like beating people up, shoving his wife, like
Speaker 1: being so emasculated and acting out in violent ways like
Speaker 1: and then everyone's like, well, even like Maxine defends him.
Speaker 1: She's talking to Bird and she's like, you can't go
Speaker 1: behind your man's back and have your eggs get a
Speaker 1: job for him, Like a man has to be a man.
Speaker 1: And he if he feels like you took that away
Speaker 1: from him, then he has nothing, which like, again, don't
Speaker 1: go behind people's backs and do things. That's the thing
Speaker 1: that it seems like everyone in this family needs to learn,
Speaker 1: because Ahmad does it, Miles does it, Bird does it,
Speaker 1: Everyone's doing it all the time. So really this family
Speaker 1: just needs to learn how to communicate. But I'm just like.
Speaker 3: Maxine, like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Why are you defending this guy who like feels so
Speaker 1: emasculated for like, i mean, pretty dated reasons of course,
Speaker 1: like this was the mental of the time. Not that
Speaker 1: that excuses anything, but I don't know for her to
Speaker 1: like lightly defend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, as far as Lem goes, I found
Speaker 3: it frustrating because I feel like, like we were just
Speaker 3: talking about Lem's character illustrates so many realities about incarcerated
Speaker 3: black men trying to re enter society in a way
Speaker 3: that is fair, and how there's so much I mean,
Speaker 3: I think we see him encounter the most direct racism
Speaker 3: of anyone in the movie. And I appreciated at the
Speaker 3: beginning of this conversation the dynamic between him and Bird
Speaker 3: where it's like she doesn't quite get it, but she
Speaker 3: wants to, and it seems like this is something that
Speaker 3: they want to work on within their relationship and that
Speaker 3: all felt like, Wow, that was like really well done.
Speaker 3: But then I was really frustrated with where they took
Speaker 3: his character from there, because he is abusive towards her,
Speaker 3: like outright, and then when he comes back at the
Speaker 3: end of the movie, he even talks with Ahmad a
Speaker 3: child and is like, I would never hit a woman,
Speaker 3: and You're like, but I've been watching this whole movie
Speaker 3: and I don't want to like put it squarely on
Speaker 3: this movie or this filmmaker, because I do think it's
Speaker 3: like an of the time thing, but like the definition
Speaker 3: of what constitutes spousal abuse and assaults very off. Like
Speaker 3: he there's no question I think in like a modern
Speaker 3: lens that what Lem did to Bird was extremely abusive.
Speaker 3: And then he came back and was like, well, I didn't,
Speaker 3: you know, strike her across the face and I would
Speaker 3: never do that, and that's my boundary, so it's fine,
Speaker 3: and I should be bought in back, which he was immediately,
Speaker 3: and everyone agrees. Yeah, it made that character so frustrating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I know, like some of the things that
Speaker 4: like Bird couldn't understand was also because of how supportive
Speaker 4: her family had been to her, and she's the baby
Speaker 4: you know she's so protected, which is like, why of
Speaker 4: course you're gonna go find this dude, Like, you know,
Speaker 4: you could have been anybody else. Everybody want you and
Speaker 4: you how'd y'all meet?
Speaker 5: Was he in jail?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 5: I was always like, did you meet him in jail?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Like because I feel.
Speaker 4: Like, you know, women meet people in jail, like, which is,
Speaker 4: how'd you meet this guy? Okay?
Speaker 3: Cool?
Speaker 4: But I think Lim doesn't have family, and I think
Speaker 4: that has become his family and he has to learn
Speaker 4: how to be in a family because he's so used
Speaker 4: to defending himself, even to people who I'm sure are
Speaker 4: supposed to be in his corner. And I get that.
Speaker 4: I've seen that a lot in like some of the
Speaker 4: people I know who've been in and out of jail,
Speaker 4: they have a hard time trust in people, you know,
Speaker 4: and believing that somebody loves and cares and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: So they kind of like do the same things and
Speaker 4: they know it's them, but it's hard to like break
Speaker 4: that cycle within yourself. So I feel like he definitely
Speaker 4: was abusive and that would be in a hard household
Speaker 4: to live in, like to bring if you like you're
Speaker 4: literally trying to trying to intimidate her physically, like you're
Speaker 4: trying to scare her, You're trying to donate her physically.
Speaker 4: You're doing it. All these people know who you are,
Speaker 4: We see what you're doing. And he needs he needs
Speaker 4: I don't want to say we need more in therapy,
Speaker 4: but I felt really annoyed that getting him a job
Speaker 4: was supposed to be a bad thing. It's like, isn't
Speaker 4: that proof that you love this person so much and
Speaker 4: you want them to be okay that you would literally
Speaker 4: go to the person you shouldn't be going to to
Speaker 4: give him a job.
Speaker 5: And she's not sleeping with the man.
Speaker 4: M m.
Speaker 5: She She's not giving him no punani to get the job.
Speaker 1: She's just gonna go to dinner with him.
Speaker 3: That's you know, which is also like not a fair
Speaker 3: position for her to be in and a huge concession
Speaker 3: on her end, because we know she does not want
Speaker 3: to be around this guy at all exactly. And I
Speaker 3: can get as far with Lim in that situation of
Speaker 3: him being angry about the lie and angry about feeling
Speaker 3: like because it feels like Lem has a deep seated
Speaker 3: issue with feeling like someone's doing him a favor. He
Speaker 3: wants to feel like it's just happened organically or and
Speaker 3: I understand that, Like that makes sense, and I can
Speaker 3: understand like finding that out, especially from the asshole that
Speaker 3: did it, who was clearly egging him on and clearly
Speaker 3: wanted him to be angry and clearly wanted to fire him.
Speaker 3: I can understand why that would be upsetting. But it's like,
Speaker 3: how is the answer to attack your wife without talking
Speaker 3: to her first? But it just feels like Lem's really
Speaker 3: left off the hook.
Speaker 4: For yeah, like okay, like we know U can't you
Speaker 4: a jailbird, so we know that's what's expect.
Speaker 3: Right, Like it seems like it's unfair to Bird and
Speaker 3: to Limb because it's like Lemon is playing into the
Speaker 3: exact stereotypes that his character has been pushing against the
Speaker 3: entire movie. And then Bird and the whole family are like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: he didn't strike her across the face, so he's a
Speaker 3: good guy, which I was really Yeah, that was like
Speaker 3: I think that was like the big thing that stood
Speaker 3: out to me as like a really dated view of abuse.
Speaker 3: And then Maxine, it's so interesting because she's a very
Speaker 3: important character, but I feel like she gets the least
Speaker 3: screen time of the sisters, and.
Speaker 1: She doesn't have quite the same arc or subplot that
Speaker 1: Bird plus Limb and Terry plus Miles get.
Speaker 3: And I mean, maybe I'm just like in discourse brain
Speaker 3: wormhole here, So stop me if this feels off, But
Speaker 3: I was feeling like because Maxine has sort of less
Speaker 3: of an arc than the other sisters. She's pretty consistent
Speaker 3: in her views, story, her marriage is stable, like seems
Speaker 3: like she's generally like okay, and her as sort of
Speaker 3: the mother of the family and she's told you are
Speaker 3: the wise one. She seems sort of like the chosen
Speaker 3: one by her own mother, as like the new matriarch
Speaker 3: of the family. And she's also the character to deliver
Speaker 3: this kind of like retro view of gender at the
Speaker 3: end of the movie, and it felt pointed to me
Speaker 3: that it's like the new matriarch and the only mother
Speaker 3: of this group of sisters thus far is also the
Speaker 3: one that thinks that you should let a man be
Speaker 3: a man and don't get in the way of him
Speaker 3: being a man. It just felt like symbolic in a
Speaker 3: way that felt a little icky to me, like and
Speaker 3: it didn't wreck anything, but it just it feels like
Speaker 3: again Team Terry of like how it's sort of I
Speaker 3: don't know. I think led to believe that, like Terry's
Speaker 3: professional life is part of why her marriage doesn't work,
Speaker 3: and it's Maxine's commitment to her family that is why
Speaker 3: she is the chosen one, and that she because she
Speaker 3: lets a man be a man. She's the only one
Speaker 3: that has a stable marriage and.
Speaker 5: She don't just have a dar.
Speaker 3: Right, which is fine, but it's like it just felt
Speaker 3: weird for the one sister that was the stay at
Speaker 3: home mom to be the moral authority.
Speaker 4: In who's not in the act, goes to the world,
Speaker 4: doesn't have to pay any bills, doesn't have like if
Speaker 4: she goes to fans, she's just gonna call Terry, like
Speaker 4: you know, so.
Speaker 3: That is true.
Speaker 4: I feel like her role in the movie is totally
Speaker 4: momb like, Like even when she has that scene with
Speaker 4: a mod talking about like what he wants to do
Speaker 4: and how he wants to get the family together when
Speaker 4: they're walking. I love that scene too, Like I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: it's so cool. Cool.
Speaker 1: She's like I was in labor with you for twenty
Speaker 1: three hours, forty five minutes and ten seconds, and he
Speaker 1: like recites it along with her as if she tells
Speaker 1: him this at least once a week.
Speaker 3: Classic mom behavior.
Speaker 4: My mom used to do that too with my sister.
Speaker 4: She's like, you guys are not three years apart. You're
Speaker 4: eleven months, twelve days, and like, what is it thirteen
Speaker 4: minutes or something like that. It's like it's like she
Speaker 4: has all of the like how far apart we are?
Speaker 4: So like I love that, but I'm just like, her
Speaker 4: role is really mother. It's like mother, but it's not
Speaker 4: real without the responsibility of mother.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't even have an issue with her being
Speaker 3: a stay at home mom. I feel like anytime though
Speaker 3: that you have a spread of characters and you have
Speaker 3: a stay at home mother, and you have a professional
Speaker 3: who doesn't have kids, or you have like a spread
Speaker 3: of different kinds of characters, when any one character is
Speaker 3: made to be like the moral voice of the movie,
Speaker 3: because I feel like there's a lot of modern movies
Speaker 3: that have the reverse problem, where it's like being the
Speaker 3: childless professional, you are the moral authority, which is also
Speaker 3: unfair to people making other choices. But it's just like
Speaker 3: any anytime one character has made the moral authority, it
Speaker 3: feels pointed, even if it's not quite intended that way.
Speaker 3: I couldn't tell if it was intended, but I felt
Speaker 3: like the stay at home on being like I'm doing
Speaker 3: the right thing because I'm doing what a woman is
Speaker 3: supposed to do, and it just felt like it erased
Speaker 3: other stuff, which that little resimplification.
Speaker 1: But no, but I agree, and not only like her
Speaker 1: being poisoned aous with a moral authority character, but her
Speaker 1: being the only one of the three sisters to not
Speaker 1: have a more distinct arc and like thing that she
Speaker 1: was dealing love. So to me, it feels like, oh,
Speaker 1: the mother character, like we don't really need to check
Speaker 1: in with her and see what is happening in her life.
Speaker 1: She'll be in scenes, but like we don't really need
Speaker 1: to give her like a fleshed out story line. It
Speaker 1: just also feels some stuff right.
Speaker 3: Which probably has to do with a man reading the movies,
Speaker 3: like good she's good mom.
Speaker 4: Yeah, probably literally has no clue what are Yeah, we
Speaker 4: probably literally couldn't even tell you, like what their life
Speaker 4: would be like as a new.
Speaker 1: Mom, right because she has two young kids a mod's sister.
Speaker 1: I know, we learn her name, but also she's such
Speaker 1: a nothing character. She's like in a couple of scenes
Speaker 1: where we see her eating, but I don't think she
Speaker 1: has any lines. Maybe it's just because like she's six,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you don't child actors enough lines?
Speaker 4: We give the grand she's so cute, but already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she gets no anything. And then but yeah, why
Speaker 1: isn't there a story where Maxine is dealing with something
Speaker 1: in her life, whether it is related to motherhood, whether
Speaker 1: it's related to her relationship with Kenny, maybe it's her
Speaker 1: relationship with her son, Like why isn't there something more
Speaker 1: that we're given? But instead she just is kind of
Speaker 1: like popping in now and then to be like, let
Speaker 1: me reinforce rigid gender expectations, okay, bye.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't And it felt also pointed that
Speaker 3: that conversation is between Maxine and Bird after Bird finds
Speaker 3: out that she's pregnant, because now Bird's going to be
Speaker 3: a mother, and she's like, let me pass down this
Speaker 3: institutional maternal knowledge. Let men do whatever they want. Bye, Like,
Speaker 3: in a way, I don't know, it felt very that
Speaker 3: seems specifically, even though I liked the sister dynamic, but
Speaker 3: that seems specifically felt the most obviously written by a
Speaker 3: man to me, because even if that is the way
Speaker 3: that a woman feels. As a writer, I feel like
Speaker 3: there would be more nuance to it than just like
Speaker 3: a man needs to be a man, and what's happening
Speaker 3: to Terry And what happened to Terry is because she
Speaker 3: didn't let a man be a man. And you're like,
Speaker 3: that's your sister, dude, come on.
Speaker 1: I find the advice should have been like, look, sister,
Speaker 1: like men are so fragile and they're so easily emasculated,
Speaker 1: so you need to uh find a therapist for your
Speaker 1: husband or like convince him to go to therapy or
Speaker 1: something like that should have been the advice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it would be like, or y'all need to
Speaker 4: have better communication, right, because that needs a really talk
Speaker 4: because yeah, on different pages.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, because that scene also felt like Maxine was
Speaker 3: like tacitly okay with how abusive Limb was towards Bird,
Speaker 3: and right away that also felt unfair to a character
Speaker 3: we love. I don't know. Yeah, Maxine is all over
Speaker 3: the place for me because it's like it's vivid a fox,
Speaker 3: So I'm on board, right, it's gonna be really hard
Speaker 3: to turn me against this, right love. But her actions
Speaker 3: to me are because it's like she's obviously a great mom,
Speaker 3: and it seems like she really enjoys being a stay
Speaker 3: at home mom, which is great, but it yeah, there
Speaker 3: was like this sort of edge of judgment towards women
Speaker 3: who are not stay at home moms, and I feel
Speaker 3: like that also tied into I think Mama Joe is
Speaker 3: a stay at home mother as well, and she was
Speaker 3: the person who held the family together and she passes
Speaker 3: that role on to the stay at home mother, and
Speaker 3: it just is I don't know. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 3: that that does happen in families, but it would have
Speaker 3: been cool to see it explored a little more than it's.
Speaker 1: Oh, we do get a little mentioned from Mama Joe
Speaker 1: that she she said like I worked on my hands
Speaker 1: and knees, like I think she said something like cleaning
Speaker 1: up after white folk. Oh yes, yes, But it feels
Speaker 1: like maybe she did that in response to her husband's
Speaker 1: gambling and they were in debt, So maybe she was
Speaker 1: a stay at home mom for a while but then
Speaker 1: had to start working for those reasons unclear. We don't
Speaker 1: get a whole lot of the details of her backstory.
Speaker 3: And then is it also Maxine. Now I feel like
Speaker 3: I'm becoming anti vaxine. It's not how I have to feel,
Speaker 3: But isn't it also a Maxine who's like, well, when
Speaker 3: our father got us deep into debt gambling, mom took
Speaker 3: care of it and she didn't say a thing about it,
Speaker 3: and she didn't humiliate or emasculate him. Oh I think
Speaker 3: it is caused that problem and she was right to
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 1: And it's like, it is not women's responsibility to clean
Speaker 1: up the messes that men make.
Speaker 3: Right, And that wasn't fair to Mama Joe, But it
Speaker 3: felt like the movie felt like it was.
Speaker 4: Right, like that was her responsibility as a wife.
Speaker 1: Right very nineties in before mentality for sure. The other
Speaker 1: man who I feel like has really let off the
Speaker 1: hook is Reverend Williams, who is a pervert. He's always
Speaker 1: trying to kiss women without their consent. He's always saying gross,
Speaker 1: like very sexually charged things.
Speaker 3: Such as meat. He called the meat at one point.
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, we're about to eat these delicious
Speaker 1: legs under the table, I mean on the table, and
Speaker 1: it's like, right, sir, But this is like played as
Speaker 1: a joke by the movie, like, oh yeah, Reverend, he's
Speaker 1: a creep. But isn't it funny? And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: get this guy away.
Speaker 3: That felt very nineties to me. I was like, that's
Speaker 3: very like nineties comedy.
Speaker 4: Nineties for sure, because y'all remember Martin, You remember Jerome.
Speaker 4: I had Jerome in the house watching out. That's all
Speaker 4: he did was being nasty. All his character was being
Speaker 4: a nasty man, and it was it was a joke,
Speaker 4: like it wasn't like, yo, like we need to talk
Speaker 4: to this dude. He's feeling all the girls in the
Speaker 4: club like we gotta stop you, like, you know, what
Speaker 4: are you doing? They're not gonna come back out if
Speaker 4: you keep treating him like this? Why are you treating
Speaker 4: women like this? And that's your whole person out that's
Speaker 4: that was his person like his character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's so many. It's like god, I feel
Speaker 3: across like for generations, there have been so many famous
Speaker 3: like comedy characters or just sitcom characters that are just
Speaker 3: like man who sexually harasses people. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 3: the quagmire paradox to bring things to family guy for
Speaker 3: no reason. But it's just like that's the joke is
Speaker 3: that he's creepy and awful to women, which is not
Speaker 3: unique to this movie certainly, but it's like, well, if
Speaker 3: the cast didn't confirm that this movie is firmly in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven, that character does.
Speaker 1: I want to rattle off a couple other very like
Speaker 1: nineties mentality things that appear in the movie. We've got
Speaker 1: let's see Bird's real name is Ryla, but there's voice
Speaker 1: over this says we call her Bird because she used
Speaker 1: to be skinny, and it's like, uh, I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at Na Long right now, and she's thin, what
Speaker 1: do you? I don't, I don't know. There's like a
Speaker 1: very sex work shamy mentality because there's a reference to
Speaker 1: how Faith used to be a stripper and everyone's very
Speaker 1: very judgmental of that. And she's also and we've talked
Speaker 1: about this before, like because there's such a huge stigma
Speaker 1: around sex work, and even people who have done sex
Speaker 1: work may internalize that shame because of just all the
Speaker 1: external shame. Because she says at a certain point, like
Speaker 1: she's talking about her career goals with Miles, and she's like,
Speaker 1: I want to dance, No, I mean really dance, Like
Speaker 1: I want to do Broadway musicals, as if like doing
Speaker 1: erotic dance is not quote unquote real work kind of thing,
Speaker 1: so she's like internalizing that.
Speaker 3: I think there's like a number of tropes attached to
Speaker 3: her as a former occurrent. It's unclear stripper or sex
Speaker 3: worker to any capacity, because it's also implied that, like
Speaker 3: I think this is another common trope with sex workers,
Speaker 3: is like they're gonna steal your boyfriend. It's like, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: they do not want to fuck your weird husband, like
Speaker 3: believe it. And also that they're like reckless and bad
Speaker 3: with money and these agents of chaos, and the way
Speaker 3: that I think Faith is pretty uncritically shown. And I
Speaker 3: think that Faith is a bad cousin like she is,
Speaker 3: and I understand why Terry fucking hates her, but it
Speaker 3: feels like the way that she's characterized is also like
Speaker 3: pretty steeped in a lot of tropes around, like erotic
Speaker 3: dancers and strippers in general, where it's like realistically in
Speaker 3: the real world, Like I don't know, I think it's
Speaker 3: more interesting if it's just like she is interested in
Speaker 3: Miles because he takes her art seriously and she takes
Speaker 3: his art seriously, and there's no one in their family
Speaker 3: that feels that way. So that connection even makes total
Speaker 3: sense to me, but it feels like there's just like
Speaker 3: tropes around it that made it messier than it needed
Speaker 3: to be made.
Speaker 4: Sure, And I think she carries that shame too, like
Speaker 4: she you know, when she goes in the house, like
Speaker 4: I think Mama Joel's like, you can stay, like and
Speaker 4: everybody's like you can stay, you can stay. She knows
Speaker 4: she's not wanted. She knowss like you know, she's kind
Speaker 4: of not supposed to be there, and she has to
Speaker 4: be like validated in that space. I think it's like
Speaker 4: Maxine who validates.
Speaker 7: Her yeah, and yeah, it is a little all over
Speaker 7: the place with like okay, now, but you're gonna let
Speaker 7: the whole stay, like y'all are obsessed with the approval
Speaker 7: of men, but but she can stay.
Speaker 3: It's confusing and also it's just like God, faith, if
Speaker 3: there's one thing you shouldn't do, it's first of all, don't.
Speaker 4: Of all the husbands.
Speaker 3: Sex with them, any of them, but much less the
Speaker 3: person who has agreed to host you. No, no, all.
Speaker 1: I almost feel and maybe I'm just reading this incorrectly,
Speaker 1: but it almost feels to me like her little affair
Speaker 1: with Miles is like see Terry, this is what happens
Speaker 1: when you're not more supportive to your man, you know,
Speaker 1: And because even she at the final family dinner when
Speaker 1: I think Maxine says something like, Terry, you need to
Speaker 1: worry about your own husband because he's out there sleeping
Speaker 1: around and she's like, was that it? Like? Did I
Speaker 1: not like care for you well enough? Was I not
Speaker 1: a good enough wife? Kind of thing? And then he says, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we just haven't been happy in a long time.
Speaker 1: We used to have fun with each other, and she
Speaker 1: replies with like, yeah, I guess, I don't know what happened,
Speaker 1: but like I guess.
Speaker 3: And it's dropped as if because it's like all of
Speaker 3: that can be true and a relationship, and it doesn't
Speaker 3: justify what he did, and it doesn't mean that Terry
Speaker 3: brought it on herself, like they weren't happy, So it's
Speaker 3: overly simplicity to say talk about it, but like you
Speaker 3: can't just be like, well, so I had no choice
Speaker 3: but to fuck your cousin, like, yes, you did, you did, Miles,
Speaker 3: you did.
Speaker 1: Can we talk a little bit more about the Gina
Speaker 1: rivera character, and I want to especially talk about it
Speaker 1: as it relates to a piece that you wrote in
Speaker 1: Pop Sugar called the Struggle for Afro Latinx Visibility in
Speaker 1: media still exists. I highly recommend everyone read it. Will
Speaker 1: link it in the show notes. But the reason it's
Speaker 1: relevant here is so the actor Gina Rivera, who plays
Speaker 1: Faith in the movie. This actor is mixed African American
Speaker 1: and Puerto Rican. Her character does not appear to be
Speaker 1: Afro Latina in any way. So it's an example of
Speaker 1: an actor's Latini dad being erased, which is what your
Speaker 1: piece is largely about. How Afro LATINX people are erased
Speaker 1: from media about and from LATINX communities because the media
Speaker 1: favors lighter skinned LATINX people. How Afro LATINX people are
Speaker 1: erased from Black communities because like in the US, for example,
Speaker 1: black people, and I mean this happens all around the world,
Speaker 1: but Black people are lumped together as a monolith and
Speaker 1: just treated as though they all have the same culture
Speaker 1: in the same background, the way that many marginalized communities
Speaker 1: are treated as a monolith. And you talk about how,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of prominent LATINX folks in media, artists, athletes,
Speaker 1: you know, things like that their Latini dad is erased.
Speaker 1: And this is just another example because I feel like
Speaker 1: her character could have easily been Latina because she's related
Speaker 1: to them on her mother's side, but like her dad
Speaker 1: could have been Afro Latinos. So I don't know if
Speaker 1: you want to speak to that any further, but it's
Speaker 1: just something I wanted to bring up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you, thank you so much for that.
Speaker 3: Check it out.
Speaker 4: I really enjoyed writing that piece. It was like a
Speaker 4: lot of drama even getting there because of so like
Speaker 4: it's like such a charged conversation in the global black community,
Speaker 4: like all the nuances, Like I went viral in the
Speaker 4: preparation of that in a negative way, like I got
Speaker 4: dragged on Twitter. Oh now it's extra. But he lived
Speaker 4: and I lived and I lived, So yeah, like that's
Speaker 4: an interesting conversation. Like personally, my mom's African American, my
Speaker 4: father is the Latino one. And a lot of times
Speaker 4: I always like press Puerto Ricans because it's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: you're Puerto Rican, but are you black Puerto Rican or
Speaker 4: white Puerto Rican? Because like you know, Loisa exists, like
Speaker 4: it's like a black town, you know, like which part
Speaker 4: are tudl Schomberg was from Santuse, Puerto Rico, like, and
Speaker 4: we had the Schomberg Museum that's in Harlem right now,
Speaker 4: and a lot of people don't even know that he's
Speaker 4: Puerto Rican and like he came from Puerto Rico and
Speaker 4: that's where he started archiving black history. I think the
Speaker 4: conversation is new a little bit, and I don't know why,
Speaker 4: because when we think of history, Langston Hughes was working
Speaker 4: with Afro Puerto Rican artists and like building with them,
Speaker 4: and we have this history of collectives. But in modern
Speaker 4: times it doesn't feel that way. It doesn't feel like
Speaker 4: you can talk about blackness on a global scale. And
Speaker 4: then media and film is very very tricky. I notice,
Speaker 4: like when it's a LATINX character, they're usually like they
Speaker 4: can't be black. It's like supposed to be that. Afro
Speaker 4: Latinos are not supposed to exist, you know. And if
Speaker 4: you are black, you are African American. That's all you
Speaker 4: get to be.
Speaker 1: I can think of exactly one mainstream movie that prominently
Speaker 1: features an Afro Latino character that is identified that way,
Speaker 1: and it's into the Spider Verse and across the Spider Verse,
Speaker 1: and that's Mars.
Speaker 4: That's not even a perfect situation because the guy is
Speaker 4: an African American character and a lot of the characteristics,
Speaker 4: like his family is technically not an Afro Latino family,
Speaker 4: Like he has a white Latina mom and an African
Speaker 4: American father, so he's kind of Afro Latino. But Afro
Speaker 4: Latinos have black parents. That's normal, Like it's normal to
Speaker 4: have black parents in Latin America. Like that's like a
Speaker 4: very normal thing. And I think it goes down to,
Speaker 4: just like the storytellers, it's really difficult for Afro LATINX
Speaker 4: people to get into these opportunities. As you guys know,
Speaker 4: Hollywood is a grind for any person, but having all
Speaker 4: these different identities, it gets really difficult to explain to
Speaker 4: Americans who you are when as a black person, you're
Speaker 4: not supposed to have all of this stuff going on
Speaker 4: for me, Like that's why I started my company, Black
Speaker 4: Tina Media, because I wanted us to be celebrated. I
Speaker 4: wanted our stories to be acknowledged when it comes to this, Like,
Speaker 4: I happy she was cast for the role period, and
Speaker 4: a lot of like Afro LATINX people in general, if
Speaker 4: they are black presenting and identify as black people, they
Speaker 4: usually are playing African American characters right.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people don't know the distinction between
Speaker 1: someone who is Afro LATINX and African American.
Speaker 3: I mean, I will fully admit that I did not
Speaker 3: have a good understanding of Afro Latin X representation because
Speaker 3: I hadn't seen it really and because like you were
Speaker 3: just saying, NAIDI. Yet, like the only sort of allegedly
Speaker 3: Afro LATINX character that we have in pop culture right
Speaker 3: now is still pretty muddled and misunderstood because who are
Speaker 3: the storytellers. It's still vustly white people.
Speaker 4: They're They're like Celia Cruz. I feel like she's the
Speaker 4: most known Afro Latina in the world sphere, Like her
Speaker 4: music is all over the world, Like she is a
Speaker 4: world renowned name, Christina Milian. She's Cuban, she's black, but
Speaker 4: she's also lumped as like African American. But like, oh,
Speaker 4: she's she's mixed. It's just like, oh, she must be mixed,
Speaker 4: you know, And the fact that she is Cuban is
Speaker 4: enough to make her mix.
Speaker 5: She doesn't actually have to be like not because.
Speaker 4: She's mixed for real, for real, But to be mixed
Speaker 4: is to not be African American Like there's like that
Speaker 4: I've noticed that because people like, oh, you're mixed. It's
Speaker 4: like I'm not mixed, Like my father is a dark
Speaker 4: Sian black man. My mom is a dark skin African
Speaker 4: American woman. But it's like, oh, no, you're mixed because
Speaker 4: your dad is Panamanian, right, And it's like.
Speaker 1: Be black and Panama Superama man.
Speaker 5: You need to go to and see all the black
Speaker 5: people that you think.
Speaker 4: Don't exist, Like yeah, so that, and then in Hollywood,
Speaker 4: I think like it's like erase sure of like just
Speaker 4: blackness in general, like we're not supposed to have culture,
Speaker 4: Like we're not supposed to have nuanced culture because even
Speaker 4: in African American film and television, it never gets that
Speaker 4: deep unless you're talking about Daughters of the Dust where
Speaker 4: they talk about Gligichi ancestry and that they wouldn't let
Speaker 4: her make another move for twenty years after she did that.
Speaker 4: Julie Dash a Dash she's killing it now. Also, is
Speaker 4: it Casey Lennon.
Speaker 1: Case Yes, Yeah, we've covered that.
Speaker 4: Yes, so she did Ease Value, which talks about like
Speaker 4: the creole ancestry. We have some of these films, but
Speaker 4: blackness in film is supposed to be like you from
Speaker 4: the South, and in the South, it's not all the same,
Speaker 4: Like they're still not a monolism, not the same as Louisiana.
Speaker 4: Which part of Louisiana you're coming from, not sing Texas,
Speaker 4: Like you got the black appellations too, black appellation history,
Speaker 4: like Tony Morrison talks about like all these black appellations.
Speaker 4: So I think in general, when we talk about blackness,
Speaker 4: we're not allowed to have nuance. And when black people
Speaker 4: get a little bit of power, there's all of this
Speaker 4: pressure to just like get like a tap on the
Speaker 4: shoulder by like the white executive and be like, good job,
Speaker 4: black person. So people kind of erase themselves. And this
Speaker 4: happens in the Latino community all the time, like people
Speaker 4: will erase themselves before they get a chance to even
Speaker 4: be like erasists, Like I don't even want to go
Speaker 4: there because I don't want to have to have a
Speaker 4: conversation or I don't want them to say no, or
Speaker 4: maybe I've tried and somebody else said no and don't.
Speaker 4: I don't want to have to go there. I just
Speaker 4: want to go straight to the top. I want to
Speaker 4: get the budget and I want them to say yes.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of things going on, but I
Speaker 4: think we need more nuance in black film in general. Sure, also,
Speaker 4: is George Tillman Junior? Is he qualified to have an
Speaker 4: Afro LATINX character. A lot of African Americans are so
Speaker 4: confused when it comes to Afrolatane that I've worked with
Speaker 4: African American production companies. They didn't get it. They couldn't
Speaker 4: understand how a black person had an immigrant experience, because
Speaker 4: the immigrant experience is usually like you're not allowed to
Speaker 4: be an immigrant if you're black, So it's like, how
Speaker 4: could you You don't understand what's going through even though
Speaker 4: the people who are getting deported the most are black people.
Speaker 4: It's Haitians. It's literally Haitians getting deported the most, like
Speaker 4: at the border, like those are the people. So it's crazy,
Speaker 4: isn't it crazy?
Speaker 3: I just think about how many immigrant stories we get
Speaker 3: in mainstream media that are like hyper specific white immigrant communities.
Speaker 3: Where you can have a whole movie about Swedish immigrants,
Speaker 3: you can have a whole movie about Italian immigrants, about
Speaker 3: Irish immigrants, And there's famous movies across the board about
Speaker 3: very specific groups of white immigrants in the US and
Speaker 3: you don't get that for a.
Speaker 1: Movie called Brooklyn about sorry those like Irish immigrants, Like
Speaker 1: have you been to Brooklyn and see what it looks like?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's Nadia. I know it's like inherent to
Speaker 3: what you do and you know it better than anybody,
Speaker 3: but it seems to have It's just so much to
Speaker 3: do with who holds the institutional power and who holds
Speaker 3: the money, and those are white people who have no
Speaker 3: understanding of these issues, and so it puts so much
Speaker 3: pressure on Afro LATINX creators, like it's an unfair amount
Speaker 3: of pressure to be under.
Speaker 4: It's and also we have to take accountability for how
Speaker 4: we present ourselves. Like I've seen stuff created by the
Speaker 4: LATINX community is full of tropes and you know, stereotypes,
Speaker 4: and it's like this you got the budget, and this
Speaker 4: is what you made. This is where you decided to
Speaker 4: put the budget. You know. So it's it is. I
Speaker 4: don't want to just say, oh, the white people they
Speaker 4: got all the control. They always doing this to us,
Speaker 4: you know, because it's also white Latinos. White Latinos have
Speaker 4: a lot of power, they have a lot of money.
Speaker 4: You know, why aren't white Latinos supporting Latinos the same
Speaker 4: reason why white Americans don't support black Americans. Like it's
Speaker 4: like it's the same thing. But I think we have
Speaker 4: to hold ourselves accountable because I've seen just living all
Speaker 4: around the world for the past like four years and
Speaker 4: being in all these different communities. It's like I'm like, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: I see how our own actions are negatively affecting us.
Speaker 4: Like we are invested in the same systems killing us
Speaker 4: because we think this is going to help us. You know,
Speaker 4: it's like, oh, let me play the game. It's like no,
Speaker 4: you're getting played. You're just getting played. So I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's not like I have like an answer to it.
Speaker 4: We just need more diversity. People need to be more
Speaker 4: confident and be more bold in storytelling and take more chances.
Speaker 4: And also people want happy films. Everything doesn't have to
Speaker 4: be like the next specsed American screenplay. It's just like
Speaker 4: people want to laugh. Can we be entertained? Do you
Speaker 4: have to kill us to entertain us? Do we have
Speaker 4: do people have to die? You know, like why can't
Speaker 4: we have entertainment that's like just purely entertaining with no trauma.
Speaker 4: Because a lot of the stuff I've seen in the
Speaker 4: last like five eight years. Everything is so sad and
Speaker 4: everybody's dying, you know, and it's just like can we
Speaker 4: just be happy? And but people are like no, I
Speaker 4: want to show that Latino's the all we do is
Speaker 4: not party, dude? We a party people. What's wrong with
Speaker 4: having a party? Like it's like we're no type people,
Speaker 4: Like that's what we do is key? Key? All right?
Speaker 4: Now I'm in Martha's vineyard and what the trainey doing
Speaker 4: with the Jamaica I'm doing what the black people do.
Speaker 5: We having a cookout on the beach.
Speaker 4: There's a cookout, bringing grill. Make it like this is
Speaker 4: what we do. This is our culture, Like it's okay,
Speaker 4: Like you know, so I feel like just looking deep
Speaker 4: into ourselves and be like where am I seeking white validation?
Speaker 4: Why do I need to present myself in this way?
Speaker 4: Like who is this for? Is this for me? And
Speaker 4: I feel like as humans we have to always be,
Speaker 4: you know, critiquing ourselves so we can be authentic.
Speaker 1: And that's like absolutely, yeah, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: sharing your perspective on all that.
Speaker 4: Thanks for asking.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're fans, We're are fans. Does anyone have
Speaker 1: anything else they want to talk about.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to shout out because we obviously have
Speaker 3: discussed George Tillman, Junior, prominant black director still working during
Speaker 3: his second Saturn Return. A lot of things to love
Speaker 3: about George Tillman Jr. I was looking into the production
Speaker 3: team and I think this is a rare example of
Speaker 3: we have a majority black production team on this movie
Speaker 3: as well, I will say excus heavily male. However, it
Speaker 3: seems like George Tillman Jr. Was very invested in having
Speaker 3: a heavily black production crew as well. I don't know
Speaker 3: about the actual crew, but in terms of the highest level,
Speaker 3: we have majority black producers. I believe we have a
Speaker 3: black cinematographer, but there's two Paul Elliotts who are cinematographers,
Speaker 3: so I'm not totally sure which person. And most interestingly
Speaker 3: to me, this movie has a black editor, a man
Speaker 3: named John Carter, and I read a little bit about him,
Speaker 3: and he's like historically significant and really fucking cool. He
Speaker 3: was the first African American film editor to work in
Speaker 3: New York ever, so he was working since the fifties
Speaker 3: and he's like a famous figure in the editing community,
Speaker 3: which I am not a part of, So I had
Speaker 3: not heard of him before, but I really enjoyed learning
Speaker 3: about him. He started on The Ed Sullivan Show and
Speaker 3: then transitioned to majority black film later in his career
Speaker 3: and is just like this very famous, respected guy who
Speaker 3: just died five years ago at the age of ninety five.
Speaker 3: So I just wanted to shout out John Carter because
Speaker 3: I just I hadn't heard of him before.
Speaker 4: That's beautiful shout out to him. I think a lot
Speaker 4: like I heard because when I was a little kid,
Speaker 4: you know how they say, oh, I never saw myself,
Speaker 4: like a lot of like black actors will be like
Speaker 4: I never saw myself on DD and that's why I'm acting.
Speaker 4: So when I started said, oh, I'm going to be
Speaker 4: an actor, I really thought I was like, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: be in all the dopest films because I saw so
Speaker 4: many dope like black films, black people in TV. My
Speaker 4: mom she watched a lot of television, and she loved
Speaker 4: watching like black characters but also like women. So Zena
Speaker 4: Charmed The Parkers, Girlfriends Half and all those up. Like,
Speaker 4: I didn't realize that it was so bad because that
Speaker 4: part of my life. I was like growing up to
Speaker 4: Steve Harvey show, you know, and I didn't realize that
Speaker 4: these actors were grossly underpaid. I didn't realize they were
Speaker 4: not getting invites to Emmy's even though they had they
Speaker 4: all had hit shows, Like I didn't know they weren't
Speaker 4: being treated at the same as like their white counterparts.
Speaker 4: But I learned like a lot of it was independent
Speaker 4: and they would have different deals in the way the
Speaker 4: business worked was different in the nineties and now, even
Speaker 4: though black people are working at I guess higher levels,
Speaker 4: in a way, there's almost like less creative control in
Speaker 4: a lot of spaces, and so it's like you're not
Speaker 4: going to have like a black film crew because this
Speaker 4: is not your show, Like you're the showrunner, but you
Speaker 4: have to hire like this whole white crew that's your crew.
Speaker 4: So everything is being translated differently, whereas like with Half
Speaker 4: and Half, it's like it's like all of these like
Speaker 4: they get to change the lines, like living single, they
Speaker 4: get to they were really involved and like the writing
Speaker 4: and stuff. Even in Charmed Hoo's Phoebe what's her name,
Speaker 4: Melisa Molana, Oh my god, Yeah, she was talking about
Speaker 4: how like they were really integral into writing things in Charmed,
Speaker 4: and Charmed had a lot of like normal black characters,
Speaker 4: Like they weren't a bunch of tropes. It wasn't like, oh,
Speaker 4: the scary black parents gonna come up the street. Like
Speaker 4: one of the episodes was a guy who had lost
Speaker 4: his wife. They had recently lost the wife, and the
Speaker 4: little boy developed powers and technology, and the father was
Speaker 4: held hostage and that's how they ended up finding the
Speaker 4: sisters getting little chills of obviously I love movies with sisters.
Speaker 4: And they had to like save him and like tell
Speaker 4: him like, hey, your powers are good, like you don't
Speaker 4: have to hide this, you don't have to feel bad
Speaker 4: about having these powers. And I don't know if they
Speaker 4: like stripped the powers or made it, but the father
Speaker 4: was like a corporate guy, like a nerdy corporate dad
Speaker 4: who had no who had to handle all of this stuff.
Speaker 4: He was not in the magic. And there were many
Speaker 4: instances of like black characters, you know, I in my opinion,
Speaker 4: even when they had like the African like even though
Speaker 4: they made the African stuff a little scary, like I
Speaker 4: think they made like one of the guys he had
Speaker 4: like the Vudan priestess was like scary and like you know,
Speaker 4: but but it didn't feel like I felt like I
Speaker 4: had a space in that show too, Like I would
Speaker 4: be like I could be friends with one of the sisters,
Speaker 4: Like I didn't feel like I had to go over
Speaker 4: here because they wouldn't let me in the house and
Speaker 4: they would in Kiki. I was like, Oh, Phoebe's gonna
Speaker 4: be my best Sie, Like me and Phoebe are going
Speaker 4: on the spade, Like I'm gonna get proved of like
Speaker 4: me and work so hard, you know, because she she
Speaker 4: only likes hard workers.
Speaker 3: Like so I was obsessed with Phoebe, but I feel
Speaker 3: like I'm more of a Piper, and it breaks my heart.
Speaker 3: Piper was dope.
Speaker 4: They did a good job with her art.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she made shit happen. Someone had to do it.
Speaker 4: She became that big sis she did.
Speaker 1: I've never seen the show. I'm so sorry, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: So good.
Speaker 3: It doesn't all hold up, but the parts that do
Speaker 3: are wonderful.
Speaker 4: It gets depressing after a while. It's like, okay, guys,
Speaker 4: whoa Like what's happening? Everything is sad. Everybody's dying all
Speaker 4: the time, Like what happened to Like.
Speaker 3: The Warlock boyfriends, like I want sister conflict and I
Speaker 3: want Warlock boyfriends that disappear after a week.
Speaker 4: And fairies. We want fairies. We want to find gold,
Speaker 4: like come on, like enough with the scary underworld magic school.
Speaker 4: Who wants to steal this kid? What kidnapping?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: Remember when like why it was getting like I'm getting
Speaker 4: now it's becoming a.
Speaker 3: Sending me back, sending me back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, speaking of soul food though, Yes, does the
Speaker 1: movie past the Bechdel test. Yes, it does quite a bit.
Speaker 1: They're talking about food, they're talking about cooking, They're talking
Speaker 1: a lot of it is conversations between characters who like
Speaker 1: don't necessarily get along very well. And it's Terry being like, hey, Maxine,
Speaker 1: I'm better than you because I went to law school.
Speaker 1: But not all of those conversations are like that. And
Speaker 1: it passes a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's like a huge I think, just like
Speaker 3: speaking to the spirit of the Bechdel test, there's so
Speaker 3: many women in this movie, and so many like different
Speaker 3: there's such a wide variety of women perspectives and they,
Speaker 3: you know, while they have to deal with the men
Speaker 3: in their orbit, that's not what it's solely focused on
Speaker 3: so right, indeed satisfied.
Speaker 1: Yes, And then as far as our nipple scale, our
Speaker 1: scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples
Speaker 1: based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, I
Speaker 1: think i'll give this I'll give it three nipples. I'm
Speaker 1: docking it for some of the like of the time
Speaker 1: kind of characters reinforcing pretty rigid gender roles and not
Speaker 1: really doing anything to challenge those characters, like lem you know,
Speaker 1: engaging in some really awful behavior and being let off
Speaker 1: the hook very easily by the end and things like that.
Speaker 1: But I love that there's a movie that centers on
Speaker 1: sisterhood and specifically black sisterhood and the joy and struggles
Speaker 1: within that. It's like a nice balance of examining these
Speaker 1: characters lives, the positives, the negatives, and just like showing
Speaker 1: well developed, very distinguishable from each other women, And I
Speaker 1: think that's really cool. There's other things the movie handles
Speaker 1: on not so well that we've discussed, but I don't know. Overall,
Speaker 1: it's really cool, and I appreciate that there's a male
Speaker 1: director like this one who wanted to center women. And
Speaker 1: I think his first a short that he made I
Speaker 1: don't know if he made it when he was instill
Speaker 1: in film school or shortly after he graduated, but it
Speaker 1: was about a single mother or am I getting that right?
Speaker 1: It's about a woman, So he like seems to have
Speaker 1: a vested interest in telling women's stories.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that his career has sort of
Speaker 3: continued in that where it's like it's not uncommon at all.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's maybe an even split, but
Speaker 3: for a male director, even that's kind of incredible where
Speaker 3: he is not shy about centering women. And I think that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: especially the further back you go in time, there will
Speaker 3: be the issues that we talked about where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's good when male directors want to center
Speaker 3: women and also they should maybe you know, get a
Speaker 3: co writer who's a woman, say right when I'm talking
Speaker 3: to each other?
Speaker 4: Makes sense. I wanted to speak to that because earlier
Speaker 4: I wanted to say how things have changed because Tyler
Speaker 4: Perry gets a lot of flack for sisters because there's
Speaker 4: no writers, it's just him. And like in the black community,
Speaker 4: a lot of these black male directors, they do a
Speaker 4: lot of talking about black women. But Tyler Perry has
Speaker 4: also financed black women directors. So I feel like, you know,
Speaker 4: good on Tyler Perry, but I feel like things have
Speaker 4: definitely changed now whereas people are like, Okay, if you're
Speaker 4: gonna speak for us, you need to have a woman writer,
Speaker 4: Like it can't just be y'all just telling our lives.
Speaker 4: So with recently, like there was the Best Man TV
Speaker 4: Show with Malcolm Dee Lee and gosh, I forgot this
Speaker 4: woman's name, and he had a co writer that was
Speaker 4: a black woman, And that I think is like we're
Speaker 4: going in the right direction because there have been like
Speaker 4: there's a lot of film that are written by black
Speaker 4: men about black women that don't necessarily authentically speak to
Speaker 4: the black women's experience. So I feel like it's great
Speaker 4: and I love soul food, but I also love that
Speaker 4: like in the future now, like black women are going
Speaker 4: to are a part of that experience, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And I think, yeah, things have totally changed because like
Speaker 4: Tyler Perry has gotten so much like negative vibes for
Speaker 4: sisters and people are like, why are you writing a
Speaker 4: show about four women in a way that if it
Speaker 4: was the nineties, he would have been praised for doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. True.
Speaker 3: I think also if Mike White with writing every season
Speaker 3: of The White Lotus completely by himself, and everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 3: these women characters are so involved, and we're like, but
Speaker 3: I don't think it is like overly nitpicky to expect
Speaker 3: him to hire a woman to hire especially that's like
Speaker 3: a whole other conversation because there's a lot of shit
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 1: With that show.
Speaker 3: But it feels like the difference of wanting to appear
Speaker 3: inclusive and actually having a vested interest in it and
Speaker 3: wanting to you know, not only like bring appropriate like
Speaker 3: writers and perspectives into your project, but also get people
Speaker 3: into the industry because you have institutional power, which I
Speaker 3: guess to be fair. George Tillman, I don't think did
Speaker 3: at this time. This is his first big movie, so
Speaker 3: maybe there wasn't a budget for that, Like whatever, I
Speaker 3: think now it's.
Speaker 4: It's good, and it's also I think if when it's good,
Speaker 4: people have less of an issue if it feels like
Speaker 4: what if it's like the reason that it wasn't is
Speaker 4: because you don't have help, like you know, so that's
Speaker 4: that's that's the thing too. But do we live in
Speaker 4: a world where a bunch of women can get away
Speaker 4: with writing about a bunch of brothers and would they
Speaker 4: be able to do that?
Speaker 3: Like, I'd like to try them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd love to try. Like, but honestly, I was like,
Speaker 4: I'm rather right about girls. But like you try, I'll
Speaker 4: watch a movie and watch your teav.
Speaker 3: I want brothers across the world to go ballistic when
Speaker 3: they see how I think brothers talk to each other. There.
Speaker 4: Oh wait, the nipple test. Can you explain a little
Speaker 4: bit more about nipples, because I when intersectionality, I feel
Speaker 4: like it for me if it's a lot of nipples,
Speaker 4: if they lose, like I would give it a lot
Speaker 4: of nipples if they lose, or maybe just one nipple.
Speaker 4: If the nipple, it's like less nipples mean less intersectionality.
Speaker 4: Because queer women, I feel like I don't see a
Speaker 4: lot of representation when it comes to queer women and
Speaker 4: queer lesbians have such a big part of our lives,
Speaker 4: like a part of our literature. Film, I don't think
Speaker 4: we see enough support of queer women. We don't see
Speaker 4: a lot of queer women unlike screen unless like they're
Speaker 4: getting raped for being lesbian, and like a man, you
Speaker 4: should be with a man. Why you don't want to
Speaker 4: be with a man like, you know, so so that
Speaker 4: I feel like he like docks some points for that.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I want to say that because I was like,
Speaker 4: there's no queer.
Speaker 1: Definitely no queer visible. Well except there's the guy who
Speaker 1: Bird works with the salon. We don't know his name.
Speaker 1: He's queer coded, but he's right. But I was like,
Speaker 1: I loved watching him when he was on screen, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we know nothing about him, including I don't even think
Speaker 1: his name, so but yeah, could definitely be more queer
Speaker 1: visibility in most movies. The nipple scale, you're trying to
Speaker 1: apply logic to something very logic a scale like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's we just sort of make it up as we go.
Speaker 1: But that said, I will definitively give it three and
Speaker 1: I will give one to Terry because justice for Terry.
Speaker 1: I will give one to Uncle Pete because I feel
Speaker 1: like some tropes about elderly people were used with his
Speaker 1: character and I, you know, didn't love to see that,
Speaker 1: So justice for Uncle Pete. And then yeah, I'll give
Speaker 1: my third nipple two queer icon the guy with dyed
Speaker 1: red hair who Bird works with at the salon, who
Speaker 1: was fun to watch, so that is that, Jamie, how
Speaker 1: about you?
Speaker 3: I'm between at three and a three and a half
Speaker 3: because I respect this movie's place in movie history and
Speaker 3: specifically black movie history. I think that especially with family dramas,
Speaker 3: it is very rare to see a middle class black
Speaker 3: family drama that is like something that we don't see
Speaker 3: a lot even now, And I like that there is
Speaker 3: sort of I mean, I think that Terry sort of
Speaker 3: gets the line and share of the judgment for it,
Speaker 3: but there is commentary on class that takes place within
Speaker 3: a black family in ways that I feel like in
Speaker 3: movies that are you know, that get wide releases, at
Speaker 3: least in the US, is not something that we see
Speaker 3: very often. And I think I just I really like
Speaker 3: George Tillman Jr. I feel like the best is yet
Speaker 3: to come from him, and I think this is just
Speaker 3: just strictly from like a writing filmmaking standpoint, like it's
Speaker 3: so wild that this is his first movie, Like it's
Speaker 3: so I mean, I know that he had a previous
Speaker 3: movie that didn't end up coming out, so it was
Speaker 3: technically his second movie, but his verse why release? Holy shit,
Speaker 3: it's so good and I think that it's very Again,
Speaker 3: I don't want to like overly hand it to him.
Speaker 3: But as a first time male director, choosing to center
Speaker 3: sisters in this story I think is really cool. But
Speaker 3: there's everything else we've talked about. I think that there's
Speaker 3: a sort of fundamental misunderstanding of domestic abuse that me cringe,
Speaker 3: sort of in the way it's presented and how easily
Speaker 3: it's forgiven. And there is the Terry issue, where Terry
Speaker 3: I feel did nothing wrong, amongst other things. But I
Speaker 3: think I'm going to go I might go three point five,
Speaker 3: and I am going to give one to Terry. Obviously,
Speaker 3: I'm going to give one to Bird. I'm going to
Speaker 3: give one to Face because I feel like her character
Speaker 3: was similarly kind of a little all over the place
Speaker 3: in a way that wasn't always fair to her. Although
Speaker 3: don't have sex with your cousin's husband, I do feel
Speaker 3: that strongly. And I'm going to give the last half
Speaker 3: nipple to John Carter, who I really enjoyed learning about
Speaker 3: and who would go on to edit future George Tillman projects,
Speaker 3: including Barbershop.
Speaker 1: So there you go, very cool idea. How about you?
Speaker 1: What would you write it on our perfect nipple scale?
Speaker 1: That makes so much I.
Speaker 4: Like so confused about nipples, So I'm just gonna give
Speaker 4: them to who I want. You guys gave nipples to Cherry.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna give a nipple to Terry. I'm going to
Speaker 4: give a nipple to Bird. I'll give a nipple to
Speaker 4: Limb because I feel like it was kind of tough.
Speaker 4: His situation was pretty tough. We don't know where he
Speaker 4: came from. And then I want to give up a
Speaker 4: nipple to a mod I don't know what that means,
Speaker 4: but they're all getting nipples.
Speaker 1: So nice.
Speaker 3: Perfect, It's just a showing of your favorite character, is basically.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you so much for joining us. It's
Speaker 1: been such a treat. Come back anytime and tell us
Speaker 1: where people can check you out online, read your stuff,
Speaker 1: plug anything you want to plug.
Speaker 4: Okay, So you can find me at black Dina on
Speaker 4: Instagram and really like I own the trademark for black Dina,
Speaker 4: so anywhere there's black Tina, like, it's going to be
Speaker 4: Mels of the time that's spelled b lacti in a.
Speaker 4: Also my website Blackdinamedia dot com. I also have an
Speaker 4: art business where I saw art from like Haitian migrants
Speaker 4: in the Dominican Republic Black Dina Galleria that's on Instagram.
Speaker 4: That is like kind of a slow cooking situation plugging
Speaker 4: Hispanic Heritage month. This comment is right around the corner.
Speaker 4: So hire me for your panels, for your schools, like
Speaker 4: for your promotions. If anybody wants to give me a
Speaker 4: budget to work on a TV show or film either
Speaker 4: in the United States or Latin America or the Caribbean,
Speaker 4: happy to do that. English or Spanish or Portuguese. Happy
Speaker 4: to do that. Just moving the conversations forward and so
Speaker 4: we can have more nuance to entertainment when it comes
Speaker 4: to blackness, because it's so nuanced and it just we
Speaker 4: have such an amazing culture. It's crazy like that it's
Speaker 4: put in this box because the black experience is so
Speaker 4: like diverse globally. Within the LATINX community. I believe, what
Speaker 4: is there like two hundred million Afro Latinos in Latin America.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure how many in the United States and
Speaker 4: like Western countries, but it's it's super diverse. It's really
Speaker 4: really fun and we're missing out on a lot of
Speaker 4: entertainment right now.
Speaker 1: So thank you again so much. You can follow us
Speaker 1: at Bechtel cast on various social media platform whatever they're called.
Speaker 3: Now know it could be different by the time you
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Speaker 3: And then if you want some merch, if you have
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Speaker 3: the money out of this TV and have a happy.
Speaker 1: Ending Wow and non nomnom on some delicious soul food. Bye.