Monsters, Inc: Deep Thoughts About Post-9/11 Mental Health, Furry Animation, and Tidy Storytelling

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Celia is thin and curvy and sexy, as you say, if a tentacled thing with one eye and snakes for hair can be sexy.
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And Roz is sort of wide with pendular boobs.
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And she's got this deep voice, so she's sort of that lifelong smoker kind of a vibe.
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And the preschool teacher is kind of round, motherly.
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Actually, oh my gosh.
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They're the maiden, mother, and crone.
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With Celia as the maiden and the preschool teacher's the mother, and Roz is the crone.
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Wow.
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Wow.
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Okay, that just blew my own mind.
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My sister, Emily Guy Birkin, no hyphen, is an overthinker.
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And my sister, Tracy Guy Decker, yes hyphen, is an overthinker.
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And we both love pop culture, a well-crafted story, and eminently quotable movie lines.
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Each week, with the help of feminism, our super smart brains, and each other, we uncover the lessons lurking behind the nostalgia of our favorite comedies, dramas, science fiction, and horror.
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Because pop culture is still culture.
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And shouldn't you know what's in your head?
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I'm Tracy Guy Decker, and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit because pop culture is still culture.
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And shouldn't you know what's in your head?
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On today's episode, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about Monsters Inc.
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with my sister, Emily Guy Birkin, and with you.
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Let's dive in.
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I'm pretty sure you've seen this movie.
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I mean, it's like just one of those things that we all watched in the early 2000s, but I don't know for certain.
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So tell me, what's in your head about Monsters Inc.?
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And and to be clear, only Monsters Inc.
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I'm not talking about Monsters University or the one that went straight to Disney Plus that I don't even know the name of.
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So yes, I've seen it.
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I I think I saw it in the theater.
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I love Pixar.
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It's one I've seen many, many times.
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It may have been part of the regular rotation when my kids were tiny.
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I can't recall.
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Like they there were some that uh that they watched over and over again that I know, like cars, but I I can't recall if if Monsters Inc.
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was in the regular rotation, but we definitely watched it with the kids multiple times.
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I absolutely loved this film.
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I loved the animation.
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I love the story like the world building of you know monsters in in everybody's closets.
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I loved the fact that the what the ultimate lesson is is that laughter is stronger than fear.
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I love the humor of it.
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I mean, you get Billy Crystal as a as a character, uh, you know, voicing one of the characters, and it's just gonna be delightful.
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I mean, that the man is just so funny and delightful.
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And John Goodman voicing Sully was also amazing, and they're monsters, so they don't look anything like their actors, and yet Sully resembles John Goodman.
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Mike Wozowski resembles Billy Crystal.
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And uh I loved the ending of it where we we get this beautiful, hopeful, lovely ending that is also ambiguous.
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So it's it's definitely a favorite of the Pixar films.
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Also, when I see cats, I go, kiddie.
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I also uh my husband likes this uh tea that's called like Wissotsky.
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And so anytime he asks me to to make him some tea or something, or I take the box out of the cabinet, I go, Mike Wisalski.
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So there's a lot in my head about it.
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So tell me, why are we talking about it today?
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Yeah, so regular listeners to the show will know that as a kid, my aspiration, my career aspiration was to be an animator for Disney.
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And so I have a a fondness and an affinity for animation in general.
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So a lot of the animated movies that we talk about on Deep Thoughts, I'll be the the leading sister on.
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And I was thinking about animated movies from sort of a more not the ones that we inherited, you know, that existed from before we were born, like the sword and the stone, which I did talk about.
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But like I was trying to think about animated movies that were a little closer to contemporary and things that were important to my kid.
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And Monsters Inc.
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just kind of jumped off the list as it was one of the it was a blockbuster in the early 2000s, and so I wanted to to revisit it.
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So that was just sort of a a beloved movie from my I guess I was 23, 24 when it came out from my early 20s.
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So that's kind of what's at stake.
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It's not a whole lot at stake, but I I do love this film.
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But let me tell you a little bit what I want to talk about today.
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There are there are things that there's a reason that so many people love this film.
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There are things that are amazing about this film, and I want to talk about that.
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There's really tight storytelling.
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What computer-generated animation could do evolved because of this movie.
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Like the technology got better to animate Sully's fur.
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Like they they wrote, I don't I don't know how it works, but they wrote more code.
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They got better at it because of this movie.
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And I think that's really worth holding up.
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The thing that you sort of named, the fact that the the central premise is that laughter is more powerful than fear, is really amazing.
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It was really needed.
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This movie came out in 2001, right after 9-11.
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So it it helped a whole culture of people who were reeling.
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But I also want to talk about some things that I wish were different.
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So gender is a big one.
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I want to talk about gender in this film.
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And I I also want to talk about some things that like I missed in the early 2000s while I was so focused on the laughter is bigger than fear.
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And that is some of the sort of baked-in critique around capitalism and sort of the idea of industry pursuing profit regardless of its expense, or regardless of its human toll.
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I think there's a there's a critique in there of that that I I just didn't see, you know, when I was enjoying it in the early 2000s.
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But it's also the case that the these characters, Mike in particular, actually, is able to like hold multiple truths in a way that feels surprising in a kid's movie.
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You know, although I think Pixar never makes films just for the children, which is why we are able to enjoy them, you know, indefinitely and not just like while we're there with a kid for the kids' enjoyment.
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So those are some postcards from The Destination.
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Before I get there, let me remind you of the plot.
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And usually I watch the movie within 24 hours of our recording so that the plot is super fresh in my head.
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I actually watched this like three or four days ago.
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So I will do my best, but sorry, in advance.
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Yes.
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So Monsters Inc.
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tells the story of a parallel universe of monsters and the bustling city of Monstropolis.
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The number one industry in Monstropolis is the power factory.
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They call it a factory, where monsters go through portals, door portals that go into the closets of children and they harvest the screams, which is the power source for Monstropolis.
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And the scarers, there's are they teams of two.
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So there's the actual guy, and it's all guys, as far as I can tell, who go through the portal and scare the children.
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And then they have sort of a partner who stays on the scare floor and is in charge of like ordering up new doors and giving them the dossier on the kid who's on the other side of the door and that sort of thing.
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Again, all male.
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We are shown that this, the monsters believe this is actually a high-risk profession, that this is very dangerous.
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They believe that children are toxic to monsters, and anything that has touched a child can be toxic to monsters.
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In the midst of this, we meet James Sully Sullivan, voiced by John Goodman, and Mike Wazowski, voiced by uh Billy Crystal.
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There are two main protagonists.
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So Sully is the big blue monster.
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He's the scarer.
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Mike is a little green basketball with a giant single eye.
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He's the face hardly with legs.
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Yeah, he's an eye with legs.
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And one night, Sully goes back to the scare floor to fill out paperwork to help out Mike, who was supposed to do the paperwork.
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And he finds a door, a lone door there.
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And he doesn't know what's up.
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He sort of pokes his head in the door to see what's going on and inadvertently lets a human child into the monster world.
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And the rest of the movie is Sully and Mike trying to get this kid back to the human world without being discovered and slowly learning that the child is not, in fact, toxic.
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Sully comes to really uh care for the kid and want to protect her.
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He calls the child Boo.
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She calls him Kitty.
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Her monster was is Randall, voiced by Steve Buscemi, looking a bit like a salamander with too many legs, and he has like a chameleon uh power.
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Mike and Sully think Randall was trying to cheat because there's a contest as to who can collect the most units of screams.
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But it turns out it's something much more nefarious, where Randall has developed a scream extractor machine that sort of sucks the energy out of kids.
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Sully and Mike try to intervene in this plan and foil it by going to the owner of the factory, Mr.
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Waternoose, who's a crab-like guy wearing a waistcoat and like the top half of a three-piece suit.
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He's like, if the Monopoly man were like a weird crab monster.
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And Sully likes him.
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He's like was considers him sort of like a mentor.
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They're very friendly, but turns out Mr.
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Waternoose is in on it the whole time.
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And there's all kinds of shenanigans with sort of high-stake chases, where you know, Sully and Mike are running from the bad guys trying to save Boo.
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In fact, they get banished to the Himalayas where they meet the abominable s abominable snowman who's voiced by John Ratzenberger, who we talked about as Cliff from Cheers.
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And in the end, they are able to trick Waternoose into going on camera, like being filmed, saying that he'll do whatever it takes and he doesn't, he'll hurt as many children as he needs to in order to keep this factory alive.
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And the child detection agency, kind of, which is sort of like the monster's, I don't know, like combination CIA and FBI, they like take him away.
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And it's revealed that a monster, Roz, who was like the floor manager, who has no sense of humor and has given Mike a hard time about paperwork.
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Turns out she was actually the number one in the CDA.
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And she wouldn't have known that it went all the way to Water News if it hadn't been for Mike and Sully.
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And as they're walking out, so Waternoose has been arrested.
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Boo has been put back in her own room.
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And then Roz has the door shredded so that they can't, they can't, because she knows so much.
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They can never see her again.
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And Mike and Sully are walking out of the factory.
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And Mike is like, we did it.
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We really did it.
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Of course, factory shut down, and now we have no source of power and we're out of jobs, and everybody we know is out of a job.
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And like he names like all the terrible things that are the result of what they just did, which was save the kid.
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And he says, But but hey, we had some laughs.
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And that gives Sully the idea, they know from spending time with this kid that laughs are much more powerful than screams.
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And so the final scene, the second to last final scene, the penultimate scene, we see the scare floor is now the laugh floor.
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And it's not scarers, it's comedians.
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And Mike is the number one comedian.
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And Sully's kind of the head of the new operations, and they're getting more power than they ever did with Screams.
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And the final scene, the truly final scene, Mike has reassembled Boo's door from all the little shreds and sawdust.
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And it needs its last piece, which Sully has been sort of carrying around almost like a talisman.
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He puts it in and opens the door, and he walks in to Boo's room from her closet, and we hear her say, kitty.
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And that's that final moment of ambiguity and hope that you remember.
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So obviously, there are like specific plot points that I missed.
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I will get to them if I need to explain them, but that's the basic plot here.
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And so I'd like to start with the good points on this movie and part of why we love it so much.
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And I believe that that is because it is a tightly written story.
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So in the very first couple of scenes, like the first 10 minutes of the movie, they need to do a lot of exposition so that we understand how the monster world relates to the human world, the fact that they think kids are toxic.
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We have to understand a whole lot of things.
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And the exposition is delivered in such a sort of delightful way that you don't even realize it's exposition.
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Because we see new recruits being trained on how to scare in a simulation.
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And there we meet Waternoose and he's explaining all the things.
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And not only is that exposition sort of delightful, and so it doesn't feel like exposition, it becomes an important plot point at the end, because that training room, that simulation room, is how Sully tricks Waternoose into admitting his plan and being recorded doing it.
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And just all along the way, the relationship between Sully and Boo, the child, is believable because the story shows us, it doesn't tell us.
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It earns that relationship.
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Initially, he's scared of her just like everybody else.
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And then you almost see how it starts to turn.
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They're in a bathroom with lots of stalls, and she starts playing hide and seek with him.
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You know, she starts hiding.
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And so he plays along and he's having fun with her.
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And, you know, you just sort of see the way you see him softening.
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The writing shows you him softening.
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And then at one point he thinks she's been killed in like a trash compactor.
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And when he finds out she's okay, the way that he sort of reacts and the preschool teacher, monster preschool teacher, mistakes him for her father.
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And just as a viewer, like you just buy it.
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Because it it's a, it's the whole, it's an old adage that every writing teacher I've ever had told me, show, don't tell.
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And he and these storytellers got that memo.
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It's also, as you pointed out to me before we hit record, like the art of it.
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This is a computer-generated animation that has the kind of magic and palette and movement of the hand-drawn animation of Disney's early days.
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That, you know, we look back and and marvel at the artistry.
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This computer-generated animation has the same.
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And as I said in my intro, I've read that they re-made the characters multiple times while they were making it because they because they figured out ways to do it better.
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And so the fur, the animation of Sully's fur got better through the making of this movie because the animators, just as with hand-drawn animators, they got better at their craft.
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And there's something really delightful that you don't need to know that in order to sort of be captivated by the magic of this movie.
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You know what Sully would feel like if you, if you, you brushed him.
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His fur is so realistic.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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There's one thing in terms of the well-crafted story, something that I feel like this movie does really, really well is uh kind of it's kind of dramatic irony in that, especially for the youngest viewers, seeing that these big monsters are terrified of tiny children is really wonderful.
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It's wonderful for for for the viewers.
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But then also the fact that we know when Sully takes Boo back to his apartment and that both Sully and Mike are wearing like oven mitts and stuff to try to protect themselves from her toxicity.
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And um Boo is not even remotely concerned about it.
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And it is very funny and a kind of kind of dramatic irony for the audience that that like we know that you know Boo can't hurt them, um, but they don't.
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But it's it's it's very appealing.
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Now I didn't see it as a child, obviously, but it's very appealing for little kids to be watching that and see, and it's just it's a delicious, fun sight gag, among other things.
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I'm gonna we used the phrase dramatic irony all the time.
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And I realized recently I was talking to a friend about it, and he didn't know what that meant.
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So I'm just gonna define that really quickly, which we should probably do every time.
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We should.
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But listener, dramatic irony is the circumstance where the viewer knows something that the characters do not, the viewer or the reader, whatever the consumer of the media knows something that the characters do not.
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So Harry Potter is a great example.
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I'm not saying that Joe J.K.
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Rowling is a great person.
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Just she used dramatic irony really well because we feel less like muggles because we know about the wizarding world.
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Anyway, that was just a quick aside footnote.
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I think, though, to support your point about the deliciousness of this, the movie even sort of displays that kind of enjoyment that kids have, where in that scene that I described in the bathroom, Sully knows where she is.
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But he like plays, he's like, oh no, where did she go?
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Like that thing that kids really enjoy when they think they've tricked you.
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And that that's a sort of form of dramatic irony as well, where we know that Sully knows where where Boo is, but you know, Boo doesn't know.
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You know, it so I think that supports your point.
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There's a a degree of shared understanding with the viewer that not all the characters have that feels really, really fun, especially for young viewers, but uh adults like it too.
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Another good thing in terms of the tight storytelling and the beautiful animation is the writing.
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There are so many like little puns and little little details.
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This is one of those cases that we often hold up as a, you know, pinnacle of of of good artistry when the artist takes their craft seriously, but not themselves.
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And so as Mike and Sully are walking to work, we see lots of different monsters doing their thing on their way to work, like working in the bodega on the street.
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And they greet people along the way, like giant monsters and tiny monsters.
00:20:41.829 --> 00:20:44.069
And then there are little jokes along the way.
00:20:44.149 --> 00:20:53.909
Like, for instance, there's a blob monster that sort of slithers over an open grate and he slips through.
00:20:54.069 --> 00:21:00.389
And so like his eyeballs and something else are just sitting on top of the on top of the grate, and he goes, Great.
00:21:04.470 --> 00:21:09.909
Which, you know, I don't know if I saw that the first time I saw it.
00:21:10.069 --> 00:21:11.750
This time watching, I was like, oh, that's funny.
00:21:11.829 --> 00:21:12.389
Great, great.
00:21:12.470 --> 00:21:14.309
You know, like I I I got the pun.
00:21:14.710 --> 00:21:16.389
I don't know if I got it before.
00:21:16.549 --> 00:21:17.349
And it doesn't matter.
00:21:17.430 --> 00:21:20.549
It's one of those moments, there's tons of them.
00:21:20.710 --> 00:21:28.950
Like there's a point where Boo, they're they're building fortresses, uh fortresses and stuff to keep Boo away from them in Sully's apartment.
00:21:29.109 --> 00:21:30.789
And she knocks over a whole bunch of CDs.
00:21:30.950 --> 00:21:34.309
I guess it's Mike's apartment because he goes, Oh, those were alphabetized.
00:21:34.470 --> 00:21:35.909
And they're roommates.
00:21:35.990 --> 00:21:36.710
That's they they live together.
00:21:36.869 --> 00:21:37.269
Oh, is that it?
00:21:37.349 --> 00:21:37.829
They live together.
00:21:38.230 --> 00:22:01.669
I know because I watch, not even for to prepare for this, but just because I'm a geek, I watched some like behind the scenes thing where the animators were talking about how they had contests and and games to like make up what the titles were in those DVDs that are on screen for like less than a second, but every single one had a title that was some sort of pun on an actual movie.
00:22:02.549 --> 00:22:11.109
And that kind of attention to detail and taking the craft really, really seriously, I think you can feel it as a viewer.
00:22:11.430 --> 00:22:26.230
I think that's why I can say that this CGI movie had the same sort of magic to it as the early Disney films when hand drawn animators were doing the same sort of attention.
00:22:26.629 --> 00:22:27.269
Into detail.
00:22:28.230 --> 00:22:30.470
So that's what it's got going for it.
00:22:30.869 --> 00:22:31.909
I mean, there are more things.
00:22:31.990 --> 00:22:32.470
There are more things.
00:22:32.549 --> 00:22:34.549
Those are the obvious things it's got it's got going for it.
00:22:34.629 --> 00:22:37.269
I want to spend a little time with a bit of a critique.
00:22:37.509 --> 00:22:42.470
This is not unique among Pixar movies in that it does not pass the Bechdale test.
00:22:42.629 --> 00:22:47.589
So the Bechtdale test, as a reminder to our listeners from Alice and Beckdale, asks three basic questions.
00:22:47.750 --> 00:22:51.029
Are there at least two named female characters?
00:22:51.269 --> 00:22:52.470
Do they talk to one another?
00:22:52.549 --> 00:22:56.230
And do they talk to one another about something other than a man or a boy?
00:22:56.470 --> 00:22:59.109
So this film passes the first question.
00:22:59.430 --> 00:23:02.309
There are at least two named female characters.
00:23:02.470 --> 00:23:06.549
There's Roz and there's Celia, who is Mike's girlfriend.
00:23:06.869 --> 00:23:13.349
And there are and then Boo, if you count her, I mean, she does get a name from Sully.
00:23:13.589 --> 00:23:15.990
None of them talk to one another, though.
00:23:16.470 --> 00:23:19.509
We don't even see Celia and Roz talk to one another.
00:23:19.829 --> 00:23:24.950
So this movie passes the first of the three Bechtel questions, but it does not pass the test.
00:23:25.190 --> 00:23:29.589
And that is not unusual for the early Pixar movies.
00:23:30.149 --> 00:23:31.829
Most of them don't pass Bechtel.
00:23:31.909 --> 00:23:33.750
It took a while before we got there.
00:23:33.990 --> 00:23:38.869
And so I want to think about gender more broadly.
00:23:39.109 --> 00:23:43.349
I noted when I told the synopsis that none of the scarers are female.
00:23:43.509 --> 00:23:54.069
And in fact, the only the two women that we see working in the factory, we see Celia, who is a f a receptionist of sorts, right?
00:23:54.230 --> 00:23:56.789
So we hear her saying, Monster's inc, can you hold, please, monster?
00:23:57.029 --> 00:23:58.549
Like so she's like answering phones.
00:23:58.710 --> 00:24:01.190
And she also goes on the PA system.
00:24:01.909 --> 00:24:03.750
And there's the preschool teacher.
00:24:03.829 --> 00:24:06.549
So apparently the factory provides daycare.
00:24:06.869 --> 00:24:07.669
Oh, and Roz.
00:24:07.750 --> 00:24:15.829
And Roz, who is eventually there is a twist, and we find out she's actually very important in this other agency.
00:24:16.950 --> 00:24:22.309
But she has this sort of like a pain in the ass kind of a persona.
00:24:24.230 --> 00:24:26.149
And maybe this was intentional.
00:24:27.190 --> 00:24:41.669
But the result of that is that the factory gives this almost 1950s feel in terms of gender roles, like this, they think dangerous job that only men do.
00:24:42.230 --> 00:24:52.950
Not even just the ones who go into the human world who have the opportunity to interact with humans, but the the partners who stay behind stay behind on the floor, they're all male too.
00:24:53.430 --> 00:24:59.589
And and and the female jobs are in administration, reception, and childcare.
00:25:01.109 --> 00:25:04.389
And that it's a choice.
00:25:04.629 --> 00:25:05.430
It's a choice.
00:25:05.589 --> 00:25:10.470
It feels like a missed opportunity on the part of Pixar.
00:25:11.109 --> 00:25:18.710
And and I say maybe it was intentional because Water Noose also has sort of an old-timey feel to him.
00:25:18.869 --> 00:25:20.789
He turns out to be the ultimate villain.
00:25:20.869 --> 00:25:24.230
He's not the primary villain, but he does turn out to be the ultimate villain.
00:25:24.389 --> 00:25:30.149
And he has, as I said, he's like the monopoly man if you made him into a spider/slash crab monster.
00:25:30.470 --> 00:25:35.589
And so he has that sort of 20th century feel to him.
00:25:35.669 --> 00:25:37.990
And he's a nepotism guy, right?
00:25:38.149 --> 00:25:42.789
This factory's been hit in his family for three generations, he tells us.
00:25:43.029 --> 00:25:50.149
And so he almost has this like, I don't know, railroad barren kind of feel to him.
00:25:50.389 --> 00:26:05.750
And so maybe like laying the gender roles of the 20th century onto the workplace was not a missed opportunity, but an intentional choice.
00:26:06.789 --> 00:26:09.269
I don't know which way I'm more angry, like annoyed.
00:26:09.430 --> 00:26:09.990
I'm not angry.
00:26:10.149 --> 00:26:11.509
I don't know which way annoys me more.
00:26:11.589 --> 00:26:16.389
If it was, oh yeah, we want it to feel like 1950s, so we'll do it this way, or if it just happened.
00:26:16.789 --> 00:26:22.149
One thing that kind of undergirds that is the voice of Celia is Jennifer Tilly.
00:26:22.230 --> 00:26:23.990
She's a phenomenal actor.
00:26:24.149 --> 00:26:25.509
I love Jennifer Tilly.
00:26:25.669 --> 00:26:32.549
Her voice is very um that that character is kind of set up as sexy.
00:26:33.269 --> 00:26:35.029
Yeah, she's a very girly girl.
00:26:35.109 --> 00:26:37.029
She and Mike have pet names for one another.
00:26:37.190 --> 00:26:42.549
So she calls him googly bear, and she he calls her schmoopsy poo or something like that.
00:26:43.190 --> 00:26:43.750
And yeah.
00:26:44.309 --> 00:26:47.269
Jennifer Tilley's voice lends itself to that.
00:26:48.149 --> 00:26:57.990
And I can remember in Roger Ebert's um review at the time, he was talking about with Mike and Celia dating.
00:26:58.149 --> 00:27:01.349
He's like, you wonder how that would work in the bedroom.
00:27:01.430 --> 00:27:05.029
You can almost imagine Jennifer Tilley's voice going, blink, blink.
00:27:08.710 --> 00:27:13.829
And like it's that was a hilarious line from Ebert.
00:27:14.149 --> 00:27:21.669
And it came about because of who they cast for the voice of Celia and how they animated her and wrote her character.
00:27:22.069 --> 00:27:35.029
Yeah, she has a very sort of um hourglass figure, like a feminine the body types for each of the three female monsters that I named are feminine coded.
00:27:35.190 --> 00:27:39.430
Like some of the monsters, who knows what gender it would be, you know?
00:27:39.750 --> 00:27:42.869
And I only know that they're male in some ways because that's the default.
00:27:44.869 --> 00:27:53.750
But Celia, Roz, and the preschool teacher all have bodies that are feminine coded in different ways.
00:27:53.990 --> 00:27:58.230
Celia is thin and curvy and sexy, as you say.
00:27:58.389 --> 00:28:04.710
Like if a tentacled thing with one eye and snakes for hair can be sexy, sexy.
00:28:05.029 --> 00:28:10.710
And Roz is sort of wide with pendular boobs, you know?
00:28:10.869 --> 00:28:15.349
So she's sort of that like late middle-aged, like, and she's got this deep voice.
00:28:15.430 --> 00:28:20.470
So she's sort of that lifelong smoker kind of a vibe.
00:28:20.629 --> 00:28:24.470
And the preschool teacher is kind of round, um, motherly.
00:28:25.349 --> 00:28:28.069
I mean, maybe those three are the actually, oh my gosh.
00:28:28.230 --> 00:28:30.069
They're the maiden, mother, and crown.
00:28:31.669 --> 00:28:36.629
With Celia as the maiden and the preschool teacher's the mother, and Roz is the crone.
00:28:36.950 --> 00:28:37.589
Wow.
00:28:38.149 --> 00:28:38.789
Huh.
00:28:39.190 --> 00:28:45.269
So you could only have three female uh monsters because they didn't want to have the horror or the witch, apparently.
00:28:46.149 --> 00:28:46.549
Wow.
00:28:46.710 --> 00:28:48.710
Okay, I that just blew my own mind.
00:28:48.950 --> 00:28:50.309
You heard it here first.
00:28:53.509 --> 00:28:53.990
Yeah.
00:28:54.230 --> 00:28:59.430
Um, okay, so those are some of the things about gender that just feel like missed opportunities.
00:29:00.069 --> 00:29:04.149
The opportunity they didn't miss is making Boo a girl.
00:29:04.710 --> 00:29:13.430
And I saw one commentator that I was reading just this morning was saying, like, imagine this movie if the child had been a boy.
00:29:13.750 --> 00:29:15.829
What a different movie it would be.
00:29:16.069 --> 00:29:19.029
And I thought that was a really interesting what if.
00:29:20.629 --> 00:29:35.909
Part of what spins out, the story that spins out in my head, if the child is a boy, is that some of that like physical affection and protectiveness that Sully has for her, that changes, which is really interesting.
00:29:36.549 --> 00:29:43.829
You know, that the story that spins out in my head, and this just speaks to the the way that culture works.
00:29:43.909 --> 00:29:54.789
Um there's there's homophobia like baked into the story where fathers and sons don't have that kind of physical affection.
00:29:55.029 --> 00:29:57.909
Physical affection the way the fathers and daughters do.
00:29:58.549 --> 00:30:00.309
And Boo's tiny.
00:30:00.470 --> 00:30:02.549
She's meant to be between two and three.
00:30:02.869 --> 00:30:06.149
Maybe I'm overestim, definitely I'm overthinking it.
00:30:06.309 --> 00:30:20.710
Maybe I'm overestimating how much of that the sort of distance, physical distance that men tend to enforce around one another with a child of that age.
00:30:21.029 --> 00:30:21.909
Maybe.
00:30:22.230 --> 00:30:28.149
But the way that kids, boys, young boys, show up in movies, I don't think that I am.
00:30:28.549 --> 00:30:45.829
What I'm spinning out, imagining if Boo were a boy, is that that would change Sully's protectiveness because there is something about the protectiveness towards a female child that is different with a male child.
00:30:45.909 --> 00:30:47.190
And I'm not saying that's okay.
00:30:47.269 --> 00:31:03.509
I'm just saying that's that is the immediate thought that I had was that instead of feeling this fierce, I can't let anything bad happen to this little child, it would be more like he's tough, he can handle it.
00:31:03.990 --> 00:31:14.309
I wonder too, so the key moral of the story that they wanted us to know they underlined it, is that laughter is more powerful than fear.
00:31:14.629 --> 00:31:15.109
Great.
00:31:15.430 --> 00:31:20.389
But one of them too, wrapped up like a subsequent, uh, what's the word I'm looking for?
00:31:20.869 --> 00:31:28.470
Like a sub-moral corollary, is uh about the power of facing one's fear, right?
00:31:28.789 --> 00:31:38.549
Randall is Boo's, so the Randall, voiced by Steve Bush Buscemi, who's the chameleon salamander, is Boo's monster.
00:31:38.789 --> 00:31:40.309
She is afraid of him.
00:31:41.669 --> 00:31:55.349
And by the end, she faces her fear and stands up to him, and she actually attacks him and helps Sully in a in a fight scene, in an action scene, that the child sort of fights him.
00:31:55.430 --> 00:31:59.669
And Sully actually says to Randall at one point, She's not afraid of you anymore.
00:32:00.389 --> 00:32:05.589
And I think about that kind of message, if the child had been a boy.
00:32:06.309 --> 00:32:08.629
And it it also hits different.
00:32:08.789 --> 00:32:32.069
I wonder if it they would have made it if if the storyteller, whoever was writing the script, would have made it happen sooner, the the facing, or possibly overcompensating, have it not work, you know, that the child would face the fear but still get knocked down in in sort of an overcompensation based on gender.
00:32:32.389 --> 00:32:32.789
I don't know.
00:32:32.869 --> 00:32:37.990
It's this I don't know what I'm learning exactly by doing this.
00:32:38.149 --> 00:32:51.190
What if, but it feels really ripe and interesting to start to analyze how gender changes relationship, even at such a young, young age.
00:32:51.430 --> 00:32:51.750
Yeah.
00:32:51.909 --> 00:32:52.230
Yeah.
00:32:52.389 --> 00:32:59.269
I mean, a baby that little is basically genderless, sexless.
00:32:59.349 --> 00:33:01.589
I mean, just I mean, they have sex, but not gender.
00:33:01.990 --> 00:33:02.549
Exactly.
00:33:02.950 --> 00:33:05.269
Um, they they are they are just a child.
00:33:05.589 --> 00:33:05.990
Uh-huh.
00:33:06.149 --> 00:33:08.549
It's so far we have pictures of our of our grandfather.
00:33:08.869 --> 00:33:09.829
With lots of with curls, yeah.
00:33:09.990 --> 00:33:11.269
With his curls and skirts.
00:33:11.509 --> 00:33:14.230
Because uh it was easier to change diapers, I'm assuming.
00:33:14.710 --> 00:33:20.789
And then until like, you know, you got you got uh actual pants as a boy when you were, I don't know, four.
00:33:22.470 --> 00:33:32.950
And yet we still have this very rigid, like, because as I as you're describing this, I'm like, it never they there was no universe in which they made Boo a boy.
00:33:33.109 --> 00:33:46.309
The storytellers would never have done that because it would have hurt the story because of our assumptions about relationships with male characters, even when they are two and three years old.
00:33:46.629 --> 00:33:47.190
Yeah.
00:33:47.509 --> 00:33:48.149
Yeah.
00:33:48.950 --> 00:33:50.309
That feels telling.
00:33:50.389 --> 00:33:53.430
And I'm I'm I'm grateful to have articulated it that way.
00:33:53.589 --> 00:33:56.389
And I'm grateful to that commentator who sort of asked that question.
00:33:57.430 --> 00:34:07.109
I'm gonna move on to one of my other points that I wanted to make that I'm sure I missed the first time, which is a sort of critique of capitalism, which it's right there.
00:34:07.269 --> 00:34:08.150
It's not subtle.
00:34:08.389 --> 00:34:13.909
So it's not that I missed it because it it was hidden, just wasn't what I was looking for.
00:34:14.230 --> 00:34:20.230
But Water News says he doesn't care how, you know, how many kids he has to hurt in order to keep this factory alive.
00:34:20.389 --> 00:34:39.830
And I think one could argue, believably, that this is not just about prof profits over people, but also about like environmental cost and other ways in which sort of resource hoarding happens, right?
00:34:39.990 --> 00:34:45.030
Because the scream extractor would hurt the kid, right?
00:34:45.430 --> 00:34:51.190
And the analogy is is pretty clear about like fracking, right?
00:34:51.269 --> 00:34:57.350
That extracts the oil but by doing huge damage.
00:34:58.310 --> 00:35:02.470
Or what what are the what are the data farms called?
00:35:02.789 --> 00:35:06.310
Yeah, the um data centers for AI, yeah.
00:35:06.870 --> 00:35:17.990
That have this huge environmental cost that affects people, real people, you know, but but hey, we we got to play with Chat Boba.
00:35:18.310 --> 00:35:18.470
Yeah.
00:35:18.710 --> 00:35:19.110
Yeah.
00:35:19.430 --> 00:35:29.350
So that felt on rewatch and kind of seeing that now, these 25 years later, I was like, damn, Pixar.
00:35:30.630 --> 00:35:31.510
Good for you.
00:35:31.750 --> 00:35:31.990
Yeah.
00:35:32.070 --> 00:35:38.150
And if I remember correctly, because it's been a few years since last time I saw it, the monsters do care about the children.
00:35:38.310 --> 00:35:52.310
When he says, I don't care how many children I have to hurt, that is actually shocking to them because even though they are extracting these screams, well, not extracting, but that they're generating having children generate screams, there is a sense that they have an ethical duty to be careful.
00:35:52.550 --> 00:35:52.870
Yeah.
00:35:53.030 --> 00:35:53.269
Yeah.
00:35:53.350 --> 00:35:57.990
I mean, at one point when Mike is trying, Mike is explaining they think Water News is still a good guy.
00:35:58.070 --> 00:36:00.310
He was like, Randall was gonna hurt this sweet little girl.
00:36:00.470 --> 00:36:01.750
Mike says that about Boo.
00:36:02.470 --> 00:36:04.630
So they're terrified of them.
00:36:04.870 --> 00:36:06.789
But yeah, they there are children.
00:36:07.430 --> 00:36:08.630
And monsters have children.
00:36:08.789 --> 00:36:10.150
We see monster children.
00:36:10.950 --> 00:36:13.590
So I think that's that's a part of it.
00:36:14.150 --> 00:36:20.310
So one thing that, if I remember correctly, it starts off where they're talking about there's rolling blackouts because of the screen shortage.
00:36:20.710 --> 00:36:22.950
Yes, there's this, there is an energy shortage.
00:36:23.110 --> 00:36:24.950
It's very clear that there's an energy shortage.
00:36:25.190 --> 00:36:32.470
In fact, the reason they walk to work instead of taking Mike's car, which Mike loves, is because there's an energy shortage.
00:36:32.550 --> 00:36:34.950
So they're saving the, they're saving the screams.
00:36:35.350 --> 00:36:40.150
This is evidence of the of the really great world building.
00:36:40.870 --> 00:36:49.750
Part of the reason for the energy shortage is that in today's world, kids are inundated with scary things and they're much harder to scare.
00:36:50.710 --> 00:36:54.870
And so the that's part of the reason for the shortage.
00:36:55.430 --> 00:37:09.190
Just to kind of build on what you're talking about with the critique of capitalism, one could argue that Randall and Waternoose may have started with the idea of we need to get this energy to protect our people.
00:37:09.430 --> 00:37:14.550
Because, you know, Mike says all those things like factory shut down, we're out of work, there's gonna be no energy.
00:37:14.710 --> 00:37:20.390
There's there's all these terrible things that have happened because they no longer have access to the screams.
00:37:20.789 --> 00:37:27.510
But it feels like the film is also saying just because you've always done something one way doesn't mean that's the only way to do it.
00:37:27.670 --> 00:37:32.870
And so there are other ways to get what is needed without harming.
00:37:33.030 --> 00:37:36.390
I can see that put on top of the critique of the coal industry.
00:37:36.870 --> 00:37:50.550
Not that there's anything as quick and easy as laughters are stronger, laughter is uh stronger than screams, but it's still this critiquing the the just because something's done one way always doesn't mean you can't change.
00:37:50.789 --> 00:37:55.510
Doesn't mean you can't make make adjustments to the way you live and the way you do things.
00:37:55.830 --> 00:37:56.390
Yeah.
00:37:56.630 --> 00:37:57.269
Yeah.
00:37:57.750 --> 00:38:07.190
I think I want to move on to the what what you just brought it up again, the fact that Mike sort of names all of the terrible things that resulted from the good thing of getting Boo home safely.
00:38:07.430 --> 00:38:18.390
And that sort of holding both of those truths, which end up being resolved neatly by laughter is more powerful than screams, which unfortunately we don't have a clear.
00:38:19.110 --> 00:38:21.830
I wish there were a clear parallel into our world.
00:38:22.150 --> 00:38:37.350
But regardless, the way that Mike sort of says that, and even earlier, Mike and Sully have a row while they're banished in the Himalayas, because Sully just wants to get back to save the child.
00:38:37.510 --> 00:38:39.030
He just wants to save Boo.
00:38:39.110 --> 00:38:41.190
That's the only thing that matters.
00:38:41.910 --> 00:38:44.630
And Mike is hurt.
00:38:44.870 --> 00:38:52.710
His feelings are hurt that Mike would say that, excuse me, that Sully would say that the child is the only thing that matters when they have this long-term friendship.
00:38:52.789 --> 00:38:56.070
He's his best friend and his partner at work and like all of these things.
00:38:56.230 --> 00:38:57.030
Don't I matter?
00:38:57.110 --> 00:38:58.550
And they so they have this big argument.
00:38:58.630 --> 00:39:03.750
And Sully leaves Mike behind to go back to the monster world and save Boo.
00:39:03.910 --> 00:39:07.350
Mike follows him and is yelling at him.
00:39:08.230 --> 00:39:14.630
And the conversation, it's actually a monologue because so Randall is invisible.
00:39:14.789 --> 00:39:15.750
Yeah, is strangling us.
00:39:21.030 --> 00:39:21.990
But I was angry.
00:39:22.150 --> 00:39:30.870
And you know, this weird little eyeball with legs, who is so ridiculous, right?
00:39:31.110 --> 00:39:35.430
Who like Jennifer Tilley calls googly bear.
00:39:36.070 --> 00:39:44.789
And yet there's this moment, and it and it's played for laughs because Sully's being choked and like he's not actually having a conversation.
00:39:45.110 --> 00:39:46.070
It's a monologue.
00:39:46.390 --> 00:39:54.150
And yet the stuff that Mike is saying is actually very emotionally intelligent and holding multiple truths at once.
00:39:54.390 --> 00:40:03.910
And that capacity, in my opinion, the capacity to hold multiple truths at once, even if they might be competing truths, is a mark of maturity.
00:40:04.710 --> 00:40:07.350
It's a mark of adulthood.
00:40:07.670 --> 00:40:16.470
And so to do that with this main character in this children's movie feels really powerful.
00:40:16.630 --> 00:40:27.510
And it's done in ways that are totally digestible because it's Billy Crystal as an eyeball with legs, who like in the penultimate scene, like swallows the microphone and burps it up really loudly.
00:40:27.830 --> 00:40:37.750
Like the same guy who's doing that is sort of being very emotionally intelligent and holding multiple truths, which is a very mature thing to do.
00:40:38.230 --> 00:40:56.870
So in thinking about it now, in re-watching it now at 50 instead of in my early 20s, that was a thing that I saw and really deeply appreciated that the movie makers gave us that and gave it to us in a way, again, that makes it digestible and doesn't feel at all preachy at all.
00:40:57.030 --> 00:41:02.630
It's just, it's a model in a silly little guy, which I really, really liked.
00:41:02.950 --> 00:41:06.630
Can we talk about the the laughter is more powerful than fear?
00:41:06.870 --> 00:41:07.269
Yeah.
00:41:07.510 --> 00:41:11.590
I think because that that also I feel like holds multiple truths.
00:41:11.750 --> 00:41:14.390
Because it's not saying that fear isn't powerful.
00:41:14.550 --> 00:41:14.710
Right.
00:41:14.870 --> 00:41:17.750
It's not saying that fear can't be debilitating.
00:41:17.990 --> 00:41:18.550
Right.
00:41:19.030 --> 00:41:28.789
It it's saying that choosing joy, choosing laughter can help with the fear rather than that fear isn't something you need to worry about.
00:41:29.030 --> 00:41:29.350
Right.
00:41:29.510 --> 00:41:31.190
It it does not deny fear.
00:41:31.350 --> 00:41:32.710
That's like that's exactly right.
00:41:32.950 --> 00:41:37.990
And I think that that's so this movie came out, as I said, it was released before 9-11 happened.
00:41:38.150 --> 00:41:39.830
Or sorry, it was made before.
00:41:39.910 --> 00:41:41.830
It was released just slightly after.
00:41:42.150 --> 00:41:47.830
And they even like made a change to one of the scenes, apparently, as you know, as a result.
00:41:48.230 --> 00:42:03.030
And I think that truth, that moral that doesn't say the fear doesn't exist, but it says that we can choose laughter, was so important to Americans in those early months after 9-11.
00:42:03.190 --> 00:42:09.670
And I don't, it's not that I think that any of us were like, I need this kid's movie, right?
00:42:11.030 --> 00:42:20.630
Rather, it scratched an itch that we couldn't even name because it was too new, it was too raw, it was too sudden.
00:42:20.950 --> 00:42:25.269
It was a salve on this very fresh wound.
00:42:25.430 --> 00:42:26.789
It it wasn't done intentionally.
00:42:26.870 --> 00:42:27.590
It couldn't have been.
00:42:27.670 --> 00:42:31.430
It takes two and three years to make a a movie like this.
00:42:31.670 --> 00:42:33.750
So they'd been working on it.
00:42:34.230 --> 00:42:40.470
You know, they they they polished it a little bit in the the scene when Boo is in the sushi restaurant and the CDA comes to the restaurant.
00:42:40.710 --> 00:42:42.310
Originally they blew it up.
00:42:42.550 --> 00:42:44.789
They blew up the building in an explosion.
00:42:44.950 --> 00:42:51.350
In the the way it was actually released, the way we watch it now, they put this like plasma dome over it and sort of quarantine it.
00:42:52.630 --> 00:42:55.030
And they made that change after 9-11.
00:42:55.269 --> 00:43:03.910
It's coincidence, happy accident, that the exact salve, that's how you say that word, right?
00:43:03.990 --> 00:43:04.789
You don't say the L.
00:43:04.950 --> 00:43:06.950
Salve, salve, salve, salve.
00:43:07.990 --> 00:43:19.910
Salve, the ointment, the panacea, the ointment that we needed was here, ready for us in Monsters Inc.
00:43:20.150 --> 00:43:26.230
And I think that that's, I don't know, it part of the magic of this movie, actually, is the timing of its release.
00:43:26.470 --> 00:43:32.630
And I agree with you that the moral itself is holding multiple truths.
00:43:32.789 --> 00:43:35.590
It doesn't deny, it's not saying, don't worry, be happy.
00:43:35.830 --> 00:43:39.110
It's saying like happy is more powerful than worry.
00:43:39.269 --> 00:43:41.990
You know, like you, you're still gonna worry.
00:43:42.470 --> 00:43:46.390
It's fear is still there and laughter is is bigger.
00:43:46.550 --> 00:43:57.350
And that's what a what a great moral and message and lesson for the you know kids who were kids when this was new.
00:43:57.590 --> 00:43:58.630
But it wasn't just them.
00:43:58.789 --> 00:44:02.630
As a 20-something, a young 20-something, I needed that message too.
00:44:03.030 --> 00:44:05.830
I honestly I need that right now.
00:44:06.470 --> 00:44:06.950
Yeah.
00:44:07.190 --> 00:44:15.510
You know, the reminder that um so you know our our listeners um may not that uh we're having a major simca in my in my family.
00:44:15.670 --> 00:44:18.070
It means um joy.
00:44:18.390 --> 00:44:20.950
Simca means joy, but basically it's a life cycle event.
00:44:21.190 --> 00:44:21.430
Yeah.
00:44:21.590 --> 00:44:25.190
So my my my youngest is um becoming bar mitzvah.
00:44:25.430 --> 00:44:35.350
And for For the first time in my career as a freelance writer, and I've been doing it for nearly 16 years, I feel uncomfortable being openly Jewish.
00:44:36.550 --> 00:44:47.110
I had talked to one of my editors about signing for this bar mitzvah, and he was like, Oh, it would be great if you could do an article on low-cost ways to have a fantastic, you know, bar mitzvah or birthday or something like that.
00:44:47.269 --> 00:45:00.310
And I have dragged my feet on it because of my fear of being openly Jewish, even though there is no way you can miss it if you look with my 16 years of writing.
00:45:00.470 --> 00:45:03.190
But that's that is real, that's there.
00:45:04.070 --> 00:45:16.710
But focusing on the absolute joy of seeing my little guy coming into himself in front of his friends and family is so much bigger.
00:45:17.030 --> 00:45:18.310
I need that now.
00:45:19.030 --> 00:45:20.150
I need that message.
00:45:20.789 --> 00:45:21.110
Yeah.
00:45:24.070 --> 00:45:26.390
So sorry.
00:45:26.630 --> 00:45:27.510
Excuse me.
00:45:27.750 --> 00:45:29.510
Someone's cutting onions in here.
00:45:29.910 --> 00:45:30.310
All right.
00:45:30.550 --> 00:45:31.910
We're running short on time.
00:45:31.990 --> 00:45:39.830
So let me see if I can synthesize or at least sum up some of the things that we said about this, about this movie.
00:45:39.990 --> 00:45:41.590
It's really tightly written.
00:45:41.830 --> 00:45:43.590
It's really beautiful storytelling.
00:45:43.750 --> 00:45:46.150
So the exposition doesn't feel like exposition.
00:45:46.230 --> 00:45:59.030
And in fact, the nature of the exposition in that training room becomes a key piece of the climax and and the and the resolution of the whole story and the conflict.
00:45:59.510 --> 00:46:05.110
It's similar to the tightness and tidiness of what I love in Jaws.
00:46:05.510 --> 00:46:05.750
Jaws.
00:46:05.910 --> 00:46:07.990
Yeah, I was thinking that too, about the canisters.
00:46:08.310 --> 00:46:16.550
The canister and the the exposition was entirely character-driven rather than just shoehorn in.
00:46:16.789 --> 00:46:17.110
Yeah.
00:46:17.269 --> 00:46:17.590
Yeah.
00:46:17.910 --> 00:46:21.269
And so this exposition is also kind of character-driven.
00:46:21.670 --> 00:46:22.150
Sort of.
00:46:22.470 --> 00:46:26.310
I mean, well, because Water News has the training facility for a reason.
00:46:26.470 --> 00:46:34.870
And we see uh because I if I remember correctly, Sullivan scares Boo because he he uses that training facility.
00:46:35.190 --> 00:46:37.430
Actually, that's a I wish that I had said that earlier.
00:46:37.510 --> 00:46:38.950
That's a really interesting point.
00:46:39.030 --> 00:46:43.110
And and I think it would have been relevant in the conversation about if Boo had been a boy.
00:46:43.350 --> 00:46:51.190
So there is a scene where Water News is trying to get Sully to show the new recruits how to do it.
00:46:51.350 --> 00:46:53.510
And Sully's like, no, I need to tell you something.
00:46:53.590 --> 00:46:54.150
I need to tell you something.
00:46:54.230 --> 00:46:55.590
And Water News won't let it go.
00:46:55.670 --> 00:46:59.510
So finally Sully just does it in order to move on.
00:46:59.670 --> 00:47:02.310
And it's a big roar with lots of teeth.
00:47:02.470 --> 00:47:09.030
And Boo is there, and she gets scared and sort of runs from him.
00:47:09.350 --> 00:47:14.230
And then he sees on the video screens himself and the child terrified.
00:47:14.390 --> 00:47:24.870
And that's part of actually, I think when I said that part of the storytelling that's so beautiful is they show-don't tell the relationship between Sully and Boo.
00:47:25.430 --> 00:47:33.190
That moment when he sees himself as the monster she sees is really, really powerful.
00:47:33.350 --> 00:47:43.030
And again, it's it's a show-don't tell where he feels it's not guilt exactly, but there is a sense of sort of regret that he frightened her.
00:47:43.269 --> 00:47:49.910
And I think it also sort of makes more tangible to him the cost of what he does for a living.
00:47:50.710 --> 00:47:53.590
Because he cares about this child that he has scared.
00:47:53.910 --> 00:48:02.070
So it's part of what then once he's in the Himalayas, his having scared her is part of what drives him to do whatever it takes to get back to her.
00:48:02.470 --> 00:48:04.150
It's really, really beautiful.
00:48:04.390 --> 00:48:06.390
So wow, I got distracted.
00:48:07.590 --> 00:48:08.230
It's my fault.
00:48:08.310 --> 00:48:09.350
I distracted you.
00:48:09.590 --> 00:48:18.070
But it only furthers my point that this movie was crafted by expert storytellers.
00:48:18.950 --> 00:48:19.830
Oh, yeah.
00:48:20.390 --> 00:48:23.269
And they were also expert animators.
00:48:23.910 --> 00:48:33.590
And they, through the course of this movie, this movie improved the technology because the animators got better at their craft while they were doing it.
00:48:33.910 --> 00:48:40.310
And so that's why we can almost feel, we we know what Sully would feel like.
00:48:40.470 --> 00:48:41.590
We know what Mike would feel like.
00:48:41.750 --> 00:48:50.230
The guy, the orange guy who ends up with a sock on his back, like we know what his skin under that fur feels like when he has to wear that cone, which I didn't even mention in my synopsis.
00:48:50.310 --> 00:48:52.150
But if you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.
00:48:52.390 --> 00:48:57.110
And the world is similarly fully built out.
00:48:57.269 --> 00:49:07.590
And as I noted, the animators took their craft deeply, deeply seriously so that all the DVDs actually have names and covers, even though we don't see them for more than a second of screen time.
00:49:07.750 --> 00:49:10.870
It's very, very quick that they get they get knocked over.
00:49:10.950 --> 00:49:12.390
We're not looking at each one of them.
00:49:12.550 --> 00:49:18.470
And then the silly puns for grown-ups, like the blob monster who falls through the grate and then says, great.
00:49:19.030 --> 00:49:21.510
That's in the like prose column.
00:49:21.750 --> 00:49:35.030
Also in the prose column is a critique of capitalism and the cost of capitalism, human cost, environmental costs, which I totally missed as a 20-something when this first came out, but is not subtle, not subtle at all.
00:49:35.269 --> 00:49:45.269
On terms of gender, this film does not pass Bechtel, like many of its siblings in the Pixar unit in the, you know, in the Pixar universe.
00:49:45.670 --> 00:50:03.910
And the gender dynamics in Monsters Inc itself, the factory, are very old-fashioned, like mid-20th century, where we ended up, which I named in our conversation, there are only three women in the whole building, and they are one of the three feminine archetypes.
00:50:03.990 --> 00:50:08.550
So we have the maiden in Celia, who is Mike's girlfriend.
00:50:08.710 --> 00:50:13.670
We have the mother who is a preschool teacher or daycare person, I guess.
00:50:13.910 --> 00:50:16.230
And then we have Roz, who is the crone.
00:50:16.470 --> 00:50:19.190
And that was a choice.
00:50:19.430 --> 00:50:33.510
And if Doctor and Lassiter and the folks who made the movie were to like remake it now, I hope they would make different choices and give us some female scarers and give us some like just more female monsters.
00:50:33.750 --> 00:50:45.750
We did note in talking about gender that by making Boo a girl child, a lot of the relationship between her and Sully is possible.
00:50:45.910 --> 00:50:53.110
It would have been harder for audiences, I think, we think, to get behind if they had made Boo a boy child.
00:50:53.590 --> 00:51:02.710
I also think that the humor of Sully being afraid of a child would be lessened if it were a boy child.
00:51:03.110 --> 00:51:10.230
There's there's something, and some of that has to do with like the very misogynistic and sexist things, like, what are you, a little girl?
00:51:10.310 --> 00:51:11.830
You know, that that sort of thing.
00:51:11.990 --> 00:51:19.990
The idea, oh, you're scared of a little girl is funny to us because of the way that we gender even tiny children.
00:51:21.670 --> 00:51:36.150
And then we landed on talking about both the capacity to hold multiple truths and the multiple truths that are baked into the foundational moral of this story, which is that laughter is more powerful than fear.
00:51:36.710 --> 00:51:44.789
And we talked there about, like I named it as a sign of, in my opinion, a sign of maturity to be able to hold multiple truths at once.
00:51:45.110 --> 00:51:57.910
And the fact that this country needed that nuanced truth that laughter is more powerful than fear, not that fear doesn't exist, or that we could somehow blot it out, but that laughter is more powerful.
00:51:58.070 --> 00:52:02.310
We needed that exactly when this movie was released, which was right after 9-11.
00:52:02.470 --> 00:52:07.510
And you need it today, as you named from just the world that we're currently living in.
00:52:07.830 --> 00:52:11.510
So next week, Em, if you remember, we're gonna have a guest on.
00:52:12.230 --> 00:52:20.630
Justin Cram from Shitsho Creative is gonna come on to talk about his deep thoughts about the weird owl movie UHF.
00:52:21.269 --> 00:52:22.470
That is gonna be awesome.
00:52:22.630 --> 00:52:24.070
Yeah, he's a very funny guy.
00:52:24.550 --> 00:52:26.390
All right, well, see you next week.
00:52:26.710 --> 00:52:30.950
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00:52:31.190 --> 00:52:36.470
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00:52:39.190 --> 00:52:43.590
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00:52:55.030 --> 00:53:01.269
Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?