On the Bechde Cast, the questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy.
Eph and Beast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Hey, Jamie, Hey Caitlin, let's be sisters and best friends.
Okay for now? That is wow.
Oh you don't want to be my friend? Well, let's see how you fair is my enemy?
And then the best fight scene I've ever seen. It was so fun. Well, I think that that actually is a full recap of the movie in a way. There's also two guys.
Yea sometimes, but they're not very important.
There's two guys, there's a kiss. Oh and and then Jade Fox.
Yeah.
I think my favorite character Jade Fox rock. Well, anyways, we gotta start the show. We gotta start the show. It's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Day on the Bechdel Cast. My name is Shamie Loftis.
My name is Caitlin Deronte, and this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. Jamie, could you indulge us and tell us what even is that?
Yeah, that's so indulgent of me to do. Living deliciously here, okay. The Bechtel Test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, originally created as a sort of one off joke in her comic collection Likes to Watch Out For. There's a lot of different versions of the test. The one that we discussed in this show requires that there be two characters of a marginalized gender with names that talk to each other about something other than a man
for more than two lines of dialogue. But we talk about a lot of other stuff too, because that would be a very short show. Even though to this day it is the easiest way to find out if someone is lying to me. When they say they've listened to this show, they're like, yeah, that's the one where you for two hours. I was like, do you think we go through the script, like, what do you think happens?
I we don't know.
It's baffling to me, but I appreciate the lie, and I think I mean that. Oh yeah, I love being lying too, and that is a big problem in my life. But enough about that.
I would never lie to you, Jamie.
Unless but see, that's what a liar would say, Oh my cerience. Liars love to call attention to the fact that they would definitely never lie in this essay. I will. Let's get our guests in.
Yes, let's she is a podcaster host of It could Happen here on Cool Zone Media.
It's me a Wong Welcome.
Yeah, I think I think you all asked for me, so now now you're getting me along.
It's true that our our listeners in fact demanded it. You've been a popularly requested guest on the show, and we're so happy to have you here. How are you.
I'm hanging in there. I'm excited to be here. I'm hoping that the absolute chaos of the last year is somewhat lifting. Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna go from there and proceed on the assumption that I'm gonna be fine and not start dying. Halfway into this recording.
Everything is let us hope not.
Everything's coming up me. I can just feel it.
So we're talking Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Miya. What is your relationship with this movie?
So, my mom loves kung fu movies. She also she reads unfathomable numbers of kung fu books. She's watched indescribable numbers of kung fu movies, and so I grew up on I guess kind of weirdly early two thousands kung fu movies. So things like House, The Flying Dagger, A Hero, and then this movie, which okay, So I I was home to go to the doctor and I was like, hey, do you want to watch? As I talked to my parents, like do you want to watch watch this movie with me?
And they were like sure, and my dad goes, I remember not liking.
This movie, and I was like huh, and then my mom was like, oh no, what she she okay, So like she she has watched so many of these movies that like, when this movie.
Starts, she is doing like power level rankings based on like their cheekong and like like the their their their ability to do the thing where everyone has like a floaty jump and they can sort of like soar around in midair. She's like, ah, this character she is weaker for the other.
I was like, God, your mom sounds great, and that also sounds like a very stressful way to watch a movie.
Yeah, it's fun too, because She's like, she also did martial arts, so she was like a blackie and Kashi kempow and so it's a it is a time watching watch movies.
That's so.
Yeah.
How how did she feel revisiting it?
It was kind of unhappy because it has I guess spoiler alert for you. So there's there's a trope in kung fu movies, particularly the Chinese ones, somewhat less so the like Hong Kong kung fu movies. But at the beginning of the movie, she said, Okay, so every every kung fu movie has one plot, which is someone's either mother or their teacher dies and then someone gains a great power to go avenge them, and then everyone dies at the end. And that is also this movie's plot
more or less. She's like, everyone dies at the end.
Yeah, it's just kind of like a doubled up version of that plot. Yeah, everyone's teacher dies.
Yeah damn. But so you you watched this movie with your mom? Is that right?
As a yeah? Yeah, as a kid. I think Actually, if I'm remembering right, I think we actually watched this movie in a hotel in Beijing in like a It was a very weird situation. It's like we had this hotel and there's it's almost like a bunk floor. So there's like this one giant window, and then there's like these beds on the top of on like the top floor, and then there's like a ladder and you go down. And so my mom and my dad were watching the movie on the TV. My sister and I were like
supposed to be going to sleep. We were watching the movie in the window.
Yes, oh, I love sneak watching a movie.
Yeah.
Ah, my dad used to watch I think I've brought this up on the show before. My dad used to watch IFC movies at night after we went to bed, and that was the only way I could see boobs on TV. Even though it's just like I just should have learned how to, Like, I don't know why. I was like, I could have just googled it. I was afraid. I lived in fear of everything. So I was like, all right, I have c boobs are the only boobs in this house.
You know, that's probably a reasonable, pretty reasonable way to engage with the Internet. I feel like we should be more afraid.
Of it, honestly, yeah, conditioned to be afraid of it. I went through a phase where when I was in college where I was like I was raised to fear this great tool, and then you're like, no, hold on, it is trying to kill everybody.
It's like the ocean, very scary, Jamie, what is your relationship with this movie?
I had? I saw this movie again. I feel like this is my story for every movie that came out in the early two thousands. I saw it on TNT at one point, and I don't think that this movie would have gotten as heavy an edit as some of my TNT faves. It's not a cussing movie and there I mean, I guess that there is there is some sex. But yeah, I saw it when I was probably in junior higher high school. I remember enjoying it, and then I saw it again when it was just re released
in theaters. I think it was just like a couple of months ago. So I saw the re release and that was really fun. I mean, this movie is so cool and a gigantic theater. It was very, very exciting. Oh yeah, so it's not a particularly interesting history, but it is somewhat long, and I also I'm just like interested in Angley's career trajectory is like very fascinating to me.
He's got range.
The man's got range. And also I was just reading about I was just you know, perusing scholarly journal, Wikipedia, and he and Spike Lee were classmates at NYU, and Angley like worked as a crew member on Spike Lee's thesis. I was like, Wow, cool, you know everything I hear about n YU. I'm like, good for them. Caitlin, what's your history with this movie.
It's a very short one because I didn't see it until the re release in theaters of February of this year. I intended to see it sooner. I bought it on DVD many years ago, thinking Oh, if I have it on DVD, I'll definitely watch it because there's so many things on my watch list, but they often to quote a star was born, Okay, they fall by the wayside. Oh yeah, But I was like, Oh, if I have
it on DVD, I'll definitely watch it. But I also bought it on DVD long after the medium of DVD was popular, so I still didn't get around to it. But when I heard it was coming out in theaters again, I was like, Oh, this is a perfect opportunity anyway, just to see it on the big screen, because this is one of those movies that feels like a movie, you know, like.
I really go to the theater type film.
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So I saw it a couple months ago for the first time and thought it was awesome. I loved the fighting and the story and the characters and in general it rocks. I love it.
Pretty sad though it is right pre fucking depressing towards the end, which I knew it was a trope, but I was like, I mean that's not a criticism, it's just a fact.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, to be fair, To be fair, this movie's survival rate is actually pretty high for a kung fu movie.
Because I mean, Michelle Yeo's character she survives.
Yeah, I think both of both of the Jen lives, right, I mean, it doesn't seem like Jen dies.
I don't understand exactly what happens at the end, and I need help interpreting it.
Yeah, I have. I have a thesis about this, but we can I guess, wait for it.
Okay, Okay. I was just like, my thesis is based on nothing except I just like, I was like, she's fine, Yeah, she survived worse than this, She's fine.
Yes, well, shall I do the recap and we'll go from there.
Yes.
So we meet a warrior named Schulin that's Michelle Yo. She is visited by Lee Mubai that is Chow Young Fat. They are friends, but also there's a bit of romantic chemistry between them.
God, there's so much. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of people holding tension in their shoulders and their eyeballs, yes.
Great, and their beautiful faces. And Mubai is also a warrior, a Wudan fighter, And just some context that I hope I'm getting this correct, but Wudan refers to a class of Chinese martial arts as well as a fictional martial arts school that appears in several works of Wusha fiction, and it's named after the place where it's based, which is the Wu Dang Mountains. So there's a lot of references in the movie to Wudan as a place of
study and also as a specific martial arts style. So anyway, Mubai is a legendary fighter who studied at Wudan and he's been there practicing meditation, but he recently decided to break his meditation and leave. It seems like something is weighing on him.
I know it's oversimplification to say that he got so horny he had to drop out of school, but.
This is effectively what happened.
But that is kind of that's how it that's how it exists. In my notes, like too horny had had to drop out.
There's this great thing where he's like describing he like he's meditating. He's like, is he this place beyond space and time? And Michelle Yone's like, oh, did you reach enlightenment? And he's like, no, I got horny. Really sad because it's amazing.
Yeah, although I almost like good for him, because I think a lot of people would often misconstrue horniness with enlightenment.
True.
Yeah, so at least he was able to recognize the difference.
Yeah, And he's like, fuck this, I'm out.
Yeah.
He's like, regardless, I am too horny to be here. I need to get out of here.
And so he goes to Schulan and gives her his legendary sword Green Destiny is its name, and he wants her to give it to a guy named Surtey for safe keeping. He also mentions that his master, who taught him to be a wood on fighter, was murdered by someone named Jade Fox.
Yes, where we get a good, a great classic twist in the near future where it's like Jade Fox is a whoa whoa classic cinematic twist. I just want to add because he doesn't appear in the movie very much. But there's als. I don't know what their role is. Really, it seems to be like he's like an old servant or works with Michelle Yeoh's character, but it felt like he was really shipping Mubai and Schuman, where he's like, come on, why don't you just just kiss allready?
Oh, that's like surtey, that's curte Okay, yeah, he.
Wants them to kiss.
I liked, Yeah, he's like, why don't you just like stop being so silly and admit your feelings for each other? And Michelle was like, I don't know what you're even talking about, Tea, it's so good.
It's Angley does that. I mean like that's like Angley's whole movie can and basically is like just forbidden love. It's like because that's like sense and sensibility that's broke Back Mountain. Like it's like he just loves to keep the lovers away from each other. Why listen.
There's is kind of this thing in this like every old character who knows both of the two main characters, like every old person who's immediately trying to thrust them together. Like there's this scene later on where like Michelle Yo's at like her hideout and she she tells one of her servants who's like an old lady, that like he's coming over, and she's like old bedroom. She's so excited. This is like he's been waiting for this for like forty years. So good.
I really enjoyed that because I feel like, very often, can you hear that? Oh?
Yeah, I can.
I don't. There's not much I can do about it, but I just wanted to acknowledge that it's happening. I feel like it is more tropy for the elder generation to be like no, you must stay apart. So I found it very fun and refreshing for all all the older characters to be like no kiss.
Life is short, right, So anyway, So we meet Mubai and he's like Jade Fox murdered my master and he wants to avenge his master's death. Shuln travels to Picking and delivers the sword to Sir Tay. There she meets a young woman named Jen played by Jean Zi.
Okay, can I can I interject a bit about the subtitles in this movie? Here?
Yes, please see.
This is the first time. This is important. Something very very strange happened with the subtitles in this movie.
Oh.
I think it has to do with the fact that, okay, so this movie is in Mandarin. Most of the actors do not speak Mandarin. They are Cantonese speakers, and so they are doing the Mandarin lines like completely phonetically. Yeah, and I okay, so I can't tell if like that's the thing that screwed up the subtitle people, or if there was like a weird direction thing. But there's a few things in the subtitles that are very very weird.
One of them is there there's like two characters like Jen is one of them, and then there's another character will be later whose names they just randomly change. And this is kind of important. This young lady's name in Chinese is it's like you jowlong, and so her name is Dragon, like beautiful dragon. And this is the thing that is capital f foreshadowing in Chinese. But for some reason they named her Jen in the in the in
the subtitles, and so it's completely incomprehensible. I don't know why they did this.
Well, Ang Lee, I think, is the one who subtitled the movie from Mandarin into English, so it is his choice.
Okay, that's very He made a lot of he made a lot of stunningly incomprehensible decisions.
I don't know your own lead like that.
It's just like, I'll just leave this one and it is a treat for the Mandarin speaking audience but no one else. It's very weird.
Yeah, I read. I'm excited to talk about that later because I knew that Michelle Yeo had to learn her lines phonetically for this movie for the most part. But a which is like I don't have the knowledge to understand that this is happening. But yeah, apparently the entire Beijing crew of this movie was incredibly frustrated by the number of accents that appear within this movie that are I guess not authentic to the story. Although that is like sort of a bizarre thing. We'll get there.
Yeah.
So Schulan meets Jen, who is the daughter of the wealthy and powerful governor. You Jen admires the sword. She also admires Shoul's lifestyle as a warrior because she's free, she can roam around, she doesn't have to get married. Jen is to be married soon, and she doesn't seem
happy about it. That evening. Jen's governess, played by Cheng Peipei, is like, you should not be hanging around with Shulin, and Jen is like, I'm gonna hang around with whoever I want, actually, And then later that night, a thief steals the Green Destiny's sword. We soon learn that the thief is Jen.
So obvious it's Jen.
Yeah.
I also appreciated that the movie doesn't make you sit in that mystery very long, No, and also like doesn't I don't know. I feel like it would have been an undercutting of Shulin's abilities for her to not realize that basically right away. It's like, you just spent an hour with this girl today, right.
But there's this like gar I think, a guard named Bo who is trying to stop her, and he thinks that the thief is a man because like, her face is somewhat concealed, but not enough that you wouldn't still recognize her anyway.
Especially if she's like locally famous, right, everyone would know her.
Well.
I think it's an he's kind of like like the way he's depicted is it's just as being really incompetent. Like he he's fighting with this like staff. It's I get that's making It's like a staff with like a uh with like nunchruck thing at the end of it, and he's like hitting himself in the head with it. She's like this man, this man has weak kung fu. Kung fu is not strong getting clowned on.
And she is a far more skilled fighter than him, and like everyone in the movie, and she seems to be able to fly around and do all these like special gravity defying moves.
I mean, that's is that what your mom was ranking?
It's yeah, it's like this. It's called the Weightless It's it's the thing that's like you you can basically become weightless, is how it works, and then you're just a power in it lets you float more and yeah, walk up walls and do stuff like.
That's so cool. I read that Michelle Yo tore her acl in the second week of production on this movie. Yeah, and then just kept making the movie.
Yeah.
Yeah, all of those people, all of the actors, everyone who came out of like the eighties era, like seventies and eighties era of like Hong Kong action movies. Those people are so unbelievably tough, Like they don't they don't have stunt doubles. I mean, people have seen small never dies. I think it was the Bond movie she's in where she's hanging off the side of a car and she is actually physically hanging off the side of that car. That car takes a wrong turn and she goes flying
and she she is just doing it right. Like all these a lot of these people get really, really badly hurt because I mean everything that is there is just them actually physically doing the thing. So hey, they are unbelievably impressive people.
I read or heard maybe in an interview with Angley that later into filming Michelle, you'll broke her back.
Yeah. I also read that, and that in the final scene where they're won't spoil it, I get for ten more minutes, but where the lovers are together, they had to angle that shot very carefully because Michelle's very obviously broken leg was just like flopped over to the side. It's like or like a cast or something. They were just like she was in the trenches by the end. They're like, we have to frame this shot so you can't tell that we almost killed her.
Yeah, they're just I think this is partially a thing that was possible in Hong Kong and probably wouldn't have been possible in other places. Is because the labor standards are really weak because everyone is really heavily invested in like union busting, but the labor conditions on these sets are up and it's horrible.
Damn god. Yeah, that's I mean, which is like true across entertainment, but this I was like that you broke her back and she still had to go to work, like oh yeah there, Oh I had another thought, but it's gone. It'll come back, we'll see anyway.
Well, so this fight is happening post this sword being stolen, and Schulin hears the commotion and goes after the thief. There's this amazing fight sequence between them, and then Shulin realizes whoever this is has trained at Wudan, hence these special moves.
Anytime Shulin and Jenner fighting, it's just like it's a good day. It's a good day for us, and.
There's so many great fight sequences, so eventually the thief aka Jen, manages to escape with the sword. The next day, everyone is upset and trying to figure out who the thief was. Many suspect that it is Jade Fox, who is thought to be hiding somewhere in Governor U's household. Shulan pays a visit to Jen. It's not super clear if she knows that Jen is a thief at this point, but it seems like she but she is suspicious.
Yeah, she does this thing. I think it's just the scene where she intentionally knocks a teacup off the table to get to catch it.
I think there's a later scene.
But yeah, I'm getting I'm getting no, no, no, so good.
Though, And I did, like I fell for the when I saw it in theaters recently because I didn't remember very much. I did fall for the fake out of Jade Fox. Like originally you think like, oh, she's of a different generation, she thinks that women shouldn't be sword fighting, But then it's like no, she's she's the ultimate sword fighter, and she thinks you should only be fighting for me, right, yes, other fun fake mm hmm.
Anyway, so Shulin pays a visit to Jen, and Jen is like, let's be best friends. You're my sister now, and Schulin's like okay, And then Mubai shows up and we learn that Shulin was engaged to a friend of his who died, and she and Mubi grew close after that, but they didn't want to disrespect the other man's memory, so they never got together. Mubi's clearly trying to tell Shulin his feelings, that he has feelings for her, but they're interrupted and it doesn't happen.
And I loved Jen's reaction there, where she, at least as it's translated, she's like, well, that sucks for the guy who died, but like, what does that have to do with you having sex today? It's like, yeah, yo, good point, Jen.
Honestly, great point. Meanwhile, there's this police inspector and his daughter who are trying to catch Jade Fox because Jade Fox killed his wife. His wife, and Jade Fox sends them a note saying we will settle this at midnight. So they meet up at midnight and battle, and we get that reveal that you were just talking about, Jamie, that Jade Fox is a woman, specifically Jen's governess.
A really fun Bechtel test pass in this scene, let me avenge my mother's death, You'll soon be like her, you little whore, and you're like, well, imperfect metric, but it has passed. Yeah, sure, nuts.
So we get the reveal of Jade Fox's true identity and we come to realize that Jen is her disciple. They've basically been like working and training together in secret for I think ten years.
Yeh.
Mubai shows up to help with this fight and he battle Jade Fox. We learn here that Jade Fox had infiltrated Wudan, stole the secret manual, and poisoned Mubai's master, and then she spent the last ten years teaching herself to be a Budan fighter, but she's still no match for Mubai. And then Jen shows up in her disguise and fights him.
Well wait, there's that moment though, where it's like you get a lot of important context for Jade Fox because I'm like, Okay, Jade Fox, Yeah, she's she's done crimes, but I'm a lot of the time, I'm like, she did what she had to.
Do, right. I was gonna save that for the discussion because it's so steeped in gender.
She's like, oh, he was fine sleeping with me, but he wouldn't teach me shit, so unfortunately he had to.
Go, so she had to kill him. Yes, so Jen shows up and she's fighting Mubai and she is more of a match for him, but then she and Jade Fox escape after Jade Fox kills the police inspector. Shortly after that, Mubai crosses paths with Jen again. Also, by now, Schulan definitely knows that Jen is the thief slash Jade Fox's disciple, and Mubi is like, Jen, you should be
my student. I will train you because you have so much potential, but also you're messy, and she's like pass and she runs away and meets up with Jade Fox, but they argue because Jen isn't sure what to do about her future, but she doesn't really want to pal around with Jade Fox anymore, which upsets her, and like Jade Fox is upset that Jen is more skilled than her and that she kept some details and secrets of the Wudan Manual from Jade Fox.
Ah, which is like A really, I don't know. Their relationship is so interesting, I'm excited to talk about it.
Same. Yeah, then A man named Low played by Chang Chen shows up in Jen's room and we cut to a flashback where when Jen's family was traveling through the desert.
This flashback is so long.
Yes, I want I want to interject a little bit to do the the second piece of very very important subtitle thing that's going on here. Yes, So, okay. One of the things that happens this would be a lot is people will say something is happening in the West, but the actual word they are saying is shing John. Now, mark that down. That is going to be a very
important sort of ideology thing. You you you may you may, you may know what Shan John is from the news now about the the autonomous region of China where Muslims are being put in camps, and you know, the sort of general like people's war on terror stuff is going on that that I think is important to what's going on in this movie. We'll talk about that later. It isn't It is interesting that on the chooses to say what like capital W West right and not tell you
quite what's going on. Yeah, there's there's stuff going on there that's interesting.
Okay. I'm excited because I was, I mean and we'll get back to this too, because I was trying to do I mean, in the effort to research this movie historically, only kind of makes it intentionally difficult because it could happen at any point in a range of four hundred years.
And yeah, also, I think he's actually made it easier to figure out that he thinks he does because of some of the historical stuff.
Then really, Okay, Oh, I'm excited to talk about it.
Yeah.
Same. So we're in this flashback now where Jen's family was traveling through the desert and attacked by bandits led by Dark Cloud, whose real name is Low, who we just saw.
He's the other character who has an actual Chinese name, but they just translated as Low for some reason. I don't know what they're doing with that. This one's less important, I think.
So his gang pillages Governor use like convoy I guess, and he steals Jen's comb, so she runs after him, and after a lot of fighting and chasing, they end up in his cave hide out where he has taken her to like feed her and nurse her back to health, but also taken her as a prisoner, and then they end up kissing and having sex and now they're in love. So there's that.
Sure, Yeah, that's that.
We'll circle back to that.
Yeah. Yeah. One other thing I want to say is that so Low thinks that Jen is Han Chinese and she's not. She is Manchurian. Right, well, she's she's manchuw that's a that that That's another interesting thing I think is kind of important that we'll get into later. But I guess the the mediate context for this is that, so this is such an the Ching dynasty. The Ching dynasty is not a Han dynasty, which is sort of a kind of unusual. It's a there was the history
has been complicated. The very very cliff notes version of it is that the previous Han dynasty's falling apart, and they kind of like negotiate a handover to this Manchu dynasty that's coming out of Manchuria in order to sort of stop a peasant revolt from toppling both of them. Okay, yeah, so that's that's why everyone has like that haircut. That's the like all the guys of the haircut. It's like the shaved bald head and then the long like punnytail
things like. That's like a specific Ching Dynasty thing imposed by like the man choose on other people, got it?
Okay, So that actually does narrow down the period of time this movie takes place in.
Very Yes, it's yeah, well we'll narrow down some more in the next.
Oh, it's so excited you're here.
Yes, okay. So then we cut back to the present. Lowe has come to Picking to stop Jen from getting married, but she's like, our relation is over. Sorry. But the next day, during a like procession slash ceremony I think for the upcoming wedding. Yeah, Low like wedding crashes it basically, I mean that's one way to describe what happens. And a big ruckus is caused, and Shulan and Mubai are like they like pull Low aside and they're like, what are you doing, Like if you actually love her, get
out of here and go to Wu Dan and wait there. Meanwhile, Jen has run away and she goes to this tavern disguised as a man named Master Long. A bunch of men try to mess with her, but she just like kicks all of their asses, like dozens of men. Incredible sequence.
They're all like really sort of incredibly funny, like stereotyped different, like like a different kung fu guys, Like there's the guy who has a giant club, There's a guy who's a monk. There's the guy the first guy is like, this guy is like I am iron arms long, and then like yeah, she she like goes his sleeve and there's just like literally an iron like brace on his arm. So that's why his arms so smart. It's so good.
It was so enjoyable, and she's just like not only like physically dominating them, but like hurling these incredible insults at them along the way.
Yeah, it's so quippy. That scene is like the funniest scene. I mean it's like not a super funny movie, but there. But every time Jen is fighting, she just like her inner stand up comedian comes out, like something comes alive.
There's a scene equipping I think it's the first scene when she and move By fight and he's like, how did you learn that move? And she's like, I'm just playing around. Okay. So Jen has bested these dozens of.
Them, all five hundred.
Well, like so they're they're in this like tea house, and this tea house is when I say destroyed at the end of this. It's not like, oh they broke it to like giant sections of like it's like a multi story thing and hold in the center, Like giant sections of the building have collapsed from how hard she's broken people through them. It's amazing and it makes well.
It makes me feel bad for whoever owns that tea house. And it's just like, yeah, but I's gonna pay for that, you.
Know, but it's you own a Kung Fu tea house, right, Like this is good. This has to be like factored into the budget.
Like they're well insured. They're definitely really well inshured.
Oh I want, I want to There's one more really funny scene right after this. There's this scene that has like every all like like the the hundred people she's defeated are all like standing around in this crowd, and all of them are like wearing casts and like split breed.
Yeah, so funny, right, because Shulin and Mubai are like kind of questioning people around to find out where Jen is. But then Jen finds Shulin and they get into an argument because Jen has caused so much trouble for like everyone around. So the two of them have this huge incredible sword fight.
Jen for for all of her like ability and power is still such a teenager in a lot of scenes where anytime she's confronted about like, so, what about those five hundred guys you just killed, she's like what, They're just like.
Excuse me, fair, I don't think she killed any of them. I think I think they're all fine because they're all kung fu people and therefore they have incredible ability to just get tossed around, right.
They also have good insurance. They're good.
Yeah, So this amazing sword fight is happening. Eventually Mubai shows up. Then he and Jen are flying through and fighting in the trees. Eventually, Jen is saved by Jade Fox, who takes her into a cave. Shulin and Mubai follow her there, only to find out Jade Fox has drugged Jen and intends to kill her because she feels betrayed by Jen. Jade Fox shows back up, Mubai and her attack each other. Jade Fox is killed, Mubai is poisoned.
Jade Fox gives a Shakesaurian send off, ooh great, can't wait to talk about that.
Yeah, so he's been poisoned and they think maybe there's no antidote, but Jen is like, no, there is and I know it. She wants to help them to redeem herself, so she leaves to get the ingredients and prepare the antidote. But by the time she gets back, it's too late. Mubai dies in Shulin's arms after they have perfer fest their love for each other.
There's those of those kind of free things, like he like dies and well he knows the thing where he was like, ah, this is like my final breath. And then he like dies, but then she like kisses him, and then he's like alive for a few more seconds.
Don't underestimate Lubaye's horniness. Horniness sustains him.
Yeah, it gives you just a few extra seconds.
Yeah, he has a brief snow white moment. He's back, baby.
Yeah. So Jen has returned. It seems like Shulin might kill her, but she spares her life and says, promise me one thing and never let go of that promise. Whatever path you take, be true to yourself. And Jen is like, I'll never let go of that promise, and then she goes to the Wu Dang Mountains to reunite with Low and then the movie ends. And like I said, I might I think the ending is maybe too metaphorical
for me to understand. But she jumps off the mountain in reference to a legend that Lowe had told her earlier. It has been interpreted in different ways, but the movie ends with her jumping off the mountain the end.
Yeah, and then low is like, why did I tell my girlfriend this story about jumping off the bridge?
Damn well, you do this.
I have regrets the one thing you never do.
So that's the movie. Let's take a quick break and we will come back to discuss. Okay, we are back.
I'd love to just jump right into the historical context, if that's cool with you, Miya, yeah.
Yeah, okay. So a lot of what's happening in this movie, so okay. So one of the you can't even really call it a sublime it's like a third of the movie is sort of about the West. So the U family, who were like Gen's like father is a governor and he his thing is that he made his bones like in the West, right, and what this is is that. Okay. So in the seventeen seventies, the Qing dynasty does this
push into Shing John. They do like basically around the time the US is being formed, they do this invasion of the state that had been in Qing John and they do a genocide so that the people who had been ruling the state were like a sort of like a Mongol speaking people, they are basically all dead. The Qing dynasty exterminates them. They do a genocide, and then after that they bring in sort of like Han and weaker settlers to sort of recolonize the land of these
people who they've killed. And that's sort of the backdrop of this whole thing, which is that the Qing dynasty, So the Ching dynasty is the last dynasty of China, right, they're the people who are eventually going to be not off by I guess the nineteen eleven revolution, but there's people who lose, like the Opium warst the British that the people yeah, so, and that that's usually the part of the Ching Chines see everyone remembers, is the part
where they're just sort of like getting kicked around by a bunch of other imperial powers. But before the eighteen like really like the eighteen forties, the Qing dynasty is a a really really brutal and expansionist empire. They're they're the people who are they're like they're really the first people to like establish Chinese control over Taiwan. They try
to push into Tibet. They're pushing basically like they're they're pushing westward away from the sort of like traditional quote unquote, well, I mean, okay, it's hard to say traditional here because the Chinese dynasties controlled just complete, almost completely random territories
at different times. But they're pushing into places that are like not han like very distinctly like they're pushing into places that are usually Muslim, and this creates the situation and where you you know, you have Shing Jan or sort of the west that they're talking about, which is it's this is this is China sort of frontier, right,
it's kind of unruly. Their control over it isn't great because it's you know, it's it's really hard to do force projection like that far away it's deserts, it's planes.
But you know, but there's some very interesting things like part a lot of some of them, like the roof shots you get in this movie are like shot in a room Chi which is this the sort of capital city of u Shing John and you know, and so I mean, this is also question, like this helps date the movie, right, Like, it's pretty clearly like after the Conquest but before well, I mean, okay, so there's another interesting thing here. Sorry, I'm sort of like going.
On no, this is all very helpful to context.
So on Lee, when he is discussing this movie, is talking about how this is his like dream of what China is, right because and this is another thing. Okay, So another thing I think is important about this is that on Lie is from a very very specific generation of Taiwanese people, which is actually like the generation that like my like my family comes from. His family's way closer like is so okay, So there's there's a Chinese civil war from nineteen forty five nineteen forty nine, right.
Right, which his parents escape from where they survived.
Yeah. Yeah, But so they're on the side of the KMT, which is the Nationalist Party, which is this like I don't know that that's a civil war where there are no good guys. Really like the KMT is this right wing like Narco death squad party. Basically they've allied with Hitler. They suck, Yeah, I mean, they're awful. They are going to do a lot of there, They're kind of like the first prototype of like a new model of like
right wing narco anti communists like death squad state. You're gonna see in like Guatemala and Al Salvador and they're like deliberately exporting this stuff. And so like only grows up in this so the but you know, the people who are aligned with the KMT like flee like flee the civil war tr Taiwan. My family does this too. Now. The different there is that my my grandpa was a
paper boys. He was not like that. He was not like a KFD guy on leave, like grows up in like a village for like military dependence, like the children of people in the army. So he has a very so he's part of this generation in Taiwan that like I'd call him like the gloomy Dong brats because they're the kids of the people. But yeah, and it's it's
they have a very very weird relationship with China. Because like if you're a kid in the generation, like my mom was like under this too, like you know, you'll be like a seven year old, right and you'll be like in school, you will be singing songs about how one day you're going to reclaim the motherland because again
this is like a horrified military edctatorship. Yeah, and and so they have this, they have this very weird conception of what China is, right, and like a lot of this movie is also it's based on like specifically like mandarin language kung fu movie from Hong Kong, which is another kind of export that happens because there's all of these So most of the Canton people flee to Taiwan, but some of them flee to Hong Kong. But those people are Mandarin speakers and not Cantonese speakers like most
of the people in Hong Kong. And so there's this sort of like mark like this is sort of like very specific kind of kung fu movie that emerges that's like Mandarin speaking that's mostly designed for like the the manage speaking people in Hong Kong and like the Taiwanese audience. And so he has this weird kind of i don't know, like a very weird understanding of like his image of China is interesting and kind of bizarre.
I mean that's an extremely specific lens to be bringing. Yeah.
Yeah, well it's interesting too because it's like like this is something that like I'm like one generation removed from this, right, So like I kind of like like I look at that, I look at like ugly, and I'm like, oh okay, like I get where he usually get what's going on here? You're you're you're you have weird dasp right angst about China because you're Chinese but you didn't grow up there and your family is sort of it's Taiwanese, but you
have this complicated relationship this you know. And he also ends up going to the US, And so I was thinking this last like, ah, yes, I see, he has the direct he has the diaspora anxiety.
Well, that context is also interesting when you consider that this movie is a multinational co production between companies in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the US. So companies from several different regions are coming together to make a movie that's also going to be widely released in these different regions.
Yeah, I kind of wonder, I mean, and anytime Mia to you, does that feel like a conflict or I guess I just like always wonder what the conversations between those production companies have to be in order for this movie to come out.
Well, so for me, the thing that's really interesting about this is if you look at the sort of arc of I can't play I'm talking about Chinese developmental politics on the film podcast, but okay, I'm gonna go to barrel through this, which is a little bit of Okay. So China is very very isolated from international capital from about the like mid nineteen fifties until really the eighties,
and even then not really until the nineties. But when China opens back up to capital markets, they tap into this thing called a Bamboo network, which is this network of sort of like Chinese capital based on sort of family lines that has been like sort of spread out
across East Asia in the US. And so the way this process works is you get a bunch of money from like, you know, people like people who were rich who fled China who end up either in the US or they ended up in Taiwan, and that money flows through Hong Kong and then it goes through this sort of like currency control capital gate thing, and then that money gets injected back into the Chinese economy. And this is how a bunch of the sort of like Chinese
economic miraical stuff happens. It's funded by this capital that had been sort of taken overseas by people fleeing the civil war. And if you look, if you look at the companies who are involved in this, right, these are all companies from the places that are directly along the paths of sort of the bamboom network. Right. You have an American company, which is sort of one end of the sort of capital spigot. Right, you have Taiwanese company, you have a Hong Kong company, and you have the
Chinese state down industry. And this is you are directly tracing the path of capital that is the thing that sort of reindustrializes China after this period, and we sort of like turns China like capitalists again after this sort of period where it hadn't been. And I think that's because there's a lot of debate about how authentically Chinese this movie is, and I think that's a lot less interesting than the sort of economic configurations that are what
brings China. Because this movie is also released like a year before China gets admitted into WTO again, I think it's either on let me let me check my dates on that. Sorry, the movie.
Yeah, the movie comes out in two thousand.
Oh yeah, that's one. Yeah, so it's like it's like a year before or China like really like completely fully reinterest the economy, and I don't know, I think I think there's okay. So this is also my explanation of the ending of the movie. Is this capital stuff, which
is okay. So I think what's going on at the end of the movie is that Angle knows that he has to sell this movie both to a bunch of like American conservatives, American liberals, and then also Chinese reactionaries and also Chinese liberals and the sort of holdouts of whatever communists are left, because that there are actual, like in two thousand, there are still like communists in China, right, like there aren't many of them, but they're still around.
And in order to do that, he has an ending that deliberately can be read in feminist or anti feminist ways.
Interesting, okay, And this is like this.
Is my sort of crank theory about it. But like, you know, you can read Jen jumping off the cliff as like, oh, she's realized that she's strayed from like her like duties and obligations and she can't bear it anymore. In so she like kills herself. You can also read it as like, well, she's fulfilling the thing of the myth the man jumping off the cliff. You know, so
this is how she fulfills her dream. But outside of patriarch expectations, there's a reading of it where she's just running away because she can use cheekong and like falling, you can't if you can change your weight to zero or like negative weight, how are you going to die from falling?
Right? So she's unkillable?
Yeah, yeah, And so I think I think Onley deliberately makes the ending like this so that it can be sold so many different markets, different markets.
Yeah, I mean I buy it. I that that is first of all, thank you for all that extremely helpful context, because it is like Only is a fascinating figure to me. I mean I I like his movies, except for his Hulk movie, which I feel like, yeah, you know that was Look, everyone's allowed to flop, it's fine. I remember I saw that movie in theaters and I was like Edward, even as even as like a nine year old, I was like Edward Norton, I don't buy it. In any case, yeah,
Only has a fascinating career. I didn't understand the context of how he grew up and what his relationship to China would be. And this goes back to Mia. Have you read Red Carpet. It's like a book that came out last year, but it basically traces the relationship between the Chinese movie industry and the American movie industry throughout the nineties and two thousands, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon comes up in a section of it. Because this was I mean, this movie was a huge hit in the West.
It was not a hit in China at all. True Lies was the big American that's funny.
James Cameron.
James Cameron, he doesn't flop even when he should. I haven't seen True Lives, so I can't speak to it.
It's pretty fun.
But this movie was intended to because there was like this whole period throughout the nineties and the two thousands where there was like this sort of like pie in the sky dream between international movie industries. So it's like, we're gonna find a movie that everyone likes. We're gonna do it, and I think, I mean, for a number of reasons, including to oversimplify Americans are racist and hate to read. There are very few international movies that cross
over into the US. This was one of them, but it was not a hit in China at all. It was mostly reviewed as either boring, derivative, confusing, offensive, Yeah.
And also also everyone everyone's really bad that again he forced a bunch of actors who don't speak Bandarin to do an entire movie in Mandarin, a language they don't speak, which is like this, this happens multiple times to Michelle Yo, and she deserves better than this shit. Like, I just it's so infuriating.
It's not the actor's fault at all. Yeah, it's like it's I mean, especially because Michelle Yo is just a treasure to all the fact that she had, she broke her back, and like they didn't even set her up for success in the lines like what are you doing?
Yeah, And I think this is like I think this is a diaspora brain thing too, right, because he has this, you know, he has this whole sort of like she's trying to like create this sort of like one China, one tin of out right, but he's trying to create this sort of like this like mythical China that on the one hand never existed, but on the other hand is sort of like excessible or comprehensible to everyone, you know.
But he, but he runs into the classic trap of thinking that China is a real thing, which is that like China, Okay, this is this is gonna be, this is gonna be the argument that I make that gets everyone really mad, but I.
Go for it.
Okay, there is there is a there was a very very good argument that like China as like a single unified thing is is basically a European economic category and has nothing to you know, there's a lot of accounts. You can read accounts in like sixty hundreds right of Portuguese.
Like merchants will go we'll go into parts of China and they will ask people about China, and no one has any idea what they're talking about, right, because you know, if you're living in China, what you're living under is like a series of sort of like okay, well you have like a king, right and your king prajuice leagues to like another guy who pledges the legion to the emperor, right,
Like you're not sort of like that. That conception of China as like like a unified a single unified entity, that that's a very Western concept because this is this is how sort of like Western traders understand it because they don't really get that it's not like a single unified entity, and so they project that onto what China is. But then you get this this sort of rebound thing where China gets taken over by like rivaling clicks of nationalists. Right.
But the problem is, like you know, both the CCP communists and the k MT are both like Western their Western educated intellectuals, and so their conception of nationalism and what China is like is the Western version of it.
And so they they come back and now like everyone thinks that this is sort of like naturally what China is, and that like you know, people people are projecting back like, oh, there's this continuous state that goes for five thousand years, and it's like like it's a state that's in it's in different places with different ethnic groups, run by different people.
It splinters into multiple states many times. People have this sort of like this this sort of nationalist mythos like takes over and I think this is actually this isn't I think importance to the fact that like what hin Jon is doing in this movie and what the sort of like the the quote unquote like ethnic other is doing here where like on these using these people who are not Han, who come from sort of like the hinterlands, who gen like Jen literally called Lowa barbarian like the
first time they be right, And that is a very that that is a very classic Chinese thing, and I guess to be fair isn't the right word. I also think that Europeans are barbarians, which I think is more accurate than everyone else I think is a barbarian. But you know, she's using them as this sort of like other against which Hanness is defined and where you know, because like because Lowe is the guy who's like, oh, well you should like, you know, we should get buried together.
You shouldn't be bound by the sort of like restrictions of patriarchal like Han society or whatever. You should run off with me.
But then but then he like claims her as his property, saying multiple times like she's mine.
Yeah there, And there's that I felt like weirdly like flirtally presented line of like well, if I was going to rape you, I would have done it by now. And you're just like yeah, it's like this, I mean, this is truly because I have very little of this context, and so now understanding more of of the historical context, I think it's like I'm curious what your opinion is because in interviews about this movie, Onley was very very vague about when it took place. He like, when asked,
could you be more specific of when it is? And he's like no. And it feels like this movie, I mean, it's like not surprising to me that it wasn't very popular outside of the West, because it feels like in some ways obviously not all, but that like it it's made with a Western lens or it fits in very cleanly with like the West's like just under education on
Chinese history and what like. I mean, I think your average like American would watch this movie and have no idea when it takes place, and have no idea, you know, what any of the context would be for it, and so take.
It and just like assume like, oh, this is so historically accurate like this, because it seems it seems flying well.
I mean, the thing I would say about that is it's not like it's not I mean, like okay, so like obviously like there's there's there's depiction problems going on here.
But it's also not not true that like the Ching have this whole sort of frontier esque thing going on in the West where they're sort of fighting these kind of insurgencies and there's this sort of I think it becomes clearer what's happening historically now than it was in two thousands, because in like in two thousands, this movie is a pre nine to eleven movie, right, And I think that's actually really important in the way that Shing John is portrayed, because I mean, things don't get like
as bad as they are now in Chijon until like the Race riots, and that's like two nine eleven when
theyse get like really really bad. But also like this is this is a period like right before the world, like right before the War on Terror like gets taken up by everyone, and it gets taken up by by China like as much as it does by the US, right, I mean, the state of the state of emergency in in Shing John is called the People's War on Terror, And you know, like there were like people from who are like nominally at least supposed to be from East
Turkmenistine separatist groups who the US tortures in Guantanamo for the CCP, and I think I think it becomes more clear what really and only I think is also deliberately doing. He's he's deliberately drawing parallels between this sort of and you know, Shan John also it literally means new frontier,
right like that, That's what like the word means. And he's he's deliberately drawing parallels through the cinematic language to the sort of like American frontier, right like that when when when Lowe's band is attacked, they do they do the thing where all the horses are like circling around
the caravan, right Yeah. And he's actually like more right about that than I think people give him credit for, because that that is, like it is a very similar set of the colonial process that goes on when the ching marched through Shing John as what happens when you know, like when when the US is basically doing the same sort of like death march kind of insertaincy thing that
they're that they're fighting. So I don't know, I think I think I think he he accidentally discovered something that was going to be very important to sort of like Chinese nationalism, which is that a lot of modern Chinese nationalism is about this resentment that the Qing Empire like wasn't allowed to be an empire and that it was sort of dismantled by Western imperialists because you know, there was you know, an as part of like inter imperialist
rivalry stuff, right right, And whether he knew it or not, and I don't know, there's something that he sort of yets maybe accidentally maybe not about how this nationalism functions, about how Hanness is going to be sort of like constructed against this sort of like uncivilized barbarian way that they see, like specifically Muslim people who live in this region that he's gotten before everyone else.
Kind of Yeah, he's good there. I'm so I am fascinated by him. And also, I mean, if you look at the screenwriting credits and the source you know, the source material, it's also a blend of it's the same as the production companies. You have a Taiwanese screenwriter who did a draft, you have an American screenwriter who did a draft. And it's based on a Chinese usha romance.
Novel, which which that's another thing I want to talk about a little bit because that book a it's weirdly more trans than this one. Oh, like do tell Gen spends a lot more time as like kind of a guy or like kind of someone in between gender when Gen's off being a kung fu wandering nomad who beats
up people in tea houses. But there's another kind of interesting aspect of this, which is that like, okay, so the author of the books that this is based off of, he gets declared like an old intellectual or like an old literati guy, and so he gets basically like sent
to a camp by the CCP. And there's this I think of a kind of interest arc of like I don't know, the CCP going from throwing this guy in prison for being a kung fu writer to and he's like like hated basically by the Chinese left for like a very long time, just sort of like left academics. Yeah, for being like a reactionary.
I real that he was like forbidden from releasing new books, like he was sent off to be a school teacher instead of like occupying the any sort of like lipspace.
It's yeah, but then you know, but there's this interesting thing where like he gets he gets sort of rehabilitated. Actually I don't I don't know if he's specifically rehabilitated in the eighties like that. There are some people who are like, like the party is like, oh, hey, we did this person wrong. And okay, I'm not going to say that part. There's a hidden take that you may
unlock at some point later. Yeah, but then you know, but by the time you get the ninety two thousands, like this guy is this is the person that you know, the sort of like state media thing is like, oh, we can sell this interesting.
Okay, So it is, I mean, because it does seem that he from what I can tell, he you know, dies in relative obscurity. And then it's like most of this is posthumous. And I saw that his widow met with Onley during the production of the movie. Yeah, I guess what do you what do you make of that of this work kind of being like reclaimed and uplifted twenty five years later.
I don't know. This is he has a really weird relationship with like this isn't really classic Chinese leadership, but there has a weird relationship with classic Chinese literature where there's this thing at the very beginning, like right after the revolution, where the party makes a bunch of they turn a bunch of like classic Chinese books into like basically like comic books so that like regular people can read them, but they'll have like annotations in like like
water Bargain with the story about these like bandits who are like stealing from the rich. They have this thing of like, well, these people, these people failed because they didn't like they didn't have the like the central guidance of the party to follow stuff. So there's all this weird stuff going on, but they have this like complicated relationship with this kind of I don't know if national is even the right term, but this kind of like
I don't know, I mean. One of the things that happens during reform and opening is that like so at least rhetorically, the CCP had been very very very anti Confucianism, which is like one of their few sort of like no, you're right about that. One's like you know, I mean, like one of the one of the first things they do when they come to power is it had been legal to like sell your wife.
And.
Was like no, like this sucks that you cannot sell your wife, like you know, right, So like like this is the kind of like like this is the kind of patriarchal society that like you're dealing with here, and you know, the CCP ultimately fails for a lot of reasons to really fundamentally undo all of the genders like patriarchy that had been embedded in Chinese study that they
where at least nominally trying to get rid of. But one of the consequences of that is that there's this way in which gender egalitarianism becomes sort of like conflated with the Maoist project. And so when reform and opening happens, there's this rejection of sort of really forward and like the cultural revolution, there's this like revival of like it takes a little bit. There's like a revival of Confucianism.
There's like a revival of like traditional gender norms. You get you get the one child policy, which is this very sort of like militant to draconian sort of like intervention of the state into like reproductive politics. And I don't know, I think I think part of them, like ZCP being willing to make movies like this has to do with them them like sort of being willing to go back and sort of like older mythologies that aren't really communists, but are nationalists?
M okay. Interesting, that's I'm trying to think of, like of another another example of that of something that was oppressed in its time and then is later sort of. I mean, there's plenty of them, but I don't I have a functioning brain at this time.
Who does?
Okay? Is there any other historical context that you wanted to discuss me? Is there anything you wanted to discuss Caitlin.
Yes, but first let's take a break and come back for more discussion. And we're back. And so I wanted to Since we talked a little bit about the kind of like production of this movie and how it was a collaborative effort I think meant to appeal to a bunch of different markets, and that mostly only appealed to a Western market, I wanted to talk a little bit
about how the movie was marketed in the US. So I'm basing this off of the official trailer from Sony Pictures Classics, which was the company that distributed the movie in North America. And so basically the trailer frames the male characters as the more prominent and important characters who are driving the narrative, which, as we will discuss shortly, is not how the movie plays out. So for example, like the voiceover is like the story of a hero, and we see images of Mubai.
He's in like eight total scenes. I know.
This movie it gets worse. So it's the story of a hero, and we see images of Mubai the woman he loved, than we see images of Shulin, a daring outlaw, images of Low, who's in the movie even less. And then a princess destined to become a warrior. And that's when we see Jen. Mubai is framed as the protagonist
of the movie. Shulin is reduced to his love interest, ignores so much of what her character is, and then Jen is like defined as a princess destined to become a warrior, which is I guess what that story is kind of yeah, I got a princess. And then Low is framed as a much more prominent character than he actually is. Similarly, the poster places Chew Young Fat in the front. His image is the largest. Jen is in the back most because it's sort of like layered images
of those four characters. Jen is in the back. Low is on the poster for some reason. Also, why is he in the trailer, Like it's it's all this stuff, so I think that will like transition into the conversation about and.
Also how that I mean, how the I guess the last contextual thing I wanted to talk about was how this movie was. This movie was, like we already said, received extremely well in the West. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards, none for acting, which is interesting. And also I saw a there's a YouTuber I really love be kind Rewind who did a cool retrospective of Michelle Yeo's career and mentions multiple times in the video something I never thought about, which is that there should be
an oscar for best stunt work. Why is there not an oscar for best stuntwork?
Because they don't want to pay stunt for people.
Then they would have to pay them. But just the way that Crouching Tiger Hiden Dragon was received by Western movie critics, so in the year two thousand, majority white men, the way that they write about this movie is very particular in a way that I've seen argued seems telling to how this movie works well with Western audiences, where it's like, oh, this is actually the greatest, you know, martial arts movie I've ever seen. It's like well kind
of because it's like partially for you. But you know, Stephen Holden at The New York Times said that this movie plucks Hong Kong style action adventure out of its generic niche and lifts it into elegant, lyrical, cinematic poetry. And you're just like, okay, just say what you're trying to say the first truly high brow martial arts film. So it's just obnoxious. And I love to talk about New York Times film critics as some of the most I mean all of the New York Times really, but
their film section historically has just been people pretty dire. Yeah, all right, anyways, let's talk about the movie.
So despite what the marketing of this movie in the US, what have you think? Women are driving the narrative. They are the most active characters, Schulann Jen and Jade Fox in particular. The men are the more secondary characters.
Jade Fox makes more sense on the poster than Low for sure. Also with the Western movie sorry, I just like but in an additional point, just to sort of hit home, how even like, you know, Western movie critics working at the highest level still know nothing about movies that are outside of the West. Repeatedly. Jen's character is like a Mulan type, a warrior princess because Mulan came out recently, and they're.
Like yeah, but you know, I saw academics writing about this who were like, oh, well, it's kind of rare for there to be like shows like this is like a male dominated like hero genre, and it's rare for there to be like a female like protagonist. And I was like, have you watched any of these movies, like, you know, say, say what you want about like the politics of like the average kung fu movie. And I think the politics the average kung fu movie are terrible.
I think this movie actually has above average politics for a kung fo movie. But the one thing you can say about that is every single per regardless of their gender, knows how to fight. It does kung fu.
Like that's that's like, that's like the one thing you could say is that there are always like female protagonists who just absolutely beat the crap out of people. It's like it's like, have you people, like you're both the academics and the journalists, like, have you.
Guys like ever have you guys watched like Picking Up or Blues? Like literally a single other kung fu movie.
Like reading shit like that in the New Yorker, You're like, oh, like, they're my god, there's don't care And it was like, didn't do any research. And they're like, oh, yes, the idea of a woman who fights was invented two years ago in an American children's cartoon.
You're like, no, China is an egg rolls Like it's just like, oh, yeah, it's a lot.
But anyways, the the Yeah, the movie is absolutely driven by women. Don't believe the poster.
Don't yeah seriously, And then there are some interesting things happening as it relates to gender and gender roles and expectations in the movie. And I personally know very little about gender politics in China during this dynasty, so I don't know how accurately the movie represents the gender roles
of this again sort of unspecified era. But there there are some interesting things happening, such as women are allowed to be warriors as we see with Shulin, but they are not allowed to train at Wu Dan, which I don't know if that means that women are prevented from becoming the greatest warriors. I don't know if the implication is like to be the greatest warrior you have to study at this institution.
I think that that's implied.
That seems to be implied, right, because.
They yeah, like that they have sort of secret techniques that no one else knows that like.
And Jade Fox is like very enthusiastic about wanting to train there and earn these fighting techniques, and she was not allowed hence her whole like character trajectory.
Yeah, and then it's I have okay question about this because I was like, oh, it's I'm not quite sure how she's feeling here, because Shulin is such a composed character that sometimes I'm like, oh, how does she actually feel about that? Where the moment where Mubai decides I think Jen should train and I will take her on as my student on all all this stuff, I couldn't tell if Shulin was chafing at that idea because she's.
Like, well, you never asked me, you never wanted me to do it.
That was sort of I was like, that's how I would feel, but I don't but I'm not her, but it was It was kind of a difficult because I feel like there were certain moments where Shulin was not like upholding patriarchy but like, you know, it's not pushing super hard art and and like right, so I don't know that was an interesting scene because I'm like, how is she? I feel like she has to be a little pissed that he's like I want this person who comes from a ridiculous amount of privilege. I just meant
to train. But you who've known my entire life and I'm deeply in love with it never occurred to me.
Kind of I did wonder about that. There's a lot of interesting things happening about how certain characters feel about certain gender roles and expectations too. Where so because you have like women are allowed to be warriors, this is like a normal thing in society. I think you learn. You don't learn much about Shulin's backstory except that she was engaged to a man and that she I think took over her father's line of work in some kind of.
Like they say it's a security.
Yeah, security, he's like a security guy, right.
So hence her becoming like a skilled fighter.
Yeah. I mean there's also like I think was interesting about one of them when she's like walking into Beijing, like I don't know, I can't remember who exactly he is like a guy who's involved with the thing tells her that, like she's like she's doing a really good job and like her thing is safer than when her dad was doing it.
Right, she's even better than her dad. I so good for her.
I really enjoyed that because it's like, not only was that like, oh, you know, this is like very you know, hyper competent character, but just like how satisfying would that be if someone was just like, hey, I know your dad did this too, but like you're you're you're killing it by comparison, he fucking sucked. I'm like like hello, like it's implied like he's maybe not alive anymore. So I loved that. It's like your dead dad, he's he sucked.
So we learned this about Shulin and her backstory and just like this is her job and it is accepted
by everyone. Then there are other women, such as Jen, who are expected to uphold more like traditional gender roles of like getting married and marrying a particular person who comes from a quote unquote good family, and the way that various characters kind of view these different expectations based on like kind of like what your position is in life, where again, Jen is from this upper class family and is therefore more bound by traditional values of like polite society.
But she thinks that marriage is a prison, and she wants to be able to like roam freely and go wherever she wants and do whatever she wants. She wants to be a warrior, and she's been training to do
that in secret for a decade. Then you have Schulin, who is in this position where she is more free, she is not bound by these limitations and expectations, but she still holds onto these more traditional values, where she says things like marriages the most important step in a woman's life, and later on she says something like to Jen, I'm not an aristocrat as you are, but I must still respect a woman's duty. And she also like seems too long for romantic love and companionship in the way
that Jen does not. So they kind of have these like they like conflicting.
I really I mean, I really love how those sort of kind of chafe with each other. And that always that Jen is constantly wanting to have a blunt conversation
that chu Lynn is not willing to have. But it's like that there's so much going on and I feel like very often in movies that are maybe technically feminist but not fun to watch necessarily, it's because it's like all women are allies to each other and that is feminism, and you're like, well, no, these are two very different people there, you know, like Michelle Yeo's character is like
fifteen years old than Jen. There are basically different generations and different classes, so it makes sense that and totally different life experiences, so it makes sense that these are the things they're going to chave fun. And it also I think like the way that Jen's youth and privilege is commented on, but in a way that doesn't negate
her as a person. I feel like it's always really clear why she's doing what she's doing, even when it is like reckless and intense, but it's I don't know, I really liked that scene where Jen I feel like being, you know, an eighteen year old doesn't understand why, you know, Shulin is not completely thrilled with the life that she has becuse she's free, she can do whatever she wants. But Julan can't do whatever she wants and is explaining that.
But it makes sense that that's difficult for an eighteen year old to understand when you're being forced down kind of the straight and narrow expected life. Yeah, their scenes together are a great Definitely.
The other part of this that I'm wondering about now that was I didn't really think about when I was watching it is the extent to which Schulin's also of the O I guess rolling back to the beginning, one of the sort of interesting things about this movie is it starts with Rubai is trying to like he's trying to give his sword away because he's like haunted by how many people he's killed, and he like is trying to get away from the violence of the sort of
like underground like kung fu world that he's in, and he kind of can't do it. But I'm also wondering now how much of the sort of like you know, because I when when when Jen and Shulen are are talking about like are you free right, Sulin has this thing about like she starts talking about how like, well, no, there's still rules in the martial arts world. You have
to have these rules so that people can survive. But I wonder how much of that is also just based on her thing that Jed doesn't really understand like the extent to which the world can be a terrible place, and that like this world is also just like a blood bath.
And Sheeln says something to the effect of like, yeah, I mean, no, I'm not married and I could go anywhere I wanted, But it's not as glamorous as you think this lifestyle. Yeah, the you know, the writers who you know write these legendary stories about warriors, are leaving out the less glorious parts of it, like how we like don't bathe for weeks on end and we sleep in flea ridden beds and yeah.
She Len's like, we smell like shit. It's actually it's actually not that fun. So I tell people who are like I'm thinking about starting stand up, I'm like, look, we don't bathe. It's disgusting.
Your life is going to be miserable. Yeah, And then she also says like, well, yeah, you perceive me to have all this glorious freedom, but like, I haven't lived the life I've wanted to have. Parentheses, I'm in love with Mubai and we have never gotten together because we're
both too scared to admit it. So like, it's not all fun in games when you're a Warrior and Jen because she's so young and naive and like arrogance is another component of her character which is fun to watch because she's like so cocky with her insults and stuff. But she's a young person who like doesn't understand and.
Understandably doesn't want to get you be forced into an arranged marriage, like for sure, and so it's totally understandable why she sees Shulan and is like, how could you not be happy with that?
Like, oh, here's here's a fun not the grass is always greener, but the sword is always greener because it's the green destiny.
Wow, wish they did it? They did it? Yeah, I mean I and I it's like neither of them are free because neither of them are able to access the life that they want and deserve. That wouldn't be fucking hurting anybody, Like it's that's not freedom for either of them. And I feel like that is that theme is explored in a different way with Jade Fox. I I'm like, I don't know if this is controversial to be a Jade Fox apologist, but I I'm right there with you.
It's even more generational between Jade Fox and Jen. But Jade Fox is. I mean, it's almost like looking at like different generations of feminists, and Jade Fox is to some extent resentful of Jen for having access both in class and freedom to do things that she can't. Also the issue of the and I want to make sure I'm getting this right, Like Jen is able to read and write and is very educated, and so she's able
to withhold information from Jade Fox to advantage herself. And that is like what Joker Fizz Jane Fox at the end of the movie where she's just like, how could you I put my you know, I put ten years of my life into training you. Although you could certainly argue that she was taking advantage of Jen's station in life and in order to I don't know. Jade Fox is fascinating to me because all she wanted was to go to NYU and they said, no, you cannot go.
Like she couldn't go, she couldn't get educated the way that she wanted to and deserve to be, and then on top of that was like sexualized and treated like shit by Mudbye's mentor. So it's like, how is she supposed to access this education? Like how like and I feel like her whole life story is an attempt to remedy that the fact that she was denied an education.
Right, I'm very much with you as far as like I was watching this On one of my watches of this movie, I was watching it through j Fox's perspective. Who by the way, just quick side note. Jade Fox is played by Chang Pei Pei, who is considered cinema's first female action hero. So cool, I think based on a movie that she starred in in the mid sixties.
Oh oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, But Jade Fox is a character who's like been abused by the men around her. She wanted access to something that she could not have access to because of her gender. She is often underestimated by people around her. Where Like that guard Bo is like once he finds out that Jade Fox is a woman, because again she's presumed to be a man, because a lot of people are making assumptions about gender as well throughout this movie. But when Bo is like, oh, Jade Fox is a woman, well,
no problem, let me handle her. And then the police inspector is like, actually, you can't. She is so good at fighting, and she killed my wife, who was also really good at fighting and.
My kung fu wife kung.
Fu wife, right, So, but like Jade Fox is someone who even though is framed as the villain of this story, and I think there's also something I mean, we touched on this already, but the way that like people of a lower class are framed in this movie, particularly Jade Fox and Low are made out to seem either uncivilized or villainous or both.
And it also feels like, I mean, with Jade Fox, like her weapon of choice is poison, which feels like a very one to one of like she's very bitter and she tries to poison gen she tries to poison everyone because she's so full of this like it's it's I don't know, I think it can be read a lot of ways, and I appreciated that it felt like you could read it a lot of ways where you are given the exact because I feel like often when we're shown older women and they're framed as bitter and angry,
you're given no context as to why that might be. And it's just like inherent to being an older woman or an older fem specifically, it's like you're bitter and mean and horrible and it's like, you know, crone logic basically, but with Jade Fox, it's like you know exactly why she's angry, and you can sort of, you know, decide how you feel about how she weaponizes that anger against other people. But I appreciate. I just feel like it's more than you usually get right to know exactly why
she's so angry. But I was, I don't know, like, I just wasn't very invested in Mubai as a character, so when she got them at the end, I was like sad for Shulin, but I was more interested in how Jen felt about her death. But instead Jen was immediately like, oh, Shuelin and Muba my new mom and dad.
She switches parents so many times in this movie. She's like, I have to go help my new my new dad, instead of I just I wish that I knew how she felt more about that relationship, because the way that Jade Fox goes out is oh my god, like.
She impaled by sword shards.
Yeah no, I mean her dying words Oh sure, Yeah, that too are really really intense, where she's like, you know, the real poison is the deceit of an eight year old girl, and you're like Oh, there's so much. There's so much going on there, and so it's so dramatic.
I think there's like an interesting kind of if you look at like the three women main characters, right, there's this kind of gradient of like, Okay, there are three things that you like want to have, right, You want to be you want to have like like a high class position, you want to have the ability to do kung fu, and you want to be free, right, And no one has all three of them really, But Jade Fox is the person who has none of them, like
she is she is low class. The high class kid that she's like I'm gonna try to like learn kung fu with this person and go be free with them, is like does this really? You know? The way it's framed in the movie is that jen is like a superior martial artist and thus knows that like there's no way that that Jade Fox could possibly learn like the secrets of this thing. But like how does she know that?
Like it really just seems like it she's Jesus right, She's just being like a terrible aristocrat and it's just writing off yeah Jade Fox.
Yeah, it's so frustrating to see and to see that that sort of bear out in the internal logic of the movie where it's like, well, I guess she thought that because it was it was true, and there's no that.
Yeah.
Well, and it also applies there's only one way to become a good martial artist, and it's by going to this one school. Like there's it's not suggested that there's any possible alternative. Yeah, I'm always a little leery. Yeah, when it's like, oh the I don't know. It's almost like the latest Star Wars trilogy logic where it's like, you can't just be a person. You have to somehow be connected to aristocracy and power and legacy in order to justify being good at something or being like the
best at something you like. And I feel like between Jen and Jade Fox, we see the same thing where Jen has access to more which isn't really called attention to too much, but the fact that Jade Fox doesn't have them is her downfall.
Well, and also like the way that Jade Fox is like her governess when they're hiding together.
Yeah, I mean that power dynamic too is like Jade Fox deserve better, and it's like deserve better from Jen. Also, I don't. I mean, it's like difficult because she's a kid, and you.
Know, I don't know, it's complicated.
I love her. She did she she did nothing wrong.
Yeah, she is a true hero.
Why isn't she on the poster consulting she kills the great hero?
Yeah, because kong Fu was not strong enough to block all of the dark. She defeated him. Right, Yeah, she doesn't get any credit for this either, right.
Right, the fact that she ugh and I don't know, Like I get that it's supposed to be like poetic that in the end they kill each other, but Jade Fox is totally like it. We're led to believe that one of Mubai's driving forces in his life is to kill her. But it's it's very.
Like he says early on, like I have yet to avenge my master, and I have to do that by killing Jade Fox, who again is only the villain. She doesn't deserve to be framed as the villain of the movie. If anyone's the villain, it seems to be the mentor guy who we never see on screen because he died before the movie starts.
But thank you, thank you for that, Jade Box.
Right, But I was reading that because I haven't seen that many WUSHA movies or I'm not really familiar with that form of fiction, but I was reading that poison as a weapon is framed in those narratives as always being like very cowardly. So anyone who uses poison is like, oh, that person's not a real warrior. They're a coward. And of course Jade Fox's weapon of choice is poison. That's how she bests her enemies.
And it also like it gets used by women a lot, which sucks.
Just across yeah, like across fiction in general, from all regions.
So that is a bummer. Yeah, I don't appreciate the way that the movie frames her with all of these villainous qualities, even though she was, you know, just oppressed by by this system that Otherwise, the movie seems to be challenging, like these patriarchal standards of women being expected to be married off and their worth as a human hinges on them being a wife, and you have this young woman Jen who's pushing against that and pushing against
all these oppressive expectations that are foisted upon women. And because of that, this movie could easily be interpreted as a feminist text. But then the movie turns around and frames this like scorned woman of Jade Fox as a villain, even though she's doing the same thing as Jen, like she's also speaking out against these oppressive gender based expectations, but for some reason, when Jade Fox does it, it's bad and she's a villain.
I will say, I think it's interesting that her existence winds up getting like institutional change starts happening, because everyone kind of looks like, you know, like one of the one of the important things without this movie is that Jen has this conversation with Mubai about going toodan and Jen is like, well, they don't train women, and Mubai is like, well, I'll go talk to it.
Well they might make an exception.
Yeah, And you can see things like very slowly starting to change. But like, I think part of what's going on in this movie is that the sort of like okay, like I guess you call it like the Heavenly Kingdom, which the air which is you know, the sort of aristocracy is you know, incredibly corrupt, right in that like the aristocracy is based on the system of political marriages that like forces women to essentially be servants and like do sex work for the powerful male members of the family.
So like that's obviously sort of like a corrupt system and everyone's trying to get out of it. But then also the sort of like the martial arts Underworld is also, you know, just a corrupt system because it's also based on the same sort of logic of patriarch exclusion, logic of like using women for sex and then it's just getting rid of them and never like teaching them, et cetera,
et cetera. And I think part of what the movie is about is the characters slowly coming to realize that, like all of this stuff is messed up and why have we been Like, Like one of the things over the course of the series is that Sulin realizes, like, why have I been wasting my entire life like not yeah, not being the right person I love because she.
And Mubai have the same kind of journey where and I thought that was especially interesting for Mubai because you know, he lives his life as this you know, legendary warrior. He gives that up because he wants to be with Hulett. He's so horny that he quits grad school and he finally like works out the courage. It almost happened to me. Now, he finally like works up the courage to hell shulen
his feelings. But before anything can really happen between them, Jade Fox kills him, and in his dying breath, he's like, I've always loved you. I've wasted my whole life, meaning like I've wasted my life not being with you. Aka, I've wasted my life denying my feelings and being afraid to express my feelings, which is like not a typical arc or journey for a male character period, and particularly not in like an action movie or for like an
action combat warrior type of character. So I thought that was very interesting.
I appreciated the high drama of it. Yes, as far as relationships between women, I feel like we yeah, like you're saying, we get like a pretty strong gradient of women of different ages, class backgrounds, life experiences, and just like desires of what they want out of life. I feel like, And as I was watching this, I was like, oh, yeah, I think we're very often and even in ways that
scan progressive. Sometimes we're told like all women want the same thing now, and it's to work eighty hours a week, and it's like well that's not you know, that's simply not what everybody wants. And I like that there is just like at a base level, the three main women who are driving this story all want something different, and they're like their definition of personal fulfillment is different, and I always appreciate seeing a flexible definition of what that is.
Definitely, can we talk a little bit about the relationship between Gen and Low.
Yeah, because I mean it's like Mubai and Shulann, You're, like, you know what, they love each other so much. I'm not gonna say no, good for them.
I'm not opposed to their relationship. I'm sad it didn't get to happen.
But and it seems like Mubai like had no issue, Like part of why he loves so much was because she was hyper competent and great at what she did, and like, it didn't seem like that relationship happen he would have interfered with that. It was just all the feelings. But yeah, the genuine Low relationship, well that's that's different.
Yeah. I'll just kind of break down some of the key beats, okay, which is Low and his bandits Raid. The group of travelers among them is Jen and her mother. He says, leave the women alone, so feminist icon Low, Yeah.
Although I interpreted that as keep them alive. So I don't know which way it's supposed to be.
I interpreted, I guess is like, yeah, we're bandits, but we have a code of ethics and we don't We might pillage, but we will not rape. Like I don't.
Well, although based on what you just said and based on how afraid Jen is, I don't think it's inconceivable that she thought that that might happen, and that's why she was kept all right, because when she she afraid of him and he's like, don't worry, I'm not and then you're like, wow, what a hero.
Right, And then when she returns to the group of like bandits, they seem like they're about to descend on her. And then Low shows back up also and he's like, leave her for me, like she's mine, Yeah, to kind of save her. But I mean, again, there we're about to talk about how messed up their relationship is.
But yeah, there's something else you need to talk about with this briefly, which is that, Okay, so there is a whole thing about gender race relations between like Weiger men and like Han women, Like this is the thing that starts the race riot that like when things go start to go really really bad in Change On, it's because a bunch of Chinese factory workers like beat a bunch of weaker workers to death, and they do it because the rumors starts spreading that like a weaker worker
has like raped a hon woman. And so that is a thing that is the sort of sexual politics interesting, like the sort of racial sexual politics. The thing that's like hanging over the edge of this in a way that like for me, was really weird. I don't know what Ong Lee was trying to do with this, if he understood really what he was doing getting into here, right, I.
Mean, because that's like and we see that in Hollywood movies all the time with different I feel like in old Hollywood in particular, anytime you see a black man with a white woman, it seems like, are you talking about a similar dynamic of like here coded as predatory and then Jen's character would be more like virginal and this is a life worth protecting sort of coding.
Yeah, And I don't know to what extent only understands this because like I mean so clearly he's done some research about what's going on, sort of like the ching Kana sees like borders, right, but that is a political thing that I don't think even most people in China didn't really get because until like the late two thousands, Like the average Chinese person, I mean, it is racist, like yeah, the other Chinese person's conception of like what
Changchani is like, oh, it's those people who would like dance, right, which is racist in its own way, but they just don't think about it very often. But it reads the fact. For example, like that Lowe is the only character and I think the only character in the movie he talks about rape like at all. I think I could be wrong about that, but it scans weird.
If you read Jade Fox's like, oh, sure he would sleep with me, but he wouldn't teach me. It's not clear in what capacity she was there, Like was she there as a sex worker who was like knowingly providing a service for these warriors or was it a more sinister.
Or is it even like yeah, or I think you could argue like I mean, I don't know, but like almost casting couchy behavior of like dangling the charactive like oh, maybe I'll teach you if you have sex with me, right, Yeah, yeah, that could go a lot of ways, right.
Yeah, But I still think it's very it rings alarm bells to me that he has, like I mean, I guess it's partially just the way that like the characters written, just the incredibly weird kidnappy situation that's going on, but the fact that he's the one, like not Han character who well, not the only but like the one plot relevant non Han character is the one. Yeah, well okay, not Han or not Manchu because at this point they're both the ruling classes sort of like unified.
Right yeah, for him to be framed as again like presented as quote unquote barbaric and uncivilized and being the thief.
Yeah, and then and then he does he does do the weird thing where they're like wrestling and then they start kissing, and it's.
Like, okay, this is where the worst thing the consent nightmare scene, yes, where like basically she's trying to get her comb back. They've had a weird rapport up until this point where like.
So weird she keeps it like I feel like it's implied by the movie that she's escaping his clutches flirtatiously.
Yes, it's yeah, like I can't exactly pinpoint what is happening to make me think that, but I think like that that's how I'm reading it. Right. So there's like this weird flirtation going on, almost like a nagging situation that they're both doing, and they're like fighting, and then at one point they're wrestling and then all of a sudden, you know, trigger warning for assault, but he has his hand down her pants and then they're kissing and it's
not clear if she's consenting to this or not. There was no like him checking in and being like, is this the vibe? And then all of a sudden and.
Then people said all the time back then, right, is.
It was of the time and the and the consent is so murky, and consent is something that should never be murky gray area thing obviously.
Which it's like, but tell that to a movie in two thousand and see how they do.
Right, and then post that they are in love with each other.
So then she's riding on his horse, right, You're like, yeah, that was pretty bleak, right, hated it, And again it's like but it's also like not the first time we have seen that where it's like this captivity is this is this big draw to a relationship, just a different kind of captivity. And then the way that their relationship ends is she has no say like it's it sucks at the end where she's like, I really please don't
send me back to my family. I want to be here with you, and he's like, no, if we oh he's doing he's doing like some d chest in this moment where he's like, well, if we had a kid, you wouldn't want her to stay here. So I'm telling you that you have to go back. And I was like what, and she's like, I guess. So I was like, no, you could kill him. They're like, why are you agreeing to this?
Plus, like her whole thing has been I don't want to be trapped, not that every relationship is a prison. Caitlin try to remember that I'm talking to myself, But like it seems like not only does she want to be out of the confines of this arranged marriage, but she doesn't seem particularly interested in kind of long term companionship. Maybe I'm just kind of filling in the blanks, but I don't quite understand.
I think it's like kind of open to interpretation. I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know.
I do have to go soon.
Okay, I think that was everything I had.
So yeah, me, is there anything else that we haven't touched on?
Yeah, I think we're good.
All right, cool, then, uh, we've we've already discussed one pretty incredible pass of the Bechdel test. I want to shout it out one more time. Let me avenge my mother's death response, You'll soon be like her, you little whore. And that's going into the pantheon of my favorite my favorite passes that you can't say it's not plot relevant, and they certainly both have names. Uh yeah that I laughed. I l O l' when that one came out. I
was like, wooo. I mean but the movie, the movie passes constantly because you have so many scenes between our two main characters. You also have a ton of scenes between Shen and Jade Fox, and yeah, there's there's plenty of discussion about all sorts of shit.
Yeah, definitely. And uh that brings us to our nipple scale, our scale where we rate the movie famous perfect Scott zero two five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, I would still give this like maybe like a three and a half or four nipples. I think there's a lot to like and appreciate about this movie. I love that it's driven by women, that it is exploring like gender politics and gender expectations. You know,
could have maybe gone further with that. I would have liked to have seen more, like more backstory for Schulin. I wanted to just kind of know more about her character in general, because she is sort of The movie doesn't reduce her to Mubai's love interest the way the trailer does, but a big component of her character is like, you know, revolving around her.
The only counterparint I have to that is that I don't know anytime a kind of a relationship, even when it's with a man more boring than you, is connected to what your definition of personal fulfillment and freedom is. I'm like a little more lenient about it because we see so we see that it's like it's not like she wants to ditch everything else in her life. It's just she wants a relationship and the life she has that is yeah, fair, I'm getting defensive.
No, I agree, and I and I Yeah, Like we've talked about this before, but it's hard for like modern feminists to particularly like women who are attracted to men and might want to be in relationships with them. It's a difficult thing to reconcile that sometimes, at least for me. I don't want to speak for everyone, but like, I've found that to be just a difficult thing to balance, but it is.
Yeah, and I feel like that's but that's like part of Schulen's.
Journey, which is maybe more interesting than I'm giving it credit for. So just forget I said anything about it. But yeah, I think there are a lot of interesting female characters and interesting relationship dynamics between women. I always love to see that in movies. Also, I read a lot of pieces from Asian American writers who were saying how much they appreciated that they were able to see characters who look like them in this big action movie
at a time where Asian representation was super low. I mean it's historically and still quite low in mainstream Hollywood, so you know, they appreciated the representation of strong, powerful Asian women. And then the fight scenes, like just every fight scene in this movie. And this is like me speaking extremely like surface level movie analysis here, but they I think all involve Jen and they're all so fucking incredible, Like it's just awesome. I'd love to just see women
fighting on screen in an action movie. I like to see women participating in the action. It's you know, simple brain thing, but I like it. I don't appreciate how Jade Fox is framed as a villainous character. Her like contempt and resentment is super valid, like she has been deceived and undervalued and underestimated by different people like throughout her life, and she's potentially been abused by that mentor guy. But the movie still treats her as this like bitter old woman, villainous woman.
Uh.
And also because she is an older woman who is resentful of a younger woman, which is something you see a lot in media. It is often uncontextualized. It's just like, well, this is just how older women feel, duh. At least it's contextualized in this case.
But but then it still does the thing anyways, still does a thing anyway.
So I don't know a lot of the host, the historical and cultural context I was not super familiar with. So thank you again, Mia for all of your insight. I'll give the movie for nipples. I'll give one to Schulin, two to Jade Fox Justice for Jade, and I'll give the fourth nipple to the daughter of the police inspector Ye who's in that few scenes and who I think is also like dating Bo, but I'm not really sure anyway. Yeah, that's that's it.
Okay, I'm gonna give mine, and then I have to jump off. I'm really sorry. Okay, no worries. I will meet you at four. Yeah. I think the historical context of this movie and then how that sort of contrasts with the way it was marketed in the West and how it was discussed in the West is like a very particular moment in history, and I just I'm gonna be thinking about for days how this movie can be
identified to a pretty specific time period. But most Western viewers just didn't have the knowledge or on the part of the reviewers, the interest in figuring out what you figured out very easily.
The academics didn't do it either. I'm so baffled.
Okayard to this day, the Wikipedia page says it could have happened anywhere in these four hundred years. We don't really tell like, okay, so the historical context, and I think also the like you're just talking about the framing of both older women and and the character of Low and the way that he's framed and called a barbarian. And then it does act without consent. It just it feels like it's reinforcing a lot of negative stereotypes on
top of making assault seem romantic. So just really some of the some of the the worst things you can do. And then I'm like that said four nipples. Unfortunately, this movie just fucking rocks, Like it's really really good. And the movie is absolutely driven by women, which in a movie that's successful in the West in two thousand is pretty unheard of, especially women that are not constantly sexualized.
Because this is also the same year Charlie's Angels comes out, which is an action movie driven by women, but at what cost? And so I think this movie is doing a lot of really unique things, and it also has plenty of issues. And I'm glad we got to talk about It's that I've I would feel so lucky I get to see this in a theater. It was so fun fun. I'm going to give all my nipples to the legend Jade Fox because I really think that she
she did zero crimes. When you think about it, you should honor that.
We should respect her for sure. Yes, uh miyah, how about you?
Okay. So I'm holding a grudge against this movie for the fact that the most easy interpretation of the ending is so Jen gets told by Chulian be true to yourself, right, go like live the life you want to do, and then she immediately jumps off a cliff, right, I I'm
mad about that. That pisses and like, yeah, I was like, oh, there's in feminist interpretations, but like the most obvious interpretation is that she was like, oh my god, I can't live with being free, and then she jumped off a cliff, which is like an INCREDI an unbelievably reactionary like like and that being the most easy surface level reading to have pisces me off a.
Lot, right, Like I was very angry when that movie ended because that's just like really.
Like I know, it jokes off a cliff.
Like really, yeah, It's like that could have ended so many like why doesn't Shoolin start training Jen, Like if the whole thing was like she needs more training or like there's so many way, you know she if Jen was like yeah, I thought about it, and like I said before, this relationship is over low so see you later. I'm gonna go do other stuff like it could have.
But then and again, I know there's a lot of like metaphorical and spiritual ways to interpret how the ending goes, but just kind of taking it at face value is like what but yeah, I agree, Yeah, So what do you what's your nipple rating.
I'm giving I don't know. I'm gonna grudgingly give it three fair because I think there's a lot going on here that's good. There's a lot going on here that's weird. Sure, try to figure out how to no. I feel like Jade Fox is the most wronged character in this whole series.
I'm for sure, I'm gonna I'm gonna follow giving them all to her because like she she deserved so much better than every single person from like every single person she encounters screws her over from a different subject position, which is like a really sort of yeah, incredible way to get screwed.
Like yeah, like why at no point is Mubai like you started the training, I'll help you finish it. Jade Fox, like he doesn't bother. He's only concerned about training. Like a younger woman. It's everyone wrongs her.
Yeah, I mean's she's just he's just utterly And this is the other thing, Like the only time he really shows emotion in the entire thing is when he's killing Jade Fox, and he is like pissed, and it's like like yeah, okay, like I get, I get it's the kung fu, like you killed my master, but this this is one of those like this is one of those things where you look at that and you go, there's extenuating circumstances. I don't know it.
It's frustrating for sure.
Yeah, it sucked. Glad she killed him in the end. That was great.
Yeah, so three nipples all to Jade Fox. So thank you so much for joining us for this discussion. It was such a treat. Come back anytime. And what would you like to plug? Where can people follow you online? Etc?
Yeah, So my day job is I'm one of the hosts of the podcast that could happen here. Okay, my specific episode plug is if you don't know what this is and you want to listen to something. We did a series called The War on trans People last year and I think it's still really important because all of that stuff is still going on and it sucks. Oh yeah, yeah. You can find me on Twitter at BCHR three. Yeah.
I guess the closing thing I want to plug is that kung fu movie I briefly mentioned earlier, Packing Opera Blues, because Picking Up a Blues is a movie about three lesbians overthrowing a bill dictatorship and then house having sleepovers and it rips. Movie is so good. I love it. It's also released like fourteen years before this one, No.
Kidding, because this movie, like, despite its flaws, like feels ahead of its time for the year two thousand, so that one feels even more.
Yeah, it's a it's a it's a trip. It's also about a period of Chinese history that nobody other than me has spent significate. Well that's not true. Me, a bunch of weird war gramiers and four academics has spent a bunch of time studying, which is like like the war lord people. Well, I guess the pre warlord periods of there's a period right after the Chinese Revolution but before this guy dies, where China is ruled by this
guy named Yunxikai, who's just like this. She's the guy who gets put in charge of China because he has the largest army at the end of the revolution, and he sucks and everyone hates him, and this is a movie about people trying to overthrow him, and it rips into the time period that gets no attention ever. So yeah, it's cool.
Hell yeah, well yeah, thanks again for coming on the show. Check out that movie, check out it could happen here. You can follow the Bechdel Cast on Twitter and Instagram at Bechdel Cast. You can also subscribe to our Patreon aka Matreon. You get two bonus episodes a month, plus access to the back catalog that can all be found at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast, as well as our merch at teapublic dot com slash the Bechdel Cast
for all of your merchandising needs. And with that, let's go not jump off a mountain.
Bye.