Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Deep Thoughts about The Fifth Element
It mu5t be found…it being a realistic portrayal of women
For this episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily dives into the valiant, vulnerable, and very very sexist portrayal of “perfection” in the 1997 Luc Besson film The Fifth Element. Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo is the poster child for the trope of Born Sexy Yesterday, wherein a childlike but fully adult woman who is both profoundly wise and unutterably naive needs the protection and guidance of an ordinary man. But the weird gender values don’t stop with Leeloo. Tracie and Emily also talk about the hyper-masculinity of Bruce Willis’s Korben Dallas and the “unmanning” of virtually every other male character.
Also: How exactly did Plavalaguna plan to get the stones out? REALLY?
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Mentioned in this episode:
https://youtu.be/0thpEyEwi80?si=hV0MKtjaSnNrOduI
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I'm Emily Guy-Burken and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I will be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1997 film the Fifth Element with my sister, tracy Guy Decker. End with you, let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Speaker 1:So, trace, I know you've seen this movie, but tell me what you remember about the Fifth Element.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it has been a minute since I've seen this movie. I've definitely seen it more recently than 97, but it's been a while since I've seen it. I remember liking it a lot. So, and we've talked about it before briefly, when we talked about different sort of tropes and feminist analysis of different tropes, and we talked about Born Sexy Yesterday, which I'm sure we'll get into with Lelou. So the things I remember. I remember Bruce Willis is like hard-boiled cab driver. I remember Lelou as this little slip of a thing, in less than a slip of a thing in terms of what she was wearing, and the priest who had like a monk's tuncher and he was the only one who could communicate with her at first because she was speaking like the ancient language, but she's super smart so she like picked up on modern language quickly. I very clearly remember her crying, as she's like watching, learning all of the history of the world and learning about war. I remember enjoying the announcer, the TV announcer, chris Tucker. Chris Tucker playing Ruby.
Speaker 1:Rod.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember really enjoying that character. And Eve Salville very briefly makes an appearance in this film. She was a runway model who wore her head shaved and has, like a big dragon all the way around her scalp, and she was the inspiration for my tattoo. Listeners, I have a tattoo of a Chinese dragon on my scalp which you will never see, but Salville was like what I was thinking of. Mine is much, much, much more modest than Salville's tattoo, but that's a thing that I remember of the fifth element. So it's pretty disjointed, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. But talk to me, why are we talking about the fifth element today? What's the stake?
Speaker 1:So I saw this movie in the theater. This came out when I was in high school. When I was in high school, I saw nearly every film that came out. I was a regular moviegoer. I really enjoyed it and also was troubled by it at the same time and this was at a time when I felt like a humorless, scolding feminist anytime I brought up things I was troubled by, so I often didn't bring it up One of them being that there are no quote unquote normal women in this film.
Speaker 1:There are either women whose cleavage is out to here, who are absolutely gorgeous because they are like runway models, literally, or actresses, or there are women who are completely androgynous or butch, to play up that they're not real women. So there's two examples. One is when the military comes to Bruce Willis's Corp and Alice to say, hey, we need you to go on this and this is Sergeant Ingborg or Iceborg excuse me, iceborg. And it's this woman with like Princess Leia Buns who is like she's got a shelf of a bosom and she's like really beefy and she doesn't speak and it's considered humorous that she would pretend to be Corp and Alice's wife. And then there is a very androgynous woman who is the president's aide. So you see her, she seems to be very competent at her job, but she doesn't have a name, she's background, like she's not sexualized and she's not made fun of for her body, she's just background.
Speaker 1:And so I remember as a kid seeing this film being like why are the women at the McDonald's drive through being sexualized? Why are the flight attendants so sexualized? Like, what are the hiring practices that we can do to overthink it? And then the other aspect that really bothered me at the time, and I didn't have quite the articulation for it, but my high school boyfriend, I remember, said like I can't believe that supreme being has a dye job, and I was like her hair is the problem you have with that. That's the problem with this being the supreme being who's perfect? Her hair, her hair.
Speaker 1:But saying that Milo Jovovich is perfect and her body is gorgeous. But holding that up is an ideal. I have a poster hanging up in my office. It has a picture of Medusa and underneath it says beauty must be defined as what we are, or else the concept itself is our enemy. And that resonated with me. I have that poster for the very reason why it bothered me that they kept reinforcing that Milo Jovovich is perfect, and specifically when seeing her naked body. Because if Milo Jovovich is what is beauty, is what is perfect, then none of us can ever even approach perfect.
Speaker 2:Even Milo Jovovich, presumably later in her life. I mean, what was she like, 20 or 25, when she made that movie.
Speaker 1:She was the same age as you, so she was 22 at the time, or 21.
Speaker 2:I'm sure we'll get into this. It's very interesting too to think about. You just used perfect and beauty in kind of interchangeably. It'll be interesting to talk about differentiating those two, but I interrupt you.
Speaker 1:So this movie has always had this weird, like uncomfortable spot in my literary DNA, like it was the way we describe it, the furniture of my brain, because it is fun. It is a fun movie. Whenever we make paltry of any kind, I go check on good, check on good, same thing with, like multi pass, multi pass, you know, like there's, there's fun in it. I also I didn't even remember that this is where it came from, but there's a point where Gary Oldman, zorg, the bad guy, he's showing off all the different things on the, on this gun that he's he's giving to the bad guys. I came one of the bad guys I can't remember what the aliens were called and he's like, oh, and the flamethrower, my favorite. So these things that are just part of my, my lexicon. And it is a visually delightful film. Like it is so fun to watch and part of it is women are scenery in this. So like, even as I was uncomfortable with the way that women are sexualized, it looks good. I understand why the male gaze is there, because it's very pretty. I enjoy looking at it too, but it's, it's a part of that kind of not like other girls feminism and like, hey, she kicks ass. So therefore, it's totally okay that she's useless Kind of go girl feminism of the 90s that we grew up with in our teen years and it's it's worth untangling. It's very much worth like unpacking all of the weirdness, the assumptions about gender, the assumptions about gender roles, the assumptions about other and whiteness, the assumptions about age.
Speaker 1:Bruce Willis was 42 to. Mila Jovovich is 21 or 22. Yuck, ew, yeah. And watching it this time around, seeing like when they meet and like he's smiling and he's got these you know like laugh lines around his, you know his crow's feet and he looks great. I mean like I'm older than he was. I am now older than he was then and he is very handsome man and those laugh lines are charming. But looking at him, and then the camera pans over to Mila Jovovich and she is completely smooth like an egg because she is. She's like she's this tiny baby. I mean like she's not, obviously, but she has no laugh lines because she has not lived long enough to to grow them.
Speaker 2:Really interesting. I'm sure we'll get into this, but it's really interesting to point that out when the character is meant to be ancient, right? So it's like having your cake and eating it too. He's not a pedophile because she's not 22. The actresses, so we get to still have our like huge age gap. This is the perfect body. You know fantasy without the creepiness of you know the big age.
Speaker 1:He's old enough to be her father.
Speaker 2:Yeah literally, Because in fact she's ancient.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And yet even like, even so, I watched it relatively recently. So my family does a family movie night. We try to do it weekly and we each take turns choosing the movie. So my spouse chose fifth element to show the kids sometime in the last six, eight months. And so, watching it then with the kids, I was like ooh. And then I watched it again last night so that I was ready for us to talk about it, because within the last eight months was not quite recent enough for me to be able to talk intelligently about it. And I had fun watching it again last night, even as I was like, oh yeah, that ain't okay, that's not okay. Oh, I'm not okay with that. So it is a very fun movie but ugly messages can be wrapped in pretty packages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, I'm looking, I'm excited to like really unwrap that package. But let's start. Can we start with a synopsis of what happens? I'll try. Let me explain. No, it's too much. Let me sum up.
Speaker 1:So film starts in Egypt in 1914. We learn that there is a temple in which there are stones representing four elements earth, air, wind and fire and then, like a sarcophagus, with the fifth element in it, which is a supreme being, and together those five elements work to defeat an unknowable evil that comes about every 5,000 years A race of aliens called the Mandeshuans come and take the elements away from the temple in Egypt because they do not trust humanity, but they will be back to help humanity fight off this horrible evil in 300 years, when it comes back. So in 300 years it comes back. The president of the Federation which it's not really clear what he's president of, who is played by an actor named Tiny Lister, who is like six foot six inches tall. He's a very commanding black man which was considered extremely progressive at the time to have him cast as the president is telling his military to attack this ball of something that's speeding up. It is the terrible evil.
Speaker 1:The descendant or well, the priests who was guarding the five elements in 1914 is told by the Mandeshuans to tell his successors what to expect. So the 300 years later successor, played by Ian Holm, is there explaining what it is and that they should not attack. What they need to do is get in touch with the Mandeshuans, try to find the five elements. The military tries to blow up the dark planet is what they end up calling it, or Mr Shadow is another name for it are unsuccessful and get killed. The Mandeshuans come into the federated space and they are on their way to earth to try to bring the five elements to earth, to defeat this thing, and that ship is destroyed by a ship of other aliens it's like Mambaowens or something, I don't remember, but they're kind of like dogfish face things and they destroy the Mandeshuanship. There are no survivors, but they have a few cells left over from what was in the sarcophagus, which is the fifth element, the Supreme being.
Speaker 1:So they basically 3D print the Supreme being back into life, based on the couple of cells, and that is Mila Jovovich. Her name is Lelu. This character's name is Lelu, whose character's name is Lelu, yes, which we don't know yet. She escapes from the facility where she was 3D printed and ends up in the cab of Corbin Dallas, played by Drus Willis, who helps her despite the police coming after her. She tells him the name of the priest, vito Cornelius, and he goes to the priest brings her, she has conveniently passed out. Oh gosh, shenanigans ensue. The reason for the aliens destroyed the Mandeshuanship was because a human named Jean-Baptiste Zorg, who was played by Gary Oldman, and he deserved better.
Speaker 2:He had like a weird, like plastic thing on his head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he apparently hated it. He did this because he owed Luc Besson. Luc Besson, who wrote the screenplay and was director, had helped him to get a passion project done, and so he felt like he had to do it, and he apparently hates the film. I don't blame him, because Gary Oldman deserves better. So does Ian Holm, quite frankly. Anyway, so he is like extreme capitalist, he's only in things for profit. He is purely evil. So, anyway, he wanted to get the four stones and sent these other aliens to get them. They got the case, but it was empty because the Mandeshuans did not trust humans and they entrusted the stones with someone else. Turns out, they entrusted them with an opera singer, a diva named Plava Laguna, who is going to be at this planet, called Flostin for a major concert Shenanigans. I'm just trying to sum up.
Speaker 1:Once the president and the military understands what's going on, they want to send Corbin Ballas who, though he is a cab driver now retired from the military about six months prior, and he is the best man for the job to go undercover to meet with Plava Laguna. There are several people who try to take his identity. There are several different ways, people trying to get there by trickery and he ends up going with Lelou, gets on the plane because the way that they got him there is they rigged the contest so it made it look like he was the winner of the contest and so because of that, the DJ, ruby Rod, played by Chris Tucker, is consistently trying to get him to talk and stuff like that, even though he's trying to do a discreet private operation. There's a lot of humor in that and in the way that Ruby Rod presents himself and the way that Corbin Ballas responds to him Once they are at the hotel at Flostin Paradise. There is another attack by the same. I wish I could remember the name of the kind of monster headed aliens.
Speaker 2:You want to look them up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mangalors, mangalors. I don't know why I have trouble remembering that. Okay so, once they get to Flostin Paradise, plavillaguna is having her concert and there is an attack by more Mangalors. They want to get back at Zorg. They also want to get the four element stones because they know that Zorg wants them. Plavillaguna is shot. She reveals that the stones are in me. I never understood how is she going to get them out Like Musenex? No, musenex, musely.
Speaker 2:Musenex is not, she'll snot it out. Musenex is Musenex is. I mean it's a possibility, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like there's, I mean, and she's not that big and they're not small stones anyway. So Corbin breaks her open and grabs the stones. There's a shootout. Meanwhile Lelu is kicking the asses of multiple other Mangalors who very hilariously say it was an ambush when it was, you know, 120 pound woman.
Speaker 1:So Zorg also ends up coming to the hotel to try to get the stones. He sets a bomb. They manage to escape right before the bomb goes off by stealing Zorg's spaceship. So Corbin Dallas, the priest who stowed away on the plane, lelu, and then Ruby Rod, played by Chris Tucker, they head to Egypt, to the temple, and they are able at the last minute to save everyone once they figure out how to get the stones to open.
Speaker 1:And Lelu at that point is like has given up and has decided like why is the point of protecting life when you see what you do with it? And Corbin Dallas is able to convince her that there are some things worth saving and she's like, oh, like love. And he's like, yes, and she's like I don't know love. And he's like, well, I love you and that fixes things. And then you end with them back in the same pod that she was 3D-printered in having sex. When the president shows up to congratulate them, he's so weird, like, seriously, if you haven't seen this movie, like you kind of have to see it. And Luke Basson wrote it originally when he was 16, which explains a lot.
Speaker 2:All right. So that was the not quite concise summary, but as concise as one can get, perhaps with this film. So you named a few things that you wanted to talk about. I would really love, if you don't mind, if we get to start with gender, and something that you said which I don't know if you said it just now, but you said it to me before we started recording was about the performance of gender, not just women not just female gender, but also masculinity.
Speaker 1:Yes, so it is really interesting looking at this from the lens of what is masculine, because the exception of the president, corbin Dallas, is the only completely masculine man in the entire film. So early on there is a general who is the one who says, like we need to shoot and destroy this, and he gets himself and the entire ship killed and so he has like a kind of like warmongering masculinity, but it's shown to be dead toxic. Then there is not going to remember his name the major who we see over and over and over again, who was Dallas's previous commanding officer and is the one who comes to tell him about the mission. He's played by Brian James. He is there when they create Lee Lu and he goes to the pod where she's being created and he checks before he gets closer to say, like is that, you know? Was that safe? Like. And they're like yeah, it's unbreakable glass. And she punches through it, grabs him by the balls and, like, brings him forward, breaks his nose, so he is unmanned by her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Then literally grabs him by the crotch Yep, and remember that.
Speaker 1:Okay. Then there is the priest, who is considered generally to be a good person, but he is very asexual and kind of like lacking in any kind of power. He's shown to be kind of ridiculous, like when Corbyn, dallas and Lelouch show up, he immediately is like, okay, I need to, I need to wear something. Like what am I gonna wear? It's like it's got to look dignified and what he ends up wearing looks ridiculous and his concern with what he's wearing is kind of made fun of by the, by the film. Then he's got his like acolyte I'm not sure what you'd call him, but this is his like priest in training who's working with him. David, who is shown to be kind of like Weasley, is a little too strong, but he's.
Speaker 2:He's also shown to be kind of weak and he's the one that has the monks tonsure. David yeah, my recollection is that he's shown to be cowardly.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and then actually I'm gonna come, I'm gonna do Ruby Rod last on the Hotel at Flossin Paradise, we very briefly meet the head of security and he and all of the people who work there them, the men who work for the hotel are wearing shorts and Like kind of a sailor kind of outfit which actually doesn't, doesn't, not make sense, considering Like it's a pleasure cruise, like you know, it's a reasonable uniform, but it very much makes him look childlike.
Speaker 1:And he is the one who I don't know if you recall the mangalores have the priest as a hostage, with a, with a gun to his head, and Says anyone wants to negotiate, negotiator, will start killing castages. And Corbin Dallas says, because he's the head of security, says to him like do you want to do this? He's like I don't, I've never, I don't, I don't negotiate, I've never known. And so Dallas goes in, just shoots, shoots the one in the head that has the priest in a chokehold and the head of security goes when did he learn to negotiate like that? So like it's very much Unmanly. And then there's Ruby Rod.
Speaker 2:Wait, what about? What about Zork?
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you. Yes, zork is also interesting Because he now this is something I had never occurred to me. I read, I read something, and I'll include the link in the show notes it was a, an academic paper talking about othering in in this film. One of the things that they talked about is that Gary Oldman, who was a white actor is, is othered in this film in a way that is subtly Asian coded, in that he's got that black hair that's kind of like Long and like glossy and then it sort of flops like, almost like a like I can't think of what it's called, but the Chinese.
Speaker 1:Well, like cultural cut, yeah, no, no.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking of the, the one long grade.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, and that had never occurred to me, because I just didn't read it that way. I Entirely get how it could be read that way, but that it's just. I don't carry those cultural assumptions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's also just presented as so bizarre mm-hmm. And, and he is a white actor.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he's wearing like a Coat that almost reads as a dress yes, yeah so Well, and it's also like his.
Speaker 1:His accent is so weird. He has this weird kind of southernish accent and Oldman is British, isn't he? I don't know, I don't know. He was in the Harry Potter film, so I believe he was, because I think that they were. Really they tried very hard to cast British actors and he played serious black, so, like that, that's part of it too, because that that accent is just so bizarre. But he wears like you're right, it's something kind of like it's long and flowy Jacket, and then underneath of it he's wearing this like iridescent rainbow tunic, and so he is another Character who's kind of coated as not manly and dangerous in this case, yes.
Speaker 2:So we have the not manly, who are ineffective and Cowardly and weak, but here we have this not manly man who's actually very dangerous, yes, who is potentially Asian coded and also potentially queer coded, because dress, yes.
Speaker 1:What's interesting is he and Dallas, who are like they're they're basically the, the hero and villain of the Film are never share screen time. They never act against each other, they never meet each other. Interesting, yeah, which I hadn't noticed until, like I was reading about it and I was just like, oh, that's true. There's like there's a second of screen time where Dallas and his crew are getting in an elevator to leave the hotel when Zorg is arriving, and so like just a Fraction of a second where one elevator doors closing and another one's opening. So it's interesting because they are Paired as opposites. You know, there is something very asexual about Zorg. There is no sense of him having any interest in anything other than money and power. And Then he also he has a limp, which is another aspect.
Speaker 1:Oh so like the Abelism in the idea that someone who is like a proper man has a fully functioning legs. So let's get the Ruby rod because he's interesting. Yeah, yeah, let's do it. So he's played by Chris Tucker and In some ways he's my favorite part of the movie, partially just because Chris Tucker is having a ball.
Speaker 2:That is my recollection of that character. Is that he's just having so much fun? Not Ruby Rod, but Chris.
Speaker 1:Tucker yes, yeah, it was like. They were like what do you want to do? Do it, go, go? And he's like, yes.
Speaker 2:I will. And then they were like no more, more, more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what I read was he. Apparently they had the costumes, and so the first time we meet him he is wearing a skin tight, like Unitard, like it's like pants and and like it comes up and like his shoulders are bare and it's in leopard print. And Then the rest of the movie he is wearing something that you'd wear to an opera, which is the same sort of like unit hard pants, but it's it's black, with roses around the collar and again like his shoulders are bare. It's very feminine coated and, and Chris Tucker, apparently, upon seeing His costumes, that helped him decide on how he would play the character. They have also said I've read that the character was based partially on both Prince and Michael Jackson and the part was offered to Prince, and I'll have to see if I can find this because I wasn't in my research today, but I previously heard that Luke Basson accidentally really offended Prince at a meeting and he was just like no, I won't have anything to do with that, which is how Chris Tucker got the job.
Speaker 1:What's interesting? So he is very feminine coated and kind of Queer coated in a lot of ways. So he's wearing very much so, yes, very much so. He's wearing lipstick. He's wearing very feminine coated clothing. He has a very high-pitched voice. Now, part of that is Chris Tucker has a high-pitched voice, but he plays it up and he does a lot of like screaming like when he's terrified and things like that in a very, very Feminine, coated Dan's London distress kind of way.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He also has three like people who work with him who are very Queer coated, who he like how was it? And they're like oh, it's so green, so green, which is his like Word for good, or cool, and there, when they can't find him, they're like very queer coated, distraught yes, distressed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so so we have that.
Speaker 1:But we also have that women describe him as sexy. Yeah, he is shown multiple times to be heterosexual or at least interested in women, because when the plane is taking off he is deducing one of the flight attendants. And then there's another point where he talks about a woman. She is the, the daughter of a of a king or emperor or something like that, and he's like oh, she told me recently she loves to sing, and then he plays a like I have a recording of her voice and plays the sound of a woman moaning which so gross like, so gross anyway. So he's shown to be interested in sex with women. But I found this interesting it is Suggested that he is going down on the flight attendant, so he's performing oral sex on her, and I think that's interesting because a manly man Would only accept oral sex or be interested in penetrative sex interesting.
Speaker 1:Because I like it's and it's played for laughs.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know it's knowing that Prince was the Target for that role Really changes in my mind. Like deepens the, the sexiness to all genders, because You're reminding me of the evidence that Ruby Rod is interested in and has sex with women, but like in my memory he's he's just Like a queen, you know. Like in my memory he's a gay man. So If it were Prince, though, like, if I think of that character as Prince has played by Prince Mm-hmm, that sort of Sexy to all genders and like who knows and why the hell not? Like that actually Jibes for me with Prince.
Speaker 2:Like the way like in my, in my mind, culturally, the man just sort of like oozed sexuality which appealed to everyone and.
Speaker 2:I don't know what. I don't know what Prince did in Prince's bedroom and it's none of my business and the and the persona that he kind of gave us was that, you know, the more the merrier. Maybe not all at once, but certainly there wasn't. It didn't seem like there was like a Genital check, yeah, or at least for the persona, yeah. So so that's really like Giving it texture in a way that I didn't have for that character. So that's interesting.
Speaker 1:What's interesting, and it's that that's a same academic article that I read that I mentioned earlier. I Coding Ruby, rod, now, and Ruby's first name, is, is feminine and Rod is a. Is is a synonym for Alec. Alec, by Coding him in that like both and kind of way also is an othering that has to do with the way that our culture looks at black men, in that they are both, you know, considered less than white men, but also hypersexualized. Hypersexualized, which is also fascinating. And then also thinking of that character, had he been played by Prince, what that would mean, you know, it brings in other strange things, because Prince lived in this, because he was black, but he lived in this kind of, since he was Multiracial, I feel like there there was a sense of like, okayness. In white culture there wasn't necessarily for yeah, yeah, interesting so.
Speaker 1:It was very weird watching, like because you you also see, because Corbin Dallas is our audience stand-in in responding to Ruby Rod and and he gets to what kind of he does? He never actually rolls his eyes, but he's basically rolling his eyes the whole time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he's not attracted to Ruby Rod.
Speaker 1:No, he actually at one point, when there's a hotel employee, a woman is showing him the room and she's telling him he's asking if he can get tickets to the the opera because he needs to meet with the diva, and she's like, oh, you have a ticket, and with Ruby Rod, I love him, he's so sexy and you can see him going like what, what, what. That doesn't make any sense. It's a really weird, interesting portrayal, particularly since for so many people, he's the best part of the movie.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm and like there is something like. In some ways, I feel like it made that kind of over the top queer-coded queen behavior, like when he goes and and like it's stuff like that you know part of you is just like can I do that? I love that. It's very, very interesting, but it definitely is like Besson very intentionally wanted to show that comparison between Ruby Rod and Corbin.
Speaker 2:Dallas Corbin. Dallas is a real man. Yes, yeah, and we know he's a real man because he gets to have sex with the perfect being. Yes, mm-hmm, yeah, and that's yeah, yeah, okay, all right. How about, then? Performance of female gender, then.
Speaker 1:So, oh goodness. So we talked a little bit in a previous episode about orn sexy yesterday, and that is the trope that Lelu basically embodies, which is a woman-shaped creature or being who is unutterably wise and yet profoundly naive at the same time. Lelu is a perfect example of this because when she first is born, basically she knows nothing of English language, she knows nothing of what Earth is. She knows, she does not understand how things work and she is coded as being very good at something masculine fighting but otherwise being so fragile and needing the guidance of someone who understands the world. I can remember other examples of this.
Speaker 2:We talked about it when we did our Wonder Woman episode, where there's and actually these of you wore in particular. I think we get that from both Wonder Woman and from Lelu where the outsider who's very wise but naive can look and say but why would you do that? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and this is a common trope in science fiction. It was only named in the past, like 10 years I think, less than that. The first one was named in 2017 is when it was named, but I can remember in the original Planet of the Apes, the Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes, the woman he goes around with I think her name he called her Viga, but I don't remember for sure is like this passive, beautiful woman he has to protect, who doesn't understand things that seem clear to him. So, like she's born sexy yesterday, without any skills, she's just someone for him to protect. They're similar things like that.
Speaker 1:So, because of this, lelu is treated like a child by everyone. I mean, dallas treats her like a child constantly when she first gets to the pre, when Dallas brings her to the priest's apartment, the priest says to Dallas like please wake her, but gently, she is mankind's most precious possession, ew, ew. And like Yiconna said, humanity. I mean not that that makes it much better Her performance of gender. Now, like the first thing I thought this time around watching it was they recreate this creature who is not human but looks human, and they keep referring to this creature as he until they have, like you know, completely reprinted her and you know she is there and they can see her naked body and they're like oh, it's a woman. And I'm like this is not a human. Why would you assume?
Speaker 2:it's gender. Well, in 97.
Speaker 1:I know, but she's wearing basically just bandages for the first.
Speaker 2:But even when they give her clothes, it's like a seat belt that's across her nipples and across her genitals, right.
Speaker 1:Yes, that is so. She's wearing bandages. I mentioned before we started recording. The costumes were designed by the French designer, jean-paul Gaultier, I think. I think that was his first name. Who was you know is. I don't know if he's still alive.
Speaker 2:I don't know if he's alive, but Gaultier is a major brand.
Speaker 1:Major brand. Yeah, and in his contemporaneous review, roger Ebert mentioned that he did the design and he said, yeah, gaultier, he starts by covering the essentials and then stops. That's how he described his designs, which, yeah, certainly what Lilo is wearing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But she is treated in a feminine way. So when David goes out to get clothes for her, he brings back clothes and he's like I didn't know your size and, like you said, there's it's this a sweater that stops right underneath her breasts and then this like orange plastic rubber thing that like goes over her shoulders and then like connects down, like like it's like a V through her crotch and then she's wearing, like these, silver leggings. First of all, I don't think you can get back those clothes for someone if you didn't know their size. Like these, these clothes are not going to fit if you don't know someone's size. So he gets that for her and she's very excited. Oh, thank you, thank you, mila, thank you. And then he got her a it's a makeup box that honestly, I would love it if they invented this, because it's really cool where, like, you put it to your eyes and it immediately it puts on the makeup for you or wear makeup every day.
Speaker 2:I would wear makeup every day if they made that little box.
Speaker 1:But she's super excited by these things, by these trappings of femininity. Well, how does she know what they are? Why is she excited by them? Similarly, when she is like recovering in between the hotel and going to Egypt, and she's she has been learning English by watching these screens and learning about the history of the earth by watching these screens and she's going through it alphabetically and she's like I'm on V, which, for one thing, luc Besson, really I'm on V and Dallas says like oh, there's some great words in V, like valiant, vulnerable, very beautiful, and she smiles. I know To be feminine. She is vulnerable. I mean she's valiant, vulnerable and very beautiful. Like that says it right there.
Speaker 1:But her being valiant is kind of a it's not a joke exactly, but they get when they get into the plane. Corbin says to her like we're not really going on vacation. I'm like this is before mansplaining was coined, but that is such rinse planning. She's the supreme being. And he's like you know, you got to stay out of trouble because I have to protect you. And she's like no, you know trouble, I protect you. And he's like uh-huh, yeah, sure, honey, and even the fight scene, which is really cool.
Speaker 1:Like she has a very, very cool fight scene, but it's one of those and some of this is just I don't know like fight choreography has gotten better or what, but even 20 years ago, I remember noticing that the Mangalore's wait and attack are one at a time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's just like there have been much better versions of that, like atomic blonde, which came out a few years ago and has Charlie's Theron in it and has similar sorts of like fight dynamics where because Charlie's Theron is another one who's like just tiny and up against these very big men, and one of the things I liked about that film was the fact that they show her fighting the way a 120 pound, five foot seven woman would fight a 250 pound, six foot two man by using things in the area Like there's one point where she takes a lamp out of the wall and uses the cord and like she fights quote unquote dirty, because that's the only way that you can win if you are fighting against someone who is so much bigger and stronger than you.
Speaker 1:So, like I think some of this is that I have, in you know, the past, so many years gotten like no, seriously, can you do a choreography that looks more realistic and, like you know this is a ridiculous film. Yeah, it just. It undercuts the one thing she's supposed to be good at, is undercut by the fact that the Mangalors wait and attack her, one at a time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, While we're on that, so she's mankind's most precious possession. The thing that she's really good at is fighting. She's perfect. Let's unpack that perfection, especially vis-à-vis beauty and ageism and gender.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the thing that I noticed and I tried to say something to my kids when we watched it, like six or eight months ago is that every time they refer to her as perfect, it is when you can see her naked body. It is not about her brain.
Speaker 2:It's my recollection that it's not like while they're watching her fight. No, they're lying there naked like lying down. So it's very much about her being the perfect object, the perfect sex object specifically yeah, now to be fair the head scientist in charge of 3D printing her.
Speaker 1:So what happens? She punches through the glass, she grabs Brian James, manages to get herself out and runs and leaps through the wall that is made of gold, aluminum foil. For some reason it's seeing her leap through the wall. He goes perfect. So it could be argued that it is about what she has just done, Right? Except lying there naked.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Except that it's also like oh, now seeing that body in action, but it's then that she's described as perfect, is that?
Speaker 2:how it's delivered to, the way you just sort of whispered it. Perfect, yeah, just like that. Oh yeah, that's not like. That's not like. That's not an engineer admiring an elegant solution.
Speaker 1:So the other times, when she gets changed, when David brings the clothes that he could not possibly have gotten the right, she starts to start getting changed because she is so naive as to not realize that you can't just get naked in front of other, in front of men. David and the priest turn around so they're not facing her and David says she really is perfect. Yes, I know, that's what the priest says. And then Dallas has someone I think it's his immediate boss at the cab company it's not entirely clear named finger, who he has two different phone conversations with. The first one is in the establishing scene when we first first meet Dallas and finger is talking to him about his ex-wife. He's like you're not still pining for her. You know that's slut, you know cheated on you, and there's millions of women out there, yeah. And Dallas says I don't want millions of women, I just want one, the perfect one.
Speaker 1:And then later on, after he's met Lelou and delivered her to the priest, and his cab is completely destroyed and he's lost the remaining points on his license which allow him to drive, and so he's in trouble with finger Finger calls and he's like I've been waiting all day for you to come for the overall hall, for your cab. He's like oh, you ever have one of those big fairs, just land in your lap. He's like yeah, how big. And so he starts describing her. He's like five foot seven, blue eyes, perfect skin, or I don't remember what else is like, and all physical descriptions you know perfect.
Speaker 1:So him loving her is entirely about how she looks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, eww.
Speaker 1:Eww, the other aspect that I did not really articulate, like it always bothered me that Dallas is in the center with her when she activates the weapon that destroys the Great Evil, because he's like you know, you have to do whatever it is and I love you, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so something I read this morning was saying that we are left to believe that the fifth element is love, which means Lelu is incomplete without Dallas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm 16-year-old male fantasy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, this is, we overthink here. That's what we do, right? Yeah, we thought so. I just was. I just was reading this article about the science of love and scientists are breaking it down. They say there are three elements to love now there's lust, there's attraction and there's attachment, because there's the science of oxytocin and all the different chemicals and things as well. Like, we can have attachment and attraction without lust. Thank God for familial relationships and we can have lust and attraction without attachment, but without attachment I'm not sure it's actually love and that's what we're seeing here, right? Like Dallas has lust and attraction. Does he have attachment to this person, you know? Or does he even have attraction without lust? Like, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a condescending attraction, it feels like, because, as I said, he treats her like a child the whole time, and even there's a point where he tries to wake her gently, and so he goes to kiss her and she grabs his gun and puts it to his head and says in her language she says never without my permission. And so she's holding him at gunpoint and he's trying to introduce himself like I'm Corbin, corbin, dallas, what's your name? And the priest comes back in and so and it gets in between them and he's like waving at her with one finger like you would to a baby. Do you remember the movie Barton Fink? Yeah, so listeners who haven't seen it, it's a very weird con movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, weird.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the main character, he is a writer who is contracted to write a wrestling screenplay, and so it's about a wrestler, and they're telling him all the elements and so have him meet a woman or a kid that he needs to protect, and the character ends up having this amazing experience I don't even remember exactly how it came about and he wrote the most transcendent thing he's ever written in his life, and the studio is not interested. It's like no, no, no, god, have a dame or a kid that he has to protect. I am thinking about this because, basically, what we have in Leluy is both oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm thinking about, like how common that trope is that there is a hard-bitten, you know, cynical man who learns to have a heart again because a woman or a child needs his help.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, it's kind of cliched.
Speaker 1:So it's, there's a lot that's ugly, I mean it's it's and to the point where, like even 18-year-old me watching it was like I'm really enjoying myself. But oh, yeah, yeah, this is. This is not great. Like, why were there any women involved in making this film?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, we've actually been talking for a long minute now. Are there any other key points that you want to make sure that you make before we wrap us up?
Speaker 1:Just that there is. I mentioned how casting Tiny Lister as the president was considered progressive, but it is also undercut and though he is not a man like the other men in the film, you never see him being decisive. You never see him. He is always anxious, concerned, confused. You overall end with a good impression of him I have always liked him as as as president but you also don't get to see him being the hero that Corbin Dallas is, and in fact Dallas like hangs up on him at one point, which that's that's pretty telling about who has the power.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And you know, I think that scene when she says not never without my permission, I feel like that's another one where there's like there's a certain progressiveness in this sort of consent matters, and then it's completely undercut by the structure in which that message is given.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, in the same way that you know it's it's amazing seeing Lelu fight, but it's I mean, for one thing, it's undercut by the fact that you know she immediately like shuts down after like Zorg comes in and she escapes into the ceiling and he's shooting at her and like, yeah, that's terrifying. There's also a suggestion that she is psychically linked to a plava Laguna and feels when she dies I didn't necessarily get that, but that was another thing that I read this morning I was like, okay, I can see that and that that also would be part of her, her grief and why she shuts down. But then I was thinking about it this time. I was like, so she doesn't know war, but she knows how to fight and that's all she knows. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And like, presumably she killed the Mangalors that she disabled in those in that fight I mean maybe not all of them, but why?
Speaker 2:But there are other, there are other, yeah, I mean, and that's that, and that's really like the tragedy of war. We're doing it to ourselves, yeah, right If we do it to others, and that's how we sell ourselves on war as well. Yeah, it's, it's like uh, yeah, I'm not, I'm not saying it makes sense, it's kind of circular, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's interesting how we give that naivete is like, oh well, you know, she understands better than than than we do, but at the same time like, oh honey, you just don't understand.
Speaker 2:Right, right, we want it both ways. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's what the wisdom and the naivete, yeah, okay. So I'm going to try and reflect back some highlights from what I heard. Number one this is a very clear textbook example of born sexy yesterday, the trope in which we have a unbelievably wise and yet also very naive woman who is a sex object who needs to be cared for. Sometimes we get what you just described. She's smarter than all of us and, oh honey, you just don't get it. We had really interesting conversation about gender. So both masculinity, where we see really a range from toxic masculinity that is punished. It leads to destruction of those who exhibit it through a very effeminate masculinity in Ruby Rod, which is sort of kind of lampooned. It's a laugh, it's an opportunity for us to laugh. And then we get Corbin Corbin Dallas in the middle, who's like a typical. He's a man, he's a man's man, not toxic, but not one of those girly men, just competent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, and that's that's what makes him a man, is that he is, he is competent and he is reward, he gets the ultimate reward, which is the perfect being as his girlfriend.
Speaker 2:And then we talked about femininity and performance of femininity. Femininity which is all about thin, white, young, beautiful in the in Lelu, who we hear over and over again when we see her naked body, that she is indeed perfect, this 22 year old child who is actually an ancient being. We talked about the ways that othering comes in in ways that maybe escape notice on first view. I'm thinking of Zorg and his potentially Asian coded appearance, and also, like the ways in which this villain was othered, with the sort of potentially Asian influence and the way that he looks. Also the weird American accent, also the ableism of the fact that this man has a limp.
Speaker 1:Oh, one other thing. I watched it on Amazon Prime and in you know the X-ray they have like trivia.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:One of the pieces of trivia is that Zorg is consistently framed with a circle, whereas Dallas is consistently framed with a rectangle, and I found that very interesting because to me that that seems like there's feminine and masculine. And then considering the fact that the the dark planet, mr Shadow, like the evil thing is a sphere, and then the, the stones are, they're, they're, they're square, they're square, I mean they're triangular so, but they're, they're square. So there's, there's almost so, there's, there's like a, like a phallus and and vulva type thing going on there in, in a way.
Speaker 2:We also have fashion from Jean-Paul Gaultier, which covers the essential bits and then stops On the women, on the women, on the women. Yeah, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And Although, to be fair, bruce Willis spends most of the movie in this orange tank top that is form fitting and in the back has vents, so it's, I wouldn't say revealing, but it's not what most 42-year-old men would choose to wear.
Speaker 2:In my mind, some of the most damning of your analysis here is in thinking about Corbin's role in the final moment in the day-new-mott, when Lelou is having a crisis and it's kind of like just despairing, like why bother, why should I bother, saving life? And he's like no, there are things worth living for, like love, and I love you. And then the implication then that love is the fifth element, which means that Lelou is incomplete without this washed up cab driver who she just happened to fall into his cab. What's interesting we didn't say this, but I'm trying to articulate this here what's interesting about Dallas is that in some ways he is an everyman.
Speaker 2:He is an audience stand-in. He's not meant actually to be particularly exceptional, but in other ways he's completely exceptional. He's the right man for the job, for this crazy, dangerous and high stakes mission we're shown through your analysis of masculinity, he's the only one who gets it right of everyone that we see on screen. So there's this push and pull. This whole movie is about push and pull. There's this push and pull with Dallas that hurts even more in my mind that Lelou is incomplete without him because she is exceptional In every way. In yucky ways, we're told that she's exceptional, and so this exceptional woman, who's not even a woman because she's not human, is incomplete without this washed up, 42-year-old, who's balding and has bleached his hair blonde, I mean I don't want to be ages.
Speaker 2:I'm older than this dude, but he has no ambition. He's not trying to make the world a better place.
Speaker 1:His apartment is horrifyingly small.
Speaker 2:He's not even like it doesn't. We're not even given this guy, as he's making the best of a not great situation. He's just surviving and seems fine with that, and that she could be incomplete without that feels all the more painful that she's incomplete. So I don't know if I fully articulated that without denigrating sort of whatever. A middle-aged dude just doing his best.
Speaker 1:It's not that it's a middle-aged dude, because middle-aged dudes are great or can be, and this is conflating actor and part but he's 20 years older than her and that's what feels gross.
Speaker 2:Well, to me that's actually not it, because he's not supposed to be Within the actual story. He's not 20 years older than she is. I think what bothers me is that we're given this not like other girls' exceptional feminism in Lelue and then sort of any man will do. I think that's kind of and that's not quite fair to the character of Corbin Dallas, but it's not completely unfair either, and I think that's what I'm grappling with with that pairing and within the universe that was created with Fifth Almond. What did I forget? I'm watching the time and feeling.
Speaker 1:The only other thing that we didn't end up talking about was there's a little bit about class distinctions. That it was interesting, because that's another way that Dallas and Zorg are opposites, because Dallas is blue collar. He lives in this tiny dirty apartment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's hand to mouth, clearly. They make that clear with the conversations with finger.
Speaker 1:And then Zorg is an unrepentant capitalist who is so bent on profit and power that he makes a deal with Mr Shadow, which doesn't even make sense because everyone would be dead, including him, presumably. So there's that. And then there's the scene in the airport. There's trash everywhere. It got cut out of the actual dialogue of the movie, but the reason there's all this trash is because the workers are on strike. So the world of 24th century New York is pretty stratified.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, that is very clear. And also police state in a terrifying way. That stayed with me. Yeah, okay, so there's a lot. This movie has a lot. We would probably do a part two, because I feel like there are things we didn't even get to.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen it that recently, and I feel like there are things we didn't quite. I think there's probably more to say about race than what we did. We talked about the fact that this thin child is the perfect being, who is also white. So, anyway, I'm sure we could keep going, and I'm going to be thinking about this one for a minute. So also just really fun to watch, despite some of the ugliness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would love to hear what listeners think about this movie, about our analysis of it. Yeah, what do we miss?
Speaker 2:How, filling the gaps for us. You can reach us at guygirlsmedia at gmailcom, or you can find us on social and post a comment, or go to our website, guygirlsmediacom, and go to the listener forum and let us know what you think Next time. Next time, you're bringing something to me, aren't you? Yes, next time I'm going to bring my deep thoughts about Michael Jackson's thriller.
Speaker 1:Darkness falls across the land.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm thinking about watching it with dad at the apartment in Carriage Hill. I don't know if you remember. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to bring Michael Jackson's thriller to our next episode and I think you have maybe one listener comment.
Speaker 1:I have a listener comment from Livia on the Rocky Horror Picture Show episode. She writes oh, my memoir of wasted youth so many hours spent in theaters all over the country with that movie Because, oh man, seeing it at a midnight show is so much fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, audience participation. All right, well, until next time, em, until next time. Do you like stickers? Sure, we all do. If you head over to guygirlsmediacom slash, sign up and share your address with us, we'll send you a sticker. It really is that easy. But don't wait, there's a limited quantity. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from Incompetechcom. Full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember, pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head?