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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 Jurassic Park
Hold on to your butts!
On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily shares her analysis of the 1993 film Jurassic Park. She describes the thrill of being the target audience for a summer blockbuster (she was 14 when it came out) and her discomfort with how the book portrayed the only two female characters as an annoying child and a cardboard cutout with breasts. She and Tracie talk about how the film that teaches us that life finds a way makes for an unexpected (and unintended) allegory for the importance of reproductive autonomy. And Emily explains why Muldoon’s final words of “Clever girl” are her favorite movie moment.
Throw on some headphones and listen to the adventure 65 million 31 years in the making!
Note: We had some technical difficulties during recording and lost a couple minutes of recording but Tracie mentioned some of the missing information in her synthesis. Specifically, in the missing section, Emily talked about Dr. Sattler saying “Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth” and about Spielberg’s desire to cast Joseph Mazzello as Tim, which affected the ages of the children in the film compared to the book.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
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 1993 film Jurassic Park with my sister, Tracy Guy-Decker, and 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 All right, trace, I know you've seen this movie.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure we saw it at the theater together, maybe. Seen this movie? I'm pretty sure we saw the theater together, maybe. Um, but tell me what you remember about. We're gonna stick to the original jurassic park. It has become an enormous franchise and I can't keep up, so I just want to talk about the steven spielberg film. I will also be talking a little bit about the book, uh, the original book, but, uh, I'd love to hear what you remember about this movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't remember a lot. Again, this often happens with things from childhood or, I guess, 93, adolescence, where there are kind of flashes. I remember that they extracted the blood from a mosquito trapped in amber and and then cloned the dinosaurs. I remember the. I remember the car chase with the objects in mirror maybe closer than the appear, and the t-rex in the mirror which, which I mainly remember because of Toy Story, I think, which spoofs it. I remember the terrifying, like jump scare, heightened terror moment of the Velociraptors chasing them in the kitchen. I think I remember Jeff Goldblum is a dish in that movie.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, is he a dish With the unbuttoned shirt, like whoo, it's all drink of water.
Speaker 2:I remember Jeff Goldblum in that movie, and Sam Neill is a very avuncular, trustworthy scientist. And Where's the?
Speaker 1:hell out of a neck scarf too and, and I have memory.
Speaker 2:I have vague memory of like the glass of water kind of like shaking because of the, the footsteps of the, of the, I think the t-rex, um, yeah, that's that's kind of what I remember, uh, in terms of the actual like, flashes of like what was on the screen, and then you know some of the lessons that I remember like quit fucking with that shit, humans. That's the lesson that I like, and the moral of the story is, um, so, yeah, that's what I got, but tell me, um, why are we talking about it today? What's in it for you? What's at stake?
Speaker 1:There's a couple of things going on with this Now that the the film came out in June of 93. I was 14 years old. I had just finished my eighth grade science Um.
Speaker 1:I had this amazing science teacher named Mr Anderson for all three years of middle school sixth, seventh and eighth grade and one of the things that he did that was really great was he would take stuff that was like in the zeitgeist and build that into the science classes and specifically he had read the Jurassic Park book and he did an entire unit on cloning, on dinosaurs, and so I went into the film and into reading the book, already knowing what the conceit was about taking the blood from the mosquitoes in Amber, because of Mr Anderson's class, which was pretty cool, and because there was this multi, multi-million dollar marketing campaign. Like we knew Jurassic Park was coming, we knew dinosaurs were going to be a thing that summer. So because of all of that, I was well prepared for that to be a summer blockbuster that was important to my generation. Then my bus stop. There were three other kids who caught the bus at the same bus stop and one of them had the Jurassic.
Speaker 1:Park book and read us the scene at the bus stop where Dennis Nedry played by Wayne Knight. I think of him as Newman from Seinfeld, yeah that guy that guy, the postal carrier, read us the scene where Newman dies, not Newman, nedry dies, and it's delightfully gruesome. So I remember him reading that out loud to us at the bus stop. I was like I gotta read that book and it was. I was at the age where I wanted to be able to say, oh, the book's better um, I feel like a lot of.
Speaker 2:I feel like a lot of people in our culture have not outgrown that.
Speaker 1:No, that's true, and in this case, the book is not better, oh cool. And I have very specific reasons for feeling that way. So I believe, as I recall, I read the book before the movie came out, because we had enough lead time and it was like a major film, I mean, like I mean, like everyone I knew went to see it. I think I saw it in the theater more than once and it has been you know something that I have gone back to multiple times. It's the first film that was like a summer blockbuster, that felt like it was mine. So, like you and I have talked offline about the movie Jaws, which was Spielberg's first like summer blockbuster movie, and the importance of that movie came out in 75, I think it was. So I'd heard of it, of course, and you know, always been a movie buff, never really saw it until I was in my late teens. I saw it in the theater at a revival in, I think, 2015.
Speaker 1:This was for the 40 year anniversary. It was an amazing experience, but that was me, that's. That's all hindsight, cause it came out before I was born. This was like Spielberg made this for me, like this is for you, kid, you're 14. You're at exactly the right age to love the shit out of this, and I did so. It was not like it was my identity or anything like that. It was a fun movie that I really, really, really enjoyed but, unlike other movies that I felt like I kind of wrapped around me and made part of who I am. I don't think it was quite like that, but the experience of like I am the movie going public that they're making movies for, that was amazing. That felt incredible and as I have aged, I don't care that I'm no longer like the main demographic for things. But there are times when I'm I kind of miss that feeling of like you. You, emily, are who we want to impress with this movie yeah, yeah so that's, that's part of what got me thinking about it.
Speaker 1:My um, I was also thinking about jurassic park and wanted to bring it to deep thoughts because my kids are interested in some of the extended universe of Jurassic Park my younger son really likes. There's an animated show called Camp Cretaceous where they bring kids to basically as Leneublar, but somewhere where they have sleepaway camp with dinosaurs, which I'm like, have they not learned at any?
Speaker 2:point. Didn't I just say what the moral of the story was?
Speaker 1:but it's, it's like you know dinosaurs, so that's part of it. Another reason I wanted to talk about this is because of my experience of reading the book. Now, I really enjoyed the plot. It's a page turner. I mean I will give Michael Crichton full credit for being an excellent plotter. He is very, very good at marrying this really interesting science with very interesting and like compelling plots.
Speaker 1:But as I was reading it, I was horrified, like I could not stand the only two female characters in the book. There's Lex, the little girl, and then Ellie Sattler, and they changed it in the movie. In the book, lex is the younger sibling and she is basically useless. And you know, in the movie they make her the hacker. And Tim is the one who's into dinosaurs. In the book he's, he's into both and he's the older sibling and it was breasts. And I remember saying something to an adult in my life who had also read the book, in expectation of the movie coming out, and this adult in my life told me like, oh, I think you're being oversensitive. So one of the things that was really vindicating for me although again I don't think I could have articulated it at the time was the fact that they did make changes to Dr Sattler and Lex's characters so that they were no longer like cardboard cutouts with breasts are completely useless. So that helped me understand that I can trust my instincts, like if it quacks like a sexist duck and walks like a sexist duck, it might be a sexist duck. So that was really helpful.
Speaker 1:We talk a lot about the furniture in our mind and, I think, in movie catchphrases. So for instance, you know, if I'm about to do something, I say hold on to your butts, like Samuel L Jackson's character in this. But when someone surprises me with something that they've done that's smart, especially like a toddler or something like that, I'll be like clever girl, like Muldoon. This film is actually surprisingly kind of feminist and in ways that I know, spielberg quite indefinitely and the other filmmakers involved in this were not necessarily intending.
Speaker 1:There are some that they very much were intending, but that I think is one of the reasons in this were not necessarily intending. There's some that they very much were intending, but that I think is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this film is because of what a bad taste in my mouth the book left and the way that it helped me understand that I can trust my instincts on things like that, because I got that kind of like I think you're being a little sensitive. And then I saw the movie and I was like no, I don't think it was because they changed those characters. Yeah, yeah, like no, I don't think it was because they changed those characters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so it kind of taught me to recognize when my lived experience is giving me insight into something that someone else might have, might not have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, okay, okay. So remind me, besides the flashes that I have the vignettes in my mind and jeff goldblum looking dishy what happens in this film? What's? What's the plot?
Speaker 1:so thumbnail plot a man named john hammond, who we don't have a good sense of exactly who he is or you know, like how he has made his money, but he is some sort of titan of some sort of industry has developed a way to clone dinosaurs, as you mentioned, by finding mosquitoes from the Cretaceous period trapped in amber.
Speaker 1:That they then extract the blood from those mosquitoes and use that to sequence the DNA of whatever dinosaurs they had bitten. So we start the film seeing a velociraptor kill a worker at the park and so, because of that and Spielberg does not actually show the velociraptor you see they're trying to transport it and you see the worker get like dragged in and Muldoon holding on to him trying to save him. So because of that, the investors and lawyers need proof that the park is going to be okay, Because Hammond is building an amusement park with this amazing technology, which is such a capitalist thing. I mean I will say Michael Crichton got that right. So, to make sure everything's safe, Hammond has brought ian malcolm the the dishy jeff goldbloom, who is um, a mathematician who's an expert in chaos theory.
Speaker 1:Unclear why that would be helpful in determining if this uh park is safe. Malcolm is actually uh, brought in by the lawyer, donald gennaro, who is uh, he's the blood-sucking lawyer. Is the way that they describe him. Oh, by the lawyer, donald Gennaro, who is the blood-sucking lawyer, is the way they describe him.
Speaker 2:Oh, so the lawyer brings in the chaos guy. Yes, oh, interesting.
Speaker 1:And Gennaro represents the investors, so he is not really there on Hammond's behalf. Hammond, however, invites paleontologist Alan Grant, played by Sam Neill, and paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, who is played by Laura Dern, to come in. They are a couple. They're a romantic couple. Yeah, yeah, they're a romantic couple. And they are in the middle of a dig that Hammond has been paying for and he offers to cover the expenses for the next three years for that dig, which is how he gets them to go there.
Speaker 1:So they all arrive on Isla Nublar and they see a brachiosaurus and it is an amazing moment where they see that and they oh, my goodness, that's a real dinosaur. They get to the visitor center where they see the plot exposition, movie introduction, which is how they did it Extracting dinosaur DNA from prehistoric mosquitoes preserved in amber, then adding the DNA from frogs where there were missing sequences, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they get to watch the hatching of a baby velociraptor While they're eating lunch. It's Hammond, gennaro, who's the lawyer, ian Malcolm, ellie Sattler and Alan Grant. So the five of them are debating the ethics of doing this and all three of the outside experts Malcolm, grant and Sattler are like, yeah, this ain't a good idea.
Speaker 2:This really ain't a good idea.
Speaker 1:This really ain't a good idea. And Hammond the lawyer, meanwhile, has been like we're going to make so much money? And Hammond's like why is the blood sucking lawyer the only one on my side? After lunch Hammond says go take a tour of the park. And uh, then, then his grandchildren, lex and Tim, show up and they're going to go on the tour with them.
Speaker 1:Grant, we've already established, is not comfortable with children. And uh, tim, who is a dinosaur enthusiast, is like following him from one to the other because the the tour is in these um cars that are on electric, cars that are on a track. Um keeps, uh, there are two of them. He keeps following them from one to the other, like which one are you gonna sit in? And he's like whichever one you're in. But tim is talking his ear off about dinosaur stuff, has read grant's uh book about dinosaurs, so and on and so forth.
Speaker 1:Wow, so they go off on the tour. It's not going well. None of the dinosaurs are showing up at the enclosures. And so at one point they get out of the cars and they go start exploring. They find a sick Triceratops. So Sattler stays with the Triceratops and the veterinarian who's going to give her a ride back to the visitor center in his gas-powered jeep and everyone else gets back in the electric cars to continue the tour. So while that's happening, hammond goes to like the control center and we get to meet several other of the staff members. We meet Arnold, who is played by Samuel L Jackson, who is this kind of no nonsense, like you know, your favorite manager at work kind of guy, cause he's got this dry sense of humor and takes no shit. He's the one who says hold on to your butts. We meet him. We meet Dennis Nedry, who is played by Wayne Knight, who he was Newman on um Seinfeld. So every time I see the man I go.
Speaker 2:Newman.
Speaker 1:So we meet him. We've already had a little bit of backstory about him. Nedry is very dissatisfied, he's disgruntled. He apparently is not happy with the amount of money that Hammond is paying him. He is the computer designer engineer for the park and he has everything set up via automation. And he, like, is constantly saying, like no one else could do this but me. And Hammond is saying to him, like you know, he complains that he isn't making enough money. And Hammond says to him, like I'm sorry that you're having financial troubles I really am, but like that's not my problem. And it's also clear that there was like bidding, so like Nedry got the winning bid, so like he bid too low or something I don't know. So he's disgruntled. Bid so like he bid too low or something I don't know. So he's disgruntled. And so because of that, earlier in the film we saw him have a meeting with a representative from a competing company who wants him to. He's going to steal some embryos of an embryo for each of the dinosaurs and get them off the island. And so he has a plan he just needs 20 minutes to shut things down so they can't see what he's doing. Get the embryos from the lab to the dock where the ship is going and he is given, I think it's like 1.5 million, and then it's going to be another like 500,000 for each embryo he successfully smuggles off. We've already met him, but didn't really know who he was.
Speaker 1:Muldoon, who is a big game hunter, basically, and he is the expert there for making sure that the predators are safely contained. His name is Muldoon and he is played by Bob Peck and he is probably my favorite character in the film because he has so much respect for the animals. He respects their savagery, their danger, like what it is they are capable of, and, um, and recognizes that they're not doing anything other than what they do. You know they're, they're not misbehaving or anything. This is just that's what they do. So, um, while the cars are coming back, the tour's coming back, there's a storm bearing down on the island and Nedry puts his plan in place, which requires shutting things down so that security cameras can't be seen. He can get in and out of rooms that would otherwise be locked, that sort of thing, sort of thing, and so he is able to successfully slip away from the control room, get into the lab, get the embryos and get out again.
Speaker 1:But the storm at that point has come in and it is raining. Fit to be tied while he's trying to drive to get to the dock in a gas jeep Like. He drives into the signpost that says which way to go and has trouble figuring out which direction he's supposed to be going. He then gets stuck on a tree branch that has fallen over. When he gets out he kind of slips down and is confronted by a dinosaur that is basically made up. It's the name of a real dinosaur, but none of what they have in the film or the book is what they were actually like. But it spits a poison in his face which is what, according to the film, that's what they would do to their prey and then attacks him and eats him and exits stage right Nedry Meanwhile, because Nedry is gone for longer than the 20 minutes he thought he would need to be gone.
Speaker 1:They cannot figure out what bug he put in the code to keep things from happening. So at this point Ellie Muldoon Hammond and Samuel L Jackson Arnold are the only ones there and they know that the children Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant are missing. So they suggest the only way to get everything back up online so they can cage the animals and close everything is to turn the whole system off and back on again, because otherwise they'd have to go through two million lines of code to figure out what nedry had done, but by turning system off and back on again. That means that all of the enclosures are now open, including the velociraptors, which are the dinosaurs that are even scarier than t-rexes, and that's what this, this film, did. Is it made velociraptors like the big bad of dinosaurs when they had always been T-Rexes when we were kids because they are supposed to be extraordinarily intelligent.
Speaker 2:Right. Small but very clever. Smaller than the T-Rexes, but very, very clever.
Speaker 1:And that actually even is the way that they characterize the velociraptors in the film. I don't know if they didn't know this at the time, or if and it's since come out, or but it is no longer, or it is not what Velociraptors were actually like.
Speaker 2:But you know, it's a film.
Speaker 1:I think it's. They were either larger or smaller than they are shown to be. It's similar to this. I know they didn't know at the time, but T-Rexes had basically feathers which we just didn't know in 93.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So they are able to turn it off and back on again. But they realize they also need to throw the main breaker, basically, which is in a shed on the other side of the island. Arnold goes to turn it off and back on again. He's gone for too long. They realize something must have happened and so at that point Ellie and Muldoon go to and actually I'm going to something I noticed last night when I rewatched this film every single character, except for the children and Ellie Sattler, are listed by their last name in the credits.
Speaker 1:So it says like it says Grant, it says Malcolm, it says Hammond, it says Ellie, and it's not Alan Grant or John Hammond, it's just last name. But then it's Ellie, Lex and Tim for the woman and two children. And that bothered the crap out of me and I'm doing it myself. Sattler and Muldoon go to turn the main breaker on, basically, and they discover that the velociraptors have escaped as well. So Sattler is able to, with Hammond's help, get things turned back on and she is attacked by a velociraptor and Muldoon is attacked and killed by. There are three velociraptors total, killed by the other two. During this time, Grant has gotten the children, after many scary moments, back to the visitor center, where he leaves them in the dining room and he goes to try to find the other adults, where the two remaining velociraptors find the children and stalk them through the kitchen that's what I remember yeah, it's, it's a terrifying scene.
Speaker 1:At that point the children they're able to get away from the Velociraptors, get back into the control room where Lex, the older kid who they've mentioned is a computer expert she calls herself a hacker figures out how to turn everything back on so they can lock the door to keep the Velociraptors out. They are climbing through the ceiling, come out through the main entrance and are climbing down the T-Rex skeleton that's there and the Velociraptors are attacking them. And just when they are all cornered and it looks like there's nothing they can do, in comes the T-Rex and kills the Velociraptors. They're fighting each other as Hammond and Malcolm show up in the Jeep and they they drive off. They're able to get to um, the phones had been out too because of the uh computers being down. So they were able to call and get a helicopter and they, they leave and cue the uh John Williams score, music swelling. And we're done so. Of all the people on the island, let's see, I think five out of the eight have survived so the two kids both make it.
Speaker 2:Two kids does their grandpa make it.
Speaker 1:yes, hammond makes it. Um, oh, I guess it's six. So six out of the nine, because the two kids, hammond, malcolm, grant Sattler and six, yeah, six. And of the ones who died, nedry Muldoon and Arnold.
Speaker 2:So Samuel L Jackson, the guy who played Newman and the clever girl guy, okay, so Jeff Goldblum makes it.
Speaker 1:Jeff Goldblum makes it, although he does not in the book.
Speaker 2:All right, All right. So well, you've already started a little bit of your analysis with the gender, but where do you want to go?
Speaker 1:little bit of your analysis with the gender, but where do you want to go? So I want to start with that, because that was the thing that really stuck with me from the experience of reading the book and seeing the film was my dissatisfaction with the female characters, with Sattler and Lex. Now, some of it had to do with the fact that Lex was the younger child in the book, so in the movie she's older and she's very much a big sister, so she is protective of Tim, whereas Tim was protective of Lex in the book because he was the older brother.
Speaker 1:And some of that's age dynamics with children. But she was a whiny, miserable. Nothing in the book and I hate to say that about a kid, but that's how she was written. She in the book, tim, was like a dinosaur enthusiast which they carried over into the movie. But he was also the computer hacker, so he saved the day in both scenarios, like he understood dinosaurs better and he was the one who was able to get the computers up and running at the end, and so Lex was just so.
Speaker 2:Lex in the book is just someone to be in peril. That's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's just a damsel in distress who's annoying. It really frustrated me and like she's supposed to be a little kid.
Speaker 1:But Spielberg fixed that a little bit, spielberg fixed that, giving her the computer hacking experience, like that's what she calls herself. She's like I'm a hacker, that's what I do, she calls herself. She's like I'm a hacker, that's what I do. And then also in the kitchen scene she is really taking the lead, like there's a point where tim is terrified and like she's saying come, come over here. And he's, he's just too scared, he just can't do it.
Speaker 1:And a ladle falls and gets the attention of a velociraptor.
Speaker 1:She's way at the other end of the kitchen and so she grabs another ladle falls and gets the attention of a velociraptor. She's way at the other end of the kitchen and so she grabs another ladle and is tapping on the floor to get the uh, the velociraptor's attention and then she climbs into. It's hard to tell what it is, but it's like a, like a cabinet or something that has a rolling closed door. So she, she taps to get their attention and then jumps into that uh, rolling cabinet and then is trying to close the door and can't. And you don't realize this until it happens you see the velociraptor coming, you think he's gonna or she's gonna get her, and um, then you realize the velociraptor is about to attack her reflection, because that's what we're seeing, that's what the velociraptor is seeing, and so, like it's not clear if lex thought that through, but she did think through enough and was heroic enough to to figure out a way to protect her brother yeah not in the book, not in the book.
Speaker 1:Similarly, sattler is. All I really remember of her in the book is that she is like devoted to grant. She's supposed to be smart and beautiful in the way that men describe women as smart and beautiful. You know where it's like okay. And there is one scene that's cool, that didn't make it into the movie where I don't recall the details but she has to jump from the roof of a building into a swimming pool and it's this like harrowing, scary, difficult thing that she has to do and she is a badass about it. The problem is that in that scene we know what she's thinking because it's, you know, omniscient, third person narrator and she all she's thinking about is like I'm doing this for alan, oh, and if I recall correctly, she and alan are not overtly in an overtly romantic relationship, but I think she wants to be, but like there's definitely a like oh, alan, in her inner monologue.
Speaker 1:So I'm very glad that Steven Spielberg did not allow Michael Crichton to just write the script himself he brought in. There were two script directors. One is credited, one is not. I don't know who the uncredited one is. Off the top of my head it's known, it's just, I don't remember, but the credited one is a man named david cupp and it's clear to me that spielberg and these script doctors like read the book and were like, um, we're gonna need to make some changes here, because we get two female characters. We get dr sattler, who has that one really cool action sequence in the book, but that's it and it's all for the love of a man.
Speaker 2:And then we get lex, who is like just whiny and annoying the entire time yeah, yeah, like it sounds like her job was just to be in peril, just yes, just to be something that tim cared about, that was in trouble, which you know could have been like I don't know his favorite shirt, like a shirt that he felt sentimental about, but yeah, still a shirt. Yeah, sure, yeah so and that's.
Speaker 1:It's interesting how, with like spielberg at the helm and with the script doctors and even with like casting decisions and things like that, they did a really good job of making the film both intentionally and unintentionally feminist. So there is an overtly feminist moment that Sattler has. It's when she and Muldoon are going to go to the shed on the other side of the island, turn on the electricity, basically, and Hammond is saying you know, at that point Malcolm is injured. It's Malcolm, Hammond, Muldoon and Sattler. That's who's there. And Sattler's like I'm going. And Hammond says, well, really I should be going instead of you. She's like you should, why? And he says, well, because I'm a and you're a because he's saying I'm a man, You're a woman, Even though Hammond is in his 70s and she is a late 20-something, fully capable.
Speaker 2:With Hammond who's saying he should go instead of her. Yes, oh, okay, okay, yeah. And the guy who's broken his leg is not.
Speaker 1:Malcolm cannot.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, he's already going. Uh-huh so and um so she says to him, she sighs and she says we can discuss sexism and survival situations when I get back nice which is amazing.
Speaker 1:So there's like there are, there are these overt moments. Now the other thing and I know this was not intentional, but I think is really interesting, particularly post-Roe is the way that they make sure they maintain population control on the island is all the dinosaurs are female. They manipulate the genes to make sure that all the dinosaurs are female. So in a single-sex environment they cannot reproduce female. So in a single sex environment they cannot reproduce. Except that because the DNA has degraded over the millions of years, from what they got in the mosquito blood, they filled in gaps with DNA from frogs and other amphibians. And there are frogs that are able to spontaneously change gender in single-sex environments so that they can reproduce. And there's a point where Grant and the children come across a nest of eggs that have hatched and he realizes that must have been what happened.
Speaker 1:Now, why I find this interesting, especially post-Roe, is that this corporation is a bunch of men making reproductive decisions for all female creatures, and one of the things that I know I didn't get when I was 14, but I was soon to figure out is that a powerful group, government, corporation that forces you to reproduce when you don't want to is the other side of the coin of a powerful government or corporation that prevents you from reproducing when you want to, and the fact that there are only two female characters, with the exception of all the dinosaurs, in this film makes that feel very pointed in a way that I know Steven Spielberg did not intend and I know Michael Crichton didn't intend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:This is a total tangent, but hey, that's what we do, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm thinking about when we went to in 2020, before everything shut down you and I went to see the notorious rbg exhibit where it was in skokie, illinois, and one of the things that I learned from that exhibit was that when ruth bader ginsburg was arguing in front of the supreme court, like about sort of reproductive freedoms, like, one of the things that she was arguing in front of the Supreme court like about sort of reproductive freedoms, like one of the things that she was arguing against was the U S military, which was forcing female service members to have abortions.
Speaker 2:So, like your point about, like, if you're control, if you're forcing people to have kids ie not letting them have abortions you have the power to force them not to ie making them have abortions, which is what? So so Ginsburg, bader Ginsburg was such an advocate for, you know, bodily autonomy for women, which makes the anti-abortion crowd crazy. But actually it started with Bader Ginsburg arguing that our female service members should not be forced to have abortion, and that is feeling really alive for me in this tension you're pointing to right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's similar to. I mean, forced sterilization is a similar sort of thing. Well, it's similar to. I mean, forced sterilization is a similar sort of thing. It's Creighton got to something that I don't think he personally understood. Now, I mean, I'm not saying this man wasn't brilliant. He was a very, very smart scientist and writer, but he did not see half of the population as fully human and I believe I'm sure he had other, like he also had smartest guy in the room, um, syndrome, I believe. Uh, like he spoke against the idea of climate change being human, caused to the senate, which I'm like. Why are you having a thriller writer anyway? Um, so Anyway, so.
Speaker 1:I think it's really what the story is about is you cannot control life, and any attempts to do so will inevitably fail. Do so will inevitably fail, which I think is a really important lesson in our patriarchal society. In the same way that when you have a high control group religion, anything and you do not allow information like sex education or things like that, you do not take away the desire.
Speaker 1:You just send it underground. And so I think that Ian Malcolm, as the chaos theory mathematician, has it right for the most part, because he's saying, like everything is chaos and you cannot know where the failure will come from. You cannot know. He says life finds a way, and I don't think he's wrong, but I think it's. I prefer it's like that's kind of a positive way of saying Murphy's Law Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, or that chaos will find a way, that human's going to human, that tropical storm's going to tropical storm, hunter's going to hunt you know all of that. So I think that that is really, really interesting.
Speaker 1:Now the other side of it that I think is marvelous about this film and I feel like is lost in the greater franchise. They have some amazing actors in this and they had state of the art special effects At this point, even though CGI, for being over 30 years old, is pretty darn good. It was seamless when I was 14. Now I can see the seams. I prefer the ones where they're interacting with a puppet, with a live something, because that's actually there. But even when they're looking at something that's not there, it's not like Roger Rabbit, which we talked about a few weeks ago, because you don't expect Roger Rabbit to be real looking, whereas the brachiosaurus when they see them, you can just tell that there's a little bit to it that looks animated.
Speaker 1:In any case. The awe and wonder that the characters feel, even the ones who Malcolm is disapproving from the beginning. He thinks this is a terrible idea from the beginning, but even he is awed by the majesty of these creatures, which is amazing, like. I really appreciate that. And last night, after I finished the film, my 13 year old came in and said so what's your favorite part? What are you going to talk about tomorrow on the podcast?
Speaker 1:And I said clever girl is my favorite part, and the reason for that is Muldoon is a very like, no-nonsense, practical person. He understands these creatures better than anyone else in some ways, because he understands hunting behavior, he understands big game, he understands that sort of thing. He understands big game, he understands that sort of thing and he has a great deal of respect for their abilities and what they can do. And the moment when he says clever girl, he recognizes he and Sattler are going to the shed to turn the electricity back on and she says OK, it's close enough, we can make a run for it. He's like no, we can't, we're being hunted Cause he can. He realizes it even though she doesn't, because he's got the the background, and he's like go, I've got your back.
Speaker 1:And so he is doing all the things that he has been trained for. He knows how to do this. And he realizes at the last minute that he's been outsmarted because one velociraptor has his attention while the other one is creeping up beside him. And so his very last words are clever girl, and just that, like that, and it's there's this awestruck, like he is truly impressed and terrified, and that is why I really that.
Speaker 1:That's what I love about it and why I don't really pay much attention to the rest of the franchise because it's just become monster movies, whereas that is about like we can't control nature. We can be awed and impressed and just find wonder in this natural world, but we cannot control it. And so that moment is like this combination of the fact that he is so overwhelmed with respect for this creature that's about to kill him that he doesn't scream, he's, he just, he gives, gives props where it's due, and that, I think, is just really, really cool. And and why I think this film is I mean, it's it's been added to the the registry for, you know, for films that are culturally significant. That's why that's amazing.
Speaker 2:I think it's interesting that that's the moment that you hold up to, because we think about the sort of terror or horror I feel like Professor Day gave us a distinction and now I've forgotten it but just the fear. You think about the fear of that moment and you are focusing on the character and that that's on brandon for you you've met me, huh yeah, yeah, like the, the actual.
Speaker 2:The character is what is like, really like lighting you up right now. Not the fear or the like. I mean you. You started this by saying your bus stop. Mate. Read this like delightfully gruesome death scene. That's not what you're talking about right now. There is a death scene that immediately follows, right like we see him get torn apart.
Speaker 1:um no, there's nothing that's particularly. It's a PG-13 movie, so you know he's going to die and I think that there's a lunge but you don't really see anything. But yeah, there's a death right after that. But I don't remember that. I remember his face.
Speaker 2:Right right, Because the character is what you're interested in.
Speaker 1:So, that.
Speaker 2:That jibes with the way that I know you to receive and perceive fiction. Well, is there anything else? That was like kind of core that you wanted to make sure that you lift it up.
Speaker 1:So one thing that I I I want to talk about Malcolm gets the thesis of the film where he says your scientists were so busy trying to figure out if they could, they didn't think about whether they should. And there is this, this uh like long conversation with Hammond Gennaro, the lawyer, who's like we're going to make so much money, and then the two scientists and the mathematician, where all three of the subject matter experts basically the non-capitalist, non-lawyers are saying like you're messing with stuff you shouldn't be. And I agree for the most part with what Malcolm has to say there. He's saying you're messing with things you don't understand. You haven't thought about whether you should do this. Is this like why are we doing this? Like you're doing this for entertainment. And you know everyone, like all the people who have expertise in the area, agree with him.
Speaker 1:But one thing he says really bothered me when I watched it last night, which is you're standing on the shoulders of geniuses and you haven't paid for this knowledge. Um, making it sound like you know it was too easy for you to do this. And I think I understand what he's trying to say, which is that Hammond, as a businessman, used money to make play things. I think is what he's saying, but what it sounds like is to earn innovation, you have to start from the beginning. And you know, one of the things like that my spouse says all the time, which I think they must hammer home in engineering school, is like we stand on the shoulders of giants. You know, anything we change is because of what came before, which I agree with, like that's how humanity progresses. You know, if we had to reinvent the wheel every generation, we'd never get anywhere.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I think it was that scene is written in a way that is just not clear what it is that Malcolm is trying to say. But that really stuck with me last night when I was watching it, because I was just like no, I don't have a problem with them using the technology that we have. In the same way that a lot of medical innovations came about because of came about because of horrible Nazi experiments, and so you know, like, okay, we're moving forward with being able to save people's lives because of these horrible, unethical experiments, and we need to hold that and be aware of it. But that doesn't change the fact that we can use knowledge if we have it.
Speaker 2:I don't read it that way. No, I don't, I don't read it. I hear what you're saying and I I agree, I think it's unclear. I mean, I think the thing that I'm hearing in the you didn't pay for it is the idea of paying one's dues, which is not the same as not using the innovation right. It's sort of like right. It's sort of like like I I'm a karate kai, study karate.
Speaker 2:I'm not very good, I'm, I've been doing it for a couple of years, I'm not terrible and like, I learn from the tricks that my sensei teaches me and that's fine. But I can't jump from day one to black belt. I have to pay my dues in the dojo and like make the mistakes that are mine to make so that, moving forward, I don't make them as I get, as I progress down this path to. That's more like what it sounds like. Like if, in some ways, like you didn't pay for it because you've got hundreds of dinosaurs, if you had taken one and done this and studied it and figured out how, like where, the things are that you're not anticipating, and see it like nip at a handler, escape from its enclosure, like the things that it then does, then you would have paid for the knowledge and you would have been prepared. They didn't pay for it because they went straight from zero to 60 without doing all of the incremental knowledge gathering.
Speaker 2:To me that's what I'm hearing, especially from a chaos theorist. Yeah, as opposed to you, sh, you have to start over from the wheel. Now that the, the Nazi knowledge that you're talking about, I mean like that's a different. I think that's a different sort of philosophical conversation that that involves again, like I mean there's lots and lots of old conversations about this, there's this, there's a. There's a question in the town would, if you discover that a, that a load-bearing beam in a house was stolen, how do you make compensation for that right? Do you owe the original owner just the cost of the beam or do you owe them the cost of the house? Do you have to deconstruct the house and give it back? Like that's a much, much bigger question. I don't think that's what the Malcolm character was getting at. To me it's more like you didn't pay your dues. I'm putting quotes around that in terms of even this scientific experiment in order to get it where it currently lives.
Speaker 1:I like that because I I had myself thinking like what would pay your dues? Look like what is it he's trying to say and like starting with a dinosaur. That's an herbivore and small.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then do a and then maybe do have a family of them or maybe then do a predator, but like to go from like there are no dinosaurs to there's an ecosystem with dozens of species, like that that's. They didn't pay for that.
Speaker 1:Well, and that that gets to. I mean it's. It's an indictment of capitalism in a lot of ways, completely.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I think that that I mean yes, not, I think that was in the book and in fact they made Hammond a kind of twinkly grandpa type. There's a little bit of him being a bit amoral, like he has. He's not even remotely concerned about the uh worker who died at the very beginning, like he just, you know, it's a, it's a hiccup, rather than a human being. But in the book, like he finds his finds, his grandchildren annoying and everything's about making sure that this, this opens up and the franchising and the. I mean like it's all about the money to him, and yet a little bit of that in the film there's a point where he is in the dining room talking to Sattler saying that when he first came to America from Scotland, his first scheme was a flea circus and everything was mechanized. So there was, you know, a little seesaw, there was a carousel that moved around but people come to see it and the children were like mom, mom, I can see the fleas. Look, the fleas are on the tightrope and it was just mechanized. And he says to Sattler, like I wanted to give them something real and I created something real here.
Speaker 1:And that hit different this time around as well, because it's like, but it's not real. You know you may have cloned dinosaurs, but they're not real. But they're not real. You know these are extinct animals that you found a way to resurrect, that don't have ancestry or descendants. They don't have, like you know, you have to figure out how to enclose them, you have to figure out how to feed them, you have to figure out how to handle when they're sick. So they're not real.
Speaker 1:And in fact, there are fan theories, which I appreciate, which kind of get to the fact that these dinosaurs do not reflect what we know, at least now, to be true about dinosaurs. They look like what we thought dinosaurs looked like in 93. And so in the fan theory is that Hammond didn't really clone dinosaurs. He created creatures using DNA from many things that look like what we think dinosaurs look like. Oh, interesting, like he was maliciously doing that just in the, what they were doing with the, the dna from the mosquitoes and mixing with other dna. Like that's not creating real dinosaurs, that's creating some kind of hybrid, weird thing. And you know, ultimately and this is something I was impressed my 13 year old said like it's, it's a frankenstein, and that is that's what it is, because, similarly, frankenstein goes nuts, or Frankenstein's monster, excuse me, goes nuts because Frankenstein refuses to make him a bride of. When you start playing God and deciding what gets to live and how it gets to live, it will inevitably descend into chaos.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking about it in relation to King Kong, which we spoke about recently with Professor Day, and in some ways it very similar and in some ways it's not at all, because I think the thing about Kong, in terms of your distinction, what's real and what's not, kong was real, right, he had a life on Skull Island. He existed independent of those who would exploit him, versus these dinosaurs, who, who did not, who did not. So it's still. There is still a like you can't contain nature and like sort of the nature versus technology, nature wins. There is still that message, but it's a very different sort of vehicle which is kind of interesting. It's a very similar and different like. In some ways it's very similar. It's this giant monster, but in a but it's coming from a very different angle. Yeah, I guess that's the right metaphor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow, okay. One other thing I want to mention Um, and it's just because so, in our sister podcast, um, because we took so long between episodes, I mentioned it in every episode for like three or four running. What is my, my pet peeve about the fact that in a lot of pop culture, characters who are not interested in having children end up having children, and I I really don't like the fact that we force that in so many cases. Something I find really interesting about this film and the franchise is that Grant makes it clear from the beginning he does not want kids, and that's part of like the longstanding kind of joke and part of what actually makes this a little bit feminist is that Grant is the one who is very uncomfortable with kids and is protecting them the entire time. And you know, at the end, when they're in the helicopter on the way back, they're cuddling and falling asleep on him because they have, like they bonded with him over this time, whereas Sattler has said like she wants kids and like kind of teasingly encouraged the kids to hang out with him during the tour before things went wrong, saying like it'll be good for you In future films when they bring Laura Dern and Sam Neill back. They are no longer together because he didn't want kids and she did, and though they had a loving relationship and cared very deeply for each other, that was going to be a deal breaker and I appreciate that. I really appreciate that Because it's clear that from this film that Grant is not like.
Speaker 1:It's not that he dislikes kids although early on it seems like he does. It's that he doesn't know how to handle them. He doesn't know what to say to them, he doesn't know how to like deal with them and he doesn't want any in his life. That doesn't mean he hates kids. It doesn't mean he's he's. He's going to be like a bad adult in a child's life. He just doesn't want them and she does, and that's okay. So I think that that is so. I think that that is admirable, that, as much as I wish this franchise would not are going to get married and have babies, and that's not what happens, because reproductive freedom is reproductive freedom.
Speaker 2:Okay, there's a lot, so I will do my best. I'll do my best. So one of the things that I heard loud and clear is that this film corrects some of the misogyny and sexism that was very present in the book of the same name and that was done in some ways intentionally. In some ways intentionally so. For instance, some of the lines that sattler that sattler is given to say, for instance, I'll talk about sexism in dangerous situations when I get back and the thing about and then the dinosaurs killed. Man and woman inherits the earth. So she's given some explicitly kind of like wave the feminist flag dialogue to say so that obviously wasn't intentional. But then there are other things that happened that maybe were kind of the product of circumstance. Ie spielberg wanted to work with this child actor who was a boy, who was younger than the kind of lead kid needed to be, and so we ended up with the older child being the female child who was actually capable and smart and brave and not annoying as hell, which may or may not have been intentionally feminist moves on the parts of Spielberg and the other movie makers. You know, as a correction to what was in the book. We also get and I think you are right in saying that Crichton did not do this on purpose. But we get some other sort of meta lessons about bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom, since 100% of the dinosaurs are female, which the male scientists believed would keep them from reproducing, and they do anyway, using their skills from their frog ancestors. So I think that that was an interesting piece.
Speaker 2:We talked at some length about the final words of Muldoon, who was the big game hunter, subject matter expert, so in some ways he was the one most equipped to survive this and he is outsmarted by a velociraptor and when he realizes he has been outsmarted, he says this line that you repeat to yourself sometimes. He says this line that you repeat to yourself sometimes clever girl, which is his final words. The thing that stayed with you all these years later, that continues to live in your brain, is not the fear of, oh my gosh, this terrifying death lizard has outsmarted me. But wow, this terrifying death lizard has outsmarted me, which is really interesting. It's not the emotion of the fear which horror trades on. It's not about the emotional release. It really is about the character and the awe of nature. We talked a bit about sort of the subject matter experts all being like this is a bad idea, this is a bad idea, this is a bad idea and the capitalists being like, yeah, but we're gonna make so much money and the ways in which Crichton got that right that that feels like a lesson that we can continue to learn from and corollary or maybe kind of following that.
Speaker 2:You and I had a bit of an exchange around Malcolm's conversation with Hammond where he says you know you well. He says the thesis your sciences were busy thinking about whether they could. They didn't think about whether they should. And then he also says you didn't, you didn't pay for this, you didn't earn this, which I think. If we read that as him saying you don't get to use innovation of of previous, you know, standing on the shoulders of geniuses. If we read that as him saying you can't use the innovation of previous geniuses, like this doesn't make sense and we disagree with him. But if we can read it as him saying like you didn't pay your dues, metaphorically speaking, to get this experiment to the stage where it is now you jumped too fast from no dinosaurs to a whole ecosystem of dinosaurs then it does make sense and kind of fits with the earlier thesis that we heard you didn't think about whether or not you should, so there was a little bit of smoothing out there.
Speaker 2:I think there was also some interesting conversations about the ways that this movie kind of in the meta context for Gen Xers, the ways in which you, as a 14 year old watching this like, really in some ways received it with open arms because it was made for you and so, even though it wasn't one that, in your words, you wrapped around yourself as a piece of identity, it still is one that you hold with a lot of affection because it was made for you as a 14 year old moviegoer for a summer blockbuster, like you were a key target audience and that that just felt good. Um, let me think. Let me think you also had some, some things to say about the kind of the technology of the special effects and the ways in which in 93 it was seamless. Today you can see some of the seams, though it still, you know, sort of holds up. I love the fan theory about like this, wasn't that?
Speaker 2:It helps to explain the fact that these dinosaurs don't look like what. Now, 30, however, many years later, 30 years later, we know dinosaurs actually did look like, because John Hammond didn't care about scientific veracity, he cared about money and that's what people expected out of dinosaurs. So he had a scientist go find like frogs and lizards and whatever to make to, to fill in the sequences, to make sure we had a creature that looked like what we were expecting. That feels like brilliant headcanon. Honestly, I really, really like that. What am I forgetting from our conversation?
Speaker 1:Just the experience of reading this book and watching this film and after having gotten pushback from an adult about my disdain for the way that the female characters are written in this book. And here's the thing Michael Crichton doesn't write nuanced characters. That's not what he does. He writes smarter than average airport books. So you put the book down feeling like you learned something. And it's not that you didn't, it's just that it's not as smart as you think it is.
Speaker 2:You didn't learn as much as you think you did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah exactly so, which I kind of know because Mr Anderson, my phenomenal middle school science teacher, made sure we did learn and you know, and I believe that that Creighton understood all of the stuff, sure, and all of that, I'm not saying that. But you know to make something that's a page turner and scientifically accurate and all that. But you sacrifice character when you're focused on plot like that and focused on like interesting scientific thought. So, just to be fair to Crichton, none of his characters are nuanced fully. I mean, this is not the importance of being earnest.
Speaker 2:Right, which also is right, so I'm actually going to bring it back to karate here. So my sensei teaches us that we do these exercises that are ridiculous, that you would never actually do in a fight, because they're so big. You make these big moves where you're starting from way back to do a block. You start from way behind your head. You would never do that. And what he always says is we start really big in these big squares because in the field you have to cut the corners off, and if you start small and you cut the corners off, there's nothing left. And I think that's what happens with female characters in Crichton and other writers like him, where he has to cut the corners off because it's a page turner. We have to keep going. The action and the plot is the driver. But if you start with characters who are already smaller than they maybe ought to be, you cut the corners off and you're left with a cardboard cut out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a Reddit thread. I did some research last night. There's a Reddit thread that's just titled has Michael Crichton ever actually met a woman? But my experience of feeling disdain for the way that these characters were written in the book and then being very pleasantly surprised by their characterization in the film, After having gotten pushback from an adult who, as I recall, had also read the book and I think I now, looking back, can see that that adult was like well, I didn't notice anything wrong, so she must be wrong, you must be wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yep, no, it's very's valid, it's very validating, it was validating it helped me understand that especially kids, I think, who are, who are female, learn you're doing it wrong, yeah, and so often, uh, like, internalize that sense of like, oh, I must've gotten it wrong. And so that was really helpful for me to recognize. No, just because that person is an adult doesn't mean they know what they're talking about and that this must have been bothersome to Spielberg, to somebody, To somebody. And the fact that it was bothersome to a white male director was like, all right, I'm not just being oversensitive, that was great, that was that. That was a kind of a seminal moment in my, my teen years.
Speaker 2:Cool. All right, that was fun. So it's my turn next. Yes, and I am going to bring my deep thoughts about dead poets society. So we're going to go from the sort of action to serious drama.
Speaker 1:um looking, forward to that dagger.
Speaker 2:I see before me, see, I remember, oh, captain, my captain anyway. So I'm looking forward to that. Now, listener, if you're having deep thoughts about our deep thoughts, please share them with us. We really want to know. What did we miss? What surprised you? What do you think we're wrong about? Please let us know. You can send us a text from whatever pod platform you're listening on. You can put a comment on Patreon if you're one of our patrons. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:If you're one of our patrons or you can send us an email at guygirlsmedia at gmailcom. We are also now on Facebook at facebookcom. Slash DT A S S podcast. Thanks so much. We'll see you next time. Theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from Incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture, no-transcript.