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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 Men in Black
You know what the difference is between you and me? I make podcasting look gooooood.
This week, Emily dives into the remarkably subversive 1997 film Men in Black. Despite looking like nothing more than an entertaining summer blockbuster that merged sci-fi and comedy, MiB actually asks the audience to rethink what they know about immigration, xenophobia, race, policing, government, and even the buddy-cop genre. Tracie and Emily truly enjoy revisiting this old favorite that seems especially prescient in the current political climate.
Take a listen and we promise not to use the flashy-thing memory-messer-upper on you!
Mentioned in this episode:
https://collider.com/men-in-black-unconscious-bias/
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.
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This is an excellent example of asking your audience to question what they know about police officers, about military, about the people who are supposed to protect us, who make snap judgments and assumptions, and, because it's talking about aliens, it allows us to be entertained by it.
Speaker 2:What others might name stupid shit. You know matters about aliens. It allows us to be entertained by it and reconsidering beloved media and sharing what we learn. Come overthink with us and if you get value from the show, please consider supporting us. You can become a patron on Patreon or send us a one-time tip through Ko-fi. Both links are in the show notes and thanks.
Speaker 1: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 Men in Black with my sister, tracy Guy-Decker, and with you, let's dive in. So, tracy, I'm sure you've seen this movie, but tell me what you know or remember about, and we're just talking about the first one. There's been a continuation, but we're not worrying about those. But what do you remember about Men in Black?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I friggin' loved it. I was a junior in college and I just thought it was the beasties, loved it so much. This one could have been mine, like I loved it so much. So I won't do all the things I remember, but I was. I was taken with the way that, like will smith's like rebelliousness was part of actually, like when he drags the like at one point, like they're taking a written test and all of these military guys are like the pens pushing through the paper and will smith like drags the table over and it makes that terrible sound and like they're all looking at him like he's failing the test because he's being like disrespectful. I'm putting quotes around that, but but he was actually, like you know, demonstrating his problem solving ability or whatever some of the one-liners are just so beautiful.
Speaker 2:You know just so, just so good. You know what the difference is between you and me. I make this look good and um and and also some of the like. It was like it was tongue-in-cheek science fiction in a way that just like felt so resonant and like fun and like for me, like we knew there was a scientific word for the memory eraser, but like Jay just calls it flashy thingy. Did you flashy thingy her? How many times have you flashy thingy her? Like that's how we talked in the nineties.
Speaker 2:You know, so, like those are the, those, those things just sort of like stayed with me, um, and, to be honest, like I have not examined it whatsoever, like not even a little bit, like I loved it and I don't know what's hiding in there, but it is definitely furniture of my mind, most definitely, most definitely. So why are we talking about it today? What's? What's the stick for you?
Speaker 1:So I also really loved this film. It came out the summer I turned 18, or the summer I was 18 rather right before I went to college. Now, this is something we talk about our dad a lot, in part because he's no longer with us. Our mom owned an art gallery throughout our childhood. She owned it for nearly 40 years, and so when I went to college, something that was really important to me was I wanted to have movie posters tacked to the wall, like other kids. Oh yeah, because we did not have that as kids?
Speaker 2:We did not. That was off limits.
Speaker 1:Everything had to be framed appropriately.
Speaker 2:That never happened in our house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I feel like the first if it wasn't the first it was really important that I got a Men in Black poster to put up in my freshman dorm room, that I got a men in black poster to put up in my freshman dorm room, the um, which you know. So that would have been August of 1997 when I moved into my freshman dorm and the film came out in like I don't know, may or June somewhere around there. Yeah, wow, so, and that was it was just. I loved it, I owned it on VHS and what's interesting is I have a regular movie night with my family and so I decided to watch that with with my kids for movie night recently.
Speaker 1:And so when I I posted on social media about you know, it really still holds up, and you said, oh, we should do it for for deep thoughts, and at first I was like, oh no, I don't know if there's anything under the surface on this, it's just delightful. No, there's always something I realized this film is remarkably subversive in ways that what's amazing about it is that it has these subversions that go so under the radar that even people who consistently look for these things, like you and me, didn't necessarily see them. Even in 2024. When I'm watching it with my kids, I'm still just like it's funny, it's delightful, but, you know, thinking about them. It's got some really great messaging and I think that it is significant that this kind of subversion that is packaged in a way that is entertaining for everyone was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed the Adams family movies in the nineties, oh, which you also love, which I also love, and are also subversive in a very entertaining package that appeals to everyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, cool, all right. Do you want to tell me what we're going to talk about, or do you want to jump into the synopsis of not?
Speaker 1:making snap judgments, the importance of recognizing what is actually threatening and what is not. There is some interesting conversation about race within this film.
Speaker 2:Oh right, the target practice Tiffany, the white girl in the hood with the theoretical physics, or whatever.
Speaker 1:And farther from that as well. There's some stuff that I don't know if they would, I don't know if they wouldn't do it in 2024, but it was things that really engaged with questions of race in a way that allowed you to laugh, you to laugh, and there is a reminder of the importance of like little things to a larger world, and so it's just a. There's a lot of metaphor in it that you don't notice, because it's hilarious.
Speaker 2:Cool, all right. Well, remind me of the plot, because, to be honest, I have vignettes. It's like a series of postcards. When I pull up the Men in Black file in my memory banks, there's a series of postcards there that I know do connect into a plot, but in my head they're kind of out of order. There's the egger suit and there's like oh, that was your auntie. And then there's the. Of course it's intact because it's not here. They're all out of order. So help me out, put them back in order for me. What happens in this movie?
Speaker 1:So we open up on a man driving a truck or a cargo van somewhere around the Mexican border, he gets pulled over by police it's not ICE, because that didn't exist yet, but something along those lines saying like, where are you coming from? What were you doing? And the driver's like, oh, I was fishing in Puerto Vallarta. So the police opens the back of the truck and it is full of migrants from Mexico and one of the things I didn't mention this, but there are a lot of conversations about immigration in this and so the police officer says, oh, you were fishing, eh. And so the police officer says oh, you were fishing, eh, me, I would have thrown him back about these migrants, which kind of gives us a sense of who this man is. So he pulls them all out, has them lined up, is yelling at the driver when up comes a old fashioned black car and two men wearing black step out. There is Tommy Lee Jones, who plays Kay, and then his partner, who is older than Tommy Lee Jones, who plays D, and they say we'll take it from here. We're from INS, section six, and they go person to person, talking to each person in Spanish, until they get to one man who clearly does not understand what they're saying and they tell the driver of the van you can go, take your passengers with you. But we're going to talk to this guy and the police officer is like really mad. He's got a whole team of people with him. They're like there is no Division 6 for INS.
Speaker 1:And so D and K take the one man off to on the other side of a hill and they discover the like he's. The head is actually like an animatronic head that an alien from off of Earth is is holding. Oh, it's also. I think one of the first very subversive things is when Kay says to the police there who are really mad at him. He says like no, no, no, we've got this. You need to go and keep protecting us from those dangerous aliens. So they're talking to Mikey is the name of the alien. They're speaking English. Mikey is speaking alien language. When the head police officer comes over the ridge and sees them, mikey starts running towards him. D tries to shoot Mikey and is unable to get his gun in time. So K shoots Mikey everywhere, the jerk police officer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like blue goo everywhere yeah.
Speaker 1:Um. And so Kay comes up and says like, oh, you got a little entrails there. And then the rest of the police arrive, and so Kay uses the neuralyzer on them to erase their memories. And uh, a team shows up to clean up and he tells a story to the police officers about what happened. That to replace their memory. He then goes to talk to D, who's like I hesitated, and uh, he kind of go start saying like they're beautiful, aren't they looking up at the stars? And uh, the stars, we never look at them anymore. And he's like well, you know, I really will miss the chase. And Kay says to him no, d, you won't. And he erases his memory. So that's the end of that introduction. From there we come to New York City where Officer James Edwards of the which stands for knock your punk ass down.
Speaker 2:Just as an aside, I live in Baltimore and I was driving past the fire department was responding to something the other day, something not like non-emergent, and they were walking in and the back of their, the back of their shirts say BFD and I was like, yeah, you are.
Speaker 1:So this is James Edwards played by Will Smith at his, at the height of his humor and charm. Like not that the man is not still incredibly handsome and charming and funny, but oh my.
Speaker 2:God, yeah, he still had that level of confidence. I don't know if it was real or not, but he conveyed a level of confidence that was just magnetic.
Speaker 1:So he is running after a suspect. The suspect is doing crazy crap like parkour, basically Like parkour yeah, and he manages to catch him a couple times.
Speaker 1:The guy jumps off a bridge and lands on the street and is fine, edwards is. The other cops aren't able to keep up because Edwards is running so fast and so is this, this suspect. So when the suspect jumps off the bridge there's a an open topped double decker bus coming, one of those like tourist buses, and so Edwards jumps onto the tourist bus. Apparently, will Smith ad libbedbed this line. It's just raining black people in new york, yeah, I remember that. Um, long story short, he manages to finally catch the guy, um, at I think it's the guggenheim museum, and the guy uh starts talking about like he's coming, it's gonna be the end of the world, blah, blah, blah. And then he his eyes like kind of blink sideways, which freaks Edwards out. Of course, at this point they're on the roof of the building and the suspect jumps over the edge. He had also at one point pulled a weird gun on Edwards that Edwards like slapped out of his hand and it fell and like burst into flames and disappeared. While he's debriefing his lieutenant, who is making fun of what he said happened, the coroner comes in, played by Linda Fiorentino. Her name is Laurel, I can't remember what the last name is. Anyway, she comes in. She says I believe you come see me at the morgue. She leaves. We see her get flashy thing on the way out by Kay. Kay comes in and says those weren't eyelids, it was gills. He was out of breath from running, very impressed with what Edwards was able to do, and talks to him about it a little bit, takes him to a pawn shop that he knows. He says if you can recognize that gun that the guy pulled on you, I think I know who sold it to him. They get there and Edwards actually knows the owner of the pawn shop. His name is Jake Jeebs, played by Tony Shalhoub. Edwards says I'm going in first. I want to talk to him. I know this guy, you know I'll figure it out. He goes in and there's stolen watches everywhere and so Edwards is talking to him about that. Then Kay arrives and holds up his gun and says I hear that you gave an import. You know, show Edwards what you've got. And Jeebs is like no, absolutely not, no. And Kay keeps who show, show edwards what you've got. And jeebs is like no, absolutely not, no. And uh k keeps saying like I'll shoot you. And they're playing good pack, good cop, bad cop. But it surprises the heck out of edwards when k actually shoots jeebs right in the head, in the head which immediately grows back. And jeebs says you insensitive prick, do you have any idea how much that stings? And so he then shows the guns, the, the, the alien guns that he has. Um, and uh, k says, like you need all that gone. I can't believe you sold it to an unlicensed cephalopoid. And Edwards says I'm coming back to talk about those Rolexes too. Kay basically says there's aliens. Then he flashy things.
Speaker 1:Edwards, who kind of wakes up at a Chinese restaurant and Kay is pretending to be telling the story to him, gives him a card saying like be here at 9am tomorrow. And uh, edwards has no idea what's going on. He's like all right, he shows up and that's where we see him taking, like the tests to uh to become a man in black, although no one knows what's going on. Like, uh, he gets there behind everyone else. I's like I'm sorry, I might have missed it, but what is this for? Why are we here? And one of the uh, one of the military guys, the marine, is like the best of the best of the best. So, sir, that's why we're here.
Speaker 1:Um, so they start with the, the written test, which is, as you mentioned, the like. They're in these, like egg-shaped seats, and the paper is too long for it to stay stable for them to write on. There's no surface for them to write on, they can't do it on their laps, and Edwards brings that table over with the screechy screech. They have the shooting gallery where there are all of these targets shaped like monsters or aliens, and all the rest of the candidates just immediately start shooting, while Edwards stops and looks around and is like kind of examining everything before he takes one shot. And Zed, who is in charge of all of this, comes up and says what happened.
Speaker 1:Edwards, he's like I hesitated. He's like can you explain to me why little Tiffany had to die? And he brings forward the target that he shot and it's a little blonde, white girl. And Edwards has this amazing and it's played for laughs, but he has this amazing explanation. He's like well, I was looking around and first I thought I was going to pop that guy you know it was hanging from the light pole but I realized he's just doing reps, he's exercising Like, and how would I like it if someone put a cap in me while I was on the treadmill at the gym, and then I was thinking about this snarling guy over here.
Speaker 1:But then I noticed he had a tissue in his hand. He's not snarling, he's sneezing Like that. That's not okay. But then I saw little Tiffany and this is a little eight year old white girl in the ghetto in the middle of the night carrying quantum physics books. That is way too advanced for her. So I figure she has got to be up to something, and so I'd appreciate it if you'd back up off me about it, or do I owe Tiffany an apology? Appreciated if you'd back up off me about it, or do I owe Tiffany an apology. So we see Zed talk to Kay saying like he's, he's basically, he's a rebel, he's a problem with authority. And Kay says and I think this is important so do I, and so it's clear that they're agreeing that they are going to offer the job to Edwards. And Zed says to the rest of the candidates thank you, you have all you. You all like you are the epitome of what we've come to expect from government training Something like you're a credit to your service.
Speaker 1:Something like that, but dry as dust, backhanded compliment about government training, right, and says we only have one more test. As dust backhanded compliment about government training. And says we only have one more test. It's an eye test, which is clearly the neuralyzer flashy thing. Kay goes and meets Edwards, tells him what's going on and then allows him to see some aliens so that he believes him. Then explains the entire situation that like it started off as like there was a government agency set up to to make contact with with life off of the planet earth. Nobody took it seriously except the aliens. So the first, first night they made contact it was just 12 people. And now there's this entire system here and we'd like you to join us. The price of it is you will be erased. No one will ever have known you existed. You must contact with every human you've ever known. I'll give you until tomorrow morning to think about it. So Edwards agrees to it. He comes in.
Speaker 1:There are a lot of funny sequences. So because he asks Kay, is this a government agency, he's like no, no, no. The government asks too many questions. Like, well then, how do you pay for it? It's like, well, we hold patents from some off-planet things and you know we put them out every once in a while and Edwards touches something that goes flying around and my favorite is when it goes into the like a room that is like full of like Erlenmeyer flasks and glass and it's just breaking everything and he's just like I will pay for that. And as as they're like walking out after it's it's neutralized, he's like sorry, it was an accident. It just doesn't matter the way like he enunciates accident. Anyway, his, um, uh, his life is erased. He, he is renamed Jay, for James, presumably, and given the black suit.
Speaker 2:And that's when you're like I make this look good, yeah, there's another line from that, like let's put it on what the last suit you'll ever wear? Yeah, yep, yep, yep the last suit you'll ever wear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yep, yep, yep. Meanwhile there is an alien. We see an alien ship crash land in upstate New York outside of a farmhouse where a man is berating his wife, mourn about the death of Edgar because, uh, as as he's talking, he was just like you're useless, beatrice. The only thing that, um, that uh pulls its weight around here is my goddamn truck. And then the? Uh, the spaceship crash, lands into the truck and the only thing that I will give Ed Edgar is like he opens the door and looks outside and he goes figures Like you got good timing, edgar, I'll give you that. So he goes out with his, with his shotgun, and there's an alien voice says like, put down your weapon. Along those lines, and he's like you can, you can have my weapon, we take it from my cold dead hands. And the alien voice goes this is acceptable, grabs him, kills him, unzips him and then wears Edgar as a suit for the rest of the film. And I have to say Vincent D'Onofrio should have won all of the awards.
Speaker 2:Yeah for playing the alien wearing an Edgar suit. Yes, yeah, agreed Because I totally like I believed it.
Speaker 1:It really seemed like something was wearing Edgar An Edgar suit. Yeah, we see him go back into the house wearing the Edgar suit, asking for sugar water from Beatrice, edgar's wife, and then leaving. Meanwhile there is some discussion of the fact that there is this unlicensed alien that has landed in upstate New York. But Zed asks Kay to go intercept someone who is leaving the borders of New York City like one of the aliens that they keep track of. He's got a visa or whatever it is, but he's supposed to stay in the borough of Manhattan or wherever it is, and so it should be an easy one. So they go to check on that and Kay takes the driver, reggie, off to the side to talk to him. And one of the greatest visual gags Reggie is saying I'm leaving but it's because of my wife, and in the back seat there's a woman like clearly at labor. And so Kay says well, come talk to me, reggie. Jay, take care of this.
Speaker 1:And like tentacles come out of the car and like, move him all like.
Speaker 1:And Kay keeps like shouting over her shoulder, like shouting over shoulder, doing great slugger jay's like, while being pulled all over the place by these tentacles, is like kiss my ass, k. So uh, the, the baby comes far more quickly than a human baby would and it's this uh like adorable little squid thing. Jay is like oh, it's actually kind of cute. And then it vomits all over him. And once Kay and Jay are back in the car, kay says anything about that. Seem weird to you, right, right, while Jay is still covered in squid baby vomit I'm going to kind of condense things a little bit, because we take forever. They discover that what's wearing the Edgar suit is what they call a bug, which is like a giant cockroach with a serious inferiority complex and that loves carnage. It is on earth because the Arquillian prince, who goes by the human name Rosenberg and has a jewelry store and a cat, has something called the galaxy. They don't know what it is, but it has this huge amount of power and can be used to create weapons Also, creating the chaos of capturing the galaxy. And killing the Arquillian prince will also mean the Arquillians will declare war on Earth. So the bug finds Rosenberg and a recent rival, the guy who played Lurch. Right right, because Barry Sonnenfeld has friends. They are meeting at a diner to chat. Lurch we don't ever know his name wants to get Rosenberg off of Earth because they know the bug has landed and they think you know. Like okay, we've got enough time to have lunch and then we'll go. But the bug in the Edgar suit shows up at the diner and reveals himself, not intentionally, puts down their food he pretends to be himself, not intentionally puts down their food. He pretends to be the waiter, puts down their food and there's roaches coming out from, uh, from his sleeves. And rosenberg very calmly says you can kill us both, but you will not find the galaxy. And he's like well, you're right about one thing he kills them both and he takes a container that it's reasonable to assume the galaxy is in, even though we still don't know what the galaxy is, and runs off. Kay and Jay have been to interview Beatrice, edgar's widow, and then they go to the morgue to check out the bodies of these two aliens as well as a human that uh, the bug killed in order to take his place as the waiter, where they meet Laurel, the coroner, again. And that's where you like yeah, it's, it's, it's all intact, but not there because Laurel, when she performs an autopsy on these bodies. It's like these are so weird, what the hell's going on. Also good to note and this is something that, like that, I wish I could use more often in real life the cat comes in with Rosenberg's body and when the police officer is rolling in the body with the cat on top of it, laurel says what's with the cat? And the cop says, oh yeah, there's a problem with the cat. And sign here. And so she signs and she's like, ok, what's a problem with the cat? And sign here. And so she signs and she's like, okay, what's the problem with the cat? And she's like, no, it's your problem.
Speaker 1:Anyway, kay and Jay show up. While Kay is examining Lurch and they are posing as doctors, jay is looking at the Rosenberg's body. They end up discovering that it is just a giant suit. Basically, they press a button on his ear, it opens and there's this tiny alien that says to prevent war, the galaxy is on Orion's belt. K is not there to hear it. J tells them and K also flashes Laurel, so she forgets everything. And that's when he's like you're going to flash away half her medical school, like you're going to give her cancer or something. Kay, have you ever flashy thinged me. They go back to MIB headquarters and are talking about, like Orion's belt. Is this grouping of stars Like this doesn't make any sense that there's a galaxy on Orion's belt.
Speaker 2:I want to just point out that at this point, kay dismisses Jay in the same way that the cops did about the aliens before he was MIB. Right, kay says it's a, it's a grouping of stars in a constellation. It doesn't make any sense. That's not what he said. Yes, and Jay's like I know what I heard.
Speaker 1:Yes, From there they go to Rosenberg's jewelry store to you know, see if maybe, like, they can find what they need to know there. It has been broken into by Edgar or the bug wearing the Edgar suit and, like all the all the glass is broken, but none of the diamonds or jewelry has been stolen. They try to chase after Edgar, cause they they see him but miss him. And that's actually Jay is like firing his MIB weapon and Kay yells at him. It's like there are so many people around. He's like we don't have time for this secrecy bullshit. The earth is is in peril and Kay yells at him. He's like there are so many people around. He's like we don't have time for this secrecy bullshit.
Speaker 1:The earth is in peril and Kay's like the earth is always in peril, like the only way that this works is if these people get to live their lives. While at the jewelry store Jay sees the many, many pictures of Rosenberg with his cat and he's like this man had a serious crush on his cat. And then he realizes Orion is probably the cat's name and by belt he meant collar. And we then find out that that is true because Laurel is petting the cat and sees like Orion is embroidered on the collar and then there's a jewel or what looks like a jewel on the collar. And then the um, there's a jewel where what looks like a jewel on the collar and laurel looks at it and and like her eyes like light up, because oh my gosh, it's so pretty realizing like that's the galaxy.
Speaker 1:The edgar suit shows up because he also realized that it had at the morgue. He shows up at the morgue yes, he also realized that it must have been with the cat and um is attacking laurel. When jay shows up he tells k I'm going in by myself because you're just going to go in and flashy thing her. I, I let me. Let me see if I can talk or talk to her. Edgar has laurel like he is hiding but has her so that she can't get away, and she's trying to signal to Jay that she's in trouble and he thinks she's coming on to him.
Speaker 1:Right, right, I need your help with something.
Speaker 2:And she's pointing down.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So Edgar gets away with, manages to grab the collar and Laurel and takes her as a hostage, grabs a cab and drives off Back at MIB headquarters. Jay is looking at murals they have and the I can't remember what World's Fair like. 1960 World's Fair, yeah, I don't know had these mock flying saucers, flying saucers, and this is something. Actually it was funny because even in 1997, I had no idea what those were Like. That was not a cultural reference. I knew. So I'm watching with my kids and they really had no idea what those were Like. The World's Fair was not something that they had any idea of. When he's looking at that mural, he's like wait a minute, do those still work? Because he's been told no, that's not actually mock, that wasn't just set up for the World's Fair, that's real. And we decided to use the World's Fair as the explanation for why those are here. So they realize that Edgar is trying to get off planet using one of those because he no longer has his own spaceship. They end up going to where those are.
Speaker 1:Edgar drops Laurel because she's really making a nuisance of herself. She's amazing in getting away from him. He drops Laurel, gets one of the spaceships up there. They were able to shoot it down. And at this point Edgar the Edgar suit is is discarded. So we see the giant bug for what it is and K says to Jay whatever happens, do not let the bug get off of this planet. And so K Screams at him and the bug has eaten their guns at this point. So Kay screams at him like eat me, eat me. So he does, and Jay is trying to get like physically, get him of cockroaches coming out of a dumpster and so he steps on one, makes this really loud crunch and that gets the bug's attention. He turns around and that's the thing you remember, like oh, was that your auntie? And as he's like coming to attack Jay, you hear the sound of the gun being turned on and Jay goes uh-oh or something along those lines, and Kay shoots from inside and he's covered in nastiness and now so is Jay.
Speaker 1:They find the galaxy in Among the Entrails. Everything seems to be fine. Great, dramatic irony. We see they're just talking. They seems to be fine. Great, dramatic, dramatic irony. We see they're just talking. They seem to think everything's okay and we see the top half of the bug is coming towards them and that justice is about to get them, it's blows up because it's been shot. And you see, laurel has picked up one of the one of the guns and has killed it.
Speaker 1:At the end. They are going back to MIB headquarters. Laurel is with them. Jay says, like can we not flashy thing her Because, like you know, she's been really helpful, blah, blah, blah. And Kay doesn't answer and looks up and says they're really beautiful, you know the stars. And Jay's like you're freaking out your partner. And Kay says I wasn't training my partner, I was training my replacement. And like, here's the neuralyzer you know days, months, years to forget and I don't want to remember this stuff anymore, especially like being down the gullet of a giant bug. And he says you know I'm going to miss the chase. And just like Dee said at the beginning, and Jay says no, you won't, flashes him.
Speaker 1:At the end we see that laurel has now become a woman in black. So now it's uh, it's jk, and l except k is now back with the girl he left behind when he become became a man in black. Um, we see it in the uh, um, a tabloid. And there is a last very topical joke that I had to explain to my kids about how Dennis Rodman yeah, dennis Rodman, yeah. And then we zoom out and we see that like the Earth as part of the Milky Way galaxy. And then we see that the Milky Way galaxy is actually in a marble that is being played with by a giant alien. And that is the end of the film.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I feel like you forgot one kind of important part, which was that the Arquellians said that they were going to destroy the Earth because of the death of the prince if the galaxy wasn't returned to them within an hour, an earthly hour.
Speaker 1:It was like one standard galactic week. And Jay says how long is that? And like one hour. Yeah, it was like one one standard galactic week. And, uh, jay says how long is that? And uh, like one hour, like what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 1:So there was a timeline on all of this, there was a ticking clock yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool. So where do we start with the analysis?
Speaker 1:Let's start with like some of the subversion and like I'm going to start with like some storytelling subversion. And I really wish I could watch this movie for the first time now because I don't know if this would still surprise me. But when Kay says I haven't been training my partner, I've been training my replacements, that surprised the heck out of me, out of me, because we see him lose a partner at the beginning. He is younger than Dee, was Tommy Lee Jones. He's still, you know, older than Jay, but he still he doesn't seem like retirement age and we are presented with this kind of like buddy cop sense. It feels like we are watching Starsky and Hutch, like the two cops, like one is by the book and one is a rebel and they are forced to work together.
Speaker 2:Right. And then they? I mean, the trope is that then they become grudging friends and partners and then they can't live without one another and they choose that friendship over everything. Yes, that's the trope we've been given.
Speaker 1:Yes, but that's not what happens at all, because while tommy lee jones does seem to be by the book, that has more to do with his demeanor and acting choices in terms of like the way that he delivers lines. Then it does what he actually does. So, for instance, when Zed says to Kay he has a real problem with authority and Kay says so do I. He sees Jay not as like a rebel who needs to be tamed, which is what you usually see in those kind of buddy cop dynamics. He sees himself and the fact that we have an older white man and a younger black man as these partners, but not partners. That's really very subversive. It's making it very clear that this is not a by the book versus against the rules, and we see throughout now like part of what's so delightful about Jay is his sense of humor.
Speaker 1:Kay also has a sense of humor. It's just very dry. So one of my favorite moments that I have always got laughed at this when they go to interview Beatrice. She sees them and she comes out and she's like who are you? And we're from the FBI. And she says have you come to make fun of me too? And Kay says no, we at the FBI do not have any sense of humor. That we are aware of. That we are aware of. Similarly, k when he introduces himself. He introduces himself as something like agent manheim I don't remember what it was and he introduces Jay as Agent Black and Jay gives him a look like really. So later, when they go to the morgue and they meet Laurel which Laurel believes is for the first time Kay introduces himself as Dr Manheim or whatever it is and introduces Jay as Dr White, which he gives a look to.
Speaker 1:Dr White, which he gives a look to. So that is like there's the subversion there in that, like he is showing that he has a sense of humor. He is not this buttoned up government worker that Jay even thinks he is. You know he's teasing his partner, including when Jay says, all right, I'm in, but I've got some rules. I know my stuff and like, clearly I'm good at this, you chose me and you're not gonna be calling me a kid or junior or Sport Sport. And so Kay immediately says you got it slick, sport Sport. And so Kay immediately says you got it Slick. So these are very much equals who have an affinity for each other because they are similar, despite what we have been led to believe. So this is like a storytelling subversion, but I think that there is an important subversion about our expectation of race within it as well, and up against the bristly by-the-book hard-ass. Who is white is another trope. Yeah, and again, that's not what's happening, and the film throughout makes it clear that's not what's happening, but we don't recognize it until Kay says I'm training my replacement and I find that really, really fascinating.
Speaker 1:I saw something, and this is related to that.
Speaker 1:I saw something on the screenwriting subreddit and I'll include a link in the show notes talking about how screenwriters and filmmakers can address things like police brutality in mainstream movies without being overt about it hitting you over the head and being entertaining.
Speaker 1:Entertaining, and the screenwriter said I realized that Men in Black does this beautifully with that scene you talked about with Little Tiffany Deserve to Die, because it is making it clear Now, among the other candidates for Men in Black, there is a some white and some black candidates. Edwards, who becomes Jay, is the only police officer and it is clear he is the only one who actually looks at what is happening instead of assuming and he's shown to be correct that he is the only one who doesn't shoot first and ask questions later. And so the screenwriter was saying this is an excellent example of asking your audience to question what they know about police officers, about military, about the people who are supposed to protect us, who make snap judgments and assumptions, and because it's talking about aliens, it allows us to be entertained by it and still take in that message without it being about that.
Speaker 2:Right, right, even the. I mean if we go even a level deeper. The scene that I remember where Edwards drags the table over could be a metaphor about changing structures right and just push their pen through the paper and try to make the best of it when a very small effort changed the structure and made it more workable.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. Similarly, the film is a little bit more overt in its discussion of immigration. Discussion of immigration. So the again very dry as dust. When Kay says to the police, at the very beginning, when they've pulled over the guy who is smuggling in these Mexican migrants, says like, yeah, keep protecting us from those dangerous aliens. It's making it clear that we are often squabbling about things that really don't matter, like where a line is drawn on a map, and when Kay explains to Edwards, before he's become Jay, how many aliens are on the planets, what's going on. And there's about 1500. So it's not really that many. The majority of them are in New York, because that is the central location where everyone shows up and almost all of them are like hardworking, law abiding people. They just want to live and it's our job to protect ourselves and them from the ones who don't want to just live, who want to hurt people.
Speaker 1:And considering the rhetoric we are currently hearing from a major presidential candidate who is talking about deporting legal citizens because they were born elsewhere, that feels prescient. I was listening to and we're recording this on October 16th, so I'm not sure off the top of my head when it's going to air, but we're about three weeks away from the presidential election. I was listening to Pod Save America yesterday where they were talking about Trump is using this very specific rhetoric. He's saying he wants mass deportation. He's using those words and the podcast played a clip of Jake Tapper talking to I don't remember which surrogate, but you know some Republican who was refusing to admit that that's what Trump was saying and Tapper was saying like. I played you the clip and I read you the words and he said them more than once.
Speaker 1:And, when you like, expand this conversation to talk about aliens, as in extraterrestrials. It kind of helps make clear how ridiculous it is to talk about it when you mean aliens, as in those not born in the United States, and that I think, is really important. So we see Reggie and his wife and the squid baby. This is just a young creature who wants a safe place for his family and came to Earth because it was supposed to be safe, and then the bug arrived and Earth no longer felt safe. The bug arrived and earth no longer felt safe.
Speaker 1:Something I read recently is people like to to say you know that they would shoot someone to protect their children, but they can't imagine crossing a border to protect their children. The fact that this film makes it clear that it is wrong to judge people based on where they come from. It is wrong to judge people based on appearances. It is wrong to judge people based on size. So the idea that that can't be a galaxy, it fits on a cat's collar. Idea that, like you know, that can't be a galaxy, it fits on a cat's collar. Like no, just because what you know is something doesn't mean that you know everything. So that like a mainstream movie starring, like one of the biggest movie stars of the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, he was Hollywood royalty at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, having these, these messages Amazing. That is so amazingly subversive and I don't know that people necessarily got it.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it's a trade off, right, because if Sonnenfeld was going, was gonna that's the same right if sonnenfeld was gonna get it into the mental furniture of millions, he had to do it in this veiled, allegorical way, and we do have like that opening, that opening scene with the migrants in the back of the van.
Speaker 1:It's really clear who's sympathetic and who's not. So, like the driver is not sympathetic, the cop says to him like, oh, what? Do you get? 100 bucks a head? Like, wow, these are people. Yeah, the cop is not sympathetic.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Saying like you know, riffing off of what the driver said, that you know he was fishing. Like I would have thrown him back like ew, these are people. And then, when K and D show up, k speaks to each person, because the cop speaks to them in Spanish, just saying like get out, get in a line. Like get out, get in a line, but Kay, because he is trying to identify Mikey the alien. But Kay speaks to each person like hey, are you coming here to find a job? How about you? And then there's an older woman, he calls her abuela, grandmother. Like don't worry, abuela, you know this will be fine. And then, and he says, welcome to the US. So that framing gives us the opportunity to see how ridiculous it is that we consider this border to be so important when it's just a line on a map.
Speaker 2:I think yes, and I think I would actually want to put the focus on the people. I think I. I think yes and I think I would. I would actually want to put the focus on the people. Yes, right, and it's, but particularly the way uh k says like keep protecting us from those aliens who we just saw were looking for a job and was an abuela, and like we're just people trying to improve their lot yes so and that we see how frightened they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um and they really it's.
Speaker 2:If you can't see yourself in those people and more to the point, well, not more to the point. In addition, they clearly have done nothing wrong. Yes, not really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like Well and that's what I mean about the border. Like yeah, there's consistently this idea of like that's against the law. Like well, the law is made up Right, so something can be morally right and against the law, something can be morally wrong and legal.
Speaker 2:Right Slavery was legal, yes, in this country, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that is what we're seeing throughout in terms of why Jay is recruited. He is able to see what others do not. He is observant and generally unwilling to accept his initial impression of things once he's been informed of the error of his ways.
Speaker 2:But he's also not willing to revise if he knows something to be true. Yes, I know what I heard. Yes, he blinked a second set of eyelids.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's what I saw. So the the example of when he's willing to be corrected. Uh, there's a point where they're like, okay, we need to go speak to an informant. And they go um to where there's this uh like newsstand and there is a man who looks a little like riffraff from um Rocky show, but even but grotesque. Right um and sitting next to him is this little pug wearing an I love new york shirt and, uh, as jay is getting out of the car, he's like that is the worst disguise I've ever seen. And then the pug says if you don't like it, you can kiss my furry little butt. And so the riffraff looking guy is a person, is a human being born on Earth, and the pug is the alien and so like.
Speaker 2:So he's willing to. If he's made a wrong assumption, he will correct it based on the data he has received, but he doesn't accept other people's assessment of his data.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:I think that's important.
Speaker 1:Yes, so, for instance, when, when k, after he passes the tests and k is trying to tell him about it, jay is like uh-huh, sure, whatever, until he actually sees aliens.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right, right, um, and that's human, that's normal yeah, and it's also like to his credit yeah, yeah, um, like he refuses to accept initial impressions or like change what he knows to be true, but when given evidence that an impression is wrong, yeah, he He'll alter that. So it's remarkable, it's really remarkable. The other thing I want to talk about was the fact the moment when Jay is shooting an MIB gun in front of a bunch of people and Kay is yelling at him and he's like the world's going to end, we don't have time for this secrecy. And Kay says, yeah, the only way the world works is if people don't know about this.
Speaker 1:Keeping democracy, government, infrastructure going is that sometimes there are going to be things that are really really difficult, that like are that are fixed behind the scenes, kind of, and I'm thinking of stuff like when they talk about good government is invisible.
Speaker 1:So when government is working, when infrastructure is working, when healthcare is working, we don't really notice because everything's just working. Now, that's an extreme example in the in in the film. Like there's an argument to be made that people should know who is going to be destroyed, but the fact that we are only able to have our lives because there are people working behind the scenes that we're not aware of doing jobs that aren't sexy, you know, because you get swallowed by a giant bug or because you're worried about, like, sewage, or you're, you know, making sure that roads are paved or that there are enough teachers, you know. These are the things that are not sexy parts of governing is, I think, again, not sexy parts of governing. Is, I think again, information that people, mainstream, need to hear. We need to hear that sometimes there's things going on that allow us to live our lives that we're never going to know about and that, basically, good governance is invisible.
Speaker 2:I think that's an interesting conclusion. I'd like to nuance it a little bit. I think One Kay's, not government. Two, I feel like there's a difference between preventing the earth, the peril which faces the earth, and delivering services, and so I feel like like, regarding delivering services, because we are human beings and we have bias and there's institutional, institutional oppression, transparency is actually really important. So those things are in, those people are invisible until it's not working well.
Speaker 2:I agree with everything that you said there. I think for me, the insight from that moment is is a little, and if we hold, if we try to hold and focus on all of the disasters or imminent disasters that are happening at every moment, we cannot live our lives because it's too scary, it's too much, and it's more that that, like life, becomes impossible when any one person tries to hold all of it and the living is actually what matters, which is complicated by the fact that there is such a person as Kay or Jay who are trying to hold those for us, which feels actually kind of yucky when I iterate it out, except that they're holding it for us in that arena, and then there's government holding it for us when it comes to like dealing with Kim Jong-un.
Speaker 1:And then there's like NGOs holding it for us when it comes to like climate change, and do you know what I mean? Like so, um, just within the universe of this, of this film, um, they're not holding everything. They're holding the alien concerns.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I feel like there's a line that needs to be walked in terms of the insight that we take away, because of the need for transparency, and I'm not sure I trust J and K to make all the decisions for me. I didn't elect them, true. True, I don't know anything about them. I have no recourse to get rid of them. So it's a complicated one actually. That one, I feel like, has layers of nuance that are potentially problematic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what has me like what this reminded me of when I was a high school teacher. I was in Ohio, which had each tiny little township and municipality had its own school district and so and they were paid for through levies that you had to vote for my final year of teaching. The levy would not pass, because the local parents were like what are you doing for us? And we could tell them exactly what was going to happen, because without the levy, there was no afterschool activities, no extracurriculars, there's like a bunch of stuff got cut because we didn't have the money for it and, as predicted, teen pregnancy went up a lot.
Speaker 1:And so that's the like. What I mean about like imminent versus non-imminent peril, and what I mean about like good governance being invisible. Like the people who voted down the levy were only thinking about this, this little thing, like how much they're paying in taxes. They weren't thinking broader, like what was going to be lost, like even if they were thinking like, okay, so, no football for a year, whatever, which was a big deal there, but then they weren't then going and from there, what are the kids going to do? They're going to be bored. We don't get home until 5 PM.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I don't disagree with you that good governance is invisible. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I just, I'm just knew that it's it's complicated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. It is complicated, it's just. I think that's an interesting and important value offered by this, and then, added to that, the fact that at the end we find out that Earth is just actually the Milky Way, is just a marble Right In some giant child's game.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so like that, that kind of also nuances, that like it matters so much and it doesn't matter at all at the same time, because it all comes down to living a meaningful life, which is what Kay is trying to do for the other humans on the planet is allow them to live meaningful lives.
Speaker 2:Right, right, right, right. Okay, I need to try and see if I can give the highlights tour of what we just talked about. This highly entertaining movie was so entertaining that it actually it made its and the moral of the story is pretty much invisible.
Speaker 2:Right, because it was so entertaining that, even as someone who like as a hobby, we have this podcast where you're looking at the deeper meaning of your pop culture. You looked at this initially and we're like but it's just entertaining, which is exactly what we say like our whole project is that's. That's never the case. This did it so well that even someone who looks for that stuff ie you uh was like but it's fun, so I'll start. So when you did look deeper, you realize just how subversive this film is, and it's subversive in multiple ways. So it's subversive.
Speaker 2:It subverts the trope on which it is built, which is the buddy cop drama, where the hard-bitten by-the-book in this case, this case white guy, mentor uh tames I'm putting quotes around that word his rebellious and like um, sarcastic, sarcastic authority question nose thumbing uh mentee, who happens to be black, and and they reluctantly come to be partners who rely on each other and balance each other out. It subverts that trope by sharing from tommy lee jones's mouth directly, from k's mouth directly I wasn't training a partner, I was training a replacement. Training a partner, I was training a replacement. So which that moment in the film then, looking back, allows us to kind of like shift that whole relationship. So there's, there's, there's a subversion.
Speaker 2:We also like moments of the film like the characters themselves subvert what's happening right, like there are specific vignette moments. There's the one when Jay is doing the training thing. It's before he's Jay, he's still James Edwards and in the target practice, like he takes one shot and takes out the little white girl with the quantum physics books. Or there's the moment where they're playing good cop, bad cop with Tony Shalhoub, the pawn broker, and Kay actually shoots him in the head and then it immediately grows back. So there are these moments like over and over immigration and the humanity of immigrants and the absurdity of freaking out about on which side of a made-up line someone was born when there's such bigger problems facing all of us as humans. I heard some like ways to talk about again the unnecessary-ness, the absurdity of police brutality, again through that same scene that we've talked about several times, and the ways in which actually the only cop in the room looked before shooting who doesn't fit in with the other cops, right, right, like they make that clear early on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he does not fit in with the other cops on the force, nor the other would be cops. They don't know what they're, the best of the best of the best, who don't actually know what they're being evaluated for, but, you know, would be men in black. Just at the end we talked about, you talked about, and we kind of. We had a discussion back and forth about an insight here, about the power of good governance to allow us to live meaningful lives and not be freaking the heck out over every crisis or potential crisis that is happening in the background, and you and I had a bit of a back and forth about the limits of that, when we're not talking about aliens who are going to destroy the earth because human beings are flawed and therefore the structures that we build are flawed, and also good governance is invisible. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. What am I forgetting, um?
Speaker 1:the the recognition of the importance of revising your impression of things with new information, but refusing to be pushed into revising facts that you know for sure.
Speaker 2:Right, good, good. Oh, also on a less like meta philosophical level, the dude who played the bug in the Edgar seat what was his name? Vincent D'Onofrio D'Onofrio Shouldn't have won all of the awards Did an amazing, amazing job. Yeah, such physical comedy. Another thing, speaking of comedy, that I think that I missed is the ways in which Kay's sense of humor is actually quite subversive because it's so dry and delivered so deadpan on purpose, on purpose. But the way that that is sort of baked in again makes these two partners more equal, since we have the humor as the front-facing, the leading humor in the Will Smith character. But Tommy Leeones's character also has a strong sense of humor. It just is delivered in different ways and I think that was also another important piece of the the world building and the character building and the subversion of these two men as actually equals. Yeah, final thoughts on mib before we real, real quick.
Speaker 1:It doesn't pass the Bechdel test. There are two female characters, beatrice and Laurel, but they do not talk to each other, so it fails the Bechdel test, unfortunately, yeah.
Speaker 2:So next time, what are you bringing for me? So next time I'm going to watch a film that I haven't seen since close to when it came out, it was running on cable. It's Airplane with Leslie Nielsen Did it come?
Speaker 1:out in the 70s.
Speaker 2:I said close to when it came out, okay, all right, I guess closer than now. Yeah, we watched it on cable. Yeah, like on the TV With dad Repeatedly, repeatedly. I saw it multiple times and I haven't seen it since it was being broadcast on cable. But I remember laughing hysterically. I'm a little worried. I've got to be honest. I have a feeling this one ain't going to hold, but not to stack the deck here, surely you can't be deck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, surely you can't be serious. I am serious and please don't call me Shirley, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll see you then. 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. Find 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?