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for conversation. It's way more fun when

1:01

you're actually talking about something you like and not

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just what's up. Get Who

1:06

Gets You on eHarmony. I'm

1:30

Claire Fallon. And I'm Emma Gray. And

1:32

this is Love to See It, an

1:34

obsessively detailed recap podcast about reality dating

1:37

shows like The Bachelor and other pop

1:39

culture that makes us laugh, cry, and

1:42

curse the patriarchy. We can't live with

1:44

these shows and we can't live without

1:46

them. But we can break down every

1:48

juicy moment and unpack all the weird

1:50

messages these shows send us about love,

1:52

sex, and dating. Love,

1:58

draw, roll, love, and fire. Can

2:00

you keep up? I like the love

2:02

and the love. Welcome to Love to

2:04

See It, a podcast about escaping the

2:06

prison of heteronormative gender roles so that

2:08

you can just kick a ball around

2:10

a muddy field. Or dare to talk

2:13

about a feeling, a single feeling. That's

2:16

very brave. But this week, we're

2:18

talking about more than a feeling. We're talking

2:20

about so many feelings, all of

2:22

which were given to us by the 2006

2:25

romantic comedy She's the Man, an

2:27

Amanda Bynes-led adaptation of Twelfth Night

2:29

that I think we all agree

2:31

could not be made today. I

2:34

think not. We're joined in this very

2:37

important conversation by BFF of the pod,

2:40

Erin Dark, who you can currently see

2:42

starring in the movie Molly and Max

2:45

in the Future on Amazon Prime and

2:48

Moonshine on the CW

2:50

app and cwtv.com. Erin,

2:53

welcome back to the pod. Thank you so much for

2:55

having me. Romcoms are one

2:57

of my true pleasures in life, and I

2:59

had never seen this one. Oh my

3:02

gosh. Oh my goodness. Okay. You just

3:05

answered our two first questions so efficiently.

3:07

Our first questions are normally, what is

3:09

your relationship with romantic movies and why

3:12

did you pick this movie? And I

3:14

think now we know. But would you

3:16

like to say more? I mean, no,

3:18

I think Romcoms are the underappreciated genre

3:21

of movies. We agree. Yeah. And I,

3:23

it's funny because I actually, I thought

3:25

this movie was going to be worse

3:27

than it was. I thought

3:30

it was going to be even more fun

3:32

to tear apart, but

3:34

it has a charm. Could not

3:37

be made now. Not perfect. But

3:40

it has a charm that I

3:42

actually wasn't expecting. Amanda Bynes is

3:44

just a deeply, deeply charming actor

3:46

and all of, she's like in

3:48

her full campy glory in this

3:51

movie. So a little

3:53

background. She's the man is a

3:55

modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

3:58

starring Amanda Bynes. as star soccer

4:00

player Viola Hastings, who dresses up

4:02

as a boy, her twin brother,

4:05

in order to play soccer at

4:07

a nearby prep school after

4:09

the girls' team is cut from her

4:11

high school. And her

4:13

love interest, Duke Orsino, is

4:16

played by Channing Tatum. I

4:20

can't get over the fact that they were like,

4:22

we're not really going to change the names and

4:24

a lot of them work. And this is just

4:26

a guy named Duke Orsino. There

4:29

are dudes named Duke. I respect that. I was

4:31

like, I love that you got into that character

4:33

and you know, and you were like, you know

4:35

what, there are guys named Duke or these last

4:38

name and they just went with it.

4:41

I agree. I love that they leaned all

4:43

the way into it. I was never wondering

4:45

like how faithfully is this based on 12th

4:47

grade? Yeah, no, I know they were like,

4:51

almost all of the characters retain the

4:53

names from the play. Even the friends

4:56

like Toby and Andrew. The

5:02

spider named Malvolio really got me.

5:04

Yeah. Yes. They really, they

5:06

were like, we're going to use a

5:08

lot of these names and we

5:10

are going to like let

5:12

you know this is based on

5:15

Shakespeare. And I'll say it is

5:17

done significantly better

5:20

than the more recent

5:22

Sidney Sweeney, Glenn

5:24

Powell movie. So like, they

5:26

should have looked to this movie for

5:29

all of it. This is the blueprint.

5:31

It's still, it does this right. So

5:34

She's the Man came out in March 2006.

5:36

I was telling Claire and Erin

5:39

before we started recording that I actually

5:41

saw this movie in theaters in 2006

5:43

in Tel Aviv. And

5:47

in Hebrew, the movie

5:49

was called Yeshla Beit Sim, which is

5:51

basically like she's got balls or she

5:54

has balls. Incredible,

5:56

incredible translated title, arguably

5:59

better. than she's the man. It works on every level. Yeah,

6:01

they should change it. They should reissue it. It

6:06

was directed by Andy Fickman,

6:08

who came from the theater

6:11

world, which I think is, makes

6:13

sense when you see how campy

6:15

this movie is. Yeah, they're

6:17

all playing to the back seats. Except

6:21

Channing Tatum. Who's

6:23

like barely playing at all.

6:26

Yeah, he's like deeply understated

6:28

and everyone else is overstated.

6:32

Pretty incredible. So Andy Fickman had

6:34

only actually directed one direct

6:36

to DVD movie prior to this

6:38

movie, which I found super

6:40

interesting. But yeah, he

6:43

did have this theater background. And

6:45

the screenplay and story

6:47

credits are

6:50

by Ewan Leslie, who I

6:52

really could find almost no

6:55

information about. He had

6:57

no other writing credits on IMDB,

6:59

but has producer credits on movies

7:01

like The Secret Life of Bees.

7:03

I couldn't find a single credit at

7:06

all after 2013. So I found that interesting. I

7:09

was like, I wanted to understand more

7:11

about how this script, like the life

7:14

of this screenplay, it

7:16

seems like maybe it originated with Ewan

7:18

and then was handed

7:20

over to prolific writing duo,

7:23

Karen McCullough and Kirsten Smith,

7:26

who are just iconic. Like they

7:28

co-wrote Ten Things I Hate About You,

7:30

Ella Enchanted, Legally

7:33

Blonde. But the story

7:35

credit is with Ewan. So I was like, I

7:37

don't know, Aaron, maybe you know better

7:39

than me. It sounds like probably he

7:42

wrote the first draft or

7:44

like... pitched the story and

7:47

then they did a page one

7:49

rewrite. Okay, that was sort

7:51

of my assumption. Yeah, because the three of

7:53

them share writing credit, but he has story

7:55

credit. So it was like, seems like they

7:57

came in and... Yeah,

8:00

I think he shares the story credit,

8:02

of course, with Shakespeare. Right.

8:04

Well, of course, I mean, the bard

8:06

himself. I

8:08

mean, can you IMDB Shakespeare? How

8:10

many story credits do you share?

8:13

In the next story credits, I can't even

8:16

imagine. And I mean,

8:18

this is it makes sense. I didn't know it in

8:20

the before when I saw it, but this is kind

8:23

of like a slightly lesser

8:25

version of 10 Things I Hate

8:27

About You, like a modernized teen

8:30

rom-com based on Shakespeare with like

8:32

a girl power twist. Yes,

8:35

not quite reaching that level. No,

8:37

yeah, I thought. Yeah, I thought this was somewhere

8:39

between 10 Things I Hate About You and Anyone

8:41

But You. Like it

8:43

rests in the middle there in the range

8:46

of Shakespeare modern

8:48

day adaptations. I

8:50

did think it was well plotted, though. I have to

8:53

say that for like the script. I was like, I

8:56

even that you're going off 12th night, but I was like,

8:58

you're you're giving me all the plot points. You're

9:01

giving me a carnival where she has to switch back

9:03

and forth. And I incredible

9:07

scene. And and I was yeah, I was

9:09

pleased that we had really established a lot

9:11

about the characters by the time we got

9:13

to that. I think you're absolutely right. It's

9:16

pretty well paced. When they

9:18

were casting this movie, Amanda Bynes

9:20

came on pretty early because Fickman

9:23

was very familiar with her work. His

9:25

son Austin apparently was like a huge

9:27

fan of The Amanda Show and all

9:29

that, like all of her work on

9:31

Nickelodeon. And so he

9:33

brought her on basically

9:35

from the beginning. And Amanda Bynes

9:37

has said that she was the

9:39

one who pushed for Channing Tatum

9:42

because Channing was basically a total

9:44

unknown. He had done like

9:47

a Mountain Dew commercial or her and.

9:51

Step up, which I always thought

9:53

about as his real breakout. Came

9:55

out months after she's

9:58

the man that same year. which

10:01

I don't know for I had inverted them,

10:03

I think in my brain, but he so

10:05

he really like was not a mainstream known

10:07

person. She told paper

10:09

in 2018 Amanda Bynes that

10:12

I totally fought for Channing in that

10:14

movie because he wasn't famous yet. I

10:17

was like this guy's a star. Every girl

10:19

will love him. And

10:23

the producers said he's so much older than all of

10:25

you and she's like, I was like, it

10:27

doesn't matter. Trust me. He

10:29

does look a lot older. He is 26 and

10:31

Amanda Bynes is 19. He

10:34

is 26 years

10:36

old of like chiseled muscle and

10:38

like he looks like he's old

10:40

enough to rent a car. It's

10:42

so funny because I have met

10:44

Channing in person and he's so

10:47

large now that like

10:49

I was watching last night and Dan came home and

10:51

we were both like, oh my God, look at tiny

10:53

Channing. Little baby

10:56

Channing. His muscles are so

10:58

big now that I was like, oh, because you're

11:00

so skinny. So

11:04

unsurprisingly, she's the man received mixed

11:06

reviews from critics at the time.

11:09

Our own reactions, as we've already

11:11

said, are mixed themselves. So this

11:14

feels right. Nathan Lee at

11:16

The New York Times wrote

11:18

a pretty vicious review that

11:21

also I think would not be published today. He

11:24

described the acting as emphatic grotesquely, which

11:26

projects as if for the benefit of

11:28

a nearsighted and dimwitted ticket holder at the

11:30

back of the room. This is one

11:32

of the more accurate things that I

11:34

think he says in the review, but it's

11:37

very harshly put. He

11:39

also says things like makes

11:42

a joke about her boy

11:44

accent being autistic,

11:46

which like, oh,

11:48

yeah, didn't realize we were doing that.

11:52

Yeah, in 2006. But

11:54

apparently we were. I

11:56

also found it interesting that this review, you know, that

11:58

all The New York Times movie reviews. reviews have the

12:00

rating at the bottom and then an explanation of why

12:03

the rating was given and

12:07

on this Times review, it says the

12:09

PG-13 rating is there due

12:11

to quote schoolyard

12:14

language and transgender

12:16

innuendo. Wow.

12:22

Yeah, yes. Wow. Just

12:24

like, yeah. Yeah. Kind

12:29

of kind of.

12:31

No one got a say on that. Yeah.

12:34

Yeah. Yeah. So,

12:36

you know, the New York Times is

12:38

just a liberal rag. I think we

12:40

can all agree pushing the woke agenda

12:42

as usual. Protect your children from the

12:44

very implication that someone might ever present

12:47

as a gender that is not there assigned sex at

12:49

birth. Our

12:51

fave Roger Ebert had a

12:53

more charitable take. And

12:56

we thought that he was pretty on the

12:58

money as as he often is. He

13:03

wrote, I didn't for one second believe the plot

13:05

of She's the Man, but I did believe for

13:07

the entire movie that Amanda Bynes was lovable and

13:11

he describes the movie as good natured

13:13

and silly. And I

13:15

think that's true. That's accurate. That's like

13:17

the good natured read on this. And

13:19

the emphatic grotesquely is like the bad

13:21

natured read. And they're both kind of true.

13:25

Correct. Doing all of

13:27

these romcom rewatches has really given me

13:29

such a deep affection for Roger Ebert.

13:32

He's a critic that somehow

13:34

always manages to really meet a

13:36

movie as what

13:39

it is and like what it is trying

13:41

to do without projecting his own feelings

13:44

about a genre or disdain for

13:46

a genre onto it. Like he

13:49

appreciates every genre and he really

13:51

appreciates a romcom, a teen movie.

13:54

And yeah, the whole review, frankly,

13:56

is is worth reading. So

13:59

I think. it's time for us to

14:01

start getting into the plot because there's

14:03

so much here. So we open on

14:05

a beach in California, or I

14:08

think actually in Canada, but you know, in

14:10

theory, it's in California, where high

14:13

schoolers are surfing and engaging in

14:15

horseplay and flirtation. And they're playing

14:17

soccer, of course, in bikinis and

14:19

short shorts. Viola, played

14:21

by Amanda Bynes, is clearly the star

14:23

of this game, even though it's edited

14:25

in like that herky jerky fashion with

14:27

lots of like splashy Nickelodeon style graphics

14:29

so that you can't tell it

14:31

all. She's actually good at soccer. The

14:34

vibes indicate she's great. Yeah, everyone's like,

14:36

Whoa, they're all like, she's

14:39

so good at kicking the ball. She

14:42

and her hot boyfriend Justin make out in

14:44

the sand and he tells her she's getting

14:46

really good. And she's like, you too, when

14:49

we first started going out, you couldn't kiss

14:51

at all. And he says,

14:53

I meant soccer, you're probably already better than

14:55

half of the guys on my team. I

14:59

was immediately super thrown off by this because

15:01

this is such a weird way to talk

15:03

about an elite level girl soccer player who

15:05

is like a senior in high school, which

15:08

seems to be what she is. Because in the

15:11

next scene, she's telling her teammate that she wants

15:13

to be a Tar Heel,

15:15

which means she wants to be part of

15:17

the number one women's soccer program in the

15:19

country. And she thinks that's

15:22

a realistic possibility. And they're talking about like, she

15:24

just started learning how to play soccer six months

15:26

ago. The movie

15:28

seems a little bit confused about

15:31

her level of skill, because they're

15:33

both like, she is the

15:35

star of every game she's in. But

15:38

also, she really needs to be trained

15:40

up by Duke later in order to

15:42

make first string.

15:44

Yeah, there, there

15:46

is this tension of like, they want her to

15:48

be able to do lots of training

15:51

montages and not shine too bright too

15:53

early in the movie. But also, she

15:55

is an elite level soccer player who

15:57

wants to like be

16:00

in a D1 school. Yeah, like truly,

16:02

I mean, I grew up

16:04

around this time. I lived in

16:06

South Bend. Notre Dame women's soccer is a

16:09

huge program, but North Carolina won

16:11

the national championship like every year. Like this is

16:13

the best team in the country. And she's like,

16:15

yeah, I just think I'm gonna be a Tar

16:17

Heel. I started playing soccer maybe 12, 18

16:19

months ago, but I think I'm starting to

16:21

get really good. It's interesting because it

16:23

like what the effect I felt like it had

16:25

on me, that she was

16:28

both good and bad was that like, it

16:30

just kind of felt like it was reinforcing

16:32

the sexism sometimes where it was like, look

16:34

at what a great female soccer player it

16:36

is. But when she goes to the man's

16:38

team, she actually doesn't quite level up. And

16:40

I was like, right, are we doing this?

16:43

I know they seem confused about whether

16:45

there is sexism or she's actually not

16:47

that good at soccer, which under

16:49

the main theme of the movie. Yeah,

16:51

the absolute main point that they are

16:54

trying. No, and it doesn't really get

16:56

resolved. She gets better

16:58

when a man trains her. Yeah,

17:00

well, yeah, that's the real lesson. Yeah, let

17:03

a hot man teach you to be better

17:05

at man stuff. So she

17:07

and her buds arrive at soccer

17:10

practice and learn on the

17:12

spot that their team has been cut due

17:14

to lack of interest. They literally

17:16

don't have enough girls to field a

17:18

squad. I don't know why

17:20

they went with this as the reason, but

17:23

I guess so that they

17:25

didn't get caught up in them lobbying

17:27

the school to put the team back

17:29

together or something. Violet decides

17:31

that the only way to handle this is

17:33

by asking the boys coach to let them

17:35

try out for the boys team. But he

17:37

simply refuses because they have to win the

17:39

big rivalry match with the Leria. And

17:42

she's like, we can help. At

17:45

this point, her boyfriend Justin, the goalie,

17:47

and the rest of the boys team

17:49

arrive and they openly laugh at the

17:51

girls who think they can join the

17:53

team. I think we actually

17:55

have a clip of his explanation. You're

17:57

all excellent players, but. Girls

18:00

aren't as fast as boys or

18:03

strong or as athletic. And

18:06

it's not me talking. It's a scientific

18:08

fact. Those can't be

18:10

boys. It's just as simple as

18:12

that. This set me up

18:15

to expect way more like Suzy and couplets

18:17

in the script. But there is never another

18:19

one. It's like

18:21

they had a previous version of the script that

18:23

was all in like iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets

18:25

and then they rewrote it. But they forgot about

18:28

this one. They were like, what

18:30

if we just have one character that doesn't like

18:32

a soccer coach? Yeah, just one

18:34

time he speaks in verse. He's

18:37

such a cartoonish villain. It's so

18:39

funny. I love how

18:41

all of the adult male villains are

18:43

just really smarmy. Like they embody a

18:45

masculinity that is just like

18:47

the douchey boss at your office.

18:50

It's not. Oh, it's not even

18:52

like a. A

18:55

swaggering like physical machismo.

18:57

It's just smart. It

18:59

they make it very clear that it's like

19:02

a projection of power that isn't even

19:04

real. Yeah. And that's why they're so desperate to

19:06

hold on to it. He's like, no,

19:08

no, no, I have control over

19:11

these children in this setting.

19:14

I'm a big man. They also found

19:16

the coaches to be some of the

19:18

how would you say largest performances in

19:20

the film, which

19:23

did make me think that it was like

19:25

a directing choice. So you got like Amanda

19:27

Bynes is going to Amanda Bynes the back

19:29

row. But like you got to audition a

19:32

lot of actors to play that coach. And

19:34

that's the performance that you chose. Yes,

19:37

no. And it felt intentional. And

19:40

her father gives a very similar

19:42

performance and just his appearance. I

19:44

mean, they went with Julie Haggerty

19:46

for the mom. Like I they

19:48

clearly they clearly were going for

19:50

this specific campy approach. I

19:53

wasn't mad at it. I

19:55

especially enjoyed this very bizarre

19:57

scene with the couplet. And

20:01

this, this results in Justin being set

20:03

up to back up either his coach

20:06

or his girlfriend. And he's like, I

20:08

think coach said it all. Viola

20:11

reminds him that he said she was better

20:13

than half the guys on his team. All

20:16

those guys are present now and they're not happy to

20:18

hear this. So he's like, all right,

20:20

I'm just gonna say I didn't say that. Like,

20:23

you know, what a gas lighter. I think we

20:25

can all the original. Yeah, she's like, why are

20:27

you know, we're out. Yeah,

20:30

we're out here banding about the term

20:32

gas light. Yeah, Amanda Bynes didn't even

20:34

know it. Yeah, Viola that this was

20:37

the moment to wield that that charge.

20:39

He's like, I didn't say that end

20:41

of discussion. And she's like, fine. End

20:44

of relationship. Got

20:47

it. It's a great line. So

20:50

at this point, we've kind of set up

20:52

the big boogeyman of the movie. Some

20:55

men and boys think they're just like

20:57

inherently better than women and girls. And

21:02

their sports are more important, they're better at

21:04

them. And we're

21:06

kind of set up to see, as

21:08

we said, like these two angles to

21:10

this. One is that they

21:13

genuinely think they're better than the women and

21:15

that they're they'll condescend to them like, oh,

21:17

yeah, you're really good for a girl. But

21:19

they don't actually think that they're very good.

21:21

But there's also the hint of fear. Like,

21:23

why not let them try out if they're

21:25

so bad that they wouldn't make the team?

21:28

Are you afraid of being beaten by a girl? And

21:31

that becomes they are. Because

21:34

the best one still can't make first

21:36

string at a year. So

21:41

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21:43

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21:54

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21:56

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21:59

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of $100 or more. And

26:21

we are back. So after this failed

26:23

attempt to get on the boys team,

26:25

Viola returns home. She's in her hoodie

26:27

and baseball cap and she

26:29

is being pursued by the specter

26:31

of traditional femininity. Her twin brother

26:33

Sebastian's girlfriend Monique played by Alexandra

26:36

Breckenridge. Monique is in

26:38

full makeup. She's accessorized. She's

26:40

wearing multiple shades of pink

26:43

and she is here to mock Viola

26:45

for not being girly and for looking

26:47

scary alike from the back to her brother

26:50

because of her complete lack of

26:52

curves. Monique

26:54

tells Viola to tell Sebastian to call

26:57

her and Viola gets off a pretty

26:59

sick burn here. Does he

27:01

have your number 1-800-BIACH? Wow,

27:05

just like the word Biatch really brings

27:08

me back. I also felt

27:10

like Monique was really giving a girl who

27:13

in 2024

27:15

would be making stay at home girlfriend

27:17

TikToks. I

27:19

also was like the the form of

27:21

femininity that Monique is presenting is very

27:24

Barbie Girl Summer, right? Barbie

27:27

Girl Summer or like Mean Girls. Yeah,

27:30

exactly. But like that's that's

27:33

fierce now, right? Like

27:35

rewatching it in this moment. We

27:38

had not reclaimed girliness for

27:40

feminism yet. Inside

27:45

the feminine assault continues. It's

27:47

her mother Daphne played by

27:49

Julie Haggerty in a

27:51

bright cerulean tweed skirt suit and

27:54

pearls. Looking like a

27:56

caricature of a mother and she

27:59

has a surprise Viola, many, many

28:01

fluffy gowns for her beautiful debutante.

28:05

And Viola's like, no, I'm not

28:07

doing that. That is totally archaic.

28:11

And her mom is like, oh, why? Why

28:13

was I saddled with a daughter who just

28:15

wants to play soccer all day? And

28:19

she does perk up a little bit when she

28:21

learns that Viola's team has been cut, which is

28:23

clearly comforting to her. It's more

28:26

time for Viola to look pretty for her boyfriend in

28:28

a dress. And Viola's like,

28:30

no, actually, I dumped him. No

28:33

one has been more upset about

28:35

a high school relationship ending than

28:37

Viola's mother. She's not even, it

28:40

gets weird here. This was a weird

28:42

moment. Oh, you mean

28:44

when she implies that

28:47

she would like to date? Yeah, she

28:49

like lists his great qualities. And then

28:51

Viola's like, so why don't you date

28:53

him? And she seems to genuinely consider

28:56

it for her girlfriend. It's

28:58

very uncomfy and

29:00

also rather hilarious because Julie Haggerty really

29:03

goes for it. You see her sort

29:05

of, she's like, no,

29:07

I couldn't. No, I couldn't.

29:09

I love Julie Haggerty. I

29:12

get very excited, but yeah, she really goes for it.

29:14

I don't know if that was in the script. I

29:16

like the idea that in the

29:18

script, it was just like, she walks away, but

29:21

Julie Haggerty was like, no, I

29:23

should really consider this. Julie's like, I'm

29:25

committing this. I'm committing to this. I

29:30

mean, again, revisiting this in the current

29:32

moment, this is the idea of you

29:34

material, right? Like

29:38

why shouldn't a mature mom step into her feminine

29:40

power and date them and

29:43

have her age? If it was 26 year

29:45

old Channing Tatum, I'd be like, you

29:47

get it, Julie. Yeah, different

29:50

vibes. Yeah,

29:52

I think that what we're meant to take away

29:54

from this scene is that her mom is really

29:56

living by Carrie's way through Biola. is

30:00

no longer at the stage of her life

30:02

where she gets to be a beautiful debutante

30:04

and date rugged handsome soccer players. So

30:07

she really, really desperately wants Viola

30:09

to do that for her. And

30:12

in this moment for a moment, she's like, well, what

30:14

if I just did that instead, instead of pressuring my

30:16

daughter to live that life for me? And then she's

30:18

like, no, I can't do that. She

30:20

will be a debutante. This

30:22

also really gave the same vibes as

30:25

that scene with Keira Knightley and her

30:27

mother in Bend It Like Beckham. Yeah,

30:29

where she's like trying to buy her lingerie and she's

30:32

like, why does my daughter just want to

30:34

kick a soccer ball around? I mean, this

30:36

is just like knock off Bend It Like

30:38

Beckham at the end of the day. It's

30:41

not not. It's

30:44

like four years later and it's so

30:46

much the same in many,

30:48

many ways. So,

30:51

yeah, so here we see the

30:53

the other side of the sexism

30:55

that Viola is facing on the

30:57

soccer field. There are

30:59

these rigid gender presentation expectations

31:01

that she is expected to

31:03

conform to. And so like

31:06

the older women in her life and

31:08

also some of her peers like Monique

31:10

really expect her to wear dresses, be

31:13

a debutante, not like

31:15

sports, but yes, like men who

31:17

like sports and date those men.

31:20

They are essentially supposed to be like decorative

31:22

and let the men do the kicking the

31:24

muddy ball around the soccer field thing. And

31:29

this is going to be the thing that Viola

31:31

is struggling against the whole movie. And

31:33

I think they complicate

31:35

a little bit the idea of where

31:38

this comes from. Like for Viola's mother,

31:40

she's still a sympathetic character in certain

31:42

ways. Like she she loves Viola. She

31:45

doesn't understand her, but she loves

31:47

her. She means well. But

31:49

then in Monique, we see someone who is just like

31:51

getting off on the power of like embodying

31:54

this normative, feminine ideal.

31:57

Right. Monique is is grasping at.

31:59

the very temporary and limited power

32:01

that comes with being young,

32:04

popular, beautiful, and being able

32:06

to kind of exact control

32:09

over your peers. As we

32:11

know, that's fleeting and not real

32:13

power, but that's

32:15

kind of what we're seeing. And yeah, for Viola's

32:17

mom, I think it's really a suit that you

32:19

said, Claire, that she's kind of living through Viola

32:22

because she is at the point in her life

32:24

where she's kind of being told that it's

32:26

time for her to disappear. And

32:29

so the only way for her to access that

32:31

kind of connection is

32:33

through her daughter. And she's

32:35

grasping at all of the

32:37

markers of girlhood that

32:40

felt exciting to her and trying to

32:42

thrust them on her daughter. But it's

32:44

not out of meanness or wanting to

32:46

control her. It's out

32:49

of wanting to bond over things that

32:51

made her feel good and

32:54

feminine. Yeah. What's

32:56

interesting to me also watching this is that

32:59

putting myself back into 2006, Viola embodies

33:04

the most popular girls in my high school

33:06

at the time. She is the same type.

33:09

She is gorgeous, but a jock. She

33:13

wears eyeliner, but also a zip-up

33:16

hoodie and Adidas slides. All

33:19

the hot girls at my school were soccer players,

33:22

and they had perfect eyeliner, but

33:24

they were always in their practice

33:26

gear. And Viola

33:29

is popular in her high school, right?

33:31

She's dating the hot guy

33:33

star soccer player, and she's the

33:36

hot girl star soccer player. Yeah,

33:38

she seems to know that she's

33:40

hot. Definitely. Yeah.

33:43

Which I kind of enjoy. No

33:45

one needs to reveal that to her. No, yeah.

33:48

Yeah. I like that too. I

33:50

think it's just, it sits

33:52

interestingly with the

33:54

sense that there is this heavy

33:57

pressure on her to embody traditional

33:59

femininity. Because it's like, it seems

34:01

like most people think she's extremely

34:03

hot and feminine the way

34:05

she is. But then

34:07

femininity is a prison that she needs to break

34:09

out of because of her

34:12

mother, I guess. You know what I mean? It's

34:14

like, is she downtrodden by this expectation that she'd

34:16

be so feminine or is she actually like in

34:18

her element and perfect and

34:21

accepted by pretty much everyone around her the

34:23

way she is? Well, I feel

34:25

like we were also on the verge of the

34:27

the cool girl era. Oh, yeah,

34:30

yeah, yeah. And like she's such a

34:32

cool girl. And there

34:34

is this almost disdain

34:37

for women who

34:39

do fit into this more

34:41

traditionally femme mold. It's

34:44

like the movie is

34:46

confused about what it's trying to say, I

34:48

think about femininity. Yeah,

34:51

I think you're right that the cool

34:53

girl element is was culturally ascendant at

34:55

the time. And she

34:58

I mean, we even see that scene of her

35:00

like burping and ripping chunks of

35:02

chicken off of a drumstick later that

35:05

feels like it could be

35:07

out of the cool girl monologue from

35:09

God Girl. Like this is what a hot girl

35:11

should be doing. It feels it

35:13

felt very much to me like

35:15

the movie is like femininity is bullshit

35:18

unless you choose it sometimes. Yeah,

35:20

because you're so cool that you

35:22

can make the choice you can

35:24

wear a green dress instead of

35:26

a white dress to the debut

35:29

top ball. Yeah, yeah, you're no

35:31

virgin. And

35:34

in case anyone was wondering, you can make

35:36

out with some guy at the beginning of

35:38

your possession. Yeah, that's totally true. And I

35:40

think that that's partly why this like, like

35:45

women's sports booster is a rom coms

35:47

were so big at the time, is

35:50

it does combine that element of like, she's

35:53

a rebel, she's different from the other girls.

35:55

People don't understand her, but also she is

35:57

beautiful and feminine. It's just that she plays

35:59

soccer. And that is

36:01

a very palatable way of like, accepting

36:05

a little bit of gender nonconformity is

36:08

like, oh, she plays soccer, but

36:10

she's still hot and she wears dresses. Yeah,

36:12

it's almost like a co-optation of

36:15

gender nonconformity. It's like, we'll give you a

36:17

little bit as a treat. Yeah.

36:19

But not too much. Not too much.

36:21

Not too much, never too much. Upstairs

36:25

Viola finds her brother Sebastian in

36:27

a violent femme's t-shirt, throwing his

36:29

belongings out the window. And

36:32

she asks him why he dates the awful Monique

36:34

and he's like, she's hot. It's a guy thing.

36:37

I was like, Monique would not

36:39

date Sebastian. Well, here's the thing

36:42

about Sebastian. They cast and

36:44

style him to look like

36:46

he could be confused for Amanda Bynes and

36:48

her boy wig. And to

36:51

me, that is not successful at conveying

36:53

like what a

36:55

really devastatingly attractive like

36:58

indie musician would look like. I

37:01

don't know. I'm not buying that Monique

37:03

would be dying. I have some questions. I

37:05

have some questions about the haircut they decided

37:08

to give them both. I

37:11

feel like it was informed by the fact that all

37:13

her hair needed to fit under the wig. So there

37:15

couldn't be like a part. It has to be all

37:17

this sort of like this mountain

37:20

of hair. Also, apparently they

37:22

tried a ton of different wigs I

37:24

was reading and the problem they kept

37:26

running into is that if

37:28

you didn't make it kind

37:31

of like a bad boy haircut, she

37:33

just looked like a really cute

37:35

girl with a pixie cut. That's

37:38

how they described it. Like they

37:40

kept trying different kind of more

37:42

fashionable hairstyles and- It is funny.

37:45

Okay, so I played Viola in

37:47

Twelfth Night in college and

37:49

they did make the unusual choice when

37:51

I did instead of giving me a

37:54

boy haircut, which I was willing to,

37:56

they had the guy playing Sebastian get

37:58

extensions and put us both. in

38:00

bony tails. And it did

38:02

remind me of that where it was just

38:04

like, like it works for whoever's playing Viola,

38:07

but whoever's playing Sebastian, man. Yeah,

38:09

it ends up as if Sebastian always

38:11

gets screwed. Yeah. Oh

38:16

my gosh, I actually also played Viola,

38:18

but only for a scene.

38:20

I did like Summer Shakespeare with

38:22

my best friend and she was

38:24

Olivia and we did that scene

38:26

where Viola's declaring Duke

38:29

Orsino's feelings and the ponytail. I was not

38:31

about to get my hair cut for Summer

38:33

Shakespeare Festival. I would have. No, that wouldn't

38:35

be worth it. I was a committed college

38:37

theater student. I know. I'm like, wow, you

38:39

are willing to cut your hair for a

38:41

college production

38:43

respect. It was

38:45

college, you know, the college productions

38:47

were everything when you were in

38:49

college. Yeah.

38:52

I mean, in hindsight, glad they didn't make

38:54

me. Yeah. And

38:56

then Sebastian got to experiment with

38:58

having a beautiful long ponytail that

39:00

opened some things up for him. So

39:04

we learned that Sebastian has been thrown out

39:06

of Cornwall High and he's supposed to start

39:08

at Illyria soon, but instead he's been telling

39:10

each of his parents that he's going to

39:12

the other house and then he is leaving

39:14

to go to London for two weeks with

39:17

his band because he is an artist and he

39:19

doesn't want to go to high school. He just

39:21

wants to play his songs. He

39:23

appears to be some sort of like pop punk musician. I

39:27

mean, that was a really big show. He's

39:29

in a band. It doesn't matter. He's going

39:31

to London. We got to get him out

39:33

of here. Viola's mother comes in again after

39:35

he hops out the window and tries again

39:38

to tempt Viola with the debutante gown. And

39:40

Viola is like, no, I have a strict

39:43

no ruffles policy. Her

39:45

mother sighs, sometimes I think you might

39:47

as well just be your brother. Ding,

39:51

ding, ding. This is a brilliant idea. Viola's

39:53

like, yeah, she looks at herself in the

39:55

mirror. She's wearing a ball cap. There's a

39:57

picture of her brother in the same ball

39:59

cap. They look totally different,

40:02

but this makes her think, I

40:04

should definitely try to pass myself off as

40:06

him, because if you can't join

40:08

him, beat him. I

40:12

think actually her plan is to both beat and join

40:14

them. Yeah, she's doing both.

40:16

She contains multiple skills. She's

40:18

talking very specifically about her high school

40:21

soccer team. She's like, if I cannot

40:23

join them, I will beat them. I

40:25

will beat them. That's true. She's like,

40:27

I need to do revenge. She's acting

40:29

quite a plan around that. Yeah. She's

40:33

committed to revenge on the

40:35

young men who wronged her

40:37

and that smarmy coach, and

40:39

that's admirable. She takes

40:41

her two besties, Kia, played by

40:43

Amanda Crow, and Yvonne, played

40:45

by Jessica Lucas, to a salon, where

40:47

apparently she has good friends with

40:50

a very, very dapper

40:52

gay man named Paul. Is

40:55

this man also in high school? Okay,

40:58

this is my question. How

41:00

old is Paul? What is the

41:02

nature of their relationship? Because

41:05

they are framed as just like besties.

41:07

Like these are his best friends, these

41:09

women. Yes. But also he

41:11

seems to not go to school and have

41:13

a full-time job. Like is he just, he

41:16

became their bestie through being their hairstylist? Or

41:18

maybe he like graduated last year and didn't

41:20

go to college. Taking a year off. This

41:22

is one of those things where I'm like,

41:24

I don't need a lot of explanation in

41:27

films. I will take your friendships as they

41:29

are, but I could have used one line

41:31

here to be like- Yeah, just one. Who's

41:33

Paul? Paul, we miss you. We

41:35

miss you. Why did you have to graduate?

41:38

Yeah. Just one line. Just one line. Never

41:40

say it again. Ever since we were growing

41:42

up together in the neighborhood, I've always known

41:44

you had the idea that you could turn

41:46

me into a convincing boy. He

41:50

laughs at the idea that he could make

41:52

this work because of her

41:54

walk, her voice, her boobs, everything. No

41:56

one would ever buy that she's a

41:58

boy. But then they

42:00

all say, come on, Paul. And

42:02

so he agrees. Come on, Paul. Then

42:06

we get a very fun and confusing makeover

42:09

montage of him trying to turn her into

42:11

a boy, which left me with a lot

42:13

of questions. Why does he

42:15

have so many low quality fake mustaches

42:17

and soul patches at the salon? Why

42:20

does he have any high

42:22

quality short wigs at the

42:24

salon? Do our salons have these

42:26

things? I've been asking for the wrong stuff. In

42:29

the back room, if you're just like, wig

42:32

me. It's

42:34

like, oh, you want one of the boy transformation

42:36

wigs. I didn't know. Oh,

42:39

I'm sorry. That's downstairs. Like on the lower

42:41

level. The one thing that you'd think she

42:43

could get from him to look like a

42:46

boy at a salon is a haircut, but

42:48

he doesn't give her that. He gives her

42:50

a really, like Hollywood level realistic wig. Well,

42:53

she's not committing to a haircut. No.

42:56

She's no Erin. She's not dedicated enough

42:58

to the role. She's no theater student,

43:00

Erin, at college. How

43:03

much does she really love soccer? Yeah.

43:06

Not as much as you love Shakespeare.

43:08

That's fair. Apparently not. This

43:11

is also intercut with a fun montage of

43:13

her learning how to present as a man

43:15

in other ways. So she's

43:18

like walking behind men in public trying

43:20

to imitate their gates. She

43:22

gets one of them to like teach her a handshake

43:24

with a chest bump. Her friends

43:26

are helping her like bind her chest with an

43:28

ace bandage, which I've read is not considered very

43:31

safe, but they didn't

43:33

have as many binder options at the

43:35

time, I guess. And

43:37

I enjoyed this montage a

43:40

lot actually. I thought it was

43:42

really campy and really fun. Also,

43:44

apparently Amanda Bynes to prepare for

43:46

this role did actually

43:48

just go to a mall and like

43:51

imitate men and watch them walking around

43:53

the mall. But she's like,

43:55

I love this montage. I love a transformation

43:57

montage, but my, one of my favorite things.

43:59

about this montage and really the film overall

44:02

is that she's never could it being a

44:04

man. No, yes. No, so bad at it.

44:06

But that's the thing, it's like what if

44:08

I learn from them? Nothing. Yeah, like, but

44:10

even in the montage when she's like imitating

44:12

the guys, she's like, no, you're not, you're

44:15

bad at it. You're so bad at this.

44:17

Like. You don't look anything like what they're

44:19

doing right now. And then later when she

44:21

goes to school and Paul drops

44:23

her off and he has her show

44:25

off her man strut, she

44:27

does the like the hippies, like

44:30

swinging strut, but it almost

44:32

seems like she went the opposite direction. Like,

44:34

before she was getting mistaken for a boy

44:37

from behind by Monique. And now you would

44:39

see her from behind and be like, I

44:41

think that boy is a girl, swinging

44:44

his hips around a lot. But

44:46

Paul, okay, is it Paul's like

44:48

great. Yeah, Paul's like, this is,

44:51

you definitely seem, this seems like

44:53

the way a human person would

44:55

walk for sure. Yeah. Haka

44:57

Lugi. The whole, the

44:59

voice and the gate that she

45:01

ends up with, it's just sort of cartoonish.

45:04

Like it's not like a girl or

45:06

a boy. It's not like a

45:08

human. It looks like she is like copying

45:11

the movements of a cartoon character.

45:13

It is Amanda Vines doing physical

45:16

comedy. Yes, exactly. Like that

45:18

is the gate. But this is where we

45:21

start to get into kind

45:23

of the gender bending themes of

45:25

the movie because what she's doing

45:27

here is basically a

45:29

form of social transition, which is

45:31

something that is much more known

45:34

and talked about today than

45:37

it was at the time. Like she's learning how

45:39

to present as masculine. She is,

45:41

you know, learning to

45:43

go against her long socialized ways

45:45

of holding herself and like, yeah,

45:47

she's learning how to be around

45:49

men in a different setting. And

45:52

she's playing with her gender presentation.

45:54

She's like trying different things out

45:56

and seeing what feels right to

45:58

her, Sebastian. And what

46:00

feels right to her, Sebastian, is like

46:02

a Southern accent. It's

46:05

a very bizarre

46:07

Southern-ish accent and

46:09

a lot of brrrah. Yeah. I'm

46:12

brrrah. That's a great job, brrrah.

46:14

Sometimes a little hip-hoppy. But

46:17

I really appreciated rewatching it and

46:19

that I'd seen it a decade

46:21

ago, but rewatching it in 2024,

46:24

I was like, wow, this really

46:26

brings up a lot of thoughts about

46:29

what this would look like as trans representation,

46:31

like watching this as a trans man especially.

46:34

And so I looked around the web

46:37

a little bit and I saw that

46:39

Gabe Dunn actually very recently wrote an

46:41

article for Autostraddle about watching this movie

46:44

after years of avoiding it and

46:47

kind of his reactions to it as a trans

46:49

man. And noted that for some

46:51

trans men, this movie has been a

46:53

very important pop-cultural touchstone over the years

46:55

because it does offer some

46:58

version of the experience of

47:01

doing the sort of social transition,

47:04

like exploring trans masculinity in this

47:06

way, even though Viola is super

47:08

cis. And they're always like, don't

47:10

worry, she's definitely a girl. She's

47:12

actually a girl. There are elements

47:15

of the trans experience in what they

47:17

show her going through. And

47:20

Gabe Dunn wrote, while prepping for her female

47:22

to male transformation, Viola follows men around on

47:25

the street to imitate their walks. She's never

47:27

worried about if her behavior is going to

47:29

be unattractive to the men or garner negative

47:31

scary attention. She simply isn't deferring or referring

47:33

to them at all. Because

47:35

this isn't a trans film, trying different

47:37

gender presentations is allowed to be just

47:39

chill girly things. Yeah,

47:42

there is like a lightness and a

47:45

joy in this playing

47:47

with gender. This was seven years

47:49

after Hilary Swank

47:52

played Brandon Tina

47:54

in Boys Don't Cry, which

47:57

is obviously a very, very dark

47:59

and... tragic representation

48:02

of gender non-conforming.

48:05

And so it made sense to

48:07

me that what Gabe outlines here

48:10

is the fact that a lot of trans

48:13

people who are, I guess, are

48:15

around our generation, millennials, were

48:18

kind of refreshed to just see someone

48:20

having fun with

48:22

this kind of transition. Like it wasn't

48:25

a site of trauma, and

48:28

rather it's just like a joyful, chill thing. And

48:33

it is really fun to watch.

48:35

And it's super interesting revisiting this

48:38

movie from the lens of

48:40

now, where I think all of us,

48:42

cis people, have a lot more

48:44

understanding of the trans experience and

48:46

what transness is. And I feel

48:49

like in 2006, when I first

48:51

saw this movie, I barely understood

48:54

transness at all. And so that

48:57

those themes didn't really land

48:59

in the same way. Yeah,

49:02

I don't think I thought about it at

49:04

all at the time. No.

49:07

And one thing that Gabe

49:09

also pointed out that I didn't know, but

49:11

it's something that came up in

49:13

an interview with Amanda Bynes with Paper

49:15

Mag in 2018, is that

49:17

Amanda Bynes kind of struggled with

49:20

some of this. And she told

49:23

Paper that when the movie

49:25

came out, she says, I went into a deep

49:27

depression for four to six months because I didn't

49:29

like how I looked when I was a boy.

49:31

She said seeing herself like that was a

49:34

super strange and out of body experience. It

49:36

just really put me into a funk. And

49:40

Gabe is like, yeah, this is basically

49:43

gender dysphoria, which I thought was a

49:46

really interesting framing, because yeah, I

49:49

think for a lot of cis

49:51

people, we don't really ever think

49:53

about what that would feel

49:55

like or why you would feel that discomfort. But

49:57

Amanda Bynes is like, yeah, I saw

49:59

myself. as a man and I hated it. And like,

50:02

that is a really difficult

50:04

experience, a disorienting experience. The strange

50:06

and out of body experience, the

50:08

way that she frames it, you

50:11

can kind of feel it viscerally. And

50:14

I think that's a really, that's a reading that makes

50:16

so much sense to me. Yeah. And

50:19

it's interesting because it's kind of in contrast to

50:21

the fact that within the context

50:23

of the movie, Viola is

50:25

a cis character. And

50:28

so the only way for Amanda Bynes to

50:30

kind of experience that gender dysphoria is

50:33

in playing another version

50:35

of herself and

50:37

like watching it back from the outside.

50:39

Yeah, I was very interested to like

50:41

dig into all this a little bit

50:43

this time around. On

50:46

that note, let's take a quick break. And

50:48

when we get back the rest of She's

50:50

the Man. Love

50:59

to See It with Emma and

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54:20

And we're back. So Viola

54:25

tells her mother that she's going to her dad's and

54:27

she covers for this by

54:30

saying that she just really hoped to spend

54:32

lots of time with Monique because Sebastian is

54:34

living with their dad and like Monique

54:36

can really show her the ropes on the whole

54:38

debutante thing. And her mother is thrilled. Her little

54:41

girl is finally going to be a lady. So

54:43

this means that Viola has

54:45

to like basically agree to be a

54:47

debutante to make this soccer thing happen,

54:49

which sets in motion many fun preparing

54:51

to be a debutante scenes. The

54:54

carnival is the best scene in the

54:56

movie. Also a weird plot hole here.

54:59

Sebastian is going to what seems

55:01

to be a boarding school. Yes.

55:03

Yeah. So correct. So

55:06

he and Monique would not be at

55:08

her dad's house. Do the parents know

55:10

it's a boarding school? They don't seem

55:13

to be. They really don't know what's

55:15

going on. They have no idea where

55:17

their children are. Sebastian wasn't your place.

55:19

And yeah, Sebastian was supposed to be

55:21

a boarding school. But I'm like, does

55:23

mom not know it's a boarding school?

55:25

I don't. I'm really unclear because she

55:27

just accepted that without a blink. And

55:30

I seems like neither of them knew it

55:32

was a boarding school. Yeah. Also,

55:35

like I feel like this is this

55:37

whole movie is an advertisement for like

55:40

parents just because your

55:42

kids are old enough to be the go

55:44

betweens and the child custody stuff doesn't mean

55:46

you should let them like you still have

55:48

to confirm with the other parent no

55:50

matter how much you hate them. You

55:52

have to be an active co-parent. Yeah. Yeah. Just

55:54

be like, all right, I guess she said she's

55:57

going to her dad's just a just

55:59

my 17. year old daughter definitely just going

56:01

to her dad's for two weeks. I have no

56:03

questions. Time to

56:05

go to school. Her boarding school,

56:07

like it's a local boarding school. And

56:11

Viola has on her movie quality

56:13

short wig and sideburns and eyebrows. This

56:15

wouldn't really be necessary now because we

56:17

don't pluck our eyebrows into tiny lines

56:20

anymore. But in 2006. Yeah, we

56:24

needed to add some hair. She

56:28

gets out of the car. Paul has driven

56:31

her to school and she immediately thinks the

56:33

first person who sees her has clocked her.

56:35

She freaks out. But Paul

56:37

calms her down. He's like, I put

56:41

a lot of work into this boy Viola

56:43

look and you're going to go through

56:45

with it. Now practice your boy voice. Do

56:47

your strut. Haka Lukey.

56:50

The entire school is like all around

56:52

them like they're at the drop off.

56:54

All the other kids are there. Why

56:58

would they practice this now where

57:01

everyone can see them? I

57:04

sort of enjoy it though as like in

57:07

opposition to the fact that Viola

57:10

Sebastian is immediately sure that everyone

57:12

is looking at him. But

57:16

what this shows is like no one's paying attention

57:18

and it's kind of all his

57:20

own anxieties. Well, that's basically the

57:23

whole part of the movie where Viola

57:25

is at a Liria's. No one actually

57:27

is paying attention to the very obvious

57:32

signs. So Paul puts

57:34

her mind at ease and

57:36

he sends her off with a soccer

57:38

ball. He says, remember, inside every girl,

57:41

there is a boy. And then

57:44

he's like, oh, that didn't sound right. And

57:46

I was like, wow, there's so many levels

57:48

that that works out. Yeah, you can really

57:50

read that in so many ways. And

57:52

then he says, be a good boy. She

57:57

then has a terrifying walk into school. Of

57:59

course, she's feels like everyone is looking at

58:01

her and they know she is dodging

58:04

football. She's whirling around the cameras

58:06

like whirling around with her. I

58:08

was getting pretty nauseous watching. There

58:10

were some in the margin. There

58:13

were some intense directorial choices made.

58:16

Walk in. Yeah, this

58:18

is I think when I texted you Emma and

58:20

I was like, I think this movie is worse

58:22

than I remembered. Because I was so like the

58:24

sensory overwhelm of this scene. I was like, why

58:27

would you do it like this? Yeah, what

58:29

is happening? But I will

58:31

say that she brings a

58:34

capacity for physical comedy to

58:36

this wild scene direction that

58:38

is unparalleled.

58:41

And she does not miss a moment to sell

58:43

a physical gag.

58:47

We also get the first real glimpses

58:49

of her odd accent as she

58:52

gives herself a little pep talk walking in

58:54

again in the middle of the hallway surrounded

58:56

by people. We have a clip. I

59:00

am a dude. I am a

59:02

hunky dude. Hunky

59:06

dude. What

59:10

is this? Again, she's like

59:12

the southern accent is simply the most masculine.

59:15

Yeah, notoriously throughout. Yeah.

59:17

Yeah. Like you know

59:20

what's so masculine, a light southern

59:22

accent. Yeah. Also,

59:25

the facial expressions really have to be

59:27

seen to be believed. There's a lot

59:29

of like exposing of the teeth for

59:32

comic effect. It's like, like

59:34

she's a cartoon of like a talking

59:36

rodent and like a Pixar

59:38

movie or something. Her

59:41

like faces per minute, like if there was

59:43

some sort of like acting

59:45

competition of like just how many faces can

59:48

you do in a minute, Amanda Bynes would

59:50

be up there. Yes,

59:52

I found myself almost on some level,

59:55

thinking that they were doing some sort

59:57

of weird film manipulation to make her

59:59

expressions change. that fast. And then I was like, no,

1:00:01

I think she's just doing that. No, I think she can just

1:00:03

do that. Yeah, I think that's wild. Yeah,

1:00:05

but it is. But that's what's like fascinating about

1:00:07

her is because sometimes she can just like deliver

1:00:10

a line in an understated

1:00:13

kind of human way sometimes. And then other

1:00:16

times you're like, oh my God, that was

1:00:18

27 facial expressions in

1:00:20

four seconds. Just had to flex

1:00:22

that real quick. That line. Bye.

1:00:26

Viola heads into her dorm room

1:00:28

where she meets a hunky shirtless

1:00:31

Duke Orsino played by Channing

1:00:33

Tatum, of course. And

1:00:35

their two hallmates, Andrew and Toby,

1:00:37

she learns they're all soccer players,

1:00:40

or as she puts it,

1:00:42

they play the beautiful game.

1:00:44

They immediately ask Sebastian

1:00:47

why he's so young. He's

1:00:49

like, I skipped a couple grades. I'm

1:00:51

just, yeah, I'm basically a genius.

1:00:54

They're like, why do you have tampons in your bag? I

1:00:57

mean, he's like, for

1:00:59

nosebleeds. It's

1:01:02

such an iconic scene where Sebastian

1:01:05

is like, you just, I'll

1:01:07

show you, you take this off, whatever

1:01:09

this is, like the applicator just throws it

1:01:12

off and sticks it right up his nose.

1:01:14

I enjoy how uninhibited

1:01:17

Viola as Sebastian

1:01:19

is. He just like doesn't give

1:01:21

a fuck. Yeah, well,

1:01:24

he's like not even really trying to be

1:01:26

like super masked. Well, but here's

1:01:28

the thing. It's not that

1:01:30

he doesn't give a fuck or she doesn't

1:01:32

give a fuck. It's that

1:01:34

he's like overwhelmed with anxiety and

1:01:36

fear. And

1:01:39

it all is coming out through this kind of

1:01:41

like manic energy. Like

1:01:44

trying so hard to be masked. And this is

1:01:46

what he's coming up with. It is, I mean,

1:01:49

I love how grossed out these men are by

1:01:52

the mere existence of a tampon, which is just

1:01:54

a piece of cotton. But also I am trying

1:01:56

to imagine if that was you and you were

1:01:58

like, meet in my new room. and

1:02:00

then whatever that was walked

1:02:02

in. Now

1:02:06

my new roommate is sticking a tampon up their nose.

1:02:08

Well, they're not very kind. They're like, wow, your new

1:02:10

roommate's a freak. And I'm

1:02:12

like, wow, that's poor. Wow. Poor

1:02:15

Sebastian. But as he looks young

1:02:17

and he has a tampon stuck in his

1:02:19

nose. As they

1:02:21

learn later, tampons are very absorbent.

1:02:23

Yeah. Sebastian

1:02:26

is correct about this. I

1:02:28

also read that during

1:02:30

the audition Channing Tatum stuck a

1:02:32

tampon with the applicator

1:02:34

up his nose because he didn't

1:02:36

realize you had to remove

1:02:39

the applicator. So, you know, men are,

1:02:41

they're all learning. I wanted to

1:02:43

say that. And I was like, wait, no, he was 26. Yeah.

1:02:47

He got to 26 and was like, literally, what is a tampon? Oh,

1:02:53

man. We

1:02:56

hide that gross stuff away from them, Erin,

1:02:58

out of respect. It's

1:03:01

time for soccer tryouts and

1:03:03

immediately the coach is like shirts

1:03:06

versus skins. And

1:03:08

also I want to call out that

1:03:10

the coach at Illyria is played by

1:03:12

a former English footballer.

1:03:15

Yes. Very successful.

1:03:17

Vinnie Jones, a former Premier League

1:03:20

player and actor, he went into

1:03:22

the entertainment industry after he ended

1:03:24

his football career. He

1:03:26

comes off like he was apparently

1:03:29

a notoriously like kind of tough

1:03:31

guy in the Premier

1:03:33

League. So it makes

1:03:35

sense that he comes off as sort of like a gangster more

1:03:37

so than a football coach

1:03:39

or a soccer coach in a lot of these scenes. I

1:03:42

feel like a lot of his acting career has been

1:03:44

like Guy Ritchie movies and he's like,

1:03:46

yeah, giving that energy here. That

1:03:48

tracks that is. Yeah,

1:03:50

that makes a lot of sense. It's the hooligan

1:03:53

energy that he brings. So

1:03:55

Sebastian is like, I can't be a

1:03:57

skin. I have a sun allergy. I'm

1:03:59

very happy. very allergic to the

1:04:01

sun. And the coach calls

1:04:03

him a Nancy boy, which

1:04:05

is not very

1:04:07

nice to use a slur like that just

1:04:09

because someone has an allergy to the sun.

1:04:12

But he does let Sebastian be

1:04:14

a shirt. And just

1:04:16

the first glimmer of maybe an acceptance

1:04:19

and a softness from this extremely homophobic,

1:04:22

bigoted tough guy coach. Unfortunately,

1:04:25

despite feminism, Sebastian only makes

1:04:28

second string on this team.

1:04:31

Also, why is Sebastian so exhausted by

1:04:33

doing pushups? Okay, here's can do pushups.

1:04:37

No, but also here's what here's

1:04:39

the thing that they missed. If

1:04:41

you've ever been bound,

1:04:44

like boobs bound, you can't

1:04:46

breathe. Like

1:04:48

that's part of why it's like sometimes

1:04:50

if it's especially if it's done wrong or

1:04:52

if it's done too tight, you like can't

1:04:54

really breathe. And that would have been a

1:04:56

great way for them to explain why

1:04:59

she was not so good in these

1:05:01

tryouts without just making her not as

1:05:04

good at soccer as we thought. Right.

1:05:07

Like, yeah, she actually can't play as

1:05:09

well when she has like a tight

1:05:11

thing wrapped around. Yeah. Yeah.

1:05:14

Okay. This is this is a real

1:05:16

missed opportunity because it just didn't make

1:05:18

sense. No, you're like, does she just

1:05:21

bad at soccer in a way we

1:05:23

were led to believe she

1:05:25

wasn't. Yeah. I

1:05:29

mean, this that does seem to be the

1:05:31

takeaway. Like she needs extra

1:05:33

extra training and to the hot

1:05:35

man front to actually teach her.

1:05:37

And I was like, okay, well,

1:05:39

the whole first part was how

1:05:41

only sexism could explain then not

1:05:43

letting her be on the boys

1:05:45

team. And now apparently it's just

1:05:47

because she's not as good. And I don't

1:05:49

know how to feel about this anymore as

1:05:51

a feminist. It really just it felt

1:05:53

like they lost they lost the

1:05:55

train of thought here because they

1:05:57

needed something for Sebastian and. and

1:06:00

Duke to like barter on. And

1:06:03

they needed something for Sebastian to

1:06:05

like overcome. Right. You

1:06:07

know, Sebastian needed to be kind of

1:06:09

defeated at the beginning and because they

1:06:12

don't have like another

1:06:14

game. Yeah. Which is

1:06:16

to have Sebastian embarrassed. I'm not making an

1:06:18

excuse for this. I think they should have

1:06:20

found a different way. Yeah, just make it.

1:06:22

I agree. I think just make it so

1:06:24

that she couldn't breathe and she didn't expect

1:06:26

that. And then when

1:06:29

she later wants to spend time with

1:06:31

Duke, she can fake needing

1:06:33

lessons as been done

1:06:35

in so many outcomes before. Like, yeah.

1:06:38

I know. It's a very common trope. This

1:06:40

was, yeah, this was a real error. They

1:06:44

just needed a little bit more explanation for

1:06:46

this and also for why

1:06:49

her best friend Paul is an

1:06:51

adult. Yeah. After this,

1:06:53

it's shower time, group showers and Sebastian

1:06:55

is saved in the nick of time

1:06:57

by a summons from the principal. Headmaster

1:07:00

Horatio Gold played by David

1:07:02

Cross, who is one of

1:07:05

my favorite parts of this movie. Absolutely

1:07:07

incredible. Incredible performance. He's having so

1:07:10

much fun. He enters the office

1:07:12

to sing a welcome

1:07:14

song to Sebastian that is basically just like,

1:07:17

welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome,

1:07:19

welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome,

1:07:22

welcome to a Leary. Yeah.

1:07:24

And it just keeps going longer than you would

1:07:26

think. He's like, how

1:07:29

are you doing? And Sebastian says, just busy

1:07:31

being a guy. Totally

1:07:33

normal response. Just

1:07:36

guy stuff, doing the being a guy thing.

1:07:40

But Viola does think that she has

1:07:42

been caught, especially because she has gotten

1:07:44

her ACE bandage stuck in the file

1:07:46

cabinet somehow. I

1:07:49

was like, Viola, why are you

1:07:51

trying to unbind in this moment?

1:07:53

Yeah, I don't understand. Inopportune.

1:07:56

Yeah, the idea of being like, well, I'm

1:07:58

in the principal's office now. Yeah,

1:08:00

now that's the time. Again,

1:08:03

something that could have been

1:08:05

maybe woven together with a

1:08:07

little line privately

1:08:09

about how she's just unable

1:08:12

to breathe after practice, but no, she just takes it off.

1:08:16

Instead, it really just seems like she looked

1:08:19

around and was like, I'm alone here. Yeah.

1:08:23

But it turns out that the

1:08:25

headmaster, like everyone else, is completely

1:08:27

oblivious. Just checking in and

1:08:30

wants to make sure that Sebastian

1:08:32

is adjusting well and never

1:08:35

ever touches the Illyria crest

1:08:37

that he keeps on his desk. After

1:08:40

I mean, as a transfer

1:08:42

student, a fellow transfer student

1:08:47

outside of the office, Sebastian

1:08:49

runs right into a very

1:08:51

pretty blonde student named Olivia,

1:08:53

and he compliments her

1:08:55

shoes and is super excited

1:08:57

to learn that they're from anthropology. Yes, they

1:08:59

have shoes. They're right by the accessories. And

1:09:03

like many high school age straight

1:09:05

women, Olivia has just been waiting

1:09:07

and waiting for a man who is interested

1:09:09

in the same things as her, like the

1:09:12

shoes that you can buy at anthropology. So

1:09:14

she is immediately smitten. Then

1:09:18

they head to the lunchroom. Sebastian sits down

1:09:20

with Duke and the boys and tries to

1:09:22

do some male bonding. And it does not

1:09:24

go well. Then

1:09:28

they see Olivia across the room and it

1:09:30

turns out Duke has a huge crush on

1:09:32

her. So the guys reveal that she was

1:09:34

actually dating a college student

1:09:36

before, but he dumped her. And now

1:09:38

she's like a mess. She has low

1:09:40

self esteem. She's so vulnerable. Yeah,

1:09:43

as guys would say, she's ready

1:09:45

for them to pounce. And they

1:09:47

like high five and file. I

1:09:50

enjoyed. Get me out of

1:09:52

here. I did enjoy how

1:09:54

explicit they make their own performance

1:09:56

of masculinity. They're like, we are

1:09:59

tough. that woman

1:10:01

is vulnerable, time to

1:10:04

sexually exploit her, because that's what

1:10:07

we do. Like as much

1:10:09

as Viola is doing a

1:10:12

performance of masculinity, so are they.

1:10:15

Like they're all performing gender. Yeah,

1:10:18

I always think I was thinking of when I was in

1:10:20

college and I spent

1:10:22

so much time in my freshman

1:10:24

year boyfriend's room because I just

1:10:27

didn't like my own roommate or my own room and

1:10:29

I was obsessed with my boyfriend. So I was

1:10:32

just there all the time and his three roommates loved

1:10:34

that. But they would like kind of forget

1:10:36

that I was there, right? They didn't like really think of

1:10:38

me as a girl who they had to impress. And

1:10:41

so I started to hear the way that they would talk

1:10:43

about girls and women and

1:10:45

it was not great. And I was

1:10:48

like, oh, people are always like, oh, women are the

1:10:50

ones who are really judging each other and guys don't

1:10:52

care about like these little things.

1:10:54

No, they care. They're talking about it to

1:10:56

each other. And it was

1:10:58

really dark to see. I mean, they were 18,

1:11:01

so hopefully, you know, they grow out of it like

1:11:03

these boys do. So

1:11:05

this felt really real to me, like that moment when

1:11:07

you're around some guys who like forget you're there, they

1:11:09

don't realize you're there, and they let the mask down

1:11:12

and are just like, yeah, we love taking

1:11:15

advantage of women. Sebastian

1:11:19

tries to express some sympathy for Olivia's

1:11:21

feelings and he's like, I can

1:11:23

relate, you know, my last breakup. You

1:11:25

think you know someone and then they just,

1:11:28

you know, it's like it was every kiss a lie.

1:11:31

And the guys just pick up their trays and

1:11:33

immediately leave. Literally, yeah, they

1:11:36

cannot handle it. She expressed a feeling.

1:11:40

Too much for us. We

1:11:42

were talking about exploiting vulnerable

1:11:44

women sexually. Feelings,

1:11:47

not so much. I love how,

1:11:49

yeah, this is so explicit in the movie

1:11:51

that they're like exploring how traditional

1:11:54

masculinity is also like imposed and

1:11:57

these boys all feel like they have to

1:11:59

adhere to certain. certain standards

1:12:01

of presentation in order to be seen

1:12:03

as men and be accepted. And they're

1:12:05

like, obviously we can't say a feeling.

1:12:07

What we say is not

1:12:09

like, oh, I find her so

1:12:12

interesting and I really want to get to know

1:12:14

her better. What I say is, time

1:12:17

for me to pounce because she's like

1:12:19

wounded prey on the ground. And

1:12:22

as we see all three of

1:12:24

these guys are suffering as a

1:12:26

result of these gendered

1:12:29

expectations. And

1:12:31

we see all three of them go

1:12:34

on little journeys to opening

1:12:36

themselves up, to being in touch

1:12:38

with their true feelings. By deconstructing

1:12:40

gender, they are able to pursue

1:12:43

more fulfilling romantic relationships. Patriarchy

1:12:45

hurts us all. Exactly.

1:12:48

Yes. It's so

1:12:50

funny how in some ways this movie

1:12:52

feels very ahead of its time and

1:12:54

in some ways it feels really not.

1:12:58

Really not. So for a

1:13:01

brief moment that night, it seems like Viola might

1:13:03

get to shower. Again,

1:13:05

she has not showered since soccer tryouts.

1:13:09

But after she gets her binder off,

1:13:11

the dorm nerd Malcolm comes in covered

1:13:13

in pimple cream dots to yell at

1:13:15

Sebastian for not wearing shower shoes per

1:13:17

the dorm manual. And

1:13:20

then Duke walks in and rescues Sebastian by

1:13:22

snapping Malcolm with a towel in the back

1:13:24

of the head. Hell yeah. This

1:13:26

movie is not pro nerd and

1:13:28

it is pro violence toward nerds. Try

1:13:32

of complicated feelings about they make the

1:13:34

nerd just a vile person. Yeah.

1:13:36

So it's okay to like snap him

1:13:38

with a towel, which is the most

1:13:41

cartoonish display of like popular jocks bullying.

1:13:44

Less popular. They're like, no, but

1:13:46

this guy sucks. So it's actually

1:13:48

violence is good. Yeah. In

1:13:51

a way. At this point, Malcolm has done nothing

1:13:53

wrong. Yeah, he's just

1:13:55

being annoying. Yeah, no, he's just being a

1:13:57

narc. Yeah. But but they should

1:13:59

wear. because that's how athletes foot spread.

1:14:01

That's disgusting. Imagine like you're in a

1:14:04

boys dorm. No.

1:14:07

Shoes on all the time. No, I mean,

1:14:09

I'm actually shocked Violet didn't like come in

1:14:11

with, with like layers of socks and

1:14:19

shoes. Like she's clearly disgusted by being

1:14:21

in this male space. It's

1:14:25

not a correct detail. Viola would be horrified

1:14:27

by touching the same floor as all these

1:14:29

disgusting male feet. After

1:14:33

Sebastian calls Duke dog

1:14:35

and G Monday, he

1:14:37

struts on out almost forgetting his

1:14:39

ace bandage. Another close call, but

1:14:42

Duke does not really notice a

1:14:44

thing. Next

1:14:46

we see the nightmare that Viola is having

1:14:49

that night. She's on the bench and

1:14:51

the scary coach is finally sending her into

1:14:54

the game. Oh no, she's in a giant

1:14:56

pink cupcake gown, just like a debutante. And

1:14:58

she trips over the ball when she's trying

1:15:00

to take a shot and everyone laughs at

1:15:03

her. She

1:15:05

is awoken in the middle of this by

1:15:07

masked soccer players initiating some hazing and they

1:15:09

are already covered in coleslaw when they're told

1:15:12

to remove their clothes. And

1:15:14

Sebastian escapes from this by

1:15:16

pulling the fire alarm. Sebastian

1:15:19

gets through like an unlikely

1:15:21

number of days without anyone noticing

1:15:23

that he is never shirtless around

1:15:25

anyone as a soccer player. Like

1:15:29

there's no more communal showers for the

1:15:31

rest of his time there.

1:15:34

There's no more. Yeah, they explain how

1:15:36

he gets saved once, but not like

1:15:38

every other practice. And they're

1:15:40

all like, okay, I guess the hazing's over now.

1:15:42

We're not going to do any more hazing. Yeah,

1:15:44

they're like, coleslaw was really it. That's where we

1:15:46

talk. Oh, well, we did get interrupted

1:15:48

by the fire alarm. I guess we got to pack

1:15:51

that in. So

1:15:53

after this catastrophe, Viola calls Paul

1:15:55

and tells him she's ready to

1:15:57

give up. Everyone thinks that Sebastian

1:15:59

is a loser geek and she

1:16:01

smells so bad she says I'm

1:16:03

convulsing people. She

1:16:06

still hasn't showered. It's been like 36 hours

1:16:08

and a soccer tryout but Paul has a

1:16:10

plan. We never resolve this. We don't see

1:16:12

her shower, do we? No, we do.

1:16:15

We see her get one shower and like

1:16:17

a shower. She starts showering

1:16:19

in the middle of the night. Yeah.

1:16:21

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It

1:16:24

seems like an unsustainable plan to me but that is

1:16:27

what we see. Also, she only has to

1:16:29

do it for 12 days. So

1:16:32

Paul's plan is for Viola

1:16:34

Sebastian to walk into the

1:16:37

local pizzeria where everyone goes to eat

1:16:41

looking sexy in a long sleeve tee under

1:16:43

a short sleeve tee because yeah. 2006

1:16:45

baby. Yeah. Oh

1:16:48

yeah. And that's the layering is coming

1:16:50

back people. It's all about layering and

1:16:52

it's like a white long sleeve tee

1:16:54

with like a logo. A short sleeve

1:16:56

tee. Like a blue graphic

1:16:58

tee over it. Oh, so bad. At

1:17:01

every step Sebastian is being accosted

1:17:03

by hot girls and he is

1:17:05

either calling them Fox and Mama

1:17:08

or being begged for

1:17:10

romantic attention by them. Viola's

1:17:13

two besties Kia and Yvonne are

1:17:16

cast as like his exes from

1:17:18

his old high school and they

1:17:20

both just happened to walk in

1:17:22

looking incredibly drop dead hot and

1:17:24

heels and beg him for another

1:17:26

chance. It's so

1:17:28

good. And he was just cartoonishly horrible

1:17:30

to them. He's like, Oh, sorry, new

1:17:32

school, new babe pool. And

1:17:35

then as Keel walks away, I'd tap

1:17:37

that. Like, isn't

1:17:40

the idea that you already did tap that?

1:17:42

Yeah. It's just a he's

1:17:44

just like throwing out phrases. Yeah.

1:17:47

Yvonne is like, I know I wasn't woman enough for

1:17:50

you in the end. And he's like, yep. Correct.

1:17:54

And then he smacks her in the ass. Paul

1:17:56

seemingly wrote this dialogue for these

1:17:59

women. Yes. They

1:18:02

couldn't think of the lines along.

1:18:04

Yeah. And again, how old is

1:18:06

Paul? How does he know that?

1:18:09

And why does he have so much free

1:18:12

time? Yeah. Do all this labor in between

1:18:14

his shifts at the makeover

1:18:16

salon where he puts cheap

1:18:19

costume mustaches on people. So

1:18:23

after seeing Sebastian treating girls in

1:18:25

this deeply degrading fashion, they're all

1:18:27

starting to be like, maybe Sebastian

1:18:29

is pretty cool after all. They

1:18:32

turn to each other and they're like, I

1:18:34

think we need to reevaluate. Yeah. He is

1:18:36

a major dick to women. And that's something

1:18:38

we can all get behind. So

1:18:40

Sebastian really polishes off this

1:18:43

performance by somehow

1:18:45

breaking up with Monique, who has

1:18:47

been prowling through town looking for

1:18:49

Sebastian and like happens upon him

1:18:51

in the pizzeria. While

1:18:54

he is running away from Monique and

1:18:56

like hiding his face from

1:18:58

her behind various pizza boxes

1:19:01

and pitchers. And

1:19:05

he finishes her off with this classic line.

1:19:07

I think we have a clip. And

1:19:09

when my eyes are closed, I see you for

1:19:11

what you truly are, which is

1:19:13

ugly. What is

1:19:16

this? Like, how is this not

1:19:18

the main thing people? I see

1:19:20

what you really are. It's

1:19:23

like, OK, I think he

1:19:25

actually learned to be she

1:19:27

actually learned her her boy

1:19:29

accent from watching like some

1:19:32

sort of old procedural

1:19:34

starring like a Southern lawyer in

1:19:36

Tuscaloosa or something. Like, it's just

1:19:39

so such a deep

1:19:41

draw. Like, where would

1:19:43

you get this? Also, I

1:19:46

was like, don't you think Monique would

1:19:48

be like, why does my boyfriend

1:19:51

have this weird accent? Right. Yeah.

1:19:53

Like she didn't even see his

1:19:55

face. Oh,

1:19:58

this does not sound like Sebastian.

1:20:00

at all. Also, Amanda Bynes and

1:20:02

the guy playing Sebastian are not

1:20:04

the same height. They're vastly not

1:20:06

the same height. Well, we're just

1:20:08

not gonna worry about that. Okay.

1:20:11

Yeah, they kind of gloss over the whole

1:20:13

like thing

1:20:15

where they have different bodies and

1:20:18

like... Yeah. She

1:20:20

has a body where everyone is like, oh, are you

1:20:22

still 14? And he is like the

1:20:25

sexiest guy in school. Which is

1:20:28

fine for all the new

1:20:30

people. Yeah, it's fine for

1:20:32

anyone who didn't actually know

1:20:34

Sebastian, but for Sebastian's girlfriend.

1:20:37

Yeah, it's not great. She

1:20:39

seems off. So despite all

1:20:41

of these plot holes, the

1:20:44

guys watching are in awe. Now Sebastian

1:20:46

is actually their hero and they want

1:20:48

his advice to be able to treat

1:20:50

women exactly as badly as he does.

1:20:53

Yeah, they're like, wow, you

1:20:55

just treated three women like

1:20:57

objects to be discarded. Tell

1:21:00

us your secrets. So in

1:21:02

science lab, after Sebastian finishes dispensing

1:21:04

some dating wisdom, they get their

1:21:07

lab partner pairings and Duke gets

1:21:09

paired with Eunice, a nerd with

1:21:11

headgear. Sebastian gets paired with Olivia

1:21:13

and also has to be like,

1:21:15

Duke, please do not be openly

1:21:17

mean to Eunice. That's not

1:21:19

nice. Olivia

1:21:21

is so in awe

1:21:24

of Sebastian sensitive masculinity because Sebastian

1:21:26

admits he's freaked out by dissecting

1:21:28

animals, which most men would never

1:21:30

admit. And she's like, but I

1:21:32

love that. And

1:21:34

then she sees a page of his lyrics. Why

1:21:36

are his lyrics there? Where did they come from?

1:21:39

Why are they just out on the table?

1:21:41

The Sebastian who writes lyrics isn't here. What's

1:21:44

all this about? I guess we're supposed to

1:21:46

think that Viola took

1:21:48

Sebastian's notebook that had

1:21:51

the lyrics. It's

1:21:53

really just there in order

1:21:55

to justify the reason that Olivia

1:21:57

would be as into Vile

1:22:00

is brother as her. Exactly.

1:22:03

This is her emotionally connecting to the

1:22:05

real Sebastian. Exactly. So she sees the

1:22:07

lyrics and she's like, oh my god,

1:22:09

these are so good. But

1:22:13

Duke. They're either they are not. Of

1:22:16

course they're not. They're

1:22:19

like an 18-year-old pop punk lyrics.

1:22:22

But Duke wants that attention, so they make

1:22:24

a deal. Duke will help Sebastian get good

1:22:27

enough at soccer to make first string and

1:22:29

Sebastian will help Duke with Olivia. There

1:22:32

is no way that a man who

1:22:34

looks like the hottest 26-year-old in Hollywood

1:22:36

would need any help talking

1:22:39

to a woman. Like they're like, oh, he just

1:22:41

gets nervous. He has a hard time talking. He would

1:22:44

not be nervous. He would be such a dick. He

1:22:46

would be like, women love me. I don't have to

1:22:48

do anything. What's there to be

1:22:50

nervous about? Come on. Give me a break.

1:22:55

Everything is going well, except that Malcolm is

1:22:57

really pissed that Olivia is swooning over a

1:22:59

transfer student because he has actually been investing

1:23:01

years in winning her over by doing things

1:23:04

like telling her how much hoof there is

1:23:06

in her baloney sandwich. And

1:23:09

also building a shrine to her

1:23:11

in his creepy dorm room. So

1:23:13

he convides to his Olivia body

1:23:15

pillow and his tarantula malvolio, which

1:23:18

is, of course, the name of Olivia Stewart

1:23:20

in Twelfth Night. They had to get that name

1:23:22

in there. And he's

1:23:24

like, we're going to take Sebastian down. So

1:23:27

once again, Sebastian almost gets

1:23:29

caught by the headmaster as

1:23:31

Viola is scratching under her

1:23:33

wig as she sits

1:23:36

just in the open on campus

1:23:38

talking on her cell phone with

1:23:40

her brother. And

1:23:45

again, there are just people everywhere. Why would

1:23:47

you just basically take off your wig? It's

1:23:51

not how those wigs work. You have to

1:23:53

glue them down. I

1:23:56

know, the idea that

1:23:58

she's supposed to be playing soccer and doing all

1:24:00

this. this intense stuff with this very realistic wig

1:24:02

on, but then when it's time to take it

1:24:04

off, she just kind of like lightly tugs it

1:24:06

off. Yes, no, that is not how the process

1:24:08

works. If

1:24:11

it were that easy, like it would come off

1:24:13

in the first time that you like juked left

1:24:15

and went right, it would just slide right off.

1:24:18

Yes. Yeah, I

1:24:20

need to know more about the physics of

1:24:22

this wig. I need to. Good

1:24:24

job, Paul. But

1:24:27

they need to have this very loaded

1:24:29

conversation about the fact that Sebastian is

1:24:31

hiding his male pattern baldness. And

1:24:35

the headmaster is like, it's okay. I'm

1:24:37

in the same boat. I think we

1:24:40

have a clip. Okay, there's gonna be a

1:24:42

time when you're gonna have to come out of the closet

1:24:44

and just accept yourself for who you are, a baldy.

1:24:47

Okay, but it's gonna be all right, okay? Oh,

1:24:51

and between you and me, chicks dig

1:24:53

it. Rauh! Hang

1:24:57

10. Hang 10. I

1:25:00

think this is my favorite line reading in

1:25:02

the whole movie. Rauh!

1:25:10

I just wanted everyone to hear that.

1:25:12

Okay, so Sebastian then tries to convince

1:25:14

Olivia to go out with Duke, but

1:25:17

she is not into it. She

1:25:19

thinks he's just another dumb jock who will hook up with her

1:25:21

so he can tell his friends. But,

1:25:23

and Sebastian finishes her sentence, too insecure

1:25:26

to treat you as an equal. And

1:25:28

she's like, oh my God, that's exactly what I was going

1:25:31

to say. Sebastian gets it.

1:25:33

He gets it. And that's hot. She's

1:25:36

like, you're the only guy in the school who's

1:25:38

never tried anything with me. And Sebastian says, trust

1:25:40

me, you're not my type. And

1:25:43

then, obviously has to walk this all

1:25:45

the way back because gay men don't

1:25:47

exist except for Paul. Like,

1:25:49

obviously the immediate takeaway would be like, oh, he's

1:25:52

gay. Like, because of the

1:25:54

way you said it was so like, obviously

1:25:56

you're not my type. But

1:25:58

that doesn't seem to come up. It's just... like, oh,

1:26:00

no, it doesn't the wrong kind of woman. And

1:26:03

he's like, no, of course, if I'm not attracted to

1:26:05

blonde women, I'm not a man. So I am a

1:26:08

man and I'm attracted to blonde women. I

1:26:11

love that they couldn't even come up with like, I

1:26:13

like brunettes. No,

1:26:16

he's just like, oh, no, I definitely

1:26:21

I just think of you as a

1:26:23

friend because we're such good friends. And

1:26:25

that's the reason friendship type is women.

1:26:27

And I don't get along with. Well,

1:26:31

judging from from his relationship history

1:26:33

with Monique. That's true. That's

1:26:35

that's actually other Sebastian. I

1:26:38

know. But like they all saw Viola

1:26:40

Sebastian break up with Monique. That's true.

1:26:42

Also, like Monique, who looks very similar

1:26:44

to Olivia. So, yeah, you would think

1:26:48

she's his type. Anyway, Sebastian tells

1:26:50

Duke that he is

1:26:52

like, oh, he's opening her up to

1:26:54

the idea of. Of

1:26:57

dating Duke, and he's like, that's great, but I'm

1:26:59

really, oh, just nervous.

1:27:02

I don't know how to talk to women. And so Sebastian

1:27:04

is like, I can help you practice learning. I'll pretend to

1:27:06

be a girl. I'm really good at it. I'm so good

1:27:08

at pretending to be a girl because my I tend to

1:27:11

be my sister. And

1:27:13

this gives us the opportunity to see Duke

1:27:16

just being like so horrified and grossed out

1:27:18

by the idea of accepting Sebastian

1:27:20

as a girl for even 30 seconds.

1:27:24

Yeah, all of the vast majority of

1:27:26

the trans and gay

1:27:28

panic in this movie does come from Duke.

1:27:31

Yeah. Yeah. But I love that it's

1:27:34

not like they didn't make the choice

1:27:36

to be like, yeah, Duke sees something

1:27:38

in Sebastian and is starting to develop

1:27:41

feelings. And maybe that makes him uncomfortable.

1:27:43

Or it's just like, no, he

1:27:46

strictly likes her when she's a

1:27:48

girl and has absolutely none of

1:27:50

those feelings when she's a boy.

1:27:52

It's like almost kind of implausible.

1:27:54

It's like that she's so similar.

1:27:57

Like there's not much difference. So

1:27:59

you're. You're really only into her with

1:28:02

long hair. Like the short

1:28:04

hair is an absolute no-go-free. Yeah, the

1:28:06

face looks exactly the same. Don't

1:28:09

get a haircut, Viola. But

1:28:11

yeah, it is like a trans panic

1:28:14

vibe that there's no like,

1:28:16

oh, like, is this opening me up to new

1:28:18

sides of my sexuality that I have these confusing

1:28:20

feelings? It's just like, oh, gross.

1:28:22

If you could dress like a girl or talk like

1:28:24

a girl, that would be so gross and weird and

1:28:26

awful. Like, I hate that. And

1:28:29

that made me really uncomfortable watching this.

1:28:32

Because that's like a big part

1:28:34

of his character and he's there

1:28:36

all the time. I

1:28:38

mean, he's like as a

1:28:40

character, Duke's not great.

1:28:44

No, no, he's just a blanks screen

1:28:46

that is made up of gay

1:28:50

and trans panic and

1:28:52

muscles. Yeah, yeah. Just

1:28:54

a handsome trans. Oh.

1:28:58

Also, Viola's

1:29:01

tips are not good. I

1:29:03

really have to sympathize with Duke on this

1:29:05

one. Sebastian keeps being like, we're doing it.

1:29:08

We're learning how to talk to women. This

1:29:10

is going so great and it's not going

1:29:12

great. And Duke is not learning anything useful.

1:29:14

He's like, just ask her

1:29:17

anything. Duke is like, okay, do you like

1:29:19

cheese? And she's like, yes, my favorite scooter.

1:29:22

And Duke is like, me too. And

1:29:24

she's like, we're doing it. This is

1:29:26

happening. And

1:29:29

I'm like, no, this is not a good

1:29:31

conversation. It's not going anywhere. No one's having

1:29:34

fun except for you because you like being

1:29:36

close to Duke and his muscles, but that

1:29:38

doesn't make this a good conversation. And

1:29:42

then the tarantula who has gotten lost

1:29:44

somehow crawls on Duke's foot and they

1:29:46

both jump up on the bed because

1:29:49

boys are also scared of spiders and

1:29:51

gender is a construct. Look

1:29:54

at that. Boys shouldn't

1:29:56

have to catch the tarantula. I am not

1:29:59

sure how I feel. about that. It depends.

1:30:01

Am I the person who's going to have to

1:30:03

catch the tarantula? If so, then a boy should

1:30:05

do it. It's time

1:30:07

for the Junior League Carnival that

1:30:09

they have to go to because their

1:30:12

mothers are all involved with the carnival and

1:30:15

it's also a debutante thing. So

1:30:17

Viola and Sebastian have both promised to

1:30:19

be there, which means Viola has to

1:30:22

pretend to be both Viola and Sebastian

1:30:24

all day. This is where the

1:30:27

mechanics of the wig really come into play

1:30:29

because that sucker is just going on off,

1:30:31

on off, on off. Also, she seems to

1:30:33

keep putting on eyeliner and taking it off.

1:30:37

Like the sideburns are flying around.

1:30:40

While she is riding on rides,

1:30:42

like she's so impressive. Yeah, it's

1:30:44

really it's a masterclass. Also,

1:30:47

I feel like she's doing it more often than

1:30:51

would be strictly necessary. Yeah,

1:30:53

I I

1:30:55

would pick one and stick with it for

1:30:57

like an hour. It's like incidents like any

1:30:59

time anyone mentions the other one, she's like,

1:31:01

I got to go. Instead

1:31:05

of being like, I don't know, I haven't seen Sebastian.

1:31:07

He must be at another part of this carnival for

1:31:09

a little while. I bet he'll turn up in an

1:31:11

hour and a half. Yeah. As

1:31:17

Viola, she runs into Justin and

1:31:19

Justin is like, we're basically

1:31:21

still together because both Viola and Sebastian have

1:31:23

horrible axes who think breakups need to be

1:31:25

mutual to be real. So they both spend

1:31:28

a bunch of the movie trying

1:31:30

to well, Viola, as

1:31:33

both Viola and Sebastian spends a lot of the

1:31:35

movie trying to evade both of these people who

1:31:37

think that they're still dating. As Sebastian,

1:31:40

she does keep running into Monique, who's

1:31:42

like, no relationship is over until I

1:31:44

say it is healthy.

1:31:47

It's good. It's

1:31:49

not good. I will say that I would

1:31:51

maybe want a conversation following the one where

1:31:53

you yelled, you're ugly at me from behind

1:31:55

a pizza boxes. That

1:31:58

does seem reasonable. But

1:32:01

overall, she's got on Clunge a little

1:32:03

bit. As Viola,

1:32:05

she has been signed up by her mother

1:32:07

to do a little light sex work. She's

1:32:09

going to be working in the kissing booth

1:32:11

at this carnival. And

1:32:13

so is Olivia. And

1:32:16

they just have to make out with old

1:32:18

men? Is this still as part of this?

1:32:21

There was like a whole YA

1:32:23

movie series about it. Recently remember

1:32:25

the kissing booth. The kissing booth,

1:32:28

yes. Are they like bad? Have

1:32:30

you ever seen one in real life? No. I

1:32:33

haven't. Only in teen movies.

1:32:36

It's such a

1:32:38

bad idea. It's so gross.

1:32:40

Very bad. Very bad. A

1:32:42

lot of room for non-consensual

1:32:45

sexual behavior. Yeah,

1:32:48

these girls are just set up. It's not even like

1:32:50

you can one by one be like, I will accept

1:32:53

the money from this person. No, it's like they paid. They

1:32:56

paid, here's the ticket. They got the ticket, you have to

1:32:58

kiss them. They really

1:33:00

kind of addressed that here. Like Olivia

1:33:03

is not enjoying the kiss. She

1:33:06

warns her about another creepy

1:33:08

older dude. At one

1:33:10

point when Channing is talking to her, another

1:33:13

like, I don't know, child in line. It's

1:33:16

like, you don't have to flirt with her, you're paying

1:33:18

for it. Oh my God. It

1:33:22

is sort of funny because it's like

1:33:24

this very sharp like feminist critique of

1:33:27

the concept of kissing booths. And also

1:33:29

I'm like, yeah, are these real? Like,

1:33:34

are we all agreeing that this is good? Normally I

1:33:36

didn't think this was a real thing, but

1:33:38

maybe this did need to be taken down. Certainly

1:33:41

at my Catholic high school, we were not doing

1:33:43

kissing booths. And in fact, we weren't actually allowed

1:33:45

to like touch each other during dances. So I

1:33:47

don't think they would have ever. Yes.

1:33:54

Yeah, Olivia is miserable and Viola

1:33:56

replaces her after she is made out with probably a

1:33:58

hundred. Yeah, that's the thing too, is they're like making

1:34:00

out. And I'm like, I thought it was supposed to

1:34:03

be a peck. But Viola

1:34:05

finally relieves her just as

1:34:07

Duke is finally up for

1:34:09

his kiss with Olivia. Poor

1:34:11

Duke. Foiled again. Oh,

1:34:13

it's so sad. Can he ever catch a

1:34:15

break? Fortunately,

1:34:18

he now gets to make out with Viola,

1:34:20

who is also hot. And

1:34:23

then Justin shows up to

1:34:25

fight him. And

1:34:28

this is when he realizes that

1:34:30

she is Sebastian's sister, because Sebastian

1:34:32

has told him that his sister

1:34:34

used to date Justin, the keeper

1:34:36

from the Cornwall men's boys team.

1:34:39

I'm like, my guy, Duke, you didn't realize they

1:34:41

had the same face. Yeah. They

1:34:44

go to their way to have both Olivia and

1:34:46

Duke be like, do I know you? But then

1:34:49

they don't put it together. Like,

1:34:51

oh, you look exactly like that person who

1:34:53

I know has a sister at another school

1:34:55

nearby. Yeah, it is funny that at no

1:34:57

point she's like, oh, maybe you know my brother. Because

1:35:00

she does in real life have a brother

1:35:02

and has established this. Right.

1:35:05

And like that would actually go a long way

1:35:07

toward furthering the whole like, yeah,

1:35:10

we're twins, but we're different people.

1:35:12

Like, see me, I'm Viola. You

1:35:15

must know my brother. He looks just she's just like,

1:35:17

no, what do you mean? What? She's like, what couldn't

1:35:19

be? No, there's no

1:35:21

one else who looks like me. After

1:35:25

they get thrown out of the Junior

1:35:27

League Children's Festival for violence, Sebastian

1:35:30

and Duke meet back at the dorms where Duke

1:35:32

is indeed using a tampon for his nosebleed. And

1:35:34

he's like, it does really work. He

1:35:38

confesses that he kissed Sebastian's sister Viola.

1:35:40

He's like, I hope that was okay.

1:35:42

It was for charity. The

1:35:45

only good reason to kiss. And

1:35:48

Sebastian is like, no, if you want to

1:35:50

kiss her, kiss her. Just like, take her

1:35:52

and kiss her. Kiss the crap out

1:35:54

of her. And

1:35:59

Amanda, then does this like incredible

1:36:01

scene. I was truly floored. There's

1:36:03

like this, it's the slapstick and

1:36:05

the camp as always, but she's

1:36:07

kind of mingling her flirty, like

1:36:10

girly side coming out because she's

1:36:12

like, oh, Duke is talking about

1:36:14

the kiss that we had. Maybe

1:36:16

he likes me. Maybe he's feeling

1:36:19

the same feelings I'm feeling. But then

1:36:21

she has to keep covering it up

1:36:23

with like the faux macho, I'm Sebastian

1:36:25

posture. And the way that she slips

1:36:27

in and out of those so fluidly,

1:36:29

I thought was really incredible. It's

1:36:31

really good. Sebastian

1:36:33

tries to find out more. He's like,

1:36:36

do you like Viola? And

1:36:38

then they have this incredible exchange. We have

1:36:40

a clip. What does

1:36:42

your heart tell you? Huh? Which

1:36:46

one would you rather see naked? Why

1:36:49

do you always do that? Why do you

1:36:51

always talk about girls in such graphic terms? Huh?

1:36:55

You know what, you have issues. Toxic

1:36:58

masculinity harms us all. Maybe

1:37:02

Duke is actually a good guy

1:37:05

because he doesn't like talking about

1:37:07

girls in those graphic terms. So

1:37:09

sweet of him. So sweet

1:37:11

of him not to look at women

1:37:13

as only objects for male sexual pleasure.

1:37:16

At this point, Sebastian is like, oh,

1:37:19

are you a sensitive guy? Duke

1:37:21

is like, not that word.

1:37:24

Yeah, absolutely not. I

1:37:26

just think I should be able to talk to

1:37:28

a woman as well as doing physical things with

1:37:30

her. And if you ever tell anyone I feel

1:37:32

that way, I will kick your ass. It

1:37:36

would be so embarrassing if people found out. The

1:37:39

prison of toxic masculinity continues to

1:37:41

be the main character of this

1:37:43

movie. But I love that Duke

1:37:46

is like, I can't believe you're always talking about

1:37:49

girls like this. And the only reason that Sebastian

1:37:51

is talking about girls like this is because whenever

1:37:53

he says anything remotely more sensitive, they all act

1:37:55

like he has B.O. It's

1:37:58

like you started it. Where

1:38:00

do you think this is coming from? But

1:38:03

Sebastian's work has paid off those

1:38:06

long practices with Duke, learning how to

1:38:08

actually play soccer for the first time,

1:38:11

despite many years as an elite

1:38:13

girl soccer player and coach makes

1:38:16

Sebastian first string for Cornwall. Plus,

1:38:21

Duke confides that he wants to

1:38:23

ask Viola out for dinner. So

1:38:26

everything is really coming up, Viola.

1:38:29

Sebastian breathily agrees. He's like, I'll give

1:38:31

you her number. And they

1:38:34

hug. And Duke like

1:38:37

flings Sebastian off like an insect when

1:38:39

the hug goes a little bit too

1:38:41

long. I was like, man,

1:38:43

I was really hoping for just a little bit of like,

1:38:46

gender bending attraction like here,

1:38:50

but he's truly just like so disgusted.

1:38:52

Is that the scene in the gym? Yeah, this

1:38:56

is in this gym, right? I think

1:38:58

her hand goes towards his ass. It

1:39:00

does go toward his ass. And that's

1:39:03

when he flings. And is

1:39:05

that so she him off? No,

1:39:10

I mean, context, they just don't

1:39:13

hug. But we want

1:39:15

some consent. That's true. We want consent.

1:39:17

But also, like, I love that there's

1:39:19

no part of Duke that's like, something's

1:39:21

off about this dude. He did

1:39:25

this time. He's exactly the same

1:39:27

size and has exactly the same

1:39:29

face as his sister, even though

1:39:31

like, you

1:39:33

know, boy girl twins are are not

1:39:35

identical, and they probably wouldn't just have

1:39:37

the exact same body and face. And

1:39:40

like, he seems to get off on the

1:39:43

idea of me kissing his sister, like a

1:39:45

little grab my ass.

1:39:47

But like, I have no further questions. Yeah.

1:39:49

Yeah. What's going on here? No, he doesn't

1:39:51

need to be fair. This, this

1:39:53

man is helping me, you know,

1:39:56

with Olivia and helping me get in touch

1:39:58

with my feelings to be fair, like Duke

1:40:01

is not presented as like the sharpest tool,

1:40:03

like kind of the highest compliment they can

1:40:05

give him is that he wants

1:40:07

to be able to have a basic

1:40:09

conversation about emotions with his future girlfriend.

1:40:12

And like, there's no layer of intellect

1:40:14

beyond that that we can see. Unfortunately

1:40:18

at this moment, Olivia is watching them work

1:40:20

out from the girl's side of the gym,

1:40:22

you know, with like the elliptical. And

1:40:25

she realizes that she needs to flirt with

1:40:27

another guy to get Sebastian jealous. And

1:40:30

decides to use Duke, why not? So

1:40:32

she comes over and starts flirting with

1:40:34

him in just a very hetero way.

1:40:36

She's like, I'm so tiny

1:40:39

and you're so strong. You

1:40:41

can bench 225 for 20 reps. I'm

1:40:44

less than half of that. How long could you

1:40:46

bench press me? And

1:40:48

Duke is like, I no longer wish to speak to

1:40:50

Viola. I'm done. Like Olivia

1:40:53

is interested. That's all that matters. Sebastian

1:40:57

goes after Olivia and tries to talk her out of

1:40:59

the date and they end up somehow

1:41:01

on a double date instead. Cause

1:41:04

Olivia is like, well, why don't you just come with

1:41:06

me? Bring Eunice.

1:41:08

Eunice, you're invited. I

1:41:10

like that Eunice is just like low key

1:41:13

Olivia's dear friend. Yeah.

1:41:16

And like the thing is that like

1:41:18

Viola is sometimes defending Eunice. Like you

1:41:20

should be nicer to her, to the

1:41:22

guys, but also Viola is kind of

1:41:24

a dick to Eunice. Eunice

1:41:28

does get a little handsy without

1:41:30

consent. Eunice is a lot. Eunice

1:41:34

is a lot. There

1:41:36

is a lack of respect

1:41:38

for boundaries from Eunice. Yeah,

1:41:42

Eunice is coming on strong in

1:41:44

a way that male or female

1:41:46

one might find a bit off-putting.

1:41:48

A bit intense. Exactly. A

1:41:50

bit intense. They

1:41:53

head to a double date at

1:41:55

Cesario's. The

1:41:57

pizza joint, which is of course also. A

1:41:59

little nod. Yeah, Viola's identity in

1:42:01

Twelfth Night when she plays

1:42:04

a boy. But

1:42:06

this double date is a complete fiasco. And I

1:42:09