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Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Jay Birds Show.
Speaker 5: How you doing great to be here? Bubba Booie, Howard Stuttenhall,
I'm not doing I'm not gonna bomb the show at
the very beginning. Now I'm doing good man. However, you
been You're one of the most busiest podcasters, so you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I'm really working hard to make a fake
job into a real job.
Speaker 5: Yeah se.
Speaker 2: Podcasting isn't like an actual necessary part of society in
any way.
Speaker 5: But you know, no, that's wrong. Podcasting is vital. Podcasting
is the essence the voice of the people nowadays, even
though we despise and we hate the people. But you know,
it's just oh, you're right, you're right, you're right.
Speaker 2: So but anyway, we're here to discuss something that we're
actually supposed to talk about on the last episode, but
then you and I got distracted and it turned into
an hour long conversation about something else. Yeah, we're here
to talk about what is in my mind. I'm pretty
interesting underdiscussed film Phantom Threat. So, Gia, do you want
to introduce it a little bit before we jump into
the discussion.
Speaker 5: Sure, But before you do that, let me distract you
once again by saying that was a great essay you
did on James Lindsay that I read it this morning,
and I don't know, like it's very you know what's funny?
I think I think I know how James Lindsay got
the idea that the woke greater maoists. Do you have
to be an old head to know this? Okay? Okay,
he got this idea because back in the Therminor Made Days.
If you remember, I was I was integral p Well,
I wasn't integral part I was one of the writers.
We had the idea of of like the right wing
has to read like Leninism, We have to read lenin Okay,
that's how you win a sort of like cultural revolution
and and the sort of and then and then Carl
is bad. I think I don't know if he's around.
Apparently he's still kicking around an alerker all but my
good friend Carl's uh he also talked about this, and
so I think like some wires got crossed where James
Lindsay now believes that the woke right is like Maoism
and Leninism, and I think this is all due to
Thermoor magazine.
Speaker 2: So oh see, I think that is a much that
you or you were being much too kind. I think
that basically it is a much lazier thing, which is yeah,
he has defined he has defined the term so that
anyone he doesn't like is woke, and woke is inherently communist.
So basically everyone I don't like is a communist the
James Lindsay guide to discourse, and it's basically probably correct.
Speaker 5: That is probably the correct take, because I'm just I'm
stretching it. I'm stretching my niche on my magazine. That
was a part of way too in terms of importance
of discourse. So but anyways, that yeah.
Speaker 2: So probably I probably shouldn't say this, uh, but I
have not not Lindsay, but another one of the sort
of anti woke right crowd coming on my podcast soon. Wow,
And I'm really not sure how it's gonna go because
I haven't really played my hand yet and I am
genuinely interested in Uh no, no, this one's much dumber.
I won't say who because it might happen, but and
I was. I was pretty upfront. I was like, hey,
I won't have a conversation about the woke, right, that's
all I say. I'm not entirely sure how that's gonna go,
because the more I dug into it. And that's sort
of why I wanted to do a review of one
of his pieces, because I was like, all right, like
I make fun of this guy enough, and I know
what he says in short form, but like, let's let's
give him the benefit of the doubt, Like let's dig
into you know, something that should have taken him a
long time to come up with write a long This
should be him at his best. I was not impressed.
But enough about Lindsay, because look, man, if you want
to get me distracted, that is a way to get
me distracted.
Speaker 5: Yeah, OK, you're pro wrestling with me.
Speaker 2: So anyways, Yeah, so we're here to talk about the
twenty seventeen film by Paul Thomas Anderson Phantom Thread. So
I'll be honest, I was not super excited initially, Like
I did not think this is a movie that I
would like because it's look, it's a movie about a
fashion designer, like that sounds pretty dumb if I'm to
be brutally honest, but is really fascinating so effectively, just
in broad Strokes, this movie is sort of a drama
concerning the relationship between fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock Cyreal, his sister,
and then Alma sort of the main character, a woman
who he ends up falling in love with. Broad Strokes,
this movie has a very fascinating discussion about the relationship
between genius and a muse, and then also the kind
of different ways in which femininity encounters and sort of
breaks down masculine genius. I think there are multiple ways
to look at it, none of which I think were
exactly what the director was necessarily desiring to come to express.
And then maybe we can get into this later Geoe.
But I think there's a fascinating sort of like alternate
reading as well, which is definitely not what the or
the movie is trying to talk about, but is worth discussing.
Maybe later, Well, I.
Speaker 5: Think that you said about female the sort of female
energy hobbling in a weird way, the genius of the masculine.
I can see it somewhat, but I see more of
a reciprocal relationship there. I know we're getting ahead of bat.
We'll explain. I think that me being like a land
SHARKI and malest on the right, I think that there
is a powerful phonic relationship there that is destructive. I
will grant you it is destructive, but it's also sustaining
if you But we can haggle over the ending of
the film. So spoiler alerts, we're gonna get into a
lot of spoiler alerts. But uh oh yeah, I didn't
think that adds jail before I do my bit, so.
Speaker 8: Oh not at all.
Speaker 2: So in sort of the beginning of the movie, we're
introduced to Reynolds. He his sister is his business partner
at this extremely successful fashion house that you know, provides
you know, addresses to the rich and famous.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is an actual house, by the way. It's like,
this is the old school style of fashion design.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And we see him, you know, when the
initial kind of start of the movie with a woman
who's sort of his muse and he's sick and tired
of her.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: He basically you know, ends the relationship and so to
clear his head, you know, after this traumatic uh you know, breakup,
and we see him throughout it being very much disturbed
by in a social conflict, right, he cannot create under
these circumstances. So he goes to the country and in
a diner he meets this girl, Alma. He sort of
falls in love with her, although what's interesting is that
it seems that he falls in love with her more
as a muse than as a romantic partner. Yeah, their
relationship kind of you know Burgeons, there's you know, ultimately
their relationship falls apart. But what's interesting is that their
relationship is sort of saved by his sickness. He gets
very very ill, and to sort of continue this process,
we find out that she is she's poisoning him. This
is much basically, yeah, it's Munchausen by proxy, so that
he can sort of reduce him to an infantile level.
They can bond. Because there's also a very bizarre relationship
between our main character and his mother. We'll get into
that later. And then apparently as the movie ends they
have a happy domestic life and his creative work suffers.
So big picture, I think that they're sort of fascinating.
Three motifs, three distinct female motifs. There is Alma, right,
who is a romantic relationship with Reynolds, obviously a very
dysfunctional one. There's Cyril, his sister, who has sort of
a business yet still feminine relationship. And then also his mother,
who both teaches him how to so teach him how
to create, and then after she dies sort of recurrently
appears in his dreams talking to him. So those are
the three primary female archetypes. But I'll throw it to you, Geo.
Speaker 5: No, that's great. That's a great setup because you have
a very powerful feminine influence in all three of them.
It's very similar to what me and a friend. I
don't know if I could still mention his name, because
you've gotten the trouble. Recently, we were talking about the
films of Vincent Gallo and no, sorry I was talking
about with him, but I was also talking about with
my Frank Tino Corner his theory on Vincent Gallows the
Brown Bunny, how each female he encounters is a Youngian
archetypal mother maiden crone iteration of Chloe Savini's character. If
you've ever watched The Brown Bunny, it's very similar here.
There is a maiden mother crone distinction that the feminine
serves as the unconscious shadow self, the anima of Reynolds.
So this isn't the I believe the nineteen fifties this
is when fashion was starting to change and where you had,
like still you have like a lot of very high
key designers that were doing a lot of private commissions
for very rich and famous people, very rich and powerful
women such as this one. I think the one he
designs a wedding dress for is the Princess of Belgium
or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it's the Belgian princess.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And which is interesting enough, isn't it implied because it's
never directly stated. But Alma is not British.
Speaker 5: It is Belgian.
Speaker 9: Oh I thought it was.
Speaker 2: She could have been Belgian, but yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think because she has sort of a French accent.
I guess I don't know anyway, I don't know anything
about Europe. Sorry.
Speaker 5: Well he he initially is drawn to her because the
actual actress what's her name, Kramps, who I believe was
in a lot of other Paul Thomas Anderson films because
a lot of directors, they'll recycle different actors and actresses.
I mean, well, of course you know there will be blood. Right,
was that that was Paul Thomas Anderson?
Speaker 10: Right?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Oh, shoot, I should know this. I don't know anything
about film.
Speaker 5: I believe that was also Pta. Yeah, uh with with
with Danio day Lewis. Right, so Dania day Lewis, he's
playing this fast?
Speaker 2: It was it was Pta?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so Dana day Lewis, he's this old school
fashion designer. Of course, fashion is changing to more mainstream
brands that are accessible. There is this sort of leveling
of high fashion where people that are in the petty
bourgeoisie or in like the sort of upper middle classes
can afford different dresses by designers nowadays. We know this.
I mean you have to be like, very very rich
and famous to have a personal designer nowadays. Right, So
this is still where fashion, this area of making serviceable
dresses for special events. It wasn't exactly the runway fashion
that's very highly adjacent to the art world. And so
you have this designer who's sort of a dinosaur, and
he's on his way out, and it's implied that a
lot of his clients are going to more of these affordable,
mainstream fashion designer houses or that are rather factories, like
Champaul Gautier for example.
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Speaker 5: And you have the house designer with the name He
lives in this mansion that's of course paid for by
a very successful patron old woman that he tries to
make look beautiful. And he has an army of seamstresses.
And I know this because my great grandmother was actually
in the It was a seamstress and all that. So
he has an army of seamstresses that handmake everything, and
he personally sows the label of the house behind the
dress of the Woodcock House. And as it progresses through
the film, he's at his wits end with his one muse.
Then he discovers the what's her name in the film
the Crimps woman?
Speaker 2: Her name is Alma, Oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, olmah. So then Olma has these broad shoulders, is tall,
it's skinny, basically perfect runway model, fashion designer, like you know,
fashion easter, right, But she's like she's working in this
restaurant where she's a waitress. And immediately, like literally from
their first encounter, she goes right to in fanalizing him
in a weird way. And see she he orders this
huge meal and he she writes him a note of
her phone number in address saying for the hungry boy. Right,
so you know what this is going to be about,
even though he's way older than her. So then as
the film goes on, she works in the house. I
believe she has some connection to the to being a
seamstress and all that. And you have to realize that
when you are someone who is an artist. Those like
little moments of creativity. They can come few and far
between and when ordinary life disrupts them. This is what
I found so fascinating about the film is that Daniel
de Lewis played a very good creative in the sense
that he's very petty and cantankerous, and he needs a
silence and he needs that sort of on the one
end of very reassuring and structured home life, but not
one that can disrupt his flow. And so this translates
to him being very like crotchety and insulting and petty,
and and it's it reminds me of something I heard
from a documentary on the famous comic artist Mobius. You
know Mobius, right Jay? Uh? He yeah, yeah he Also
this is uh he got famous because I believe was
it Marvel that brought him on to do a Batman
or a Superman Sorry, a Spider Man was a Marvel
or DC that does Spider Man? I forget, which I
thought was very interesting. But Mobius is very famous in
his own right for his own series and it grew
one of the best avant garde comic book artists ever. Right,
his penmanship is incredible. There's this documentary that was made
a few years before he died, talking about his relationship
to his wife in one section where he said that,
you know, it's very funny because a lot of comic artists,
a lot of artists in general, it's almost like the
wife becomes this mother figure where they're doing the taxes,
they're organizing the meetings because the artists can like have
time to play with his little colors and his pens.
It's very much like a sort of consuming mother type
of relationship.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 2: Oh, and that's exactly the archetype I wanted to bring up, right,
be all consuming mother, because she does become that, right.
She is literally later in the film poisoning him. It
almost kills him right to keep him hers right, to
keep him attached to her.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, And so she they have this like very relationship.
And notice how one thing, I'll say, skipping ahead of
the film, she has this vision of having a child
with him and living a very like, you know, bougie
type of existence. But throughout the film there's not a
lot of physical contact between them. There's not a lot
of implications of sex or anything like that. It very
much is a standoffish muse type of relationship where to
lower it to the level of being fleshy and visceral
and vulgar that would have a profound impact on the
relationship as a whole. So Woodcock wants to keep her
at a distance. But when it comes to sort of
like the more masculinized version of the feminine in the film,
it's obviously his sister. His sister is his business partner.
She's the one organizing all of these very high end
commissions with like royalty and famous people and so on and
so forth. She's the one that he confides in as
an old I believe she's the older sister, and so
she took the role of her mother in nurturing his talent,
but doing it in a very strictly strict and regimental way,
whereas Olmah's character is sort of the you know, the
chaotic feminine. She's the agent of disorder because she has
a lot of other needs that are not there as
a sister. Right, So they have kind of like I
wouldn't want to say that would the two like Woodcock siblings.
I don'tudn't see that there's an incestuous relationship there. It's
more of like she is the manager. She takes on
a masculine role, whereas he's dwelling in something that is
very feminine, which is the act of creativity in a
very which has historically been a very feminine pursuit. Although
a lot of the greatest fashion designers of history have
been met and not necessarily gay men either, I mean
a lot of them were straight, right, I know, like
there is there is this one very famous model who
wrote about actually the relationship between homosexual men and women
in the fashion world that's in the fifties is very
red pilly. But anyways, so you know, a lot of
the great designers are men and so, but they're taking
on the embodiment of what has been pigeonholed as a
characteristically feminine form of art, right, although it shouldn't be.
It shouldn't be. So he's he's going into this relationship
with his own creativity. He's meeting this new woman and
then all of a sudden there is this disequilibrium he
finds with her in the house with the old man
in the house, and there's this one scene where he's
confiding in his sister after he's trying to create a
dress for this very rich but very old woman. He's
having a hard time, you know, of all the different
scenes and everything, and he confides to his sister, I
can't have her in house. I can't work, I can't
do anything. She's ruining my life, you know, like typical
like he's an old man, but it's like a teen
angst type of thing, right like, And of course, what happens,
the stereotypical movie thing. She walks in the room mid
mid rant, and now she knows what he really feels
about her, and so what does she do? She goes
in scavengers for mushrooms in the forest, finds the poisonous
ones and then feeds it to him, and he's like
terribly sick. And now she goes from the intoxicating, chaotic
maiden to the feminine motherly figure nursing him to health.
Because what happens. He's trying to model for this, this
wedding dress for this princess, and wedding dresses are very
important this film. We'll get to that Jake. So he's
trying to model for that. He's trying to construct this
wedding dress. He only has a day left to send
it off to Belgium. What happens. He collapses right on
it ruins the dress, and so his seamstresses and his
sister and his now girlfriend has to work the whole
night to repair this dress. And well, sorry, they work
the whole night. And well, Uma is nursing him like
a mother nursing a sick child, very very similar to
an Edward Monk painting. That's the first thing that came
to mind, nursing him back to health. Uh. And and
he's terribly still like he's delusional and crotchety and cantankerous,
and he wore he tells the doctor to go f himself.
And it's just in a weird way. It's it's very
crazy and insane, but it's also beautiful. It's it's a
very like I wouldn't want to say like it's it's
like a fem clled fantasy or whatever, but there very
much is like a very strong feminine fantasy. If I
can fix this genius who is a creative genius, but
he's he's like a lion, he's like a blonde beast.
He plays by his own rules, and he's this almost
like a Heathcliff character. He's a force of nature, right,
But I'm going to tame him, and I'm going to
break him down and nurse him back up. And so
there's this very powerful feminine fantasy of engaging with a
male artist of any stripe. And so in a lot
of ways, it's a very beautiful film, but it's a
very destructive film. And then eventually he gets better and
that's when he's that's when she's talling. I believe she's
a saying all of this in the film. There's it's
interspliced with her her monologuing to a therapist or another
guy or whatever, and it's a very beautiful thing where
she's like, he's his most calm, he's his most loving,
he's his most serene when he's on this like basically
the cusp of death. And so the relationship between the
feminine and death is very powerful in this film, because
of course his mother died when he's young. His mother
that he had, she had this beautiful wedding dress, and
there's this one piece of dialogue between them where he's
saying that, you know, it's very hard to do wedding
dresses because a lot of models have a lot of
superstitions around wearing wedding dresses where they say that if
a model wears a wedding dress on a runway that
they're never going to get married, or they're going to
marry the wrong guy, or it's going to characterize their
life and the romantic relationship in some way. And so
he goes a it's very like a notoriously difficult to
do a good wedding dress, right, but he's obsessed with
the same design of his mother's wedding dress that then
gets lost through time or moving or whatever. And now
in the film he models this wedding dress off of
UMA's character. He has this very rare I think it
was Italian lace that survived through the war. You know,
this is the nineteen fifties, so used to World War Two,
and he like throws it on her carelessly. He's putting
needles and pins everywhere, and he's sort of like trying to.
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Speaker 5: The twelve days of Christmas.
Speaker 8: Eurospa had for me twelve Christmas eleven cakes are baking,
ten salmon smoking, nine.
Speaker 13: Christmas crackers, eight Lovely Jesus, seven sheets of wrappings.
Speaker 5: Six stucking fillers.
Speaker 10: F mins spies, four Christmas case, three Brussels brows, two
turkey legs and the Christmas Night's super easy.
Speaker 11: Fine, you're super easy, supermarket.
Speaker 5: Like mold her in a way, But she resists that
out of all of the muses he's had, that he's
burned through like light bulbs, you put one in, you
replace them, right, she's the only one that had this
sort of phonic feminine power to resist his imposing masculine creativity.
And how does she do it? She literally physically breaks
him down to the level of a child in his
sickness to do this, and he she does this repeatedly,
and near the end of the film it's implied that
he's fine with it. He takes the mushroom. He knows
he's getting poisoned, but he does it anyways. And it's
a very it's a very like weird relationship, but within
the confines of that very creative lifestyle, you can understand
in a weird way. And so I thought it was
a very beautiful film, and it really has that the
interplay between the masculine and feminine within a creative endeavor.
And she then has this vision of having a child
with him, and it's it is implied that they eventually
do have sex and he she like totally just like
breaks him down and builds him back up. And it's
it's a way in which the feminine can impose upon
this feral, chaotic force of nature that is male creativity
in the artist. And if you look throughout a lot
of human history, a lot of artists had this relationship
and even when there wasn't, like if you have artists
such as I mentioned Edward monk Ortulli's the track where
they have a very like chaotic and destructive relationship to women,
and they're like, you know, frequenting ladies of the night
and all this stuff there still is. Ah, there was
something that Robert Hughes, the great art critics, said a monk.
He said to Edward Monk's sex is ominous and hateful.
As a man, you either live in the humiliation of celibacy,
being an insul or you subject yourself to the castration
of the feminine. And it was like this very the
polarity of the masculine energy being subsumed by the feminine.
And of course Edvardmunk was into the early Scaninavian vitalist
movement where it's like a bunch of men, you know,
bathing naked and the sun, very sole broad ish type
of stuff. But that they were doing where they were
like the male if you look at the male bather painters, sorry,
if you look at the male bathing paintings of Edvard Munk,
you know what I mean. Where they had this like
Germanic and Scandinavian health movement where a lot of men
would prance naked on the beach and these like nudist beaches,
and they do their exercises in the nude, and it
was about this like solar vitality type of stuff, you know,
very very like not feminine. But at the same time,
Edward Munk had this incredible relationship to the feminine that yeah,
was very I guess the modern you know, twenty ten's
lingo would be toxic and chaotic and whatnot. But here
you see with Woodcock in the film an equally destructive
and toxic but yet beautiful and in some ways endearing
relationship to the feminine. And so uh yeah, that's that's
that's my little rantom the film.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so what do you make of because their
relationship sort of has a two distinct crises, right there
is the you know, the first one, which punctuates in
her poisoning him first, and then they get married and
pretty quickly the relationship goes sour and sort of culminates
on New Year's yes, where you know, she gets invited
out by you know, to go dancing with this doctor.
She ends up going to this like horrible like gaudy,
uh you know, New Year's celebration, and he comes to
get her sort of rebukes her, which I think is
an interesting element there. Multiple things. One obviously, you know,
the reaction of the kind of the aesthetic or the
artist to kind of like mass market celebration.
Speaker 5: Is just it was also very americanized as well. There
was a lot of American themes in this New Years party, right.
Speaker 2: But I think it's interesting interesting as well, right that
the element of you know, she acts out to force
him to correct her. Yeah, she's almost kind of giving
him some giant test to be no, I won't you
would come and get legitimately like that's.
Speaker 5: What happened to Yeah, yeah, no, it is. Yeah, it's
very like Patris O'Neil ask like when you talked about like,
you know, Patrisa O'Neil for being like this, you know,
a fellow fat guy. You had a very you know,
attractive wife that he would talk about. You know, she'd
be like, you know, you give her a little, you know,
but they take, they keep taking. You got to stop it,
you say, no, you got to stop you know, like
you remember those classic Patrisa o' neil interviews. Right, yeah,
you know, Now, not that I endorse, you know, I'm
you know, I'm not about the whole like anti women stuff,
but like there is a lot obviously like a lot
of truth there. There's obviously a lot of truth there,
like she's goading him and testing him, and it's just
a simple fact of human nature, you know what I mean,
between men and women. And there's this sort of like
and it's very funny how there's a little subtle hints
of the changing times because this is in Europe, but
there's like this very like American esque and gaudy Years party,
and so there's sort of like a commentary on the
vulgarity of the culture that is coming down the pipe
in this time after the war, and he's sort of
trying to find a way in this new culture, this
new mass produced culture, as a niche boutique fashion designer.
And so yeah, then it's also with noting by the
way that for years he resisted, I believe Daniel day
Lewis is like he's supposed to be in his fifties
in this film. For years he resisted actually getting married
because he assumed that if he was going to be married,
then he would view every wedding dress he made filtered
through his own relationship to his wife. And so the
fact that he was broken down to submit to bourgeois
domesticated marriage is a very you know, that's a very
important plot point that they would get married and that
he you know, he essentially he does pass the test
because he grabs her and wrestles her away from this
this terrible New Year's party of gallantry and drunken festivity.
And so well, what did you think of that part
burn you mentioned about the shit testing, What did you think?
Speaker 2: It's it's really well shot, like it's it's a visually
interesting movie, and I think it's it's interesting because we
see this this sort of social tension throughout the movie,
where we see both a social tension between you know,
our character Reynolds and those around him, because, as you've
said that, the times are sort of changing, and you know,
he has this sort of uncomfortable relationship with this older,
unattractive woman who is sort of nuvo rish right, very
very wealthy, but very very classless. Yes, and he has
made I think, like an absurd number of wedding dresses
for her over and over and over again. Yeah, because
he can sort of summon the magic to make her
young and beautiful again.
Speaker 5: As as an artist, you create your teeth because she's
paying you, so.
Speaker 2: Well, she's paying. And also, you know, he he feels
as if he is lowering himself because you know, she
is not only physically unattractive, so he is sort of
contorting his craft to meet this you know, unworth vessel.
But also he is forced to, finally, after resisting over
and over again, attend her wedding. He never wanted to go,
and he goes with Alma, and part of the reason
why it never explicitly stated is he doesn't want to
see her embarrassing herself in his dress. Yeah, and there's
this moment at the wedding, and I think that there's
there is a tension between the two party. So I
guess three technically party scenes between the beginning and the end,
because in this one, they together, he and Alma are
unified in going to retrieve his dress. This woman has a.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: This woman has gotten horribly drunk embarrassed herself at her
own wedding. He basically says, like, we're going in to
get the dress right now. I don't care, like we're
going to save my art from this. And you know,
he kind of torpedoes that relationship. And so that is
one way in which social class plays into this but
also later kind of in between the first and second
poisonings when they are married. Now we see this tension
where you know, he is, you know, sort of rankling
at the relationship. He's not happy, he feels as if
he's been sort of, you know, tricked into something.
Speaker 5: He tells her that maybe you have no taste at all,
you know, in that Daniel day Lewis dep was that
was like, really, that was so cunning. You know, maybe
you have no taste at all.
Speaker 2: There's a moment and I'm not entirely sure of the
social connotation of this, just because I'm not really up
on mid twentieth century European like party game practice, but
there's sort of the setup where it looks like there
it's kind of like a speed dating setup and they're
playing i think backgammon or something. So basically it's a
round robin, you know, you move from one to the other,
and so we have back to back, you know, a
conversation between him and his wife, which is very icy,
and then him and this other woman, one of his clients,
and it seems as if she is sort of this
other woman trying to muscle to steal him away from her.
Maybe who knows, but very clearly there is this class
dynamic where she views Alma as being lower or under class.
And that comes back around when we talk about, you know,
this sort of wild bacchan alien celebration, because we see
the doctor who she's not quite it's never implied they're
having a fair but she is flirting with and.
Speaker 5: She has with him, she has eyes.
Speaker 2: Yes, that again, right, we see a lowering where that
same sort of process of process of you know, like
massification or social leveling that has occurred in the fashion
worlds occurring here because it is not only just kind
of the average hoy POLOI, but it is this doctor, right,
some of his high class friends are now descending like
to that level, and so when he comes toget her,
it's this really striking scene. And yeah, there's a certain
element of this which is the like the shit test, right,
like no, I won't let you do this. But on
another level, I think as well, it is like no
I will like you, you are not allowed to. You
will you are a representation of me, and you will
conduct yourself as such, which I think is interesting because
that is another dynamic as well, the degree to which
the product of their work as both of them. You know,
it is her wearing his art. And I think that
that's an interesting development as well, that they it goes
from being this kind of revolving cast of him and
whichever muse to his one muse right, the person he
is linked to. And I think that that's an interesting
development as well, because before they're both going to retrieve
his art, yeah, whereas here he's basically saying like, no,
you are a part of me and you are not
allowed to do that. I don't know, you see on
getting at their geo.
Speaker 5: Well, no, it was. Yeah, it was a great scene
because like they match each other's freak in that moment,
you know, like they like that's that was a great
moment because now she fully is invested in each other
as an entity, even though he is the creative. I
remember one time, I don't know if I should say this.
I probably shouldn't say this to quote the famous geoism,
I probably shouldn't say this, But there was this the
guy to be fair that the writer's he's a good
guy and I might interview him one day. But there
was this magazine once that wrote about my artwork in
relation to my friends Fenn and Matthew Stout and he
said something. It was like it wasn't meant as like
maybe it was meant as a job, but he said
that like a lot of my landscapes are sort of
like in the British context, there's sort of like a
seaside seasider art, you know what these like seaside resorts
in the UK, and like they have landscape painters Plannar
painters there right, And you know, I don't really take
any offense to it because I do quite a bit
of Plannier landscape painting, and you know, I mean if
they're pleasant or whatever. But I remember my girlfri read
this and she freaked. She like, absolutely, this is terrible.
I can't believe that he would say something thing about you.
And I'm like, oh my god, Like I wasn't even
that offended, you know what I mean.
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Speaker 5: So I totally got that moment. That was a great
moment in the film, right, But I think that in
terms of a greater socio political context or a greater
cultural context, the one woman that is a client of
his was chastising his wife because of course he's not British.
But then of course, you know, the whole bacchanalia of
the Nearest Festival is this like American theme. I believe
they even had the Confederate flag in Abraham Lincoln in
this unstilts type of deal, you know, which to the
British ruling class at the time was very like vulgar
and New World and not very couth, right, But when
it comes to the enclosing of that social system, the
sort of like British higher class. I mean, obviously, you
know they won the war against the Germans, but did
they really win the war against America? You know what
I mean? Like, you know, the America Kin's basically ruled
the world after that point, you know, because of well
we all know what happened, right, So I thought, like
Paul Thomas Anderson, in a very slight, minuscule way, was
nodding to I would say, a more mature aspect of
that greater sociocultural commentary than this recent abomination that he
did with the Thomas Pinkton short story what's it called?
One soy after another, one battle after another, one battle
after another, the recent Paul Thomas Anderson film. But in
that film, it's a very good commentary on the situation
in a weird way, right, Like these people they still
maintain their class distinction, their class consciousness, but that class
consciousness has suffered a great deal of you know, a
great blow to their sort of global legitimacy. Right, And
so it comes off as kind of pernicious to make
that comment that, well, you know, she's not British. I
don't know what they do in her with her people
in Belgium or Germany wherever Uma is from. And it's
a very like, you know, these people are kind of
on the losing end of things, the way that Woodcock
himself is on the losing end of a larger, more
mass produced, more American driven fashion industry that now is
coming from New York rather than coming from London or Paris.
So it's sort of like the art world in general,
that huge change after the war from Paris and you know,
from Paris, Italy, the UK, especially from Paris to New
York City. It's it's the same trend over and over
again at this time. And but that's like, you know
that that was like a side of the film when
it comes to the ratio between them, Like as you
pointed out, there is always she's trying to wrestle him
away from what did make him a great in it's
not necessarily that she wants to destroy his creativity, she
wants to domesticate him. It's just like that that is
an element of nature that in a lot of ways
is necessary because it is true what people say, Like
you know a lot of people men and women that
are sort of bachelors or whatever later on in life,
they they're sort of cement I know a lot of
older men like this, by the way, you never got
married or whatever. They're cemented in their ways, and they
can become quite quite ornery in their disposition towards anything
that smacks of like bourgeois domesticity. And so it's a
very interesting tension there, right and throughout the film the
fact that a lot of those tender moments comes at
the behest of a great physical illness, and it's very
cathartic in a way. And so but anyways, I've rambled
for I've rambled for her to yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh no, not at all. Men, what would you make
of And this is not a reading that I think
is super supported by the text. But just when I
was sort of throwing around with some friends, what do
you think about the reading that this is a narrative
exclusively filtered through Alma talking to a third party and
she's trying to romanticize her role in this.
Speaker 5: That's a good interpretation. I mean, sensibly it is about that,
because throughout, like I said, throughout the film, it's placed
with these narratives where she's speeling to this therapist or
this other male figure about her relationship and she's by
a fireside and she's gussing up a lot of these details,
and she is creating this like very very powerful psychodrama
in your head, and it is very like through her
gaze in a weird way the film. But what did
you think of that though, Like, what would your interpretation be?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, I think that that's an interesting thing,
that there is a there's a And I hate the
term unreliable narrator because it's most often used in a
very reddit context, But I think that there is a
a dissonance between what actually happened in the film, like
not what we're shown, what the events is they were
actually supposed to have happened, and what we are seeing
because she is interpreting everything in a highly romanticized, idealized
version where her actions are redeemed after the fact. So
for instance, like the scene where he voluntarily takes the
un poison or the poison again, where it's like, Okay,
well did that really happen? Or is that her romanticizing
this sort of munchhaus in by proxy right, saying that oh,
you know, he really wants this, which, again that sort
of infantilization from the very beginning throughout the end. I
don't think that's a necessary reading, but I think that
that's an interesting element to it.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, definitely, Yeah. I wonder though there is an
element of like with when it comes to much houses
by products, there's an element of like Darvaux or gaslighting,
where you convince yourself that you're doing this because you
love this person, because they need it, and because ultimately
their life would be better for it than not. But
you're still poisoning somebody. You're still like horrendously affecting their life.
So but then again, I think that you can't really
pull a sort of how shall I say it, Sometimes
it's necessary to suspend a sort of real world moralism
when it comes to a lot of these films, when
it comes to any work of art. So I wouldn't
be too critical or to judge, but given the real
world context of the things like this happens every single day,
then yes, it is very like destructive and you know, abusive,
but it's a very feminine style of abuse though right
it's it's it's mothering to the point of destruction, and
that is I think something that isn't you know, there's
a lot of famous cases of course in the real world,
like there's the whole Gypsy Rose thing, right, But it's
something that a lot of a lot of people talk about.
And I think Paul Don Sanderson he's very uh for
as much as like his recent work is terrible, he
is willing to go to places that are very like
unp politically uncorrect, but portraying them a sympathetic way, like
specifically a Magnolia with Tom Cruise's character. Right. So I
think even though like nowadays we we view it as well,
it's hall would And this recent film that came out
is like Bryy Stellis is I have a green line
about liberal mustiness. I think if you suspend any moral judgment,
that does make sense within the film.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well, and actually that's an element to it,
I feel like it is. I was surprised to see
a movie from this era deal with negative femininity so honestly,
because a worst director could have very easily turned this
into sort of a modern liberal morality play where she
was actually completely morally justified all along. You know, then
the sort of like bro minds you'd sort of expect
from you know, woke quote unquote Hollywood. But yeah, no,
he's sort of it's not entirely negative, right, their relationship
is an entirely negative. But I do think it is
interesting that he is very comfortable painting her in a
in a negative light. And I think it's interesting that
there are multiple negative versions of femininity, right. You see,
the the kind of you know, vanity of you know,
an aging an aging woman in his you know, in
his clients, this sort of like backbiting cattiness. Uh, you know,
in the woman that he you know, speaks at at
the kind of like backgame end game. Yeah, but there
were there's sort of a number. Uh and honestly, there
are very few male characters in this book other than Reynolds.
Speaker 5: But that's pretty much it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, what what do you make of,
you know, his his relationship to his mother, like his mother,
you know, while he is poisoned deeply ill, his mother
sort of appears to him and then when when Alma
walks into the room, she disappears.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: I think obviously there's a level of replacement there. You know,
he's becoming his mother, both on a literal level as
well kind of like a spiritual one. But what do
you make of that scene.
Speaker 5: That was Yeah, that was another great scene that was
very telling because I was thinking about this when we
took a pause. I was thinking about this again, very
similar to a lot of paintings by Edward Munk, where
if you look at his uh lithiographs or his paintings
such as The Sick Child, he was very sickly as
a kid and he had he was consumed by these
feminine forces, either through nurses or through his mother. And
so I think that the film is very honest when
it comes to sort of female power struggles and intersexual
competition and and the modolo was thing of It was
Coco Chanel who wrote this like very telling, uh screed
about gay men in the fashion in history and how
they like you know, make women look ridiculous. And there
was always this like tension between you know, gay gay
men and women. And I remember one time on Da
Me and Prude, we had Catherine Dion and Katherine she
was recently in the New York Times. I don't know
if you saw that, Jay, but we were reviewing these
three films and one of them was this film called
Pig Hag about this this rather large woman and her
only friends, these gay men, and at the very end
of the film, she says, you know, my gaze have
ruined me. My gaze have ruined me. But anyways, that's
that's off topic. It was very well kind of on topic.
But it's on topic in the sense that when it
comes to Woodcock in the film, just by necessity, he
is surrounded by the world of the feminine. His seamstresses
are all women, his sister, his mother who died Umma.
The clients that he has are women. They're very powerful.
Women employ him. So he has to assert himself as
a man.
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Speaker 5: In a very different way than men in relation to
other men. That's why he becomes very standoffish and caddy
and cantankerous. And so it's a matter of him navigating
the world of the feminine because of the loss of
that very maternal feminine influence early on in life. And
he's always at the one end trying to find and
I know this is like stereotypical, especially of male artists,
trying to like go back to mommy, trying to like
find a motherly maternal replacement. But he's also repulsed by
it because he has to differentiate himself as a man
in the world of women, which is, I hate to
say it, a very unhealthy type of thing, right, especially
if you're a heterosexual man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that's that's definitely like you
survised it. Well there right, I'm unfortunately GEO gonna have
to step out soon just due to real world concerns.
But just kind of put a bow on it.
Speaker 13: Uh.
Speaker 2: This was really interesting movie. Uh, one that I was
not particularly excited to watch because the one hundred percent
honest this was a date night movie for me, and
it's like, oh, come on, a movie about a male
dress designer like that, that sounds awful. But it was
really interesting, you know that there's a lot to be
said about, you know, the relationship between the sexes, the
kind of different forms that femininity takes. Uh, andry. I
had to give my wife credit. She picked a good movie,
so fair enough, but would recommend it. You can find it,
rent it for three bucks or sale the high seas.
But there's an interesting, uh, an interesting commentary there on
both the nature of what it is to be a
creative you know, what it is to produce art that
indexes with the real world and becomes commercialized, and also
with the feminine, you know, in both positive and negative,
in kind of multiple different forms.
Speaker 5: Which which is literally the mother of creation the feminine.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, and so yeah, man, I think it
was a really interesting film. I appreciate you coming on
to review it with me. But Geo, if people want
to find more of you, where should they look.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm sure my link Tre'll have everything, like from
my YouTube channel of Jenner Productions, Twitter at Genngo, Substack,
Geo's content Corner, Telegram. I need to get more Telegram subscribers.
Unfortunately I don't know Telegram's weird, but uh yeah, Patreon,
Accompash one Productions, Telegram sorry, substack dot Com, Slash Geo's
content corner. Every episode of content Minded is only five
dollars a month, although there's different tiers of Patreon. But
I'm also starting to get more into art videos and
where I talk and I paint. I call a painting
Discourse every Monday, and in the near near future I'm
going to probably start releasing Patreon exclusive art videos as well.
So but yeah, I have literally hours upon hours of content,
and of course you know I have da with with
Prude Credentialist Digital Archipelago every Tuesday night. And so yeah,
that's just go to my link tree. That's probably the
best bat.
Speaker 2: So well, sure thing, man, I appreciate it as far
as my stuff, Jay Burden Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere
you will listen to podcasts. You want to support me Patreon,
Substack or gum road get the episodes early in ed
free again Geo, I really appreciate it, manye.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, god bless that's great.
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