I watched this episode prior to Anthony Bourdain’s death but post the original airing. I noticed he seemed a bit off; a little distant, melancholy, distracted. Even his friends from the episode post mortem had said something was off. As the episodes went on I noticed him up and I noticed him down. It was very strange to see, but I thought that maybe he was missing his daughter, maybe he was just slowing down. Maybe within the next few years, he would have fewer episodes per season or end Parts Unknown and travel less; strictly working with CNN on a more permanent basis in New York. It was after his death that I paused on the episodes and had to take a moment. My first episode back in was Seattle. That ending, that song. It fucked me up; don’t even get me on the final season. Post the premiere, every episode I could hear Bourdain’s monologue in my head. Not exactly what he would say but his tone, his humor, the cadence of his voice. It was like hearing music underwater. You can recognize a tone, maybe catch a verse or hum a few bars but it’s warped and distant. I grew up watching him on No Reservations and then Parts Unknown. The world is a little quieter since he passed; not just his own voice and story, but those he featured on his program or would have if he were alive. He is one of the few Celebrities that I cried for when he passed and when I see his picture or hear his voice, my breath hitches, my eyes water and it hits me all over again.
Someone was talking at me yesterday about this movie and I was getting riled so I decided to go full rant. Specifically in regards to the feminist podcast that slammed it.
I don’t even remember which podcast it was, but I am still rankled and baffled that any “feminism in movies” podcast could jump to anything but “this movie is phenomenal.”
First of all, even just discussing the overall quality: sure, it might not have been groundbreaking with its cgi or plot twists. But back in the 90s, that wasn’t the standard of measure like it is now (and even now is a shitty standard that needs to die). This movie was light and funny and yet hit all the right beats to maintain the dire stakes needed to make it a compelling action flick.
Its characters are fully realized and entirely distinct from each other. Even those treated with a broader brush, such as the Americans, were charismatic enough that we were fully invested in their fate. The entire cast of characters were real people with real impact and real agency.
The script is quotable and fucking hilarious. There are gems from literally every single character. Rick and Evie have actual chemistry, aided by Rachel Weisz’s natural magnetism and Brendan Frasier’s career-long knack for acting utterly charmed with his female costars.
Actually, let’s talk about Rick O'Connell for a second. This is peak 90s Brendan Frasier. He is absolutely GORGEOUS, suave, and cool, rugged and handsome. He is the epitome of the 1920s adventure hero. Dear god I want to kiss those casting directors. But for all his general peak masculinity? He’s feminist as fuck. He is equally dumbstruck by Evie as she is by him, and it’s wholly evident that it’s more than a “oh no she’s hot” thing.
He steals her some tools to dig with. This gift demonstrates that he a) has identified her passion for archaeology, b) has recognized her proficiency in the field, despite it not being explicitly stated on screen, and c) sees a chance to restore her full and active participation in the discovery of Hamunaptra.
There is never a moment where Rick assumes to be the leader of the expedition. He is the weapons expert, the muscle–and he knows it. Better than that, he’s totally okay with it. He follows Evie’s lead in all things.
Another favorite moment of mine is when they’re facing off with the American team on Day 1, and Evie realizes there’s a chamber underneath Anubis they could use to excavate the statue. She puts her hand on Rick’s arm, looks him in the eye, and says very deliberately “there are other places to dig.” And he yields, instantly.
By comparison, see the way the Americans treat their workers and guide.
Does he groan about his work being made exponentially harder as a result? Nope. And that’s a recurring theme in his behavior the entire goddamn movie. The only time he is in charge is when a situation is in his wheelhouse– namely, combat and rescue. And it deserves mentioning that the majority of the time that he’s in charge, Evie is not present.
Meanwhile, Evie– her adventurer’s spirit chafing in an academia that dismisses her for her gender– is an absolute marvel. She is visually coded as being very feminine (she’s in dresses and long hair most of the film), but that fact in no way detracts from her competence and agency.
She is consistently protrayed as a fully capable expert in egyptology and there is never a single moment where she waffles on what to do. Even when she’s the damsel in distress, she actively makes the choice to be so because she weighs the potential outcomes and decides doing so provides their best chance of success.
Evie is never the passive victim. She is constantly brash, constantly scheming, and saves the lives of her would-be rescuers mid-abduction. And when her brother (who is the failure of the family, against type) needs help with translation, she correctly translates for him while being throttled by a mummified priestess.
When I first saw this film, I was too young to realize how novel it was. Back then, all I knew was that it was just a good time. But now as an adult– an adult acutely aware of the treatment female characters have gotten in the twenty years since– I marvel at the respect with which the writers and directors treated Evie.
I marvel at how tender Rick was allowed to be, despite his rugged adventurer archetype.
The Mummy (1999) is peak storytelling. It doesn’t try to outsmart the audience, but rather lays out a consistent, coherent narrative that gives the characters and viewers room to breathe. It invests the audience enough to care whether the characters succeed in their goals.
The Mummy (1999) does it right. It’s the reason that any talk of the Tom Cruise version gets an immediate eyeroll from me, because whatever modern grimdark grit they shove into a story about a mummy cannot compare to the reliable and timeless entertainment of the 1999 adaptation.
All modern media should aspire to be the kind of film that The Mummy (1999) is.
and like. Not to detract from the amazing way they treat Evie, because believe me as a lesbian i can go ON about Evie, but can we talk about Jonathan for a moment?
The “failure” of the family, in a movie set in the 1920s, who is either explicitly or heavily implied (i can’t recall off the top of my head) to be a veteran of WWI? Who has so much more depth to him under the surface than the initial “comic relief” typing would suggest? Who is played as a drunk idiot who is still clearly both highly knowledgeable about egyptology and archaeology (just not as much of a genius at it as Evie) AND a frankly excellent marksman? Who i’ve seen people very successfully argue is clearly struggling with PTSD (which would explain the “failure of the family” stuff quite handily btw, back then), yet here he is. Sure he came along wanting treasure, but he sticks around when shit gets super bad for the love of his sister.
All these characters are fucking amazing, I cannot handle.
(and don’t get me started either on how much I love The Mummy Returns. Is it as good? Maybe not, depends on your tastes, but it’s still DAMN good, and you know I love me a good established adventuring spouses story…)
THIS
The reason you felt for the mummy was because he just wanted to bring his lost love back, it wasn’t about him taking over the world. Even after he came back, it was always about Anak-su-namun (I know I spelt this wrong). Thats what made the monster movies back then work, you connected with the monster. Thats why Shape of Water worked. The Tom Cruise version made the mummy the Villain because she wanted to be the ruler. Making what was supposed to be a feminist storyline into one about a woman being put in her place, also it made no sense (per MovieBitches, she could have just killed the baby and the king without the powers. Also watch their reviews on the 90′s Mummy movies as well as the remake). Clearly Tom Cruise is the Villain of the ENTIRE movie with his Toxic Masculinity, among other trite and overused stereotypes. Why not have Ahmanet take these powers as a way to beat an enemy, or stop a plague? She could have imprisoned herself to make sure Set was never released. Ahmanet could awaken later and discover that she is erased from history or she was wrongly portrayed; she didn’t make a noble sacrifice, she was a power hungry bitch. Also, is Tom Cruise now the Mummy? I don’t get it. Even when you google the mummy, the 90s mummy is the first thing that comes up, everyone wants to forget about the Tom Cruise Version. Guillermo del Toro should have taken the deal with Universal, he could have made these movies so much better!!!
I can’t confirm the Swamp Thing one but Constantine has slept with three female demons with horns, tail, and wings, three male demons, a decomposing ghoul / zombie woman, a male ghost, an anthropomorphized city, an anthropomorphized House, a witch, Lucifer Morningstar, and several vanilla men and women. He also had a threesome on Lucifer’s bed with eldritch monsters. This isn’t that new.
How could he bottom?
I just assume with magick all things are possible. Maybe his anus is a pocket dimension. :-P
@thenightling I’m just more impressed that John Constantine had the common sense not to sleep with Harley Quinn. I adore her, but the clusterfuck with her exes…
Well, yes. The literal Shark was safer than Harley. :-P
DC animation is so much better than the live action movies. I need Constantine to get his own tv series again, not loving Legends of Tomorrow but I adore Matt Ryan another solo Constantine series. Also, I’m sure there is a joke somewhere in the movie drafts about Constantine being a size queen that was cut, I want that joke. I need that joke. Even if it was just after John turns away shyly from King Shark and Raven just whispering, “Size Queen.” mic drop, I’m dead.
a friend of mine forgot the word “lamp” once and said “light faucet”
I’m shaking from laughter. Yes, this is the right way to start a Friday morning.
Listen guys, I have a BA in English and an MA in Professional Writing and I have:
Forgotten the word “gums” and called them “teeth cuticles” Forgotten the term “liquor store” and called it a “rum-o-rama” Forgotten the word “mohawk” and called it a “head mustache”
The list goes on and on. Wording is HARD.
You know that putty you put in holes before you paint a wall? I forgot the word “putty,” called it “hole-be-gone” instead, and now my whole family refers to it as hole-be-gone.
it’s hard to make the brain do the english, ok!?
I wish I had this skill. When I lose a word, my brain derails. I use the term ‘derail’ because it is the mental equivalent of a train derailment (just easier to clean up)
At the staff meeting, my boss referred to the clipboard as “that snappy board”
My 4-year-old nephew didn’t know the word “knuckle” so he told us his finger knee hurt.
I forgot the word “speech” once so I said “you wrote me an essay with your mouth”
Dad once temporarily had the term “auto body filler” leave his brain; the Canadian Tire worker had her whole day made when he cheerfully said, “I’m here to procure some…car-spackle!”
I once forgot the work barrel so I described it as a round wooden box and then something “pirates put rum in it” before my mate figured out what I meant.
Oh god. Here we go.
Once upon a time, I had a lot of trouble communicating with friends. It could be argued that I still do.
In my first year of high school, I was talking to this one girl who I’ll call Lullaby. We had literally every class together, so we started hanging out all the time.
During lunch, we had a conversation about our experiences dating girls vs. dating guys in a sexual manner. We get back and we go to the rest of our classes, and she starts out the door.
What I WANT to say is “Come back”
Of course my brain decides that there are synonyms to words that sound like that, since it won’t actually word.
I blurt out, in front of half of my class.
“Ejaculate back!”
I do this a lot.
Here are some good ones:
I stepped on something gross and it got between my toes, and in my distress I referred to my toes as “feet teeth.”
I was very proud to have finished the “plate laundry.”
I told my ex to go look in the garage, only I said “car pantry.”
But my VERY FAVORITE is when I couldn’t remember the word for brown, so I called it “boring purple.”
>
I once forgot the work barrel so I described it as a round wooden box and then something “pirates put rum in it” before my mate figured out what I meant.
“Something pirates put rum in” is usually “pirates” in my experience.
Look, I still maintain “food closet” is a perfectly acceptable term if you can’t remember “pantry”.
Conversely I once forgot the term “linen closet” and told my mum to get a sheet from the Blanket Pantry.
our entire household refers to the compost bin as the “dirt recycling”
The word was “obituaries”
i did this today when i asked my friend what the word is for “astral projection, but science for normies”
it was lucid dreaming
Look up “Critical role reverse math” you’re welcome internet.
Gomez gives out better relationship advice than like 90% of dudes.
Gomez Addams is a suave motherfucker who loves his wife more than his own life.
Everyone should want a Gomez. He’s p cool.
Gomez and Morticia Addams actually have a very loving and extremely healthy relationship, both in the old TV show and in the more recent movies. They were also one of the first television couples to be shown to have an active (albeit offscreen) sex life. Their frank attitude towards sexuality was shocking in its’ time, but their relationship and their family dynamic is actually more functional and more…dare I say it…sane than most families portrayed on TV.
The comedy in the show came from the family’s “odd” lifestyle, rather than from infighting and petty bickering, or worse, as was common on other shows of the time, thinly veiled references to spousal abuse. They didn’t make fun of each other or act like their children were creatures from another world. Were they strange and outside of social norms? Yes. Were they united in creating a loving home and being good, supportive parents? Absolutely.
These two support and adore their children, care for an aging mother and an estranged brother, put family before everything, and they love each other, wholly, fiercely, without reserve. They are every bit as much in love after at least a decade of marriage as they were the day they met.
Relationship goals. LIFE goals.
Just remembered in the second movie when their third child became “normal” for a period and although they were shocked and didn’t know how to handle it, they didn’t mistreat the child or love it any less. They accepted the difference, even though it was hard for them.
Reblogged for truth.
❤️❤️❤️
Posts about Gomez and Morticia Addams are almost always uplifting and I’m happy to have them on my dash, but I think my favorite bit about this conversation is what Gomez is actually saying to Fester.
It’s nobody’s surprise that many of the aesthetic and thematic elements of The Addams Family in its various incarnations are influenced by Gothic tradition (not goth, that mostly came later. And not Goth, that was much much much too early), and I think Gomez’s words are a dead bullseye in terms of Gothic mentality.
“Make her feel like she’s the most sublime creature on earth”
The sublime is a recurring theme throughout Gothic literature. Although the word (like “awesome”) has lost a lot of it’s original luster over the intervening decades, sublime doesn’t really mean elevated and lofty (or even heavenly) as it’s often used today, but rather something possessing the power and grandeur to induce awe and veneration in the mind of the beholder. Although less than divine, something sublime possessed a wildness and power that transcended human ability to control…or even to comprehend.
Sublime is standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon leaning as far as you dare over the railing and still not being able to see the canyon floor below. Sublime is warrior-queen Galadriel being tempted by the One Ring. Sublime is waking up in the middle of the night in the heart of a wild thunderstorm.
“Make her feel like she’s the most sublime creature on earth”
Gomez isn’t advising Fester to treat a woman he fancies like a princess, or even elevate her to pedestal of angelic nature (who’s idea was it to equate femininity with purity anyway? What a laughable and historically damaging idea. Shame on whatever dead (probably) white dudes promoted that!)
Gomez is advising Fester that if he truly loves a woman he must do everything he can to remind her of how she’s an untameable force of nature who’s grandeur brings him to his knees in awe and terror. Just like Morticia, for Gomez.
I’ll sign off with one of my most favorite quotes of all time, because it feels suddenly very relevant:
“When I find myself surrounded by so much beauty, I feel as if I am the eye of a hurricane.”
- -Sanjay Kulkarni
I have always had a love and fondness for the Addams family. Maybe it was the dark humor, the crazy antics or even Anjelica Huston (come on…she IS Morticia and seriously they need to bring back adult Wednesday Addams like right now!). But i think that despite all of that surface level stuff that makes them stand out its the fact that 1. all those things were NOT the most interesting aspects to their characters and 2. they truly are the most well balanced and loving family and admit it, every one has the crazy uncle or the cooky grandmother or “Addams Family” relative. Gomez is giving sound advice here. In the age where there are multiple apps for sex and that “courtship” has devolved to a “right/left swipe”, love, passion, romance, etc. is in a bad way my friends. Call me old fashioned but Gomez and Morticia are the kind of couple one should strive to be. Whether you are straight, gay, bi, transgender, pan sexual, polyamorous (and the list goes on) this is the way you should feel about your partner whether you are 25 or 105. Gomez and Morticia are relationship goals and if you want to see something else watch Desi Arnez’s speech about Lucille Ball at her Kennedy Center Honors. Forget the Notebook, that shit will make you cry.
He wanted to be here tonight. I’d like to read something that he wrote:
‘I Love Lucy’ had just one mission: to make people laugh. Lucy gave it a rare quality. She can perform the wildest, even the messiest physical comedy without losing her feminine appeal. The ‘New York Times’ asked me to divide the credit for its success between the writers, directors and the cast. I told them, ‘Give Lucy 90% of the credit. Divide the other 10% among the rest of us.’ Desi concluded: Lucy was the show. Viv, Fred, and I were just props. Damn good props. But props nevertheless. PS- ‘I Love Lucy’ was never just a title.
-Desi Arnaz’s tribute to his ex-wife Lucille Ball, read by Robert Stack at the Kennedy Center Honors on December 7, 1986, five days after Desi had passed away from lung cancer.
I always worked late so I always must the first airing, had that shit saved for DVR though…Netflix or AMC where are you? Seriously, with Preacher on AMC, Netflix with original programming or Cinemax with Outcast these would all be great channels to take up the series. Love Glen Mazzara’s work and James was fantastic these two need Damian season 2 or another project ASAP!
One of my favorite things about the introduction of Cole this season is how clearly he casts the spotlight on the “monsters within us all” storyline. He is a man who dedicated his entire life to hunting down one guy for the sake of revenge. He is a military man who dedicated his life to fighting for his country, to protecting humanity. And in both endeavors, he encountered every variation of monstrosity in the world, far beyond what he could have imagined.
Cole was a hunter and he was a savior. He once saw Dean as nothing but a monster, but grew to think of him as a good man.
It doesn’t matter what you are. It only matters what you do.
Monsters can be humans. Humans can be monsters. We have the strength to change.
Okay, who thinks that Cole should be the next spin off? Its between him, Jodi (and the others female sheriff, forgive me I forgot her name), or claire. I think that they would be really interesting. If they do another spin off and introduce new characters I would love to see female leads but for existing character as spin offs I hope it is one of those three.
So on Sunday I finished up watching the first in a series of upcoming Netflix series from Marvel Studios. Marvel’s Daredevil is a new series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, focusing on street-level crime and crime fighting in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, set after the events of The Avengers….
I HAVE LITERALLY WATCHED THE ENTIRE FIRST SEASON SEVEN TIMES ALREADY AND IT KEEPS GETTING BETTER AND BETTER!!
