EP 14 - Peter Pan (1953): Growing Up, Gender Roles, Queer Pirates, and Little Mothers
In this episode, we discuss: - racism, sexism, and the white male fantasy in the Edwardian boy's adventure story, - the depiction of childhood as the time in your life that you can act however you like without regard to the consequences your actions have for other people, - the accidental, backwards subversiveness of the game played by the Indigenous characters and the Lost Boys, - the subversive potential of Smee as the pirates' mother, - how much we love Captain Hook as campy, theatrical dandy, and - the sudden and arbitrary importance of appearing honourable in the last 20 minutes of the movie.
EP 11 - The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949): Fabulous Manias, Horsemen (both BoJack and Headless), and Prospective Spectral Husbands
In this episode, we discuss: -The Adventure of Mr. Toad being a Beatrix Potter story (if Beatrix Potter wrote stories about devastatingly disastrous characters), -Angus MacBadger's 'Scottish' accent that is so bad we theorize that he is not Scottish in-universe, -some wild theories about why Toad Hall is weirdly both human-sized and animal-sized at various points, -the moral obligation of the idle rich to respect and care for the people affected by their excessive lifestyles, -the ethics of being fabulous (**spoilers for the BoJack Horseman finale 27:13-29:35**), -Ichabod Crane's scholarly, metropolitan threat to an agricultural town, -The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as a proto-Beauty and the Beast, and -whether we'd most like to marry Ichabod Crane, Brom Bones, or the Headless Horseman.
EP 10 - Melody Time (1948) - Could you stay friends with the horse who yeeted your life partner into space?
***In light of the current political climate, we decided to re-record portions of this episode to make our critiques of American power structures more clear. As a result, you may notice slight variances in the audio quality. These variances should be resolved for future episodes.*** In this episode, we discuss: -the limits of our love for anthropomorphic musical instruments and shorts about the seasons changing, -our projection of a good, old-fashioned lesbian love story onto a cute little Christmas card romance, -the movie's investment in exploring a pioneer version of Americana and its celebration of the Christian-American expansion into the Western frontier, -the misadventures of a little tugboat who is a menace and a miscreant but who ultimately wants to be good, -the return of our boy José Carioca, and -our various opinions about whether or not we would stay friends with a horse if he sent the other to space.
EP 9 - Fun and Fancy Free (1947): Would You Willingly Join Jiminy Cricket for a Night Out on the Town?
In this episode, we discuss: -the retconning of Jiminy Cricket as a 'conscience' without a care (despite the fact that he sees how awful the world is), -our choices for a better host for the movie, -the use of face-slapping as a courtship ritual in an inherently kinky bear culture, -Jiminy Cricket crashing the worst party ever (where a little girl is seemingly held hostage by a middle-aged ventriloquist and his drunk and deeply depressed puppets), -our differing opinions on whether or not it would be fun to hang out with Jiminy Cricket in a neutral location, and -Disney's really clever and inventive take on the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.
EP 8 - Make Mine Music (1946): Jazz, Americana, and the Unnecessary Death of a Hyper-Talented Whale
In this episode, we discuss: -how this film fulfills our dream of a jazz Fantasia, -the roots of America's gun violence problem in a short with a high body count, -censoring boobs, slimming butts, and the rules that govern the relentless pursuit of pleasure in the 1940s, -the fragile masculinity of a showboating, All-American proto-Gaston baseball player, -being emotionally invested in a clandestine love story between two resilient hats, and -the tragedy of a The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met singing his only sold out show in Heaven.