In terms of CMBYN, I think it's also important to note that the film does not have a happy ending. Elio and Oliver do not ride off into the sunset together. From my perspective at least, there's an element of Elio getting played by Oliver (the latter being someone who I don't think is an entirely sympathetic character). After he leaves Italy, we're under the assumption that Oliver has more or else ghosted Elio and only calls to let the family know he's getting married. Which also means Oliver was hiding the seriousness of the relationship with his future fiancée from Elio while they were together.
Agreed. I didn't feel like it was framed as some great or deep love story. It seemed to be more about a fleeting summer crush and exploring one's sexuality and the beauty of making memories (especially when you are rich and live in Italy :P). Neither Elio nor Oliver connect that deeply emotionally, imo. They are attracted to each other intellectually and physically. Elio, being 17 treats the whole thing more seriously than Oliver and that's it. Also, I still think that Oliver was miscast. All controversies aside, he was supposed to be in his twenties and I think that casting an older actor didn't work that well and ended up highlighting the age gap which didn't feel as significant in the book because both characters seemed pretty inexperienced and lost.
@@julci4964 I think he was cast that way because Timothee was already 20 because you can’t have an actual 17 year old go through the motions I think, so he was closer to 24, Oliver’s age. Even if they’re both inexperienced and lost, the fact that Oliver is still older than Elio is still pretty important to the narrative and its implications.
@@randomgirl2282 That does make sense but I still think that Timothee easily passed for a 17 year old, whereas Armie Hammer definitely looked his age so it didn't work as well as it could have. 🤷🏻♀️ But I read the book first so my opinion is definitely tainted by it.
I don't agree with that view it always seemed to me that Oliver got engaged with his on and off girlfriend because he had to. He says in the film that his parents would not be ok with him being with a man and even says they'd send him away somewhere if they found out
@@athenajaxon2397 Yeah I agree. I think the movie makes it pretty clear that he's tremendously repressed due to his religious background and since he's returning home, he's also returning to that life. I don't see it as a betrayal to Elio or as a sign that he was manipulative, he's simply one of countless of queer people who settle into a "straight" life because they don't have enough of a support network to allow themselves to live their truth.
I really enjoy your nuanced discussion of this topic. As a female high school teacher of mostly 14 and 15 year old boys, I just can't endorse any narrative that depicts these relationships with any sort of romanticization or neutrality. When I see discussions that do, I wonder if those people actually spend time around 15 year olds to remember how young they actually are. Most boys in this age range have JUST gone through puberty. No matter how nuanced a story may try to portray the relationship between a 25 and 15 year old, it is always an abuse of power (no matter the gender of the older person) and it is always unhealthy. I would challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to shadow 9th graders for a day. All this being said, you examine the topic beautifully and I really appreciate your thoughts!
I 100% agree. I think we all sort of forget our true mentalities of previous ages and only remember in expieriances. So i think a lot of people forget that, while i was 13-14 and feeling mature, I also was over sexualized, and yet had no *real* sense of sexuality outside of attraction (sexuality such as gay, straight, etc. not as in actual sex). Forgetting that part of my mentality and who I was, paints over A LOT of my issues as a child, and now as a young adult, as mature for my age. If people ignore their own mentalities from the past, its easy to not see how children those ages now are going to be affected if that makes sense?
As a fellow teacher, I completely agree. I think a "neutral" telling of such a story falls short of being responsibly realistic. These situations are not neutral and the responsibility is not shared equally between the parties involved. I believe we can make room for nuanced discussions about motivation and emotional maturity, but to frame a statutory situation as anything other than an abuse of power is a reckless misrepresentation and a cultural disservice.
@@kitkatherine23 yes really good point. I was recently making this point about my experience of being a college student and how, while I was certainly a "real" adult then, I had a much greater sense of my responsibility and maturity than was actually true. Especially looking back on it now, 11 years later. We're almost always going to experience and remember the experienced of different ages as older, more worldly, and wiser than we are. It's understandable. And also part of the reason minors are so easily taken advantage of by older partners. The affections of someone older feels like a compliment to our perceived maturity. You're right that, when we look at these statutory age gaps through the lens of remembered experiences, rather than through the realities 14 and 15 year olds are living every day, we miss important information and reminders about how this is truly abuse.
in the past was a very very common occurrence to have a relationship of older male, and extreme young female (like 15 y..16y..). Even in the movies of the 70's and 80's that was common (taxi driver...raging bull...Leon). Maybe is good that PTA depicted that, as it shows how wrong certain things were in the past.
One of my big issues with Licorice Pizza was that Alana has her "you should just be with who you love" moment after witnessing an argument between 2 closeted gay men. The reason she "couldn't" be with Gary is very different to the reason why two men couldn't be together in the 70s, especially as one of them is running for public office.
Not sure I agree. Hell, what I got out of it was that Alana's "you should be with who you love" moment came about in part BECAUSE of the closeted nature of the gay couple's relationship. Like, "these people can't be together because their environment makes it literally impossible for them, so why the fuck am I not with Gary when, unlike these two sad sods, I could be?". Which is obviously absolutely the wrong lesson for her to take out of that little episode... but it also IS the lesson someone like Alana would get out of it.
@@andreantunes8615 are you trying to imply that some characters have flawed motivations and learn the wrong lessons from what they see and are not perfect, omnipotent beacons of morality? How DARE you!
As someone who has been taken advantage of by older men, I believe that art should not work as a moral compass. However, I believe Lolita (1997) went too far. Dominique Swain (actress of Dolores) should never have been put in that position, and the movie completely fails to capture the beauty of the ending of the book. In the book, when Humbert realizes what he has done to Dolores and repents, it's clear that things are not going to end well for him. And he understands that. He is ready to be locked up or die in prison if it only means that he can kill his darker self (symbolized as Quilty). The catharsis that I experience whilst reading is very intense for me. I hope many people will read the book instead of watching the movie. Also, I tend to dislike it when people talk about Dolores and call her Lolita. That's not her name. "Lolita" is a derogatory name that Humbert has made up. Don't be fooled by him.
I appreciate this nuanced reading a lot! Having enjoyed Nabokov's writing and never read Lolita as a romantic depiction, I was always upset by people who demonize the work without giving it much thought. It's like people are unable to divorce the writing and the narrator's voice from the author.
from only hearing about Lolita through discourse, I hadn't even realised that Dolores' name wasn't Lolita (and I write Dolores now, but I didn't know her name). thank u for sharing this
Great video, and breakdown. It was fascinating to watch Licorice Pizza and Red Rocket back to back, since Red Rocket complicates this subject by portraying a relationship that isn't technically a statutory age gap, while definitely fetishizing that gap visually, and also portraying it as predatory, while somehow still (in my reading) feeling more cautionary than anything by the end. It's very strange.
Your final segment nails it. I'm less concerned with what an individual movie says and more about what the culture around it says. If no filmmaker ever dared even potentially crossing the line while depicting cultural taboos then cinema would lose validity as a serious art form. Conversely, if films commonly contained repugnant content and no one cared then society needs to change. Controversial movies being made, and discussed and dissected in the open is exactly where we should be.
@@maxrosas2826 Thanks. Sadly, I think youtube age restricting this video kind of takes the edge of my post a little. This platform, at the very least, is not where it should be.
I love that your last two videos discussed the lack of nuance surrounding conversations of art and production, while also touching on TikTok dogpiling and Lolita. Ironically, I also found myself getting berated by teenagers in a TikTok thread discussing Lolita. I disagreed with the OP’s take that Lolita “normalized age gap relationships and grooming”, as several people’s comments verged on book banning rhetoric. Through the chaos of that comment thread it became so increasingly obvious that they’d hadn’t even read the book, and were instead equivocating the book to Lyne and Kubrick’s films; they kept saying how Dolores is shown as wanting Humbert, too, and said that Nabokov promotes the relationship and presents it as the “norm” (so I guess they missed the unreliable narrator part?). TikTok really is just regurgitating all the same discourse from 2011-2015 era Tumblr, huh?
Totally lol, and I think part of why that happens is that teenagers (even those who read the book) generally are a bit too young to fully understand Nabokov's writing in Lolita -- I read it for a book report in an advanced english course when I was about 16 and although I didn't think it was a romance by any means (I read it as a pseudo-horror/poetry type thing), I also didn't get the more complex themes that are WAY more clear to me now as an adult. Not saying a teenager couldn't get it, just that it'd be unusual since it's about such an intensely grim situation that many teenagers (fortunately) have not had to encounter. Edit: To sum up, I think that's part of why that happens in a space like tiktok, but I agree that the claims made about the book on that platform are untrue and Nabokov does make that as clear as he possibly can, it's just that teenagers were likely not the intended demographic for the book lmao
That is such a bland take away from the book and does such disservice to this dark topic. (The TikTok take away I mean) there’s too much nuance for TikTok to be able to sum up with their time and character limits.
@@FeyPax Right??? Like it’s so apparent they didn’t read the book. How is Nabokov promoting that kind of relationship when he explicitly presents Humbert as a deplorable person? There’s multiple instances in the story where Humbert is full mask off the villain, it’s just told through Nabokov’s prose. Just because a piece of media is aesthetically appealing, doesn’t mean that it condones the subject matter discussed.
Your discussion of Call me By Your Name is so refreshingly nuanced. I hate how this film is discussed in the popular discourse, framing it as immoral and disgusting purely because of the age gap with no consideration for how the story is told, both thematically and technically. I find it absurd how many debate whether or not this relationship is toxic when it isnt a relationship at all. It's a moment of indulgence for both characters who both acknowledge and understand why it cannot last forever. The monologue with Mr Pearlman at the end solidifies this film, not as a story about Elio and Oliver, but as an exploration of the nature of desire, both rational and irrational ones. Love your videos
I grew up with these 90s depictions of manipulative younger women and having a mother who BRAGGED to me about her relationship with a teacher three times her age at 15 (was the 70s) I thought that's kind of what a teen girl SHOULD do to learn how to be a woman. I'm glad my teachers were a lot more responsible...
I've always found it strange that people said that the romance in CMBYM would've been ok if Elio was 18. Most 18 year olds are still in high school I turned 18 two months into my senior year. It's genuinely bizarre to me that legally in the U.S the legal age of consent in most states is 18 meaning at 18 you can have sex with someone way older than you, sign up for the army, be tried as an adult, and vote but apparently you aren't responsible enough to drink and smoke
I often see the idea of "progressive autonomy" missing from these discussions. I don't know if it's a concept used in the States' legal system. Many other countries' laws often mention various instances in which minors gain autonomy, rights and responsibilities as they age.
The human brain isn't fully developed until our mid 20s, so with that logic you can also make the argument that no one should be considered a legal adult until they're 25. Personally I think 18 is a reasonable age for legality, because at 18 we're already in young adulthood and our bodies have stopped developing. I think in the US especially, we have an annoying tendency to prolong adolescence.
no ones really arguing that its okay. But it is realistic. a younger person (boy) who gets to explore their sexuality with a slightly older person. is it okay? not really, but does it happen? absolutely. it's an honest portrayal of an experience many people have.
There’s something about listening to a nuanced take on something controversial that is just so satisfying. I think the framing of taboo topics especially age gap relationships in film is important however aside from framing audiences have to be media literate enough to be able to take in the perspectives of the framing and also understand the context behind said framing.
That's the thing, an audience member's intelligence, level of education, and morality will play part in how they interpret what they see... You bet media literacy is a factor... Btw I did not think there was an age gap when watching the trailers lol 😅 Gotta lookup the actors actual ages lol
I often feel that the main problem when these relationships are shown is the same as in all media featuring children/young adults. I work with children for a living and films never depict them right. They are always the voice of adults pretending to be children. Real children, even the ones that could pass for 25 at 15 give away they are not that old when conversing. They are inherently naïve, have not experienced much and it always shows. IF films depicted children honestly then a lot of these problems would go away, but they do not. This also leads to other issues, some say children cannot act, so older people are cast in children's roles. This is usually because the children have not been written as actual children but mini adults. This makes the relationships depicted seem less bad because what we are seeing is not what is described, we than see two adults, but are meant to remember one is not an actual adult (even thought they clearly are one). When we look at Lolita the book manages to get the unreliable narrator aspect to work. We see Humbert as a perv, but the film does not show this as well as it could. If it did the wrongness would come across, Lolita is a kid and doesn't have the ability to understand the full consequences or consent. I think the film required her POV, whereas the book had a more critical aspect.
Confession time - I've never actually seen Manhattan and I had no idea it was about a 42-year-old man "dating" a 17-year-old girl. I'm not too shocked that this received no scrutiny at the time, because of course it didn't. I AM shocked, though, that any person in their right mind would dare to defend Woody Allen when he was so obviously broadcasting his predatory ways. As someone who was emotionally, physically and sexually abused by a 43-year-old man when I was 18, who told me it was "true love" and called me "precocious", I feel so betrayed by the world for heaping praise on that movie and normalizing that type of abuse even more. And I feel rage toward Woody Allen, for using deceptive film language and portraying himself as bumbling and harmless so he could keep abusing young girls and getting away with it. I hope he gets a real comeuppance one day.
He portrays himself like a sad sack in the movie with immense self-deprecation and ridiculous self-pity. I remember seeing the movie in my early twenties and falling for the act hook line and sinker. I was convinced that we were not supposed to find the relationship a good thing and that we were supposed to dislike Allen's character for it, but it wasn't until several years later when I realized that the self-pity and him making himself out to be pathetic was an intentionally manipulative shield for the characters bullshit. I will say this though, the movie did cause talk at the time and I highly doubt it would have become as big as it did if it was all about that. The relationship is a big part in the movie, but it's not specifically what the movie is about. It's a sprawling tale about Allen's character's life and most of the run time is spent with Diane Keaton and Michael Murphy's characters. I think that's largely why the movie isn't as shit on much as it should be since the parts with the trio are all great, while the parts with the girl are "eeeeh, what the fuck?".
He was also creeping on the actress who played his teenage girlfriend. He wanted to take her on a trip to Paris after she turned 18. Luckily she didn’t.
I get it. But the movie is good. The movie is beautiful because its creator is talented. That does not mean the acts that the film depict are right, that just means the film is good. Why the hell a movie has to be politically correct? Like what's the point of creating anymore, if now movies are all a social manifesto with no artistic value.
@@Cosasquenotienennombre you missed the point about the pedophile making a movie about a pedophile that doesnt condemn that act of pedophilia.......... that isnt about "political correctness" or "talent". Thats some nasty shit and you look really gross for in any way trying to excuse this.
Maybe I'm being naive, but I always thought that CMBYN shows what can happen when an adult enters in a relationship with a teenager: one of them has the maturity needed to know what they want and act accordingly (including moving on), and the other one lacks in that department. It's unfair: the older guy, while being sad by the separation, realizes he wants to move on and get married, and Elio lacks that agency because he doesn't have much life experience and is infatuated with the love he's feeling for the first time. It couldn't work out long term either, and that's why it's even more unfair for the younger person, who thinks he has found the love of his life because it's his first love.
While I want to believe the average person has the agency and common sense to make informed decisions about media, as an African American, I'm painfully reminded that the 1915 film Birth of a Nation, the first film screened in the White House, had such a profound effect on white supremacist culture in America that we're still dealing with it today. It did not hide the fact that it was propaganda, yet many of the myths and stereotypes of the film have been repeated and ingrained in American society ever since. Those who adopt white supremacy today seem more susceptible to propaganda than ever before, despite having easier access to factual resources.
👏🏾 Agreed. This was very much the case and, I would argue, media has never truly stop replicating and reinforcing those portrayals-- they just (barely) repackaged them.
As the internet grows it forms ecosystems of self affirming echo chambers which are created by algorithmic and personality feedback loops. Just because there's factual information doesn't mean they'll seek it out or that would ever be shown to them regardless. Cultural heat-death of the world is coming
I would like to note that the swimsuit shot in call me by your name (32:44) is probably in reference to one of Elio’s thoughts in the book. In the book he mentions that depending on what swimsuit Oliver won he would be more open or angry, etc. I think it was meant to be a subtle nod at that.
I'm dealing with a kidney infection and have a fever so I don't have a lot to add, but I just wanted to say I appreciate this (and all your videos) so much. Your nuance is always appreciated.
Yay! Finally, a real video dissecting the conversation in a critical way and not just slapping a 5 minute review together and saying “I guess the movie is well made, but did you know being a pedo is bad?” Thank you.
"These films are able to do so by going to great lengths to convince us that the relationship between the adult and minor is normal and romantic by framing the younger member as wise beyond their years, in command of their sensuality, and an active pursuer of the older member". This really sums up for me the discomfort I felt first watching Manhattan, and to some extent felt in Licorice Pizza. If anything, with more time passed and a greater context applied to Woody Allen as a director (and ultimately as a sexual being), I was able to understand the very blatant manipulation that was being attempted by Allen in his directorial framing of the relationship, further compounded by him being the main actor and 'passive manipulator' as the neurotic older lover. Perhaps what is more insidious then with Licorice Pizza, is just how little conflict I experienced whilst watching the film over this subject - and those contextual frameworks are really important when understanding why a viewer personally feels that a film is endorsing or challenging an inappropriate narrative. PTA repeatedly grounds this inappropriate relationship within a multitude of temporally contextual inappropriate and 'un-pc' scenes, to convince us as an audience that this is all going on during a period of American history where 'everything goes'...to the point that I'm sure many viewers came out thinking "Hey maybe this relationship is kind of ok, and didn't Gary say that he was nearly 16 anyways so enough time has probably passed in the film where he's probably already turned 16 by the time they've kissed" etc. Sure we can't hold a particular time and place in history to our same moral frameworks, but when a film is conceived and released in the 21st century, with a happy-go-lucky, rose-tinted set of spectacles over the camera lens, it does start to make you think that PTA is playing a rather perverse experiment with his fanbase and audience to see just how far he can push the envelope. Great video anyways Broey!
Interesting take. To me, LP never came off like an endorsement or even a piece of neutrality because I think the film makes it pretty clear that they’re not a healthy, functional couple at all and when they get together at the end, it’s not going to last. They’re going to keep fucking up, breaking up, and getting back together again and again until one of them figures out that they’re stuck in a bullshit cycle. To me, I think that’s what that final scene when they run toward each other represents. The only piece of original music written for the film which is this grand romantic sweep of strings plays, and the two charge at each other only to have the moment undercut by having them literally crash into one another and injure themselves and that I think sums up their relationship in a nutshell. There’s a lot of passion directed at each other in the midst of all their chaos but it always results in a crash. It makes sense given the ending of Phantom Thread was also about leaving a pretty dysfunctional relationship on a vague, speculative note.
An Education is one of my favorite films because as I grew up I learned the same lesson Jenny learns. While I've never been involved in an age-gap relationship, watching the movie for the first time at 13 and now more recently in my mid-20's I go through a similar journey. At 13 I focused on the fact that David gave Jenny gifts, seemed to understand her better than her parents or the boy her own age who just didn't really get her at all. I was taken in by the trip to Paris or to Oxford and mistook David's patience with Jenny's inexperience as peak romance. Also, take into account, Jenny was portrayed by a 20-something Carey Mulligan playing a 17-year-old so to my middle school brain, she looked like an adult. I didn't focus on the age-gap part because there was a gap between me and the character and the actress. They both, David and Jenny, looked like adults to me. When I rewatched in my 20's and I see the eventual downfall of the relationship, I can even see the cracks in David's facade early on. I can see the damage it had. (SPOILERS) Jenny drops out and doesn't take exams, then immediately after, this relationship, including the prospect of marriage, falls apart. She panics, "I haven't taken my exams, what am I supposed to do?" She ends up working her way back and getting into Oxford like she'd planned and manages to even separate Oxford as a place associated with David to something of her own. Only after seeing that having graduated did I understand the magnitude of what David could have taken from her, simply because he was dissatisfied with his own life.
This is the first of your video essays I’ve seen and I can tell you I’m going to end up watching every one of them back to back. Incredible stuff here!
I'm more than happy that this video exists. There's a severe lack of nuance in film discussion, or discussion in general over the internet so this is a breathe of fresh air. To accuse ppl who enjoyed LP to being pedophiles is not only surface level, but also irresponsible.
I think I am more skeptical of the depiction of adult/minor relationships. I tend to view it more like the line “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film”. Especially for age gaps as long as a decade, I think it could, (perhaps should) be preferable to choose to depict relationships between adults rather than adult/minor relationships. I mean, college age adults can also be naive and manipulated, while still having more agency. I am also perhaps coming from this from a different perspective than most. A decade ago, during my senior year in high school, a teacher in my school was charged (and eventually convicted) for grooming and raping a series of football players (as minors). It’s not a personal thing for me; I didn’t know the teacher nor was friends with any of the affected students, though I did know some of them. However, it was something that stuck out to me as something wrong and manipulative and gross and certainly negatively affected the students. And I also remember people mocking the circumstance, mostly because it was a female teacher abusing male students (ie making the students out to be casanovas.) And I think that really downplays how damaging those relationships can be for the minors.
@@asdfgh161001 "There's no such thing as an anti-war film" is a quote attributed to the late French director/critic François Truffaut. The gist of the quote is that, due to the very nature of film, whenever you actually depict war, no matter what cinematic language you chose to use, you are stuck making something that someone can interpret as pro-war. If you show combat, you necessarily depict the struggle of (mostly) men to rise to an occasion, and, through violence, impose their will. Or you show the camaraderie of being a solder in a platoon. etc. The idea gets at this challenge to depict such violence without any sort of glamorization at all. Think about dedicated depictions of war. For me, the intro to Saving Private Ryan stands out as a noteworthy piece of film making. It depicts the storming of the beach in Normandy during WWII as this grueling, bloody, dehumanizing thing. And yet, there is a kind of awe that it inspires. Or you can look at a movie like Forrest Gump, which actively mocks the Vietnam War, routinely relies on anti-war protest imagery and music, and spends a great deal of time on the lasting hardship of war veterans. Despite all these elements, the movie depicts Forrest's work as a soldier, primarily rescuing his platoon, as courageous and noble. By extension, the movie depicts being a soldier as something worthy of imitation. American Sniper has been called (rather controversially) an anti-war movie because it apparently depicts the struggle of post-Iraq War veterans to reintegrate into society. I say "apparently" because I have not seen it. I refuse to watch it because it very famously opens with a scene where the sniper kills an Iraqi woman and child, with the Iraqis depicted through the crosshairs of the sniper rifle. Those two Iraqis are depicted as credible threats. I find that scene astonishingly dehumanizing and offensive, and it is very clear to me that that scene effectively downplays the value of the lives of foreign civilians. We see this idea that you can't depict war for anti-war purposes used in other media. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is a somewhat autobiographical novel that deals with WWII, particularly the fire-bombing of the German city of Dresden. Both the author and the main character survived the bombing of Dresden (by the Allies) as war prisoners kept in a slaughter house. The novel largely avoids depiction of combat. Instead, the novel lurches into absurdism, weaving in stories about time travel and aliens that look like plungers. Instead of actually seeing the bombing of Dresden, we only see its aftermath, the scorched remains of buildings and bodies. "There's no such things as an anti-war film" is quite obviously not accepted as a universal idea. Rather, it is a criticism of the use of film in depicting war. It's basically a statement that highlights the limitations of the media and challenges those who take it seriously to think more critically about how they use war in movies.
@@adnanilyas6368 Speaking of anti-war films, what are your thoughts on Elem Klimov's Come and See an anti-war film? I have heard it's much more realistic in depicting what war is; horror and that it's not patriotic by its ending but rather a sense of doom and forbolding of the mental and physical trauma that our protagonist will face.
@@adnanilyas6368 thank you for answering. I haven't seen many films a out war myself, but hypothetically I think it would be possible for one to be anti-war. Some of the ones you mention, though, sound as if they can't quite divorce from American imperialist propaganda that "our wars are necessary and we're bringing freedom to the world".
Great video! I mostly agree with everything said here. One aspect I always find lacking in the CMBYN discourse thought is the cultural context around it. You briefly touched on how the age of consent in 14 in Italy but it's not just that. The relationship portrayed in the film, aka a summer fling between a 17 y.o. and 24 y.o. simply isn't taboo in the Italian cultural context. It certainly wouldn't have been in the '80s. And I think this definitely (consciously or subconsciously) affected the way Guadagnino, an Italian filmmaker, approached its depiction on screen. I have to admit I, an Italian woman in my late 20s, didn't even blink an eye at it when I saw the film and kind of rolled my eye the first time I heard the "predatory older man" reading of it. This is not to say that the relationship or its depiction should not be criticised. I think a nuance critique like that presented here is very valuable and enriching. I just wish more people actually engaged with the reality of the cultural context the story and the film exist in.
Want to take a second to say that in the piano teacher, the student she has an affair with is in his like early 20’s so yes there is the power imbalance of her being his teacher but he is an adult and the film very much portrays there relationship as negative
Agree, I REALLY don't understand the inclusion of The Piano Teacher. I can't think of a less romanticised relationship in cinema than the teacher and the student. The fact that people can watch it and not spend the rest of their lives in celibacy is a testament to power of evolution, which, knowing Haneke's distaste for his audience, might have been the goal of it.
An inclusion of Babyteeth (2020) would have also been interesting to look at since it's a similar age-gap to the one in Licorice Pizza but with the genders reversed and I think there is a lot of nuance there also :)
This is the nuance this conversation needed. I'm saying this as someone who originally rocked up to the Licorice Pizza debate with pitchforks out ready to argue unto the ends of the earth with the PTA-defending film bros. (Which I still might do sometimes, because a girl needs a hobby, but I will try to keep that encoding/decoding model in mind.)
I absolutely agree that this has been a great discussion on the movie. Yet something about the backlash to Licorice Pizza from even those who haven't watched it is weirdly refreshing. Because of how common normalizing a woman with a boy has been, I'm relieved that people are concerned about it.
@@eyecamd I know that no-one has really ever taken it all seriously, but where else has it popped up? I'm not doubting you, I'm just struggling to recall other notables examples.
I liked the film but yeah it kind of invites debate. It has this fun energy even if I was like where is this going more than once. Upon second watch, it made total sense for me. I mean if you’re not white and a guy, you’d probably have less reason to like this lol. on the whole, though, it’s an engaging film. I found it easy to identify with some of the emotional truths. I watched red rocket right after this and jeez is that film intense. Sometimes I need to go back to Disney films and lord of the rings.
@@Tuosma Women involving themselves with boys? The first I thought of was Riverdale, then it was adult cartoons like The Simpsons, Family Guy, Robot chicken. I wish I could think of more, honestly I was just shying away from saying that I think men are generally conditioned to not view themselves as victims of SA ps i get anxious, thanks for the end disclaimer.
Encoding decoding is actually quite fun! As a film students, we had a task to create a story each and show it in 20 photos. Then everyone laid out their stories on the table and other people had to narrate what they understood from the stories without any explanation from a "creator". It's gave us a great idea of the difference between things you wanted to say and things that were actually understood
this is something I constantly worry about, I'm writing a kinda paradise lost-inspired story about a kinda icky relationship between two kids who go onto be terrible people (like, war crimes terrible), and while the relationship is Bad it is also heavily romanticized. the little twitter user in my brain was constantly nagging me about how I was fetishizing or endorsing it or whatev, so the solution I ended up creating was framing the as if it were written down by the protagonist much later (either on his deathbed or from the grave, deliberately unclear) so that you can get all the complex feelings straight from the (wizened yet still somewhat unreliable) horse's mouth
This was a really interesting video, thanks. One thing I don't really think you mentioned with Licorice Pizza was how she repeatedly said that them having a relationship would be illegal, it's actually one of the first things she says to him when he hits on her as student coming up to a woman helping take high school photographs. The dialog in these scenes were odd, almost like PTA wanted to assure the audience that he was aware the concept of them having relationship was taboo and illegal. The weird thing to me, is that when I was in high school there were some guys that would go after the freshman girls as seniors, and it always felt weird and wrong. In Licorice Pizza, this was someone the equivalent age of a teacher going after a freshman in high school. I just don't see why he wrote this story, other than just being really boring, it's so weird to make a love story between a 15 year old and an almost 30 year old. Pretty much nothing about the movie would have changed if he was 18, you could have even made both of them older to still have the age gap be a large plot point. It's just odd that this is the movie PTA wanted to make.
The story was based on his feelings for Alana Haim's mother (who is in the film) when she was his school teacher. I feel like a lot of the questions people have can be answered by watching a few interviews.
That’s just not true, him being 15 makes his character and his be in a more frustrating position which could explain why he dies drag around the girl the cab drive that isn’t his mother, besides his attraction to her
This is a very good take on LP. The whole time I cringed at Alana's behavior, even as a thirty-smthg who sometimes hangs out with younger people and can be attracted to younger guys (but certainly not teenagers). I don't think we're supposed to see it as romantic but as a weird story that Alana indulges because she so clearly needs validation which she's not getting from her family. So I didn't enjoy the ending where they legitimately seem to entertain the idea of staying together romantically. Another thing is, I read her as being 25 in the beginning, and them staying friends long enough for them to both grow older, so 28 and 18. When they meet Jon Peters, she changes it back to 25 to impress him and stay desirable. Although 3 yrs seems like a long time, I can't imagine her real age would stay secret for long if she had lied. Of course we're unsure of the whole timeline during the movie.
I genuinely believe that was a blooper they decided to keep in the movie as the actress Alana Haim was 28 during shooting, and slipped her line, but corrected it and they just rolled with it. The line between her being a character and her being her is pretty blurred though
Great video. It reminded me of the movie The Tale, written and directed by Jennifer Fox. It tells the story of her own sexual abuse as child. It's gut wrenching at times and shows the matter in a very raw way. I totally recommend it.
I’m gonna leave what I think before watching the video. Will update if it’s changed after just bc I think it’ll be interesting to see how Broey changes our minds. Depiction does not equal endorsement, but romanticizing it does. Like, showing it in a way that makes it seem like it’s a non issue or is okay is a problem.
I’d still heavily argue that even if a film romanticises violence, exploitation, whatever negative behaviour... Art is not your moral compass. You can enjoy watching something even morally awful because film is art, it’s expression, it’s exploration. We’d be losing expression and intellectual endeavour if art has to be limited to a being in a box of what’s ok to depict. It’s a dangerous and irresponsible path. A film shouldn’t have to hold your hand by telling you what is bad behaviour. I’d hope people with any kind of brain don’t need that support and can understand how to behave appropriately in real life.
@@AH-bm5xs I somewhat agree, but the difference is this centers around children. Movies don’t show violence against children and frame it as okay, ever. Honestly, I’d argue immense violence in movies is almost always framed as a bad thing. Only ever in the form of revenge or self defense is violence ever framed as good. Sexual abuse of a child could never be framed as a good, so your argument falls apart under that minor scrutiny.
@@AH-bm5xs I agree with your comment ao much, it's almost as if films and other mediums are like a safe space to depict the taboo. I feel like David lynch's work is often doing that
This is such an interesting statement that I completely agree with. What do you think about films that take a “neutral” approach as Deschanel pointed out?
@@alicia379 I also agree with this response. Deschanel at the beginning of the video was citing the work of a Jewish leftist who was targeted by Nazis was talking about how easy it is for art that endorses certain behavior to change minds, art in media, especially movies, as he said, can easily be used to propagandize and manipulate of mass scale. That’s what those propaganda films framing Hitler as a benevolent leader when he was a dictator were. Even if art isn’t a moral compass and film shouldn’t hold your hand-Film can both affect society and is a product of it. Art existing for art’s sake with no obligation to do or be anything is fine, but art being distributed to the public is done so with a reason and with it’s cause and affects.
That Woolf quote is so interesting. One of the best of all time and she knew a hundred years ago that literature could not always be adapted to film, at all. And she was right.
Age of consent in Italy is 14?!! I see my country's not the only one in this situation.....lemme tell you, it leads to truly.....bizarre court cases....
Wonderful video, incredibly clear and informative. Shout out to Lola Sebastian's video and Lolita Podcast, both are incredible. Tangentially, I'm curious on your opinion on Euphoria, mine are incredibly mixed and things are complicated by the two episodes halfway between season 1 and 2.
The thing that really bothers me about the CMBYN discourse is that the black-and-white nature of it means that if the character had been 18 they wouldn't have had a problem with it. And that just feels so weird to me, not because I think that age gap would also be problematic and awful OR because I think it would necessarily be ok. (I'd probably file that one under "proceed with extreme caution" personally, but I'm on the younger end of that so maybe take that with a grain of salt.) The idea that turning 18 makes you an adult is this huge component of social media discourse rn and there's absolutely no nuance there. Like 18 is this cosmically ordained magic number that makes you mature, and not a largely arbitrary thing that most countries seem to agree on legally (even though the age of consent varies). I absolutely think that predatory age gaps are bad, and even if there really is a chance that a relationship between, say, a 16yo and a 30yo could work out and be mutually beneficial, we're better off having a taboo around it to protect the 16yo in the 99.999% of cases where that's a really bad idea. But have some freaking nuance! Not everyone's going to agree on the numbers, but there should be a range between "A-OK" and "go to jail." (Sorry about the rant, I was having trouble getting my thoughts across succinctly and I REALLY didn't want to be misinterpreted lol)
I was a teen in the 90s graduated highschool in 2000). I saw "The Crush" and the "Poison Ivy" movies, along with "Fear" and I movie I hazily remember with Alicia Silverstone and Matt Dillon who was a killer/detective where he raped and tried to murder her teen character. I never saw "Lolita" (thank God). I always wondered how these movies (the ones I did see) were made and allowed to be played.
@@samf.s8786 Yes, you have been spared! I wish I could unwatch them. Man, I just remembered another Alicia Silverstone movie where she was young and in a weird relationship with a wayyy older man played by Benecio Del Toro.
Phantom Thread has an age gap, interestingly, that did not go anywhere near where I was thinking it was gonna go... Remains one of the weirdest age gap relationships depicted on screen, the age gap itself is definitely not the most "toxic" thing about that relationship ... Literally 😖😖😂
At least in Phantom Thread: (A). The tone of the film establishes the messed up nature of the relationship better than in LP. (2.) While Alma is clearly younger, she is obviously an adult.
i agree with your take on the cmbyn movie but i do think it should be mentioned that the book the movie is based off was written by an admitted p3dophile. yes the book and movie are separate and have numerous differences, but with that knowledge of the source material its made me even more uncomfortable by the movie.
@@insa9474 he admitted to finding little girls attractive and insisted most people would agree if it wasnt "taboo". it was in an interview - look it up, its pretty easy to find
i haven't seen Licorice Pizza, but it is really reminding me of Rushmore, which also depicts a lost, precocious boy pursuing an older woman (who unequivocally shuts him down)
When it comes to the CMBYN comparisons, I'm surprised to not see anyone point out that in CMBYN we see a fully sexual relationship, unlike LP. Like, come on...
I didn't know licorice pizza was a story between a 15 and 25 year old till this video. All I saw from people's discussion is that it's a coming of age and first love which ummmm yeah. The neutral take on age gap made people romantized it in the end
Really enjoyed this piece. Something that stands out to me is that so many of the films with age gap storylines (neutral or otherwise) are set in the past compared to when they were made. Even the Woody Allen film creates a perception of an older time by shooting in black and white. It could be interesting to consider if placing the viewer in a time outside of the present would manipulate how the age gap relationship is interpreted. I know this isn’t true of all age gap movies but certainly seems to apply to many in this category. If these stories were set in the contemporary time of their filming would they Illicit the same response from viewers? As an aside: thank you for confirming my suspicions that I would hate “Licorice Pizza”. Even the trailer seemed cringy to me and I didn’t even know about the age gap dynamic.
As always, amazing video. Happy to count myself among the Patreon fam! Excellent points all throughout. All of your theory tidbits enriched your reading of the films and named the dilemma of interpretation really well. I recently watched Lolita (1997) and didn't hate it...but also have read some of the book. I fully admit that I was probably reading what I knew about from the book back into the film and it wasn't there. I'll also say that I didn't watch it super thoroughly, mainly just while I did other things, certainly from a standpoint of rigorous analysis. My main thought was that I got through it whereas I never made it through Kubrick's version, check one off the list move on. Still, i agree with everything you said especially counterpointed to An Education, a movie I like a lot. In this video I couldn't help but think of another 2021 movie one that, in my opinion, should be getting a lot more attention, and that is Red Rocket. Nothing is ambiguous about Red Rocket. It's a slimy character doing grooming-adjacent behavior on a 17 year old. The film a couple times even explicitly reminds us that this is the legal age in Texas, and this fact does nothing to make us more easy about the situation, which makes the film stronger. It is in no way shape or form a love story. We inhabit the perspective of the older guy...but we constantly care far more about the young girl and if she's going to be safe. A pretty tricky feat. I think it interesting that for all the controversy LP has stirred up, no one has mentioned that there's another movie out at exactly the same time that helps clear up the situation. As for Licorice Pizza I...didn't love it, despite being a BIG PTA fan. I agree that the last third really meanders, which is so out of character for a guy who's made several of the best finales in films of the past 30 years. My main issue was really that I didn't think the film had much to say about the world or its characters. It's a coming of age story, sure, but do I think Gary has matured? or Alana will grow up? Not really, which left me feeling kind of empty about it. But all your points are spot on. If the genders were reversed, it would be a problem for sure (think even of a throwaway joke from Pineapple Express, and that even with Amber Heard's character being 18 if i remember correctly. I also think, like Almost Famous, audiences might be inclined to "give it a pass" because it's set so long ago. But i wholeheartedly agree that the film is NOT a romance, and the fact that it sometimes almost felt like it was trying to be was part of why it didn't exactly work for me. All that to say, great video. Thoughtful nuanced analysis as always, and I can't wait for the rest of the series! (I say in hopes you decide to extend beyond two parts...)
I would love to see you talk about the show Dickinson; how they decided to avoid the claims of incest and abuse, how they show black people's history and their impact on bringing back one of the best poets in the US history
It seems a strange time to decide to romanticize the unhealthy relationship between an adult and a teenager ... and an even stranger time for reviewers to willfully celebrate this theme. I admit that it took some daring to make a film with such questionable subject matter and artists should have the freedom to explore dark, even confronting topics. With that freedom, though, should come a sense of responsibility to explore those issues with integrity. Intelligent films examine doubtful scenarios; they don't glorify them for an undiscerning audience. Simply because the characters justify something to themselves doesn't mean that the film - or its reviewers - have to fall into line, too. In fact, I have noticed an eerie strand of emotional blackmail operating in some of the film's reviews - critics seem to suggest that, if you don't buy into its romantic treatment of an unhealthy relationship, then you're too "square" to appreciate cinema. The role of the critic isn't to provide PR cover for an anointed director. It's to examine films: how they work, how they don't work. Critics shouldn't be insulating filmmakers from legitimate interrogation.
I'm so glad you're talking about this! I've already filmed my video for next week which kind of ties in with this and I'll be sure to mention your work
Love the video and the content you put out. Hope that one of the things you bring up in your tabboo series is audience glorification of toxic characters who are the protagonists of the story. Things that come to mind are Fleabag, Don Draper, Walter White, Bo Jack Horseman, Rebecca from Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Tyler Durden, or anyone from the show Euphoria ect. In all of the examples given there are scenes and plotlines that show that these characters are self-destructive but there's an almost romantic quality to it. Most likely because of the highs of these characters, both literal highs from drug usage and metaphorical highs of their impulsive behaviors, often out shine the more darker aspects of the show/film, which could have many audiences leaving remembering all the cool drug scenes from Euphoria or the bad ass action scenes from Breaking Bad, but forget about all of the emotional manipulate, sexual assault, or suicidal tendencies the characters had in both shows. It's like many people listen to a full album and tend to mostly remember the happier and catchier songs whereas a deeper cut that's more emotional is something that's never at the forefront of the listeners mind. At some point there has to be a clear shouting at the audience what the message of the work is about. Like two examples I think of when discussing wrong interpretations of works of art are the Nirvana Songs "Polly" "R*pe Me" and "In Bloom" vs the Idles songs "Ne Touche Pas Moi" and "Samaritans" while Nirvana used vague metaphors in there songs to allude to being for women's liberation, their vagueness with serious subject matters often flew over their male audience. Which is why despite Nirvana making many metaphorical pro feminist art, they had numerous times had to stop shows to address a man assaulting a female fan. Whereas Idles, who have been criticized for being extremely obvious in their political messaging, so far, have not had any instances of these things happening in their shows and have made it clear that both in their art and in real life that their community and fan base don't tolerate that shit. It's almost impossible to be an Idles fan and not be for women's liberation, whereas one can be a Nirvana fan and ignore their messaging bc of it not being extremely direct. Perhaps it's the same with depictions of toxic people in art. Maybe being obvious in preaching is a better alternative to accidentally endorsing or even inspiring or emboldening violent or manipulated behaviors.
I watched An Education last year and a couple days ago was watching deleted scenes of the film and thought "It feels like this movie was forgotten. I remember when it came out many people said it was good but practically nobody talks about it now". Then a few minutes ago I learned about Licorice Pizza's plot and look here on YT if someone had made a video about the age gap and Voilà!
I think in a lot of cases, depiction ends up endorsing even if they didnt intend to. Because a lot of directors/writers/producers/etc end up getting lazy with subjects and it comes off that way. If you are going to do a topic thats serious like this, you cant get lazy with it. You have to CARE. Moreover, I think that its all with how its carried out and the outcome. CMBYN could do a bit better with showing that this relationship is NOT IT from the begining and that they arent the two people meant to love each other and be together (they go for a more "Hills Like White Elephants" Iceberg theory, where they dont neccessarily show or say everything thats there, but I think they could have done it a bit better), but I think its pretty good with showing that this relationship was doomed (especially towards the later half of the movie, not so much the first) with a guy whose just looking for a good time and doesnt take the relationship seriously (oliver is emotionally immature tbh) and a teenager whose emotionally serious about this relationship while also growing and developing and having a lot of firsts. It does show that people with these age differences are on two different playing fields when it comes to life, love, and happiness, which is why its emotionally damaging and destructive (specifically to the younger less overall mature one) to the people.
Also, to give some more cultural context to the 1997 film version of Lolita, it was released on the heels of the Amy Fisher/Joey Buttafuoco story --- and Amy Fisher was literally dubbed "Long Island Lolita" in much of the press.
Ugh the whole issue I see with age gaps in films is that I've only ever seen it from this perspective of "two people falling in love" and rarely does it show the power dynamics and the manipulation. Like unintentionally Pretty Little Liars reveals Ezra has a pattern of predatory behavior with young girls by dating Ali when she's like 14, barf. And Taylor Swift's All Too Well short film was really interesting in showing the deep falling in love, and then the kind of disconnect at the dinner party where Jake in this story kinda pushes her to the side, like his own subconscious way of admitting he thinks she belongs at the kids table/can't be an equal in his older adult world.
I don’t think depiction equals endorsement always but romanticization does. I really went into this movie wanting to like it. It was filmed near my house and I miss coming of age films with no distinct plot or over arching meaning. My issue is the film could have easily done this with an 18year old. Him being in HS added no value to the storyline. Why not make his character 18? Many times Alana herself questions the validity of her hanging out with someone so young. Most of the other adults that she discusses this with do not find any issue with it. I feel like the movie doesn’t actually question the relationship enough. I don’t think that it’s able to take a look at why their relationship is wrong. Some thing else that really bothered me was the flippant responses to criticism of the film. I think it’s OK that people feel uncomfortable by the relationship. I think it’s OK that people don’t understand why the racist scene was needed. What I don’t like is the gaggle of white men and women trying to prove that their counter culture by separating the art from ethics. Therefore silencing other people who had negative thoughts about it.
@@Bob-uh6gf I was discussing Internet discourse. I saw this movie when it first came out and the initial reviews were of course very flattering. Then there was a TikToker who made a video and the Twitter discourse immediately pivoted to them being preteens and it not being fair criticism. There were people who were actively saying that at no point in the movie do they kiss which clearly showed me that they were only going off of what they were hearing versus actually having seen the movie. It’s fair for you to have like the film but it’s not fair for you to tell other people that their criticism is not valid.
@@bgeese1918 I agree it would make me feel less icky. Even the immaturity of the main character could have translated just as well. Alana being 30+ while he was 17 during the filming of the movie also adds another layer.
I loved this video! Really great to see An Education mentioned, as it's such a well made, brilliant film. As the age of consent in the UK is 16, the same age as Jenny, the relationship falls into a very debatable area, and as someone who at that age was in my own age gap relationship, I find it fascinating and a bit tough to consider! Thank you for your wonderful videos, I can't wait to see the next!
One possible explanation for the surge in age-gap in the 90's might be that that was the time when the Baby Boomers (a generation once so thoroughly associated with youth) began entering middle age and the whole existential crisis that caused,
I love watching your film analysis. Your nuanced exploration of film never feels contrived and highlights how art can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. Your videos inspire the viewer to confront their preconceived views and make a case for the importance of different forms of storytelling in film. Even when the subject matter is controversial or goes against the dominant cultural ideal. Your analysis always encourage introspection and have made me contemplate the way my world view influences the way I consume art. I was surprised and delighted to find out that you are only 25- you are putting out some of the best film analysis that I have seen in a long time. I remember you mentioning feeling the urge to make films again in another video. Fingers crossed that you share your own films with us. Either way, I can’t wait to see what you create in the future.
This was phenomenal, as always. Glad to see a more nuanced and in depth conversation as all I had seen until now was "thing bad" "thing good" when it came to this film. I think the jump to "can this topic be discussed in film at all" as being the discourse kind of misses the point, when what matters, in my opinion, is how and why its presented and discussed.
I love your analysis! I've thought about this issues for a long time. In the case of LP, beside the age gap, also really bothered me how PTA portrays 30 somenthing womenhood or women in their crisis, in the same way there were issues about how was potrait a woman in her lowest with The Queen's Gambit, I believe there's a romanticize view on how women confronts existencial crisis... that made the age gap worse form me when I was in the theather (sorry for my english, is not my first language and I don't practice grammar very often)
Me encanta haber encontrado tu canal, considero que tus videos están muy bien hechos, compartes argumentos y preguntas válidas que me dan la oportunidad de deconstruirme. ¡Muchas gracias! 💖✨
I am a kinda big PTA film fan, he's probably top five directors for me, but I just started giving his films a chance in the last six months. maybe its a recency effect thing, but I do love Licorice pizza and I do think its textually not explicitly glorifying the act of grooming, just like its not explicitly sexual for most of it, but I think that at this moment in time in doing so it just adds to the discourse in a very complex and unique way. like every film everyones gonna have a different interpretation, but I think the film by not explicitly engaging in those ideas makes the viewer have to engage more with those ideas and recognize them for what they are, and idk that is more productive in my mind that getting someone to go watch more or to buy something.
I think what ruined my experience of the film was that PTA portrayed teenagers not acting like teenagers at all and not even partaking in teen activities. I don’t know if it s historically accurate for the 60s but from a contemporary perspective it felt like he wrote those teen characters that way so that we d feel less awkward about the love story itself.
I am a late 90s/early 2000s child but my sister came of age in the late 80s/early 90s and looking at her friend circle, many of whom married their high school or college partners, age gaps seem to have been much more common in the 80s/early 90s? Most of her female friends' husbands/wives are 5-8 years older and they all met their husbands or wives when they were between 16 and 20 years old. None of these relationships are seen as inappropriate, let alone predatory. I've talked to her about this a few times and to them, this sort of age gap was just normal at that age. Definitely not when they were younger, but around 16-18, it was common. (during my sister's high school and uni years, we lived in Paris and then in Bologna, though, so the system is a bit different there than it is in the US, where you're more isolated in high school/college). The view of what's mature has definitely changed through the years. I am not talking about cases like the one in "Lolita" but more about young people on the cusp of adulthood. My mom's generation was generally considered more mature at the age of 17 or 18 than my generation, who spend a good portion of our twenties "at the cusp of adulthood" ;) Again, this is in no way meant to excuse predatory behavior! I'm referring more to relationships like the one depicted in Call Me By Your Name, where Elio, while young, would have been considered closer to a young man than a child.
As someone who just turned 20, I feel like it should be noted on the point of “it’s good seeing teens being less impressionable” and calling out the age gap fetishization on social media that there are two potential biases: that teens by themselves have a much much larger influence on social media compared to adults, especially in social media that millennials and younger are exposed to, and that before the last ten years or so, the media was controlled mostly by adults. It should be taken into account the difference in voice individual teens have now when saying they’re “showing more of them are saying something,” when there are a few major things influencing our perception of teens voices. I do think there are more teens that are aware, but I don’t think it’s as many as some may think. At least this is from my perspective as I would see older (sorry people in their early 20s a few years ago) people talking about “teens voices” online, but then just not see it reflected in anywhere near the same scale that was being claimed.
wonderful essay, love the nuance. I wanna add that if you've watched any other PTA films I think you'll be more likely to read licorice pizza as depiction-not-endorsement. What I love so much about his movies is how there's this narrative that is so large, for lack of a better word, that you cannot narrow the movies lesson down to one tangible thing. They persistenly refuse being pinned down to anything more specific than "people trying, not really succeeding, maybe it's ok anyway, but if it isn't at least its a beautiful mess". It's a mess. You'll make a fool of yourself trying to make it adhere to any agenda.
I really enjoyed this discussion and the nuance you presented with each film, I do wish you had gone a little deeper into “Diary of a Teenage Girl”, I have just recently watched this and although there is a sexualization from both parties within the film which can be problematic. Where I think the film gets it so right is how much of Minnie’s perspective we are shown, very rarely does it switch to Monroes perspective, and even still I’m not sure they did that, mostly showing him viewing her from a far but the most we see of how he really feels is when they take acid together. I think this was a really big catalyst for Minnie’s story because I think it finally showed her Monroe’s true colors, a weeping baby boy who has not grown up at all. After this event Minnie becomes much more distant, but we still see how much the relationship effects/ effected her. I just really enjoyed how the film ended, it was not a happy ending in the sense the two end up together, it is a happy ending in my opinion because Minnie finally sees herself, how she wants others to see her, I also really enjoyed how she continued to pursue her cartoon career and even started selling them at the end! Overall I believe this film did a great job in showcasing the different emotional storms that Minnie goes through with this increasingly stressful situation.
I have yet to see the movie adaptation, but the graphic novel is definitely worth a read! Extremely poignant and it's all through Minnie's perspective. Definitely more slice of life but you get to see so much complexity in Minnie
I was so happy when you uploaded! Cause your videos are so well-made and I always look forward to watching your thought-provoking and well researched essays! Your videos always make my day better!
In therapy I learned that when I'm triggered I'm supposed to look within - what thoughts and emotions are making me react. Looking for external blame when you're triggered is disempowering, it takes away your agency. So when a film triggers you, maybe calling for it to go away isn't helpful to you. It's an invitation to look within.
I watched the trailer for Licorice Pizza when I got it as an ad on YT, no clear indication of the age gap, I thought it was just two hetero high scholars falling in love. Nothing to add to the conversation, but good video.
@@samf.s8786 I think it's cause both actors are almost the same height, when compared to the other films like cmbyn where the height difference is stark.
kickass essay! paused it to go watch An Education, and that was excellent, so, nice bonus =) this helped digest this movie, and i like it more as a result, so thanks for that BD!
I'm sorry your video got age restricted. this is such an interesting topic and it's so challenging to talk about in a nuanced way. I logged on to youtube with my "real" google account just to be able to watch this. I'm glad I watch enough of your videos that this came up in my feed!
Great video. I willingly spoiled my most anticipated movie to watch it, but it was worth it. I was hoping perhaps you'd mention Buffalo '66 or Red Rocket. Maybe in the second half.
Great video once again, Brooey! This was definitely an in depth and impartial discussion on film's portrayals on age-gap relationships. I would love to see a more in depth take on the 1962 and 1997 film versions of Lolita. Keep up the great work!
Licorice Pizza has a pretty impressionistic, even surreal style. It's a story told through the lense of imperfect memory and nostalgia. People should stop taking the central relationship so literally. This wasn't high realism
@@paulelroy6650 fictional films can still be propagandistic or ideologically harmful. I just happen to think Licorice Pizza is not particularly propagandistic, more impressionistic and dream-like. In fact, I don't think we're supposed to even know for sure whether or not Lana says "I love you, Gary" at the end. The way the end was shot gives an impression that this is what he wished he heard rather than what was actually said.
@@harmonynelson2141 Honestly I think people need to stop making excuses. They could've just made him older 15 and 25 is not okay unless the movie makes sure to portray it's a predatory relationship.
@@majlordag1889 life is messy and art is a reflection of life. Art isn't supposed to be a moral map that people model their lives after. Sorry, but I don't think you have the tools yet to critically engage with a film like this. Take some film/media studies classes.
@@harmonynelson2141 Life for sure is messy. However, imagine if a movie was about an 11 yo and a 40yo having a relationship and the producers made it look really romantic and not problematic, then tried to justify it by saying it's fine because the story isn't high on realism. You can still portray the p world in a movie if you do it respectfully and don't glamorize it, I never claimed you're not allowed to portray it at all. Justifying the portrayal of a 15yo with a 25yo by saying it's not supposed to be realism is kinda the logic a lot of animes use when they make a character look like a kid but say they're secretly 1000yo so sexualizing them is fine
One thing I wished you had covered was whether a movie has a duty to depict statutory relationships as bad, which I think it does. Call Me By Your Name is more in the gray area due to the age closeness, but Licorice Pizza definitely is not. It even shows how they both realize their relationship is unhealthy, by at the end they literally run away into the sunset. Having a neutral position on child predation is just like being a complicit bystander relative to films like Lolita 1997.
Euphoria is under controversy for what some people believe to be “glamorization” of drug use, however we watch the main character almost die twice(?), her close relationships deteriorate and overall life fall apart due to her addiction and terrible life choices. I wouldn’t want to switch places with Rue or even her non-addict friends who have their own somewhat fucked up lives and people surrounding them. I think most teens are smart enough to tell that these characters are not meant to be admired. showcasing taboos is not the problem but how you showcase it matters. 13 reasons why romanticized suicide through it’s writing. Euphoria doesn’t romanticize anything and shows the shitty and gritty consequences of these teenagers and their lifestyles, (but it does go overboard on the nudity and sexualization of teenagers, which it should be criticized for)
I've not seen euphoria so I can't speak about that, but honestly I disagree with the whole idea that depicting drug use in a "glamorous" way is inherently wrong. Drug use can be glamorous actually, as a person who as tried drugs myself, I can tell you I wouldn't have done it if I thought it wasn't gonna be fun. A lot of people do drugs for lots o different reasons, and of course drugs are very destructive, but I think acting like you can't ever portray ANY drug use without making it seem like hell in every way all of the time without being told your "glamorizing" it is denying the truth that most people who got addicted to drugs had pretty valid and fairly logical reasons for starting in the first place.
@@gpu213 I’m sorry to be harsh but there are no valid reasons for starting it unless you were prescribed by a doctor. That’s your addiction talking. I have an addict in my family. None of the “fun” eclipses the consequences. He’s a shell of himself and the entire family hates him because of the things he’s done for and because of drugs. Glamorizing drugs im media is is wrong and results in people like yourself with your mindset. I don’t trust anything an addict has to say and the only reason I like Euphoria is because it shows the reality of addicts and their shitty life choices.
@@witchplease9695 yeah, when addicted its destructive, but i think demonising drug use so severely doesnt help, people usually do drugs because they are struggling in life and want an escape, who can blame them? Or just because it seems like a fun thing to do. Alcohol is a drug remember and its completely normalised to get drunk recreationally. Of course it’s dangerous, im saying it makes perfect sense that people do drugs, despite the danger
@@witchplease9695 I've done "hard" drugs 5-6 times during the last 3 years and loved it every time and look forward to the next time I have a few days of work to do it again. Stigmatisation makes responsible use much more difficult, and criminalisation makes it impossible to stop potentially problematic use when it is still manageable.
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If you're tired of seeing the same clip of Licorice Pizza over and over and over again in this video, - so am I babe. So am I.
It's understandable. Don't worry. Great video!
Girl, loooool 🤣
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@@choicethetaurus Your lucky this sounds good or else you would get a lot of hate
@@choicethetaurus wait this is actually pretty good- one of the few times I don't regret clicking some random link
In terms of CMBYN, I think it's also important to note that the film does not have a happy ending. Elio and Oliver do not ride off into the sunset together. From my perspective at least, there's an element of Elio getting played by Oliver (the latter being someone who I don't think is an entirely sympathetic character). After he leaves Italy, we're under the assumption that Oliver has more or else ghosted Elio and only calls to let the family know he's getting married. Which also means Oliver was hiding the seriousness of the relationship with his future fiancée from Elio while they were together.
Agreed. I didn't feel like it was framed as some great or deep love story. It seemed to be more about a fleeting summer crush and exploring one's sexuality and the beauty of making memories (especially when you are rich and live in Italy :P).
Neither Elio nor Oliver connect that deeply emotionally, imo. They are attracted to each other intellectually and physically. Elio, being 17 treats the whole thing more seriously than Oliver and that's it.
Also, I still think that Oliver was miscast. All controversies aside, he was supposed to be in his twenties and I think that casting an older actor didn't work that well and ended up highlighting the age gap which didn't feel as significant in the book because both characters seemed pretty inexperienced and lost.
@@julci4964 I think he was cast that way because Timothee was already 20 because you can’t have an actual 17 year old go through the motions I think, so he was closer to 24, Oliver’s age. Even if they’re both inexperienced and lost, the fact that Oliver is still older than Elio is still pretty important to the narrative and its implications.
@@randomgirl2282 That does make sense but I still think that Timothee easily passed for a 17 year old, whereas Armie Hammer definitely looked his age so it didn't work as well as it could have. 🤷🏻♀️ But I read the book first so my opinion is definitely tainted by it.
I don't agree with that view it always seemed to me that Oliver got engaged with his on and off girlfriend because he had to. He says in the film that his parents would not be ok with him being with a man and even says they'd send him away somewhere if they found out
@@athenajaxon2397 Yeah I agree. I think the movie makes it pretty clear that he's tremendously repressed due to his religious background and since he's returning home, he's also returning to that life. I don't see it as a betrayal to Elio or as a sign that he was manipulative, he's simply one of countless of queer people who settle into a "straight" life because they don't have enough of a support network to allow themselves to live their truth.
I really enjoy your nuanced discussion of this topic. As a female high school teacher of mostly 14 and 15 year old boys, I just can't endorse any narrative that depicts these relationships with any sort of romanticization or neutrality. When I see discussions that do, I wonder if those people actually spend time around 15 year olds to remember how young they actually are. Most boys in this age range have JUST gone through puberty. No matter how nuanced a story may try to portray the relationship between a 25 and 15 year old, it is always an abuse of power (no matter the gender of the older person) and it is always unhealthy. I would challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to shadow 9th graders for a day. All this being said, you examine the topic beautifully and I really appreciate your thoughts!
I 100% agree. I think we all sort of forget our true mentalities of previous ages and only remember in expieriances. So i think a lot of people forget that, while i was 13-14 and feeling mature, I also was over sexualized, and yet had no *real* sense of sexuality outside of attraction (sexuality such as gay, straight, etc. not as in actual sex). Forgetting that part of my mentality and who I was, paints over A LOT of my issues as a child, and now as a young adult, as mature for my age. If people ignore their own mentalities from the past, its easy to not see how children those ages now are going to be affected if that makes sense?
As a fellow teacher, I completely agree. I think a "neutral" telling of such a story falls short of being responsibly realistic. These situations are not neutral and the responsibility is not shared equally between the parties involved. I believe we can make room for nuanced discussions about motivation and emotional maturity, but to frame a statutory situation as anything other than an abuse of power is a reckless misrepresentation and a cultural disservice.
@@kitkatherine23 yes really good point. I was recently making this point about my experience of being a college student and how, while I was certainly a "real" adult then, I had a much greater sense of my responsibility and maturity than was actually true. Especially looking back on it now, 11 years later. We're almost always going to experience and remember the experienced of different ages as older, more worldly, and wiser than we are. It's understandable. And also part of the reason minors are so easily taken advantage of by older partners. The affections of someone older feels like a compliment to our perceived maturity. You're right that, when we look at these statutory age gaps through the lens of remembered experiences, rather than through the realities 14 and 15 year olds are living every day, we miss important information and reminders about how this is truly abuse.
in the past was a very very common occurrence to have a relationship of older male, and extreme young female (like 15 y..16y..). Even in the movies of the 70's and 80's that was common (taxi driver...raging bull...Leon). Maybe is good that PTA depicted that, as it shows how wrong certain things were in the past.
@@minabina1146 very well said and I 100% agree!
One of my big issues with Licorice Pizza was that Alana has her "you should just be with who you love" moment after witnessing an argument between 2 closeted gay men. The reason she "couldn't" be with Gary is very different to the reason why two men couldn't be together in the 70s, especially as one of them is running for public office.
It was more like, the world is too real go back to childishness you yearn.
Well from a moral perspective. Two Gay men are consenting adults. There relationship is a lot less problomatic than a grown woman and a child
Not sure I agree. Hell, what I got out of it was that Alana's "you should be with who you love" moment came about in part BECAUSE of the closeted nature of the gay couple's relationship. Like, "these people can't be together because their environment makes it literally impossible for them, so why the fuck am I not with Gary when, unlike these two sad sods, I could be?". Which is obviously absolutely the wrong lesson for her to take out of that little episode... but it also IS the lesson someone like Alana would get out of it.
@@andreantunes8615 are you trying to imply that some characters have flawed motivations and learn the wrong lessons from what they see and are not perfect, omnipotent beacons of morality? How DARE you!
@@ivanvoronov3871 y’a ever heard of this thing called literacy
As someone who has been taken advantage of by older men, I believe that art should not work as a moral compass. However, I believe Lolita (1997) went too far. Dominique Swain (actress of Dolores) should never have been put in that position, and the movie completely fails to capture the beauty of the ending of the book. In the book, when Humbert realizes what he has done to Dolores and repents, it's clear that things are not going to end well for him. And he understands that. He is ready to be locked up or die in prison if it only means that he can kill his darker self (symbolized as Quilty). The catharsis that I experience whilst reading is very intense for me. I hope many people will read the book instead of watching the movie.
Also, I tend to dislike it when people talk about Dolores and call her Lolita. That's not her name. "Lolita" is a derogatory name that Humbert has made up. Don't be fooled by him.
I appreciate this nuanced reading a lot! Having enjoyed Nabokov's writing and never read Lolita as a romantic depiction, I was always upset by people who demonize the work without giving it much thought. It's like people are unable to divorce the writing and the narrator's voice from the author.
@@justaname999 Yes, I agree. Lolita is one of my favorite works, and it’s heartbreaking to see it being so controversial.
I agree 100%
@@anais559 Yes it is. It's heartbreaking how Nabokov is treated like a creep...
from only hearing about Lolita through discourse, I hadn't even realised that Dolores' name wasn't Lolita (and I write Dolores now, but I didn't know her name). thank u for sharing this
Great video, and breakdown. It was fascinating to watch Licorice Pizza and Red Rocket back to back, since Red Rocket complicates this subject by portraying a relationship that isn't technically a statutory age gap, while definitely fetishizing that gap visually, and also portraying it as predatory, while somehow still (in my reading) feeling more cautionary than anything by the end. It's very strange.
Your final segment nails it. I'm less concerned with what an individual movie says and more about what the culture around it says. If no filmmaker ever dared even potentially crossing the line while depicting cultural taboos then cinema would lose validity as a serious art form. Conversely, if films commonly contained repugnant content and no one cared then society needs to change.
Controversial movies being made, and discussed and dissected in the open is exactly where we should be.
THANK YOU! you perfectly worded it!
@@maxrosas2826 Thanks. Sadly, I think youtube age restricting this video kind of takes the edge of my post a little. This platform, at the very least, is not where it should be.
I love that your last two videos discussed the lack of nuance surrounding conversations of art and production, while also touching on TikTok dogpiling and Lolita. Ironically, I also found myself getting berated by teenagers in a TikTok thread discussing Lolita. I disagreed with the OP’s take that Lolita “normalized age gap relationships and grooming”, as several people’s comments verged on book banning rhetoric. Through the chaos of that comment thread it became so increasingly obvious that they’d hadn’t even read the book, and were instead equivocating the book to Lyne and Kubrick’s films; they kept saying how Dolores is shown as wanting Humbert, too, and said that Nabokov promotes the relationship and presents it as the “norm” (so I guess they missed the unreliable narrator part?).
TikTok really is just regurgitating all the same discourse from 2011-2015 era Tumblr, huh?
Totally lol, and I think part of why that happens is that teenagers (even those who read the book) generally are a bit too young to fully understand Nabokov's writing in Lolita -- I read it for a book report in an advanced english course when I was about 16 and although I didn't think it was a romance by any means (I read it as a pseudo-horror/poetry type thing), I also didn't get the more complex themes that are WAY more clear to me now as an adult. Not saying a teenager couldn't get it, just that it'd be unusual since it's about such an intensely grim situation that many teenagers (fortunately) have not had to encounter.
Edit: To sum up, I think that's part of why that happens in a space like tiktok, but I agree that the claims made about the book on that platform are untrue and Nabokov does make that as clear as he possibly can, it's just that teenagers were likely not the intended demographic for the book lmao
That last sentence both opens my eyes and scares me to death. Oh boy, I suppose it’s a rite of passage.
That is such a bland take away from the book and does such disservice to this dark topic. (The TikTok take away I mean) there’s too much nuance for TikTok to be able to sum up with their time and character limits.
@@FeyPax Right??? Like it’s so apparent they didn’t read the book. How is Nabokov promoting that kind of relationship when he explicitly presents Humbert as a deplorable person? There’s multiple instances in the story where Humbert is full mask off the villain, it’s just told through Nabokov’s prose. Just because a piece of media is aesthetically appealing, doesn’t mean that it condones the subject matter discussed.
Yes, yes it is. Watch when they try to do a Dashcon and say how fanfiction is superior because current media is "bland and unoriginal."
Your discussion of Call me By Your Name is so refreshingly nuanced. I hate how this film is discussed in the popular discourse, framing it as immoral and disgusting purely because of the age gap with no consideration for how the story is told, both thematically and technically. I find it absurd how many debate whether or not this relationship is toxic when it isnt a relationship at all. It's a moment of indulgence for both characters who both acknowledge and understand why it cannot last forever. The monologue with Mr Pearlman at the end solidifies this film, not as a story about Elio and Oliver, but as an exploration of the nature of desire, both rational and irrational ones.
Love your videos
Iii
It seems you'll love Lola's video on the topic
@@kostajovanovic3711 great, will definitely watch it!
@@kostajovanovic3711 It's so good, the point about how abnormal it is that the younger one chases the older is so astute and on point.
I don't care how the story is told.
I grew up with these 90s depictions of manipulative younger women and having a mother who BRAGGED to me about her relationship with a teacher three times her age at 15 (was the 70s) I thought that's kind of what a teen girl SHOULD do to learn how to be a woman. I'm glad my teachers were a lot more responsible...
I've always found it strange that people said that the romance in CMBYM would've been ok if Elio was 18. Most 18 year olds are still in high school I turned 18 two months into my senior year. It's genuinely bizarre to me that legally in the U.S the legal age of consent in most states is 18 meaning at 18 you can have sex with someone way older than you, sign up for the army, be tried as an adult, and vote but apparently you aren't responsible enough to drink and smoke
I often see the idea of "progressive autonomy" missing from these discussions. I don't know if it's a concept used in the States' legal system. Many other countries' laws often mention various instances in which minors gain autonomy, rights and responsibilities as they age.
Exactly. I hate how people treat relationships between 18 year olds and fully grown like 25+ year old adults as normal and ok
Yeah him being 18 isn't enough, Oliver needs to be aged down to 22 as well.
The human brain isn't fully developed until our mid 20s, so with that logic you can also make the argument that no one should be considered a legal adult until they're 25. Personally I think 18 is a reasonable age for legality, because at 18 we're already in young adulthood and our bodies have stopped developing. I think in the US especially, we have an annoying tendency to prolong adolescence.
no ones really arguing that its okay. But it is realistic. a younger person (boy) who gets to explore their sexuality with a slightly older person. is it okay? not really, but does it happen? absolutely. it's an honest portrayal of an experience many people have.
There’s something about listening to a nuanced take on something controversial that is just so satisfying.
I think the framing of taboo topics especially age gap relationships in film is important however aside from framing audiences have to be media literate enough to be able to take in the perspectives of the framing and also understand the context behind said framing.
That's the thing, an audience member's intelligence, level of education, and morality will play part in how they interpret what they see...
You bet media literacy is a factor...
Btw I did not think there was an age gap when watching the trailers lol 😅
Gotta lookup the actors actual ages lol
This! I feel like as a teenager if I saw a movie like this I wouldn’t be able to decipher the difference between it being romantic and ethical.
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@@choicethetaurus Ngl i thought this was gonna be some trash self promo but i was wrong
I often feel that the main problem when these relationships are shown is the same as in all media featuring children/young adults. I work with children for a living and films never depict them right. They are always the voice of adults pretending to be children. Real children, even the ones that could pass for 25 at 15 give away they are not that old when conversing. They are inherently naïve, have not experienced much and it always shows.
IF films depicted children honestly then a lot of these problems would go away, but they do not. This also leads to other issues, some say children cannot act, so older people are cast in children's roles. This is usually because the children have not been written as actual children but mini adults. This makes the relationships depicted seem less bad because what we are seeing is not what is described, we than see two adults, but are meant to remember one is not an actual adult (even thought they clearly are one).
When we look at Lolita the book manages to get the unreliable narrator aspect to work. We see Humbert as a perv, but the film does not show this as well as it could. If it did the wrongness would come across, Lolita is a kid and doesn't have the ability to understand the full consequences or consent. I think the film required her POV, whereas the book had a more critical aspect.
Great video but you missed out on all the extra engagement you could have gotten from people correcting you if you'd mispronounced Benjamin
Confession time - I've never actually seen Manhattan and I had no idea it was about a 42-year-old man "dating" a 17-year-old girl. I'm not too shocked that this received no scrutiny at the time, because of course it didn't. I AM shocked, though, that any person in their right mind would dare to defend Woody Allen when he was so obviously broadcasting his predatory ways. As someone who was emotionally, physically and sexually abused by a 43-year-old man when I was 18, who told me it was "true love" and called me "precocious", I feel so betrayed by the world for heaping praise on that movie and normalizing that type of abuse even more. And I feel rage toward Woody Allen, for using deceptive film language and portraying himself as bumbling and harmless so he could keep abusing young girls and getting away with it. I hope he gets a real comeuppance one day.
He portrays himself like a sad sack in the movie with immense self-deprecation and ridiculous self-pity. I remember seeing the movie in my early twenties and falling for the act hook line and sinker. I was convinced that we were not supposed to find the relationship a good thing and that we were supposed to dislike Allen's character for it, but it wasn't until several years later when I realized that the self-pity and him making himself out to be pathetic was an intentionally manipulative shield for the characters bullshit.
I will say this though, the movie did cause talk at the time and I highly doubt it would have become as big as it did if it was all about that. The relationship is a big part in the movie, but it's not specifically what the movie is about. It's a sprawling tale about Allen's character's life and most of the run time is spent with Diane Keaton and Michael Murphy's characters. I think that's largely why the movie isn't as shit on much as it should be since the parts with the trio are all great, while the parts with the girl are "eeeeh, what the fuck?".
He was also creeping on the actress who played his teenage girlfriend. He wanted to take her on a trip to Paris after she turned 18. Luckily she didn’t.
I get it. But the movie is good. The movie is beautiful because its creator is talented. That does not mean the acts that the film depict are right, that just means the film is good. Why the hell a movie has to be politically correct? Like what's the point of creating anymore, if now movies are all a social manifesto with no artistic value.
@@Cosasquenotienennombre it doesnt have to be a manifesto, but it shouldn't endorse immoral acts such as statutory relationships.
@@Cosasquenotienennombre you missed the point about the pedophile making a movie about a pedophile that doesnt condemn that act of pedophilia.......... that isnt about "political correctness" or "talent". Thats some nasty shit and you look really gross for in any way trying to excuse this.
Maybe I'm being naive, but I always thought that CMBYN shows what can happen when an adult enters in a relationship with a teenager: one of them has the maturity needed to know what they want and act accordingly (including moving on), and the other one lacks in that department. It's unfair: the older guy, while being sad by the separation, realizes he wants to move on and get married, and Elio lacks that agency because he doesn't have much life experience and is infatuated with the love he's feeling for the first time. It couldn't work out long term either, and that's why it's even more unfair for the younger person, who thinks he has found the love of his life because it's his first love.
While I want to believe the average person has the agency and common sense to make informed decisions about media, as an African American, I'm painfully reminded that the 1915 film Birth of a Nation, the first film screened in the White House, had such a profound effect on white supremacist culture in America that we're still dealing with it today. It did not hide the fact that it was propaganda, yet many of the myths and stereotypes of the film have been repeated and ingrained in American society ever since. Those who adopt white supremacy today seem more susceptible to propaganda than ever before, despite having easier access to factual resources.
yeah, that's true. most people don't watch video essays, most people don't analyze media.
👏🏾 Agreed. This was very much the case and, I would argue, media has never truly stop replicating and reinforcing those portrayals-- they just (barely) repackaged them.
@@stepahead5944 There's a mexican movie called Nuevo Orden pretty similar to this movie.
It seems the 'firdt film shown in the white house' is another myth
As the internet grows it forms ecosystems of self affirming echo chambers which are created by algorithmic and personality feedback loops. Just because there's factual information doesn't mean they'll seek it out or that would ever be shown to them regardless. Cultural heat-death of the world is coming
Damn - this made me question if by creating content about taboo topics, if I’m commodifying or even worse, diluting the discussion.. Thank you, Broey
I swear we sub to most of the same people haha
I would like to note that the swimsuit shot in call me by your name (32:44) is probably in reference to one of Elio’s thoughts in the book. In the book he mentions that depending on what swimsuit Oliver won he would be more open or angry, etc. I think it was meant to be a subtle nod at that.
I'm dealing with a kidney infection and have a fever so I don't have a lot to add, but I just wanted to say I appreciate this (and all your videos) so much. Your nuance is always appreciated.
I am so sorry about that. Please feel better soon!
Hope you feel better soon!
Get well soon !!
Yay! Finally, a real video dissecting the conversation in a critical way and not just slapping a 5 minute review together and saying “I guess the movie is well made, but did you know being a pedo is bad?” Thank you.
"These films are able to do so by going to great lengths to convince us that the relationship between the adult and minor is normal and romantic by framing the younger member as wise beyond their years, in command of their sensuality, and an active pursuer of the older member".
This really sums up for me the discomfort I felt first watching Manhattan, and to some extent felt in Licorice Pizza. If anything, with more time passed and a greater context applied to Woody Allen as a director (and ultimately as a sexual being), I was able to understand the very blatant manipulation that was being attempted by Allen in his directorial framing of the relationship, further compounded by him being the main actor and 'passive manipulator' as the neurotic older lover.
Perhaps what is more insidious then with Licorice Pizza, is just how little conflict I experienced whilst watching the film over this subject - and those contextual frameworks are really important when understanding why a viewer personally feels that a film is endorsing or challenging an inappropriate narrative. PTA repeatedly grounds this inappropriate relationship within a multitude of temporally contextual inappropriate and 'un-pc' scenes, to convince us as an audience that this is all going on during a period of American history where 'everything goes'...to the point that I'm sure many viewers came out thinking "Hey maybe this relationship is kind of ok, and didn't Gary say that he was nearly 16 anyways so enough time has probably passed in the film where he's probably already turned 16 by the time they've kissed" etc.
Sure we can't hold a particular time and place in history to our same moral frameworks, but when a film is conceived and released in the 21st century, with a happy-go-lucky, rose-tinted set of spectacles over the camera lens, it does start to make you think that PTA is playing a rather perverse experiment with his fanbase and audience to see just how far he can push the envelope.
Great video anyways Broey!
Interesting take. To me, LP never came off like an endorsement or even a piece of neutrality because I think the film makes it pretty clear that they’re not a healthy, functional couple at all and when they get together at the end, it’s not going to last. They’re going to keep fucking up, breaking up, and getting back together again and again until one of them figures out that they’re stuck in a bullshit cycle. To me, I think that’s what that final scene when they run toward each other represents. The only piece of original music written for the film which is this grand romantic sweep of strings plays, and the two charge at each other only to have the moment undercut by having them literally crash into one another and injure themselves and that I think sums up their relationship in a nutshell. There’s a lot of passion directed at each other in the midst of all their chaos but it always results in a crash. It makes sense given the ending of Phantom Thread was also about leaving a pretty dysfunctional relationship on a vague, speculative note.
@@tatehildyard5332 That's an interesting reading of the final scene, thanks for that comment!
An Education is one of my favorite films because as I grew up I learned the same lesson Jenny learns. While I've never been involved in an age-gap relationship, watching the movie for the first time at 13 and now more recently in my mid-20's I go through a similar journey. At 13 I focused on the fact that David gave Jenny gifts, seemed to understand her better than her parents or the boy her own age who just didn't really get her at all. I was taken in by the trip to Paris or to Oxford and mistook David's patience with Jenny's inexperience as peak romance. Also, take into account, Jenny was portrayed by a 20-something Carey Mulligan playing a 17-year-old so to my middle school brain, she looked like an adult. I didn't focus on the age-gap part because there was a gap between me and the character and the actress. They both, David and Jenny, looked like adults to me. When I rewatched in my 20's and I see the eventual downfall of the relationship, I can even see the cracks in David's facade early on. I can see the damage it had. (SPOILERS) Jenny drops out and doesn't take exams, then immediately after, this relationship, including the prospect of marriage, falls apart. She panics, "I haven't taken my exams, what am I supposed to do?" She ends up working her way back and getting into Oxford like she'd planned and manages to even separate Oxford as a place associated with David to something of her own. Only after seeing that having graduated did I understand the magnitude of what David could have taken from her, simply because he was dissatisfied with his own life.
This is the first of your video essays I’ve seen and I can tell you I’m going to end up watching every one of them back to back. Incredible stuff here!
I'm more than happy that this video exists. There's a severe lack of nuance in film discussion, or discussion in general over the internet so this is a breathe of fresh air. To accuse ppl who enjoyed LP to being pedophiles is not only surface level, but also irresponsible.
I think I am more skeptical of the depiction of adult/minor relationships. I tend to view it more like the line “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film”. Especially for age gaps as long as a decade, I think it could, (perhaps should) be preferable to choose to depict relationships between adults rather than adult/minor relationships. I mean, college age adults can also be naive and manipulated, while still having more agency.
I am also perhaps coming from this from a different perspective than most. A decade ago, during my senior year in high school, a teacher in my school was charged (and eventually convicted) for grooming and raping a series of football players (as minors). It’s not a personal thing for me; I didn’t know the teacher nor was friends with any of the affected students, though I did know some of them. However, it was something that stuck out to me as something wrong and manipulative and gross and certainly negatively affected the students. And I also remember people mocking the circumstance, mostly because it was a female teacher abusing male students (ie making the students out to be casanovas.) And I think that really downplays how damaging those relationships can be for the minors.
Genuinely curious because I haven't heard the phrase before: why isn't there such a thing as an anti-war film?
@@asdfgh161001 "There's no such thing as an anti-war film" is a quote attributed to the late French director/critic François Truffaut. The gist of the quote is that, due to the very nature of film, whenever you actually depict war, no matter what cinematic language you chose to use, you are stuck making something that someone can interpret as pro-war. If you show combat, you necessarily depict the struggle of (mostly) men to rise to an occasion, and, through violence, impose their will. Or you show the camaraderie of being a solder in a platoon. etc. The idea gets at this challenge to depict such violence without any sort of glamorization at all.
Think about dedicated depictions of war. For me, the intro to Saving Private Ryan stands out as a noteworthy piece of film making. It depicts the storming of the beach in Normandy during WWII as this grueling, bloody, dehumanizing thing. And yet, there is a kind of awe that it inspires. Or you can look at a movie like Forrest Gump, which actively mocks the Vietnam War, routinely relies on anti-war protest imagery and music, and spends a great deal of time on the lasting hardship of war veterans. Despite all these elements, the movie depicts Forrest's work as a soldier, primarily rescuing his platoon, as courageous and noble. By extension, the movie depicts being a soldier as something worthy of imitation.
American Sniper has been called (rather controversially) an anti-war movie because it apparently depicts the struggle of post-Iraq War veterans to reintegrate into society. I say "apparently" because I have not seen it. I refuse to watch it because it very famously opens with a scene where the sniper kills an Iraqi woman and child, with the Iraqis depicted through the crosshairs of the sniper rifle. Those two Iraqis are depicted as credible threats. I find that scene astonishingly dehumanizing and offensive, and it is very clear to me that that scene effectively downplays the value of the lives of foreign civilians.
We see this idea that you can't depict war for anti-war purposes used in other media. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is a somewhat autobiographical novel that deals with WWII, particularly the fire-bombing of the German city of Dresden. Both the author and the main character survived the bombing of Dresden (by the Allies) as war prisoners kept in a slaughter house. The novel largely avoids depiction of combat. Instead, the novel lurches into absurdism, weaving in stories about time travel and aliens that look like plungers. Instead of actually seeing the bombing of Dresden, we only see its aftermath, the scorched remains of buildings and bodies.
"There's no such things as an anti-war film" is quite obviously not accepted as a universal idea. Rather, it is a criticism of the use of film in depicting war. It's basically a statement that highlights the limitations of the media and challenges those who take it seriously to think more critically about how they use war in movies.
@@adnanilyas6368 Speaking of anti-war films, what are your thoughts on Elem Klimov's Come and See an anti-war film? I have heard it's much more realistic in depicting what war is; horror and that it's not patriotic by its ending but rather a sense of doom and forbolding of the mental and physical trauma that our protagonist will face.
@@adnanilyas6368 thank you for answering. I haven't seen many films a out war myself, but hypothetically I think it would be possible for one to be anti-war. Some of the ones you mention, though, sound as if they can't quite divorce from American imperialist propaganda that "our wars are necessary and we're bringing freedom to the world".
@@rickardkaufman3988 Sorry, I'm afraid I haven't seen it!
Great video! I mostly agree with everything said here. One aspect I always find lacking in the CMBYN discourse thought is the cultural context around it. You briefly touched on how the age of consent in 14 in Italy but it's not just that. The relationship portrayed in the film, aka a summer fling between a 17 y.o. and 24 y.o. simply isn't taboo in the Italian cultural context. It certainly wouldn't have been in the '80s. And I think this definitely (consciously or subconsciously) affected the way Guadagnino, an Italian filmmaker, approached its depiction on screen. I have to admit I, an Italian woman in my late 20s, didn't even blink an eye at it when I saw the film and kind of rolled my eye the first time I heard the "predatory older man" reading of it.
This is not to say that the relationship or its depiction should not be criticised. I think a nuance critique like that presented here is very valuable and enriching. I just wish more people actually engaged with the reality of the cultural context the story and the film exist in.
Want to take a second to say that in the piano teacher, the student she has an affair with is in his like early 20’s so yes there is the power imbalance of her being his teacher but he is an adult and the film very much portrays there relationship as negative
Ghost World is also not statutory as Enid is a high school graduate which would make her 18
Agree, I REALLY don't understand the inclusion of The Piano Teacher. I can't think of a less romanticised relationship in cinema than the teacher and the student. The fact that people can watch it and not spend the rest of their lives in celibacy is a testament to power of evolution, which, knowing Haneke's distaste for his audience, might have been the goal of it.
I’m so glad you mentioned Diary of a Teenage Girl! I never hear anyone ever talk about it! It’s one of my absolute favourite movies/books
An inclusion of Babyteeth (2020) would have also been interesting to look at since it's a similar age-gap to the one in Licorice Pizza but with the genders reversed and I think there is a lot of nuance there also :)
This is the nuance this conversation needed. I'm saying this as someone who originally rocked up to the Licorice Pizza debate with pitchforks out ready to argue unto the ends of the earth with the PTA-defending film bros. (Which I still might do sometimes, because a girl needs a hobby, but I will try to keep that encoding/decoding model in mind.)
I absolutely agree that this has been a great discussion on the movie.
Yet something about the backlash to Licorice Pizza from even those who haven't watched it is weirdly refreshing. Because of how common normalizing a woman with a boy has been, I'm relieved that people are concerned about it.
@@eyecamd I know that no-one has really ever taken it all seriously, but where else has it popped up? I'm not doubting you, I'm just struggling to recall other notables examples.
I liked the film but yeah it kind of invites debate. It has this fun energy even if I was like where is this going more than once. Upon second watch, it made total sense for me.
I mean if you’re not white and a guy, you’d probably have less reason to like this lol. on the whole, though, it’s an engaging film. I found it easy to identify with some of the emotional truths. I watched red rocket right after this and jeez is that film intense.
Sometimes I need to go back to Disney films and lord of the rings.
@@Tuosma Women involving themselves with boys? The first I thought of was Riverdale, then it was adult cartoons like The Simpsons, Family Guy, Robot chicken. I wish I could think of more, honestly I was just shying away from saying that I think men are generally conditioned to not view themselves as victims of SA
ps i get anxious, thanks for the end disclaimer.
@@eyecamd Glad that it helped. I know questions like that can come off more antagonistic in text than they actually are.
Encoding decoding is actually quite fun!
As a film students, we had a task to create a story each and show it in 20 photos. Then everyone laid out their stories on the table and other people had to narrate what they understood from the stories without any explanation from a "creator".
It's gave us a great idea of the difference between things you wanted to say and things that were actually understood
this is something I constantly worry about, I'm writing a kinda paradise lost-inspired story about a kinda icky relationship between two kids who go onto be terrible people (like, war crimes terrible), and while the relationship is Bad it is also heavily romanticized. the little twitter user in my brain was constantly nagging me about how I was fetishizing or endorsing it or whatev, so the solution I ended up creating was framing the as if it were written down by the protagonist much later (either on his deathbed or from the grave, deliberately unclear) so that you can get all the complex feelings straight from the (wizened yet still somewhat unreliable) horse's mouth
This was a really interesting video, thanks. One thing I don't really think you mentioned with Licorice Pizza was how she repeatedly said that them having a relationship would be illegal, it's actually one of the first things she says to him when he hits on her as student coming up to a woman helping take high school photographs. The dialog in these scenes were odd, almost like PTA wanted to assure the audience that he was aware the concept of them having relationship was taboo and illegal. The weird thing to me, is that when I was in high school there were some guys that would go after the freshman girls as seniors, and it always felt weird and wrong. In Licorice Pizza, this was someone the equivalent age of a teacher going after a freshman in high school. I just don't see why he wrote this story, other than just being really boring, it's so weird to make a love story between a 15 year old and an almost 30 year old. Pretty much nothing about the movie would have changed if he was 18, you could have even made both of them older to still have the age gap be a large plot point. It's just odd that this is the movie PTA wanted to make.
The story was based on his feelings for Alana Haim's mother (who is in the film) when she was his school teacher. I feel like a lot of the questions people have can be answered by watching a few interviews.
That’s just not true, him being 15 makes his character and his be in a more frustrating position which could explain why he dies drag around the girl the cab drive that isn’t his mother, besides his attraction to her
@@royalrejects Do you maybe remember the source of this and could share?
This is a very good take on LP. The whole time I cringed at Alana's behavior, even as a thirty-smthg who sometimes hangs out with younger people and can be attracted to younger guys (but certainly not teenagers). I don't think we're supposed to see it as romantic but as a weird story that Alana indulges because she so clearly needs validation which she's not getting from her family. So I didn't enjoy the ending where they legitimately seem to entertain the idea of staying together romantically.
Another thing is, I read her as being 25 in the beginning, and them staying friends long enough for them to both grow older, so 28 and 18. When they meet Jon Peters, she changes it back to 25 to impress him and stay desirable. Although 3 yrs seems like a long time, I can't imagine her real age would stay secret for long if she had lied. Of course we're unsure of the whole timeline during the movie.
I genuinely believe that was a blooper they decided to keep in the movie as the actress Alana Haim was 28 during shooting, and slipped her line, but corrected it and they just rolled with it. The line between her being a character and her being her is pretty blurred though
Great video. It reminded me of the movie The Tale, written and directed by Jennifer Fox. It tells the story of her own sexual abuse as child. It's gut wrenching at times and shows the matter in a very raw way. I totally recommend it.
I’m gonna leave what I think before watching the video. Will update if it’s changed after just bc I think it’ll be interesting to see how Broey changes our minds.
Depiction does not equal endorsement, but romanticizing it does. Like, showing it in a way that makes it seem like it’s a non issue or is okay is a problem.
I’d still heavily argue that even if a film romanticises violence, exploitation, whatever negative behaviour... Art is not your moral compass. You can enjoy watching something even morally awful because film is art, it’s expression, it’s exploration. We’d be losing expression and intellectual endeavour if art has to be limited to a being in a box of what’s ok to depict. It’s a dangerous and irresponsible path. A film shouldn’t have to hold your hand by telling you what is bad behaviour. I’d hope people with any kind of brain don’t need that support and can understand how to behave appropriately in real life.
@@AH-bm5xs I somewhat agree, but the difference is this centers around children. Movies don’t show violence against children and frame it as okay, ever.
Honestly, I’d argue immense violence in movies is almost always framed as a bad thing. Only ever in the form of revenge or self defense is violence ever framed as good. Sexual abuse of a child could never be framed as a good, so your argument falls apart under that minor scrutiny.
@@AH-bm5xs I agree with your comment ao much, it's almost as if films and other mediums are like a safe space to depict the taboo. I feel like David lynch's work is often doing that
This is such an interesting statement that I completely agree with. What do you think about films that take a “neutral” approach as Deschanel pointed out?
@@alicia379 I also agree with this response. Deschanel at the beginning of the video was citing the work of a Jewish leftist who was targeted by Nazis was talking about how easy it is for art that endorses certain behavior to change minds, art in media, especially movies, as he said, can easily be used to propagandize and manipulate of mass scale. That’s what those propaganda films framing Hitler as a benevolent leader when he was a dictator were. Even if art isn’t a moral compass and film shouldn’t hold your hand-Film can both affect society and is a product of it. Art existing for art’s sake with no obligation to do or be anything is fine, but art being distributed to the public is done so with a reason and with it’s cause and affects.
That Woolf quote is so interesting. One of the best of all time and she knew a hundred years ago that literature could not always be adapted to film, at all. And she was right.
Age of consent in Italy is 14?!! I see my country's not the only one in this situation.....lemme tell you, it leads to truly.....bizarre court cases....
Wonderful video, incredibly clear and informative. Shout out to Lola Sebastian's video and Lolita Podcast, both are incredible.
Tangentially, I'm curious on your opinion on Euphoria, mine are incredibly mixed and things are complicated by the two episodes halfway between season 1 and 2.
The thing that really bothers me about the CMBYN discourse is that the black-and-white nature of it means that if the character had been 18 they wouldn't have had a problem with it.
And that just feels so weird to me, not because I think that age gap would also be problematic and awful OR because I think it would necessarily be ok. (I'd probably file that one under "proceed with extreme caution" personally, but I'm on the younger end of that so maybe take that with a grain of salt.)
The idea that turning 18 makes you an adult is this huge component of social media discourse rn and there's absolutely no nuance there. Like 18 is this cosmically ordained magic number that makes you mature, and not a largely arbitrary thing that most countries seem to agree on legally (even though the age of consent varies).
I absolutely think that predatory age gaps are bad, and even if there really is a chance that a relationship between, say, a 16yo and a 30yo could work out and be mutually beneficial, we're better off having a taboo around it to protect the 16yo in the 99.999% of cases where that's a really bad idea. But have some freaking nuance! Not everyone's going to agree on the numbers, but there should be a range between "A-OK" and "go to jail."
(Sorry about the rant, I was having trouble getting my thoughts across succinctly and I REALLY didn't want to be misinterpreted lol)
A relationship between a 16year old and a 30 year old will never be mutually beneficial
@@user-hv8ch9vg2z elaborate?
sidebar: I love your username
I was a teen in the 90s graduated highschool in 2000). I saw "The Crush" and the "Poison Ivy" movies, along with "Fear" and I movie I hazily remember with Alicia Silverstone and Matt Dillon who was a killer/detective where he raped and tried to murder her teen character. I never saw "Lolita" (thank God). I always wondered how these movies (the ones I did see) were made and allowed to be played.
I have never seen any of those, they seem pretty dark tbh...
So you're saying I spared myself mental trauma? Thank you!
@@samf.s8786 Yes, you have been spared! I wish I could unwatch them. Man, I just remembered another Alicia Silverstone movie where she was young and in a weird relationship with a wayyy older man played by Benecio Del Toro.
Licorice Pizza is the Water-Bed of this taboo...wobbly and retro.
It's crazy how much ur videos make us think about different things. i always end up thinking for hours even days after watching ur vids.
+
Phantom Thread has an age gap, interestingly, that did not go anywhere near where I was thinking it was gonna go...
Remains one of the weirdest age gap relationships depicted on screen, the age gap itself is definitely not the most "toxic" thing about that relationship ... Literally 😖😖😂
At least in Phantom Thread: (A). The tone of the film establishes the messed up nature of the relationship better than in LP. (2.) While Alma is clearly younger, she is obviously an adult.
Well done. Well said. Thank you.
i agree with your take on the cmbyn movie but i do think it should be mentioned that the book the movie is based off was written by an admitted p3dophile. yes the book and movie are separate and have numerous differences, but with that knowledge of the source material its made me even more uncomfortable by the movie.
What exactly do you mean by "admitted pedophile"?
@@insa9474 he admitted to finding little girls attractive and insisted most people would agree if it wasnt "taboo". it was in an interview - look it up, its pretty easy to find
@@maddieatkinson1527 just did so and yeah, that's a very yikesy thing to say
i haven't seen Licorice Pizza, but it is really reminding me of Rushmore, which also depicts a lost, precocious boy pursuing an older woman (who unequivocally shuts him down)
When it comes to the CMBYN comparisons, I'm surprised to not see anyone point out that in CMBYN we see a fully sexual relationship, unlike LP. Like, come on...
I didn't know licorice pizza was a story between a 15 and 25 year old till this video. All I saw from people's discussion is that it's a coming of age and first love which ummmm yeah. The neutral take on age gap made people romantized it in the end
Really enjoyed this piece. Something that stands out to me is that so many of the films with age gap storylines (neutral or otherwise) are set in the past compared to when they were made. Even the Woody Allen film creates a perception of an older time by shooting in black and white. It could be interesting to consider if placing the viewer in a time outside of the present would manipulate how the age gap relationship is interpreted. I know this isn’t true of all age gap movies but certainly seems to apply to many in this category. If these stories were set in the contemporary time of their filming would they Illicit the same response from viewers?
As an aside: thank you for confirming my suspicions that I would hate “Licorice Pizza”. Even the trailer seemed cringy to me and I didn’t even know about the age gap dynamic.
As always, amazing video. Happy to count myself among the Patreon fam!
Excellent points all throughout. All of your theory tidbits enriched your reading of the films and named the dilemma of interpretation really well. I recently watched Lolita (1997) and didn't hate it...but also have read some of the book. I fully admit that I was probably reading what I knew about from the book back into the film and it wasn't there. I'll also say that I didn't watch it super thoroughly, mainly just while I did other things, certainly from a standpoint of rigorous analysis. My main thought was that I got through it whereas I never made it through Kubrick's version, check one off the list move on. Still, i agree with everything you said especially counterpointed to An Education, a movie I like a lot.
In this video I couldn't help but think of another 2021 movie one that, in my opinion, should be getting a lot more attention, and that is Red Rocket. Nothing is ambiguous about Red Rocket. It's a slimy character doing grooming-adjacent behavior on a 17 year old. The film a couple times even explicitly reminds us that this is the legal age in Texas, and this fact does nothing to make us more easy about the situation, which makes the film stronger. It is in no way shape or form a love story. We inhabit the perspective of the older guy...but we constantly care far more about the young girl and if she's going to be safe. A pretty tricky feat. I think it interesting that for all the controversy LP has stirred up, no one has mentioned that there's another movie out at exactly the same time that helps clear up the situation.
As for Licorice Pizza I...didn't love it, despite being a BIG PTA fan. I agree that the last third really meanders, which is so out of character for a guy who's made several of the best finales in films of the past 30 years. My main issue was really that I didn't think the film had much to say about the world or its characters. It's a coming of age story, sure, but do I think Gary has matured? or Alana will grow up? Not really, which left me feeling kind of empty about it. But all your points are spot on. If the genders were reversed, it would be a problem for sure (think even of a throwaway joke from Pineapple Express, and that even with Amber Heard's character being 18 if i remember correctly. I also think, like Almost Famous, audiences might be inclined to "give it a pass" because it's set so long ago. But i wholeheartedly agree that the film is NOT a romance, and the fact that it sometimes almost felt like it was trying to be was part of why it didn't exactly work for me.
All that to say, great video. Thoughtful nuanced analysis as always, and I can't wait for the rest of the series! (I say in hopes you decide to extend beyond two parts...)
I would love to see you talk about the show Dickinson; how they decided to avoid the claims of incest and abuse, how they show black people's history and their impact on bringing back one of the best poets in the US history
It seems a strange time to decide to romanticize the unhealthy relationship between an adult and a teenager ... and an even stranger time for reviewers to willfully celebrate this theme.
I admit that it took some daring to make a film with such questionable subject matter and artists should have the freedom to explore dark, even confronting topics. With that freedom, though, should come a sense of responsibility to explore those issues with integrity. Intelligent films examine doubtful scenarios; they don't glorify them for an undiscerning audience. Simply because the characters justify something to themselves doesn't mean that the film - or its reviewers - have to fall into line, too.
In fact, I have noticed an eerie strand of emotional blackmail operating in some of the film's reviews - critics seem to suggest that, if you don't buy into its romantic treatment of an unhealthy relationship, then you're too "square" to appreciate cinema.
The role of the critic isn't to provide PR cover for an anointed director. It's to examine films: how they work, how they don't work. Critics shouldn't be insulating filmmakers from legitimate interrogation.
The director is pushing pedophile propaganda, simple. He's an evil bastard who deserves the pasolini treatment.
Love the way you break things down from multiple different perspectives. The enormous amount of hard work you poured into this video is palpable.
Another banger - love the style and I always leave your pieces smiling and thinking afresh.
I'm so glad you're talking about this! I've already filmed my video for next week which kind of ties in with this and I'll be sure to mention your work
Love the video and the content you put out. Hope that one of the things you bring up in your tabboo series is audience glorification of toxic characters who are the protagonists of the story. Things that come to mind are Fleabag, Don Draper, Walter White, Bo Jack Horseman, Rebecca from Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Tyler Durden, or anyone from the show Euphoria ect. In all of the examples given there are scenes and plotlines that show that these characters are self-destructive but there's an almost romantic quality to it.
Most likely because of the highs of these characters, both literal highs from drug usage and metaphorical highs of their impulsive behaviors, often out shine the more darker aspects of the show/film, which could have many audiences leaving remembering all the cool drug scenes from Euphoria or the bad ass action scenes from Breaking Bad, but forget about all of the emotional manipulate, sexual assault, or suicidal tendencies the characters had in both shows. It's like many people listen to a full album and tend to mostly remember the happier and catchier songs whereas a deeper cut that's more emotional is something that's never at the forefront of the listeners mind. At some point there has to be a clear shouting at the audience what the message of the work is about.
Like two examples I think of when discussing wrong interpretations of works of art are the Nirvana Songs "Polly" "R*pe Me" and "In Bloom" vs the Idles songs "Ne Touche Pas Moi" and "Samaritans" while Nirvana used vague metaphors in there songs to allude to being for women's liberation, their vagueness with serious subject matters often flew over their male audience. Which is why despite Nirvana making many metaphorical pro feminist art, they had numerous times had to stop shows to address a man assaulting a female fan. Whereas Idles, who have been criticized for being extremely obvious in their political messaging, so far, have not had any instances of these things happening in their shows and have made it clear that both in their art and in real life that their community and fan base don't tolerate that shit. It's almost impossible to be an Idles fan and not be for women's liberation, whereas one can be a Nirvana fan and ignore their messaging bc of it not being extremely direct. Perhaps it's the same with depictions of toxic people in art. Maybe being obvious in preaching is a better alternative to accidentally endorsing or even inspiring or emboldening violent or manipulated behaviors.
I watched An Education last year and a couple days ago was watching deleted scenes of the film and thought "It feels like this movie was forgotten. I remember when it came out many people said it was good but practically nobody talks about it now".
Then a few minutes ago I learned about Licorice Pizza's plot and look here on YT if someone had made a video about the age gap and Voilà!
I think in a lot of cases, depiction ends up endorsing even if they didnt intend to. Because a lot of directors/writers/producers/etc end up getting lazy with subjects and it comes off that way. If you are going to do a topic thats serious like this, you cant get lazy with it. You have to CARE.
Moreover, I think that its all with how its carried out and the outcome. CMBYN could do a bit better with showing that this relationship is NOT IT from the begining and that they arent the two people meant to love each other and be together (they go for a more "Hills Like White Elephants" Iceberg theory, where they dont neccessarily show or say everything thats there, but I think they could have done it a bit better), but I think its pretty good with showing that this relationship was doomed (especially towards the later half of the movie, not so much the first) with a guy whose just looking for a good time and doesnt take the relationship seriously (oliver is emotionally immature tbh) and a teenager whose emotionally serious about this relationship while also growing and developing and having a lot of firsts. It does show that people with these age differences are on two different playing fields when it comes to life, love, and happiness, which is why its emotionally damaging and destructive (specifically to the younger less overall mature one) to the people.
Also, to give some more cultural context to the 1997 film version of Lolita, it was released on the heels of the Amy Fisher/Joey Buttafuoco story --- and Amy Fisher was literally dubbed "Long Island Lolita" in much of the press.
Ugh the whole issue I see with age gaps in films is that I've only ever seen it from this perspective of "two people falling in love" and rarely does it show the power dynamics and the manipulation. Like unintentionally Pretty Little Liars reveals Ezra has a pattern of predatory behavior with young girls by dating Ali when she's like 14, barf. And Taylor Swift's All Too Well short film was really interesting in showing the deep falling in love, and then the kind of disconnect at the dinner party where Jake in this story kinda pushes her to the side, like his own subconscious way of admitting he thinks she belongs at the kids table/can't be an equal in his older adult world.
I don’t think depiction equals endorsement always but romanticization does. I really went into this movie wanting to like it. It was filmed near my house and I miss coming of age films with no distinct plot or over arching meaning.
My issue is the film could have easily done this with an 18year old. Him being in HS added no value to the storyline. Why not make his character 18? Many times Alana herself questions the validity of her hanging out with someone so young. Most of the other adults that she discusses this with do not find any issue with it.
I feel like the movie doesn’t actually question the relationship enough. I don’t think that it’s able to take a look at why their relationship is wrong.
Some thing else that really bothered me was the flippant responses to criticism of the film. I think it’s OK that people feel uncomfortable by the relationship. I think it’s OK that people don’t understand why the racist scene was needed. What I don’t like is the gaggle of white men and women trying to prove that their counter culture by separating the art from ethics. Therefore silencing other people who had negative thoughts about it.
How were they "silencing people who had negative thoughts about it"?
It would have made more sense even if he was not in the high school and was around his early 20s tbh
@@Bob-uh6gf I was discussing Internet discourse. I saw this movie when it first came out and the initial reviews were of course very flattering. Then there was a TikToker who made a video and the Twitter discourse immediately pivoted to them being preteens and it not being fair criticism. There were people who were actively saying that at no point in the movie do they kiss which clearly showed me that they were only going off of what they were hearing versus actually having seen the movie. It’s fair for you to have like the film but it’s not fair for you to tell other people that their criticism is not valid.
@@bgeese1918 I agree it would make me feel less icky. Even the immaturity of the main character could have translated just as well. Alana being 30+ while he was 17 during the filming of the movie also adds another layer.
@@aiba6540 exactly 🙃
I loved this video! Really great to see An Education mentioned, as it's such a well made, brilliant film. As the age of consent in the UK is 16, the same age as Jenny, the relationship falls into a very debatable area, and as someone who at that age was in my own age gap relationship, I find it fascinating and a bit tough to consider! Thank you for your wonderful videos, I can't wait to see the next!
One possible explanation for the surge in age-gap in the 90's might be that that was the time when the Baby Boomers (a generation once so thoroughly associated with youth) began entering middle age and the whole existential crisis that caused,
I love watching your film analysis. Your nuanced exploration of film never feels contrived and highlights how art can be interpreted in a myriad of ways.
Your videos inspire the viewer to confront their preconceived views and make a case for the importance of different forms of storytelling in film. Even when the subject matter is controversial or goes against the dominant cultural ideal. Your analysis always encourage introspection and have made me contemplate the way my world view influences the way I consume art.
I was surprised and delighted to find out that you are only 25- you are putting out some of the best film analysis that I have seen in a long time. I remember you mentioning feeling the urge to make films again in another video. Fingers crossed that you share your own films with us. Either way, I can’t wait to see what you create in the future.
This was phenomenal, as always. Glad to see a more nuanced and in depth conversation as all I had seen until now was "thing bad" "thing good" when it came to this film. I think the jump to "can this topic be discussed in film at all" as being the discourse kind of misses the point, when what matters, in my opinion, is how and why its presented and discussed.
Another fascinating video from Broey - you never miss! 👌
I love your analysis! I've thought about this issues for a long time. In the case of LP, beside the age gap, also really bothered me how PTA portrays 30 somenthing womenhood or women in their crisis, in the same way there were issues about how was potrait a woman in her lowest with The Queen's Gambit, I believe there's a romanticize view on how women confronts existencial crisis... that made the age gap worse form me when I was in the theather (sorry for my english, is not my first language and I don't practice grammar very often)
Me encanta haber encontrado tu canal, considero que tus videos están muy bien hechos, compartes argumentos y preguntas válidas que me dan la oportunidad de deconstruirme. ¡Muchas gracias! 💖✨
I am a kinda big PTA film fan, he's probably top five directors for me, but I just started giving his films a chance in the last six months. maybe its a recency effect thing, but I do love Licorice pizza and I do think its textually not explicitly glorifying the act of grooming, just like its not explicitly sexual for most of it, but I think that at this moment in time in doing so it just adds to the discourse in a very complex and unique way. like every film everyones gonna have a different interpretation, but I think the film by not explicitly engaging in those ideas makes the viewer have to engage more with those ideas and recognize them for what they are, and idk that is more productive in my mind that getting someone to go watch more or to buy something.
I think what ruined my experience of the film was that PTA portrayed teenagers not acting like teenagers at all and not even partaking in teen activities. I don’t know if it s historically accurate for the 60s but from a contemporary perspective it felt like he wrote those teen characters that way so that we d feel less awkward about the love story itself.
I am a late 90s/early 2000s child but my sister came of age in the late 80s/early 90s and looking at her friend circle, many of whom married their high school or college partners, age gaps seem to have been much more common in the 80s/early 90s?
Most of her female friends' husbands/wives are 5-8 years older and they all met their husbands or wives when they were between 16 and 20 years old. None of these relationships are seen as inappropriate, let alone predatory. I've talked to her about this a few times and to them, this sort of age gap was just normal at that age. Definitely not when they were younger, but around 16-18, it was common. (during my sister's high school and uni years, we lived in Paris and then in Bologna, though, so the system is a bit different there than it is in the US, where you're more isolated in high school/college).
The view of what's mature has definitely changed through the years. I am not talking about cases like the one in "Lolita" but more about young people on the cusp of adulthood.
My mom's generation was generally considered more mature at the age of 17 or 18 than my generation, who spend a good portion of our twenties "at the cusp of adulthood" ;)
Again, this is in no way meant to excuse predatory behavior! I'm referring more to relationships like the one depicted in Call Me By Your Name, where Elio, while young, would have been considered closer to a young man than a child.
Fantastic nuanced take. This channel was my best find recently.
As someone who just turned 20, I feel like it should be noted on the point of “it’s good seeing teens being less impressionable” and calling out the age gap fetishization on social media that there are two potential biases: that teens by themselves have a much much larger influence on social media compared to adults, especially in social media that millennials and younger are exposed to, and that before the last ten years or so, the media was controlled mostly by adults. It should be taken into account the difference in voice individual teens have now when saying they’re “showing more of them are saying something,” when there are a few major things influencing our perception of teens voices. I do think there are more teens that are aware, but I don’t think it’s as many as some may think. At least this is from my perspective as I would see older (sorry people in their early 20s a few years ago) people talking about “teens voices” online, but then just not see it reflected in anywhere near the same scale that was being claimed.
Hooboy. As far as I'm aware I've never seen a Woody Allen movie in my life. I knew academically they were bad, but I was not prepared for those clips.
wonderful essay, love the nuance. I wanna add that if you've watched any other PTA films I think you'll be more likely to read licorice pizza as depiction-not-endorsement. What I love so much about his movies is how there's this narrative that is so large, for lack of a better word, that you cannot narrow the movies lesson down to one tangible thing. They persistenly refuse being pinned down to anything more specific than "people trying, not really succeeding, maybe it's ok anyway, but if it isn't at least its a beautiful mess". It's a mess. You'll make a fool of yourself trying to make it adhere to any agenda.
The word ‘romanticize’ has been deduced to meaning that something isn’t explicitly condemned
I really enjoyed this discussion and the nuance you presented with each film, I do wish you had gone a little deeper into “Diary of a Teenage Girl”, I have just recently watched this and although there is a sexualization from both parties within the film which can be problematic. Where I think the film gets it so right is how much of Minnie’s perspective we are shown, very rarely does it switch to Monroes perspective, and even still I’m not sure they did that, mostly showing him viewing her from a far but the most we see of how he really feels is when they take acid together. I think this was a really big catalyst for Minnie’s story because I think it finally showed her Monroe’s true colors, a weeping baby boy who has not grown up at all. After this event Minnie becomes much more distant, but we still see how much the relationship effects/ effected her. I just really enjoyed how the film ended, it was not a happy ending in the sense the two end up together, it is a happy ending in my opinion because Minnie finally sees herself, how she wants others to see her, I also really enjoyed how she continued to pursue her cartoon career and even started selling them at the end! Overall I believe this film did a great job in showcasing the different emotional storms that Minnie goes through with this increasingly stressful situation.
I have yet to see the movie adaptation, but the graphic novel is definitely worth a read! Extremely poignant and it's all through Minnie's perspective. Definitely more slice of life but you get to see so much complexity in Minnie
I was so happy when you uploaded! Cause your videos are so well-made and I always look forward to watching your thought-provoking and well researched essays! Your videos always make my day better!
This is phenomenal. I have a completely new area of film I want to research now.
In therapy I learned that when I'm triggered I'm supposed to look within - what thoughts and emotions are making me react. Looking for external blame when you're triggered is disempowering, it takes away your agency. So when a film triggers you, maybe calling for it to go away isn't helpful to you. It's an invitation to look within.
This seems like a really helpful way to look at and work with one’s own triggers, and I will be remembering this :)
This is your best work. Absolutely brilliant.
I watched the trailer for Licorice Pizza when I got it as an ad on YT, no clear indication of the age gap, I thought it was just two hetero high scholars falling in love. Nothing to add to the conversation, but good video.
Alana Haim looks like a teenager I guess... I didn't think there was an age gap either lol 😂
@@samf.s8786 I think it's cause both actors are almost the same height, when compared to the other films like cmbyn where the height difference is stark.
kickass essay! paused it to go watch An Education, and that was excellent, so, nice bonus =)
this helped digest this movie, and i like it more as a result, so thanks for that BD!
I'm sorry your video got age restricted. this is such an interesting topic and it's so challenging to talk about in a nuanced way. I logged on to youtube with my "real" google account just to be able to watch this. I'm glad I watch enough of your videos that this came up in my feed!
Great video. I willingly spoiled my most anticipated movie to watch it, but it was worth it. I was hoping perhaps you'd mention Buffalo '66 or Red Rocket. Maybe in the second half.
credits at the front + these nails = my undying devotion
Great video once again, Brooey! This was definitely an in depth and impartial discussion on film's portrayals on age-gap relationships. I would love to see a more in depth take on the 1962 and 1997 film versions of Lolita. Keep up the great work!
Licorice Pizza has a pretty impressionistic, even surreal style. It's a story told through the lense of imperfect memory and nostalgia. People should stop taking the central relationship so literally. This wasn't high realism
it was also a fictional film. i think people forget that.
@@paulelroy6650 fictional films can still be propagandistic or ideologically harmful. I just happen to think Licorice Pizza is not particularly propagandistic, more impressionistic and dream-like. In fact, I don't think we're supposed to even know for sure whether or not Lana says "I love you, Gary" at the end. The way the end was shot gives an impression that this is what he wished he heard rather than what was actually said.
@@harmonynelson2141 Honestly I think people need to stop making excuses. They could've just made him older 15 and 25 is not okay unless the movie makes sure to portray it's a predatory relationship.
@@majlordag1889 life is messy and art is a reflection of life. Art isn't supposed to be a moral map that people model their lives after. Sorry, but I don't think you have the tools yet to critically engage with a film like this. Take some film/media studies classes.
@@harmonynelson2141 Life for sure is messy. However, imagine if a movie was about an 11 yo and a 40yo having a relationship and the producers made it look really romantic and not problematic, then tried to justify it by saying it's fine because the story isn't high on realism. You can still portray the p world in a movie if you do it respectfully and don't glamorize it, I never claimed you're not allowed to portray it at all. Justifying the portrayal of a 15yo with a 25yo by saying it's not supposed to be realism is kinda the logic a lot of animes use when they make a character look like a kid but say they're secretly 1000yo so sexualizing them is fine
This channel was a great find. Loved this analysis and the others I’ve seen too
Phenomenal analysis, thank you for this!
One thing I wished you had covered was whether a movie has a duty to depict statutory relationships as bad, which I think it does. Call Me By Your Name is more in the gray area due to the age closeness, but Licorice Pizza definitely is not. It even shows how they both realize their relationship is unhealthy, by at the end they literally run away into the sunset. Having a neutral position on child predation is just like being a complicit bystander relative to films like Lolita 1997.
Always glad to have your work show up.
I would love to hear your thoughts on Harold and Maude! That movie plays with this same lost younger man dynamic, but with a much much older woman.
Manhattan looks unwatchably sleazy.
I really hope part 2 is for euphoria!!!! Too much debate but I would really like to see your point of view
Euphoria is under controversy for what some people believe to be “glamorization” of drug use, however we watch the main character almost die twice(?), her close relationships deteriorate and overall life fall apart due to her addiction and terrible life choices. I wouldn’t want to switch places with Rue or even her non-addict friends who have their own somewhat fucked up lives and people surrounding them. I think most teens are smart enough to tell that these characters are not meant to be admired.
showcasing taboos is not the problem but how you showcase it matters. 13 reasons why romanticized suicide through it’s writing. Euphoria doesn’t romanticize anything and shows the shitty and gritty consequences of these teenagers and their lifestyles, (but it does go overboard on the nudity and sexualization of teenagers, which it should be criticized for)
I've not seen euphoria so I can't speak about that, but honestly I disagree with the whole idea that depicting drug use in a "glamorous" way is inherently wrong. Drug use can be glamorous actually, as a person who as tried drugs myself, I can tell you I wouldn't have done it if I thought it wasn't gonna be fun. A lot of people do drugs for lots o different reasons, and of course drugs are very destructive, but I think acting like you can't ever portray ANY drug use without making it seem like hell in every way all of the time without being told your "glamorizing" it is denying the truth that most people who got addicted to drugs had pretty valid and fairly logical reasons for starting in the first place.
@@gpu213 I’m sorry to be harsh but there are no valid reasons for starting it unless you were prescribed by a doctor. That’s your addiction talking. I have an addict in my family. None of the “fun” eclipses the consequences. He’s a shell of himself and the entire family hates him because of the things he’s done for and because of drugs. Glamorizing drugs im media is is wrong and results in people like yourself with your mindset. I don’t trust anything an addict has to say and the only reason I like Euphoria is because it shows the reality of addicts and their shitty life choices.
@@witchplease9695 yeah, when addicted its destructive, but i think demonising drug use so severely doesnt help, people usually do drugs because they are struggling in life and want an escape, who can blame them? Or just because it seems like a fun thing to do. Alcohol is a drug remember and its completely normalised to get drunk recreationally. Of course it’s dangerous, im saying it makes perfect sense that people do drugs, despite the danger
@@witchplease9695 I've done "hard" drugs 5-6 times during the last 3 years and loved it every time and look forward to the next time I have a few days of work to do it again. Stigmatisation makes responsible use much more difficult, and criminalisation makes it impossible to stop potentially problematic use when it is still manageable.
ART. End of argument. Stop, please.
not me realizing that I have been groomed from watching this video