Romancing the Stone: Deep Thoughts About White Feminism, Fiction Writers, and Forgivable Plot Holes You Can Drive a Bus Through

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Okay, Joan Wilder, write us out of this one.

On this week's episode, Tracie revisits the 1984 film Romancing the Stone. Both Guy girls loved this film in their childhood, enjoying both the romance and comedy of seeing Kathleen Turner's Joan Wilder go from hapless writer to confident and capable badass. Baby Emily, as a budding writer, especially loved how the storytelling made it clear working as a novelist translated to practical life skills.

While the film is just as fun and easy to enjoy as it was 40 years ago, the feminism written into the fiction is only for white women. Joan Wilder is a dynamic, proactive, and delightful character, but Colombia is nothing more than a stereotypical backdrop for her story. Every character in Colombia--other than the white love interest played by Michael Douglas and the bumbling white villain played by Danny DeVito--are either menacing, drug dealers, or background villagers. And Joan doesn't actually need her love interest to save herself and her sister by the end.

Still, there's a lot to love in this film, as long as you remember that Colombia is a real place full of real people, and not just the flattened set piece full of cardboard cutouts used in this film.

Throw on your headphones, keep an eye out for Devil's Fork, and listen in!

Mentioned in this episode:

https://www.splicetoday.com/moving-pictures/the-romance-of-imperialism

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.