I hesitate to bring this up for fear of launching a tug-of-war. Politics is not entertainment for me, but for many it’s something they can’t turn away from. Here in the States, the political arena is gearing up fast and furious. It’s a time I really can’t stand - regardless of party affiliation, I end up feeling like if I vote, I’m voting for the candidiate I think will inflict the least harm. That’s neither here nor there, really.

From a feminist standpoint, Republican candidate John McCain naming Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate has sent the media into a tailspin. Some of it’s about politics, but often the commentary is littered with sexism. FCOL, CNN just used the term ‘hockey mom’ in a headline. The meat of the article might focus in a less gender-biased way, but jeez. From The Wall Street Journal’s opinions page:

Imagine watching Sarah Palin, the gun-toting, lifelong member of the NRA, the PTA mom with teased hair and hips half the size of Hillary’s, who went … omigod … to the University of Idaho and studied journalism. Mrs. Palin with her five kids and one of them still virtually suckling age, going wham through that cement ceiling put there exclusively for good-looking right-wing/populist conservative females by not-so-good-looking left-wing ones (Gloria Steinem excepting).

Elsewhere on the internets, we’re seeing advice for Palin to stay at home to take care of her babies, commentary on her pregnant teen daughter and about a million other news tidbits focusing more on her personally than politically. Please feel free to share.

Shoot, even people I’m surrounded by have uttered the “I don’t like the sound of her voice” bullshit we’ve discussed here before. Yesterday a male coworker commented that he thought Palin was super hot.

Love Palin’s politics or hate them, it’s incredibly disheartening to see people focusing on things which are not entirely relevant or necessarily important versus keeping their debates about her political stance.

(I do have to link to The Daily Show, though, because sexism in politics certainly isn’t new. I’m afraid my bias might be showing, that’s dang funny.)

On what I think is a much less loaded topic, Beyonce calls weight gain “so much fun” and bemoans “I had to lose it,” she laments. “I was so angry with myself. I was like, ‘D’oh! Why do you have to go through this?’”. Oh, dear.

Alas, I lost the link to where female star salaries were again compared like a competition. Fail, SBG, fail. I was going to mention it, only because I can never seem to recall if ranking by salary gets done for male stars. Even if they did, can you imagine doing a side-by-side comparison? It might reveal too much…

What have you all been buzzing about that I might have missed?

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Oh, how clever of Sealy! Using gold digger trope as a prime example of Us v. Them. You see what they did there? There are regular people who are too busy working to relax, and then there are women who boinked their way to wealth and can therefore sleep all day. I know when I think wealthy woman, I automatically jump to “gold digger” because there is no other way a woman could ever amass so much wealth all she has to do for her daily routine is pamper herself and get hours and hours of rest. ::rolls eyes::

Try imaginging them swapping her out for “Meet Joe Schmoo, gigolo…”

As Jennifer Kesler pointed out on my LJ when I spluttered about this ad, the gold digger stereotype is problematic from an historical standpoint: for ages upon ages, a woman’s means to survive were limited (and often it wasn’t her means at all) to being married off to a man who would care for her basic needs, rely upon family to care for her forever and/or prostitute herself. Then we turn around, get enlightened and a woman who seeks this kind of security is frowned upon or made fun of.

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Along the way, Generation M forces us to confront the dangerous real-life consequences of misogyny in all its forms - making a compelling case that when we devalue more than half the population based on gender, we harm boys and men as well as women and girls.

Obviously, I can’t review a documentary I haven’t seen, so I’m just mentioning this to inform you in case you want to check it out.

The other email linked me to an article by Jennifer Merin about the lack of mainstream female film critics in the industry:

Lauzen’s impeccably researched report shows that women are still marginalized in the national discussion about film, arguably our country’s most influential cultural commodity — a medium of sweeping social, political and economic significance.

The more I thought about it, however, I realized there is a bit of a theme going on here. Women are welcome in front the camera - if they’re young, meet the insane beauty standard, and are willing to be depicted not as sexual beings but as objects intended to rally Our Boys into a frenzy of socially approved heterosexual lust. But the mainstream media doesn’t want to hear from women exercising critical thought about pop culture. Note we’re talking about “women”, not feminists. They’re not only ignoring women who might complain about the elements we criticize here; they’re ignoring women who might be totally oblivious to issues of gender, race, etc., and are as likely to be valued by the audience as male critics.

Merin reveals another wrinkle with a quote from Stephanie Zacharek suggesting there’s also a decrease in mainstream media’s willingness to hire full-time critics at all, male or female. According to Merin, the future of movie criticism lies with bloggers. This is true: online, your chances of finding a critic who mostly shares your point of view is much more likely than in print. I don’t completely share Merin’s concern about bloggers being marketers or studio employees in disguise, though I think that’s very possible: I just don’t think the practice of bribing critics began with the internet. If Hearst and Pulitzer could drag the US into war through unethical journalistic practices, I think it’s safe to assume the people who once helped make or break movies were sometimes subject to undue influence.

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Oh. My. Word. Is Dixie for really reals? All but one woman used in this ad say something that offends my sensibilities as a woman. I am really at a loss to do anything but splutter incoherently.

Woman #1 - No woman I know is defined by the number of dishes she washes, and it’s insulting to imply this. FAIL.

Woman #2 - Wait, wait, wait a minute, did they really just have a female actor say “I’m trading in my apron…” and move on to more glamorous things such as painting one’s nails? FAIL.

Woman #3 - Okay, needing a paper plate as strong as she is and is strong enough to hold messy food? I can get behind that. But it’s still relying on the women-in-the-kitchen bullshit. Partial FAIL.

Woman #4 - Ah, the kid card. I’m sorry that taking fifteen minutes a day to load the dishwasher will drastically decrease the time you spend with your children. Women-as-nurturers for $200, Alex. FAIL.

Woman #5 - Repeat of #4, with the added bonus of being proud of using disposable dishware. Uhm. FAIL.

The cloying, ubersweetness of all these women might be what gets me the most. Dixie is relying heavily on the Happy Housewife trope, and it causes sharp pain behind my right eye every time I see this ad. It…it…flames. Flames on the side of my face…

I’m leaving out any in depth critique for two reasons - see note above about incoherency and I’m really interested in what you all think. I can’t be alone in thinking this is one of the most aggravating and problematic ads on TV right now, can I?

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I was never the only one

The film industry is absolutely full of people who want to write better roles for women and other “minorities.” I was never the only one arguing for change. Not only students but employed writers, producers and directors at every level of the game want change, and they will tell you so if you discuss your desire for change. But then they tell you why change can’t happen, and it’s always the same tired arguments that don’t really stand. It once took me a year to get a producer to understand that if the industry has never made mainstream movies featuring female leads that got promoted the same way as the movies featuring men, you cannot claim the audience doesn’t like them. It’s like saying “We gave them apples and apples. They chose apples. Therefore, they don’t like oranges.”

And he was one of the ones who wanted change. He just believed all the usual arguments about how the audience wouldn’t tolerate change. You know, the arguments about how the “right” audience wouldn’t go see a fantastic suspense/sci-fi thriller if it starred Sigourney Weaver instead of some dude, and so on and so forth. You know the examples we’ve all named that prove the dominant theories imperfect, at the very least. They were always dismissed as non-recurring phenomena.

This is, in fact, why I left. If all these people - no, it’s not just Joss Whedon, though he’s one of the few even attempting to walk the walk - at various levels of power in the industry couldn’t change it, how many sell-out scripts would I have to sell (damaging my own credibility) to acquire enough power to make the films I believe to this day the audience wants to see? Could it even be done? I didn’t see how. Conversely, what if I started running websites and became a millionaire - something screenwriters rarely become? I could become a financier and call the shots on how a movie I funded gets made and marketed. That was how to get the power to change things: not by climbing up a ladder with all the Old Guard on higher rungs dropping bricks on your head every step of the way, but by accruing power outside the system and eventually meeting them at the top of the ladder with something they very much want in tow.

I wouldn’t have left if there weren’t so many other people already working within the system for change. I figured they needed someone on the outside with the same agenda. This site is my contribution to raising the audience’s awareness of how it’s being manipulated, and why change isn’t happening.

Screenwriting: almost as much power as the janitor

When Stephen King writes a feminist-friendly book, it stays feminist-friendly throughout the editing process. You can be sure that what Stephen King writes represents his own thinking processes, or at least something he’s allowed his editor to talk him into. When a lowly screenwriter pens a feminist-friendly script, however, it gets rewritten and there is nothing you can do about it.

One of the first things you learn when you start reading about selling scripts is that when you sell a script, you can try to negotiate a contract that specifies you get to do the rewrites. But if you refuse to put in that sex scene they want that totally throws off your story, they’ll just hire someone else to do it. If you refuse to make your black characters white or your women characters men or to reduce your developed not-white-male characters into vague supporters of your white male lead’s agenda, they’ll just hire someone else to do it. And your name will end up attached to a piece of shit that possibly even violates your personal ethics. There is no guaranteed way to avoid this. Not one.

Do you see now why Joss Whedon sometimes gets it wrong? Even at this stage in his career, he has to play ball with them somewhat - carefully choosing his battles - or he’d have accomplished even fewer steps in the right directions than he’s managed so far. If he didn’t give them some of what they want, they’d just have found someone else to rewrite him.

Writers really don’t have enough power to affect change on their own. Therefore, many of them try to become producers and directors, only to find that now they’re responsible for the success of a movie on which the entire hard-working crew is depending. Suddenly, not only do you feel pressured to play it a bit more safe for their sake, but you realize the studio won’t back you up with a good marketing campaign if they don’t see the brilliance of this new direction you’re heading. Without marketing, most any movie or TV show will tank… and be added to the list entitled “Movies That Prove People Only Want Stories About White Men.” Not only might your crusading harm the income of people depending on you; you might even harm your cause.

If all Hollywood needed were more people who think like you and me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. There are plenty of Hollywood insiders (including white men) who want change, who want to make movies about fascinating people who aren’t white men. The problem is that too many people involved in the very collaborative process of film buy into the belief that the audience won’t accept anything but white men’s stories, and there’s a vicious cycle preventing the industry from taking the next step.

“But I think they’re right…”

I believe there are enough “exceptions” to prove audiences are more tolerant of non-white-male leads than Hollywood thinks. This is not to say audiences are less sexist or racist than Hollywood thinks; see Hyperphonics’ eloquent comment on that. My argument is simply that I perceive proof among all these “exceptions” that such movies can be profitable. Why does that matter?

Because if you make enough movies featuring people other than white men doing the same interesting things white men have been allowed to do in film, those movies become normal, and then the idea that people other than white men can be interesting becomes normal. Yes, some of the audience will be seeing the movie for the same ugly reasons that virulent white racists enjoy watching African-American sports figures or misogynists enjoy screwing women, but eventually you’ll have a whole generation of kids who doesn’t remember when only white men had stories. What will that generation produce in its art and its politics? What will its women and “minorities” achieve? Bigotry will never go away completely - I’m afraid humans are inherently xenophobic assholes aspiring to be something better and often failing - but at least we can render some expressions of it abnormal. We can saturate a market dominated by one viewpoint with many other viewpoints, without everyone losing their shirts. Ideals and profit are not mutually exclusive.

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Yellow and Red are often shown chumming around. Yellow’s rather oafish and a bit slow. Red’s snarky and sarcastic. Their interaction is probably stereotypical in its own right - see the hypothermia commercial, which is about the only one where their gender is essential, and even then it’s not about sex. Countless other classic commericals, though, are simply cute and funny: Ice cream treats and what are you eating? are decent examples of the comedic duo Yellow and Red are supposed to be and the Addams Family commercial is classic - I am always impressed with how much that one looks like Uncle Fester. I’m sure if M&Ms are available in your country, you can think of countless other harmless, fun commercials - the “this is the day” campaign is catchy and always a favorite.

Now we’ll take a look at some commercials in which Green’s the star. Take the cat-calling commercial, which highlights the phenomenon of a woman being “appreciated” on the street. It’s saved a little bit by having a woman also ogle Green, and Green’s sassy comeback, but ultimately the ad makers had to use Green here, because everyone knows people will not whistle and make inappropriate remarks at a male-gendered M&M. Take the Megan Mullally commerical as another example - the only intances of sexualization involve Megan herself (and not in an overt way, more in a showtunes kind of way) and Green, who is described as a “chocolate beauty queen”.

The one that really got me peeved was the most recent ad for M&M Premiums, in which Green struts around as if she’s in a soft porn, with a sexy woman reading the voice over. Again, when the message is that eating chocolate is a sensual affair, the go-to gal is Green. The guys, meanwhile, are the ones filming her and their reaction is … well, I don’t know what to say about it.

Green also gets sexualized internationally. I stumbled across a few examples on YouTube: Green Eye Candy, Green Naked (this one isn’t sexy, per se),  and an, uh, interesting music vid in which Green is the object of objectification for Yellow and Red.

The differences aren’t subtle here. Even the music played in Green’s commercials cues the audience to think chocolate = sex, whereas the other M&M commercials suggest playfulness and fun. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Green is gendered female and is used in a surprisingly blatant way (for chocolate candy, anyway).

I don’t know if I can ever look at M&Ms the same way again.

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“Bringeth It On” has more good things in one episode than a lot of shows manage in a whole season. I hardly know where to start: the complete lack of surprise the Girardi family shows for Will making breakfast while Helen sleeps in on the weekend? Joan’s friend Grace’s verbal smackdown of a popular girl who tried to insult her by calling her a lesbian? Helen doing everything she can to watch out for the female students while the D.A. is pushing the police on a witchhunt to make an example of the teenage mother? Adam’s complete acceptance of Joan’s sudden interest in cheering in contrast with Grace’s disgust at something so perky and mainstream?

The police started by going to the school and asking to interview students who could be the girl they’re looking for, and Vice Principal Price had helpfully compiled a list of girls he thought were most likely. Helen quite rightly refused to make any copies for the investigation or give it back– Price claims he’s qualified to identify “at risk” students, but Helen says they just don’t fit his ideal of the perfect young lady and that the only reason her own daughter isn’t on the list is because Will’s the chief of police. And why aren’t they talking to any boys? They eventually decide to have a small group of people listen to the 911 tape to see if anyone recognizes the voice. Showing some shocking naivety Will says later in private that the list would never have been made public, but as Helen points out “The CIA couldn’t keep that list from getting out in a high school”.

Meanwhile Joan kind of misses the point about cheerleading, like she usually does at first. She’s becoming friends with the cheerleaders and letting it tear apart her new friendship with Grace. Even tacitly condoning the list some of the girls are drawing up of the likely candidates and barely speaking up when someone suggests Grace. Joan is confusing popularity with friendship, as God tells her.

Eventually things work out in the usual indirect manner: Helen happens to answer Joan’s cell phone and recognizes cheerleader Brianne’s voice from the tape. Once word gets out, Brianne transfers out of the school and Joan stops to talk to her while she’s waiting for her dad to get the paperwork, and Brianne says that Joan’s the only person who’s asked how she is. The only one who’s even talked to her: all her so-called friends had seen her and purposely ignored her. It’s easy to see it as the catty cheerleader stereotype but everyone in school is talking about what happened, the only extra criticism for them is that they were the people closest to her and didn’t have a clue.

The point is that Brianne would NEVER have made it onto Price’s “at risk” list. She’s a nice girl from a nice family and was outwardly happy and social. The point is things like this don’t just happen to the “bad” girls, and being there for someone when they need friends the most should be more important than your reputation. And Joan takes the opportunity to point that out in a public forum at her final tryout. In cheer form!

Go, Eagles, Go, Eagles, Go, go, go Eagles!
We live to cheer
We’re so sincere
Unless you get in trouble — then we’re outta here

‘Cause it’s such a royal pain when a friend gets arrested
How could I have known? How could I have guessed it?
It’s not like she’s my sister — whoops, is that my beeper?
And even if she was, am I my sister’s keeper?

Sorry, gotta go, tryouts are today.
Tell her we’ll think of her every time we say
Go, Eagles, Go, Eagles, Go, go, go Eagles!

My name is Joan
This cheer is my own
So kiss my feathers, ’cause this bird has flown.

The episode takes time to make an excellent point about how much criticism and shame is heaped on a girl in this situation while also making the point that none hits the boy who’s also responsible. After Helen’s first question about why they aren’t talking to any boys, he’s not mentioned at all until the very end. That D.A. who was so eager to prosecute a teenage girl for attempted murder? Declines to press any charges at all, even endangerment. When Will’s telling Helen about it at the end, she drops the info that Brianne’s boyfriend is the son of a Councilman, but nobody ever asked about him. We never even saw him, and only learned his name in the last 30 seconds of the show. Yes, she was hiding the pregnancy but no one else showed any interest in even finding out who the father was.

The boyfriend’s absence is used to contrast the reduced expectations he’s held to while highlighting the many ways Brianne is being punished– does anyone for a minute believe that he’ll be shunned the way Brianne was? Does he have to transfer schools? The only reason he comes into it at all is when they decide to bend rules to make his and his father’s lives easier. Seems to me that Brianne would be the better subject of such concern. But no, it was entirely her responsibility. Can’t think why she panicked. And I can’t think why we so rarely see the intrinsic unfairness shown like this.

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Response from writer/film types:

Charles Stross announced that from now on his books and any film adaptations of them will pass the Bechdel test. He also made a follow up post listing articles that spurred the decision.

Aspiring screenwriter Misty Flores lists some great recommendations of films that pass the test.

Alex Epstein, a screenwriter, show runner and author, had this to say:

Fascinating post on Jennifer Kesler’s blog The Hathor Legacy about an unwritten rule that I never heard of, but which, come to think of it, I almost certainly have followed instinctively in my screenplays:women can’t talk to other women about anything other than men.

He and his readers are trying to compile a list of successful mainstream movies that pass the test.

While I avoided naming any of the professors or industry professionals I encountered who advised me against passing the Bechdel test, Miss-Anthropy - a current UCLA film student - had no trouble making one accurate guess.

And Extraneous Particles talks about this as a “trap” writers fall into:

It’s easy to define the characters you don’t understand by attaching them to a character you do understand. But it’s a disservice to the character, and ultimately, a disservice to yourself as a writer.

What bloggers had to say

Fleet-Streetese breaks down several 2008 movies into a three-point Bechdel-based scale. There’s some very interesting analysis here.

Seeking Avalon talks about how the comic book industry does the same thing as film, relegating women to the position of “exotic others” from the perspective of adolescent white boys.

Silverblue digs into some of the outlinks and backlinks and posts some very cogent analysis - hitting, incidentally, on one of the exact arguments I used to have with industry pros: “Maybe chick flicks do not do very well because they usually suck, not because women are an insanely hard demographic to reach.” But that’s just the beginning - read the whole thing, and the comments, too.

Yonmei at Feminist SF - The Blog! said:

What I found interesting about Betacandy’s posts is that they outline in convincing detail why it is that the movie/TV industry in California is still stuck in the 1960s - and why Joss Whedon comes across as such a rebel just because he did, some time ago, manage to write a TV series in which two women sometimes talked to each other about something other than a man.

And, on a side note, this is why the frequently under-appreciated Xena: Warrior Princess was revolutionary, too.

Ideologically Impure draws a very appropos contrast between Sex & The City and The Golden Girls.

Gold-Plated Witch on Wheels notes the irony of Hollywood making so many movies about evil government and big business screwing the little guy, then screwing over women.

Crazy on Tap has an interesting discussion about such things as how men can be uninteresting or obnoxious in ways women aren’t, thus proving not all men operate on some hive mind which fears girl-cooties above all else.

This comment thread at the F-word makes for really interesting reading as they discuss examples of movies that do and don’t pass the test and share anecdotes about audience responses.

Seth Roberts, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, suggested a new show you might want to check out in response:

I came across this test after spending a pleasant morning analyzing data while listening to the first six episodes of Denise Richards: It’s Complicated which I found on YouTube. (Such as part 1 of Episode 1.) The show consisted mainly of two named female characters — Denise and sister, Denise and friend, Denise and daughter — talking to each other about something other than a man.

I was surprised how much I liked it.

And apparently this blog full of silly females you should just ignore (someone tell our 18-49 year old male audience about that, ‘kay?) is also capable of sending a bit of traffic to your website: “Impressive spike in hits yesterday. Welcome, new readers from The Hathor Legacy! (I love Project Wonderful sometimes).” That spike was due to the Bechdel post hitting the front page of Reddit, despite the extremely male-dominated audience on that site. Hmm.

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Let’s get started, shall we?

About eight months ago, I brought up Jennifer Love Hewitt’s war of words with tabloids for snapping unflattering pictures and calling her fat. This is, sadly, not an uncommon occurrence in today’s entertainment world.

Now we have this: the tabloids are reporting on Jennifer Love Hewitt’s amazing weight loss, which she insists is not a result of the debate back in December of 2007. Call me skeptical, I guess. It’s great for people to want to lose weight for health reasons, but what happened to being happy and standing up for herself the way she was? *le sigh* Mixed messages are so confusing.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I ran across this little blurb a month ago and never had the chance to do anything with it. It seems like an appropriate thing to juxtapose with the story above. Megan Fox, rising starlet and co-star of last year’s summer blockbuster Transformers, was asked (told?) to gain weight in order to be in the sequel. I’m not sure I’m fond of anyone dictating what to do with someone else’s physique, but that is part and parcel with an industry so reliant on body image and control. Ugh. On a contradictory note, I have to admit it is nice to see someone asked to enhance her curves (without PhotoShop!) rather than try to starve them away.

In other news, the Olympic games have brought important discussions to the plate. Rumblings about underage Chinese gymnasts resurface every other day. There’s been a pictoral debate on why women volleyball players wear bikinis while the guys cover up, which I think is a fair question. I can see both sides, there, though really - if it’s more comfortable for the women to wear less, wouldn’t the same apply to men? Take the shirts off, guys. C’mon. I think this highlights a broader issue - aren’t almost ALL female athletes’ bodies exposed far more than the men’s? I could be mistaken simply because I’ve noticed the camerawork tends to linger on the women more. Gee.

Let’s not forget the opening ceremony’s child singer switcheroo, involving a pretty girl lip synching to an ugly girl’s beautiful voice. What I find most disheartening about that isn’t the fact that it happened, but that the poor “ugly” girl is reportedly just as honored to have served her country as the pretty faux singer, a country which felt it had to hide her behind a proverbial curtain.

That’s it for today!

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And yet, the film manages to include women who are fully fleshed out, sympathetic, interesting characters, even though they don’t get a lot of screen time. First, Julianne Moore plays Alice Fabian, a Joan Baez type looking back on her folk music career, her work with Dylan and Dylan’s influence during a series of interviews for a documentary. She comes off as intelligent and sensitive, talking about both the cultural force and the person that she cared about.

More apparently, the sections of the film dealing with Dylan’s relationship and marriage included a few really solid scenes featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg as “Claire”, Dylan’s wife. Claire is an artist with a career of her own, but who also manages to fall in love with this completely unattainable man and public figure. Her disgust when her husband treats her as a trophy checklist at a party – a sexy artist and French, what a score! – is the focus of that scene, and I didn’t get the sense that we’re supposed to read her as being unreasonably demanding or refusing to accept her eccentric and brilliant husband for who he is. The same thing comes across in the scene between Claire, Dylan and another couple, when Dylan claims that women just aren’t capable of writing poetry the way that men are. Not only does his wife immediately challenge him on this ludicrous statement, she then refuses to get involved in a one-on-one “contest” that – given their respective individual talents – she knows would prove absolutely nothing. She walks away, and again, nothing suggests that we’re supposed to read her as being irrational, overly emotional or bitchy. I think the film is written to portray her as a woman who feels abandoned, who loves another person despite all his flaws, who does “get” who he is and the struggles he has, but who gradually comes to realize that it’s just not a marriage that she can live in. There’s no caricature of her, there’s no criticism of her (it’s not really in the nature of the film), she’s just there, living her life and making her decisions.

This is a film that is not about the women characters, and it’s a film that is not about the relationships. This is a film that’s about one man, and it’s explicitly advertised as being about one man in all his complexities. Which is exactly why I’m writing about it – we receive a pretty substantial amount of criticism at this site that suggests that we’re being unreasonable, demanding that every Hollywood movie turn into a “chick flick” or, if people are being slightly more polite, focus completely on the women characters. And while I certainly believe female characters could and should be treated more prominently in media, this is a better example of what I think is really important – these female characters come off as human beings living their own lives, having their own motivations, reactions and emotions based on their own personalities and experiences. In this case, the reason we care about them as an audience is because of one of the men in their lives, but that’s never portrayed as the reason that they exist, the first and foremost thing that they think about themselves.

In short, there’s a really simple way to write good female characters, even if you don’t give them a lot of screen time or big storylines – write them as though they’re human beings with complete lives, even though we may not see the whole thing. This isn’t too much to ask.

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